Australia Day

by Melanie Cheng

  He started the Porsche and rolled forwards, straight towards the Holden, blocking the way so it couldn’t pull out, and then killed the engine. The driver hadn’t even had time to put the key in the ignition. Deepak stepped out of his car, his rubber shoes squelching on the wet concrete. He was determined to resolve this matter once and for all. He felt the flare of the Holden’s high beams on his face and waited for something to happen.

  * * *

  Tony didn’t recognise the man in the beanie who emerged from the sleek black car. At first he thought it might be an undercover policeman, but Tony had never heard of a policeman driving a Porsche. Luca was fidgeting on the seat beside him. Tony felt an ache in his chest and took a few sprays from his Anginine pump.

  ‘Fuck!’ said Luca.

  ‘Relax.’

  ‘It’s him.’

  ‘Who?’ Tony peered through the windscreen at the man, who was shielding his face with his hand.

  ‘The doctor.’

  Tony examined the man again. Luca was right. He looked different in normal clothes—Tony had only seen him in a suit—but there was no mistaking the expensive watch and the cocky way he stood, as if the world owed him something.

  Luca laughed. He was enjoying this. Tony didn’t like to admit it, but there was something not quite right about his grandson. Every chance he got, Tony warned the boy off drugs. He suspected a hit of ice would be just the thing to unhinge him.

  ‘Look at his car,’ Luca said, and again Tony did as he was told. Anything was better than looking at Luca, smiling and salivating like a predator on the seat beside him.

  ‘Probably bought it with the money he made fucking you over.’

  Tony nodded, but as he watched the doctor blinking in the headlights—reduced to a human being by the beanie and the tracksuit pants—he felt the rage he had maintained for so long desert him. Tony reached for the handle of the car door. He was ready to make peace with the guy. But he was too slow. Luca jumped out first. Tony saw his grandson’s hooded face through the windshield. He felt his heart pound against his ribs. He watched the doctor stab the air with his finger and Luca’s soft lips curl into a snarl. He heard himself gasp and a voice, very much like his own but different somehow, mutter No, no, no, no, no!

  Tony had given Luca the knife as a gift one weekend at Lake Eildon. He had shown Luca how to use it on the sequined skin of a rainbow trout—shown him how to slash the fish’s belly in one quick move before scooping its guts out with his bare hands. There was no mistaking it—the bright green handle, the curved blade flashing white in the glare of the Holden’s headlights. The surgeon—a man familiar with knives and scalpels—saw it too. He backed away.

  It was fast and it was gruesome—a couple of quick thrusts. Tony watched the body writhing on the ground as blood hosed, like black oil, across the concrete.

  Within seconds Luca was back in the car, hot and breathless.

  ‘You idiot,’ Tony said, with a calm that surprised him. ‘Give it to me.’

  Luca handed over the knife, red and wet and sticky.

  ‘Go,’ Tony said.

  But Luca didn’t move. He was like a child, waiting for his nonno to punish him.

  ‘Go!’

  Luca ran away from the car, hesitantly at first, and then at great speed, his hair flapping wildly.

  Tony got out of the Holden. He looked down at the doctor, heaving in a pool of blood at his feet. He looked straight ahead at the flickering red emergency sign. He looked up at the dome of sky, at the stars glinting overhead. He crossed himself. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost…

  Toy Town

  Maha despised the play centre. It smelled faintly of soiled nappies, and her four-year-old daughter, Amani, always found a sultana at the bottom of the ball pit. But Amani loved the curly blue slide, and it got them out of the house. With all the rain this winter, they had been spending a lot of time at home lately and the claustrophobia was driving them crazy.

  It was Maha’s fourth winter in Melbourne, but it felt as cold and lonely as her first. Maybe more so, because this year Malik was working three out of five days in Sydney. Maha had thought she would feel settled by now, that she would at least have a couple of friends. But the only people she spent any time with were Malik’s elderly parents. Last year she had gone for a couple of coffees with a Ukrainian woman from her English class, but when the six-week course ended, they had lost touch.

  Having a child was isolating. Days were lost in a haze of housework and playdough and preparation of snacks. In Beirut, Maha would have had a maid—a girl from Sri Lanka, probably—to help with the household chores, which would free her up to do some teaching, maybe have her hair done at the salon. At four years of age, Amani would already be at school, learning to read and write and count, instead of spending just a few days a week at kindergarten, painting with her fingers and making cakes in the sandpit.

