Reunion

by Andrea Goldsmith

  He touched his head. The pain had coagulated in his right temple and when he added the spices to the onions it flared. But like coffee, curries could be kind to migraines, so he threw in some more spices and put up with the pain. Please, he prayed to an unknown being as non-believers in extremis tend to do, please make this headache disappear.

  Linda sometimes could. There would be a hefty dose of aspirin and strong coffee at the first signs of a migraine and she would stroke his head, bending the hairs close to the tender scalp and stepping her fingers up and down the back of his neck. His wife was a no-nonsense sort of person but often very effective.

  Some women are head-strokers and some like Sara are not. Although it was Sara’s difference from Linda, her difference from everyone he knew that underscored her attraction. He had always been drawn to the new. (‘Everyone is,’ Linda had said during one of their recent disagreements. ‘Far more difficult is finding newness, new interest in what you see every day.’ She had paused before adding, ‘Definitely not your speciality.’) Sara was turned up high in a way that in others would be overwrought but in her was exciting. He knew his friends disapproved, that they believed him to be mesmerised by her youth, but the problem, if indeed there was a problem had nothing to do with Sara; rather, when it came to loving attention he was a glutton. His mother’s fault of course, who had given him far too much love when he was a child, burdening him with an impossibly large appetite.

  His three wives, Rosalie, Linda, even Susan the brief disaster in the middle, had all tried to give him what he wanted, and for a time he made it appear as if it were enough. Rosalie would have eventually tossed it in if he had not pushed her first, and how much happier she had been with his replacement; he left Susan to a childcare worker at the crèche; but Linda was not the sort ever to admit defeat – although, as it turned out, neither was she fool enough to remain where she was not wanted. But it would be different with Sara. He twisted around to look at her. She was chatting online to her sister and talking on her mobile to a friend, she was lit up and laughing, all of her was laughing. Sara believed in plundering life for all it could give; she feasted on passion. And while today’s passion could quickly turn into tomorrow’s leftovers, it thrilled him that she was constantly on the move. Sara filled him to the brim, she gave him plenty.

  He added stock to the curry paste and started up a smooth stirring. He was determined to make this relationship work. In the past he had loved well and to his mind enjoyably, but never steadily. His mother’s generation, although not his mother, would say he lacked backbone. Linda accused him of shallowness. But if anything was to account for his changing partners it was his poor tolerance for boredom. He glanced at Sara with all her paraphernalia, it was a quality he shared with her generation.

  He poured in the remainder of the stock, slowly brought it to the boil, then turned the gas back to simmer. The fish would go in once the spices had cooked through. He made himself another large coffee, and with Sara still on the phone, he went into the living room to lie down. He tried to organise the cushions so as not to aggravate his head, but the pain fisted inside his skull no matter what he did. In the end he sat up and switched on the mid-evening news. There followed reports from Burundi, Somalia, the Middle East, insurgents – again – in Chechnya, terrorists in half a dozen different hotspots, unstoppable fires, runaway floods.

  ‘How can you watch that stuff?’ Sara said from the doorway. ‘It’s so depressing.’

  An extravagant user of rhetorical questions, he knew she didn’t expect an answer – and besides politics provided little common ground for them. So he simply smiled in her direction and turned back to the TV; a moment later she returned to the kitchen.

  The drugs began to kick in and he plunged into one of those deep, irresistible, fifteen-minute sleeps, more like passing out than normal sleep. When he awoke, Sara was sitting next to him still hooked up to her devices, watching a reality show in which people forced into embarrassing situations shouted abuse at one another. Sara had assured him it had a cult following, and while he had tried to see the attraction, as far as he was concerned the show was tripe.

  Nothing is perfect, he told himself as he rose from the couch to check on the curry, and life would be the lesser if it were. He lifted the lid off the pot. He stirred, he sniffed, he risked a taste; just a burn in the throat from the drugs. With his spirits raised he went into the bedroom to change and freshen up. He was aware of that grateful sloughing off of deadness when a migraine is receding. He felt lighter, more spirited than he had for days; maybe he had beaten this one, the cycle finally exhausted, and then he caught sight of himself in the wardrobe mirror and was felled more efficiently than by the most determined migraine.

