Australia Day

by Melanie Cheng

‘Are you an artist too?’ I say, and look away. I’ve never been a good liar.

  ‘Actually I was the model.’

  ‘Ah, yes. Now I remember.’

  ‘But that was months ago. I don’t model anymore.’

  ‘Really? From what I remember, you were very good. Very…’ I search for an appropriate word. ‘Professional.’

  Jackson is happy to let us chat. He sits back down and crams another handful of popcorn into his mouth.

  ‘Thanks,’ Daniella says. ‘But I had some issues with the guy who ran the class.’

  ‘Marcel?’

  ‘Yeah, just money stuff,’ she says and pushes a ten-dollar note across the counter.

  ‘Due back by seven pm tomorrow,’ Jackson says, turning up the volume on the television.

  ‘Well, it was good to see you.’ Daniella picks up her DVD. She is slipping away from me again.

  ‘You too.’

  The bell on the door jingles as it closes, and for the first time I look at the DVD I picked off the shelf. Aliens and scantily clad women dominate the cover. ‘Think I’ll give this one a miss,’ I say, and put the movie back where I found it. Jackson merely shrugs.

  I wonder if there’s time to catch her. I scan the street outside and am relieved when I spot her red beanie bobbing up and down near the intersection. I move so fast that by the time I reach her I can hardly speak.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ she asks. ‘Did I leave my wallet behind?’ She fumbles in her oversized handbag. ‘I’m forever doing shit like that.’

  ‘No—’ I catch my breath. ‘I just wanted to ask you something.’

  ‘Oh?’ she says, and I’m pleased to see curiosity creep into her face.

  ‘You see, I’ve been having my own problems with Marcel and the drawing class.’

  Daniella raises her eyebrows.

  ‘But I miss drawing. And you were such a good model—from what I remember at least—that I was wondering…well, I was wondering if you’d be interested in modelling for me.’

  She doesn’t say anything at first.

  ‘I’d pay you well, of course,’ I add.

  She looks me up and down, as if appraising how much I can afford. ‘How well?’

  I’m disappointed by her businesslike tone.

  ‘Fifty dollars an hour.’

  She hardly hesitates. ‘Okay. It’s a deal.’

  I’m dumbfounded.

  ‘So I guess I should probably introduce myself,’ she says and hangs a cigarette from the corner of her mouth. ‘Seems only fitting before I get naked in front of you again.’ She puts the cigarette packet back in her bag and holds out a gloved hand. ‘Daniella.’

  ‘Oh yes, of course. And I’m Evan,’ I reply.

  ‘Evan.’ She thinks for a moment. ‘Yes, I do remember you.’

  When I return home, I see the house through Daniella’s eyes. I start at the old man smell as I walk through the front door, cringe at the cat hair smeared across the curtains, and the coffee mugs with furry rims. I can’t possibly bring her here. I spend the next week cleaning. I fill the regular bin, the recycling bin and even the green wheelie bin with rubbish. It feels good.

  I thought Lola’s last surprise for me was the pair of lace undies in the rosewood chest. But all this time, the big one has been sitting behind a leg of the desk in the master bedroom. Our bedroom. It wasn’t like Lola to be careless, especially not with something of such consequence. It makes me think she wanted me to find it.

  3.30 at Merri Creek, our spot. A few words scribbled on the back of a receipt. The note is many years old, but the immediacy of the words makes me picture some mystery man still waiting for Lola down on the banks of the creek. I imagine him to be tall and distinguished—because surely that’s what Lola would have been looking for, something different from me—but when I try to envisage his face, I draw a blank. I wonder if he made her happy. I wonder if he made her scream. I should feel vindicated, but I don’t. Ana and I never wrote little love notes to each other. We never had a ‘spot’. Lola even did affairs better than me.

  I’m tempted to tell Bea. She wouldn’t believe it at first—not her precious perfect mother—but then I’d show her the note and even she wouldn’t think me capable of making up such a story. But I know what would happen. She would make excuses. She would say that Lola was lonely, that the marriage was already over. She would look at me like she did on the day she found me with Ana, all those years ago—with hurt, disappointment and disgust like black clouds across the green of her eyes. I can’t compete with a ghost. I’ve tried before, and the ghost always wins.

