Australia Day

by Melanie Cheng

  They have a plan. It may have been crudely constructed—getting the notorious binge drinker Hammer to manage the diazepam, for instance, doesn’t quite bear thinking about—but it is a plan. Dr Garrett prints two copies, one each for Macca and Rowena to keep.

  *

  It is raining and the tram is full. The spines of somebody’s wet umbrella needle her stockinged knees. Emily rubs the misted glass with her fist, makes a circle, peers through. Outside, people cling to the sides of buildings as they check out Tinder and Facebook on their smart phones. Above them, high on a red brick wall, graffiti hovers like a headline: If you don’t change direction soon, you may end up where you are heading.

  She thinks of Macca. She wonders if he is at home, taking the diazepam from Hammer, like he should be. She wonders where, exactly, home is. Is it a concrete unit covered in graffiti with aluminium foil in place of blinds? Or a crumbling shack with a yard full of beer bottles and thorny weeds?

  As she daydreams, she tries to ignore Dr Jeff’s mantra ringing in her ears: Not your problem, not your problem, not your problem.

  He’s late. Dr Garrett has called in the next patient, Kaylah, a teenager in her second trimester of pregnancy.

  ‘So remember, there’s still a small risk of listeria, so no soft cheeses or cold meats until after delivery.’

  ‘Soft cheeses?’

  ‘Feta, ricotta, brie…’

  Kaylah screws up her face. ‘Yuk.’

  Dr Garrett helps the girl to her feet, guides her back to the reception area. She is still typing in the teenager’s notes when she hears a rhythmic tap on the door.

  ‘Betcha thought I’d gone AWOL.’

  ‘Macca.’

  He is alive. And he looks sober.

  ‘How are you?’ she asks.

  ‘Been better.’

  He has bags beneath his eyes, but his hair is washed and he seems happy.

  ‘The shakes?’

  ‘Getting there.’

  ‘Any diazepam today?’

  ‘Five mils. At ten o’clock.’

  ‘How’s Hammer?’

  ‘Reckon he’s found his calling.’

  Dr Garrett laughs. She opens Macca’s file on the computer.

  ‘Seeing Em on the weekend,’ he says, his voice faltering. ‘Missus says she’s proud of me.’

  The printer bursts to life, a shuddering monster of grey plastic between them. Dr Garrett hands him the prescription.

  ‘Macca, that’s wonderful.’

  ‘Wouldn’t be the first time,’ Rowena says.

  Dr Garrett wants to shake her—force some emotion into that vacuous face. Macca has vanished. Not even the good old Hammer knows where he is. He has slipped off into the night with a hipflask full of scotch and two pairs of Hammer’s old jocks. It’s not supposed to be this way, Dr Garrett thinks. He is supposed to be here—abstinent and smiling—thanking her and patting her on the back.

  ‘He’s in breach of his court order,’ she says.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What will happen to him?’

  Rowena shrugs. ‘Police’ll catch up with him, I guess.’ She picks up her bag. ‘It’s been nice working with you,’ she says, avoiding eye contact.

  Dr Garrett tells herself that he won’t pick up. A blocked number could be his wife, or the police, or—and perhaps worst of all—her. Because she is probably the last person he wants to hear from. A reminder of all his failings. Another name, another Emily, to add to the long list of women he has disappointed. But she is wrong. Just as she is about to hang up, he answers.

  ‘Hello?’

  He sounds relaxed, almost casual.

  ‘Macca? It’s Dr Garrett.’

  She can hear him breathing. Deep exhalations, like he’s smoking. ‘G’day, doc.’

  ‘How are you?’

  ‘Okay.’ He exhales again. ‘On me way to Darwin.’

  Dr Garrett wants to plunge her fingers into her ears, tell him not to tell her any more.

  ‘Working holiday.’

  She laughs. There is a muffled sound of men talking.

  ‘I’ve gotta go.’

  ‘Yes, of course. I just wanted to make sure…as you missed your appointment.’

  ‘No worries.’

  She hears the beep of a car horn.

  ‘And doc?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘She’ll be right.’

