by J. C. Burke
‘Ralph drove me to the hospital last week,’ I started. ‘Actually, it was the day that Zane died. He was so nice, Louise. About everything.’
‘No!’ Louise squealed. ‘You sneaky rat! When were you going to fess up?’
‘Nothing’s happened. Unless you count a hug?’
‘I’m sure Ralph likes you,’ Louise said. ‘Andrea thinks I’m imagining it.’
‘She would.’
Louise’s parents had gone out and her brother was at a birthday party so we had the house to ourselves. When we’d finished getting dressed and shoving Louise’s clothes back into her wardrobe and drawers, Louise went downstairs and nicked a bottle of champagne from the cupboard.
We drank it in her bedroom. The number one rule was not to get to the pub too early. That’d look desperate.
‘To Zane,’ I toasted.
‘To Zane.’ Louise clinked her coffee cup against mine. ‘And to you and Ralph!’
‘Oh my God, Louise, I’m really nervous about seeing him now.’ Then I couldn’t help myself. ‘He told me he thought I was cool!’
‘We are going to have the best time tonight, Gemma!’
We clinked glasses again and I promised myself that’d be the last thing I’d say about Ralph.
Even though Louise’s mum had left out lasagne for our dinner and I was starving, we decided it’d make our tummies bloat so we didn’t eat it. Instead we left for The Northern each with a honey sandwich in our hand and the rest of the champagne.
Champagne tasted a bit nicer than white wine and even though it had bubbles, it didn’t make me burp as much. So it was definitely easier to drink and I think I was hogging the bottle. Louise didn’t seem to mind though.
‘You know, Gemma, apart from the movies this is the first time we’ve been out properly together.’ She wrapped her arm around my shoulder and I passed her the bubbly. ‘To us,’ she said, taking a long swig.
‘To going out raging,’ I added. ‘It’s been a while for me.’
‘I know. You poor thing,’ she said, taking another sip.
‘I thought this year I’d be raging every weekend. Not sitting in a hospital on a Saturday night.’
‘Forget about all of that,’ Louise declared. ‘We are going to have the best night ever!’
As we got closer to The Northern, we could hear the lead singer doing a pretty good cover of ‘Little Red Corvette’. The drums were thumping and I could feel the beat filling up my chest, making me walk even faster. I couldn’t wait to get in there now. I’d been trapped in a hospital for weeks surrounded by a slow, plodding gloominess that had found its way inside me via osmosis. Maybe I would present my theory to Mr Curtin, next Biology class.
‘Here we are.’ Louise took my hand and we crossed the road towards the pub. ‘You ready?’
‘I think I’m a bit pissed,’ I said.
‘We’ll order a Baileys and milk. That’ll line our stomachs.’
‘Okay. You’re the boss.’
The minute the door opened the music blasted our brains. The room was swept up in a cloud of smoke, packed with dancing, sweaty bodies that bumped into us as we pushed our way through to the bar.
I scanned the crowd for Ralph. I couldn’t see him, but there were people tucked away in corners and behind pillars, so that didn’t mean he wasn’t there.
Louise and I took our Baileys and milk with us onto the dance floor. The band were playing an INXS cover now and the lead singer was strutting around the stage doing his best Michael Hutchence impersonation. The song was a bit slow and hard to dance to and, to make things even more embarrassing, Fergus Eames had spotted us and came over. He was trying to rub up close to me, his hands running up and down my hips.
I excused myself and went for a wander but I still couldn’t see Ralph, and wondering if he was going to show up was starting to get in the way of my fun. Three Baileys and milks later, my stomach wasn’t feeling so good. Ralph definitely wasn’t here, Fergus Eames wouldn’t leave me alone and I was starting to remember how much I hated dancing.
‘You okay?’ Louise shouted in my ear.
‘I think I’ll go to the loo,’ I told her. ‘You can dance with Fergus.’
‘Gee, thanks. Hurry back!’
On my way to the ladies, I did one more lap of the pub, just in case. But still no Ralph.
I wasn’t going to tell Louise but my heart felt as though it had begun a slow slide down into her ankle boots. There was no point being here now and I wanted to go home. Not back to Louise’s. Back to my place, where I could snuggle up in bed with Zane’s rabbit, like I’d done last night.