  The day Bea found me with Ana was the worst day of my life. Lola was doing casual teaching at the local primary school and her hours were predictable. Ana had wanted to close the shop for the afternoon and I’d invited her back home. Bea wasn’t meant to finish school until three, but—as I found out months later—she had come down with a migraine (her first and last) and had been sent home by the school nurse. To this day, I live in hope that the migraine clouded what she saw when she walked into that room. I have played it out over and over in my head. Did she see my bare arse or Ana’s swinging breasts? Did she recognise the hunger in the way the clothes were strewn wildly across the room? Whatever she saw, it was enough to make her scream—a haunting, high-pitched scream that still disturbs my dreams. And then she fled. I looked at Ana, pulled on a pair of pants and followed at breakneck speed, nearly slipping on her abandoned stockings as I careered down the hall, but Bea had barricaded herself in her room.

  ‘Bea…’ I pleaded at her door. ‘It’s not what it looked like.’

  ‘Do you think I’m a fucking idiot?’ she shouted, her voice wet with tears.

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘I’m telling Mum.’

  Of course you are.

  ‘Can we talk?’ I asked. I felt her weight lighten against the door. As it gave way, she dived onto the bed and buried her face in a pillow. I kneeled on the floor beside her. ‘Bea, I don’t really know what to say.’

  ‘You’re disgusting.’

  I moved to the edge of the bed. ‘I still love your mum.’

  ‘You’re disgusting!’ She threw her pillow on the floor and sat up. I felt her fists beating against my chest. ‘You’re disgusting!’ she said again. And she wouldn’t stop. She just kept saying it—‘You’re disgusting!’—until I couldn’t take it anymore. I wanted it to stop. I wanted her to stop. So I pushed her off me. I can still see the shock in her eyes as her head hit the cupboard door. And then the blood came. I remember the blood. There was so much blood.

  At the hospital, Bea talked to the doctor in the emergency room by herself. I could only hear muffled voices from where I sat outside. I wondered what she was saying. Was she telling them her story? At any moment I expected some stern representative from the Department of Human Services, or even the police, to come and take me away—to punish me for being a bad husband and father, for almost killing my teenage daughter. But the doctor was smiling when he eventually re-emerged.

  ‘She’s going to be fine,’ he said. ‘Just three stitches that will need to come out in a week.’ I looked hard, but I couldn’t see any revulsion in his eyes—at least nothing beyond what I was accustomed to. And then, as he was about to leave, he stopped. ‘Is it true?’

  ‘Is what true?’ My heart was racing. Yes, it was true: I was an adulterer and a child abuser, and he should do his duty and report me to the authorities.

  ‘Was Professor Duvall really your father-in-law?’

  The affair was the scandal of the year on our street. An Aussie cheating on the daughter of a prominent neurosurgeon with the fat Croatian woman from the milk bar. In those days gossip didn’t get much more titillating than that. But that was when people still took the time to get to know their neighbours—when they would wave instead of nervously eyeing each other from the safety of their front lawns. So it wasn’t long before anyone and everyone knew. It was a strange and embarrassing thing, to talk to
Lola about it. At least I only ever had to live through it once. After that day she never mentioned it again.

  ‘So, did you get it out of your system?’ she said. Her tone wasn’t angry—more matter of fact. ‘Because if you didn’t, we’ll have to get a divorce, but if you did, I’m willing to forgive you.’ That’s how she was: clinical and practical, like her father.

  Lola’s father hadn’t lived long enough to celebrate my downfall. He was killed by a haemorrhage so large only someone of his skill could have drained it. (God knows his registrar gave it a good go, but the professor did nothing by halves and his death was no exception.) In some ways, I would have preferred it if he had still been alive at the time—I could have tolerated the lectures, the awkwardness, the smug looks, the I told you so’s. Anything but his ghost, taken up residence in his daughter’s eyes.

  We never made love again after that. I never made love again. It was my punishment.

  I last saw Ana in the fruit and veg shop at Barkly Square. She looked old under the fluorescent lights. Her doughy cheeks sagged, and she had the shadow of a moustache above her lips.

  ‘Ana.’

  It took some time for her to recognise me.

