It's Not All About YOU, Calma!

by Barry Jonsberg

  That left my clothes. I could go for the bold approach. Trousers, waistcoat, maybe even a tie. Too sexually ambiguous, I decided. Or there was the feminine angle – print dress, soft, flowing lines, complemented with chunky Doc Martens. My head could act as another stylistic counterpoint at the other end. Too schizophrenic? And what about my head itself? Should I go out bare-headed, scalp gleaming in the light of streetlights, or would a scarf be better? Maybe a floppy hat? Could I keep it on throughout the movie? Dubious. With my luck, I’d sit in front of a dwarf and be forced to remove it. No, there was no way I could go the entire evening without Jason finding out. What if he tried to run his hands through my hair during the film? I could imagine his scream when he discovered he was fondling a boulder.

  I had made little headway on the thorny problem of appropriate dress when I heard the Fridge leave, about three-thirty. The front door slammed and there was a crunch of tyres on gravel. I waited ten minutes before I went downstairs. I’d seen too many films where an unsuspecting bald heroine had been caught by sneaky decoys like that.

  I got to the front room and the phone rang. It was Candy from Crazi-Cheep.

  ‘Hello, Calma?’ she said. ‘I was wondering if you could work tonight. We’re short-staffed again.’

  ‘I can’t, Candy,’ I replied. ‘I’ve got a bone in my leg.’

  There was a five second pause.

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ she said. ‘Hope you’re better soon.’

  I put the phone down and the doorbell rang. Typical, I thought. For hours, the Fridge is home and open to the public and nothing happens. As soon as she leaves, it’s open house. I snuck over to the curtains. I might have mentioned already that the view from the window is not perfect, but this time I was lucky. Swirling paisley material and a glimpse of long blonde hair told me Vanessa was at the door.

  I didn’t hesitate. I unwrapped the towel from my head, raced to the front door, opened it sharply and went, ‘Boo!’ Vanessa screamed. The look on her face was priceless. I was making a habit of getting a reaction out of Nessa these days. She stood stock still for a moment, eyes glazed, her mouth describing a perfect little ‘O’. If I’d tipped her forehead with my finger she’d have gone over like a felled tree.

  ‘Wassup, Nessa?’ I said. ‘Care to come in and give my skull a buff and polish?’

  And then she started to laugh. Really laugh. Laugh in a way I’d never heard from Vanessa before, as if an internal barrier had been breached and what was bubbling up was fresh, pure, unstoppable. I couldn’t help myself. I laughed too, bent double, tears running down my face and threatening to wash my contact lenses into the welcome mat. We held onto each other, lungs struggling to get air, pain like a sharp band along my side. Laughing.

  Fact File

  Common name: Vanessa Aldrick

  Scientific name: Hippius Noncommunicado

  Habitat: This creature spends most of its time asleep to conserve energy. Can occasionally be seen searching through sad racks of clothing in op-shops or in the folk section of record stores.

  Mating habits: Unknown. Scientific studies are proceeding.

  Appearance: Brightly coloured, the Hippius Noncommunicado is nonetheless a retiring creature. Favours loose-flowing, garish plumage and is renowned for its inability to evolve.

  Distinguishing characteristics: Normally unresponsive to human contact, but is loyal and supportive if treated with patience and kindness.

  Status: Possesses hidden depths while appearing barely sentient.

  Sometimes, you think you’ve got someone pinned down and classified and then they leap up and surprise you.

  Vanessa came into the house and disappeared off to the toilet, pleading a severely weakened bladder. I heard her giggling from the front room. I wiped the tears from my eyes and a thought skittered across my mind. Was this why I liked Vanessa? Because I could sometimes provoke such reactions from her, though her natural tendency was towards gloominess? Was she merely a mirror I held up to my own wit? It was an uncomfortable thought and I put it to one side. I’d take it out later, when I had time, and examine it. It occurred to me I was doing that a lot recently, postponing stuff. Was I a procrastinator? I’d think about it tomorrow.

