We Were Not Men

by Campbell Mattinson

  ‘As if you want me to save you,’ she said.

  ‘We all do,’ I said.

  Oranges. She looked up at me then and took me in and she was not casual or pleading but instead she was deliberate. She was like Eden in that she thought a step or several ahead and I had autumn leaves swirling in my mind as she put her mouth on mine. Then came the flood of oranges. Sweet, bitter oranges. Warmed. I kissed her and she tasted of oranges. She did not purse her lips, her mouth was open and moving, and as we kissed the brisk salty air worked into my mouth. The contrast between this cold air and the warm orange spread of her mouth was tremendous.

  When the kiss ended it did only just. There was air between us and nothing else. I felt that her hand had moved and realised that it was now on my shoulder.

  She said, ‘Close your eyes.’

  I said, ‘I want to see you.’

  She said, ‘I’ll close mine too.’

  I said, ‘Have you closed them?’

  ‘Be quiet,’ she said.

  I could hear birds tumbling through the air. I could hear the breeze playing the fence like a wooden guitar. I reached a hand out with my eyes still closed and felt for the onion grass. I rolled a tuft of it in my fingers and it reduced to a seed and as the seed fell back to the ground I heard in my mind the word reap.

  I said, ‘If you were a block of land I’d build a house on you.’

  ‘With a fireplace?’ she replied.

  I figured that I could open my eyes then but when I did I saw that Carmelina’s were still shut. I closed mine again and felt her cheek brush against mine and then her lips were so close to me that my ear felt wet, warm and cold at once. She spoke directly into my ear from a millimetre distance. I could feel her lips move but her voice was so whispered that her words became smudged against my skin. I didn’t react to her words at first because it took time for me to work out what she had said.

  She had mouthed the words ‘I miss my dad.’

  ‘I know,’ I eventually said.

  ‘I miss feeling nervous,’ she mouthed.

  ‘You didn’t hate him,’ I whispered back.

  ‘I might have,’ she said.

  She jolted away from my ear then. She put her hands on each side of my face and kissed me like she was doing eighty in a forty zone. She kissed me and I responded. I remembered what Werner had said about Bobbie and how she had started a sentence when she first met Jack and how that sentence remained open from that moment on. I would have been happy if this kiss was like that. I would not just fall for Carmelina but I would invest my every last cent. I felt already that I’d fallen, that I was taking whatever feelings I had left and was betting them on her. Carmelina held me and kissed me as if she was a scoreboard that could stand tall against the wind. I could look through her and she could look through me. As we kissed I felt the sunlight dim cooler and I remembered that Bobbie had once said that the cold light of day is only ever half of the story.

  ‘Come on,’ Carmelina said. I thought she was going to jump up and lead me somewhere but instead she just leaned in and started kissing me again. I knew that Rena and Minh had kissed for a good long time but I felt as though we had already sped past them. I closed my eyes again and fell into the kiss but at some point I opened them again just like I would when I swam. Over Carmelina’s shoulder I could see a bank of solar panels at the back of the milk bar takeaway shop across the road. I stared at these solar panels with Carmelina sitting close and it felt as though she was a socket or as if I was kissing a power station.

  When it was time for her mum to pick her up I said, ‘Don’t leave,’ even though I knew that she had to.

  She said, ‘We’ll walk slow.’

  ‘It’s solved by walking,’ I said.

  ‘What’s solved?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘The physio used to say it.’

  *

  When I got back to our house off Jubilee Street, Bobbie was on the phone. I had not hurried back. I heard Bobbie ask into the phone, ‘Mazda Mario or Dentist Mario?’ There was a pause and then she said, ‘Tell him to pull his head in.’ As I waited for her I went and stood behind Eden. He was playing StarCraft on the computer. As I watched him I smelled my fingers and they smelled of Carmelina but also of onion grass and seeds. ‘What’s Bobbie going on about?’ Eden asked. Bobbie finished the call and then turned to me and said, ‘It’s only when you’re older that you realise how young you were.’ She went to the freezer and pulled out a packet of frozen pork buns. ‘Three days before your dad died he spent $415 on his teeth,’ she said. ‘Heartless galoot reckons we never paid.’ She was on a roll, no response necessary. She pulled a bottle of white wine from the fridge. ‘Worst kind of dickhead,’ she said as she unscrewed the bottle. ‘A convincing one.’

