The Best Australian Stories 2011

by Cate Kennedy

  *

  Switching pages, I see that Xanadu658 is selling a silver crochet evening purse lined in pale-blue silk. It is ‘no longer suitable, due to a change in lifestyle.’

  What kind of lifestyle precludes evening purses? I check the other items Xanadu has for sale: three diamante belts (all size XS), red kitten heels (a bit scuffed), a six-pack of baby booties (NWOT).

  I’m watching a couple of dresses, their prices creeping, I don’t need them, I probably won’t wear them, and yet … Maybe I should invest; maybe I need an evening purse. Who knows what the future may hold. Maybe this evening purse holds my future of evenings out clutching purses against perfect frocks over flawless skin, all clutched tight by a companion.

  *

  Hannah has dark brown eyes. We were once friends. Now we are not even ‘friends.’

  I have a lot of ‘friends.’

  I mean, we all know, or knew, or knew of, or wished we knew, or the-guy-from-the-bookshop, way too many people, don’t we?

  I’d even found my dad listed on Facebook: the first time I’d seen him since I was eight. Late one night, call it the bottom of the barrel. He looked fatter, smaller and dumber than I remembered. Barrel bottom or not, I didn’t ask him to be my friend.

  What I really wrote to Hannah was this: Cool, Hann. Give me a call sometime if you’re passing through town and we’ll have a coffee and catch-up. Ciao xx

  I don’t need to tell you; she’d never call, kiss kiss, how are ya babe.

  *

  Hannah moved from South Africa to my school in year eleven. Something about the end of apartheid and its impact on cattle farming? Her dad – despised, pined after – went to New Zealand. Hannah and her mum came here.

  Her first week at school she caught me smoking by myself, behind the woodwork shed. She asked for a light and said my tobacco was grown in Zimbabwe. I looked at my burning cigarette, then back at Hannah, unsure if she was taking the piss.

  She lit up, blew smoke out of the corner of her mouth. ‘I’m Hannah,’ she said, as if I didn’t know.

  I made no assumptions, but from that moment on she’d find me each lunchtime and peel me away from my book. We’d nibble our crappy sandwiches, make fun of the other students and smoke our guts out. We never hung out on the weekends; she was seeing some older guy named Frank who took up all her time. But in year twelve they broke up and Hannah and I made the transition from smoking buddies to out-of-school buddies and she started sleeping over at my place.

  Weekday, weekend, it made no difference to us, we’d stay awake half the night, gulping hot chocolate and leaning out the bedroom window to smoke. Hannah’s appetite for hot chocolate was insatiable; we’d go through a litre of milk each night, at least. Hannah’s mum would only allow cocoa made with water and a splash of skim milk, so when she got to my place – where my mum slept heavily and didn’t give a damn what we drank – she’d cut loose, heat the full-cream milk in a saucepan till it boiled, add half the box of cocoa and an avalanche of brown sugar. Each week I’d scrawl cocoa and milk on the shopping-list notepad on the fridge.

  ‘The amount of cocoa you girls go through,’ my mum would sigh in her distracted way as she tore the list from the pad and rushed off to the supermarket on Friday night.

  Hannah’s hot chocolates. Her mother was one of those petite, pointy-nosed women for whom eating nothing was a sign of refinement. The world was a great and mysterious place where nothing was certain except the superiority of looking like an old bag of bones. Hannah inherited her father’s large frame and appetite and made her mother look like an icy-pole stick. As far as I could tell, Hannah’s mum had spent Hannah’s entire life trying to whittle her into a twig.

  One morning towards the end of the school year we were walking to the bus stop when Hannah told me that I held her in my sleep. I would – she said – wrap my arms around her waist, press my head into her chest or her back and hold on tight. She said she didn’t mind, but wondered if I was aware that I did it.

  No, I told her, I was not aware.

  Then I said: Jesus Christ, how embarrassing, I’m so sorry, I’ll try to stop.

  She said not to worry about it, she didn’t much mind.

  She sort of liked it, she said.

  She found it sweet.

