by Karen Foxlee
Pam said no.
‘No, no, no. It’s better, things are different here, much better, you’ll see, you’ll soon see,’ she said.
‘I feel it beating inside of me, Lou,’ he says again. He takes a sip of his tea and she sees his hand is trembling.
‘What then?’ Lou asks.
‘I feel it settle inside me,’ says Morrie. He’s twisting the napkin in his hands. ‘I am filled with, not strength as I expected, as the legend goes, but the beginning of something else. I go outside. I say goodbye to the restaurant folk. I walk along the street. I seem to… grow.’
She closes her eyes.
Sitting on her bed that first night he had unfolded his handkerchief. As he talked she had seen the small red holes in his gum where his teeth had been. He said it had been too far to keep track of the streets. They would never find their way back. She said we should have left a trail of crumbs. He said don’t be stupid. He was always the more practical one.
She only thinks these things when she sees Morrie. She shouldn’t see him, that’s the answer. When he leaves a message with her landlady, with his new address or his new number, she should ignore it. She should screw up the piece of paper and walk away.
That day the sun had been shining so brightly; their suitcases packed so hastily, everything crammed in, clips down, buckles tied. In those moments before they climbed into the car, people were coming out of their houses to watch them go. They didn’t shout, those people, or call out or even make a noise. They were silent. They stood silently and watched. In her memory, their faces are like faces in paintings. They appear to have features but if she moves closer she sees they are only made of brushstrokes.
Even now she’s too frightened to look, to turn in her memory, to cover her eyes against the glare, to look up at the windows. Surely she did that. Surely she looked back that day.
‘Taller?’ she asks, eyes still closed. She listens. The waitress is stacking plates loudly. She hears bells. The day has grown darker and colder.
‘The sun was going down and I felt as tall as a giant,’ he says. ‘My heart was pounding.’
He hits his chest across his heart, tears in his eyes. She looks down at her rings. The door swings in and some rain enters with two young women, soaking wet. They drip pools on the dirty chequerboard floor.
‘I’m a man. I realised I’m a man. A true man,’ Morrie says. He’s getting louder. He’s taken her hand, she can’t look up, can’t bear it. ‘It isn’t physical strength, Lou, not physical. It’s fortitude. Everything, everything will be all right. You see?’
She looks at him, pulls her hand from his, holds it like a wounded thing.
‘You see,’ he repeats and there are more tears spilling over now, down his beautiful cheek bones. ‘You see, we’re all right, you and me. No matter what. It’s over. I feel it’s over and we’re set free.’
She nods her head and agrees. Looks down. Counts the seconds. The newcomers have taken their seats, laughing, laughing at their bedraggled state, she counts the seconds.
‘What I’m saying is, we’re strong, you and me.’
‘Yes.’
‘What I’m saying is you’ve never, you’ve never even tried to let it go.’
Outside she opens up her handbag and takes out her purse. Morrie is wiping at his eyes and then he wipes his hand on his jeans before accepting the money she gives him.
‘Thanks Lulu,’ he says. ‘I appreciate that.’
He’s thin, painfully thin, he keeps hitching up his jeans and she sees the point of his hip bones. Once she saw him walking like a prophet on Vulture Street, his jeans hanging on those points, shirtless, shoeless, walking and staring up at the sky, gesturing wildly with his hands.
On the day of the pearl teeth wrapped up in a handkerchief she had turned in the car to look back one last time. Of course she had. Her mother was coming out of the front door of the flats, exploding out, a fury of hair and stick thin limbs, she was coming out the front door, fighting off hands, running barefoot, calling out, screaming out, only Lou couldn’t hear. The woman driving had turned on the radio. The song playing was filling up her ears.
On the way home in the bus all the streets are gleaming. The rain has slowed and moves in glittering drifts across the traffic. She doesn’t want to go home. Home always feels wrong after Morrie. No matter how much she checks and rechecks that everything is fine, visits each small room, runs her hands over surfaces, closes up windows, wraps herself in a blanket, turns on the telly; no matter how much, after she sees him, she knows all home will feel like is clinging to a rock in wild seas.
