Call Waiting

by Dianne Blacklock

  She stared at her reflection in the mirror; there was a kind of melancholy in her eyes. Ally had green eyes, like Nan’s, and her mother’s apparently. A little too big for her face, she sometimes suspected. Anyway, they were nothing like her grandfather’s. James Tasker’s eyes were brown, almost black. They made him look forbidding. Ally shivered, wandering back out to the bedroom. She heard the shower stop as she pulled down the covers on the bed and propped up some pillows. She sat hugging her knees.

  Bryce finally appeared, shaved and exfoliated and moisturized to within an inch of his life. He glowed. Ally knew she was probably being terribly sexist, but there was something odd about a man having a more elaborate skincare regime than she did.

  He sat on the edge of the bed, facing her. “So how’s my girl?”

  She shrugged. “Sad, I suppose.”

  He leaned forward and kissed her lightly on the lips.

  “When’s the funeral?”

  “Probably Tuesday.”

  “Are you going?”

  Ally frowned, “Of course! I’m his only next of kin.” She hesitated. “You’ll come with me, won’t you?”

  “What?” he seemed taken aback. “I didn’t even know your grandfather. I won’t know anyone there.”

  “You’ll know me!” Ally insisted. “I don’t want to go on my own. I was counting on you, Bryce.”

  “Oh babe,” he chided. Ally cringed, she hated it when he called her that. “You know how flat out we are at the moment. I’m assuming the funeral will be held in the Highlands?”

  She nodded.

  He pulled her into his arms, stroking her hair. “If it was in Sydney, I’d come, you know I would. But I need more notice to get off work for a couple of days.”

  “Sorry, I’ll tell my relatives to consult your diary before they cark it next time,” she spat sarcastically, pulling away from him. “What am I saying ‘next time?’ That’s right, I don’t have any more relatives. You’re off the hook!”

  Bryce looked at her, nonplussed. “I think you’re being a bit unfair, Ally.”

  There was an uncomfortable silence, as she struggled with the impulse to say, “Yes Bryce, sorry Bryce.” She didn’t feel like it this time. They were always so polite to each other. Sometimes Ally wanted to scream. But she never did. She’d become a cardboard cutout of her previous self, like that singer, the artist formerly known as …

  “Ally,” Bryce was stroking her arm. She looked up at him. He shifted closer. “Let’s not fight.”

  That was a fight?

  His head was close to hers. “Ally?”

  “Mm,” she grunted.

  “Don’t shut me out.”

  She lifted her head and his lips were on hers, and three seconds later his tongue slid into her mouth. Then the hand crept up to her breast, like clockwork.

  Ally pushed him off. “No, Bryce.”

  “What? What’s wrong? I thought you said you wanted it tonight.”

  “No, I wanted you tonight.”

  “So, here I am, babe.”

  Ally shuddered inside. “Bryce, I just feel like being close to you.”

  “Well, you can’t get much closer.” His hand reached up under her nightie.

  “Bryce!”

  “I thought it would make you feel better.”

  “No, it will make you feel better!” she glared at him. “You know you can actually be close to a person without having to screw them!”

  He stood up and marched around the bed angrily.

  “Christ, Ally, I don’t need this crap. I was just trying to be nice.”

  He flung back the covers petulantly and got into bed, turning away from her. Ally reached up and switched off the bedside lamp. She lay there in the dark, tears stinging behind her eyes. She blinked them back determinedly. She didn’t want to start crying, she was afraid she might not be able to stop.

  Ally stared at Bryce’s back. She craved some physical contact with another human being. She’d have to take what was on offer. Beggars can’t be choosers.

  She moved over closer to him and nestled into his back. He stiffened.

  “Sorry Bryce,” she said quickly to placate him.

  He turned over, hesitating. “Are you okay now?”

  She murmured assent and he pulled her hard against him, kissing her. She didn’t feel okay. She felt empty and hollow.