  He hangs up. But it’s too soon. Dr Garrett hasn’t finished with him yet. She hasn’t had time to make him understand that she is simply fulfilling her duty of care; that he is no more special to her than any of her other poor and homeless patients; that—in spite of the impression she may have given him—deep down, she doesn’t care.

  Clear Blue Seas

  DAY 1

  The seaplane settles on the water with the lightness of an insect. Propellers slow. The ocean, momentarily ruffled, is calm again. At the jetty an army of staff wait with frosted champagne glasses. Passengers alight and swap their bags for keys on wooden turtle key chains.

  It had been Raf’s idea to come to the Maldives. Kat would have preferred Cuba, or even Sri Lanka—somewhere a little less clichéd. For months they’d flipped through brochures of white beaches and couples with airbrushed skin and Kat suppressed horror at the prices in tiny type beneath the glossy prints. When she forgot herself and Raf mistook her disgust for some kind of disbelieving awe, he took her shoulders in his hands and told her, in a soft voice, that there was no such thing as his money or her money. Which was easy for him to say. He wasn’t the one dropping small change from freelance writing jobs into the pool of his six-figure salary.

  A Thai woman who introduces herself as Sukhon shows them to their room. They follow her down a sandy path flanked with coral-coloured bougainvillea. Hidden behind a hibiscus sits a mud hut with a neat straw roof. Sukhon opens the door and removes her slippers before beckoning them inside. She kneels between two footbaths with floating frangipani flowers at the end of the four-poster bed. She points to Kat’s Havaiana thongs and Raf’s leather moccasins.

  ‘Oh no,’ Kat says, looking at Raf. ‘We couldn’t possibly.’

  ‘I am the head masseuse on the island,’ Sukhon says and stands up. ‘I specialise in reflexology.’

  She shows them how to operate the air conditioning before shuffling backwards to the door. Somehow, during this brief deferential dance, Raf slips Sukhon a tip. Kat is both impressed and a little revolted. She has always felt uneasy about wads of money pressed deep into waiting palms.

  DAY 2

  Raf is asleep. He lies on his stomach, face buried in the pillow, brown arms flung carelessly across the bed. Kat watches the morning light snake across the valleys of his naked back. Husband. The word feels awkward and foreign on her newly married lips. She never dreamt of being part of this club—this world of Thermomixes and LCD TVs. She thinks back to her beaming smile at the ceremony and hates herself just a little.

  It was five years ago now that Raf had burst into her world of lightless share houses and homemade bongs like a gust of cool clean air. She’d only ever dated boys who got stoned and pierced their eyebrows with safety pins. Raf’s recollections of life in war-ravaged Iraq were horrifying, authentic. Better than her memories of paddle pools and Scrabble games, which played like some reel from The Wonder Years in the dusty corners of her mind. But he scared her too. His whole family did. Because the humble, gentle people who fussed over her at dinner and cried at the mere suggestion of grandchildren didn’t match the steely characters from Raf’s stories. Kat found it hard to picture Raf’s mother—a woman who made little eye contact and cupped her hand to her mouth when she laughed—sheltering beneath a bed as bullets tore through her house, or Raf’s milky-eyed father pulling a limbless man from a smouldering building on his way home from work. She often marvelled, too, at how a boy who wet the bed until he was ten and chewed his fingernails until they bled could one day become a celebrated barrister in Australia.

  Raf wakes. Without opening hi
s eyes, he grabs Kat’s legs and pulls her onto his hips. They make love in the efficient but not unenjoyable way unique to married couples. When they are finished, Kat finds her underwear among the sheets and then pads, barefoot, to the ensuite.

  The decor of the bathroom is in keeping with the resort’s Robinson Crusoe theme. The tiles are a seamless constellation of pebbles—too smooth and regular to be natural—and the bath is a perfect oval cut into a block of dark grey stone. Kat brushes her teeth, rinses and wipes her mouth with a fluffy towel. When she opens her eyes, she sees Raf’s sleep-crumpled face in the mirror.

  ‘Nice touch,’ Kat says, pointing to a sign above the sink.

  DEAR GUESTS, EVERY DAY MILLIONS OF GALLONS OF WATER ARE USED TO WASH TOWELS THAT HAVE ONLY BEEN USED ONCE. A TOWEL ON THE RACK MEANS ‘I WILL USE AGAIN.’

