by Ros Baxter
‘And the winner is…Dick.’
Dick? I felt like laughing. What the hell could Dick possibly know about me that would be so effective as to convince Emmy to award the prize to him, against all of her prejudice?
‘And…before we move up the garden for petit fours, allow me to read you the winning entry,’ Emmy went on. ‘Ahem.’ She unrolled a little scroll and began to read,
‘“My favorite memory of Lola is of the first time we met. She was late to the bar, and came rushing in with wet hair. She’d been caught in the rain and she looked like Medusa. She’d had a run-in with the bus driver and didn’t stop talking for fifteen minutes while she told us about it. She seemed pretty scary, but just when I thought I’d faint with terror, she stopped, cocked her head like an Alsatian dog and started listening to the conversation in the next booth. Then she peered over the top.
‘It was pretty loud, with some drunk, angry guy saying some really foul and scary things to the girl he was with. Lola walked right up to him, tipped her drink over his head and yelled “pick on someone your own size, asshole.”
‘I thought he was going to kill us. But as he emerged, it became clear that he was really short. Like Lola. Exactly her own size. The whole bar burst out laughing, and he skulked out of there like a little weasel. And I thought Wow, I want to be just like her. Half the soldiers I know aren’t that brave.”’
Emmy put the scroll down and produced a gorgeous magnum of champagne from somewhere that she handed to Dick. Everyone started clapping and laughing and Dick was grinning from ear to ear. I was astonished. And felt small and unworthy at the same time. Dick, who I always thought was such a shallow, Republican-voting freak.
That’s when I decided. Had an epiphany, if you like. That’s when I decided that things were going to change. If I could be a hero to someone like Dick, I needed to start acting like one. I needed to be more directed. I needed to get myself together. I wasn’t exactly sure how, but I felt like I could almost see the fog clearing, and as I looked around and caught Heidi’s eye, an idea started to take fuzzy form.
I stood up, pushed out my chair and walked over to Dick. I picked up his hand, pulled him up and gave him a big hug. I didn’t even feel like washing straight after. Dick smiled hugely, and for the first time in a long time I felt excited. And hopeful. I looked over at Ralph, and realized there will be no Round Two with him. He looked…empty.
I was suddenly sober, but very happy. That awful saying I’ve always hated popped into my head: ‘today is the first day of the rest of your life’.
Bring it on.
Part Six: The Last Time
Full circle — The Southern Ocean; November 15, 2012, 7:06am,
I’m sitting on the cold, wet floor of this hateful boat, with my hands tied behind me.
The guy who’s watching us is like some bad caricature of a Japanese soldier from one of those really racist old films about Pearl Harbor. He looks like he’s made from stone.
And he keeps saying ‘don’t move, don’t move.’
We’re toast.
I know it sounds kind of crazy to say this when you’re the prisoner of an insane Japanese whaling crew, location unknown — somewhere in the Southern Ocean — freezing cold and wondering how the hell you got here, but I have really gotten my life together over the last six years. It’s true. So that’s why I’m still finding it hard to believe that all this has happened.
I know I always say this, but I really didn’t plan it this way. In fact, I thought I had done everything I could to make sure it wouldn’t happen like this. In the last couple of years, since that last arrest, I really have started over, and things have been totally coming together for me. Things are starting to look up. Let me prove it to you.
One: I run my own business now
I took a bit of a gamble and started my own thing. I don’t know what you call it — company, venture, whatever. It’s called Clean Money. I help people invest their cash without supporting Chinese gulags, strip-mining of the Arctic or doing bad things in rainforests. It’s kind of like what I did for Heidi’s animals, but on a bigger scale.
