It’s not awkward with bodies thrown up against walls and clothes torn off, it’s quieter than that. They’re ravenous but they are patient too, drawing out moments as long as they can, in case this is all they will ever have. She wants every touch to be imprinted on her skin so she slows everything down until the end, when it’s impossible to be slow.
After
The waiter brings out the last plate of food to complete our banquet – a sticky plate of sweet, seared beef – and lights a small sparkler. He places it in Dan’s rice bowl and gives a little bow.
‘Happy birthday, Dan,’ he says with a grin.
Dan forces a grin back, ‘Another year bites the dust, Chen.’
‘May you have many more, mate. Doing anything special this year?’
Dan spreads his hands out, indicating Ava and me. His smile is tight.
‘Tomorrow I’m taking off for a weekend hike with some mates.’
‘Well, have a good one.’
Chen makes a subtle exit and Dan, Ava and I are forced to look at each other again without the buffer of a near-stranger.
‘The food looks good,’ I say.
‘As always,’ Dan says.
Ava picks up a chopstick and pokes it in her rice, trying to imitate what she’s seen us do countless times.
‘You need two, darling,’ Dan says. ‘Like this.’ He picks up Ava’s other chopstick and places it in her hand, trying to rearrange fingers and sticks into the right places. Ava resists the strange feeling and gives up, throwing the chopsticks on the table and using her fingers to pick up individual grains of rice, fascinated by the texture on her fingers and tongue.
‘We could be here all night at this rate,’ Dan says.
I pick up my own chopsticks. I’m aware that I’ve ruined this and we will never do any of this again. No more birthday dinners at Lim’s. No more sharing the small moments of Ava’s development. There is no laughter tonight, that’s all gone too.
Waiting until after Dan’s birthday to tell him seemed like a good decision at the time, and having one last celebration together as a family, for Ava’s sake, seemed like the right thing to do. But it’s nothing more than diversion and denial. And Dan knows something is up.
Now, when I close my eyes in quiet moments I see Alexander and me at my exhibition. We are a movie I play back in my mind, and now I’ve got fresh footage. Making love with him did not erase him, it enhanced him. My imagination was low def, reality is high def.
‘What are you thinking?’ Dan’s voice jolts me out of my memory. ‘You were smiling.’
‘Was I?’
‘I remember your happy smile. It’s been a while, but I’m pretty sure that’s what I saw,’ Dan says sadly.
I concentrate on my food because I feel dangerously close to the edge of something irretrievable.
‘You can tell me, Jennifer. I know, anyway. Don’t think you are sparing me by waiting until this charade is over.’ He waves his chopsticks over the embarrassingly laden table.
‘You know what?’
‘I know it’s over. I know we’re done.’
I glance at Ava. I don’t want to have this conversation in front of her, in a restaurant, but maybe it’s easier this way. No screaming scenes, no dramatics.
I can’t look at him.
I finally raise my eyes to his and he nods. He shuffles his chair a little closer to Ava and makes a determined effort to ignore me while he helps her eat her food.
GARY, SARAH AND ABDUL
Car Park Job
Some joker has walked through seven floors of the car park and left flyers on every windscreen. The flyers, about the size of a wallet, are photocopied on the cheap. The writing is cut off at the top and bottom, but there is no mistaking the message: there’s a phone number and a picture of a woman, hands scraping her blonde hair from her face, lips parted in phony ecstasy and breasts fairly bursting out of her triangle bikini. I have to take those bloody flyers off every windscreen before the car owners come back, or I’ll have mothers screaming at me about mental scars. Makes me feel like a dirty old man just touching those photocopied breasts.
The car park is full, that means three hundred and fifty flyers. I’m about halfway there and I take a break – my fingers are tired from puckering the corner of the paper so that I can grab it and slip it out from under the wiper blade. RSI. I think about all the trees that had to die to make this pornography, and then I think about how that girl, whose face I’ve seen having the same sham orgasm a hundred times, is someone’s daughter, some girl who grew up right – or maybe not – and then ended up doing this. Puckering her lips like some bloody gawping fish so that men can get off.
