Clancy of the Undertow

by Christopher Currie

  ‘Doesn’t surprise me,’ says Mum, in a weird, light voice. ‘I know the world well.’ She seems to have been blindsided by the location. I was sure she was going to be in teacher-voice mode all day.

  ‘Hello, Clancy,’ Carla says. ‘Nancy is inside. We’ll be just on the other side.’ She points to a brown door—one in a line of many—that’s slightly ajar.

  ‘Oh,’ I say. ‘Okay.’ I walk over to it, waiting for a moment to see if the two mums are going to follow me, but they’re not moving. All right, I say to myself. This is one of those you’ve got yourself into this mess, you get yourself out of it kind of situations.

  I push open the door, and the sanitised smell of commercial cleaner hits me. It’s exactly what you’d expect a motel room on the outskirts of a shithole country town to look like. A double and single bed, two Steve Parish photos framed on the walls, everything washed in weak, lace-curtained light. How long have they had to live here? A large suitcase is open against the opposite wall. Nancy’s sitting at the end of the double bed, in tracksuit pants and a woollen jumper.

  ‘So, hi,’ I say, realising I haven’t actually prepared myself for this. ‘This is, um…they’re nice photos.’

  Nancy lifts her head to take in the framed view of Uluru she’s probably only stared at a thousand times already. ‘Hi,’ she says. Her hands are twisted up in the ends of her jumper. I can’t read her. She’s not hostile, but maybe just unsure, like she hasn’t yet decided how to react to me.

  ‘So listen, about the other day…’ This seems as good a place as any to start. I feel sick, stomach sick. ‘I really was a massive dick.’

  ‘No, it’s okay.’ Her voice is hardly audible. A fan rattles from what I imagine is the bathroom around the corner.

  ‘No,’ I say, and I realise this is actually what I think. ‘It’s not okay. I shouldn’t have had a go at you. You were just trying to be nice.’

  Nancy rubs her eyes and I see she’s crying. ‘It’s me,’ she says. ‘I never pick the right moments. I shouldn’t even have said anything to Mum.’

  I feel the glare of both mothers on the back of my neck so I step inside and close the door. ‘No, you really should have. I was a real jerk. I want to apologise.’

  ‘I should be apologising.’ Nancy rubs her eyes with her sleeve.

  I go, ‘We’re quite bad at this, aren’t we?’ and Nancy nods. I sit down on the end of the single bed. ‘Look,’ I say, ‘I’m really sorry. Please accept my apology, sincerely, even if only for the two mums waiting outside in a motel carpark, thinking they’re parenting.’

  Nancy smiles. ‘They’ll be in the next room.’ She drums the wall behind her with her fingers. ‘They’re joined. This is my wing of the mansion.’

  ‘Oh, right. Could we break a vase, just to give them something to think about? Would you have to pay for it?’

  ‘No, I think St Stephen’s could come up with the twelve bucks.’

  I laugh. ‘How long do you have to stay here for?’ I go to bounce on the bed, but it’s so soft I just sink into it. ‘Jesus.’

  ‘I know. It’s like sleeping in a marshmallow.’ She falls back on the double bed. ‘This one is just as bad. Feel it.’

  I get up and flop down next to her. Something deep in the frame creaks worryingly. ‘Man,’ I say. ‘Authentic country charm.’

  ‘We were only supposed to be here for a few nights, but it’s already been two weeks.’

  ‘I feel like your human rights are being impinged upon. And I say that without really knowing what impinged means.’

  ‘Next week, apparently. They’ve got a place for us. A real house.’

  ‘Bet you’re counting down the days.’ I turn over so we’re both on our backs. ‘Oh, I’d hoped there would be a mirror on the ceiling.’

  ‘Can’t even get that right.’

  We lie there for a while and I hear a clock ticking. I turn my head to face her. ‘I really am sorry,’ I say.

  ‘Shut up about it, then.’ Nancy grins.

  I sit up. ‘Should we let our mothers in? Tell them we’re BFFs forever?’

  ‘Nah,’ Nancy says. ‘I need every moment away from that woman I can get. She’s fine, but…you know.’

  ‘I do know.’

  Nancy yawns. ‘It’s not easy for her, the move, but at least she’s got work to keep her occupied. I’m just here. We haven’t even got all our stuff yet. They can’t send it down until we have somewhere to send it. I’ve got a couple of suitcases, and that’s about it.’

