by Cate Kennedy
Lax, she thought venomously. Remembering her loneliness, all through her tightly wound, subjugated adolescence, when she’d lie in her room and vow to herself: If I ever have children whatever happens I’m going to do the exact opposite of what she’s done.
And the thing was that despite Janet’s continual attempts to undermine it, she’d done that. What a wonderful childhood Sophie had had, full of broad-minded, colourful people and ideals. No pointless sterile rules. No warping, guilt-laden repression. The exact opposite of her own, and that was the one good thing she’d managed with her life, one glowing result after fifteen years of effort, and did her mother give her the slightest bit of credit for it? Sandy kicked at the nettle till it was a wet green smear on the paving stones.
‘Well,’ Janet finished with a sigh, ‘I suppose you’ll go ahead and do whatever takes your fancy regardless — you always have. Can I have a word with Sophie, please?’
‘I’ll tell her to ring you — she’s not home at the moment.’
‘At this hour, on a Sunday night? Where on earth is she?’
Sandy walked back into the house, towards the wine in the fridge. Her jaw was forced down tight. Breathe, breathe.
‘At a friend’s house.’
She pulled out a glass and stood it on the table, still piled with all her stock from the market waiting to be sorted. She imagined her mother putting a hand to her temple, shaking her head slightly in genteel disbelief; her face, so unlined and well maintained, flinty with that familiar, martyred tolerance.
She’s not your daughter, she wanted to spit. You had your chance with yours, and look what a disaster you made of it. She’s mine, so butt out.
‘She’s got her own webpage she’s working on,’ she heard herself say brightly. ‘Her teacher says she’s one of the smartest girls in her year and the best thing I can do is just give her her head and let her do her own thing.’
‘You wouldn’t hear that sort of nonsense if she was at a decent school,’ her mother said. ‘And now she’s going off with Richard when you have no idea what sort of person he’s turned into. Honestly, Sandy, sometimes I despair, I really do.’
‘Well, just rest assured we’re all fine here,’ she answered inanely. Her mother rang off and she stood there with the phone handset, feeling something corrosive and sour in her chest that had to be swallowed down. ‘I despair,’ she muttered savagely to the phone. ‘Me.’
She poured a glass of wine and went back to the couch, glancing at the clock. Honestly. What a ridiculous judgemental overreaction — it was only 9.30. Sophie had her own life to lead, her own friends, and one thing Sandy was determined about, she was never, never going to put onto Sophie the shit her mother had given her. Never. If she wasn’t home by ten, she’d do a casual ring-around to a few houses. Trust — that was the important thing. Wasn’t it? Freedom.
When, at last, she heard the back screen door scuffing open as the handle turned and Sophie came in, she couldn’t believe the traitorous words that leaped suddenly, jerkily out of her own mouth.
‘What sort of a time is this to be coming home?’ And — shit, how did this happen? — in her mother’s voice exactly, the exact same icy tone she desperately wished to exorcise.
‘I mean,’ she amended hastily, ‘I’m not hassling you about it or anything, but you have to let me know. Phone me or send me a text or something. That’s what that phone’s for. But I get worried when I don’t know where you are, you know? Does that seem fair to you?’
‘What’s the point of sending you a text? You can’t switch on your phone to read them.’ So flat and tired, somehow, her daughter’s voice, with that look that would shrivel you in your tracks. Scare you to death.
‘That’s beside the point. Anyway, I can read them. I just don’t see the sense in taking ten minutes to make one up and send it when I can just ring.’
‘I’ve been studying.’
‘Where?’
‘At Skye’s house.’
She felt her hands start going triumphantly to her hips, and she stopped herself. Folded them. No, even worse. Where on earth to put those hands?
‘Well, that’s very interesting, because I was talking to Annie and she said Skye was at the library tonight.’
‘OK, then, I was at the library.’
The low, sullen monotone of her apathy. Awful. A thin silence between them, like two fencers, waiting on the balls of their feet. When did things get so ... adversarial?
‘I think I’m pretty open with you, Sophie.’
‘Here we go,’ she heard her mutter.
