It's Not All About YOU, Calma!

by Barry Jonsberg

  Eventually, Vanessa opened her eyes and let her breath out in one long, slow exhalation. I didn’t say anything. I knew there was a routine we had to go through first. Vanessa continued to take deep, deliberate breaths, her diaphragm swelling like that guy’s in the first Alien movie, just before something nasty erupted from his rib cage. A low hum issued from her nose. This was some kind of mantra. It might have been ‘Om’, but I don’t have Vanessa’s fluency in meditation-speak, so I can’t swear to it. I continued to wait.

  Finally, her eyes lost their hypnotic glaze, she shook her head slightly and Vanessa was back on the plane of existence where she could communicate with the unenlightened. She brushed her long, fair hair back from her face, pale freckles framed by two straight, shining curtains. ‘Hello, Calma,’ she intoned.

  I say ‘intoned’ not because I want to be arty-farty, but because Vanessa’s voice never expresses much in the way of emotion. It was like one of those computer-generated simulations of human speech that invests as much excitement into ‘Today is Sunday’ as ‘Woohoo! I’ve won twenty-four million dollars on the Lotto!’Vanessa’s voice always gave the impression that communication was something she found tiring. You wouldn’t be surprised if she had to take a nap after the exertion of a complete sentence.

  ‘I’ve got a boyfriend,’ I blurted out.

  Okay, this wasn’t quite the way I had practised breaking the news. I’d intended leading up to it gently, throwing it in casually when the opportunity arose.

  [‘It’s funny you should bring up refugee-internment, Vanessa, because I was just saying to Jason yesterday . . . Jason? Haven’t I mentioned Jason to you? Good heavens, mind like a sieve. He’s just a guy who finds me irresistibly attractive. I’ve agreed to go out with him this week. It was easier to agree than listen to his blubbering and pleading. Anyway, he was gazing up at me adoringly – you know, drinking in every word – and I said, “Jason, the thing about this Government’s policy on refugee status . . .”’]

  I hadn’t meant to give the impression that a date with a guy was something totally unexpected, like the reappearance of the Tasmanian Tiger. Blew that, big time. It was all I could do to stop myself bouncing up and down on her bed, clutching my hair in both hands, shrieking incoherently.

  Vanessa raised one eyebrow two microns and I knew she was shocked to the core of her being.

  ‘A boyfriend?’ she said, with as much emotion as if I had dropped in the current state of the Dow Jones index. ‘Why?’

  ‘What do you mean,“Why?”’ I said. ‘What kind of a question is,“Why?”How about,“Who?”or,“Dish me the dirt, girlfriend?”’

  ‘Hmmm . . .’ said Vanessa, uncurling her legs with the speed and elegance of a spreading flower. ‘Let’s have a cup of dandelion tea and you can tell me about it.’

  It was a long sentence for Vanessa and it obviously took a lot out of her, because five minutes elapsed before we made it into the kitchen.

  Mrs Aldrick prepared tea and put out a tray of cheese, rice crackers and seedless grapes. I offered to help, but she twitched manically as if I’d suggested initiating a nuclear strike on North Korea, and scuttled off with little whimpers of anxiety. Vanessa and I sat at the kitchen table and picked at the food.

  I ran through the events of the previous day, with considerable emphasis on the conversation with Jason. To be honest, I indulged in a certain amount of editing. I mean, would you admit to that embarrassing soccer stuff? So I cleaned up the story, recast it to some extent, so I was a touch more charming, witty, ever-so-slightly more in control.

  Okay. I told a pack of lies.

  Vanessa listened. At least, I think she listened. She could have fallen asleep, but I don’t think so. She was nibbling on a cracker, slowly. It took ages to disappear. It was like watching the erosion of a sandstone cliff. Vanessa doesn’t eat much, but then again she doesn’t have to. That one cracker would balance out the calories expended in an average day and still leave room for fat storage.

  I finally finished my little tale, giving prominence to Jason’s physical attractiveness, and waited for Vanessa’s response. I didn’t know what to expect. Vanessa had never shown any interest in boys and I didn’t know if this was to conserve energy or because she genuinely didn’t like them. The most reaction I had ever seen was when she curled a lip fractionally at the footy-kicking drongos in the schoolyard. But where she stood on the issue of boy–girl romantic entanglements – it was a closed book. So I was curious.