  It was one of those glimpses of the unprepared self, when the gaze is brutally objective. The face that confronted him was not the face he saw each morning as he shaved and moisturised and combed his hair. This image was recognisably himself, yet foreign and horrifying. There were bruised pouches beneath the eyes, trenches joined the nose to the corners of the mouth, harsh lines cut through the cheeks, jowls souped towards the neck, the neck itself sagged, and there was something shrivelled about the entire figure which simply did not gel with his version of himself.

  Connie was appalled to think others might see him like this, that Sara might see him like this. Inside his skin he felt as always. Not for him the tiny crepuscular world of the old, not ever for him that obliviousness to everything beyond the stifling familiarity of the old man’s hearth.

  He forced himself to stand in front of the mirror. He straightened himself up, he cocked his head slightly to the side, he coached the neck out of its sags, he arranged the mouth into a part-smile and the rest of the smile he put around the eyes. The lines softened, the face filled out, he looked altogether firmer. Now he concentrated on the feel of the arrangement, to imprint it over that ashen, ancient parasite of himself. Never again did he want to see that used-up old man.

  When he returned to the lounge, the yelps and groans of the TV show were blaring into an empty room. He switched the television off. Sara’s laptop was propped on the couch and playing across the screen was her Sara-as-mermaid screensaver replete with glistening tail and bare breasts. Her mobile phone was gone, but then Sara never separated from that.

  From down the hall, past the bedroom he heard the slam of a cupboard door, a drawer opening, the squeak of floorboards in the hall outside the bathroom, the faint clatter of make-up containers – Sara never shut the bathroom door – and finally the flush of the toilet. Connie heard these noises with the same heightened but distant awareness he had to sounds in an audience when he was giving a lecture. A short time later she was standing in the doorway of the lounge room, smelling sweet, lips glossed, stretches of shiny skin around a silvery garment. She was clearly going out.

  ‘I thought we were having dinner here,’ he said. And after a hesitation, ‘Together.’

  ‘And we were. But Jimmy has just called and he’s at No-Names and feeling miserable and he absolutely needs me, and of course you could come too, but I know it’s not your scene.’ And before Connie could do anything so embarrassing as to negotiate, she stepped forward, kissed him on the mouth, squeezed a buttock – ‘I won’t be late, and that’s a promise’ – and was gone.

  There was an amplified silence whenever Sara quit a room. Connie immediately switched the TV back on, turned the sound to a murmur in deference to his head, and then realised the headache had completely disappeared. That at least was something. He turned off the heat under the curry, he wasn’t hungry, and even though he knew it to be unwise poured himself a scotch. The TV was an irritation and he switched it off again and sat on the couch sipping his drink, wanting to metamorphose into Wallace Stevens’s ‘thinking stone’.

  The scotch mixed with the drugs and he fell asleep again, another fifteen minutes, but this time one of those calm sleeps that feel so much longer and a dream about Linda in their early days before the boys
arrived. It was winter and she was shovelling fresh snow from the path. On either side of her, the drifts were piled high and white, and a delicate white piping along the black branches of the trees. She was wearing the same red jacket she wore in the photo he used to keep on his desk and she was laughing. He was not visible in the dream but the perspective was his. The satisfaction of it rolled through him even while he slept.

  When he awoke he no longer wanted to be alone. Briefly he considered joining Sara and her friends, but common sense kicked in and he walked around to Ava’s place instead. The front of the house was in darkness and he went around the back expecting to find her in her study. The living room lights were blazing, the curtains were not drawn. Connie stopped and stared, a frozen moment before collecting himself and pulling back into the shadows. Harry and Ava were on the couch. Harry was cradling Ava like a baby, stroking her hair, bending over her and talking to her. Connie felt a physical revulsion. This was not how he wanted to see Ava, and certainly not how he wanted to see her with Harry.