‘I don’t impose too many restrictions, I hope. But you need to tell me where you are, and I’d appreciate it if you didn’t lie, because I know the library closes at 6 p.m. on Sundays.’
‘OK, then. I was at Jesse’s.’
‘Jesse? Boy or girl?’
‘Jesse the boy.’
‘Well, you don’t have to hide your relationships from me, do you? When have I ever not welcomed your friends?’
Sophie swapped her bag to the other arm and glanced longingly at the door. She took a breath, sighed it out in a gust of frustration as though whatever it was wasn’t worth explaining.
‘You haven’t ever not welcomed them. It’s not that.’
For all Sandy knew, she could have some of that crystal meth in that bag, waiting for her chance to go into her room and smoke it or cook it up or whatever they did. Someone’s kid had overdosed last October, seventeen years old and out cold at the bus stop, right here in Ayresville, none of them could believe it. What was wrong with these kids? She willed Sophie to face her, so she could have a look at her eyes.
‘How long has this been going on, with this Jesse person?’
Sophie gave her a long, level, amused look — plenty of time to check out those pupils. Normal.
‘Since his family got Bluetooth.’
‘What?’
‘Wireless broadband.’
‘I don’t get you ...’
‘God, what is this? I was in a chat room, OK? Just surfing the net and downloading some music. Nothing else.’
‘Well.’ Floundering again, on the back foot, her indignation log-jammed with nowhere to go. ‘Well, anyway, dinner’s in the oven.’
‘No, thanks.’ Sophie was searching in her bag now, for something. ‘I’m on the forty-hour famine,’ she said indistinctly.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘You know — raising money for charity. I told you already.’
Sandy took another mouthful of wine, feeling a quick loosening slip of relief. Had she told her? Maybe. Probably.
‘Well, good for you. That’s great. Is Tegan doing it too?’
‘No,’ said Sophie. It was taking up all her attention, whatever she couldn’t locate in that bag. Her teased, matted hair fell in a dark sweep across her face. ‘Just me.’
‘You can’t tell me you got these muscles using the AbCruncher Pro.’ Rich rested a shot glass on Genevieve’s stomach. ‘See, look at that. You could probably drink it from that glass without using your hands, couldn’t you?’
She smiled, shifted her hair behind her ear. ‘Probably.’
‘Now why can’t they put that on daytime TV? Really though, are you an athlete? A professional dancer?’
‘No, I do a lot of yoga.’
‘Yoga doesn’t give you biceps like that.’
‘Yes it does. And don’t try challenging me to an arm-wrestle as some kind of awkward flirtation.’
‘OK then, I’m on warning.’ He felt light-headed, even at the thought of them struggling fully clothed in an arm-wrestle. His mind was racing ahead making a scattergun inventory: how old the sheets on the bed were, the state of the shower recess ...
‘Why do guys always do things like that, as if they’re the first ones to ever try it on you?’
He was instantly on the alert. ‘What’s that?’
‘Oh, you know. Pretend they’ve just had the great idea of offering you a massage, say. All those
dumb underhand excuses for foreplay.’
He swallowed. Throat suddenly cotton-dry. ‘No idea.’
‘Like the way they just happen to be carrying a condom.’
‘Hmm. Must be annoying.’ Shut up, you clown.
She sat up without using her hands and downed her drink, glancing speculatively around his place. Over at the wall, he thought. That’s right. Look over there.
‘They are great photos,’ she said finally, and he felt a rush of relief, of new firepower.
‘Thanks.’
‘You’re not saying you took them?’
‘I did, yeah.’
‘Wow. Where are those women from?’
‘Thailand. They’re tribal women from a particular group up in the north, and they fit those rings around their necks from a really early age.’
‘My yoga instructor would have a fit. She says the neck vertebrae are the most fragile in the whole body.’
‘It’s a cultural thing.’
He remembered booking that tour in Chiang Mai, the street of touts selling different trips. BEST PRICE FOR VISITING LONG-NECKS, one blackboard had said. Visit Hill Tribes With Us Then Best Price Handicraft Factory. The one he recalled most sharply said: If You See Any Other Tourist Group On Our Trip, We’ll Give You Refund.