  I feel extra bad for Nancy, then. At least I have my own room, my own refuge from all the crap that goes on outside your bedroom door. ‘So will you get to go back to Brisbane in the meantime? Or call your friends or whatever?’

  Nancy sort of grimaces. ‘Not really an option.’

  ‘Oh. Why’s that?’

  ‘There’s sort of…complications there.’

  ‘In Brisbane?’

  ‘At my old school. There was some stuff. Some crap. That happened.’ Nancy’s voice sounds like she’s reciting a poem from memory. ‘Bullying. Was what it was.’

  ‘Shit. Sorry.’

  Nancy shrugs. ‘It happens. It happened.’ She smiles at me, a really unconvincing smile. ‘Private school. All girls. Actual hell on earth.’

  I try to think of a joke to lighten the mood, but nothing really fits. I give her time instead.

  Nancy’s mouth is the sketch of a straight line. She says, ‘I’m the reason we’re here. We moved because of me, because I couldn’t hack it. Mum’s uprooted her life and her job and…everything, all because of me.’ She starts to cry, and I take her hand and squeeze it. Her cheeks are shining. ‘I can’t complain. I can’t ever complain. Because it’s my fault.’

  I go, ‘Don’t say that.’ That’s how people on TV respond at times like this.

  ‘I’ve got this procedure,’ she says, finger-quoting. ‘I have to go through it whenever I feel threatened. I have to tell Mum. That’s part of our emotional contract. That’s why I told her about you. I had to. It’s so stupid.’

  ‘No, it’s not.’

  ‘Well, anyway, it’s part of this manual this psychologist gave Mum. Like I’m a car and he’s a mechanic.’

  ‘Charming.’

  ‘Yeah. I mean, it’s fine I guess. It sort of works. I still have to see a counsellor. Except now we have to do it over Skype. So modern.’ She laughs again, humourlessly.

  ‘e-Shrink,’ I say, without thinking.

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Jesus. All that bullshit I said to you.’

  ‘I’ve heard worse.’ She laughs, humourlessly.

  ‘What did…did someone hurt you, or…’ I feel like a creep. ‘Don’t answer that. You don’t have to—’

  ‘Not, like sticks and stones. I just wasn’t into all the social bullshit. All the groups and cliques. The clichéd shit. I just became the go-to girl. Whenever people felt angry or frustrated or wanted to let off some steam, they knew they could take it out on me. And yeah, not just calling names. Sly, horrible shit.’

  ‘God. That’s awful.’

  ‘That’s the real version anyway. Clinically speaking I was the vessel for other people’s unhappiness with their own lives. Which is a great and clever thing to say to someone who’s being…tormented. It’s their problem, not yours.’

  ‘Jeez.’

  ‘It might be their problem, but I was the one who couldn’t leave the house or even go online. This counsellor is useless. He thinks I’m a logic puzzle or something. It’s like he can’t see me as a human.’

  ‘That’s awful.’ I want so badly to tell her about Raylene McCarthy and Buggs and how I feel every time someone shouts faggot from a passing car. I want her to know some of us know what she’s going through. Except I don’t know how.

  Then Nancy goes, ‘Let’s actually be friends. You and me.’ Her expression opens up and I see the Nancy who greets me happily every time at Nature Club. She is hopelessly innocent, I realise. She is a relentless optimist
in a world that crushes earnestness and trust into small cubes of fear.

  ‘I know it’s like something you say in grade three,’ she says, ‘but let’s actually be friends.’

  ‘I’m in,’ I say, without a second’s hesitation.

  ‘Awesome!’ Her face drops for a moment. ‘Let’s just make an agreement,’ she says, ‘to not have any other bullshit. Let’s just say let’s be friends and tell each other stuff and hang out because I think you’re very cool and I think I’m very cool and so that should work out well, right?’

  It’s a rare type of thrill I’m feeling now. A calming, soothing thing. Maybe it’s happiness. ‘I don’t have a phone,’ I say.

  ‘So?’

  ‘I’m just getting all the bad things about me out of the way.’

  ‘Okay. Well, I’m emotionally damaged, obviously.’

  ‘I’m emotionally stunted.’

  ‘I have to write letters to my own feelings. Every week.’