  *

  I once read that the reason we are able to walk down a crowded street without continually colliding into others is because we detect subtle movements in the eyes of the people coming towards us – movements that somewhere deep inside our brains we understand as an intended direction and make the necessary adjustment in our trajectory. We make way for each other through a mutual understanding. Perhaps this is why we can feel comforted by a crowd.

  Our eyes send signals so we avoid the barest touch. Perhaps this is why we can feel so lonely in a crowd.

  Hannah? It had not been what, one year or two. It had been twenty-eight months plus three weeks. And Hannah? Never mind.

  *

  Facebook makes me sick. Hannah and I used to meet up in the flesh and walk along a real street and enter real live shops, staffed by fragrant, embodied individuals who – if you reached out and touched them – would feel warm and smooth, as human beings do. In such establishments we would try on clothes that were new and available in most sizes, including ours. And we would choose a frock from a rack and slip it on and spin for each other, our backs to the cool, hard mirrors. Then Hannah and I would sit face to face, look across the table into each other’s eyes, and lips, and down into our coffees, slowly stirring the froth in, as we spoke words with pitch and waves that hit each other’s tympanic membranes and sent physical signals of chemico-electric form zinging through each other’s brains.

  ‘Keira?’ she’d say.

  ‘Hannah?’ I’d say. And we would answer each other – ‘yes,’ or ‘yes?’ – without the use of emoticons or excess punctuation. Without the need to ruminate over the difference in meaning of ‘oooooooo’ and ‘oooooo!!!’ and ‘oooohhhhhhh.’ We used gesture and eyes and sounds. We sat face to face, and a single look transmitted the equivalent of three hundred posts on Facebook. None of which rendered me sick.

  That saying ‘catch-up’ makes me sick.

  That saying ‘I hope you don’t mind’ makes me sick.

  Sometimes, people streak so far ahead that there can never be any catch-up and too bloody bad if you mind.

  Other things that make me sick: hot chocolate, long macchiatos, catching buses, the smell of burning fabric, dark brown eyes.

  One time with Hannah I bought a pale-blue silk dress from the Vintage Clothing Shop. It gripped my tits like a cold fist but made my arse irresistible. Around the neck was a ring of pearlised sequins. It was cut at just the right length, highlighting both the bones of the knee and the curve of the quadriceps, which for some reason always screams vagina. Hannah made me buy it, although its price was such a stunner that I had to pilfer money from my mum’s purse to pay. But I wore that frock dressed up with fish-net stockings, and down with bare legs, with scarfs and brooches and belts, depending on whether we were going to a club or a show or a café. I wore it with jackets on top and skivvies underneath, I wore it with hats and long socks and gold sandals and gloves. I wore that dress with Hannah.

  Also, eBay makes me sick. And spastic and insatiable for things just out of sight. It fuels something frantic, then leaves me gutted. Without getting out of bed, with the rhythmic twitch of one finger against the return button on my keyboard, I can have frock after frock. None of which, poured out of their post-packs, caught warm in my fingers, satisfies anything. Although, according to the vendors’ descriptions, every dress on eBay is ‘stunning.’ They are stunning with tiny flaws, or stunning and unworn, or they are stunning and would look fabulous with heels and golden eyeshadow or equally so with ballet flats and a leather jacket; they are NWOT and stunn
ing. You don’t need to ask why the vendors are auctioning off their stunning crap because – like a con man – they tell you before you ask. There are three stories: wardrobe clearout; fluctuation in body weight; change in lifestyle. No one ever says that they are auctioning their kids’ toys because they need a carton of fags or a crate of VB, or because the bank’s about to foreclose. No one’s selling their shit to raise funds for a holiday or to build a herb garden or a gazebo or buy a pet dog. No one’s selling their shit because it’s shit. They all regret horribly the necessity of the sale. They expect us to look at this detritus and be stunned.

  Nothing to lose, I sign in.

  There are currently seventy-four thousand, five hundred and thirty-one dresses listed for sale. Five thousand six hundred and twelve of them are pale blue. Seven hundred and forty are pale blue and vintage. I survey the capacity of my room. I turn back to my computer, flip pages.

  Nothing to lose, I sign in.

