And there’s the piety that has shaped my own life, has affected me the most: the piety that says that a man, any man, who hits a woman, any woman, is by definition a bad ’un. Straight up. Black and white. No ifs or buts or maybes or provocation. No second chances. You’re better off without him, girl. Your dad’s no angel, but he never hit your mother.
’Cause I’m no angel, either. Andy and me, it was bad towards the end: really bad. But I’m talking six to the half-dozen. It was a bad relationship, I understand that now. A spoiled princess and a princeling with commitment problems. A man who never, ever introduced me to his family, and a woman whose family were never out of the picture, not even for a day. A guy who reacted to pressure with brutal off-pushing and a woman who reacted to rejection with bursts of uncontrollable rage.
I’m a hypocrite: I’m such a hypocrite. I complain and complain about secrets, and most of my life has been about staying shtum one way or another. I guess I got so much early training in not letting people know how the land really lay, that I never really learned to do anything much else. I didn’t talk about the way things were deteriorating with Andy until they’d gone a long way down the road, and by the time people found out the truth, it was far too late. And they still don’t really know the half of it. To this day, the family think of me as the victim, as their hard-treated little Princess. And me? I’m scared. Scared to death. Scared of getting trapped in another situation I can’t get out of. Scared of people finding out about me, that I’m not as nice as they think. Scared I’ll drive Rufus off, make him leave me the way Andy did. And most of all, I’m terrified of my temper. I’ve not learned the happy medium. Where before I would have reacted like a wildcat, I now just roll over and play dead. I disgust myself, sometimes, with the way I just let myself be stomped on. But you see, I learned the hard way that if I don’t shut my mouth and take what’s doled out to me, that disaster will inevitably follow.
Love has a lot to answer for.
Some Souvenirs of the Apocalypse
Saturday, 11.30 p.m., Brisbane. Driving home from the Mummydaddy’s. I’m driving because Andy always seems to need a drink to handle time with my family. Or so he says. I think it’s more of an any-excuse thing. Andrew has spent an hour in the den with my dad and Costa while Mum and Yaya and I cleaned up after dinner, so it can’t have been that much of an ordeal.
Except that, while we’re sitting at the lights on an empty junction, he announces, apropos nothing, that this has been his last visit to my family home.
He doesn’t say it quite so elegantly, of course. The phrasing comes out more like: ‘Well, that’s the last bloody time I bloody go there. You can stick your bloody family up your bloody clacker.’
Andrew’s speech has always been peppered with the Great Australian Adjective.
I count to ten, and reply: ‘Excuse me?’
Having had his little outburst, he adopts the accusatory-silence mode of expression, and glares through the windscreen.
I count some more, then say: ‘And would you mind telling me where this has come from?’
‘I can’t stick them,’ he says, ‘And I’m not putting up with it any longer.’
‘Since when?’
This has genuinely come as a surprise. Andrew has been coming with me on the weekly home visit without a complaint for years. Matter of fact, I had always been under the impression that he enjoyed them: clapping people on the shoulder and calling my father an old bastard. He showed all the signs of an Australian male in his element.
‘Since for bloody ever. Anyway, I’m not going back there. Wild horses wouldn’t drag me.’
‘What’s eating you?’
‘Nothing. I’ve just had enough, is all.’
The lights change. I move off, hang a right through dark suburban streets.
Neither of us says anything for a bit, then he starts up again: ‘They think a whole lot of themselves, your family. You’d have thought they were royalty, the way they go on.’
My father was wearing a string vest this evening. And my mother was wearing a towelling playsuit in frosted pink. Not a tiara between them.
‘Bullshit.’
‘And that’s another thing. Where do you get off being so bloody foul-mouthed?’
‘You can bloody talk.’
‘It’s not bloody ladylike. Just shows the sort of family you come from.’
‘Well, make your bloody mind up, Andrew. They can’t be the scum of the earth and royalty at the same time.’
This is not, by the way, a political viewpoint I particularly subscribe to, but the point itself is reasonable.
‘Well,’ he says, ‘you can let them run your life if you like, but they’re not bloody running mine.’