  ‘I hang out at a skate park, and I don’t even like skating.’

  ‘I spend all my time with my mother.’

  ‘My family don’t talk to each other.’

  ‘My dad lives in another country.’

  ‘My dad—’ And I stop. I can feel my body physically rejecting emotional openness. I can work up to it. ‘The whole town thinks my dad’s done something horrible. They…think my entire family are criminals.’

  Nancy hardly even reacts. ‘I have to eat cereal out of one of those little mini boxes every morning.’

  ‘Like, a travel pack?’

  She nods.

  ‘Do you at least get Coco Pops?’

  ‘It’s only ever Special K or cornflakes.’

  ‘That’s some stone cold shit.’

  She laughs.

  I smile too. It’s fine, I think, that I’m not telling her my one, actual secret. It’s fine.

  28

  And then suddenly it’s mums and daughters at twenty paces. And by this I mean side-by-side in a booth in Danny’s Ristorant, which I can safely say is the saddest place I have ever been. Even though the sun’s blazing outside, even though it’s a bright shiny spring day, inside the cafe it’s drab and dark green and I get the feeling everything in this place once got very wet and has never had a chance to dry.

  Mum’s sitting next to me and her voice is light and fluffy and she’s laughing and acting like a normal person and I can’t make fun of her because we’re in company. She and Carla, it seems, have been bonding over teaching stories in the other room while Nancy and I talked. Everyone has made friends and it is really, really, weird.

  The owner of the cafe, who is possibly the Patient Zero of the rising damp smell, serves us what he no doubt considers coffee.

  ‘Thanks, Danny,’ says Carla.

  ‘Great customers, these two,’ says Danny. ‘Wish there were more like them.’

  Nancy gives me wide eyes across the table.

  ‘Are you joining us here as well?’ he says to Mum.

  ‘No,’ she says, ‘but it’s a lovely place you’ve made here.’

  I snort a laugh and quickly turn it into a cough. Nancy keeps her face stony solid, but raises a single eyebrow. I have to look away.

  ‘I’ll be sorry to see you both go,’ Danny says. ‘Usually only get people here for a night or two. Always passing through.’ He wipes his hands on the front of the apron he’s wearing. ‘You need anything else, you give me a yell.’

  ‘Shall do,’ says Carla. ‘Thanks.’

  When he’s safely beyond earshot, I’m forced into another coughing fit and Nancy kicks my foot. Our mothers remain oblivious.

  ‘This is lovely,’ says Mum, for the fortieth time. I guess it’s a rarity for her as well, having someone to talk to.

  ‘It’ll be nice when we get our own place, though. Won’t it, sweetie?’ Carla puts her arm around Nancy. ‘Be a bit more like home.’

  ‘Yeah,’ says Nancy. ‘Definitely.’

  ‘Not that this place is too bad,’ says Carla, looking at me for some reason. ‘It’s nice Danny gave us the adjoining rooms.’

  ‘Oh man,’ Nancy says to me. ‘There’s this portrait opposite Mum’s bed. I swear Danny’s cut out the eyeholes.’

  ‘Nancy. Please.’ Carla has her own teacher voice, which is kind of chilling.

  Nancy lowers her voice. ‘One time, with breakfast, there was this rose in a vase.’

  ‘His mother grows roses,’ says Carla, ignoring her. ‘It was very pretty.’

  ‘Country hospitality,’ Mum says. ‘Lovely.’

  ‘I miss my mirror, mainly,’ Carla says. ‘There’s no full-length here, just the little one in the bathroom.’ She stirs a sweetener into her coffee. ‘A girl gets to know her mirror, you know? You trust it, after a while. Or at least you know the best way to look good in it.’

  Mum giggles, and the need to escape rises in me like bile. We’re sailing dangerously close to a moment where Mum suggests we all form a bookclub. She once used the phrase Stitch ’n’ Bitch in my presence, and I made it quickly and violently clear she never should again.

  ‘I could never give up my mirror,’ Mum says.

  I say, ‘A full-length mirror is literally my worst enemy. I spend so much of my day trying to forget what I look like. Why do I need something whose job it is to remind me?’

  ‘Agreed,’ says Nancy.

  Mum looks at me with a mixture of confusion and, strangely, admiration. Like my daughter is still strange, but is she at the same time contributing to a conversation?

