New Australian Stories 2

by Aviva Tuffield

  ‘I can’t tell you what the kids’ve been like. And the pups. Lucky it’s pretty much time for weaning. D’you have a dog?’

  ‘Haven’t been able to face having one since … He was a chocolate lab too, actually.’

  ‘Oh you poor thing.’

  ‘It was my son’s.’

  ‘Did it go missing too?’

  He shakes his head and says to the lino, ‘An accident. My grandchildren were in the car at the time. It was always a bloody stupid mutt, chasing car tyres. They encouraged it.’ And their faces come back to him, the way they looked just after. His car still running.

  Sarah’s hands are up covering her open mouth, Chocolate giving a warning snarl at one of her pups.

  ‘I haven’t driven since. Haven’t seen my grandchildren, either.’ He gazes at the row of wagging tails. ‘I suppose he’s just busy, my son. Sports journalist.’ Ted’s face urging hers to understand — her hand down now but her mouth still a little open. ‘Posh house in the hills.’

  There’re squeals then as the kids come in and happy-hell breaks loose, Sarah looking at him looking at the children.

  He loiters in the garden, an outsider among the inclusive throng. He doesn’t know how to feel. On the one hand here he is, their new best friend and hero, people getting him sausages and does he want mustard or red sauce? Beer, Ted? This is Ted, everyone. Ted’s the one that brought Chocolate home. Inebriated cheers.

  But behind the smile and the polite platitudes of his replies there are those hills staring at him.

  … She came home with nipples like brake lights!

  He goes into the relative quiet of the house, watching those swigging aliens through the window. The light in their eyes. He sets his beer down on the kitchen surface, feeling drunk suddenly. His innards sagging.

  He wanders through and has a look in the laundry, the barricade there, the puppies back inside now having been paraded and cooed at — chased round the garden. Or left to put tiny puncture marks in things, like four-legged ticket inspectors.

  They’re curled up now. Seven yins. Or yangs. Sprawled all over one another like they’re one organism, pink skin on their bellies. Breathing quickly as if excited to be alive even when they’re asleep. Giant paws. Everything dawning and new and beginning for them. Sagging skin, but sagging with capaciousness.

  A little TV is on in the kitchen, showing footage of children at the racetrack, releasing hundreds of helium balloons into the air. The children’s excitement backed by manipulative music and shots of the multicoloured balloons shrinking into the sky.

  There’s bedlam in the kitchen, people moving in a tacit congo through to the big TV in the lounge, turned up loud for race time. Like it’s New Year and close to midnight. Betting slips and drinks jutting from hands, children shooshed sternly but weaving themselves in among the tense, excited bodies of adults. The TV blaring and Ted walking out to the garden but Sarah fetching him in again — telling him he can’t miss the race.

  So he stands at the back, ready for that voice. The excitement in it like his son is a child again. Like his voice in the days he wasn’t yet old enough to chide Ted.

  You left them, Dad. I don’t care if it was to get him to the vet … You can’t be trusted with them if you panic like that. You can’t even be relied on to drive.

  But it was just a son getting his own back for his childhood, Ted thinks, watching the families around the TV. He takes an urgent slug of drink. That was parenthood for you, eighteen years of giving everything but still feeling it isn’t enough. Then the rest of your life waiting for them to realise. The rest of your life waiting for them to take their love away.

  SLAM. The gates open, hooves on the ground, divots flying, gaping nostrils, the whites of the eyes. That voice galloping along too and everyone in the lounge happy and bouncing and delighted. The children wrapped up in adults. Fingers in half-open mouths. Laughter. Screaming. Ted in the corner, the crystal glasses tinkling in the cabinet beside him from the vibrations.

  He leaves his beer on a coaster, slips out of the lounge, then the front door. Walks down the path, not wanting to leave but unable to stay. The street quiet. The race that stops a nation. Ted moving through the open gate.

  ‘Ted?’

  He stops, still focusing on the footpath. Sarah’s tentative hand appearing on his shoulder. He turns a little, eyes downcast and wet.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I don’t deserve your hospitality.’

  ‘After what you did for us! Wait here, just for a moment. Then you can go. Promise me you’ll wait.’

  He fidgets in the sunlight while she’s gone. His son’s voice calling from indoors. Ted feeling unsteady now, his hand on the gate post. All those households listening to his son.