It’s cool, because it involves two things I love: the math stuff — poring over forecasts, running the numbers, that kind of thing — and the sleuth stuff — digging up the dirt on some of these disgusting outfits and finding out how they really make their money. And believe me, some of the things I know now, it’s a wonder I can buy anything at all, and am not naked and starving. There are some bad people out there in moneymaking land.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m no Wayne. The venture is hardly ever going to make me rich. But it’s growing. The best thing has been attracting non-profit enterprises — little guys like Heidi’s shelters — who have a little cash, or maybe a donations base, and are looking for a bit more stability. I’ve been bringing more and more of them on board lately, and it’s really helping me grow the whole thing. Thank God, or I may have had to sell my body to keep it afloat. And I was kind of scared that when the punters saw these stretch marks, they might not have been so crazy about paying for it.
Things were a bit desperate in the beginning. But Mom was like this dogged little cheerleader. She threatened to give up chemo if I gave up on the business. And the rest, as they say, is history. After all, pretty hard to deny someone who’s hooked up to a million tubes and looking like they’re already half dead.
Okay, okay, I’m also pretty shameless when it comes to exploiting people I know, and so I had no qualms at all about letting Emmy spread the word among her charity contacts. Most of them couldn’t care less how their money got invested, but it came as a revealing shock to me to realize that there actually are some right-on rich people out there, and I got some individual clients as well as non-profits out of Emmy’s work on my behalf. I’m still not sure how she talked people into using me, although at least one guy who came to see me looked genuinely terrified when he arrived and kept saying over and over again, through these really pale and trembling lips:
‘You will tell Emmy I stopped by to seek your help, won’t you?’
Esteban had also come to the party, charming some of his rich friends into coming to me for a consultation. Actually, I’m not sure I’m going to be able to take many more of those clients. He seems to only know South American men as sexy and charming as himself, and I always spend the night hot and restless after providing them with a consultation.
As Emmy said when she stopped by one day while I was finishing up with one of them, they’re the kind of guys you should be paying, not the other way around. Preferably for sex. But I had a rule: no sleeping with clients. Admittedly, I’d made it before Esteban starting sending his homies my way, but hey, a rule’s a rule. And anyway, while I had started to become aware of my libido again since Polo Ralph, and had even dated a couple of guys, I still hadn’t quite graduated to sealing the deal, so to speak. Well, until recently, but that’s another bit of the story.
Actually, I don’t think anyone really needed that much convincing to use my service once they knew the deal. You see, I’ve discovered something really interesting: people are basically tight-asses. One of the things I offer is a free initial consultation, which includes an appraisal of people’s current portfolio. Amazing how the sniff of a free thing brings people running. And it seems to make them even happier to pay next time, no matter what I’m charging.
One day when my phone buzzed I found myself speaking to none other than Judge Renquest, who was seeking my services. He told me he’d known that day in court that I’d make the most of my second chance. It somehow felt like closing the loop, like a divine finger was pointing down at me saying ‘yep, see, you got it right this time, Lola.’ Hooray.
So, you see, I am a bona fide clean act now. I even served my full 150 hours of community service while I was teaching part time and setting up the business — most of the work on the business happened at night anyway, after Eve was in bed. I didn’t care that I was so busy. I needed a full head to ke
ep my mind off the horrible, horrible stuff that was going on with Mom.
But anyway, that’s number three…
Two: I found my calling
It all began with my community service. I turned up the first day determined to do my penance willingly. I reminded myself repeatedly that this was the outcome I had wanted from my day in court — well, short of being completely let off scot free, but that was never going to happen, I guess. So I dressed in practical clothes, ready for service. I wasn’t required to wear an orange jumpsuit or some identifying banner across my back saying something like ‘PUBLIC NUISANCE’, like I’d heard they were doing in some states.
Our supervisor, Chippendale Jackson Harwood the Third — ‘Chip’ or ‘Mr Harwood’, as he preferred the participants to call him — took his role as disciplinarian of wayward souls very seriously. He appeared to take an almost lascivious joy in allocating the worst tasks to those participants he saw as being the most uppity. Oh yeah, you guessed it. He took one look at me and cast me firmly into the uppity pile. On the first day, he told me that he just knew I wouldn’t last the full 150 hours. I know I could have made things better. I could’ve won him over. I have loads of experience managing irrational and prejudiced people. After all, I’ve lived in my family for 35 years. But I just could not make nice with this creep.