And then I think about my own daughter. Sarah hasn’t spoken to me for six weeks. She’s some big corporate deal and wears suits that cost more than I make in a month. Her shoes are peacock-coloured weapons, but she walks in them as if they are slippers. The last time we saw each other she sat across the table from me and pushed the mashed potato and sausages around on her plate like they were nuclear waste. She’d brought wine and drank more than she ate. When I told her she was too thin she said, ‘Thanks.’ When I grew up, being too thin meant that you couldn’t afford to eat, now it means you have more money than God.
I take another break and look over the barricade to where the cars are banked up on the street below. It’s a nice way to see the city, everyone on their way to something important.
I always think of Sarah when I lean out the window like this. She’s in one of those big office blocks, somewhere out there. I go back to picking flyers off windscreens.
The boss showed us video footage of the flyer guy this morning, we’re supposed to look out for him and tell him to piss off if we see him. He’s skinny as a reed, dirty blonde hair, dressed in an old flannel shirt and those tracksuit pants with the stripes down the leg. It’d be my pleasure to tell the weasel to bugger off but I know he’s not coming back, not today anyway.
Molly would have told him to bugger off, too. Never met a broad who loved a fight more than my Molly. I drove her mad with my attitude. She called me ‘lackadaisical’, she loved to use words like that – she would spend hours on the crosswords. I know she would have liked a husband who got fired up from time to time, but I was never gonna be that fella. Sarah never forgave me for Molly dying. You’d think it was me driving the car that hit her, the way little Sarah turned on me. Poor blighter, I was about as much use to her as a shovel without a handle.
I’ve stuffed all the flyers into the plastic bag now so I take my place in the booth. All this thinking about Sarah and Molly has made me melancholy and I want to pick up the phone and talk to my wife but I can’t of course. No phones in heaven.
I call Sarah instead.
‘Sarah Wilson speaking,’ she says.
‘Sarah, love, it’s Dad.’
‘Oh?’
‘Just wonderin’ how you are. Haven’t heard from you in a while.’
‘Is that a car? Are you at work?’
‘Yeah, it’s okay. Abdul will get this one, I’ve got my sign up. Just wanted to say hello.’
‘I’m busy, Dad.’
‘Okay, love. How about coming over for a fish meal next week?’
‘I’m pretty busy, you know.’
‘Okay,’ I say.
‘Well, bye then.’
‘Wait!’
‘Yes?’
‘How’s work?’
‘Really, Dad? How’s work? That’s all you’ve got to say to me?’
‘No, of course not, love. You know I’m not much of a talker.’
‘And I’m busy, so…if you’ve got something to say?’
‘No, no. You get back to it.’
I hear the line go dead. I say into the beeping phone, ‘Your mother wouldn’t like what you’ve become, Sarah. No time for family. Rude to your father. She’d be ashamed of you, and she’d tell you too.’
I try to imagine the impact of those words, if she’d heard them. I can’
t. I don’t know her well enough.
‘Thanks, Abdul,’ I call over to the other booth. Abdul smiles and give me his ‘no worries’ wave as I take my sign down and open up the booth.
A woman drives up and hands me a flyer.
‘This was on my car,’ she said. ‘It’s disgusting, I might as well park on the street.’
‘Sorry, ma’am. I tried to take them all down, must have missed one.’
I hold up the plastic bag to show her all the flyers I’ve collected and a tear in the plastic splits clean down the middle with the weight of it and the flyers, hundreds of them, get caught in the little fan in my booth and blow straight into the woman’s car.
She screeches like she’s been slapped in the face as the paper breasts and puffed-up lips settle on her face, lap and cleavage.
Before I can get out of my booth and around to her car, Abdul is already there.
‘So sorry, ma’am, let me help you,’ he says.