  When Nessa came out, we sat on the couch and I told her about my disastrous trip to the hairdresser. I didn’t even have to exaggerate for comic effect. The truth was bizarre enough. I set her off laughing again. I liked it when Vanessa laughed. She got all these sparks in her eyes. Her smile injected her face with life. She looked beautiful.

  It was a pity she looked like that so rarely. Nonetheless, I reflected, she had come a long way since primary school, when a smile from Nessa coincided with the appearance of Halley’s comet. I liked to think I’d helped her in that regard. Since we’d become friends she smiled much more frequently. Vanessa had also been disastrously accident-prone. She missed heaps of days from school and would come in with bandages and sticking plasters up her arms. Fell off her bike, slipped in the shower. But not since we’d teamed up. I wasn’t sure how to put this down to my influence, but I was prepared to accept the credit.

  ‘Listen,’ she said after I finished the sad and sorry tale of my tonsorial misadventures. ‘I’m going to the movies tonight. I swear to God I’m not going to check out Justin.’

  ‘Jason,’ I said.

  ‘Whatever. I’m spending the weekend with Dad and I don’t want to get to his house too early. I need to kill some time.’

  Nessa, like me, was in a single-parent household. Unlike me, however, she had a father who showed interest, so every month she’d spend the weekend with him. I got the impression she wasn’t keen on it. She never talked about him, for example. Mind you, she rarely talked about anything so I suppose that wasn’t a clinching argument. It was just a feeling I had.

  ‘Do you want to come with Jason and me?’ I asked.

  Her eyes widened in surprise.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Not at all. I just told you, in case you spotted me and thought I was spying on you.’

  ‘Good,’ I said. ‘I wasn’t going to invite you, anyway.’

  I smiled when I said it, though, and she knew I was joking. Her eyes sparked briefly.

  ‘Just as well you mentioned it, however,’ I continued. ‘You’re right. I might have come to the wrong conclusion if I’d seen you in the next row hiding behind a maxi popcorn.’

  Vanessa left about ten minutes later. She had to pack for her weekend stay. She touched me on the arm when we got to the front door.

  ‘I hope you have a great time tonight, Calma,’ she said. ‘Really. And I’m sorry I was such a loser when you told me.’

  ‘Hey,’ I said. ‘Forget it. And give me a hug.’

  In the end, I decided on a simple outfit. Long blue fisherman’s pants, a white halter-neck top I had been saving for a special occasion and black leather thongs. I checked in the mirror and was pleased with what I saw. Mind you, what I could see wasn’t crystal clear. Those damn contact lenses were still giving me grief.

  Oh, and I wore a dark, floppy hat. Very floppy.completely spineless. The hat, not me. Well, me as well, when I come to think about it.

  I set off very early for the date. I hadn’t intended to. 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, 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 saw the Fridge.

  The cinema was part of a large shopping and entertainment complex. There were many restaurants and bars. I caught a glimpse of a woman’s face as she entered a restaurant. She had her back to me and was partly obscured by passing traffic. But she turned her face briefly to the side and smiled at someone next to her. I couldn’t see who it was. It was all over in a flash, a fraction of a second, a single frame in the spool of time. Too quic
k to be sure.

  But I was sure. It was the Fridge.

  I moved towards the restaurant, but Jason separated from a crowd and I stopped. It wouldn’t have taken much to go over and check, peer in through the window at the customers, but suddenly I was scared of knowledge and its implications. I smiled at Jason and we collected our tickets.

  From: Miss Moss

  To: Calma Harrison

  Subject: Sonnet

  Calma,

  I’d like you to try a Shakespearean sonnet! As you know, the sonnet form is [essentially] fourteen lines of iambic pentameter, with a specific rhyme scheme. The Shakespearean form has a rhyme scheme of ababcdcdefefgg – in other words, you finish with a rhyming couplet. Have a look at Shakespeare’s sonnets – you will already be familiar with a good number, like sonnet 18, ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day’ – but don’t be put off. I’m not expecting work of his standards!

  Write about a person who is, or was, important to you [we might as well keep to the subject matter that old William was obsessed with].