  He rushed from the courtyard and hurried home. Baby Ava and bovine Harry: had the marriage always been like this? Such ghastly possibilities he couldn’t bear to think about it. He poured himself another scotch and drank it far too quickly. He was chafing in the empty house. He tried reading, he tried the TV, he doodled with the script for his TV series. Ava clinging to the gruesome Harry. Sara just walking out. Where exactly did he fit in her life? Was Sara tiring of him? He missed his boys. The script was rubbish. He was rubbish. In the end he took a Valium and went to bed.

  At three o’clock he awoke. Sara was not yet home. The Sara-appropriate action would be to text her, but he lacked both the energy and the goodwill for such a ridiculous form of communication. At six o’clock he awoke again. No headache – and still alone in the house. He showered and dressed and went out for a slow breakfast. He hoped Sara would return while he was gone. She did not. But as he stood in his study wondering what to do, a text came through: Jimmy very upset, too many drinks, stayed with him, home later – in her own inimitable shorthand.

  It was now after nine, and knowing Harry would have left for the office, Connie again walked around to Ava’s. A multiplicity of reasons: he didn’t want to be alone, Ava could always fast-track to the core of a problem, and he needed to replace the pathetic curled-up figure in Harry’s arms with a more congenial image. She answered the door within moments of his knocking, smiling that whole-face smile of hers and a waft of her lily-of-the-valley perfume as they embraced. Ava was floating in sky-blue over faded jeans and bore no resemblance to the creature in Harry’s arms last night. Although she did look pale, and as soon as they were settled on the couch he asked if she was quite well. She was so slow in answering there was time enough to worry.

  She was a little tired, she finally said, and pulled herself straighter on the cushions.

  ‘But nothing serious?’ Connie returned, aware too late that the phrasing of his question was far more effective in revealing his fears than anything it might elicit about her health.

  Of course it wasn’t serious, she said. And sitting there an arm’s length away, still with that radiance which was uniquely hers, he was sure he could believe her.

  ‘So what’s the latest on the TV series?’ she asked. ‘And Sara – still thriving with her?’ She hesitated before adding, ‘And Linda – are the two of you managing to sort things out?’

  Connie held nothing back and Ava let him talk, prompting occasionally with a question or comment. He could not explain how Sara’s differences nourished him but it was more than the easy pleasures of novelty. He was working steadily, although to be entirely honest it was without the same drive. Yes, he and Linda were managing the divorce quite amicably. And no, he didn’t miss her, not really, although he did miss the way she challenged him.

  ‘Sara is of the generation that believes everyone’s entitled to an opinion and that all opinions are equal.’ He forced a grimace into a smile. ‘It’s not an attitude to push the work along.’

  He readily admitted to missing his boys. ‘I miss their stories, their confidences, their – dailiness.’ He paused. ‘I miss their unconditional little-boy love.’

  More difficult to acknowledge was how much he missed America. And, as if to excuse himself, he added, ‘The un-American part of America – Boston and the north-east.’ He shrugged. ‘Embarrassing, isn’t it?’

  Ava understood exactly how he felt. She was happy to be back in Australia but it didn’t stop her longing for Oxford. ‘Its age, its weather, the whole dynamic of the place, and of course its proximity to London and Europe.’

  Connie, however, knew his absence from America was far more profound than this. ‘I feel like I’ve separated from my life.’

  ‘Despite Sara? Despite your new book? Despite the TV series?’

  He nodded and told her about the rolling headaches, the subdued work, his general unease. ‘I feel disorientated, a rootlessness, even a sense of exile.’ He hesitated. ‘I think America has become home in a way Australia no longer is.’

  It was a reluctant admission from a member of the generation whose suspicion of America was so entrenched it would have endured without top-ups from more recent fiascos.

