Gang of Four

by Liz Byrski

  He shook his head. ‘Not yet. I have to go to Sacramento for a couple of days next week to fix up the deal – that is, if I decide to do it.’

  ‘Why wouldn’t you do it?’ she said, watching the serried rows of vines stretched along the taut wires above the newly turned earth. ‘It’s a great opportunity, you’d be crazy to turn it down.’

  There was a pause before he spoke. ‘It’s a lot of work, time-consuming …’

  She felt him look at her again but kept her head turned away.

  ‘Yes, but the course finishes in a couple of weeks. You’ll have more time. You’ve been saying for weeks that you need to organise some work.’

  He swung the car off the road and onto the verge, and switched off the engine. ‘What’s going on, Sally?’

  She turned to face him, hoping the sunglasses hid more than just her eyes. ‘What do you mean? Nothing –’

  Steve struck the wheel with the heel of his hand. ‘Don’t give me that. We’ve been through this before – pretending there was nothing between us. All these months together and now in a few weeks you’re leaving and not a word, not even a hint about what happens to us.’

  She stared at him and swallowed hard, grasping her hands together in her lap. ‘What do you want me to say? You know I have to leave, I don’t have any choice.’

  ‘I know that. And I know you’ve done what you came here to do. But is that all? I mean, am I just supposed to drive you to the airport, wave goodbye and pretend I’m happy about it?’

  ‘Why are you angry with me, Steve? I don’t have a choice. I won’t have a visa, so I’m not allowed to work here. I have to earn my living too. Are we fighting about this?’

  He looked away, stiff and angry, until his shoulders slumped and he ran a hand across his eyes. ‘No,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘No, of course we’re not fighting. It’s just me … I don’t know what to do. I can’t bear it that you’re leaving and you won’t even talk about it. I feel … well, I just feel helpless.’

  She reached out and took his hand. ‘It’s not just me, Steve. You haven’t mentioned it either. I thought you didn’t want to talk about it. I was frightened you’d think I was trying to pin you down.’

  He looked at her and put his hand up to touch the tear that had sneaked from under the sunglasses. ‘Oh, pin me down. Pin me wherever you like, just don’t leave me wondering what to do.’ He got out of the car, walked around to her side and opened the door. He drew her out of the car and pulled her close to him. ‘I don’t have fancy words for this. I love you, Sally, I don’t want to lose you, and I don’t know what to do.’

  ‘I love you too, Steve,’ she said, burying her face in his neck, loving the soft warmth of his skin and the way he held her. ‘I don’t know what to do either. I haven’t known what to say to you. You did say you might come back with me, but you never mentioned it again and I thought you’d changed your mind. Then … when you told me about the job …’

  He held her away from him, looking intently into her face. ‘I didn’t mention it again because you didn’t. I thought maybe I was being too pushy, wanting to go with you, interfering in your life. But I love you. If you feel the same then we’ll find a way to be together somehow.’

  She gazed out across the vineyards. ‘You know, this looks a lot like home, like the Swan Valley,’ she said. ‘Wine-growing country. I so want you to see it.’

  ‘Then I will. But I’m not looking for an Australian holiday, Sally, I’m talking about a future, either here, or there, or somewhere else. But you and I together.’

  ‘I want that too, Steve, but how? I need to earn a living and I don’t have a green card, and I’m not likely to get one. And I don’t know about the situation back home, whether you’d be able to work there, what the visa situation would be. It seems so hard, impossible almost.’ Her tears were flowing freely now and he held her closer, stroking her hair, kissing the top of her head.

  ‘It’s not impossible,’ he said. ‘We’ll find a way to do it. You’re too precious to me, Sally, I’m not going to be beaten by bureaucracy – American or Australian.’ He paused and reached into the car for a box of tissues, handing them to her, waiting while she dried her eyes. ‘You know,’ he said with a smile, ‘it may be that the only way to do it would be to get married.’

  ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘Deadly serious. But I heard you tell Nancy that you’re not the marrying kind.’

  She stared at him, her body flooding with a sudden terrified heat, her heart seeming to beat so loudly that she felt he must have been able to hear it.

  ‘No … no, I’m not … or at least, I haven’t been. But I guess, well … I guess I could … I could change if that’s what it took.’