  Sarah reappears with three sleepy brown bundles in her arms.

  ‘Sarah, I can’t.’

  ‘Now, Ted,’ she says, a gentle forcefulness in her voice, the sweetness of alcohol on her. ‘Choose one.’

  ‘But I —’

  ‘No matter what you might think, Ted, all I see standing here is a dear sweet man who misses his grandchildren. Now, choose one. Or two, if you like. Maybe they’re ready for another by now? Anyway, what are we going to do with seven little terrorists.’

  Wednesday — The day that jades a nation. Ted wakes earlier than usual, showers, shaves. Gathers up all the empty bottles and rollie stubs in his lounge.

  He’s hungover and dry-retching as he clears up the small messes in the laundry, a clumsy chocolate-drop chasing his shoelaces round the house. Ted shooing her off then picking her up and letting himself be licked in the ear — wiping it off again, tiny puncture marks on his formidable earlobes. The radio sitting silent in the corner.

  He carries the pup and her sweet smell out to the garden, his mind occupied with a soup of feelings in his stomach, the dog’s tiny pulse fluttering insistently against his hand, and a heart-shaped balloon floating high above him in the blue, heading for the hills.

  No One Special

  PEGGY FREW

  ‘Have fun.’ Dixon kisses me and goes back to the recipe book.

  ‘Thanks.’ I stop at the door and watch him, the way he bends urgently over the table, glasses slipping down his nose. ‘Dix.’

  ‘Yeah?’ He doesn’t look up.

  ‘Don’t worry too much about dinner. Bec might not even come. You know what she’s like.’

  He straightens, pushes his glasses back up. Looks at me. ‘Kath. It’ll be fine. If she doesn’t come we’ll just eat it.’ He smiles, flaps his hand. ‘Go on — off you go. Don’t forget the wine.’

  I go, but all the way to the tram stop I still see him, his finger on the page, marking the line. His sweet preoccupied face and the crease between his eyebrows that had softened for a moment, at the thought of her not coming.

  Bec’s waiting on the corner of Bourke and Swanston, under the shelter of the tram stop, hands in the pockets of a grey-green coat I haven’t seen before. Her smile leaps out at me from the swarm of faces, and we fall into step together, heading up into Little Bourke, the narrow hectic red-and-gold of Chinatown.

  ‘How was the conference?’ I say.

  ‘All right.’

  ‘How’s Sydney?’

  ‘All right.’ This she says with a lifting and dropping of her hand, a dismissive gesture that’s wholly hers. For a while, in my early teens, I tried to copy it, until my mother one day grabbed my wrist and stopped me. ‘It’s not glamorous, that waving-off thing your sister does,’ she said. ‘It’s actually very rude.’

  So she’s cut me off, and because of this we go along for a while in uncomfortable silence. I watch my feet and press my lips together over the feeling of shame that’s spurted so readily at her rejection. In my head I try out and dismiss some things to say.

  Then we reach an Asian grocery, and she tugs me by the arm inside. ‘Should we get a present for Dixon?’ she says, and taps at a jar of wizened, greyish, pickle-shaped things. Sea cucombor it s
ays on the label, underneath some Chinese characters. ‘What do you reckon?’ She turns to face me and lifts an eyebrow, and I smile, ready and willing, because I know this is the closest she’ll come to apologising.

  Back out on the street, some winter sunlight comes down between the looming buildings, and we both tilt our faces to the narrow strip of sky. A sliver of eggshell blue shows through the clouds, and a platinum blaze of sun. I lower my gaze, and there we are, reflected in the shop window: our hips, our shoulders set at the same angle, each with the right arm raised, hers holding her hair down in the wind, mine shading my eyes as I stare into the glass.

  ‘So.’ She sighs, blowing on a little round cup of tea from the self-serve urn. ‘Melbourne. Freezing old Melbourne.’ Though I notice, if anything, her pale skin is paler than ever, despite all the Sydney sunshine she’s supposed to be basking in.

  My mother’s voice comes into my head. ‘Yes, Rebecca’s in Sydney now. Doing very well. She’s in finance.’ Sydney. Finance. The far-off world of Bec and her success.

  I clear my throat. ‘Will you … Are you still going to come for dinner?’