He wished, now, he’d thought to get a photo of that sign. He imagined the repeated complaints that must have motivated it: a noisy group of German eco-tourists coming face to face on the track with an equally earnest troupe of Canadians, both sides lowering their camcorders with stiff resentment, then a third chattering group tramping up the jungle track like Dr Livingstone. And up around the bend, the tribe checking their watches and yawning and getting into position in front of their traditional huts.
‘What are you thinking about?’ Genevieve asked him curiously.
‘Oh, I was just thinking about the day I visited that ... ah ... indigenous community. There they were in the middle of the jungle miles from anywhere.’
There had been a jovial tour guide who’d confided to him that the Thai nickname for farangs was ‘long-nose’. ‘That’s my job!’ the guy had said, chuckling and wiping tears of hilarity from his eyes. ‘Taking long-noses to visit long-necks!’
Rich started to tell Genevieve this but stopped. ‘You know what I feel like?’ he said instead. ‘Chocolate.’
‘Do you have some?’
‘Sure I do. Always got some in the fridge.’
She must have forgotten she’d told him about her weakness for it. But when he brought out the block of plain milk chocolate he’d bought, a shadow of disappointment crossed her face, the first he’d noticed that night. He felt a second of doubt. Hoped she wouldn’t start spouting on about carbs and trans-fats. Talking about what she ate as if it was her religion.
‘Oh, OK. I don’t want to sound picky or anything, and I’m a sucker for chocolate, but I really only like the dark pure organic stuff.’
‘Do you? Next time I’ll know, then. I know the stuff you mean. The eighty-percent cocoa kind. It’s like having four espressos, isn’t it? Like a hit.’
He was starting to gabble now, he could feel it, trying to rescue the moment.
‘It’s actually quite good for you,’ she said. ‘Full of antioxidants.’
‘I’ve got a bit of a soft spot for this brand, though,’ he went on. He couldn’t stop himself. ‘When I was on the Blockade for the Franklin we were camped upstream in the forest for days on end and it was so bloody cold and wet, this chocolate was a godsend. Someone had brought a family block of it and you would have thought we were in a concentration camp, the way we hoarded it.’ He paused, waiting.
‘I know it’s cheaper, but it just tastes too salty to me,’ she said.
‘I’ve got some photos of the Blockade somewhere, if you’d like to see them.’
‘That was — what? — a protest blockade?’
‘Yeah — the big one. Where we saved the Franklin.’
‘That’s a river, right?’
He eyed his glass. Another couple of mouthfuls in there — he’d pour them both another one and change the CD; this African one had been a miscalculation.
‘The battle for the Franklin River, in Tasmania,’ he said lightly. ‘Thousands of people went. We all got arrested and went to jail. You must remember it: ’82 and ’83.’
‘Rick, I would have been about two.’
He smiled brightly, feeling the air start to go out of the room, feeling the blades jam.
‘Well, anyway,’ he said. ‘Next time I’ll get the gourmet chocolate. And it’s Rich, by the way.’
She was looking at him differently. It wasn’t just his paranoia — she definitely was.
Then she yawned, stretching her glorious, suddenly unattainable legs, and his heart slumped as she climbed to her feet.
‘Oh, sorry. Better get going, anyway,’ she said. ‘Work tomorrow. Doing a big shopping-mall promotion. Thanks for dinner.’
‘Sure,’ he said, still smiling like a moron. ‘See you round.’
Giving her a casual wave at the door, after she’d slipped out nimbly from under his arm, took everything he had.
The chocolate, he thought bitterly as he snapped off the CD player, that’s how much it meant to these Gen Y-ers. Just a different bloody brand of chocolate would have swung it for him.
He flipped through the channels on the TV dispiritedly, then tossed the remote control onto the coffee table, where it skittered into the others. He seemed to have acquired an arsenal of the things — TV and DVD and VCR and digital box and CD player — he was always looking for the right one, always pointing and pressing impatiently, wondering why the channel wouldn’t change. His phone was lying there amongst the remotes and takeaway Thai food containers. On an impulse, he leaned forward and picked it up, scrolled to his phone contacts. He’d text Sophie. Ask her how she was going with her packing. Let her see her old man was still up and doing late on a Sunday night.