  Steve grinned. ‘So is that some sort of acceptance of a proposal?’

  She laughed and dabbed at her eyes again. ‘Did you actually propose? I thought it was more of a bottom line, a fallback position if all else fails.’

  ‘Would you like me to go down on one or two knees?’

  ‘Neither.’ She smiled. ‘Definitely not. Look, I accept the proposal that we must be together. I love you – I want to be with you whatever it takes.’

  ‘Even if it takes getting married?’

  She paused again. ‘It sounds so terrifying. I so much prefer the idea of just being together. It’s not because I don’t want to make a commitment to you, Steve, I do. It’s just marriage and all the baggage that goes with it …’

  ‘We’re grown-up people, Sally – middle-aged. We can make it whatever we want it to be. It’s just a piece of paper we may need to enable us to be together. The relationship we have will be the same, but we may have to be married in order to be together in the same country. To make it legal.’

  She sighed, thinking how much she loved his square face, the crinkles around his eyes, and the way those eyes not only saw her but knew her. He made her feel strong, and beautiful, and loved in a way she had never known before. She put her hand up and touched his lips with her fingertips. ‘Well, I guess I’ll love you and want to be with you legally or illegally,’ she said.

  The phone was ringing as she unlocked the door to the apartment. She dumped her camera case and raced to grab the receiver, expecting it to be Steve. When she heard Stacey’s voice she wished she had let the answering machine pick up the call. Stacey sounded uncharacteristically subdued.

  ‘Is my dad there, please?’

  Sally swung her shoulder bag onto the table and ran a hand through her hair. ‘He’s in Sacramento, Stacey. You could try his cellphone.’

  ‘Yeah, I tried that but he’s not answering. D’you know where he’s staying?’

  Sally put down the phone, collected the slip of paper with the hotel number from under the fridge magnet, and read out the name and the number of Steve’s hotel. ‘But I doubt he’ll be back there till this evening,’ she added. ‘He was expecting to have some long meetings with the publisher and some people from the Jazz Association.’

  There was silence at the other end of the line.

  ‘Stacey, are you … is something wrong?’

  ‘No, nothing. I’ll leave a message if I don’t get him. Thanks.’ She hung up.

  Sally stared at the receiver, shrugged and hung up with the familiar sense of irritation that she experienced each time she encountered Steve’s daughter.

  Clearing a space on the table she spread out the photographs she had just collected from the developer, and studied them with satisfaction. She had taken them at first light in the Mission District, and she knew she had captured the bleak chill of the dawn, the despair of the old man rolling up his thin mattress and stuffing it into the shopping trolley with his other meagre possessions. She had caught the hopelessness in the eyes of the teenage panhandler outside the Dolores Mission, and the brutal reality of the police officer shaking the mountainous woman from her blanket on the steps. She had set out to capture the darker side of the city, to portray the other life behind the affluent sunlit street
s, and she knew she had achieved it. These would make up the portfolio for her final assessment and she was pleased with what she had done. She sat down to draft the accompanying legend, staring again at the photographs, satisfied with the honesty and the dramatic impact of her work. So absorbed was she, she didn’t notice that a couple of hours had passed since she’d arrived home, then she heard a sharp rap on her door.

  ‘Stacey!’ she said, amazed to see her standing on the other side of the security screen. ‘I told you, Steve’s not here.’ She unlocked the screen door. ‘D’you want to come in?’

  Stacey nodded.

  ‘Did you call the hotel?’ Sally asked.

  ‘Yeah, I called, I left a message. I tried the cellphone again and called the operator – it’s not working.’ She stalked the room in jerky strides, avoiding eye contact. ‘Great view,’ she said quietly, stopping at the window briefly before pacing the room again. She noticed the photographs spread across the table. ‘Did you take these?’ she asked, not looking up.

  ‘Yes, they’re for my final assignment.’

  ‘They’re good,’ Stacey said. ‘Brilliant. You must be pleased.’ Her voice was thin and flat, several decibels lower than her normal tone. ‘It must nearly be the end of semester.’

  Sally hesitated. Stacey’s eyes looked red, her skin dull, and her manner was unusually restrained. ‘just a few more weeks,’ Sally said. ‘Stacey, why are you here? Are you okay?’