  *

  I was a swimmer who rarely looked at the time clock. The clock I cared most about was the face and the feel of the watch beneath my pillow. I swam to keep up with Eden, in search of our mum, and then to win. There was a race just after the first time I kissed Carmelina though when I stood on the blocks and looked up at the record board to see where I should aim. I had air in my feet and thunder in my heart. I looked at the Under 13 record and at the Under 14 record and then I zeroed in on the Under 16 record. There was an incremental difference between the first two but the Under 16 record was a light-year jump away, as if twelve-year-olds and fifteen-year-olds were not the same species. For the first time ever, I stood on the block and did not regard or obsess over Eden. I looked down the lane and flopped my arms forward and there was nothing else besides euphoria, the pool and me. The world, Bobbie had once said, is built on the backs of the spurned and the deserted, the lonely and the transgressed. On that day I did not feel lonely, I did not feel spurned, I did not feel transgressed but I did feel in love.

  I leaped from the block and set about building my world into a bigger place. As my feet let go I felt myself soar. The water pulls you back and can be difficult to plough through but the air is free and thin. I remained in the air for longer than normal so that when I hit the water I was already ahead and surging. I had swum many races where I had poured too much power into the first twenty-five metres and so I kept myself measured even though I was flying. I had trained hard upstream and up the channel of The Warmies and my body was like wood. I felt sharp and ready like one of Fuzzy’s spears. I pulled far out ahead and soon the pool felt as though it was my own. When I got to the end of the first lap I was still under control and still had every effort measured. My lead in the race was incredible to me and yet I had designed it. I flipped over to start the second lap and sought out the backwash and surfed it. I flew forward. I remained on the bit, in full control; I raced so smart, I felt brutal. I looked ahead then and the finish line was where I wanted it to be and then I let out the power as if it was easy. I let go. I could feel perfection in the air or my version of it. I was fast. I did not ease up. I smacked into the finish wall as if trying to knock it down. I kept my head down and let the water wash over me but then I curved around and drew my goggles away and beamed in the direction of the clock. I was twelve years old but my face was as bright as that of a little boy’s. Water streamed down my cheeks but I was not crying. I saw the time. I checked the board. I looked back at the time and at the board and I had done the 100-metre freestyle faster than any thirteen, fourteen, fifteen or sixteen-year-old boy at our club had ever done it. I had swum an adult time, a fast adult time. I felt as though I could have swum it just as fast all over again, faster even. I’d swum so high up in the water I’d almost run on top of it. I had kissed Carmelina and I had swum like an adult and my perspective on myself was bending. I got out of the pool and shook the water clear and then looked up towards the stands to see if Mum and Dad were there, because I always did and always would, but instead I saw at the far back that Carmelina was there. She was sitting on her own and she looked huddled, her hands clutching her knees as if sheepish, as if she wasn’t sure if she should be there. I wanted to s
tep towards her but I did not yet have a towel. I wiped the hair from my eyes and looked for Eden and he clapped my hand in a shake and said, ‘Swim,’ in acknowledgement that it had been a good one.

  The president of the club then approached and said, ‘Should we start talking about the Olympics?’

  ‘If you have to ask,’ Bobbie said, approaching, ‘you’re not ready.’

  ‘Ian Thorpe was world champion at fourteen,’ the official said.

  ‘What’d it cost him?’ Bobbie asked.

  *

  On the Wednesday of our final week in primary school I walked out onto the oval with Carmelina. I did not want this day to end but I did not fear that it would. Life as I had known it had rushed away from me in the months after the crash but it was now flowing back in my direction. I was ready for more but mostly I was ready for now.

