After the Blues

by Kathy Lette

  The next day when he was out jogging, I filled my pockets with coins. Embarrassed in case he didn’t hand over enough change, Billy only ever paid with big notes, which meant that his pockets were constantly bulging with Kembla Grange. I raided the change now, booked a flight, called a cab, and fled.

  Back in Sydney I sat in the lounge room of our Darlinghurst terrace feeling numb. Kerrie was whingeing. To get back at Russell she’d slept with a friend’s fiancé the previous night after a drunken party and was filled with remorse. ‘He wasn’t even a good fuck,’ she concluded, dropping Beroccas into a glass. ‘Didn’t even touch the sides.’ And on top of that, her waterbed had sprung a leak portside.

  Soula had been home to visit her parents. They had now arranged for her to marry Stavro. ‘He’s really off. He’s got a huge space between his front teeth and a really hairy back.’

  Debbie had lost her surfing heat and come home for some sympathy. Ro, just back from Britain, was embracing celibacy.

  No fuss was made about my return. Kerrie said she hoped next time I wanted an offbeat record collection, that I’d go for classical, not criminal. And then they simply assigned Billy to the bottom of the linen press, along with the scuba, abseiling, photography, pottery, spray cans and screen printing paraphernalia of my other passing fads.

  ‘I mean, she who hesitates is celibate, right?’ Kerrie puffed herself up with self-justification, then just as suddenly sagged. ‘My girlfriend’s fiancé. Ugh. What am I going to do? I mean, what if she finds out? No point asking you, Julia, ya goody-two-shoes. You’re always in control. Nothing shitty ever happens to you.’

  ‘No.’ I said. ‘Nothing.’ I was the sort of person a girlfriend rang at midnight when a boyfriend had left her for another man. I was the sort of person they rang for the phone number of Legal Aid, marriage counsellors, the STD clinic, the AIDS Hotline … I knew which minister held the portfolio for Veterans’ Affairs. I’d held the hands of mates in preterm abortion clinics and acted as ‘support person’ for all the single mothers in our circle – forehead-mopping, back-rubbing and breathing encouragement.

  Upstairs, I lay in bed, alert to every creak and groan in the house. I felt his presence in every shadow. For the first time I knew where to lay the blame. I, not Billy, had been the con artist. Emotional break-and-enter. White-collar crime of the heart. I shivered and curled up against the wall. The street light filtering through the venetian blinds lay like bars across my bed.

  BACK TO SUBURBIA

  The car

  ‘Debbie, it’s your father. I hear you’ve bought a car?’

  You stare at the receiver, speechless, like the lotto winner on the television ad. Your father hasn’t really spoken to you for five years. Try to remember him. He’s the three-piece suit, the nocturnal creature who always vanished in the early morning and only reappeared at night. Habits included putting out the garbage, untangling the pool cleaner and occasionally accidentally locking himself in the guinea pig cage. He was the recipient of all those strange envelopes with cellophane windows. His vocabulary consisted of ‘No!’, ‘This is my house,’ and ‘Who do you think pays the bills around here?’

  All through your teens, as you frantically fought for the preservation of whales, women and wombats, you overlooked one common or garden household creature definitely at risk – the father.

  You decided at seventeen that with the demise of leather straps and dowries, dads had become redundant. Like tonsils, little toes and appendixes, disused dads would gradually mutate and just drop off.

  ‘Yeah, it’s going well, Dad,’ you finally mumble. ‘Bit of a rust bucket, but it’s good.’

  He rings again a few weeks later. ‘Why don’tcha bring the car out, Deb, and I’ll give it a bit of a tune-up.’

  Dads of this vintage are emotionally inarticulate. One time your mum and dad had a terrible fight. She didn’t speak to him for a week, served his dinner in silence, turned her back to him in bed, slept on arctic sheets. The whole family were tiptoeing around on eggshells, traumatised and upset. Finally, she just acquiesced and asked him to kiss and make up. ‘I just can’t stand it anymore!’

  Your father looked at her and said, ‘What?’ He hadn’t noticed. Nothing. ‘What are you on about, love?’