  ‘Oh, I dunno.’ She shrugged, turning back to the window, her shoulders slumped. ‘No. Not really.’

  Sally stiffened, trying to dispel the feeling that this visit meant trouble. Stacey was the one black cloud in her relationship with Steve. However many times he assured her that Stacey had her own life and would not affect them, Sally still saw her as a disaster waiting to happen. She had spent several sleepless nights wondering how Stacey would react when faced with the fact that she was a permanent fixture in Steve’s life. The silence was heavy and tense. Sally cleared her throat awkwardly. ‘Would you like some coffee?’

  Stacey shook her head and as she turned, Sally could see that she was crying. She hesitated, curbing an instinctive reaction to go to her and offer some sort of comfort, needing instead to protect herself.

  Stacey dabbed her eyes with a handful of tissues and took a couple of deep breaths. ‘I had an abortion,’ she said with a sudden noisy sob. ‘I don’t have anywhere else to go.’

  Sally’s anxiety dissipated in the blinding relief that the situation was not about her. She guided Stacey to the sofa and sat down alongside her, taking her icy hand. ‘Good heavens, Stacey, you’re frozen. I’ll get you a blanket.’

  She fetched a blanket from the bedroom closet and wrapped it around Stacey, who drew it up to her chin. Sally lifted her legs onto the sofa and tucked the blanket under her feet. She was crying bitterly now, shaking uncontrollably and apologising with every breath.

  Sally crouched down beside the sofa. ‘It’s okay, Stacey, don’t apologise. You need to cry. Can you tell me what happened? When was the abortion?’

  ‘This morning,’ Stacey said through her sobs. ‘I just came from the clinic.’

  ‘All alone? Didn’t you have someone with you?’

  She shook her head. ‘They said I had to but I told them someone was waiting for me outside.’

  ‘And you drove here?’

  ‘I drove to Dad’s first, that’s when I called you. Then when I couldn’t find him I just drove around and around, and then I didn’t know what to do, so I came here. I didn’t want to go to my apartment, the guys I share with … I didn’t want them to know. I had nowhere else to go. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Don’t, don’t be sorry. I’m glad you came here. Now, what did the clinic tell you to do when you left?’

  Stacey shook her head. ‘I can’t remember. They gave me some printed instructions but I don’t know what I did with the paper. I shouldn’t have come,’ she said, starting to get up.

  Sally pushed her firmly back onto the sofa. ‘You just stay there, Stacey. You’re not going anywhere. You did the right thing coming here, and there is no way you’re leaving now. Tell me the name of the clinic and I’ll call them for instructions, and then I’ll try to get hold of Steve.’

  Stacey shrank back into the cushions as Sally talked to the clinic staff. ‘You just have to keep your feet up and rest,’ she told her when she’d hung up. ‘Keep warm, plenty of fluids and call them if you’re in pain or if there’s any heavy bleeding.’

  Stacey nodded, the tears running silently down her cheeks. She was barely recognisable as the belligerent, outspoken woman who had upset everyone at the Thanksgiving dinner. She looked like a teenager, a broken child, and her eyes followed Sally as she paced the room, phone in hand, trying to reach Steve.

  ‘The mobile’s definitely not working,’ Sally told her eventually. ‘The operator says it’s not responding, there must be something wrong with it. He’ll call eventually, Stacey, then you can tell him.’

  Stacey shook her head and blew her nose on a handful of tissues. ‘I don’t know how to tell him. I feel so ashamed. When he wasn’t at his apartment I felt desperate because I had no one, but I was relieved too, relieved I didn’t actually have to tell him.’

  Sally sat down beside her again. ‘There’s nothing to be ashamed of, Stacey. Steve loves you, he’ll understand.’

  Stacey shook her head. ‘I don’t know. I’ve been so stupid. Dad thinks I can look after myself, that I’m independent and competent, all that stuff. This isn’t me, as far as he’s concerned. He’s proud of me.’

  ‘And he’ll still be proud of you.’ Sally smiled, taking her hand again. ‘Look, I’m going to make you some tea, you need something warm to drink. Then, if you want, you can tell me how all this happened.’