  She narrows her eyes in the steam from her cup. ‘Of course,’ she says, as if she always does what she says she’ll do. She taps her bitten-down nails on the table and picks up the plastic menu. ‘So,’ she says again. ‘How’s Dixon?’

  And there it is, the tiny flick of a look, the split-second of acknowledgement. I look back, and we share it. An adjustment, a blip, and then it’s over and we resume.

  ‘He’s good.’

  ‘Good.’ She drinks more tea.

  They always happen, these moments, every time we see each other. Every time we talk about Dixon. And then, later, when he’s there too there’ll be another one. Recognition. Awkwardness. Throbbing there in the spaces between us.

  The waitress comes for our order, and when that’s done I take a risk. ‘Mum says you’ve got a new boyfriend,’ I say, looking down at my cup.

  Bec shrugs. ‘No one special.’ She picks up her paper napkin and spreads it on her lap.

  I tip the cup, watch the tea leaves twirl.

  ‘So,’ says Bec. ‘What movie should we see?’

  In the cinema, in the dark, I sneak a sideways glance at her, and it opens up again, that yawning space, the blankness that is the time they had together. We don’t talk about it, me and Dixon. And Bec certainly doesn’t talk about it — with me or with anyone, as far as I know. And I hardly ever think about it, really. Only times like this, when I see her again after a while.

  It didn’t last long. Like all of her relationships. And I wouldn’t have even got to meet him — because of course she never brought boyfriends home — except I bumped into them on the street one night, and she was forced to introduce us. Which she did in her typical breezy don’t-you-dare-start-talking way — ‘Dixon, Kathy; Kathy, Dixon’ — and then rounded him up and moved him along as soon as she could. And then I guess they broke up. And then I started hanging around with this girl, Sarah, I met in my first year at uni; we’d go to these parties, and he’d be there, Dixon. At first we kept our distance. But it kept happening, we kept running into each other, and Bec had moved away — not to Sydney yet, but across town, so we hardly saw her — and Dixon was so real and close, and it just felt right, and, well, it just happened.

  And now our time together — mine and Dixon’s — has gone on so long, and looms so big all around us and trails such a strong and bright and full history of its own that that other time — his and Bec’s — is just a speck way off in the past, really.

  That night though, when I first met him, when they were together. As they walked off I looked over my shoulder and I saw him put his arm around her. I can still see that, clear as if it was yesterday, if I ever think about it.

  At our house, Dixon opens the front door before I even get my key in the lock.

  ‘Oh, hello,’ he says. ‘Thought I heard the gate.’ He runs his fingers through his hair, jabs at his glasses, rubs his nose.

  ‘Hi, Dixon.’ Bec reaches up to peck his cheek, and he receives it shyly, one hand lifting towards her shoulder but not quite making it, so it hovers for a moment like some sort of uncertain benediction.

  ‘Hi. Hi, Bec. Haven’t seen you for ages. Nice to see you.’

  We all stand for a second. Rain starts to fall, rattling on the tin verandah roof above.

  ‘Oh — come in.’ Dixon steps back. ‘Quick, you must be freezing. I’ve got the fire going.’ Bec moves past him and up the hall, and Dixon flashes me a quick smile. ‘Come in, come in,’ he says, as if I’m another visitor.

  In the living room Bec slings her coat and bag onto the floor and sits right at one end of the couch. ‘Something smells amazing,’ she says.

  ‘Roast lamb,’ says Dixon. ‘Shouldn’t be too long.’ He opens the wine and pours, spilling some on the coffee table. ‘Whoops.’ He hands glasses around and raises his own. ‘Cheers.’

  We drink and stare into the fire.

  ‘How was the movie?’ says Dixon.

  ‘It was okay,’ I say, at the same time as Bec says, ‘Great.’

  We all laugh.

  ‘I think Kathy let me choose because I’m the visitor,’ Bec says. ‘I think she’d’ve preferred to see something, you know, serious.’

  I roll my eyes at her. ‘You were always into crap films.’

  She shrugs, lifts her glass. ‘I like to be entertained. Not traumatised.’

  ‘Fair enough.’ Dixon gets up and goes to the kitchen and comes back with a dish of olives. Then he starts poking at the fire.

  Bec looks at him. ‘Sit down, will you, Dix!’