  I expected that we would sit against the grey weatherboard fence and that we would kiss again and that we would both be hungry for it. We stepped onto the oval but instead of walking then, Carmelina grabbed my hand and urged me to run. The grass on the oval had not been cut but it had been watered and although it was mostly pale there were patches of green. I stumbled as we ran and when I looked down I saw that a clutch of seeds, burrs and grasses had tangled in the flap of my shoelaces. We reached the unfinished scoreboard and Carmelina dropped my hand and ran straight up the leading arm of it. I hadn’t yet added a score from our last swimming race and I wasn’t in a hurry to. When Carmelina reached the top crossbeam she stopped abruptly and I didn’t bump into her but I stopped right up close. She looked down and I thought she was going to jump but then she turned to me and reached both hands out to hold mine.

  ‘It’s too high to jump,’ I said.

  ‘Listen,’ she said.

  ‘I’m puffed,’ I said.

  ‘I keep needing to run,’ she said.

  ‘I want to kiss you.’

  ‘Listen,’ she said again.

  She blinked then but not fast, in fact quite deliberate and slow, as if her eyelids were swallowing. At that close distance her eyelashes looked dark and long. The birds were not tumbling and the wind was not blowing and there were clouds and probably even shadows.

  ‘It’s Eden,’ she said.

  I looked for him in her eyes and then realised that she could see past me. I turned to look and she was right, it was my twin brother. He was running. He had shorts on now and a singlet and he must have changed clothes immediately on getting home. We swam and we boxed, we rode our bikes and dragged wood around the farm, but we did not run as part of our training.

  ‘Is that your dog?’ Carmelina asked.

  Eden was a distance away but the sun caught the sweat on his shoulders and made him shine as though he’d been lacquered.

  ‘She was our grandpa’s dog,’ I said. Hemi was with Eden and she was not on a lead but she bounded along beside him.

  ‘Don’t give up hope,’ she said.

  ‘I won’t.’

  ‘Promise me,’ she said.

  ‘I promise,’ I said.

  ‘Okay.’

  I did not know what I had promised but I thought that I had promised myself. I waited for her to say more or for her to make a promise too. She did neither. She looked out at Eden as if he was a puzzle and then she turned back to me. She did not kiss me. I felt her hands grip tighter on mine and then I saw her lick her lips as if she was nervous.

  ‘I can hear the sea,’ she said.

  I thought of how Eden had upped his training without me. I thought of the grand scale of the scoreboard we stood on and how it was unfinished and how it always would be. I looked at Carmelina. She had run across the oval on our final Wednesday of primary school as if she was desperate to break free of it. All I wanted to do was linger. I knew that I had not saved any matches. I had not paced myself with Carmelina in the way I had learned to in races.

  I remembered then that exact moment when her father thudded to the floor of the souvlaki shop. I thought as we stood high on the unfinished scoreboard that she was the only one who could really understand me. I hoped that I was the only one who could really understand her. At the bottom of despair there’s an energy well and I thought Carmelina and me were huddled together there.

  ‘I can hear a train,’ I said.

  ‘You promised,’ she said. She said this as if we’d argued, though we hadn’t. She said this as if she was slipping away somehow, though I couldn’t believe that she was.

  I should at that moment have asked her if she was okay. I should have known that something was wrong or was about to be. But instead I leaned in to kiss her. She accepted my kiss but only briefly and without enthusiasm. She kept her face close to mine. She was so close that I couldn’t properly focus and so it almost looked as though there were two of her.

  ‘I can’t see you,’ she said.

  I went to look into her eyes but they were closed. I felt colder then, suddenly. The sun was still high, three-quarters to the west, but it had slipped behind the tall end pillar of the scoreboard.

  ‘I can’t see you,’ she said again, and when she did I reached up and put a hand on her shoulder for no reason other than to steady. I pushed myself slightly away, trying to focus. I couldn’t work out whether she’d emphasised the word see or the word you. I was certain that she would look up at me then but I looked and her eyes remained closed. Mum would always look at me and respond when I needed her to look at me and respond. When Carmelina eventually did open her eyes the sun popped out the other side of the pillar and fired light back onto us. I turned to see if Eden and Hemi were still visible but they were long gone. I wanted to get off the scoreboard and back onto the ground. But Carmelina pulled me closer to her again. I felt her breathe as if she was drawing me in.