  They made love on automatic pilot, according to the scheduled flight plan. Ally moaned accordingly and he came right on time. Afterward she cuddled into him, into the warmth of his body, trying not to feel so alone. But after a few moments he disentangled himself and rolled over. They never slept in each other’s arms. Bryce complained he couldn’t get to sleep that way.

  She lay in the dark again, more alone than before. Ally wondered if Bryce felt empty too. He seemed content. Sex was always the same but he never stopped wanting it. He’d have it every night, but she’d worn it down to three or four times a week. If they went longer than four days without it he’d get cranky, and Ally would make sure they had sex that night. That had been the pattern since about six months into their relationship.

  She’d hoped that love would feel stronger than this, more uplifting. That maybe it would fill the gap deep inside her. Then she wondered if having a child would fill it. But that would have to wait. It was okay, she’d told herself a hundred times. Bryce was a decent man, and for some reason he stayed. Even her mother hadn’t done that. It was enough. Anything more was fantasy.

  But the gap inside was getting bigger, threatening to swamp her. Her eyes filled, and she felt a single tear trickling down each cheek. One for James Tasker. And one for herself.

  The next day

  Meg steered her car into the staff carpark. She was not impressed coming in to work on a Friday and she was going to give Simon a piece of her mind, not least for phoning at six-thirty on one of the rare occasions Harrison had decided to sleep in.

  Simon Ridgeway was Meg’s boss, one of them at least. He was the creative director at Imagine! and, as such, the only person Meg felt vaguely answerable to. Simon kept trying to remind her that she also needed to maintain a relationship with the accounts manager, not to mention the managing director. But as head of the digital graphics department, Meg felt that as long as Simon approved of what she was doing, then he could handle the others.

  But Simon had big ideas for Meg. He was the one who’d argued for a computer graphics specialist more than ten years ago, and he’d also been the one who’d pushed for Meg when everyone else had wanted to hire from a pool of more experienced men. The way Simon had looked at it, a woman who had become any kind of IT specialist was a rare and special breed. And his instincts had been right.

  “You should become a director,” he had announced over lunch one day.

  “And just whose role would I take on, Simon?” Meg returned. She was never one to get too excited about anything until she had thoroughly sussed it out from every angle. “I’m only qualified to be Creative Director, and in case it’s slipped your mind, that’s your job.”

  “I think there’s room for a new position. Well, more of an upgrade,” he explained. “The digital graphics section is vital to this firm. These days there’s rarely a campaign you’re not involved in. And that’s aside from all the outside contracts you’ve brought in.”

  Meg had built the department into one of the most highly regarded in Sydney. Smaller firms, without the technology and expertise, were now outsourcing work to Imagine!.

  “You shouldn’t be answerable to me,” Simon continued. “And in reality, we both know you’re not.”

  That was true. Simon was Meg’s kind of boss. She told him what she was doing and left it up to him to find the budget, staff, whatever. He rarely second-guessed her. He trusted her intuition, and she had never disappointed him.

  “So what are you suggesting?”

  “That your current position be upgraded to director.”

  “What, I’d be ‘Digital Director?’” She gri
maced. “I don’t like the sound of that.”

  “We’d have to come up with a better title,” Simon dismissed. “But don’t you see, this way you would have equal standing. You’d get to manage every aspect of your own projects and argue for resources on the same level as the rest of us.”

  Meg thought for a moment. “You just don’t want to do my dirty work anymore!”

  Simon grinned sheepishly. “Well, there had to be something in it for me. But it’s a good idea, Meg. You must see the sense of it. And you’d finally get to put that MBA to use.”

  She did like the idea of running her own show. Meg had never been overly fond of the hierarchy of business and had often thought of working for herself. But she’d never got around to it because Simon was such an easygoing boss.