  ‘I was in love with him,’ Stacey said eventually, clutching the warm mug in both hands. ‘We worked together on the newspaper in London. He was so cool. His name’s Andrew and he looks like Hugh Grant, he even has the same accent, and I was just head over heels. He thought I was something else – he said so, he liked me being tough and noisy. Ballsy, he called me, so I kept acting more tough. He told me he was separated from his wife and getting a divorce.’ Sally shivered with a sense of déjà vu.

  The affair had lasted several months until Stacey discovered that Andrew had moved back with his wife. ‘So that was it. I was devastated. I chucked in my job. I couldn’t go on working with him and I didn’t want to be in England, so that’s when I came back here. I thought I’d stay with Dad, he’d understand, I’d hang out with him for a while. But when I got here I felt so stupid, like a failure, you know. Running away from a married man, it’s such a cliché, and Dad was really hung up on you and that just froze me up. So I decided to tough it out and not say anything. I kept on pretending I’d come back because I wanted to work at the Chronicle.’

  ‘But that was November,’ Sally cut in. ‘You came back just before Thanksgiving. You weren’t pregnant then.’

  ‘Andrew came over here in February,’ she said. ‘He had to cover that climate change conference in LA and he came here first. I thought he’d come to tell me that he’d decided to leave his wife. But of course he hadn’t.’

  Sally shifted her position on the sofa, lifting Stacey’s feet so that they rested on her lap. ‘Have you told him about this? I mean, did you let him know you were pregnant?’

  Stacey nodded. ‘Oh yeah! I called him as soon as I realised. Last-chance thing, you know … maybe this will make him see that it’s me he really loves. Well, no way. He was horrified, told me to get rid of it straight away. He wasn’t a bit concerned about me, or about the baby, only that his wife might find out. That’s when I really got the message. So I found the name of a clinic and … well, you know the rest. I’m really sorry to land on you, Sally. I’ve been a real dog … it was just that I came back looking for Dad, and when I found him he was missing – emotionally missing, if you know what I mean. I was jealous.’

&nb
sp; Sally squeezed Stacey’s foot through the blanket. ‘It’s okay You could still have told him, you know. He would’ve wanted to know. I suppose that with the broken leg and what was happening with us, he just didn’t pick up that you needed him.’

  Stacey stared into her mug. ‘What d’you think he’ll say about it … the whole thing? He’ll be so disappointed in me.’

  ‘Stacey, you’ve known your father a lot longer than I have but my guess is that he’ll say he loves you very much and –’

  ‘But the abortion … will he be okay about that? He’s pretty cool but men sometimes feel differently.’

  ‘I think he’ll be fine about it and anyway, Stacey, it’s your decision to take, it’s your life. You don’t need his approval.’

  ‘But I want it,’ Stacey mumbled, the tears starting again. ‘Desperately want it. I’m scared of him disapproving of me. Not being good enough.’

  ‘Steve loves you, Stacey, he’s a very open-minded person. Believe me, it’ll be okay, he’ll understand.’

  ‘I feel such a failure. Here I am, almost thirty, and I’ve made such a mess of things. Lord knows what you must think of me. You know, I liked you straight away, Sally, but I treated you like shit, then got pregnant, now I end up on your doorstep. What you must think of me …’

  ‘Stacey, I think you’re very brave and very lonely. And I know how it feels, honestly I do, because I’ve been there. Look, I think it’s time I told you a story …’

  TWENTY-ONE

  Robin was heading north towards Perth on the South Western Highway when the motorcyclist cut in front of her so sharply that the adrenaline pumped up her heartbeat and prickled her skin. She slipped off the road into the forecourt of a service station and went in to the shop to get a cup of coffee. It was a bitter, watery concoction in a polystyrene cup and she gagged on it, pouring it immediately onto the grass. Collecting her bottle of water from the car she wandered towards a shaded patch of ground where a few wooden seats and some scruffy grass claimed to be a picnic area. A huge truck pulled onto the forecourt, brakes screeching to a noisy halt, dark fumes belching from the exhaust. Robin turned away in distaste, watching the late morning sunshine glinting off the sleek chestnut coat of a horse grazing in a nearby paddock. Take some deep breaths and calm down, she thought. This is not about the motorcyclist.