‘What’s got into you?’
Andrew suddenly starts gesticulating. The alcohol he’s consumed during the evening exaggerates his gestures, so that I find myself ducking around his hands as I try to keep an eye on the road.
‘No, I guess you probably wouldn’t see any of it, would you? That’s the trouble. You don’t see anything wrong with it.’
I find myself thumping the steering wheel. ‘Of course I bloody don’t! What do you want me to see?’
‘That’s it,’ he says. ‘Bring out the threats. Typical. Daddy’s little girl. Bloody princess bloody Melody, can’t get her own way so she goes berko. Can’t take criticism, can’t take the truth. Things get a bit hot so she goes running to Daddy.’
‘I never—’ I begin.
‘Stuff it,’ he interrupts.
‘Has something happened I don’t know about?’
‘I very much doubt it,’ he says meaningfully.
‘Don’t talk riddles,’ I say.
‘I’m just telling you,’ he says, ‘that I’m sick of the way your family interferes. They’re bloody stickybeaks. Can’t keep their bloody noses out of anything.’
‘Well, at least you’ve met my family. Yours might as well be dead as far as I’ve seen of them.’
‘Well, are you surprised? If they met you, they’d have to meet your family, and—’
‘Now who thinks they’re bloody royalty?’
‘Well, we’ve gone a bit higher up the social scale than kebab shops,’ he says crushingly.
I realise I’m grinding my teeth. ‘I never realised you were a snob, Andrew. Anyway, I don’t know what you’ve got to be so proud of. A photocopying franchise and a guesthouse. It’s not a lot to write home about.’
‘Well,’ he says, ‘I don’t suppose you write home at all.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Well. At least my old man can read.’
This really stings. None of this has ever been a problem before.
‘Yeah. And you know what? I’m proud of him. Not many people get as far as he has when …’
‘Well, you’ve got to ask,’ says Andrew, ‘how he managed it.’
‘What? What do you mean?’ I say, stomach lurching because we’ve been respectable for years now; I’ve never needed to let him in on things because there’s plenty of cover been built up.
He shrugs. An insolent, slumping shrug. ‘Nothing.’
‘Well, you meant something.’
‘No. Nothing. Forget about it.’
‘How can I forget about it?’
‘Oh, stop nagging me, willya?’ he shouts. ‘You and your bloody mouth. Yap yap yap yap yap!’
Firday. 3 a.m. Lord Howe Island. Milky Way Apartments. Andrew lies in bed, silent, arms folded, back turned to me. I know he’s awake. After four years sharing a bed with someone, you’re so attuned to the sound of them sleeping that their insomnia is, usually, catching.
He’s not spoken to me for two hours. I didn’t really notice while we were still with the others, but the silence since we’ve been alone has been oppressive, has filled my ears like white noise. The inconsequential exchanges of going to bed, shared bathrooms, finding spare pillows in a new hotel room, have been one-sided, my words dropping with thuds into the tropical nigh
t like rocks into sand.
But I’m in a good mood tonight. It’s the first night of a week’s R and R, and I’m just ripe to get my bubble popped. We had a good dinner at Trader Nick’s, elbows on the table, shooting the breeze and sinking stubbies with Tina and her bloke-of-the-week, Dylan, and Tines’s sister, Lola, and her girlfriend Rusty, a muscular, forthright type who drives one of Dad’s cabs and never takes shit from anyone. Then we had a couple of sharpies on the deck of our unit, Andrew throwing jokes about, an arm lightly draped over my shoulder just like the old days, and a race in the moonlight down through the forest to Old Settlement beach, where the moon glittered so invitingly off the ocean that Tines and I were overtaken by an urge to chuck our Daks over our shoulders and go skinny-dipping, like we used to when we were fifteen, sixteen. And it was great: just like the old days. A laugh.
