This Is the Life

by Alex Shearer

  “The latter,” Halley said.

  “So what if you’ve got a large animal and it needs attention?”

  “You shoot it,” Halley said.

  And that was the end of that conversation.

  * * *

  We got back toward Louis’s place, but we were hungry again by then, so we headed for Tomato Brothers and ordered pizza. Kirstin rang her daughter who came over and joined us. She would spend the night there at her daughter’s. It was too far to go back to her own house.

  We stood outside the restaurant and said good-bye. Halley and I walked back to Louis’s house, where Halley had left his ute, and he said he’d be in touch soon, and he got into his ute and started up the engine.

  I went inside and sat at the table in Louis’s kitchen, and it felt as if it had been a long day. But like all the other ones, short or long, it had ended. I tied the dongle to the bamboo pole and stuck it out of the window so I could check my e-mails.

  * * *

  I remembered an incident when I was very young, maybe seven or eight years old. I don’t recall exactly what I was doing, but I knocked the saltcellar off the table and it smashed on the kitchen floor.

  I was terrified of my father’s anger and I went in search of Louis and told him what I’d done and how scared I was.

  He was blasé about it. “It’ll be all right, just tell him,” he said.

  “It won’t be all right, Louis. He’ll go mad. He’ll kill me. Would you tell him you did it—please?”

  He could have said no and let me stew, but he didn’t.

  “Sure.”

  He went and found our father, who was unemployed at that time and sitting brooding in the living room over the last of his hand-rolling tobacco.

  “Dad,” Louis said. “I had a bit of an accident and knocked over the saltcellar and it broke. Sorry.”

  “Don’t worry. These things happen. Have you cleared it up?”

  “Just going to.”

  “I’ll help,” I said.

  Later, when we were in our beds, Louis said, “See, I told you it would be all right.”

  “It was only all right because it was you, Louis. If it had been me he would have killed me.”

  “Nah.”

  I was grateful to him, but I still believe it to be so—our father would forgive Louis things that were inexcusable in me, because Louis was so smart and bright, and he was going to carry the candle and fly the flag and do such wonderful things. But I was the second son who should have been a daughter, and was a disappointment from the start.

  So I was truly grateful, but I was resentful too, and bitter, that I didn’t get equal treatment.

  But the past is done. It’s over and finished.

  So why then does it so often feel like a splinter never removed?

  27

  Reprise

  We went back to Jack and May’s for dinner, as invited.

  May had plainly been on the white wine since early afternoon, and Jack had also had a few—though maybe not as many.

  “Louis! How lovely to see you!” she said. Though, in truth, it was getting harder to see him, as the beanie hat was getting lower on the forehead with each passing day. “Have a drink.”

  “Can’t,” Louis said. “My head.”

  “Jack, maybe Louis would like an orange juice. Give his brother some wine.”

  “I’m driving, I’m afraid.”

  “You can have one, for God’s sake.”

  “May, don’t force him—”

  “I’m not forcing anyone, would I force anyone to have a drink? People can have a drink or not have a drink. You could have got a taxi over and then we could all have had a drink. But if you don’t want a drink, well, then don’t have one.”

  We were party poopers. We sipped our orange juice. After some strained small talk, we sat down at the table.

  “It’s melon,” May said, in case we were unable to recognize it.

  “Good bait for red claw apparently,” I said. But they weren’t much interested.

  “Jackie, would you top up my glass?”

  After the melon there was a wait while the fish cooked. Jack decided to tell us a little about his theater days, back when he was young, and could have turned professional if his nerve had held.

  “So I was offered the lead part in this play. A Harold Pinter. Do you know Harold Pinter at all?”

  We said that we did, by repute.

  “Well, I was offered this part and—”

  May emitted a groan.

  “What is it, dear?”

  “Not the Harold Pinter anecdote,” she said. “Not again.”

  “Is there a problem, dear?”

  “I’ve only heard it about thirty-five thousand times, that’s all. I probably know it off by heart and word for word.”

  “But Louis and his brother haven’t heard it, dear. They might be interested—”

  “Oh, well, you tell it then. Don’t worry about me. I’ve only heard it about thirty-five thousand times. But never mind. I’m sure I can sit through it once more.”

  I looked across the table at Louis. He seemed oblivious, as if his beanie hat provided a kind of sanctuary and rendered unpleasant things invisible and inaudible.

  “Then maybe another time,” Jackie said. “When it’s more appropriate.”

  We changed the subject. May scooped the plates up and went into the kitchen with them. She was wearing a lot of jewelry and it rattled against the dishes. The door to the kitchen remained open.

  “Can I help, dear?”

  “No.”

  Jackie told us of some other aspects of his theatrical life. While he did so, strange noises emanated from the kitchen. He paused and called, “May, are you all right in there?”

  The noises stopped and May appeared on the threshold, her glass in her hand and her apron around her waist. She appeared to be wearing some kind of flapper-style dress under it, preserved from the 1920s.

  “Of course I’m all right. Why wouldn’t I be all right?”