I watch Abdul as he picks up the pictures, one by one, from around the woman in the car. He holds the paper carefully, as though each piece is precious, even though of course it’s not.
Oma’s Fruit Cake
DAN
Compartments and Venn Diagrams
In the library there are rows of carefully ordered books, in compartments assigned by Dewy.
My life is made up of compartments too.
In one, there is Jennifer.
In another, there is Ava.
Then there is me.
When we got married, I thought those compartments would join up somehow, that we would share our lives with each other. But the opposite happened. Jennifer buried herself in work, then in Ava, and I was on the sidelines. Mostly, I was happy to be there.
If our life together was a Venn diagram, it would look like this:
Jennifer’s secret was never really a secret. I always knew she married me because I was solid, because I would never let her down. Not because she loved me.
The worst part about that diagram is the space between Ava and me. I know I can fix that, even if I can’t fix anything else.
I wonder how it was possible that Jennifer once had the ability to break my heart. Now she is just a person I awkwardly share a house with, a person I am entangled with. We’ve been hanging on for so long that hanging on seems to be the whole game now.
The librarian gives me a bemused smile as she hands over the books Jennifer reserved for Ava, as well as the titles that are for us: Surviving Divorce, Rebuilding After Divorce and Divorce Doesn’t Have To Be Bad. In a quiet corner I flick through that last one. The title seems improbable, but someone believed in it enough to write a whole book about it, so I’ll give it a try.
One chapter is called, ‘Two happy homes: how to help your children thrive through change’. I flick straight to that. Ava seems like the most important part of all this. Whatever Jennifer and I inflict on each other will not be inflicted on Ava.
‘The saying goes, children are happier in two happy homes than in one unhappy home. This is undoubtedly true. But change can be frightening for children, so it’s always best to talk to them about what is happening. Explain the change in simple, unemotional terms and talk to them regularly. If you tell them once and then never mention it again, the whole subject of your divorce becomes a no-go zone. Talk often and talk honestly,’ the author explains.
I flick to another chapter, ‘Being friends with your ex: it is possible!’ The cheerfulness of these titles irritates me. I wonder if it is possible for Jennifer and me. Were we ever friends to begin with? I plough on and read.
‘What drew you to your ex in the first place? Perhaps a kind smile, a thoughtful compliment, or maybe it was that zap of electricity that we sometimes call ‘falling in love’. Whatever it was, try and remember the positives…’
I slam the book shut. What a load of shit. None of this applies to me. The prospect of divorce doesn’t scare me. I’m excited. I’m ready to start again.
I grab Ava’s books and leave the divorce guides on the table.
The Swarm
We are a long way from Plane Tree Drive. No plane trees, just a forest of Casuarinas stands in front of us and the blazing moon tips over the apex of the highest tree. The others have gone to sleep. My muscles feel shredded and my thighs throb. I’ve ignored the blisters on my feet for too long.
I sit with him on the balcony smoking weed – the reward after the climb. We blow blue-grey smoke into the air and pass the small joint between us, careful to avoid touching, though as I place the damp roll of paper to my lips I’m aware that it’s just come from him.
We talk about pointless crap – who was the fastest, who wimped out, who won’t make it back – to avoid saying anything that might matter, and I drift off into thrilling and dangerous places. I want to leave everything behind. I don’t want to protect my precarious and imperfect life anymore.
The joint is gone and I am joyous and hungry and pleasantly lightheaded. Now is the time, if there would ever be a time. I can say it’s just because I’m high.
I stand, straighten my bulky jacket and wriggle my numb toes in their stiff, muddy boots. I stamp the mud off, ignoring my screaming blisters.
Well, we did it, I say. The summit. I keep my tone level.
He stands too. We don’t hug as a rule, but the joint has freed us and hell, we just reached the top. We take a step towards each other with our arms half raised, eliminating the careful space we’ve always kept. I lean my body into him. We match, from our thighs through our hips, chests and to our cheeks. I take a breath, slowly in, feeling his body move with mine, and slowly out. I hold him longer than would be considered appropriate, but he holds me too.