  I have a friend request from Nicky Winch, the guy in grade four who had the set of seventy-two Derwent pencils in a tin. I wonder if that’s enough to forge a friendship. Nothing to lose, I accept, and the face of another stranger joins my library of friends.

  *

  So the pale-blue silk dress I bought and wore with Hannah was sleeveless? And it started to unravel under the armholes? At the part they call a gusset? I sewed the edges together, but I’m not much good with a needle and a gusset is a triangle of reinforcement that can only bear so much reinforcing. And then I ran out of pale-blue thread, used up all my white, moved on to pale green and et cetera until the underarms of the dress looked like psychedelic spiderwebs. At special events or where the light was quite bright, I tried to keep my arms pinned to my sides. Someone might flick a glance at my armpit during conversation and this served as a reminder for me to clamp that arm back down. Hannah told me to relax. She said the mass of threads were scary-beautiful. Those were her words: scary, beautiful.

  Then, a few weeks later, she said the mending seemed desperate, overly optimistic, why didn’t I just get another dress? Desperate, overly optimistic; a cause and its effect.

  I’d seen Hannah ruin two striped tops from her prized collection: one with blue-black hair dye; one behind the bus stop where a rusty nail stuck out of the fence. Both times she did the exact same thing, no threads involved: she just chucked them in the bin, like wet tissues.

  *

  There are three hundred and seventy-three pale blue + vintage + sleeveless dresses for sale on eBay. Forty-four are ‘Buy it now!’ The rest are up for auction. All bids end between one minute and eight days from now.

  *

  The plan was that we’d both do nursing and then volunteer as aid workers abroad. That’s what we called it: abroad, which to our ear was far more sophisticated a term than overseas. We enrolled – and then spent the summer around town, me in that dress, Hannah in ballet flats, red lipstick and one of her striped tops. We talked about moving in together as soon as we got part-time jobs. Meanwhile she stayed over at mine. Full-cream milk and cocoa. I held her warm body at night and pretended to sleep.

  *

  I log in, compelled by the old What if?

  Nicky Winch the Derwent boy has sent me a message.

  Unusual. Normally you accumulate ancient artefacts and never exchange a word. Befriend, read their inane and desperate and overly optimistic daily updates, voyeurism, despair.

  The Westgate sucks, sooooo happy Masterchef’s back, shiny, happy, kid topped the class.

  But here in the stream was a message just for me. For a fraction of a second, a tiny boy in a crowded school photo, his pursed little lips, calling across years.

  Kieiria wots up? Remember the day you fell from the monkey bars landed on me and stuffed my knee my knee still kills me and I might need an op. Work in a sign shop which is pretty shit. Usual stuff, 2 kids, don’t have much contact tho. How goes?

  He’d spelt my name wrong and I did not remember that monkey bars incident.

  Then I did remember the incident and the attending ambulance and the fact that it was a girl called Sonya Murne, the netball champion of the school, who landed on his knee, not me. I hated the monkey bars. I hated netball. I liked coloured pencils in tins, and books and other quiet stuff. Hello? You think you know me? I’m not fucking Sonya Murne.

  *

  Somehow that summer between school and uni, bisexual had emerged as the new normal, so unless you were a Nazi Christian you said you were bisexual. We discussed it. In theory, Hannah said, she could definitely be in love with a woman; love was love, after all; male, female, what’s the diff? Keep in mind that it was me she was sitting with when she said it. She said it to my face, looking into my eyes. Then she said, ‘And woman on woman avoids all the problematics of submission that go with penetrative sex, the prescribed male/female dynamic, et cetera, you know?’

  I nodded, heart thumping, palms sweating, cheeks probably fucking purple, though I had no idea what she was talking about. All I knew about penetrative sex I had learned at fifteen from Jason Campbell. Over four weekends we’d exchanged a dozen words max and a few buckets of bodily fluids, mostly mouth-to-mouth, and he did penetrate me. If pressed I’d say it was neither pleasant nor unpleasant. Mostly I was on my back, thinking, ‘This is penetration. I’m being penetrated. He is penetrating me.’ Probably I thought ‘fucking’ rather than ‘penetrating,’ but you get the picture.