There were only three toilets. I stood in the queue waiting, losing my footing every now and then and bumping into the girl behind me who had zero sympathy for my sorry state.
Finally, it was my turn. I folded onto the toilet, burying my head in my hands. Mum was probably still at the movies with Aunty Penny. I could walk home; it wasn’t that far. Or maybe I had enough cash for a taxi. All I knew was that I had to get out of there.
I was counting my coins when I noticed a small Safe Sex poster stuck on the back of the toilet door. Just a small one sitting in a frame. If it’s not on, it’s not on. The words were surrounded by a cartoon of smiling, happy condoms, in a circle holding hands.
But why were they smiling? What was there to be happy about? What about the young guys who hadn’t used condoms? Who hadn’t said, If it’s not on, it’s not on? Who were too afraid to tell their families they had AIDS and were now in hospital dying and alone? Not just one of them. Lots of them.
I didn’t have a pen but I pulled my eyeliner from my wallet. I defaced every smiling condom, turning the corners of their mouths down, drawing wrinkles to make them frown. Then I wrote a new slogan: It’s nothing to smile about.
By the time I left the bathroom I was shaking. No one in this pub really knew about what was going on out there. They probably all thought that AIDS couldn’t get them. It was a gay, fag, dirty, druggie disease that people brought upon themselves. And they didn’t give a shit about those people anyway.
I’d bet no one here had ever held the cold hand of a twenty-one-year-old. Held it and not let go for almost three hours, until he wasn’t in his body anymore. So only then, you knew that it was okay to take your hand out of his because you didn’t want him to feel alone for one second because he was so fucking terrified.
Now it was me pushing through the crowd. I didn’t even care that a metre-long piece of toilet paper had attached itself to the heel of my boot and was dragging along behind me. Catrina’s mother and bridesmaids, Andrea’s mother and grandmother, probably Andrea too and God knows who else all thought my family were dirty plague carriers. What difference did a bit of toilet paper make? Maybe it was the perfect accessory for someone like me.
Sonia Darue and some of the other prissies had turned up. They were dancing in a tight circle, smiling and laughing, each with one hand holding a drink and the other waving in the air. The perfect girls with perfect lives whose biggest dilemma was if their periods were late.
Suddenly I hoped that AIDS would bowl them all down, one after the other, until they all had cat cancer in their brains, the crypto bug to make them shit their pants and purple spots all over their flawless skin.
It was only when I was out the door and a few blocks away that I could stop. I crouched in the gutter and buried my head in my lap. I couldn’t cry because I was too mad. Instead, I wanted to kick or hit or slap something. Tonight I wasn’t scared of that feeling. I knew this person. This person was me. Gemma Longrigg, who had a brother with AIDS.
The gutter was feeling more and more comfortable. I decided to have a quick nap before I went back into the pub to find Louise and hopefully Ralph. But when I closed my eyes, the blackness started to swirl and sway in my head and suddenly I was sitting up, spewing.
My vomit was all over Louise’s black-and-white spotty dress. It was dripping through the ends of my hair and out of my nose. I tried to sta
nd up but fell straight back down. I pulled Louise’s ankle boots off, noticed that they’d managed to get a bit of spew in them, rolled over onto my knees, then got up on all fours, and very slowly attempted to stand again.
One step, two steps, three. I staggered in my socks towards a tree. My hands steadied myself on the trunk while I vomited again.
I didn’t hear any footsteps. I first realised someone was there because I noticed red pointy shoes on the ground next to me.
I peered up through strands of my sticky hair and saw Vanessa.
And standing next to her was Ralph.
22
THE NEXT MORNING, I WOKE UP TO FIND MY bed covered in towels and a bucket on my bedside table. I groaned, dragging the pillow over my head so I could find some darkness.
The last thing I remembered was the sight of Ralph standing next to his twin sister. Bits of the night popped up but I honestly could not remember anything clearly after that. Except a vague memory that maybe they’d helped me into the lime mobile?