  There were two people in the high-ceilinged room when they arrived, a Caucasian woman with red hair and a girl who looked the same age as Amani. The girl was in the toddler area, feeding pretend food to a one-eyed teddy bear. Maha ordered a cappuccino and sat down at a table near the back of the room. Amani immediately flicked off her shoes and ran towards the curly blue slide. She scaled the padded ramp with ease, in spite of the slipperiness of her socks.

  Maha scooped milk froth into her mouth. She did love the coffee in Melbourne. The cappuccinos were a wonderful compromise between Lebanese coffee and the freeze-dried Nescafé she drank back home. As Amani explored, Maha held the warm mug up to her cheek and checked her phone. There was a message from Malik. It said miss you in Arabic letters with a red heart emoji. There was a photo from her mother, too—a picture of her four aunts, all made up for her cousin’s wedding.

  After a month in Melbourne, Maha had stopped caring about her appearance. It seemed absurd to spend two hours doing her make-up only to go to the supermarket, where everybody had their wrinkles and pimples on show. How Maha’s mother would cringe if she saw her now—wearing an old hijab, scuffed leather shoes and just a hint of eyeliner. And while Maha did miss spending hours having her nails done with her mum at the salon, there was something freeing about getting ready in twenty minutes—not having to worry about being caught out by a relative at the local coffee shop without her three-inch heels.

  Her mother still called her every night, worried, asking if she’d made any friends. Though Malik insisted that Australia was a tolerant place, Maha’s mother was fearful. She’d read the articles in the newspapers, seen the riots on TV. When Maha and Malik got engaged, Malik assured his future mother-in-law he lived in a good Melbourne suburb—full of progressive, left-leaning Aussies. Sure enough, Maha’s experiences of outright racism had been few and far between. There was the boy who’d left a flyer on her car windscreen that said ISIS terrorist go home, and the local handyman who’d refused to mow her lawn, but mostly the Australians she met were well-intentioned. After flinching—almost imperceptibly—at the sight of Maha’s hijab, they smiled and tried to ingratiate themselves to alleviate their guilt about their initial reaction. Maha didn’t begrudge them this. When she’d first arrived in Melbourne she had judged her neighbours harshly too, for their unkempt hair and their sleeve tattoos and the ladders in their stockings.

  Maha saw the woman with the red hair look back in her direction. It was an awkward move. A hello but not a hello. Maha felt Amani at her elbow, tugging on her blouse and asking for water. Maha gave her the Frozen water bottle she always carried in her handbag.

  ‘There’s another girl here,’ Amani whispered in Arabic.

  ‘You should go and talk to her,’ Maha said.

  Amani cocked her head to the side, stuck out her bottom lip. ‘Will you come with me?’

  Maha sighed. She put her phone in her bag and stood up. Happy, Amani ran towards the girl, who was still absorbed in her tea party.

  ‘Can I play with you?’ Maha heard her daughter ask in English. She didn
’t hear the girl’s reply, but it must have been yes, because the next minute they were taking turns to cuddle the one-eyed teddy.

  Maha stood, stranded, halfway between her table and the toddler area. The red-headed woman was perched on a bench with her back to Maha, watching the two girls. Maha looked at the old man who took the money and made the coffees, but he was busy typing something on his phone. She could easily retreat to her seat and catch up on the Lebanese news online, but something about the way the mother was sitting, with her spine straight and taut, told Maha she anticipated a conversation. Maha shuffled forwards a little, pretending to watch Amani. Bored of the teddy, the girls were now diving off the plastic slide into the pit of brightly coloured balls. Their shrieks echoed around the room.

  When Maha sat down on the bench, the woman looked at her and smiled.

  ‘It’s easy when they find a friend.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Charlotte loves it here.’

  Maha looked at Charlotte, rolling in a sea of balls.

  ‘My daughter, Amani, loves it too.’

  Charlotte’s mother looked towards the old man at the front counter and lowered her voice. ‘But I can’t stand the place.’

  Maha laughed. ‘Me too!’

  ‘There aren’t any windows.’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘And it smells.’