  After hanging up the phone, you decode this car conversation. This is your dad’s way of saying ‘G’day. I miss you.’ It hits you then that you love your father. But you don’t know how to say it.

  You visit him on Father’s Day. He nods hello, then touches your bumper bar tenderly. He fingers the rust patches and peers beneath the bonnet. ‘Yeah, top buy. It’s in good nick …’ You chew your nails nervously, waiting for his diagnosis. ‘… Except for the hail damage and the panel-beaten back where it most probably had a close encounter with a coal truck.’ You realise with a shock that you’ve missed his laconic humour. It’s as dry, as he would say, as a Pommy’s bath towel. ‘What this car needs,’ he concludes, ‘is some TLC.’ He adjusts your carburettor.

  The next visit, he tightens your fanbelt, pumps your tyres, gauges the pressure, changes the oil, puts new contact points in the distributor, checks the level of oil in the differential, changes your spark plugs, and puts pinstripes down the duco. This is the equivalent of a Shakespearean love sonnet.

  From then on you talk regularly. Once a week. About radial tyres and rear demisters. About oil and air filters. About high tension leads and tighter fanbelts. You clock up the wordage. It’s a conversational grand prix.

  It is Christmas when you have the accident. A head-on vocal collision. What runs you off the road are the idle comments about the unemployed not being able to use a knife and fork. And the discourtesy of banning American nuclear-powered ships from the harbour. And then his version of a newspaper story about a feminist who was bashed by police after smashing a window of the South African embassy in Canberra.

  ‘She was flat-chested,’ your father declares. His chin is smeared with cake and he clutches a can of KB Lager.

  ‘So?’ You detour off your normal discourse. You don’t want to go this way. You are like a car in fog that follows the lights of the car in front over the edge of a bridge.

  ‘I would have clonked her too.’

  ‘You mean anyone with small breasts is unfeminine, and anyone unfeminine is automatically a lesbian, and a lesbian is automatically a criminal? That’s idiotic.’

  You both stare, blinded by each other’s high-beam headlights. ‘You’re the idiot, my girl. Living in squalor in the inner city. Sleeping around. Do you think we don’t know what goes on? You’re the bane of your mother’s life. You’re no daughter of …’

  You both sit in remorseful silence. Leftover prawn cocktails and trifle melt in the forty-degree-Celsius sun. The grease from your dad’s hair has soaked into his purple crepe-paper hat. Herds of Disney deer drawing an armada of sleighs, platoons of caftaned wise men and squadrons of airborne Santas beam from the mantelpiece behind him. The rellos have departed. Mum’s resting. The Christmas tree has been stripped of bonbons, lolly baskets and baubles. The fridge’s white ribs are picked clean. The deserted house looks like a post-picnic chicken carcass. Both of you are sad at the ground you have lost.

  ‘Well,’ your dad says suddenly. He’s hearty now, back on track. His mental Gregory’s is open, the streets mapped and marked. ‘So tell me, Deb, how many miles have you been getting to the gallon, love?’

  You’ve got mail

  I dropped my bags on the kitchen floor and saw a note from Mum on the countertop.

  Debbie, darling, it’s so lovely to have you home again. I know you say you’re only staying while the Cronulla surf competitions are on, but you are always welcome. I had to dash to work – it’s school inspection week – so just wanted to say that I understand that daughters on the verge of womanhood have an ‘I find my mother contemptible’ clause written into their contracts. But it’s hard for us mums too. Motherhood is like a beanbag – easy to get into, hard to get out of. Still, it ha
s its cosy moments while you’re down there! And it’s very cosy having you home for a while. But when you have your own daughter, here are my top tips. First off, there are four things you will never hear a teenage daughter say:

  I don’t need money. I’m going to get a part-time job and be self-sufficient.

  Can I get you a cup of tea after I’ve unpacked the dishwasher?

  Drugs and sex are passé. I’m going to pour my energy into learning Mandarin and algebra and studying the Iliad.

  I don’t want to go out with him again. An incredible physique, a Harley Davidson and a recording contract are totally overrated.

  What you will hear them say is:

  If you talk to my boyfriend again I will kill you.

  If you gave me a decent amount of pocket money I wouldn’t have been caught shoplifting.