  ‘A towel on the floor means I’m an arsehole,’ Raf says.

  Kat laughs.

  ‘Ironic, isn’t it?’ he adds.

  She doesn’t follow.

  ‘A place soon to be drowned beneath the sea is pleading with us to save water.’

  *

  DAY 3

  The waiter studies the horizon as he flicks a napkin across Kat’s lap.

  ‘Coffee?’ he says, to nobody in particular.

  Raf nods.

  They are falling into a routine. They wake up at the same time and they sit at the same table on the beach with an unobstructed view of the ocean.

  Raf pushes back his chair, ploughing deep troughs in the sand with its legs. While he gathers food, Kat reads the news—a one-page summary of the New York Times with too many typos too mention. Another lone wolf terrorist attack. Another high school massacre. Another photo of President Obama at another talkfest on climate change. She sips her coffee and folds the news into a crude paper aeroplane.

  Raf returns with half the buffet balanced precariously on his plate.

  ‘I got a bit carried away.’

  Kat stands up. It’s her turn. She wanders around the tables, lost amid the mountains of food. Watermelon carved into a lotus flower. Mangoes bursting out of their skins. Plain croissants, almond croissants, pains au chocolat, pains aux raisins. Blueberry friands, raspberry friands, apple friands. Blistered sausages and curled rashers of bacon and a hollandaise sauce like liquid gold. And at the centre of it all, a chef in a stiff white hat, making eggs and pancakes to order.

  ‘Just one, please, sunny side up.’

  The chef says nothing. Kat wonders if he has heard her, but then he ignites a ring on his stovetop. He looks at the pan, at the bowl of chopped chives in front of him, anywhere but her expectant face. She holds out her plate and he slides the egg onto it. The yolk quivers like something alive. She waits for it to stop.

  ‘Thank you.’

  The chef scrapes his spatula across the bottom of the pan. It makes an awful, nails-on-blackboard noise. He doesn’t look up.

  When Kat returns to the table, Raf’s plate is clean and his face is deep in a diving book. He is going for his thirty-metre certification. Any excuse for an exam. Kat sits down, pokes violent holes in the yolk sac with her fork.

  Raf looks up. ‘You all right?’

  She watches the amber fluid ooze across her plate. ‘Not the friendliest of people, is he?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘That chef.’

  Raf looks over at the buffet. A woman in a hot-pink bikini has ordered a crepe. The chef flips it in a perfect arc above his clean white paper hat.

  ‘What do you expect?’ Raf says, dropping his sunglasses over his eyes. ‘It’s Ramadan. Poor guy’s probably starving.’

  ‘Ramadan. Of course,’ Kat says, feeling stupid. Ignorant and stupid.

  DAY 4

  As Raf descends into the ocean, Kat takes a tour of the capital, which is on another island, just nearby. It is not a popular destination. There are only four other people on the boat: a mother and daughter from New Zealand and a gay couple from San Francisco. There is no beach in sight. Only scooters and gold-capped mosques and bright square buildings that look like Lego. A tour guide greets them at the dock and helps the group disembark. He is a small man named Ali with dancing eyes and a porcelain smile.

  ‘Ten years ago we were hit by the tsunami.’

  They nod, frowning, remembering their Christmas bellies and a number of dead too obscene to be believed.

  ‘Two-thirds of Malé was flooded. A hundred people died. The resort island you are staying on now disappeared.’ He makes a flattening motion with his hands. ‘Completely. Under. Water.’

  Ali smiles as he talks, proud of his people’s capacity for regeneration, but Kat feels disoriented. She remembers that day: post-break-up, drunk, passed out on her mum’s leather recliner. And it couldn’t have been ten years ago—she is not old enough to talk in decades.

  They visit Malé’s handful of attractions on foot: the Sultan Park, the National Museum, the Islamic Centre, the presidential palace. But talk of the tsunami stays with them. The gay couple had a friend who drowned on Koh Phi Phi. The New Zealand girl had flown out of Aceh a day before the monster wave hit.

  On the way home, the hum of the boat’s engine and the diesel fumes combine to have a tranquil effect. Kat stares at the water. She pictures Raf thirty metres down, kept alive by a cylinder of air on his back. The more she stares, the more she thinks she can see the insidious rise of the water’s surface with each deep and heaving breath.