She tries not to think of him, her brother. She’ll remember the lost woman instead, yes, that will keep her occupied for a time; how she shouldn’t wear expensive scarves out in weather and how she shouldn’t get good shoes wet. She’ll wonder if she learnt anything at her class. She’ll imagine the woman’s dreams; perfectly smooth, peachy, milk and honey dreams, on her expensive sheets at night. But maybe she never found her dream class at all.
She should have helped the woman.
That’s what she should have done.
The woman might be wandering still, up and down, searching for the place, frantic now, crying now, wet. And Lou knows what it is like to be lost in this city.
Clancy of the Undertow
Christopher Currie
Things I remember, like waking up that night at the screen door crashing. Something about the sound. When you know a thing so well that if you change it, even a tiny bit, it’s magnified, so much more obvious than it should be. It wasn’t until years later that I realised it was dad coming home, throwing open the door with more force than usual. So many of these details only snap into focus with a retrospective lens. So much only made sense later on.
* * *
She’s got this nearly chinless face, which isn’t as bad as it sounds because she’s European and her nose bends over in a poetic way. And she’s small, birdy, gorgeous. She dresses in silk blouses the colour and consistency of cream. Pencil skirts that have an actually pencil shape: that sort of perfect thing. Whereas me, I lose change down the front of my shirt. Am described as willowy by people who don’t know what the word means. I have a constant, quizzical, mouth-full-of-toothpaste look which has apparently been present since birth and seems to be here to stay. Red hair, brown, blonde, whatever light it’s in—wavy and permanent like a crumpled car door. Awkward, titless, something approaching hopeless.
This is the two of us, Eloise and I. Our top halves poking out above a makeup counter. Our island in a shopping centre sea. Usually, we’re both here only on a Saturday; the other six days we split. During the holidays, I’m Mondays and Tuesdays and Thursdays. On these days, I sell nothing. Not one thing. And for some reason this is okay. I give people directions, because I’m in a booth, despite the lack of a large letter i above me and spend the rest of my time perfecting doodles in the notebook in which we’re meant to jot down takings and customer orders. It’s better than school, but only because of the air-conditioning.
But it’s Thursday afternoon now. Eloise has come to check inventory when she knows it will be quiet. Eloise and me. She is thirty-two, voluptuous, perfect. I am sixteen, with the physique of a tree frog. But still, she grabs my cheeks when she sees I’m down and says, in her untraceable smoky accent, You are the business, bella. This face, this face! and I horse-snort with pride and turn red. Eloise is the only reason I stay here, that I put up with the days of boredom and humiliation in this retail prison.
Eloise is the only reason anyone comes up to the booth—or rather, the Beauty Station. She purrs and preens over the fat-hipped country women who waddle up from The International Carvery to have their gravy-swaddled faces primped and poked by a mysterious European queen. And they all leave with the Full Beauty Package (not that you need it, darling? But the men, eh? They want a little colour to your cheeks…) which will require replenishment in under a month’s time. Every Saturday we make close to two thousan
d dollars in the three hours everyone in town turns up to buy the week’s groceries.
It’s late afternoon now, the shoppers are all but gone and it’s back to the head-crushing tedium. The only thing keeping me going is my afternoon visit from Reeve. This afternoon he ambles up about three-thirty, in his dark blue uniform. He has in his hand something that purports to be a juice, but has a colour not seemingly derived from actual fruit matter.
‘What’s the two-oh-three?’ I say to him.
‘It’s all on the down, Clancy,’ he says. ‘Nuthin’ but goddam happers, whackin’ out and fliptoppin’.’
I nod knowledgeably. ‘Streets be a jungle, yo.’
Reeve takes a sip of his drink. His face is only capable of devoting itself to only one emotion at a time. After he swallows, he laughs. ‘How’s business, ladies?’
Eloise folds a hand-towel neatly. ‘Security Guard Lewis,’ she says seriously. ‘How are you?’