  I’m just having a few friends over (which translates as an open invitation to everyone under the age of twenty-five in the free world).

  I HATE YOU.

  What crosses a mother’s mind at this point is how much easier it is to love your children unconditionally before they learn to speak. I mean, imagine a job description of motherhood – ‘Hours: constant. Time off: zilch. Pay: zero. All food and entertainment supplied by you. Must be good at athletics, home repairs, making mince interesting and finding the other glove of the pair. Fringe benefits: none.’ Would you take this job? I don’t think so. And yet we do.

  But when a mother thinks of the 1095 meals she cooks for her child per year, the 255 packed lunches, the 3764 snacks, the endless special banquets for birthdays, the flocks of sheep you’ve baked, the acres of toast you’ve buttered, the five hundred miles you’ve ironed – a daughter’s rejection really hurts. For all her life you’ve fed her when you felt hungry; made her go to bed when you felt tired, layered her in coats when you were cold and stripped layers off again when you felt warmer. And how does she repay you? By developing the communication skills of a shrub. If I’d put you in the sun a few years ago, you’d have photosynthesised!

  Still, besides feeding and watering and prodding with a foot occasionally to see if it is alive, it’s best to just back away slowly and sleep on the nature strip for the duration of a daughter’s teens.

  Or better still, put a sign up on the fridge door which reads, ‘Teenage daughters, are you tired of being harassed by stupid mothers? Well, act now. Get a job! Pay your own bills. Put a downpayment on a flat.’ (Or GET YOUR HSC AND GO TO UNI, hint, hint …)

  Your dad and I will welcome you home with open arms – although not an open wallet. Returning Prodigal kids must memorise these new Commandments. Thou shalt honour thy mother’s sleep needs and be home before sunrise, because I’m your mother and I can’t sleep until I hear you are home. Thou shalt never have sexual relations with anyone whose name is Butch, Fang, Chook or Spider. In fact, thou shalt rejoice in celibacy until thou meets a kind, literate, domestically trained male preferably in full employment. Thou shalt not covet thy mother’s one cashmere sweater.

  In the event of missing jewellery, a mother has the right to search and seizure. Boyfriends left in the kitchen longer than one week must have a forwarding address. No more tattoos or multiple earrings either. The only thing you can pierce in this house is the can of tuna that you will open on the nights it’s your turn to cook the family dinner.

  If you upset me in any way I will hug you in front of all your friends. Possibly while wearing hotpants.

  But it’s nice to have you home – and it is your home – forever.

  I love you, possum.

  Mum.

  P.S. I know you wanted to find Frieda to ask her on your big girls’ night out but nobody knows where she’s living anymore. She moved out of the area. I know she has a little girl now, I think I told you. What a wasted life. And she was always such a sweet little girl. Chops and peas and mashed potato for tea? Plus some pav, of course!

  Free kick

  Look, love, you won’t last the season. I’ve seen groupies come and go. I’ve bin with footballers for years now. And I’m the only one they talk to at the club. Youse young groupies are idiots. Youse get drunk and whinge, ‘Oh, you’re talking to another girl.’ Nah. You won’t last the season.

  There are rules, see. Like not being obvious. Like when you go to the club, you don’t walk up to a footballer and start chattin’. It could be embarrassin’ for him. Like wiv Leanne and me, that’s Leanne-Leanne-the-Footy-Fan, we walk into the club and we stand at the bar. If they wanna speak to us, or they wanna arrange a night, or whatever, they’ve gotta approach us. We don’t go and chat to them. That’s rule number one. Neva ring their home, neither. Most of ’em have silent numbers and that, anyways. And, um, keep your mouf shut. You don’t talk about who you’ve bin in bed wiv. Or what you’ve done. Smoke? Hang on. I’ll get us an ashtray …

  And you don’t screw around. See, I know my boys are all faithful to me. ’Cause all the blokes I bed and that in the team are happily married. They’ve all got about six children. And most of our footballers are policemen, see, in real life, so their reputations are on the line. They’ve gotta be careful. So, if you’re gonna mix wiv my footballers, you can’t sort of screw any Tom, Dick and Harry, and then go and sleep wiv my team ’cause that puts them at risk. ’Cause if they picked up an infection or AIDS or something and gave it to their wives, all hell would break loose, see, and it’s the club that cops it.

