‘It’s me,’ he said.
I waited, not wanting to ask. I had kept my sort-of promise to Ingrid and told Ralph – warned him, as though delivering a bad weather report – only a week before.
‘Fuck,’ he said now.
‘We’ll go together,’ I said finally. ‘It’ll be OK. Are you home? I’ll come over.’
‘Fuck,’ he muttered again, and, ‘Great, great, come on over.’
We didn’t mention the invitation until the end of the night, two movies and two bottles of wine later. Ralph had seemed sober when I arrived, though later it became apparent that it had been shock and the calming effect of gin. He cried at the end of The End of the Affair. I regretted my choice of film.
‘We’ll go together,’ I told him again. He sniffed and smiled wanly. ‘You’ll have to help me find a frock to wear,’ I warned. At this he brightened slightly.
I finished my wine and took the glass to the sink, a little unsteady on my feet. The invitation was there on the kitchen counter, tasteful RSVP card on top with boxes to tick for vegetarian or kosher meals, just like an airline. I found a pen and made a cross through the box marked ‘attending’. Ralph’s name was written at the top of the card in a careful, anonymous, calligraphic hand. I sealed the card into its little envelope and held it.
She’s happy, I thought. He’ll see. And then she can go back to bloody New York.
I touched my hand to the top of Ralph’s head as I came back to the couch.
‘I’ll post this for you,’ I said, and put the envelope into my bag. Ralph stared blankly at the television screen. ‘Come on,’ I said, and sat down. ‘Let’s watch TV.’
Five minutes later he was snoring. I left him there and went home.
They would stay for one week only, Ingrid told me on the phone two days before they arrived in Sydney. I offered to help this time, knowing it was too late.
‘If there’s anything I can do. Anything last minute. Did you get the peonies?’
‘Oh, the peonies were for New York. Vicky’s doing the flowers for there. I think there’ll be orchids. Tropical something.’ She sounded unenthusiastic. ‘Ralph’s coming, I’m so glad,’ she said.
I told her that we were coming together and that I was bringing Mark. She hadn’t met him yet.
‘I’m married!’ Ingrid said suddenly. ‘It’s really true!’
‘Yes. Should I call you Mrs Grey?’
Ingrid laughed, and I liked the sound of it, and missed her suddenly.
Her laugh ended like a sigh. ‘No Mrs Grey. Mrs Holburne-Grey, with a hyphen. Ms,’ she said, buzzing the zed sound of the word. ‘The hyphen is the thing here. I could have just kept it the same. But I wanted it to be different.’ Her voice grew more intense. ‘I wanted it to be something different, not just the same as it was before. It is a change.’
She sounded suddenly thoughtful. ‘I’ll have the same name as Fleur. The same last name, almost the same.’
‘Is she coming with you?’ I asked.
‘No. She’s with friends of hers in London, friends from school, they’re here with their parents. She’ll meet us in New York.’ ‘Oh.’
‘It is weird to be a stepmother,’ Ingrid said, exaggerating the word. ‘But she doesn’t hate me.’
‘Good, I suppose.’
‘She likes me.’ Ingrid sounded surprised. ‘I like her. We like each other. She’s actually quite shy. And she’s a total genius. A genius.’ She laughed again. ‘It sounds silly, doesn’t it? But it’s really true.’
I could picture her clearly, sitting and leaning against the wall as she did on the phone, twisting the cord around her fingers. It was probably a cordless phone over there. Static crackled down the line. I wanted to hear her laugh again, but couldn’t think of what to say to evoke it. Say something, I thought, something to tell me you are happy. She sounded happy about Fleur.
‘The line’s quite bad, isn’t it?’ Ingrid said. ‘I’m starting at Columbia just a couple of weeks after we get back. I can’t believe it. I’ll be a student again.’
It was late at night in Sydney, and early morning where Ingrid was calling from. I yawned.
‘It’s so late there!’ Ingrid exclaimed. ‘I’m sorry!’