I mean, don’t get me wrong, the last thing I wanted to do was get in trouble, so I was always compliant with direct requests, and I made sure he couldn’t get me on anything. But he knew I harbored a revolutionary heart. Maybe it was the way I always accidentally mispronounced his name: Mr Hardwood, Mr Has-Wood, and the like. For his part, he couldn’t resist constantly making jibes at me, and giving me the crappiest jobs, needling, prodding, hoping for a reaction that would allow him to officially write me up as non-compliant.
Fat chance, buddy. I’ve been irritated by far more skilled practitioners than you.
Anyway, he was the worst bit about community service. But some of the other bits I actually quite enjoyed. I loved getting out in the fresh air, and in a weird kind of way, the physical activity felt really cleansing. I slept like the dead after a day of it, and it was nice to have a period of time where there were no crazy dreams to haunt me, no extended periods of insomnia. And it required no brainpower, but was distracting enough that I couldn’t think obsessively about my life and failures, like I usually did.
And I really liked the other participants. You know I’m a sucker for a hard luck case, and man, my little group of ne’er do wells was just full of them. I absolutely loved crafty, crazy old Mary, who was a serial kleptomaniac, but did such a great line in ‘I’m so old and pitiful’ that no judge had ever had the heart to give her a custodial sentence. She held the record for the most hours ever spent in community service.
Chip hated her almost more than he hated me.
But best of all, or maybe worst of all — because it’s how I ended up in this spot of bother — was Pedro. He was kind of greasy, but more in a friendly, messy, hippy way than an ugh-don’t-touch-me-I-might-catch-something way. He reminded me a bit of that big dog from Sesame Street — was it Barkley? He was involved in Friends of the Earth and his thing was whales. It’s hard to believe, given what I’d been doing with Clean Money, but I really knew very little about the whole whale hunt thing before I ran into Pedro again. Pedro had been arrested picketing the last G8 meeting to try to get them to pressure Japan into ending its whale hunt and ‘scientific whaling’ program. Somehow, he’d managed to get close enough to throw a bucket of fake whale blubber on the Japanese attaché. Apparently it was only mushed up cod fillets, but it hadn’t gone down well.
Hearing him talk about whales was enough to transport me back to that trip with Wayne. I remembered seeing whales for the first time out at Hervey Bay — their grim majesty, and the sadness of their songs. And I remembered Wayne not wanting to tell me why he thought they might be sad. Well, now I knew. They were sad because these other-wordly creatures were hunted like…like ducks, or pigs, or something pedestrian like that. Okay, okay, I know all creatures are God’s design. But really, whales shouldn’t even occupy the same category as other animals. They’re warm-blooded. Sentient. Magical. They should be in some romantic, mystical category with dragons, unicorns and mermaids. Anyway, I guess being the world’s largest mammal and being hunted and butchered by Lilliputians would be enough to make anyone sing a sad song.
It seemed impossible. Killing whales was like killing babies. Or God.
Pedro was so articulate about it all. He would spend our morning break eating cookies and waxing lyrical about the whales. He, too, had been on a whale watching trip years before and been blown away by whales. He sensed a captive, interested — and potentially useful — audience, so he started bringing along reading material for me.
I was more and more horrified the more I learned.
I started researching the issue myself. There weren’t really many products on sale in the US made from whale blubber, but there were plenty of companies and governments around the world that did business with whaling countries. I started writing some pieces in a little e-zine about it, and they started to get a bit of a following.
And then, because the world is full of infinite circles I got asked to do this other thing. An Earth Warriors ship was going over to shadow some Japanese whalers during the hunt, and they asked me to spend some time on their boat documenting their mission to watch and observe — and disrupt — the hunt. I wouldn’t be breaking any laws to write the piece, but I was still worried about going. The plan was that I would be airlifted to the boat on the night of November fourteen, stay a day to interview the leaders of the protest and take some pictures, and then fly out again.