  ‘I can’t see you,’ she said for a third time, less pointedly now and softer too, as if in apology. ‘I can’t say why but I just can’t,’ she added. She looked at me full on then, from close range. This change in tone sent panic into me like dye, as if less volume was more. I saw my reflection in the corner of her eye and I did because a tear had formed there. I peered into this tear as though I was peering into the front seat of our car that night it was can-opened to the sky.

  I squandered this moment. I was about to fall from a cliff and I didn’t know to reach out. I was in a pool with Carmelina but no matter how fast I swam I couldn’t get onto the same lap with her, though this realisation came to me too slow. I could feel that I’d gritted my teeth and I tried to relax my teeth by focusing on my jaw. I concentrated on my teeth and my jaw instead of jumping up and down or doing what I could to stop Carmelina from sliding.

  Before I had a chance and before I even knew, Carmelina grabbed my forearm and pushed my hand into her school pants. We were at the end of it but we were still in primary school. I didn’t think we should be doing this although I couldn’t have explained why not. I wanted to keep Carmelina and me for good as if we were a pair of new runners. I kept my hand where she had placed it but I kept my hand dead still. I had my hand inside the pants of Carmelina and I was thrashing through life as if it was a hurry but I didn’t want to be. Carmelina sensed this and lowered her eyes. The tear squeezed free. She changed the shape of her lips, not, I don’t think, in disappointment but I couldn’t rightly tell. She was acting as though she was scared but I couldn’t tell why or who for. Carmelina took my hand from her pants then. She kissed me, not for long but with more enthusiasm, more force, more meaning; she kissed me as she had a week ago, though still now it felt more rushed and it did because it was.

  She turned away quickly then and stood side-on with her back to the school. She paused but only briefly. ‘I just can’t,’ she said again. She jumped from the scoreboard. Her mum usually waited for her at the front of the school but her red car was now parked just past the see-saws at the end of the vacant block. Carmelina hit the ground and stumbled but only slightly. She was light on her feet, capable. She ran like she needed to. With each stride her pink sho
elaces flashed and caught the sun. In a few seconds she’d be in her mum’s car and gone. I wanted to chase after her but I couldn’t. The sun was now well clear of the scoreboard post. It beat hot on the side of my face. I wanted to jump down and rub out the scores I’d marked against Eden as if suddenly they didn’t matter. Carmelina kept running and she didn’t turn around and I was defined at birth and then again by the accident but as she slipped away I could feel myself being defined again, by her leaving. She stepped into the car and it disappeared and with no one around I remained standing on top of the scoreboard that my dad had half-built. I wanted to yell something at the emptiness but I had nothing, though later I wished that I’d called out ‘I’m not a charity’ because that was the fear that flooded into me then.

  *

  Eden took things by the scruff of the neck and if I’d been like him I would have been better.

  I arrived home and Hemi did not bound towards me and I knew they must still be out running. I changed out of my school pants and was about to put on running shorts when instead I pulled on a pair of skinny jeans. They wrapped my shins like cling wrap and made me feel hemmed in. I slipped onto the computer but instead of StarCraft I skimmed through news pages. I was hoping for a message from Carmelina. I rarely read the news but as I waited for Eden I found a report on swimmer Kyle Chalmers and another on Katie Ledecky. I saw a story about two teenagers who had been found dead in the boot of a wrecked car. I thought of Werner as I read of the optimism of cyclist Richie Porte in his bid to win next year’s Tour de France. I heard a noise from outside and went to the window but Eden and Hemi were still not home. I made a Salada biscuit with butter and Vegemite and then skimmed a story about children and the internet and how we needed to be protected from ourselves. The machinery of these assorted stories was bigger than my brain could handle. Bobbie came in and asked, ‘Have you seen the good scissors?’ Eden had gone out running without me and Bobbie had made no comment, even though we always trained together. Eventually I went out to the back garden, to Mum’s old vegie patch. It wasn’t yet Christmas but her basil had already started to seed. I got the hose and turned it up high and sprayed water all over our mum’s garden.