  “You seemed to be talking to yourself, dear.”

  “Talking to myself? I was singing, actually. I was singing!”

  “Oh, I see, yes, right.”

  “But if it doesn’t meet with your high standards, then excuse me for doing so. Pardon me for opening my mouth. Pardon me for singing to myself. Pardon me!”

  Then she disappeared to put the fish on the plates.

  “You mustn’t mind May,” Jackie said. “She’s always being herself.”

  “Who else would I bloody be?” her voice asked, from off.

  “More orange juice?” Jackie asked.

  “Give ’em a proper drink!” May shouted.

  “They’re driving, dear.”

  “What? All of them?”

  “And Louis has had an operation.”

  “Louis house-sits for us. Did he tell you? He’s marvelous with the cats.”

  She came in with breaded fish. She had thawed it out earlier and put it under the grill. It was accompanied with baked potatoes and severely boiled broccoli.

  “Are you at all familiar with the plays of a writer called Simon Gray?” Jackie asked, as we started on the fish.

  I conceded that I did know a little about him.

  “Well, when I was starting off, and when I could actually have turned professional, I was offered the lead in—”

  “Yes,” May butted in. “We were supposed to be going on honeymoon too, weren’t we?”

  “It was too good an opportunity to miss, dear.”

  “Supposed to be going on honeymoon, but no. He takes on a six-week run in a play. That was our honeymoon.”

  “It was such a good opportunity, dear—”

  “And when we finally did get to go off on honeymoon, what then?
Yes.”

  Jackie looked somewhat uncomfortable.

  “We had to take your drug-addicted cousin along with us, didn’t we, to keep him off the stuff.”

  “There was nobody else able to help, dear, and it was a difficult time for the family—”

  “That was our honeymoon—three of us. Three of us on honeymoon, all going off together, Jackie here, and me, and a raging drug addict, to make up the threesome. And that—and that—was our honeymoon.” She took a swallow of wine. “But anyway,” she said, “how are you keeping, Louis? How’s the head?”

  “I’m fine, thanks, May,” Louis said.

  No one appeared to think there was anything out of the ordinary going on here, except me, and even I was beginning to question my judgment. Maybe this was average ­dinner-table behavior and I was just a Pommie prude and stuck-up bastard.

  “That was lovely, thanks,” I said, leaving most of the leathery fish and dried-out spud on my plate, half-hidden under the soggy broccoli.

  “There’s dessert,” May said, in a tone that could merely have been informative, or that might have been a threat.

  The table was cleared and she disappeared again for a while. Jackie told us some more amateur theatrical stories, about his triumphs on the boards and how he had received offers to turn professional, but how that profession was too insecure for a man with a mortgage and a wife.

  “Dessert!” May said, making a grand entrance—every entrance she made had a certain grandeur to it, along with an element of unsteadiness. “And there’s some Rocky Road.”

  She put shop-bought apple pies down in front of us, along with a bowl of her famous confectionery.

  “You like Rocky Road, don’t you, Louis?”

  “You can’t beat May’s Rocky Road,” Louis said.

  “You can take some home with you if we don’t eat it all.”

  I thought of the bag of Rocky Road sitting in the fridge at Louis’s place, just lurking in there getting ready to break your teeth.

  “There. Dessert, dessert, dessert.” She dealt the bowls out. “Help yourselves to whatever else. I’ve had enough. I’m going to bed.”

  “Oh, are you off to bed, dear?”

  “I’ve had enough,” May said. “I’ve had enough of everything.”

  And then, with a sparkling smile and undeniable charm, she turned the radiance of her personality upon us and said, “Louis, so nice to see you again, and so nice to meet your brother, and I do hope you get well soon, and do take some Rocky Road. I’m off to bed. Good night.”

  And she left.

  We ate our dessert. Jack did not appear unduly embarrassed or especially mortified.

  “That’s May,” he said. “She’s like that. We’ve had twelve to dinner and she’s gone to bed.” (“With all of them?” I almost said, but exercised restraint.) “It’s just her way. More orange juice?”

  There was the clatter of descending footsteps.

  “Are you talking about me?”

  “I was just telling Louis and his brother about Harold Pinter, dear.”

  “Oh, God. I must have heard that twenty thousand times.”

  “Thirty-five thousand, dear.”

  “I can’t get this necklace off, Jackie. Be a dear. Be a dear, Jackie, and unclip my necklace for me.”

  To make things easier for him, she knelt in front of him on the floor, a little like that picture of Mary, Queen of Scots, at her execution, as she prepared to have her head chopped off.

  “So I am good for something then, dear?” Jackie said affectionately, reaching for the catch.

  She turned and gave him a long and penetrating look.

  “I suppose so,” she said at length. “But not much.”

  Finally the long-suffering Jack took offense.

  “Then maybe I won’t unclip your necklace for you. Maybe I won’t.”

  “Then don’t,” May said, struggling up onto one knee. “I’ll just pull the fucking thing off then and chuck it on the fucking floor.”