Even though I would only have been away from Eve three days in total, and even though she was almost eleven now, and even though I felt the pull of doing something about this more strongly than I had ever felt anything in my life, I was reticent to go. I hated leaving her. And I’m a complete wuss, as we’ve already discussed. But then, I’ve discovered you sometimes get messages from the universe, and decisions get made for you.
My divine message came, as so many of my life lessons seem to have come, in the form of Eve. She came home one day in floods of tears. Big, gaspy sobs. In that way that only children can manage. Their whole body shakes as their little chests heave up and down. It took me a while to calm her down enough for her to get words out, but when I did it was all about the whales. She’d been to Felicity’s place after school that day, and they’d been watching Discovery Channel.
By the way, I’m as big of a fan of Discovery as the next person, but given some of the things I’ve seen on it — think reproduction in all of its many, varied forms across multiple species — I made a mental note to myself to talk to Felicity’s Mom about maybe ramping up the supervision while the kids were getting to know nature a little more intimately.
Anyway, there’d been a piece on Discovery about the whale hunt. From the sounds of it, a pretty graphic, bloody piece. Eve, whose little heart ached unbearably when exposed to any of life’s cruelties or injustices — God help me if I did that to her — was particularly traumatized. She kept asking me over and over what we could do, and, while directing her heroically towards a letter writing campaign, internally I kept thinking:
She’s right she’s right she’s right and You can do more, Lola, you know you can.
So I decided to go.
As it turned out, Eve was pretty much Robinson Crusoe when it came to thinking this particular excursion was a good idea. Of course, Mom and Dad were more than happy to mind Eve while I was gone, and I knew she’d be safe and happy — in fact, spoiled — there, but everyone was worried about the risks, and the possible consequences. I think they all thought it was too scary, and had the capacity to disrupt my carefully constructed new life in ways that frightened them. Mom, my sister, even Vera. For once, opinion was united.
Stay home. Let other people tell the story.
Emmy, in her usual frank way, summed it up like this: ‘Why the fuck do you need to go to some godforsaken ocean to write this story? If it’s credibility you’re after, surely there are some pictures you can photo-shop to make like you were there?’
But it did matter to me that I would be able to say I’d seen it first-hand. I had a stronger sense of myself now. I had checked this thing out pretty closely, and was satisfied that I’d be safe, and that the group were well credentialed and serious, and that the issue mattered. And that I would not be breaking any laws in trying to bring this to some public scrutiny. Anyway, for better or worse, I decided to go.
Three: Mom got better
Oh, man, my Mom got so sick before she got better. They had to operate three times before they got all the vile stuff that was inside her bowel, and in lots of her other bits too. And then she had chemo that seemed to go on forever. And she really was even sicker than I’d been with morning sickness. At least when I’d been pregnant, there’d been some times that I didn’t vomit. There didn’t seem to be any respite for Mom. It just went on and on, and even the anti-nausea drugs seemed to do nothing.
And, as you can imagine, we were all terrified. I think the most scared I ever got was one night, when we were all there at the hospital, gathered around her bed. She’d just come out of the second lot of surgery and she was so tired, and looked so tiny, and so old. And the news wasn’t good. It looked almost certain they’d need to go back in again, and she had this look on her face that said she just couldn’t bear one more minute of it all.
She actually told me one day after it was all over that she now had a whole new respect for concentration camp survivors because being sick had made her realize what an out and out coward she really was. She said that even with all the drugs for pain, and sickness, and all the good food and great care, there’d been times when she’d just wanted to end it all. And she’d realized that if she’d been there, in Bergen-Belsen or Auschwitz or wherever, in the freezing cold, sick, worked to the bone, not knowing when or if it would all ever end, she’d have just found the nearest sharp thing to kill herself with. I totally knew what she meant. We just both shook our heads and reflected on how incredible the human will to survive must be.