  DAY 5

  They’re in the lounge, watching the rain fall in beaded curtains around them. Raf is checking his email.

  ‘The dealership emailed me. The car will be ready next week.’

  Kat nods. He’s like a child, she thinks, with an eighty-thousand-dollar toy. She doesn’t look up from her book.

  ‘Metallic red. Ruby, they call it. With satellite navigation.’ He thinks these things will convince her: a sexy colour, a built-in mapping device. A waiter clears Raf’s plate. He asks if there will be anything else.

  ‘I could do with another coffee,’ Raf says. ‘But can I have it brought to the room?’

  The waiter says, ‘Yes, of course, sir,’ before disappearing through the kitchen’s double doors. Raf returns to his emails. Kat closes her book.

  ‘Do you ever feel bad?’

  Raf smiles. ‘Can you be more specific?’

  But she’s not in a joking mood. ‘Forget it.’

  The smile vanishes. When he speaks again, his voice is tight. ‘You can’t say something like that and then tell me to forget it.’

  She studies the ocean through the haze of rain. It is more a cloudy grey, now, than turquoise.

  ‘You know,’ Raf says, leaning across the table that sits between them like an island, ‘any of these people would swap places with you in a heartbeat.’

  ‘These people?’

  ‘And they’d enjoy themselves.’

  She searches for her page again in the book, pretends she’s no longer listening.

  ‘Not agonising over whether the coffee they’re drinking is fair-trade.’

  He is referring to another cafe. Another city. Another fight.

  ‘You’d have had it, wouldn’t you?’ she snaps. ‘If I hadn’t stepped in.’

  ‘Had what?’

  ‘The footbath. You’d have let her give you one.’

  He rolls his eyes. ‘It’s a footbath, Kat. Not a blow job.’

  The bartender bends his head, polishes glasses intently.

  ‘You didn’t answer the question.’

  Raf stands up, clamps his laptop beneath his arm.

  ‘So shoot me.’

  DAY 6

  They carve out their spaces: she, in the rattan armchair, buried in a book; he propped up in bed, doing serious things on his computer. By midmorning, Kat can’t bear it anymore. She leaves the hut to go for a walk. Today she ventures further than usual, to a low fence at the end of the beach. There is no gate, but she scales it easily enough in her thongs and running shorts. Beyond the fence, a bougainvillea gr
ows wild and frantic in leafy violet clumps. She picks her way through the thorny branches. Green claws catch on her skin. Through the purple flowers, she sees a paved clearing and a grey slab of building that eclipses the sun.

  A few shirtless men are playing a game of basketball in a fenced-off central courtyard. Kat recognises one of them as the breakfast chef. The men shout and laugh and slap each other’s sweaty backs. Even though she is twenty metres away, Kat can smell the rows of salted fish drying in the concrete quadrangle, and the rubbish, piled high in plastic bags, outside the gate to the compound.

  Someone pats Kat on the shoulder. She turns around with a start.

  ‘You don’t belong here,’ Sukhon says, pulling her free from the thorny nest.

  How long has she been there—hiding between the leaves, spying on Kat as she spies on the staff—before finally making her presence known?

  She holds Kat’s hand all the way back to the beach but says nothing until she turns to go.

  ‘Your hut is over there.’

  DAY 7

  ‘Our last night on the island.’

  It is dusk, and Kat and Raf are making their way to farewell drinks at the restaurant.

  ‘We should’ve been more aggressive at Tribal Council.’

  Kat laughs. She remembers drinking cheap beer and watching Survivor on his parents’ leather lounge suite.

  ‘You look nice,’ he says.

  She is wearing the apricot-coloured dress she wore the night he proposed. She chose it especially.

  ‘Thanks.’

  Cicadas hum. The sun casts pink and purple shadows at their feet. As they round the bend, they see four men sitting cross-legged on the sand with drums between their knees.

  ‘Bodu beru,’ Raf says. ‘Made from stingray hide.’

  This is what Kat loves most about him. His worldliness. One of the men knocks two bamboo sticks together. The other three close their eyes. They tap a beat on the drums. Gently sway.