And then, the moment we were alone, he reverted to the silent punisher he’s been for months now. That’s Andrew all over: solicitous boyfriend in public, taciturn judge in private. It came as a surprise to most people when we broke up. ‘But you guys got on so well,’ they said. ‘He was always all over you. I don’t understand …’
I lie and listen to him breathe. Decide that I’m not going to let this night be ruined like so many recently. So I reach across the border that’s been drawn down the centre of the bed, and touch his hip, run my fingers forward and down towards his doodle. Men are always harping on about women making the first move, after all.
He slaps the hand away. ‘Get off,’ he says.
I sit up in bed, shocked at the baldness of the rejection. ‘What’s eating you?’
‘Just don’t touch me. I don’t want you pawing me tonight.’
‘What’s your problem this time?’
‘Nothing.’ The back stays firmly turned to me.
‘What, nothing?’
‘Well, if you really want to know, it’s you,’ he says. ‘You give me the irrits.’
‘Oh yeah? And what am I meant to have done this time?’
He sits up sharply, looks at me with an expression of loathing like I’ve never seen on his face before. ‘Well, just look at ya,’ he says.
‘What?’
‘It just hit me, that’s all. When you and Tina were galumphing about with no clothes on. You’re seriously fucking fat. You’re chunderous.’
‘Jesus.’ Taken aback is hardly the word.
‘Just look at ya,’ he repeats. Jabs a finger out and rams it into my belly. ‘You’ve let yourself go. It’s like you don’t care at all. Do you really expect me to fancy that?’
I’m stunned into silence.
‘I’m ashamed to be seen with you,’ he says.
‘You disgust me,’ he says.
‘Just keep your hands to yourself,’ he says. ‘It makes me crook just thinking about it.’
Wednesday. 6 p.m. Home. I’m in a narky state anyway, because I’ve just got my period and I feel like my guts are about to fall out, and, believe me, the last thing you want to be doing when your hormones are all over the place is bending over someone else’s bunions and listening to them grizzle. It’s been a full day, driving about in forty degrees of heat, with a full complement of whingers, because, let’s face it, whatever I think about the power of reflexology, the majority of the people I treat are the sort with more money than sense and too much time on their hands, and I don’t really rank higher in the social order than a manicurist or a hairdresser. Even digging my trigger pointer in twice as hard as I need to doesn’t seem to have had the satisfaction quotient it usually does. I’ve heard nothing but self-pity all day, and though I know that this is largely what people pay me for it’s hard to take when your back hurts and your stomach is cramping and your tolerance levels are at practically zero. I need a shower, a long cold drink and a backrub.
What I get is a lounge full of torn-up rolling-paper packets, a floor full of takeout, a sink full of last night’s washing-up and the dolie I call my fiancé fast asleep in front of the aerial pingpong, volume turned up so loud the neighbours will be over. He’s been there all arvo, by the looks of it. His feet are up on my silk cushions and his mouth is open in a sluggard’s snore, and he’s got one hand down the front of his baggy shorts, cupping his balls. Andy, who I used to love to distraction. Andy, who when I met him was a lion – lean, strong, agile, eager – turned into a neutered tomcat, raggedy blond body hair scattered over a little pot belly. Did I do this to him, that he can have changed so much in four years? Maybe. I can be an über-bitch when I get going. Maybe that’s what I do. Maybe I’m a ball-breaker. Maybe that’s what I am.
I certainly act like one now. And no, the menstrual excuse is no justification. I go into the kitchen, fill a glass full of water, come back into the lounge and throw it in his face, with all the energy I can muster.
I’m not proud of this. I’m not proud of this part of my history. If I remember it, I blush with shame. How can someone have so little self-control? I knew it was ending, I desperately didn’t want it to end, and this was how I went about keeping him.
If I could take it back, I would. All of it. Every little bit. I don’t mean I want him back but, my God, when you know how much you are to blame, when you have so much to be guilty about, you find yourself making every bargain under the sun with God to get him to take the shame away. This was the way I behaved to someone I loved. What sort of person does that make me?
Andy rolls awake, coughing, looks up at me blearily. ‘What’d you—’
‘Get up!’ I shout. ‘Get up, you lazy bastard! What the fuck have you been doing all day?’
Andy scratches his wrist, says: ‘Oh, sorry, babe, I sort of fell asleep.’
