‘And who is Celeste exactly?’
‘Celeste? Celeste is Celeste. A school friend. An old school friend.’
I followed my mother as far as her bedroom, lingering at the door while she removed the towel from her head and used it to dry her hair in a careless fashion. The room, spacious and with vertical blinds, was dimly lit. In one corner golf clubs and a tennis racquet were propped against the wall. The unprepossessing single bed was perfectly made. And the bedside table, the only other furniture in the room, was devoid of books or a lamp. I wondered at the new interest in sport, and what had become of my mother’s classics.
Content to leave her hair somewhat damp, she led me back through the apartment towards the kitchen. Celeste certainly had money. The basics—the carpet, furniture and fittings—were all modern and expensive-looking. Yet on both floors, over all this, or rather, built into it, was a curious addition: art. Bizarre works of art caught my eye at every turn. Celeste was an artist who chose as her palette the most mundane, everyday items available to her. In one room there was a vacuum cleaner with a thick skin of condoms, all in fluorescent, transparent wrappings; in another, a lamp made of tightly woven twigs. In the kitchen the fridge had been turned into a skyscraper, complete with lit windows and tiny business people working at cluttered desks. Even Celeste’s dog, a Great Dane which carried itself around the apartment like a stallion, often breaking into a canter, wore her art, its thick collar studded with old bike pump valves.
‘I like it,’ I said uncertainly.
‘Do you really?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Then you shouldn’t say you do. That’s a bad habit. It’s hard enough working out what you do and don’t like in this world without lying.’
‘That’s a very serious thing to say. You sound like Dad.’
‘Well, in many ways your father’s a smart man.’
We brewed coffee and, blowing steam from the tops of our mugs, stepped onto the second-floor balcony. A view of the front yard greeted us, the shed’s aluminium roof barely visible through thick leaves.
‘She’ll be deaf soon,’ my mother observed, nodding towards the shed. ‘Already I have to shout at her. But she only enjoys music when it’s loud. It’s been that way as long as I’ve known her.’
‘Why isn’t there any art in the front yard?’ I asked. ‘Compared to inside, there’s nothing. Only that path and the crazy old gate.’
‘It’s what Celeste calls her “Pretty Much Normal Zone”. If she has to entertain people who can’t appreciate what she does with her life—and there are more than a few—she does it in the front yard. She rarely invites people inside the house. Not unless she’s opening it up to the public for an exhibition, and I can’t remember the last time she did that. All her shows have been failures. Newspaper people get in and they find it too easy to mock. If you ask me they’re scared, but—’
‘Scared?’
‘Scared to like it. Or maybe it’s just no good. I really don’t know.’ My mother withdrew a pack of menthol cigarettes from her jeans, unwrapped it, checked under the lid for a number, then selected the corresponding cigarette, counting her way from the front left filter. She had always been superstitious about which cigarette to smoke first, fearing cancer, and it pleased me to see this superstition remained. I looked her over as she lit up.
My mother might have been a little heavier, but not overly so. Her greying hair had the same severe style it had had all my life, administered with a hand mirror and sewing scissors, and her jeans were still faded and frayed from overuse. In fact, the only real difference was her skin. Previously dry, pale and often besmirched by acne, it was now clear and moist. There were three sharp sunburn lines —one just above the collar of her singlet and two halfway up her arms. The long forearms, toned and coated with fine, almost white hair, were deeply tanned. I pictured the golf clubs and racquet in her room, so alien to my understanding of her.
‘Must be nice not to have to sneak out for a cigarette,’ I said. My mother smiled and nodded.
‘It is, though I’m smoking too much now.’
And here the conversation stalled. From our vantage point we could make out the tops of trucks passing on the opposite side of the wall. One or two belched smoke and I followed a burst up into nothingness. Somewhere off in a side street schoolgirls were laughing.
‘Are you angry with me?’ my mother asked finally.
‘Angry? No, I don’t think so.’
She rubbed the back of my head with her free hand, roughing up my hair. She had a beautiful face. Most of it was her smile, but there was something more. She was one of those lucky women who aged gracefully no matter how little sleep she had, or how stressful her daily routine. Though not without wrinkles, my mother’s face still held a certain youthfulness from every angle, impossible to define because it had no substance beyond an impression. Even her hair, the colour of cold ash, did nothing to age her.
My mother smoked calmly. Whereas my father had been eager to speak, she did not appear to need to. I could not be sure, however, as I found her difficult to read. She had become impossibly complex in the space of a few years: more like me, with hopes, miseries, strengths, weaknesses, convictions and doubts all suddenly on display. Before, she had been my mother—nothing more, nothing less. Now she was human and flawed, confusedly looking for happiness. I felt scared for her, and the realisation was as unwelcome as it was unsettling. I had never worried for a parent.
‘What’s Celeste doing with those can-openers?’ I asked.
‘No idea. You never know until she’s finished.’
‘Was she always like this?’