  ‘Yes!’

  The old man looked in their direction then, which only made them giggle even more.

  ‘I’m Nicole,’ Charlotte’s mother said, holding out her hand. Maha shook it. The woman’s skin was rough and dry.

  ‘I’m Maha.’

  ‘That’s a beautiful name.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Maha wondered if she should return the compliment, but the moment had passed.

  Charlotte ran up and started clawing at Nicole’s bag. ‘I’m hungry.’ The little girl had dark hair and brown eyes and looked nothing like her mother.

  ‘Charlotte takes after her father,’ Nicole said, as if reading Maha’s mind. ‘He eats like a horse too.’ She pulled a Tupperware box from her bag and opened it. Charlotte took out a small, deep-fried ball and sunk her teeth into it. A shower of crumbs fell to the floor.

  ‘Falafel,’ Nicole said and smiled proudly. ‘I made them myself.’

  Maha inspected the golden-brown balls. They vaguely resembled the falafel she knew, only drier, and slightly burnt.

  ‘My father worked in Saudi Arabia when I was young,’ Nicole explained. ‘We travelled a lot.’

  Maha was surprised. She would never have guessed that someone who looked like Nicole had lived in the Middle East.

  ‘I’m from Lebanon,’ Maha said.

  ‘I love Lebanon!’

  Maha saw Amani abandon the ball pit and sidle up beside her new friend. When Nicole held out the lunch box, Amani screwed up her face and shook her head.

  Nicole smiled and turned back to Maha. ‘I love Baalbek, and the Bekaa Valley and the cedar forests in the mountains.’

  Maha nodded, stunned that this woman, with her strong Australian accent and freckled skin, could know her country so intimately.

  ‘I’m hungry too,’ Amani declared.

  Maha dug inside her tote for the sandwich bag she had packed in a hurry that morning. She felt self-conscious as she passed the three chocolate biscuits and white bread sandwich to her daughter in front of Nicole. They suddenly seemed too processed, too unimaginative, too mainstream.

  ‘Is that yummy?’ Nicole asked as Amani took alternate bites of the chocolate biscuit she held in one hand and the sandwich she held in the other.

  Amani nodded.

  Nicole smiled. ‘What have you got inside your sandwich today?’

  ‘Vegemite,’ Amani replied. A small piece of wet bread fell from her lips onto the floor.

  ‘She loves Vegemite,’ Maha said, leaning down and picking it up.

  ‘How funny,’ Nicole laughed. ‘Charlotte and I can’t stand the stuff!’

  Charlotte thrust a half-eaten falafel into Nicole’s hand and wiped her lips with the back of her sleeve. She took Amani’s hand and pointed to the bouncy castle. Amani looked at Maha, her big brown eyes pleading. Maha nodded and the girls ran off, leaving her in a scatter of falafel crumbs and sandwich crusts.

  ‘How do you find it here, in Melbourne?’ Nicole asked. She buried the Tupperware inside her bag.

  Maha thought of the street they lived on, its crumbling weatherboard houses, the word WHORE! scrawled across a block of units with an arrow pointing to some poor person’s front door. But she wanted to be kind to Nicole’s home country, just as Nicole had been kind to hers.

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ she said.

  ‘Mummy, watch this!’ Charlotte yelled. She did a handstand in the bouncy castle. Nicole waved and clapped her hands to show she was impressed.

  ‘It must be hard, though,’ Nicole said when Charlotte turned away. She said it with such sincerity that Maha wondered if she spoke from experience—beyond that of a child expat spending school holidays in a compound in Saudi Arabia.

  ‘It is difficult,’ Maha said, recalling the first night she’d spent alone in her Australian home—her bed vibrating with the booming music from a nearby house party as she obsessed about the flimsiness of the front fence. She had longed for the safety of her parents’ Beirut apartment with its wrought-iron gates and concrete walls and security guard at the front door. She was still racking her brain for the right words to describe it all when she saw Nicole snatch a look at her watch.

  ‘We’d better get going,’ Nicole said, standing up. ‘I have to go to the supermarket.’

  ‘Yes, me too,’ Maha said, even though she had done her shopping yesterday.