  Jack removed the necklace for her. She took it in her hand, stood, flashed us another lipstick-smeared smile, and said again, “Lovely to have met you. Don’t rush away on my account. Jackie will make you some coffee. Night-night.”

  And back up the stairs she went.

  Jack seemed largely unabashed.

  “That’s May,” he said. “She has her ways. Coffee?”

  We stayed another thirty minutes, listening to Harold Pinter anecdotes. Louis finally cited tiredness and an early start tomorrow for chemo and radiotherapy.

  “Do call in again,” Jackie said.

  And we finally got out of the place.

  As we drove off in the ute, I turned to Louis and said, “Are they always like that?”

  “She’s a character, May, isn’t she?” Louis said. “They’re nice people, aren’t they?”

  We drove on in silence. Then Louis said, “I forgot the Rocky Road.”

  “You want to go back for it?” I asked him.

  “Maybe not,” he said.

  “Probably wise,” I said.

  “Left here,” Louis said, and he raised his hand, and pointed right.

  I thought to myself, And people go to art galleries for surrealism. Like they couldn’t get all that at home.

  Terri, who knew both May and Jack, told me later that the major problem was that all Jack’s friends were homosexuals, and that when it came to being married, his heart wasn’t in it, and that was the reason why May started opening wine bottles at ten past two in the afternoon. But you can’t build a case on rumors.

  I never saw either May or Jackie again. I rang to tell them that Louis had died, but they didn’t pick up, so I left a message. Then I rang again to tell them the time and place of the funeral, but they didn’t get back to me and didn’t appear.

  I worked my way through the contacts list in Louis’s cell phone and through the scraps of paper that constituted his address book. I found a number for a guy called Wanday, and I saw that checks had been made out to him too, for a charity he ran for a free Tibet.

  I sent him a text message and he called and said he would be at the crematorium. But he wasn’t there. The day after, I got a call from him asking where everybody was. “I’m at the crematorium,” he said. “And the place is deserted.”

  There’d been a mix-up and the day and the date had got confused. I apologized and so did he. He said not to worry and that was the end of the conversation. We never did meet.

  I mentioned this to Halley and said that maybe Wanday should change his name to Wrongday. He didn’t think it particularly funny, or even in good taste. Maybe he was right. But you have to try to keep your spirits up the best and only ways you can.

  28

  No Dramas

  The integral DVD player in the TV stopped working and we couldn’t watch the shoot-’em-ups anymore.

  “It’s no good,” Louis said. “We’re screwed.”

  “Louis, I thought you told me the set was nearly new. Where’s the receipt?”

  “Be in the bag, if anywhere.”

  I looked in the clear plastic bag containing the instruction manual, and there I found the receipt, only two months old, along with a document he had paid extra for, called the No Hassles, No Lemons Guarantee.

  “Louis, the receipt’s here and it looks like you also paid for some additional warranty. It’s just a matter of taking the set back.”

  “It won’t be that easy.”

  “I don’t see why not.”

  “Because it isn’t. Because we’re screwed.”

  “Louis, it’s just your frame of mind.”

  * * *

  The next day, after the radiotherapy, we came back to the house. Louis was too tired to go to the shop, so he crashed for a few hours, and I said I’d do it.

  I pu
t the TV in the ute and, armed with a map and the No Lemons warranty, I set off to the appliance store.

  It was one of those huge electronics warehouses and it turned out to be the place we had got the fridge and washing machine.

  I carried the TV inside and put it down upon the central counter.

  “How are you today?” the girl asked.

  “Fine,” I said. “Can I see someone about this TV?”

  “Chris is with a customer just now, but he’ll be right over.”

  Chris’s customer proved to be of the time-consuming kind.

  “I’m sorry about the wait,” the girl said, “but he won’t be much longer, I’m sure.”

  “You can’t deal with it?”

  “Not my department, I’m afraid.”

  My patience got stretched. But after twenty minutes, the customer left, and Chris came over.

  “This gentleman here, Chris,” the girl said. “He’s been waiting.”

  “Hi. How are you today?” Chris said.

  “Fine,” I lied.

  “So what’s the problem?” Chris said, and he seemed to be keeping cheerful.

  “It’s this set,” I said. “My brother bought it from you eight weeks ago, but the DVD player has stopped working. I have the receipt here and there’s also this warranty and—”

  “You’ve tried other DVDs?”

  “We have tried plenty of DVDs. It plays none of them. Or they get stuck in there and they don’t come out until the following morning.”

  “You mind if I try?”

  “Not at all.”

  He plugged in the TV, got a DVD, and inserted it. It got stuck.

  “It doesn’t seem to be working.”

  “That’s why I’m here.”

  “Okay. Well, let me see what we can do about that.”

  He took a look on the computer.

  “All right. We can exchange that for you, not a problem, except that I see that your set is now discontinued and we don’t have any. The new model is in stock though, and we can let you have that.”

  “Fine.”

  “That’ll just be another fifty dollars.”