  ‘Sorry.’ He grins and sits down on the couch, at the other end from Bec. He sinks into the cushions with a loud, obvious sigh of relaxation, but almost straightaway gets back up. ‘I’ll just go and put the greens on.’

  We watch him go.

  ‘So.’ Bec moves down off the couch and onto the floor, closer to the fire. ‘How’s your Masters going?’

  ‘Okay. I guess. Driving me crazy.’

  In the firelight the lines I’d noticed on her face for the first time today are gone again. Sitting with her legs drawn up and her arms around her knees, neck straight, eyes on the flames, she looks as she always has: contained, untouchable. ‘Good old Bec,’ our parents would say. Striking out on her own. Always so independent. They told stories of her as a child, of her sense of justice, how she’d take on the bullies in the playground, how her little face would puff up with rage at the sight of unfairness or persecution. ‘Even as a baby she knew her own mind,’ my mother would say. ‘Kathy would go to anyone, but Bec — if Bec didn’t want to do something there was no making her.’

  There’s a muted flutter of notes. Bec reaches for her bag, pulls out her phone, glances at the screen, tosses it back again. She takes an olive and puts it in her mouth. The muffled ringtone sounds out a couple more times and then stops.

  I get up. ‘Just going to the toilet.’

  Out in the kitchen Dixon is rummaging in the saucepan cupboard. The rain drums on the low roof.

  ‘How’s it going?’ I say, but he doesn’t hear me. I slip past.

  In the bathroom mirror my face is flushed, my lips purple from the wine. I press my wet hands to my cheeks. A vision comes to me — Bec’s eyes, up close, reflecting green from the grass we are lying on. Freckles on her skin. Her face still round, babyish. Lying so close we can feel each other’s breath.

  I move closer to the mirror, angle my face into it, my eye. Under the glistening outer layer I can see the sclera with its veins and yellowed patches; the coloured fibres of the iris, their gradations and flecks; the black hole of the pupil. The things you only see right up close, that as an adult you no longer examine in anyone, except maybe a lover.

  ‘Five minutes,’ says Dixon as I go through again.

  ‘Okay. Want some help?’

  ‘No thanks.’ He fiddles at the stove, adjusting the gas.

  I st
op at the doorway and look in at Bec, at the straight back of her neck, her level shoulders. I think about Dixon giving her the glass of wine, the way he lowered his head to her, supplicating.

  She’s always been in charge, socially. I still find it amazing that someone can control others so effectively by doing so little. That way she has of closing up her face. It tightens — the eyebrows drawn into smooth curves, the eyes slightly widened — and seals itself over with a kind of cool impassivity. And whoever it was saying whatever it was she didn’t want them to say just stumbles to a halt.

  I think perhaps this defensiveness, this expression, is what our parents are referring to when they describe her as tough. She freezes them out too, as much as anyone, if not more. I’ve seen their gently frowning, wounded faces, their eyes sliding helplessly off that intractable stoniness, the questions half-asked and trembling on their lips. And then they just give up. ‘Bec’s always been a bit of a closed book,’ I’ve heard them say. And my mother might laugh a sketchy little laugh, as if it’s a funny thing that your own daughter could be so unknowable.

  I lean against the wall. Bec’s hand reaches out, lifts the glass, and she dips her head to drink. The back of her neck shows, frail as a child’s.

  She must’ve been about sixteen — and me fourteen — when I first saw the cuts on her legs. We were forced to share my room for a while because hers was being painted. And so I saw them as she swung up onto the top of the old bunk bed, as her nightshirt flared out: short ugly red scratches, deep ones, in the soft white flesh at the tops of her thighs, just near the elastic of her underpants.

  And then, smoking on the garage roof, she showed me how to press the heated metal top of a cigarette lighter down on the skin near the inner elbow, leaving a burn mark like a grinning face, a curved U-shape and two small circles above it. Smileys, they were called. Kids did them at school, or at the train station, but not Bec. She did them only at home, ignoring my presence and my murmured protests. Screwing her eyes up, a cigarette hanging loose between her lips, she would hold the lighter there until I’d try to grab her arm, and even then she registered this disruption only faintly, with a flicker of her eyebrows. My smileys were barely a pale pink, and gone within a day. Eyes stinging, already sick from the smoke, I could only hold the lighter down for a split-second. But her arms inside her sleeves bore dark scabs that took ages to heal.