  That’s why when I seen you down at Woolies I grabbed ya for this little chat. ’Cause if you stuff up, we all suffer. It was a year ago, the last young one, and well she gave the jack to about three or four of ’em. That’s right, and all those warts and things they got. All the wives told their husbands that they weren’t allowed to go to the pub after training, and if they did they were gone for half an hour only. Like Gibbo. When he goes to the club, his wife gives him two dollars to go out wiv. So the guys gave this young groupie-type person the flick. That’s why the older guys just mix with me and Leanne-Leanne-the-Footy-Fan … No. Ya won’t last the season.

  But … seein’ as we are Stick Sisters, like, right at the moment … What? Ya dunno what I’m on about? Well, like, it started with the surfie chicks at school. When ya found out you was being two-timed, you’d get together wiv the chick he was sharin’ his stick wiv, and send the guy a twig … You did do business like wiv the whole team didn’tcha?… Fought so.

  Well, if you’re gonna do it, you may as well do it right. There’s a, um, you know, like an etiquette in the sack, see. They like a good gobble first. And then usually they’re in a hurry ’cause they’ve gotta rush home to their wives, so they just jump on and do their little deed. But you’ve gotta feed their ego. It’s good for their confidence on the field and that. They like to think they’re doing you a favour. Like Jacko. Jackson’s like … well, he’s alright in bed. He’s not brilliant. You know, when he blows he pretends he hasn’t. Like he’ll sort of put his dick in and he’ll have a screw for a minute and … he always likes the other blokes to watch, see. And he goes first, ’cause he’s captain. And so he says, ‘Look at me go!’ And he goes an’ then after about a minute, he’ll blow, but he’ll just sort of keep goin’… ‘Right, now I’ll have your legs up over me shoulder.’ He’s already come, but he sort of exhibits himself for another fifteen minutes after he’s done the deed. And you’ve got to go, ‘Oh, oh Jacko,’ you know, and carry on. It wouldn’t be good for team morale if the blokes knew their captain was a dud bash type of a fing. Right? And the team comes first.

  I’ve got a bit of bubbly. Excuse the mess and everythin’. It’s too wet to hang the washin’ up outside. Fancy a drink? It’s a bit flat but …

  Nuthin’ will get you the flick faster than fallin’ in love. You’ve gotta say to yourself, he’s got a good body and I use his body like he uses mine, or it just won’t work out. Like, you get groupies who hang round and they fall in love and they bug the players and Leanne an’ me stand back and you can see they say, ‘Ah, you fuckin’ moll’
when the girl walks off, or they say, ‘Oh, here she comes again!’ and they hide behind the poker machines. These guys are under enough pressure from trainin’ and that – we’ve lost the grand final for fuckin’ ever – they don’t need any extra worries from you, right?

  Andja gotta know your football. But don’t mouf off like Wendy the Wog. She’s revoltin’. She’s a grub and she doesn’t tub. And she says, ‘Oh you did this wrong and you did that wrong.’ Like, the coach knows what went wrong and he’ll sort it out wiv the players.

  I hope you appreciate, well, like it’s a privilege to be selected as one of their groupies, even if it is just for a season. My first graders are heroes round here. They’re the most respected guys in this whole area. And you’ve gotta live up to the honour, type fing. Me, personally, I like a bit of competition. I like a chase. They’re fairly hard to get onto, some of the first graders. Like, when I was about sixteen, I had this crush on Prong. He was the hottest footy player on the field. Everyone was creamin’ their jeans over him. He was famous for this long prong of his. Anyway, my brother was playin’ snooker up at the Catholic Club one day; it was a lunchtime and he’d told a few of the fellas that I had the hots for Prong. So the next fing I know, I’m getting paged to the foyer. Off I toddled and answered the phone, and this husky voice on the other end says, ‘Meet me down near the butcher’s. Down the bottom of the club.’ So I, um, walked downstairs, and so Prong’s standin’ there and he says, ‘Come on, we’re goin’ to this bloke’s place.’