  Not so much these days, she thought, as she parked the car. He was constantly dragging her in for client meetings, or planning sessions, or something else. Today it was a pitch to take on the campaign for the release of a new ice cream. Not exactly earth-shattering stuff, but Simon insisted she had to lift her profile, be seen as director material. Before Harrison was born, Meg could have thought of nothing more exciting. A challenge, a chance to have a greater degree of control, to manage her very own section. But these days she wasn’t so sure.

  It was not as though she wanted to be at home with Harrison full-time. She didn’t have the constitution for that, she’d discovered. Harrison was a relatively easy baby, but Meg had obsessed about his routine, and when she had got that under control, she’d moved on to the housework. She drew up a detailed roster, setting herself daily, weekly and monthly goals.

  The day she found herself spread-eagled on the floor with her cheek flattened against the shiny timber, intent on polishing the kickboards underneath the kitchen cupboards, was the day she knew she had to go back to work.

  But she wasn’t sure anymore that she wanted to climb to the top of this particular ladder. The shiny, hard edge of her career had dulled, merged into the same gray bilge as everything else. Lately Meg didn’t know what she wanted. Even choosing something from a takeaway menu felt overwhelming. She was sick of making decisions and being responsible. She’d had enough.

  Today was a glorious early summer day, Meg noted on her way into the building. The most taxing thing she had planned for the morning was to remember to reapply Harrison’s sunscreen while they paddled on the shoreline down at the cove. She wanted to hold that thought until she was face to face with Simon.

  She climbed the stairs up to his office, her heels clattering on the black metal. Imagine! was one of the most upmarket agencies in Sydney, so their premises had to live up to the hype. They’d fitted out a derelict warehouse in Surry Hills, leaving the rough brick walls with their patches of paint and faded signage. The ground floor remained one huge open space, segmented with partition walls to create the various work spaces. Above, seemingly suspended in midair, were the directors’ offices and a boardroom, connected by perforated steel gangplanks. It had taken Meg a while to get used to all this, and it still gave her vertigo crossing the open space from one office to another.

  Now of course, black metal and exposed bricks were becoming a little passé. The directors had lately interviewed a couple of avant-garde designers and were getting excited about beech veneers, louvred glass panels and bagged brickwork. That would keep them cutting edge until the next trend came round.

  “Meg!” Simon greeted her expansively as she appeared at the door to his office. “You made it!”

  “Like I had a choice,” she muttered, throwing herself onto the leather two-seater. “I’m supposed to be at the beach.”

  “Don’t get comfortable there,” Simon said walking around his desk, ignoring her dark look. “We’re expecting the clients any minute.”

  He put his hand out to her. Meg looked up at him and smiled despite herself. She couldn’t really get mad at him, not for long anyway. Simon Ridgeway was gorgeous. He was impossibly good-looking and always immaculately dressed. He wore a beautiful silk tie over a crisp white shirt every day of the year, turning the sleeves back in summer in precise, even folds. Simon was conservative but classy.

  But the thing Meg liked most about him was that he was so earnest. She had rarely known anyone as decent and genuine as Simon. It set him apart from all the go-getters that littered the industry. She had consequently developed the biggest crush on him when she’d first started working there. Finding out he was gay had been only a temporary setback. She’d decided she would be the woman to turn him around. Lucky for both of them, Chris came along and swept her off her feet, and out of Simon’s hair.

  “Is there coffee?” Meg affected a scowl.

  He nodded. “And friands. I got them specially because I know they’re your favorite.”

  She put her hand in his and stood up.

  “Lead the way.”

  * * *

  Meg sat on Simon’s desk, picked up the phone and dialed Chris’s direct number at work.

  “Chris Lynch,” he answered automatically.

  “Hi, it’s me.”

  “Hello honey,” Chris replied warmly. “Your meeting’s over?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did it go?”

  “They’re launching a new ice cream in competition with Magnum and all the other ones that are supposed to be like an orgasm on a stick. Hey, that’s what they could call it!” Meg threw at Simon who was staring intently at his computer screen, answering e-mails. “Orgasm!”