  All the best,

  Miss Moss

  When Kiffo died

  Some things are best forgotten, mother said:

  When spinning days are steeped in pain enough,

  Why resurrect what’s buried in the head?

  But if we can’t forget... that’s when it’s tough,

  When images revolve against our will

  And in our dreams press heavy on the eyes –

  A red-haired boy, a car, a bike, a spill

  Of earth and sky, a crumpled form that lies

  Beside a road. The imprints of these things

  Are stamped upon my mind. I see again

  His hair, his freckled face and memory brings

  The dead to life, refreshes like the rain.

  When Kiffo died I knew I’d lost a friend.

  I did not know the void would never end.

  Chapter 13

  Just your average date, part two

  Jason was drop-dead gorgeous. He was wearing dark canvas chinos and a collarless cheesecloth shirt. My head broke into a sweat as soon as I saw him. He smiled and I worried that a thin sheen of perspiration would slide from under my hat and baste my face, like those portable water features.

  If Jason noticed anything about my head, he didn’t say anything. The hat I was wearing was floppy all right, but close examination would reveal an absence of tresses flowing down my back. I tried to keep facing him. He’d find out soon enough, but I wanted to be in control of the timing.

  We picked up tickets. He paid, thank God, and I didn’t protest too much. Independent creature though I am, the fact that my bank account held one dollar and twenty-four cents militated against chipping in. Jason suggested we have a drink before the film started, as we had forty-five minutes to kill, and I was happy with that. For one thing I wanted to get the revelation over with as quickly as possible. If he hated my scalp there was still time to call the date off. I didn’t want to be sitting next to someone in the cinema and know he would sooner have his toenails ripped out with red-hot pliers than be seen there by any of his friends.

  It was getting to make-or-break time.

  We sat down outside Giorgio’s, a little Italian coffee shop on the outskirts of the mall, and ordered two hot chocolates. Jason wanted to sit outside to smoke and I didn’t object. If you were going to do a grand unveiling, then it was fitting to do so in front of the entire city. Maybe there’d be speeches and ribbon-cutting.

  ‘Love the hat,’ said Jason. God, his eyes were gorgeous.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said. I took it off.

  There were gasps all around. Traffic screeched to a halt. Passers-by stopped and stared. The only sound was of jaws hitting concrete and the smash of coffee cups as twenty waiters dropped their bundles. A caged galah in the shop window fell off its perch.

  Actually, I’m not sure any of that happened. It might have been my imagination. You’ll have to use your judgement.

  Certainly there was a lull in the conversation. Jason froze, the cup against his lips, a thin smear of hot chocolate giving him an artificial moustache. Actually, it looked cute. Finally, he put the cup back on its saucer and wiped his top lip.

  ‘You’re bald,’ he said.

  ‘There’s not much that gets past you,’ I replied. ‘What gave you the first clue?’

  Jason: It suits you. [You look like a bouncer. ]

  Calma: Do you really think so?

  Jason: Sure. It’s distinctive. It’s different. [It’s shit. ]

  Calma: I like to be individual.

  Jason: Did you get it done for Shave for a Cure? [Or am I dealing with someone who’s two sandwiches short of a picnic?]

  Calma: Yes. A spur-of-the-moment thing. I thought, ‘Hell, why not?’ It’s for a good cause.

  Jason: Nice one. [I’ll create a diversion and make a run for it. With luck I’ll be able to shake her off after a couple of kilometres. ]

  Calma: I thought you might hate it.

  Jason: Of course not. [Of course I do, you bald drongo. ] It was just a shock, that’s all. [To find I was dating an extra from Lord of the Rings. ] Actually it accentuates your features. [Who was that bald guy in The Addams Family?]

  Calma: Is that good?

  Jason: Absolutely. [Not. ]

  You see, part of the problem is that when someone is saying all the right things, you don’t know if they are saying all the right things because they feel they need to say all the right things or whether they are saying all the right things because they are the things they want to say.

  Do you see what I’m trying to say? It’s a tricky one.