I had been twisting the cord of the phone around my own finger in imitation of Ingrid’s gesture. My hand stilled. I was sitting on the bed in my room, legs up on top of the covers. My dress for the party hung over the back of the old school chair at the desk. I reached out and ran the fabric between my fingers, the dark blue of midnight, the sapphire blue of a stone. It felt like water between my hands, covered in tiny black beads like little rocks.
‘Did you like the teapot?’ I asked.
The teapot had seemed like the thing that Ingrid would most like from among the many items on the extensive wedding registry. It was fat and round and blue like lapis lazuli.
‘The teapot?’
‘The blue one …’
‘Oh, are you talking about a present? I haven’t seen any of them. I can’t wait – they’re all waiting for us in New York. We can finally finish setting up the flat.’ She corrected herself. ‘The apartment. It’s seemed quite empty since we moved in. That was ages ago, before the wedding. But the decorators will be finished when we get back and then we can move the presents in.’
It was the first she had said about decorators. She had told me about the apartment, a vast space overlooking Central Park on the West Side. It had levels – staircases within it, an unthinkable luxury. Ingrid talked now about antique tables as I wondered about staircases and how high the ceilings reached.
We said goodbye. The receiver clicked down at the other end and I unwound the cord slowly from around my finger. It had left faint marks.
Ralph wasn’t answering the phone the night before the party. I tried a last time before midnight.
‘Give up,’ Mark said, pulling his T-shirt over his head, as I was leaving a message on the machine. ‘For fuck’s sake.’
‘I am giving up,’ I said. I looked at the phone. ‘I give up.’
Mark’s bedroom was small, a square with a wardrobe jammed in the corner and just enough room to walk around the bed. I lay down and stared at the ceiling. ‘Let’s get there early tomorrow, when we pick him up, in case.’
‘Fine,’ Mark grunted.
We got there just on time in the end. I was surprised to see him dressed and shaved when he opened the door.
‘You’re early,’ he admonished me, and smiled. ‘Where’s Jenny?’ he asked, tapping a cigarette against the back of his hand.
‘Not coming.’ My aunt was in Melbourne for the opening of some show.
‘Oh. How is she?’
‘Fine.’
‘Nice suit,’ Mark offered. He didn’t much like Ralph, but had a grudging respect for his sense of style.
The suit was beautiful, pale like candied honey. It made me think of Ingrid’s note that had come with the photos, stained with its circle of wine. It didn’t look like a colour that would withstand much in the way of wine stains. Mark’s own outfit was surprisingly good: a dark blue wool suit he had pulled with a flourish from a corner of his wardrobe. It was perhaps the first time I had seen him out of jeans. We matched, almost, with me in my midnight blue dress. The beads itched when I moved. Mark was admiring the stitching on Ralph’s cuffs.
‘Ralph, I like your dark suit better,’ I tried.
He laughed, a quick bark. ‘Hey, it’s a party, not a funeral, right?’ He winked at Mark.
He met my eyes and I felt a small chill seeing what was there, and then I saw the colour of his skin that the honey suit was doing its best to tone up. It looked as though you could push a finger right through to the bone. His hands trembled as he straightened his collar.
‘How drunk are you?’
He smiled and took my arm, and spoke calmly. ‘Would you like a Xanax? Mark?’
Mark turned his head, considering.
‘No!’ I slapped Ralph on the arm, harder than I h
ad meant to. ‘Ralph, you’re a mess when you drink with those. Jesus.’
The apartment was in more disarray than usual, as though the site of a struggle or half-hearted burglary. Small shards of glass lay broken on the fireplace grate at the end of the room.
Mark’s hand was already out. I sighed. ‘OK, give me one.’
Ralph pulled the silver strip from his pocket and popped a small pink tablet into my hand. ‘And one for later.’ He winked again.
‘Stop winking. The cab’s waiting outside,’ I said.
A piece of late afternoon light came through under the lowered blinds at the window as the sun moved to a new angle. The room brightened in that one corner. I smoothed my dress down.
‘Tally-ho.’ Ralph gestured widely to the door. Mark’s hand in the small of my back pushed me out.