  Nicole told Charlotte to put on her sneakers, and Charlotte dropped to the ground, yelling, ‘No!’ When Nicole insisted, her daughter screamed until her face burned red, and yellow snot poured out of her nose. After ten minutes of shouting and pleading, Charlotte finally agreed to put on her shoes in return for a biscuit and five minutes on the iPad when she got home.

  They walked out of the Toy Town play centre together, all four of them. Outside, the two girls ran ahead.

  ‘It was nice to meet you,’ Maha said.

  ‘Same here.’

  Maha pulled her coat tighter around her body.

  ‘We should do this again,’ Nicole said.

  ‘Yes,’ Maha agreed.

  Nicole wrapped a green hand-knitted scarf around her neck. ‘See you.’ She didn’t offer to exchange phone numbers. Maha felt disappointed, and then relieved.

  ‘Bye.’

  The girls were far ahead of them now, holding hands and skipping towards the pedestrian crossing. They looked similar from behind—the same height, with the same bouncing brown ponytails. Maha and Nicole called out, but the girls didn’t hear. They were too busy laughing and singing and telling each other fanciful tales.

  Doughnuts

  Pandora was Barry’s first client, ever. They’d met the year he graduated with a bachelor of social work from Victoria University. Back then she was stunning: dark, feline, defiant. Like Cleopatra, except with a potty-mouth. But that was ten years ago, and all the long admissions had played havoc with her. Every now and then, Barry saw a hint of her long-lost beauty—in the line of her regal nose, or her vaguely purple eyes, which Pandora likened to Elizabeth Taylor’s. Despite the age difference, Barry had been attracted to her at the start. The way she’d looked at him was exhilarating, like she could tap into his core.

  Pandora had been doing well recently, and Barry had cut down his visits to once a month. But last Tuesday at three am, a neighbour had called 000 about booming ABBA music, and the local police, who all knew Pandora well, had alerted Barry.

  It was nine-thirty by the time Barry arrived at her weatherboard near the housing commission. Pandora’s father, a hardworking pharmacist, had left her the property in his will, which—in spite of its proximity to the flats—would easily fetch $800,000. B
arry was surprised Pandora had never mentioned selling it during one of her manias, but luckily simple logic often evaded her at those times.

  The garden was full of weeds. Somebody had scrawled PORK in spiky capitals across the splintered timber fence. Piles of painted canvases were stacked on the front verandah—oils in bright primary colours, peanut butter thick. Pandora would be in the backyard, painting probably, in spite of the bitter winter weather.

  Pandora was out the back, as Barry thought, but she wasn’t painting. She was lying on a broken deckchair, naked, except for sunglasses and a tanning mirror open on her lap.

  ‘Barry,’ she said, as if his impromptu visit were nothing out of the ordinary. ‘Sit down.’

  Barry turned a milk crate upside down to make a seat. ‘Top of the morning to you.’

  Pandora laughed. Her flesh was a field of goosebumps. ‘Glorious day, isn’t it?’

  Barry looked up at the sky, heavy with grey cloud.

  ‘We’ve got to enjoy these last moments, Barry. Before the end.’

  Barry nodded. Armageddon psychosis. There’d been a lot of it around lately.

  ‘When Trump presses that button, we’re all dead. Kaput. And the unlucky ones who survive the blast will be destroyed by their own radioactively mutated cells.’

  Barry could see the shadows of veins like tangled wires beneath Pandora’s skin. He pulled a picnic blanket from beneath a stack of newspapers and laid it on top of her.

  ‘Never mind climate change,’ she said and laughed. ‘We’ll all be dead this side of Christmas.’

  As Pandora cackled about the impending apocalypse, Barry constructed a plan. First he would speak to her psychiatrist, then the crisis assessment and treatment team, and finally, as a last resort, the police, if she refused to go willingly.

  ‘Fancy a bloody mary?’ Pandora said, sitting up. Her pendulous breasts swayed, metronome-like, above her knees.

  The admission was messy. Casey, the woman who arrived from the crisis team, was someone Pandora had had run-ins with before. On seeing her, Pandora-the-laughing-doomsayer was transformed into Pandora-the-spatula-wielding-assassin. Barry helped the police bundle his picnic-blanket-wrapped patient into the back of the ambulance. When they’d left, he went back inside. He plucked a jumper and a pair of leopard-print leggings from the floor and then made his way to the hospital.