Reeve nods. ‘Very well, thank you.’ We’re never sure when Eloise is joking.
‘Anything we can help you with today?’ I say. ‘I could offer you a lovely lotion to set your complexion off against your uniform. What colour would you call your shirt?’
‘Ocean of despair.’
I snort. Eloise clears her throat beside me. She has banter-tolerance of exactly one minute.
‘Better get back to it,’ I say. ‘Time waits for no tan.’
Reeve groans. ‘Awful. Just awful. What time you closing up today?’
‘Darling,’ says Eloise, ‘I feel there will be more sales before the day is out.’ She flutters a hand up against her face.
‘Five-thirty then,’ I say, trying to hide the tone of resignation in my voice.
‘Alright,’ says Reeve, ‘well I might see you once more, high crime permitting.’ He gives us a lazy salute and strolls off.
When Reeve is out of earshot, Eloise leans over to me. ‘He is quite something, that boy.’
I cluck my tongue. ‘He’s something.’
‘Ah, to be young again, Clancy!’ Eloise claps her hands together, swooning.
‘Jeez,’ I say, my neck flushing red because it clearly hates me. ‘He’s just a friend.’
‘Ah, well, it is better to have lost in love than ever more.’
‘Right. Yep.’ I duck behind the counter to look in a drawer that has suddenly caught my attention. I’m never sure whether Eloise actually doesn’t know the real words to proverbs, or whether this is just further depth to the character she plays.
‘You just have to believe in yourself,’ she says. I feel something in my hair before I realise she’s stroking it. I jump, which is not easy when you’re crouching, and try to reposition myself away from her. My duck-waddle fails and I topple onto the floor. I observe the complex ecosystem of dust and used cotton balls under the counter.
‘Are you alright, darling?’
‘Absolutely,’ I say. ‘Completely in my element.’
* * *
The afternoon passes with no more sales and I leave just after five. I change into my boots and hurry out of the shopping centre before Reeve can find me and we have to have a conversation without the social safety of a large white counter between us. Coming down the escalators the knife guy is there with his display table and he winks at me, his hand resting on the hilt of a dagger shaped like a dragon’s head. For the umpteenth time, I realise I could just reach down off the escalator and pick up a blade and make the news. Not that I ever would, but you sometimes I think it, don’t you, just for the stupid thrill.
I leave through the big sliding doors and the afternoon humidity drapes itself across my face. I’d rubbed off the worst of the makeup in the shopping centre bathroom, leaving on what I hoped was just enough. Eloise had taught me how to apply makeup, but only in a way that suited her strong features. On my whitebread face, the dark eyeshadow and swathes of lipstick just made me look like something from a straight-to-video horror franchise. My bike is there on the rack, still somehow not stolen even though I keep leaving the lock conspicuously undone. Dad refuses to buy me a new one until it ‘wears out’ and so once again I hop on my too-small red BMX with Lightning Lady written in horrendously large letters down its frame and pedal out of the car park. I often consider riding it out of town and abandoning it, but then I’d have no way to get back home and besides I’m a terrible liar and dad would be able to tell and then I’d have no bike.
My stupid backpack keeps hitching up my shirt so I spend most of the ride holding it down before I have to sling my backpack over my handlebars and then it makes it hard to steer and so I have to go really slow and I can feel the drivers of the cars buzzing past judging me but that’s just the way my life is. I turn off the main road and shudder over the dusty path that runs beside the river. I pull up next to the play equipment and fling my bike into the dirt, hoping to elicit an unrepairable crack to its chassis. No such luck.
Soon I’m sitting behind the skate park, shivering out dust and petrol fumes, pretending to read a book. All the guys are pretty much just silhouettes against the sky. One by one, they teeter on the lip of the ramp and drop away, the sight of them replaced by the hum of wheels on concrete. The rest of them are huddled on the other side, making fume-tents with their shirts or smoking or both. It stinks here, but there’s nowhere better to watch the vacant lot across the fence where the cars are.