He turns his head and I feel his breath flow over the exposed skin of my neck, carrying a soft humidity that hints of the tropics in this cold forest and spreads goose bumps down my shoulders. My skin puckers and bursts through the warmth of my thermals. This air expelled from deep within him arouses me beyond reason.
We do not let go.
The sweetness of the joint lingers in his hair and his arms are thick around me. I catalogue these things, file them into my memory, for later.
The time to end this moment has long passed, but I can feel his erection, throbbing against mine. Just when I think this is the most exciting sensation I’ve ever experienced, he presses his lips into the nape of my neck. He is hesitant, as though he’s giving himself the option of calling it an accident. But my intake of breath is so sharp that he can’t mistake my response. He continues. My eyes are closed against the forest and I push my cock harder against his. His kiss explores my ear lobe, finally reaching some electric place just below it and the question I had prepared and discarded, my complicated life and his responsibilities are all irrelevant. My thoughts are set free and feeling swarms into the moonlight. I can no longer summon any sensation of Jennifer’s touch.
STELLA AND GRAHAM
North Atlantic Farewell
Graham
It is possible to be alive and dead at the same time. To live as though there is nothing left to be done, no work to conclude, no relationship to foster, no love to feel. It is possible to know that your death is so certain and so near that you are already in the throes of it. To be in the heart of death, to be living the pain of hell, to be absent to your loved ones, while your body obstinately withers.
For years Stella built walls, much higher and stronger than those in our home, so that when my day came she would be protected from her grief. I ignored this because it was more than I could bear. I blamed my fragile muscles, bones, nerves and tendons. But we realised that later the remorse for our lost days would come, so we chose a different path. The shadow of death will no longer be a companion, throbbing by my side. I will walk to death. My way.
My mind is claw-sharp. It has to be, otherwise I would not be deemed fit to make this decision. I have studied the brochure and watched the web videos and attended the mandatory counselling with sweet-faced Cl
audine.
My questions have been answered, all of them. Stella and I said our long goodbyes in the way that people who have been married for forty years can do. It took weeks and was sad and funny and felt like a gift.
Stella
Graham and I attended the Final Destination’s christening. It made us feel like we were part of something bigger than just our pain. We watched Captain Mertens hand Queen Beatrice a bottle of champagne, which she cracked across the ship’s monstrous hull and said in French, Flemish and English, ‘May your travels be comfortable and your final destination glorious’. The ship was officially put into service and an hour later we boarded. Wheeling Graham around the ship we marvelled at the gilt sculptures in the atrium, the shopping mall with gifts of memorial photos, engraved pens and Belgian chocolate, and the peaceful spray of the neon-lit water feature. We sat down to our evening meal – the silverware stamped A835 in a barrel lozenge and the wine imported from all the right regions in Europe, Australia and the US – retiring to our cabin to sleep on 400 thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets.
As the sun rose the following day, the Final Destination encountered a protest vessel. The Life Warrior had apparently been following us since Zeebrugge. She sidled dangerously close and the protesters stood on deck with their posters, frowning at us shameful sinners. The two vessels, ours enormous and imposing, theirs small and pugnacious, cruised into the international waters of the North Atlantic Ocean, each watching the other with suspicion.
On the third day, the Captain of the Life Warrior took to the megaphone. ‘So do not fear, for I am with you! Do not be dismayed, for I am your God! I will strengthen you and help you! I will sustain you and rescue you!’
Graham
These protestors continue to follow us and blast us with their monologues of death and doom. Don’t they know that all of us have looked death in the eye, given it a teasing butterfly kiss to test how it reacts? We have questioned death more deeply than any of the truly living. We understand it and know it for what it is. It is hard for them to hurt us now.
Plane Tree Drive Page 12