  ‘He’ll want sex,’ she said finally.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Sex. He’ll want it.’

  ‘Oh, my God,’ I yelled. ‘You can’t be serious. Sex! Who’d have thought it? Boy meets girl, and the next thing you know sexual attraction is involved. What am I going to do? Get the mace out! Call the vice squad now! Sex!’

  Mrs Aldrick poked her head around the door. It was probably the first time she had heard the word ‘sex’ yelled in her kitchen and she wasn’t responding well. But she disappeared quickly, a small tuft of grey hair wafting in the breeze and floating slowly to the floor.

  Vanessa continued to stare at me. She treated sarcasm the same way she treated a snarling dog. If you ignored it, it generally lost interest and wandered away to urinate on a telephone pole.

  ‘They’re only interested in one thing,’ she said, unembarrassed by her lack of originality.

  ‘Jason isn’t,’ I replied. ‘He’s interested in soccer as well.’

  Vanessa sniffed.

  ‘Oh, come on, Nessa,’ I said. ‘You’re behaving like a grandmother.’ I was tempted to tell her about the condom-buying geriatric, but didn’t think it would go down well. ‘I mean, what about your whole sixties thing? I thought you were into that era. Well, they invented free love. You couldn’t sit next to someone on a bus in the sixties and not have sex with them. No one got any work done because they were at it continually. Rabbits were feeling sexually inadequate in comparison.come on!’

  ‘Just be careful. That’s all I’m saying.’

  To be honest, Vanessa had taken the gloss off my news. I knew she wasn’t going to shriek with joy, but I hadn’t expected such a damp-squib reaction. It made me depressed. I wanted a little enthusiasm and now I felt like I had gone to confession and needed to recite two hundred Hail Marys. Even a ‘That’s nice’would have done. I felt cheated and resentful.

  I made my excuses and left. I hadn’t intended staying long anyway, on the grounds that it was unlikely I’d hear my phone ringing from a distance of half a kilometre. I plodded home in the blazing sun, but it felt like I had a small black cloud attached. Nothing gets under Vanessa’s skin. She always keeps calm. It’s one of the things that annoys me the most about her.

  The Fridge had gone and she hadn’t left a note to say anyone had rung. I checked the answering machine. Nothing. I tried the last number function on the phone as well and drew a blank.

  It was 2.33 pm precisely. No problem. I’d do some reading. There was no point just hanging around waiting for the phone to ring, like a complete loser. I wasn’t one of those sad people who mope, dependent upon others for their state of wellbeing. No, I was a busy person with demands on my time. Things to see, people to do.

  But what if Jason had lost my phone number and was even now desperately trying to track me down? Maybe he had been mugged on the way home from work and his wallet, with my number in it, had been snatched. Perhaps he was somewhere saying, ‘I don’t care about the credit cards and the two hundred bucks, but Calma’s phone number is an irreparable loss.’ Maybe he was frantic with anxiety.

  Eventually, at 2.35 pm, I rang him.

  We arranged to go to the movies on Friday.

  I forgot to stay mad at Vanessa.

  Chapter 7

  Keeping the Fridge up to speed

  Dear Fridge,

  I am writing this slowly because I know you can’t read fast.

  It is spring in the Antipodes and the sap is rising. I am not referring to your ex-hu
sband, incidentally. No, I am merely identifying the season and its signifiers: primal juices are abundant within nature, new shoots appear, blossoms unfurl. So too beats the primeval rhythm within the human breast, a beat to which I am not immune. In short, dear Fridge, this Friday evening I am following the well-trodden path of romance, whereby a young English gentleman, the classically-named Jason, with accompanying Greek God looks, will escort me to a place of entertainment and possibly thereafter to realms of amorous bliss.

  Thought you should know.

  Love,

  Calma

  Dear Calma,

  About time you got a date.

  Incidentally, it might be spring where your young man comes from, but in the tropics it’s too bloody hot for rising sap, new shoots or unfurling blossoms. Sorry to be practical.