I pick up a cushion, swipe him with it.
‘Ow!’ he cries, puts his hand up in front of his face. Somehow this action enrages me all the more. I don’t know. It was a mad time. Mad and bad, and my heart was coming apart at the seams. Suddenly, I’m whacking at him with the cushion, full-throttle, and he’s curled into himself on the couch, saying nothing.
I can hear my own voice, and it doesn’t sound like me. It’s like an ogre has taken over my body. ‘You fucker. You total pointless waste-of-space fucker. You can’t even do the fucking washing-up. Sitting around on your lazy arse all day and I come back and the house is worse than when I left.’
‘Melody!’ his voice is muffled by his defensive arms. ‘What are you doing? Stop it! Stop fucking hitting me!’
Suddenly I realise that I’ve dropped the pillow and am using my bare hands. I’ve been slapping him about the head, even got a couple of punches in on his body. The rage goes out of me as quickly as it came. My arms drop to my sides. ‘Jesus,’ I say.
Andy cautiously unrolls himself. His hair is all messed up and his face is red – whether as a result of my attack or from breathlessness I can’t yet tell.
‘Oh, Jesus, babe.’ I hear the ritual cant of the wife-beater spill from my lips. I’m aware of what I’m doing, but I don’t know what else to say. It all sounds so simple when you see it on the problem pages: he’ll promise he’s sorry. He’ll say he didn’t mean it. He’ll say he doesn’t know what happened. He’ll say it’ll never happen again, but don’t believe it. What they don’t say is this: if it’s you, if you’re the violent one, you probably do mean it. I’m all twisted up inside: confused by my rage and sickened by my behaviour. I can see myself in my mind’s eye, and what I see is a monster. I am disgusting, vile, a modern leper. ‘Oh Jesus,’ I say again, ‘I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me. Oh God, are you all right?’
Andy’s nose is running. He dabs at it, obviously thinking it’s bleeding, looks down at his fingers and back up at me. And the look in his eyes is so wounded, so wounded and disgusted, that I reel. I see in Andy’s eyes the way I feel about myself.
I drop to my knees in front of him. Put a hand out to touch his face, attempt to offer him the comfort we used to give each other in the early days, before we started tearing each other apart. ‘Let me�
�’
He grabs me by the wrist, pulls the hand away.
I start to cry. Crying and shouting: that’s all we do these days. ‘Please don’t. Oh, Andy, I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.’
Head bowed in penitence, I look up through my eyelashes. Andy is shaking his head. His mouth turns down at the corners.
‘You’re sick,’ he says.
He’s right. How can he be wrong? Look at what I’ve just done.
I sob. ‘I’m sorry. Andy, I’m so sorry. I swear, it’ll never happen again. I’m so sorry. Let me make it up …’
Sharply, with contempt, he pushes me by the shoulder so I drop back on to the floor. And there’s something about the gesture that is more humiliating, more enraging, than anything I’ve experienced before. It reminds me of Reggie Harper and her buddies back at school. It reminds me of the way he’s talked to me lately, the way he looks at me lately, his lip curled with a potent combination of dislike and contempt, and waits two beats before he lets go with some remark that crushes the wind out of me. And I see red: a red mist descends in front of my eyes and I lose what remaining restraint I had.
He’s turned and started walking to the door by the time I’m on my feet. I belt across the room, teeth bared, and throw myself on his back, like a kid going for a piggyback, calling him a bastard, a cunt, a fucking shithead. And Andy staggers under the sudden weight, claws at the arm I’ve got wrapped round his throat as I batter at his head with the free hand.
‘Stop it!’ he chokes. ‘Mel, stop it! Get off! Get offa me!’
‘I’ll fucking – I’ll – I fucking hate you! I hate you! I’ll fucking do for yer, you bastard!’
I slip down on to the ground, stand in front of him fists clenched, barely able to see him through the slits that are my eyes. And I don’t know what I’m doing, really I don’t, just that I hate him, and I want to hurt him, make him feel the way I’m feeling right now, hurt and humiliated and hot and stung like snakebite.
Simply Heaven Page 35