My mouth was dry and there was something sharp sticking into the back of my throat that burned when I swallowed. Carefully, I manoeuvred myself out from underneath the towels and blankets and shuffled to the bathroom to clean my teeth. But I’d forgotten my toiletry bag. I was about to shuffle back to get it when Mum appeared at the doorway.
‘Good afternoon, young lady,’ Mum greeted me. She was eating a piece of toast. ‘Didn’t you cover yourself in glory last night.’
‘Can you get mad with me later?’ I moaned. ‘I don’t think I could handle it now.’
‘I’m not mad, Gemma.’
‘You’re not?’
‘No. I’m relieved you’re all right and that you have good friends that care about you.’ I was about to smile when my mother said the most horrific thing. ‘Poor Ralph, carrying you up every single stair like that. You were such a groaning dead weight. Worse than Mrs C at Christmas. He must feel like he has a broken back today.’
‘Ralph carried me up the stairs?’
‘Every single one. But don’t feel bad.’ Mum smirked. ‘You thanked him enough. And told him how fantastic and gorgeous he was. Actually you kept telling him he looked like Johnny Depp.’
‘Noooo!’
‘Louise has called a few times. She was frantic last night, thinking you’d disappeared. But Ralph went back to The Northern to tell her you were fine. What a nice boy.’
‘Mum, this is a disaster.’
‘Well, sweet pea, you have no one to blame except yourself.’
‘The night just turned—’ I began.
‘No. You did, Gemma,’ Mum replied. ‘It’s called the drink.’
‘Someone kill me.’
‘Not yet, because Ralph will be here soon to drop your wallet off. Apparently he found it in the car this morning’ – she stalled as another smirk appeared on her face – ‘when he was cleaning up your vomit in the back seat.’
‘What?’
I sat on the floor of the shower wishing I could be sucked down the drain hole and live underground with the water-rats for the rest of my life. Or at least the rest of the year.
Now I had to somehow get my act together and look reasonable because Ralph was coming over. I begged my mother to tell him I was out, or make up some other excuse for me, but she flatly refused. This was why I wasn’t in trouble – Ralph’s visit was my punishment.
My 501s and Billy’s grey jumper were the best I could do. At least it was casual and an outfit I liked. Sloppy chic, I’d call it. The only problem was that I couldn’t fix my bloated face and my eyes like slits hiding somewhere in the skin.
There was nothing I could say to Ralph except sorry. I would have to wear the ‘you look like Johnny Depp’ line because I’d only look worse denying it. Maybe I’d try to make a joke about it but I wasn’t feeling very witty at the moment.
Ralph didn’t knock on the door until after 7 p.m. By that stage I’d given up on him coming and had swung from dreading his arrival to being disappointed he was a no-show. So my heart jumped when I heard the tap on the door.
Ralph was grinning his head off when he handed me the wallet. ‘Feeling better?’
‘I’m so, so sorry, Ralph. I don’t remember anything.’
‘The bus from the Geography excursion got in late,’ he started. ‘We’d only just got to The Northern when Vanessa spotted you stumbling down the road.’ Ralph’s hand was moving this way and that, mimicking the wonky trail I’d taken. He was trying not to laugh. ‘We were calling out to you but you didn’t stop.’
‘Really?’
‘Don’t worry about it.’
‘You must think I’m disgusting though.’
‘Gemma, it’s cool. Like I said, don’t worry about it.’ Then he added, ‘It was actually pretty amusing.’
‘Glad I could oblige.’
‘See you at school,’ he said, and ran down the stairs two at a time.
Billy called to say he’d be away for the rest of the week. Jonathon had a house in the country with a twenty-five metre swimming pool. My mother said that Billy was there ‘recuperating’. She kept saying how sensible it was that Billy’d decided to have more time away, because he needed the space. Plus, the fresh air would be good for his lungs. But I wondered how bad their fight on the way back from the hospital had been. I couldn’t understand why Billy and Mum had argued over me staying with Zane until he died. Hadn’t I done a good thing? A few times, I’d tried to suss Mum out but she wasn’t taking the bait. Maybe I could squeeze the details out of Billy when he came home.