A chill wind was blowing as we arrived at the place, a vast glass restaurant at the end of one of the old piers on the harbour. By the time we all got out of the cab the drugs were working and my limbs felt smooth and slowed down, as though we were moving through a thick, viscous liquid.
The room was respectably full of people, gathered in small groups around a centrally placed long table. Ingrid’s eyes were bright when she saw us, spots of pink high in her cheeks. She stepped away from Grey, leaving him talking to someone else, and walked towards us.
‘You’re all here!’
She embraced Ralph quickly before he had a chance to say anything. He had managed to get a glass of champagne before we had even crossed the room and he held it awkwardly, tipping it as one arm gripped her shoulder and the other arm circled her waist. His lips brushed her ear and paused to whisper something, and the look in her eyes was hard as she pulled away, her smile just slightly broken.
She moved towards me. Her eyes were brighter, with the start of tears in them, quickly blinked away. She pressed her cheek to mine. ‘Thank you,’ she murmured. ‘Thanks for coming.’
In one corner a trio played mournful-sounding jazz: an upright bass, a muted saxophone and a black grand piano. The musicians looked at the floor or the instruments of the other players, and not at the guests.
I found myself talking to a former lecturer of mine and Ingrid’s from art history, and that conversation seemed to melt away, and I didn’t know the people in front of me, and wasn’t sure if I was part of the conversation or not. Mark came into view at the edge of my vision. He was seated in a corner deep in conversation with a girl who looked almost too young to be drinking, and he was refilling her glass from a bottle. The girl said something, her eyes wide and earnest. Ralph appeared then in front of me, pulling a drink from a passing tray. A cigarette hung in his fingers and the waiter with the tray looked at it and said something cautionary, which Ralph ignored.
‘How’s it going?’ I asked. My voice sounded as though it hadn’t been used in a while. ‘Do you want to go outside with me and smoke?’ A long balcony stretched the length of the place, smokers dotted along it. The lights of the far shore blinked across the water.
‘No, I’m fine,’ he said calmly. His eyes had a sleepy glitter that scared me a little. He drew on his cigarette and wobbled slightly and looked away.
When would we eat, I wondered. Small pastry parcels and towers constructed of cucumbers floated on trays somewhere across the room. I looked at the long, white table and wondered if we would ever sit down or whether we would all stand here all night, eating tiny morsels and drinking until we couldn’t stand up any longer. Apart from Mark, with his bottle and girl and chairs in the corner. A tall potted palm now hid him from view. I turned around and was soon explaining to a man with an undefinable accent how I had met Ingrid. The lift of his eyebrows made it seem as though he was unconvinced – by Ralph’s relation to her, or my relation to Ralph, I couldn’t tell. He looked at me in apparent disbelief – why, I wondered, did it sound so unlikely? Ingrid’s sister, Victoria, walked past and I grabbed her arm.
‘Victoria! I was just telling. just telling about how I met Ingrid.’
Victoria looked at me briefly with plain contempt and said, ‘Yeah.’ She flicked her long hair over her shoulder and turned a brilliant smile on the man with the lifted eyebrows. He kissed both her cheeks – they seemed to know each other – and I felt again as though I were standing at the margins. This was better than being the object of narrative doubt. Over in the corner behind the potted palm the bottle was there, empty on the floor under the chairs against the wall, but Mark and the girl were not. I saw him then, coming out of an unmarked door near the kitchen entrance, no glass in hand. By the time he made it over to me he had two, and pressed one into my hand, and kissed me on the neck.
He clinked my glass with a quick smile, and said, ‘Hi, I’m Mark,’ interrupting Victoria and shaking her hand vigorously.
‘Your fly is undone,’ I said.
He turned to me and clinked my glass again while zipping with the other hand. Victoria walked away, hand raised to summon a waiter with a tray.
‘What happened with that girl just now?’ I asked him.
Mark took a sip from his glass and met my eye for a second before his glance slid away, and as it did his arm went around my waist. ‘You are way off,’ he hissed. ‘How much have you had to drink?’
I clinked my glass against Mark’s again, and realised it was empty. Just get me something to eat,’ I said, and turned away.