  If penetration was a problem for Hannah then that was no prob for me. And how I leapt to agree with Hannah on the question of loving a woman. Oh boy, that was something I knew all about.

  *

  I study the eBay pictures one by one with an attitude forensic. My neck stiffens, my eyes ache, and none of the three hundred and seventy-three pale-blue vintage sleeveless dresses resembles mine in the slightest.

  *

  Then one day Hannah and I were in Degraves Street, drinking double macchiatos because we liked the way they made us look – sophisticated glass, black ink, dense white foam. We were drinking them even though we would have preferred massive mugs of cocoa, cream, sugar, a half litre of milk, and a boy called Andre Devonport (and what sort of name is that, anyways?) comes over to our table and goes, ‘Hannah?’

  To which the only possible answer was, ‘Yes?’

  And then he asks if she recognises him.

  And she does recognise him: he’s a guy from her high school in South Africa. A great looking guy, with flopping-in-his-eyes soft hair and you-are-the-only-person-in-the-world-Hannah eyes. He pulls up a stool without taking his eyes off her and they start exchanging relevant demographic data – me feeling increasingly uncomfortable, then left out, then grumpy – and when Hannah says the word ‘nursing’ Andre’s face expands in surprise, then contracts, and what’s left of his eyeballs direct their suspicion at me. He turns back to Hannah, ‘But you were so … clever. So artistic.’

  Call it the beginning of the end, if you will.

  *

  When an auction has less than sixty seconds to close, the timer switches to red numerals and you can watch the countdown in real time. This never fails to scramble my mind and shrink my world. Do I want it? Should I bid? How much is it worth to me? I am held in a 59-, 58-, 57-, 56-second fist where I am without past or future, where I have no idea what to do. I pounce and feel sick. Or I move on and feel sick. Uncertainty, desire and lost opportunities. It’s all there in the countdown.

  It’s a bit different with Facebook. Less intense. Needless to say, I immediately deleted Nicky Winch from my list of friends.

  *

  We’d be meeting less frequently and Hannah would be saying things like, ‘Oh Keira, you’re so …’ and finishing off with adjectives that sounded a bit South African to me. A bit male South African with floppy hair and an eye for the particular. This ‘you’re so …’ made me feel disappo
inting and small. And when someone starts to point out what you’re like with a decrescendo sigh, it’s a sign to get ready ’cause they’re shrinking you down flat into a face in an old album that can be snapped shut with one hand. And pretty soon, you just watch, the act of misrecognition will be complete.

  *

  Things I had not contemplated: flats without Hannah, summertime without Hannah, nursing without Hannah, developing nations without Hannah.

  ‘We can still hang out!’ she said, grinning fluoro from the lips but not the eyes, after she informed me that she’d landed a job at the food co-op, was switching from nursing to film studies and moving into Andre’s share-house.

  Andre this. Andre that. ‘He’s so …’ Eyes heavenward. Crescendo sigh.

  ‘I’ll have my own room, though. At least … at the start …’

  It has often been noted that catastrophes take place in slow-motion, hyper-real time. I can add that your body sucks inwards. Major arteries slap the underside of your skin like untethered hoses and in the face of all this you can remain surprisingly polite. You can, if you wish, find air for something small and inane: oh, gee, wow, congratulations. Then you can flee.

  *

  EBay. Facebook. Twitter and chat. Send, comment, respond and reply. I’ll buy stuff I wouldn’t touch. I’ll comment on your post though I wouldn’t cross the street to say hello. Things that are not acts will pretend to be acts; they will take the place of acts. I will search and I will trawl and I will neither catch you nor be caught.

  *

  What I did was walk home, into the house of my childhood, into my bedroom, and close the door. I lay still on my bed for a long time. I peed once, in a milk-crusted mug abandoned on the windowsill. My mum knocked, said my name with a question mark and then went away. The sun rose and set twice. Soon after the second setting, I had a small thought, call it a plan. I stood up, went to the kitchen, gathered a glass of lemon cordial and a cigarette, a lighter, my blue mended dress. I opened the back door and stepped out into the cool night-time breeze. I sat cross-legged in the backyard as standing made me dizzy, and I watched the threads catch and smoulder to a fine grey ash.