They’re all parked at mad angles as usual, in some sort of protest against symmetry. More join every minute, appearing first as dust from behind the hill, swinging into focus with carefully choreographed fishtails that send up even more dirt. The crowd cheers each time a new car arrives. Everyone coming in from work. Or not working. Thursday is Student Night, named after the claim on the chalkboard the Criterion never takes down from outside its entrance. It’s sort of a Barwen inside joke, as no one here is really a student, not in the sense a Student Night means. A few adult learners at the TAFE, probably, but that’s it. Still, tradition is tradition, and Thursday night means party night.
Finally, the car I’m waiting for arrives, and it gets the biggest cheer. A mustard-brown Monaro, flashing its lights. Buggs gets out first, unfolding his body from the driver’s seat, which he’s modified so it fits really low in the car. It always struck me as stupid, because the sun visor wouldn’t protect him from the sun. But Buggs isn’t someone who I get the feeling really thinks things through. He takes off his cap, smooths his hair, puts the cap back on. Predictable as hell. He kneads his lips, fishing in his pocket for cigarettes. He strides over to some guy who looks suspiciously like my older brother, but I keep my eyes on the car.
The tiny light flicks on in the Monaro and my heart jags because she’s there, painting Cleopatra edges to her eyes, peering at the rearview mirror. She leans back to shuffle on a stocking leg, kicking one foot out at the evening air. All the guys have gone with Buggs to the edge of the skate ramp. Nobody watches Sasha except for me. Nobody sees the three holes in her stockings that look like a ghost’s face. I think of being a ghost, of not being able to be seen. Of being in that car, in the back seat, as she gets ready for another night out. Leaning my ghost head down to her cheek and feeling its heat as my skin passes right through it.
I realise I’ve got my hands down the sides of my boots, where the elastic has already wafered because I always stretch it out. I need new shoes. I’ll never impress anyone with old shoes and old clothes and an old bike. I glance at my watch but I already know that I have to leave. Sasha gets out of the car and stretches sort of the way a cat stretches, every muscle shivering out. She’s cut her hair since last week, framing her face with jet-black straight edges. Someone said she goes to Brisbane to get it done. Most local girls go to Classic Cuts or Real Beauty, which are basically the same place because any girl who goes in there comes out with skanky highlights and fake nails and eyelashes like a giraffe. They’re all fake tanned, too, but Sasha is pale. Whenever you see them all together, smoking outside The Cri or on the council wall on the weeke
nd, Sasha always stands out like a vampire in a wheat field. She dresses in black jeans, always, impossibly tight. She’s with Buggs, I tell myself, only because it makes them a crazy famous couple.
Buggs is from a family who’s been here since the town was settled and his uncle is the mayor and half the town is run by his extended family. His last name is Pfister, which is indisputably hilarious, but no one’s allowed to make fun of him because of who his family is even though his first name is actually Barnaby, a fact that made me laugh for five minutes straight when I found out. Buggs is a massive douche. He works in his dad’s auto shop, but he’s never really there. He spends most of his time tinkering with his own car, or sitting at the front bar of The Cri. He’s super-thin and stooped over, and his nose is almost flat to his face, but he’s somehow the coolest guy in town. Which is why, for some reason, Sasha is with him.
All the guys are laughing at the skate park and I hear cans opening and bottle caps flipping off and I get up and leave before anyone sees me. I take one look back and see Sasha, leaning against Buggs like a useful tree, smoking and staring off into her own middle distance. I dig my nails into my palm and stifle a huge, self-pitying sigh. She’d never notice me. I’d never even be a part of her world.
I cycle back up the dirt path, not bothering to get up off my seat as I judder across the tiny stones. What was the point? I pedal furiously up the hill and cut in behind the City View car park. I throw my bike over the fence and drag it up the cow paddock. As always, I can’t tell what’s a divot and what’s a cowpat but I plow on regardless. There’s a crowd of cockatoos dotting the grass white and they flap madly up as I walk through them. They all fly up as a big swarm and circle one of the two huge eucalypts on each side of our house. Late summer is brimful of birdscreech until at least seven-thirty.