  ‘Evan,’ she finally said, with that ever-so-slight European accent she had. ‘I’m so sorry about your wife.’ She had never called Lola by name—it had always been ‘your wife’.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, and in the same breath added, ‘I’ve missed you.’

  Ana looked down at her basket. ‘The avocados are a bargain today,’ she said. ‘Two big ones for a dollar.’

  ‘I mean it,’ I said again. ‘I’ve missed you.’

  A woman by the tomatoes was listening to our conversation, but I couldn’t care less.

  ‘Evan,’ Ana said, putting down her basket and looking me in the eye. ‘Your wife’s dead.’ She moved into the checkout queue. ‘Have some respect.’

  And that was the last time we met.

  I arrange it for a Tuesday. Somehow it seems right to keep it to a Tuesday, for the sake of a short-lived tradition, or even as a little snub to Marcel. We organise it all through text messages, not the most romantic of mediums—not that this is a romantic meeting anyway—but she does finish her messages with a D for Daniella and a single X for a kiss.

  On my way home from the shops, I buy a bouquet of tulips, a mix of red and orange ones. On my first date with Lola I’d bought her tulips. ‘They’re yellow,’ I’d said, ‘for friendship.’ I was testing the water. When she looked dismayed, I was delighted. At home, I search the cupboards for a vase. I find the antique one my mother-in-law gave us for a wedding present. I trim the stems and fill the vase with water. The blooms bring some much needed colour to the hallway, but something about their bowed heads makes me sad.

  It’s Monday night, and Bea has invited me for dinner. Her home is a rented one-bedroom apartment in Northcote, which she and Edwina have made their own with a carefully selected collection of Edwina’s artworks. One piece in particular looms over the tiny space, a large painting of an Asian woman with a distorted face. She watches me as I move around the room. When I go to the kitchen, it’s partly to get away from her.

  ‘Smells good,’ I say.

  ‘Moroccan tagine,’ Bea replies, and lifts the lid on the clay pot. ‘I’ve only done it once before. It was delicious.’ In the past few months she’s put on a few kilos, but it suits her. It softens her face.

  ‘Where’s Edwina?’

  ‘At some artists’ workshop in the country.’

  ‘Tonight’s the first time I’ve seen her paintings,’ I say. ‘She’s talented.’

  ‘I know.’ Bea smiles proudly.

  ‘Can I help with something?’

  ‘No,’ she says, throwing down her tea towel. She opens a bottle of wine. ‘Now it’s just a matter of waiting.’ She ushers me back into the living room. When I sit down on the couch I can feel the Asian woman’s huge black eyes burning through the back of my head.

  ‘So,’ Bea says as she pours me a glass of wine. ‘Edwina told me you stopped going to the life drawing class.’

  ‘It’s been a while. Months.’

  ‘I thought you enjoyed it.’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘Then why did you stop?’

  She always asks so many questions.

  ‘I don’t know, Bea,’ I sigh. ‘Can’t we just drop it?’

  ‘Okay.’

  I take a sip of the wine. ‘Where’s this from?’

  ‘Do you like it? House-warming gift from a friend.’

  ‘It’s very…’ I look for the right words. ‘Easy to drink.’

  ‘Oh, that’s what I was going to tell you,’ Bea says. ‘Did you see the paper today?’

  ‘No. Why?’

  She takes a newspaper from the magazine rack near the couch. ‘In the obituaries,’ she begins. ‘Ana Hrustanovic from Pascoe Vale.’

  At the mere mention of her name I feel sick. Bea passes me the paper. It’s open at the death notices. Ana’s name is circled in blue biro. I can barely concentrate enough to read the small print.

  Ana Hrustanovic

  13 September 1950–30 July 2009

  Beloved mother of Adrijan and Damir.

  You will always be in our hearts.

  ‘Why are you showing me this?’ I ask.

  ‘Weren’t you close to her?’

  I search Bea’s eyes for malice, but I don’t find any. ‘I don’t know why you’re doing this.’

  ‘I thought you’d want to know. She was someone you were close to, a long time ago.’

  ‘I never meant it, okay? It was stupid. I know. I ruined everything.’

  ‘Dad.’ Bea puts her glass down on the coffee table and places a hand on my knee. ‘I might not have understood when I was fifteen, but I understand now.’