Louise, Andrea and I had agreed to have coffee after school. It was Louise’s idea. I hoped she wasn’t planning some sort of UN peace treaty between Andrea and me because life was about as peaceful as it ever had been between us. The three of us still met at Nigel in the mornings and some afternoons we walked home together too. Andrea had pissed her pants hearing about Ralph carrying me up the stairs. As far as she was concerned, if it wasn’t for her netball competition, she would’ve been there too.
What neither of us had mentioned once was the formal. We’d been back at school two weeks. That’s how long it’d been since we’d uttered the F word. It was as though the whole thing had been cancelled or that we’d never even had this grand plan of Billy doing our hair and make-up. I felt weird about it and I’m sure Andrea did too. But for now, not talking about it seemed to be the easiest thing to do. In ten weeks’ time, it wouldn’t be so simple.
Early this morning, Mum had driven off to Catrina’s for the final dress fitting. Mum said that she and Catrina had agreed her place was the best option. But I had overheard Mum talking to her on the telephone and to me it sounded like it was Mum’s idea and that Catrina had no option.
Mum forgot to leave money out for afternoon tea. In fact, Mum had forgotten a few things lately. My dentist appointment, her thirty-year school reunion and the Year 11 mothers’ morning tea at Mrs Sylvia Darue’s house that I’d just discovered after finding the invitation in her top drawer when I was raiding it for some coins.
All I had managed to scab so far was one dollar and thirty-five cents. I hit Billy’s room next. Hopefully the top of his chest of drawers would be a gold mine because he always emptied his pockets of change there, stacking the coins up like towers.
Sixty-five cents. That was the disappointing grand total of his gold mine. I opened the top drawer, finding a couple of ten-cent pieces in one corner and a fifty-cent piece on top of a white envelope.
Billy’s handwriting was on the envelope. Yet it was only as I was pocketing the change that I bothered to check who it was addressed to.
Mr Garth Longrigg
Maintenance and Petroleum Services
Ezzo Drilling, PO Box 188, Dampney Bay, WA
Very carefully, my fingers lifted the envelope from the drawer. It was already stamped and ready to go. Our address was on the back with ‘William Longrigg’ as the sender. It wasn’t thick, it had to be only one page.
I turned
on Billy’s bedside lamp, holding the envelope as close to the globe as I dared. But I couldn’t read a thing.
Billy had needed the space and fresh air. When he arrived home on Friday night he was like a brand new person. All sparkly and happy. He gave Mum the most beautiful bunch of white roses that he’d picked from Jonathon’s garden that morning. He even lifted her up in the air like he used to.
‘I might be a skinny old fag these days,’ he joked, ‘but I’m still strong.’
Mum was squealing and laughing. ‘Put me down!’
Billy took his bag into his room, calling out behind him, ‘I’m not home for long. I’m going out for dinner. Then I might go to a club.’ He popped his head around the doorway. ‘Hey, Gemma, want to come dancing? I hear you’ve become a party animal!’
‘Can I, Mum?’
‘Hell will freeze over before I let you go clubbing with your brother.’
‘Next time, Gem,’ Billy called from his bedroom.
So it was Mum and me again. We ate chocolate chip ice-cream and watched the video A Room with a View. It was an olden day story about a young woman and her aunt going to Italy. At one point, the guy picks up the girl and carries her away after she’s collapsed. I thought of Ralph carrying me up the stairs. The only difference – and it was a big one too – was that the girl in the movie looked beautiful. I would have been covered in vomit plus my dress was probably over my head with my undies in full view. Again.
I’d barely spoken to Ralph all week. We’d just finished a Week B timetable, which meant only one double period of English. Ralph had arrived late and had to sit at the very front. For the full seventy minutes I’d stared into the back of his head, hoping it’d make him turn around. But it didn’t. When class finished he had to see the teacher. At least I got a wave from him when I walked out.
Polly Pessimistic had been trying to bust out of her shell and tell me I’d jinxed things with Ralph. He thought I was disgusting. I’d vomited in his car. He thought I was desperate. I’d gushed that he looked like Johnny Depp. He so totally wouldn’t think I was cool anymore. Yesterday, he’d winked at me from the end of the corridor but what was that meant to mean? He hadn’t asked about giving me a lift to the hospital. Or home. Or anywhere.