  He frowned at her before returning his attention to the monitor.

  “Anyway,” Meg continued, “I was thinking, seeing as your mother’s got Harrison, and this was supposed to be my day off, why don’t we do lunch?”

  “Umm…”

  “In fact, we could even take off for the whole afternoon.”

  “What?”

  “It’s Friday, Chris. Let’s start the weekend now. We could—”

  “Honey, you know I can’t just take off like that. I was going to say that I can’t even spare the time for lunch today.”

  “You know the world’s not going to stop because you take a lunch break.” Meg didn’t mean to sound curt, but she knew she probably did.

  “I just can’t,” Chris said, the regret evident in his voice.

  Meg bit her tongue, hoping her silence was uncomfortable for him.

  “It’s beano night tonight,” he said in an attempt to placate her.

  She sighed. When Chris was a kid, Friday night was “beano” night, not that anyone remembered how the term had come about. His dad brought home lollies for the kids, and a bottle of Porphyry Pearl for his mother. They stayed up late and watched Gunsmoke on the telly.

  Chris adapted this when Harrison came along and their social life was somewhat curbed. Every Friday night he brought home a nice bottle of champagne, and oysters or prawns, Balmain bugs, whatever looked good at the fish markets. They watched a video and curled up on the lounge together.

  These days they tended to curl up on separate lounges and fall asleep before the end of the video. Meg had started to get a little bored with beano night. She’d started to get a little bored with everything.

  “Do you want to choose the video?” Chris was asking.

  “No,” she sighed. “You get it.”

  “Any preference?”

  None at all. “No, whatever you think.”

  “Okay then, I’ll see you around six. Six-thirty tops, I promise.”

  Meg hung up the receiver and slumped dramatically across the top of the computer monitor.

  “What’s the matter?” Simon murmured, his eyes not leaving the screen.

  “I’ve got no one to play with!” she pouted.

  “Chris is too busy to get away?”

  “He’s always too busy. You don’t want to come and have lunch with me?”

  Simon shook his head regretfully. “Can’t, love, client lunch.” Then he looked up at her brightly. “You could join us, you know.”

 
That brought Meg to her feet. “No thanks.” She picked up her bag and walked to the door.

  Simon leaned back in his chair. “You could still make it to the beach.”

  Meg shrugged. “Maybe.”

  “Come on,” he cajoled. “It’s a beautiful day out there. The sun is shining on the harbor. You’re in the best city in the world. Life is full of possibilities.”

  “City of Sydney tourism campaign, circa…” Meg thought for a moment. “1996?”

  Simon grinned. “’97 actually. See you Monday?”

  “Yeah, yeah, with bells on.”

  She clattered down the stairs and out into the bright sunshine. So, life was full of possibilities, was it? Funny it didn’t feel that way.

  Bowral

  Ally pulled in through the gates of Birchgrove just after two in the afternoon. The morning had been trying. She’d made it to school early, to get through as much work as she could before classes started for the day. When Mark arrived, Ally went to see him about arranging leave. As soon as he heard about her grandfather, he insisted she finish up and go, he would handle anything still needing to be done. But Ally didn’t want to put anyone out. She never accepted favors easily, it made her uncomfortable. She hated the thought that anyone felt obliged toward her.

  So she’d stayed on, wading through the rest of her marking, organizing her paperwork so that at most, there were only marks to be recorded on the aggregate sheets. Finally Mark had almost pushed her out the door.

  The sight of the colonial mansion, set among Lillian’s beloved gardens, was an immediate comfort to Ally. The Ellyards’ home had been a haven to her when she was growing up. To her childish eyes, it was like a palace. The rooms were enormous, filled with ornate polished furniture, overstuffed chairs and beautiful paintings and ornaments. It was so different from their ramshackle house and secondhand, mismatched furniture.