Ingrid stood near the musicians at the end of the room, talking with a group of people, one of them a young girl who looked only ten years old, her hair a shiny black curtain down her back. Ingrid’s dress was a long shift of pale blue, thick watered silk, her hair golden against it. The summer sky, I thought, and smelled the smell of cut grass right through the air full of wine and the salt of the harbour. Ingrid stood with one arm bent in front of her, clasping the other by her side. I felt a twinge of memory, and thought of the days in the past when Ingrid would have stuck together with me at parties like this, when we would have been the ones with a smuggled bottle getting drunk and giggling in the corner, and I would have been the one to have fumbled sex with someone else’s boyfriend behind an unmarked door.
Ingrid caught my eye and smiled, and before the smile there was something else, something of my own instant of sadness reflected there, and something else again. She came over and touched my hair hesitantly, and drew her hand back. Her mouth opened and closed and I finally made out words, about the party and the water outside, and nodded.
‘Do you have a cigarette?’ Ingrid asked in a pretend whisper. ‘Let’s go outside.’
I didn’t have cigarettes.
‘We’ll find some,’ Ingrid said, and pulled my hand along towards the doors.
‘I have Xanax,’ I offered, and Ingrid laughed.
The air was cold outside and Ingrid lit two cigarettes for us that she took from an older woman going inside, who kissed her cheek and pressed a hand to her face.
‘Who are these people?’ I asked.
Ingrid looked offended. ‘A lot of people came over from Perth and WA,’ she said. ‘You know, friends of the family. You wouldn’t know them.’ She smoked as though she had been getting a lot of practice. ‘And there’s all these people from uni – not everyone could make it.’
I looked back inside and saw faces familiar from lectures and the university bar and the parties with Ingrid I had been thinking of earlier. Mark was talking to another woman with wide eyes. Where did he find them?
The balcony over the water stretched and wrapped around the building, made with big, uneven slats of salt-bleached wood.
‘Do you remember those parties?’ Ingrid asked. She looked over the water, away at something in the distance.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I was just thinking about them.’
I reached out for Ingrid’s glass, having lost my own between inside and outside, and drank, and handed it back. She was drinking water, cool and sweet.
My memories seemed very loud compared to the stillness of the night and the quiet between t
he two of us, and I wondered if Ingrid was thinking about the same times. There had been a tiny kitchen with fluorescent light in a house lit with candles, ferociously loud music coming from a stereo that managed to be noisy despite being moved out into the front yard. Every inch of counter space had been covered with coloured plastic cups, and a bottle of green liqueur with an unpronounceable name was the only thing left to drink apart from Guinness. There was the smell of toast. Ingrid, finding bread, and butter in the fridge (otherwise filled with Guinness), and buttering the toast, laughing breathlessly as she held the knife, her eyeliner smudged and running. The comforting taste of burnt bread, and our shudders at the green liquid.
‘It’s all a blur,’ Ingrid said happily.
My memory clouded too, then sharpened. Ralph appeared in the fluorescent kitchen brandishing a bottle of gin. Applause. Blur.
‘I remember it,’ I said. ‘Do you remember the kitchen, the time you made toast?’
Ingrid’s face was doubtful, then she smiled. ‘Oh, the toast.’ She passed her cigarette from one hand to the other. ‘I think so. There were a few nights ending with toast, I think. Are you talking about Terry’s party?’
I frowned. There was a memory of sleeping in someone’s bed and waking up with toast crumbs on the sheets but it may not have been Terry.
‘No, it was me that slept with Terry,’ Ingrid said, answering my thought. ‘It was his house with the toast though.’
We were quiet as we finished smoking.
‘What are you going to do here, Julia?’ asked Ingrid, leaning back against the balcony rails with her arms folded.
I shivered. ‘What are you going to do there, Ingrid?’ I asked in turn.
Ingrid scowled and turned away. There was no possibility of a conversation like the others we had shared just after the engagement, when her face had glowed with excitement, about the marriage, art, love, study, the city, everything. All of it.
The Legacy Page 14