Sophie’s mobile phone played the opening bars to ‘Katabasis’ as the text arrived. Sophie, oblivious in stereo headphones, cracked the spine on the book she was meant to have read by first period tomorrow, her hand at her mouth and her teeth absently searching for a rough edge of fingernail. She scanned the first page, her brain troubled, full of the images of the Amazon basin she’d coasted over using Google Earth that afternoon, mesmerised, at Jesse’s place. She couldn’t stop thinking about it. Floating like an angel, abseiling down to get a closer look at the dieback and soybean plantations and human roads crisscrossing it like unhealed scars on a body, soaring up again, thinking how small and vulnerable it really looked from above, and Jesse saying hey I thought you were going to help me with this essay, and her answering, yeah, in a minute, in a minute.
Sandy, sitting in a pool of lamplight in front of their own computer, was thinking that it just felt like last week she’d had the guy in the shop install Windows ’98 on it; surely it wasn’t the dinosaur Sophie claimed it was, surely she could still use the dial-up to well, whatever, to downpod what she needed. Instead of all this eye-rolling, pissed-off secrecy that flourished beyond her control. The stuff she felt herself brushing over uneasily, like that CD of Sophie’s she’d come across this afternoon — a three-headed dog glowering out at her from the cover. Just another one of those incomprehensible goth things, like the black crow tattoo and skull rings. She felt a furtive relief at the satisfying series of chirps as the modem connected her when she clicked on the right icon, thinking that swimming into the world wide web wasn’t as hard as she’d been telling herself. In fact, she was sort of struggling now to remember the principles that had kept her so determinedly opposed to it. Then, hesitantly, she clicked the cursor in the search engine box and typed: Elmo Goth.
Seven
What would she look like now? Rich had a photo of her from when she was about eight, one of those school pictures with hair neatly combed and a sweet scattering of freckles across her nose. Pierced ears, he’d noticed, scrutinising
the photo. That’d be Sandy’s leniency. Way back then (seven years, he reminded himself wonderingly, half her lifetime, gone like blown smoke), he’d debated about taking the photo to show his parents one Sunday when he’d gone over there for lunch, and decided uneasily against it. They hardly spoke about Sophie by then.
It had been awkward, those initial few years after he and Sandy had broken up. They’d grill him about whether he ever saw her and did he have an address where they could send her Christmas presents, and on and on till he felt leaden with grainy, exhausted guilt. Then one year, something shifted. His mother, he suddenly noticed, didn’t say Sophie’s name. Just called her ‘the little girl’.
‘You never see her now, do you, the little girl?’ she’d said in a voice so quiet and distant he almost asked her to repeat it, then checked himself.
‘No, she’s basically just with her mother now,’ he’d answered. ‘I didn’t want to drag her through some kind of custody battle. You see enough of that around to see what damage it does.’
He’d glanced at his father — nothing. Just that mouth drawn tight over his teeth as if he was perpetually disgusted with everything.
Showing his mother another photo would have been a mistake. He’d given her one early on in the piece, of Sophie when she was barely two. She’d taken it in both hands and gazed at it, her breathing shallowly heaving through her nose as she kept her mouth clamped shut, and Rich knew what that meant. Sure enough within thirty seconds she’d been weeping and he hadn’t known where to look. And his father staring at him with that see what a fuck-up you’ve made of things look on his face.
‘I know you don’t see her, but she’s still our grandchild,’ his mother had whispered through the ball of tissues she held to her face. His father had cleared his throat abruptly and got up, and his mother raised a helpless, placatory hand, almost as though she was fending him off. ‘I know, I know, I know ...’ she had sobbed, and Rich had turned the handle carefully on his teacup resting in its saucer, and itched to make his escape.
‘Mum,’ he’d said finally, sitting uncomfortably in her lounge room that day, ‘try not to upset yourself too much.’ He thought, uneasily, about phoning his sister, joking with her to get moving and pop out a couple of kids, get herself home from Washington and give their mother something to devote herself to. His sister was the steady married type; she should be the one his mother pinned all her hopes on, not him.