  He rose from the couch and wandered the room. His trousers pooled from his buttocks, the wild hair was thinning, skin drooped on his neck and arms; youth seemed to be draining from him.

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ he said, turning to face her. ‘I’m suffering separation pains from the United States of America.’

  ‘Are you sure this new-found attachment to America mightn’t be something more personal? Separation from your boys? Separation from Linda?’

  Connie shook his head. ‘I love the immensity of America, I love its excesses, the too-tall buildings, the loud-mouthed people, their unabashed confidence. I love life itself turned up high.’ He looked helpless. ‘I love the place.’

  He felt himself to be America in miniature, but he did not admit this to Ava. In Australia and England he had experienced a sense of struggling against the current. But in America he was the current – he was the whole bloody river.

  Connie talked through the morning, there was no stopping him. Ava ignored the phone and when the doorbell sounded she ignored that too. Around midday the phone rang again. As she had done earlier, she let the call pass to the answering machine, but a few words into the message – it was a man’s voice, as to anything else, Connie could not say – she was out of her chair and dashing to the phone.

  And probably just as well, Connie decided, as he checked his watch. Already he felt so much better. Although this new sense of home was worrying. What if it were not intrinsic to America? What if he were to spend the next ten years in Canada or Mexico? Would Canada then become home? Would Mexico? Was it possible that given sufficient time the substance and sensibility of any place would seep into him in a type of cultural osmosis. He remembered reading an article about Daniel Barenboim, how Barenboim spoke five languages fluently, all with an accent – so many languages but at home in none.

  He would have asked Ava her opinion but there was no opportunity. When she returned she explained that something had come up. She looked rattled and he assumed it was a work emergency. She apologised, she hoped he understood.

  ‘Of course I do,’ he said from the doorstep, ‘of course. And thanks, Ava. If ever I can return the favour.’ But the door was already shut.

  CHAPTER 13: The Real World

  1.

  There was a specific moment following months of moments when Ava knew she was seriously ill. It was not during an interminable hour with a huge roaring machine scanning her head, nor later that week when the neurologist outlined the numerous cerebral dysfunctions that could be causing her symptoms. Nor after hours of testing by a neuropsychologist in which her language functions were shown to fall within the average range – no consolation whatsoever to a woman accustomed to a thriving language universe. The moment came months earlier when she w
as seated at her desk, a site she knew better than any specialist could know her brain. At her desk, that euphemism for mind, for thought, for her very self, sifting through pages riddled with crossings-out. She skirted around the gaps and blotches as she read the flabby sentences, and even though these afforded no pleasure neither were they cause for concern: all writers are far more familiar with sentences that fail to make the grade than those which do. It was the misspellings that shocked her. She saw the misspellings in her own hand and she was terrified.

  Occasionally she was unable to begin a word, sometimes she would trip up part way through, other times she would complete a word only to suspect it was wrong. The familiar had turned strange and the more she picked at a word the stranger it became. Simple words like ‘pencil’, ‘mountain’ and ‘glue’ were more susceptible to sabotage than more abstract ones. But then a pencil was simply a pencil and glue was only glue, while sadness could be loss, grief, bewilderment, failure, terror.

  Her spelling had collapsed. And now she could no longer ignore all the other problems. Her speech would stagger and ultimately stop over words which flickered just out of reach. Thoughts would enter her mind clear and tantalising and a moment later dissolve. Other times the thoughts were solid enough but the words were occluded – like a stutterer, although unlike the stutterer she could not even hit on the first sound. Or she would begin an utterance and forget where she was planning to take it, and be left dangling mid-sentence, desperate to gather herself and her gaping mouth and flee the conversation, yet forced to remain exactly where she was, terrified at what was happening even while she tried to disguise it. She would intend to go to the shop but before she had reached the end of the street she would have forgotten where she was heading. Once she lost her way in the cemetery, a place she had walked hundreds of times, and one of the gardeners had to guide her to the exit.