  Have a great time on Friday. Watch those primal juices. Haven’t they told you about them in Health Education?

  Love,

  The Fridge

  Chapter 8

  Finding the Fridge is a fibber

  The Fridge was up to no good.

  Now, this might be news to you, but I have a reputation as an amateur sleuth. Not an undeserved one either, if you’ll forgive me inserting my own trumpet and giving a resounding rendition. Call it a gift, but I can spot duplicity [what a brilliant word that is!] from twenty kilometres without a road map. I can smell a lie. I can taste a half-truth. I’m allergic to deception. I’m part bloodhound. In fact, only last year I helped solve the mystery of the unmuzzled Pitbull . . . but that’s another story and I don’t want to revisit it.

  Anyway, it was but the work of a moment for me to piece the parts of the jigsaw together and come to the conclusion that the Fridge was telling me whoppers. However, the pieces of that jigsaw came in subtle ways. And the problem I’ve got is how best to tell you the details without boring you senseless. You see, if I’m going to be honest, the separate events are not, in themselves, ipso facto, of stunning dramatic quality. No corpses in the shed to mysteriously disappear. Not a sign of daubed, bloody and cryptic messages left in the middle of the night on the front door. Not even the merest insinuation of enigmatic, swarthy strangers with Middle Eastern accents.

  Bloody boring, in fact.

  Plus, the evidence accumulated gradually, over days.

  So . . . I’ve decided you are going to have to do some work as well. Don’t worry, it’s not physically demanding. All I ask is that when you see the word FastF™ [Calma Harrison, patent pending] on the page, then you mentally press the fast forward button on an imaginary remote control. Listen, use a real remote control if it makes you feel better, but not much is going to happen – unless you’re reading this when the rest of the family is watching a movie, in which case you’ll find your popularity suddenly plummets.

  It’s a narrative device I’ve just invented, where we can skip the dull bits of normal existence and focus on the relevant stuff. I can tell you’re dubious, but give it a go. Okay?

  Let’s practise.

  Well, it’s Sunday night and getting dark. The rain is coming down like stainless steel rivets and the tree frogs are carrying on like foghorns. I think I’d better do that homework . . .

  FastF™

  Slap me round the face with a wet fish! It’s Monday morning and my homework’s done. The sun is boiling the bitumen and . . .

  Get the general idea? Okay. Let’s give it a go with ‘The Strange Case of the Dissembling Fridge’.

  I told you earlier that the Fridge was out when I got back from Vanessa’s on Sunday afternoon. I didn’t give it much thought. She’s always out, doing one of her two jobs. She works in a supermarket in the next suburb. It’s a better one than Crazi-Cheep. They’ve got two muzak CDs and they can spell the name of the store properly. Positively up-market. You can grind your own coffee, whereas at Crazi-Cheep the only grinding option is your teeth. Anyway, she does strange shifts in the supermarket.

  When she’s not there, she’s at her other place of employment – the casino on the Esplanade in the CBD. She used to work in a pub, but got tired of the relentless insults and sexual harassment. And that was just from the other employees. So now she deals cards for grim-faced tourists who, even when they win, look as happy as if she was performing a colonic irrigation on them. The hours are weird there, too.

  Look, all this is just background information. If I was wondering where the Fridge was on that Sunday afternoon I probably assumed she was at one of those places. Actually, I wouldn’t have given it a moment’s thought. After all, I had arranged a date with Jason. I was basking in a mellow glow, almost certainly humming Kylie Minogue songs while skipping blithely through the garden, scattering rose petals. The Fridge was not high on my list of priorities.

  There weren’t even alarm bells when Mr Moyd from the casino called. For a moment I thought it might have been Jason ringing back, just to hear my voice, and I got to the phone before it had rung twice. Mr Moyd, an American with an accent you could sharpen a cutthroat razor on, asked me to pass a message to the Fridge. It went something like: ‘Tail yer Mom that aim shoor sorry thet she’s failing seek too day. Ai hev gotten coveh for hair sheeft tonite, so she musn wurry. Send mah baist re-guards.’