  And then I got the answer. Jason laughed. He tried not to. In fact, he was taking a sip of his chocolate and he ended up inhaling part of it. So he’s there, spluttering with laughter and asphyxiation and that started me off. Some people at adjoining tables laughed as well. It was infectious. And I knew it wasn’t malicious laughter. You can tell these things. Jason was laughing because he was happy to be there. So was I.

  It took a few minutes to recover. Just when we thought we had it under control, we’d start again. Eventually, though, we got a grip.

  ‘So you don’t feel like you’re on a date with Uncle Fester, then?’ I said.

  ‘Hey. One of my favourite characters. Honest, it looks wicked. David Beckham in his shaved phase.’

  ‘And that’s a compliment, is it?’

  ‘They don’t come much higher.’

  It was such a relief. I mean, I had done that rationalisation business about shallow people judging on superficial appearances, but it would have hurt if he’d left me there at a coffee shop, all bald, dressed up and nowhere to go. And if I was honest, I had to look at it from another perspective. What if Jason had turned up, radically different from what I had been expecting? What if he’d had a huge boil covering part of his face? Would I have laughed it off, or would I have visited the ladies, climbed through a back window and slipped off into the night?

  I think I know the answer, but you can’t tell for sure unless it happens.

  We talked and he was really good company. I like the British sense of humour and he had it in spades. All the magazines I’ve ever read said a sense of humour is the biggest turn-on for women. I think that’s true. It’s certainly true when you’ve got a guy with a sense of humour and the kind of looks that turn your legs to jelly.

  The start time of the film was approaching and I got up. Jason put a hand on my arm.

  ‘Can you sit down a moment and tilt your face towards the tablecloth?’ he said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘There isn’t a mirror around and I need to check my hair.’

  Bastard.

  I really liked this guy.

  The film was pretty good. It had pirates, which is always a positive sign, and the swashbuckling was awesome. There was scarcely one swash that didn’t get a damn good buckle before the final cr
edits. You can divide pirates into two categories, I decided. There was your heart-throb pirate with flashing teeth, bulging biceps and full tights and your unsightly pirate with missing limbs, decaying teeth and speech impediments.

  I tell you. If you were a pirate in those days and couldn’t afford decent private medical insurance you were in deep shit.

  Anyway, like I said, the film was fun. It didn’t stretch the mental faculties, but the special effects were good and few people of my acquaintance judge the quality of films by any other criterion. I saw Vanessa. She came over during the previews and asked if I’d put my hat on, since I was dazzling row H. Everyone’s a comedian these days. I introduced her to Jason in a whisper and asked if she’d like to meet up afterwards, but she said no. She was going straight to her dad’s place. I have to confess I wasn’t disappointed.

  When the film finished, Jason asked if I’d like to go to a club or something. I didn’t. For one thing, the lightness in my purse was getting to me and I felt uncomfortable about Jason paying for everything. Anyway, I wasn’t in the mood for flashing lights and loud music. I had visions of standing in the middle of the dance floor, my head acting like one of those suspended disco balls. To be honest, I just wanted something quiet, so I suggested a walk.

  We strolled along the banks of the river that runs through the CBD. Plenty of people were out. It was Friday night, after all, and the riverside was the hub of social life in my city. The weather was mild. The river glittered under streetlights and a nearly full moon shimmered on its surface. Knots of people sat looking out over the city or laughing and chatting in cafés. We didn’t say much. At one stage, Jason held my hand.

  We sat on a bench overlooking the water, his knee pressing against my leg. I suddenly felt nervous. Jason squeezed my hand and turned towards me.

  ‘Calma?’ he said, looking intently into my eyes.

  ‘Yes, Jason?’ I whispered, desperately trying to keep blood from flooding my face. I’d read somewhere that Indian mystics can control metabolism by sheer willpower. If someone can slow their heartbeat to three beats a minute, then surely I could stop a blush in its tracks? There was silence for ten loud heartbeats – about four seconds. I lifted my face to his and closed my eyes.