  ‘You’re beautiful, Clancy,’ says Carla. ‘Now where did your name come from, anyway? I love it.’

  ‘I am a product of an inexplicable love of bush poetry,’ I say, which is the line I always use.

  ‘Clancy of the Overflow,’ says Mum. ‘Bob’s favourite poem. I think it’s kind of sweet.’

  ‘And yet he failed to name either boy in our family the boy’s name.’

  ‘It fits you though, darling.’

  ‘Wow. Thanks.’

  Nancy goes, ‘I got my name cause Mum liked Nancy Sinatra.’

  ‘Hmm,’ I say. ‘Only two letters different, and suddenly it’s a normal name.’ I give Mum a glare, but she continues to be immune to embarrassment. Her and Carla share a look. Our daughters are so individual and amazing and aren’t we blessed their screwed-up lives make ours look more normal?

  Mum takes a look at her watch. ‘This is so lovely, but we’ve really got to go. I’ve got to get to work.’

  ‘Thanks for coming out here,’ says Carla. ‘It wasn’t under the best circumstances, but I think it’s turned out well.’

  ‘I do hope we’ll do it again,’ says Mum. Then she raises her index finger, as if struck by divine inspiration. ‘Sunday!’ she says. ‘Come over for lunch. Sunday lunch is something of a tradition in the Underhill household.’

  This is news to me.

  ‘If we’re not imposing,’ says Carla.

  ‘Not at all. The more the merrier.’

  Good luck to you, lady, I think. Try getting our family to be in one place for more than five minutes. Something of a tradition, indeed.

  ‘Lovely,’ says Carla.

  ‘Lovely,’ says Mum.

  Nancy and just look at each other, like yep.

  29

  Carla and Mum talk by the car, tapping each other’s number into their phones. I don’t think I’ve ever seen my mother so excited.

  Nancy and I say goodbye, and we even go to hug, which is awkward because we’re leaning towards each other like a bridge, trying to keep our bodies apart. We laugh at this, knowing it means we’re really alike. Just two modern ladies bonding over debilitating intimacy and trust issues.

  ‘Can I text you later?’ she says.

  ‘No phone, remember?’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I wasn’t joking.’

  ‘This must be what it’s like to be friends with a Mormon.’

  ‘You won’t be complaining when I churn us up some
fresh butter.’

  ‘You got email? I’m not allowed on Facebook or anything. Not that I’d want it again.’

  ‘Right. Yeah. I’ve got an email account, but I usually check it at school. We’ve only got one computer at home, in the kitchen. So…’

  Nancy laughs. ‘So, do I just send up a signal into the sky when I want to contact you?’

  ‘Yes. Only at night, when there’s a bit of cloud around. I’ll email you this arvo, though. Promise.’ A mobile phone starts to overtake new shoes in my imaginary budget.

  ‘Cool. Well I guess I’ll see you on Sunday, anyway.’

  ‘For sure.’

  ‘Okay.’

  And then we’re attempting another awkward goodbye. I think maybe I should kiss her cheek but then she sort of bows so I end up kissing the top of her head. We pull apart, and the secret look of the terminally awkward passes between us: Let us never speak of this mortifying moment again, upon pain of death.

  Mum appears next to me and says, ‘Come on, kiddo,’ like this is the sort of relationship we have.

  ‘Okay.’ I need to get away before I do anything else embarrassing. A curious mix of shame and elation fills me as I get into the car, and we drive away, waving.

  ‘That went very well, I thought,’ says Mum.

  ‘Have you always called me kiddo and I’ve only now just noticed?’

  She ignores this. ‘So you’ve made up with Nancy, obviously.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘It’s good to have friends,’ she says. This is where I would normally accuse her of speaking like a Sesame Street segment, but today I hold my tongue. She might be talking about me and Nancy, or her and Carla, but either way it seems actually true.

  ‘You’ve never had that…experience, though?’

  ‘What experience?’

  ‘Like Nancy had. She told you about that? The reason they had to move?’

  ‘Yeah, she told me.’

  ‘You’d tell me if that happened to you?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Okay. It’s just that what happened to Nancy was so awful and I’d never want any of my children going through it.’

  ‘Yep.’ My fingers ache for the familiar shape of my iPod. I need its weight in my hand. I need a pair of headphones to block everything out.