  Even without the benefit of subtitles, I got the gist. The Fridge was crook and had the evening off. Selfish and preoccupied as I was, I forgot about it in an instant . . .

  FastF™

  Monday afternoon and Jupiter must be in conjunction with Saturn or something, because when I get home from school, the Fridge is parked in the kitchen. Next to the fridge, actually. We pass a few pleasantries.

  ‘How was school today, Calma?’

  ‘Crap. How was work last night?’

  ‘Ditto.’

  ‘You in again tonight?’

  ‘Leaving in five minutes. There’s a casserole in the oven.’

  ‘I’ll take a shower first.’

  FastF™

  I’m standing in the shower, trying to cover myself completely in soap suds, when a small, niggling thought at the back of my mind bursts through to consciousness. Mr Moyd. The message. What’s going on?

  FastF™

  It’s late at night and I can’t concentrate on maths. Actually, that’s a normal state of affairs for me, but this time I have a reason. The Fridge told me she was at work last night, but Mr Moyd specifically said she hadn’t been in. If she had chucked a sickie, then where had she gone?

  I ring the casino. She isn’t in. Reception tells me she has rung in sick again and won’t be in until Friday. I hang up and return to the maths problem on my graphics calculator. It has something to do with box plots, statistical functions and standard deviation distribution graphs. Don’t worry. It doesn’t make any sense to me either. Anyway, the only standard deviation I’m worried about is the one involving the Fridge.

  FastF™

  It’s late Wednesday afternoon and the Fridge is leaving the house just as I’m coming in from school. She is carrying car keys and a vexed expression. I get between her and the driving seat. I had been tempted to leave a note, but decided against it. If something funny is going on I don’t want to give her the chance to polish a lie. I want to look her in the eyes.

  ‘Where do you think you’ve been, young lady?’

  Actually, I don’t say that. I want to, mind. I want to stand there, hands on hips and a pissy look on my face, like I’m getting in serious preparation for parenthood.

  ‘Mr Moyd from the casino rang on Sunday. He said you had called in sick. And you weren’t in Monday night either. What’s going on, Mum?’

  The Fridge looks at me and I think I detect a shiftiness in her eyes. It might be annoyance at running late, though. I can’t be sure.

  ‘Caught me wagging, Calma?’ She is trying to lighten the tone, but I’m having none of it. I give her my steely gaze.

  ‘Look,’ she says. ‘I had to work at the supermarket on Sunday and Monday. I’d double booked myself, but I couldn’t tell the casino that, co
uld I? So I threw a couple of sickies. Shoot me! Now I’m sorry, Calma, but I’m late and unless you get out of my way, I’ll drop you with a karate chop to the neck.’

  It sounds reasonable. The explanation, that is, not the threat of mindless violence. I stand aside and she drives off. I feel easier in my mind.

  FastF™

  It is Friday evening and I am waiting outside the cinema for Jason. I’m tingly with nervousness, scanning the crowds of people, looking for his face. I am thirty minutes early and worried I’ll seem too keen. I tried to be late. My brain had issued firm instructions to the rest of my body that a lateness of at least ten minutes was required, on the grounds that this would ensure Jason would be tingly with anticipation and scanning the crowds of passers-by for my face. Unfortunately, the rest of my body had performed a bloodless coup and propelled itself to the cinema with unseemly haste.

  I see the Fridge.

  The cinema is part of a large shopping and entertainment complex. There are many restaurants and bars. I catch a glimpse of a woman’s face as she enters a restaurant. She has her back to me and is partly obscured by passing traffic. But she turns her face briefly to the side and smiles at someone next to her. I can’t see who it is. It is over in a flash, a fraction of a second, a single frame in the spool of time. Too quick to be sure.

  But I am sure. It’s the Fridge.

  I move towards the restaurant, but Jason separates from a crowd and I stop. It wouldn’t take much to go over and check, peer in through the window, but suddenly I’m scared of knowledge and its implications. I smile at Jason and we collect our tickets.

  FastF™

  ‘Did you have fun last night?’ says the Fridge. ‘And why are you wearing that towel around your head?’