  I can’t believe this is happening. Can Lola see all of this?

  ‘Please, let’s not…’

  ‘I’ve cheated on my girlfriends.’

  ‘Please, Bea, I don’t want to hear it.’

  ‘I know what it’s like. You don’t think. Until it’s all over, and it’s too late.’

  ‘Please.’

  The timer on the oven goes off. Bea looks at the kitchen door and then turns back to look at me. She stares at me for what seems like an eternity, but I keep my gaze fixed on a stain on the carpet. Finally she gets up and goes into the kitchen. I can breathe again.

  Today’s the day. I wake up early and can’t get back to sleep. As I pull on my robe and walk to the kitchen I’m pleased to see the house is spotless. I almost expect to find Lola at the stove, making me a cooked breakfast of bacon and eggs. She’s not, but the eggs I cook are beautiful and creamy anyway.

  I make the bed, pulling the sheets tight until every crease has been pressed out. I shave and put on a pair of jeans and a jumper. When I look in the mirror, I see the face of an old man, but an old man with promise in the curl of his old lips. I lug my easel from room to room and from corner to corner, searching for the perfect backdrop for my yet-to-be-conceived masterpiece. I imagine Daniella’s long legs stretched across the old chaise longue in the sitting room. I picture her naked, leaning casually against the marble mantelpiece in the bedroom. I see her staring through the front window at the now bare arms of the Japanese maple.

  At midday I walk to the milk bar and buy a packet of Winfields from the Chinese man. He is a man of few words—of no-frills Chinese efficiency—and today it’s a relief, because I’m not in the mood for mindless chitchat. On the way home I smoke my first cigarette in thirty long, tobacco-free years. It feels good, comforting, like catching up with an old friend. I walk. I smoke. I walk and smoke. I follow Glenlyon Road. I stroll past the gym-goers at the Brunswick Baths and the looming face of the Brunswick Town Hall. I pass the Brunswick Community Health Centre and the Shell petrol station on Lygon Street. Soon I know where I’m headed.

  Merri Creek. The powerlines are the only reminder that I’m five kilometres from the city. If
my hearing was better, I might be able to catch the rumble of a faraway tram, but mostly the air is full of birdsong. I remember bringing Bea here when she was a little girl, in spring, to feed the ducklings.

  I cross the bridge, ignoring a boy spraying spiky words across its underbelly, and find a quiet spot on the opposite bank. I can’t help but think about Lola and her faceless lover. Was this their spot? What did they do once they had settled into the dewy grass? Did they hold hands and recite poetry to each other in the dappled sunlight? Or did they tear off each other’s clothes and fornicate in the grass?

  It’s peaceful here. I lie down, close my eyes and let the shadows of the leaves run back and forth across my face. The cigarettes have had their way with me. I surrender to the moment.

  She’s late. We said three-thirty and it’s already ten to four. For the past hour I haven’t been able to do anything except stare at the face of the clock. I don’t know her, or what she likes. There’s half a litre of Diet Coke in the fridge, an open bottle of red on the bench, a packet of Tim Tams in case she gets a craving, and cheese crackers if she prefers a bit of salt. I put my hand in my pocket and the cold metal of the cigarette lighter between my fingers calms me. If there’s one thing I’m sure of, it’s that she’ll want a smoke.

  At two minutes past four the doorbell rings, and my heart pounds against my ribs. Here she is, I think—not just a bunch of lines on a piece of paper, but the real thing, soft and warm and fleshy, in my hallway, my house. It’s a moment to savour. I take a deep breath.

  ‘Welcome,’ I say, but it feels wrong, too formal.

  She looks at me, her face unreadable, as she takes a long last drag of her cigarette. ‘Thanks.’

  She hangs her coat on the hatstand and loiters in front of an oil painting in the hallway—a generic Australian landscape, all orange and grey, with a few scattered gum trees.

  ‘A gift,’ I explain, and she nods. ‘Not sure who the artist is.’ Silently she follows me into the front room. I’ve started a fire, and it’s almost cosy. I’m pleased to see her relax a little. I pass her the one-dollar ashtray I picked up at the Brotherhood yesterday. ‘You can smoke in here if you like,’ I say, and I see her relax a little bit more. She shakes out another cigarette.