‘No, I don’t think so. To be honest, I didn’t know her well at school. She only attended for a while. The middle years. We were awful to her. And people were probably awful to her family, too, because they went back to Japan and she finished high school and university over there. She only came back here when she was in her forties, after a messy divorce. That’s when we met up again, realised we’d been in the same year. She has three grown children I’ve never met.’
‘How long will you be staying with her?’
‘As long as she’ll have me. I’m her chef. It’s a live-in position.’
I felt, hearing this, an obligation to ask, ‘Did something happen?’
‘With your father? No.’ My mother butted out her cigarette forcefully, squashing it into her coffee cup. ‘Nothing ever happened.’
That night at dinner Celeste took a long time to settle. She kept pulling her shirt out from between the three neat rolls of fat circling her stomach.
‘Thinking,’ she kept saying to me. ‘Still thinking about openers. Thinking, thinking. Sorry. Must not, I know. But what to do, what? So many fucking openers.’ She asked for ideas (which we gave and were rebuked for), and only began to let go of the topic after a third glass of wine. ‘Aha!’ she shouted at one point, banging the table. ‘That’s it! I’ll take them apart, then put them together, but all mix up.’ Her face dropped. ‘No, no good.’
‘Celeste, Noah is living in Japan, remember?’
‘I remember. Of course I remember.’ She turned on me and spoke in rapid, flowing Japanese. Sentences leapt from her, all tumbling over one another. The speed of them marked such a change from her halting English that they sounded beautiful—free. I tried to understand, to pluck words like tadpoles from this stream but they slipped past, hiding among one another. Embarrassed, I had to ask for a translation.
‘I don’t know,’ Celeste said with a smile. ‘In English, I don’t know. Fucking very difficult.’
‘Have you made many new friends over there?’ my mother asked somewhat optimistically. I nodded, then followed this nod with a shrug. My mother knew of my tendency to avoid people, to remain on the periphery, watching. But clearly she hoped Japan had cast a social spell. I thought about explaining the truth: that Japan had only removed the guilt of isolation, not solved it. Whereas once I had felt awkward and alone ami
dst my family, my school and hundreds of others with my skin tone, my accent, my exact eye shape and colour, in Japan I was an outsider by default. It was automatic. Japan expected nothing from me. No laborious introductions, no ritualised meet and greet, no chitchat, nothing with subtle layers of judgement leading to exclusion, since there was no club in Japan I could ever plausibly possess the requirements—blood, language or profession—to join. Which meant there was no need to feel rejected. It had taken a year in my cocoon of an apartment to learn to pass through Tokyo like a stray animal, interested only in myself, to realise all communication with non-fluent English-speaking Japanese people was (despite occasional pangs of guilt at my lack of effort) perfunctory—more an exchange of sounds than words—and to see foreigner friends as a simple convenience. Outside our homelands, none of us cared who we surrounded ourselves with. I would never have befriended Phillip in Australia, nor he me. But I feared any attempt to explain that my isolation no longer wounded as it once had, that I was at ease with it, would sound callow—or worse, callous. I dared not—even to this new mother—say I had emerged caring only for myself.
To my relief, my mother let the topic drop and went to collect plates. It had not been my intention to stay for this meal, or to stay the night, and I felt trapped, but Celeste had talked me into it. ‘Tomorrow,’ she had said, ‘maybe your mother is dead. Cold as pebbles, and you say, “No! Not my mother? How? I did not stay with her!” ’
So now I sat feeling out of place and uncomfortable— like Australia was the foreign land, like I had left home rather than returned to it. My mother put down the dinner plates one at a time, playing both chef and waitress.
‘For you, sir,’ she said, before circling the table to Celeste. ‘And you, madam. We can’t forget you.’
‘No,’ said Celeste. ‘Or I stomp.’
My mother had prepared a rather conservative dish; it seemed there was only room for one artist in Celeste’s house. Nevertheless it was cooked to perfection. We ate in near total silence, savouring each mouthful, until Celeste asked me, ‘So … you have girlfriend, Little Dips, no?’ She was chewing with her mouth wide open. I could see yellow capsicum and bean mush churning inside, like clothes in an industrial dryer.
‘I do,’ I said.
My mother put down her knife and fork, the latter still laden with food. Their soft clank against the plate sounded ominous, but her voice was happy, surprised.
‘Really?’ she asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Love or lust?’ Celeste wanted to know, causing me to laugh nervously.
‘What?’
My mother groaned. She glared at Celeste, who eagerly topped up my wine, eyes alight. She made sure to get every last drop from the bottle, our second for the evening. In the centre of the table, three stout candles flickered and blurred.
‘Love or lust?’ Celeste asked again.
‘I’m not really sure I can answer.’ This sidestep, articulated carefully for fear of slurring, sounded cold. I glanced towards my mother and added, ‘Or maybe love, I guess.’
‘So no lust, ne,’ said Celeste, shovelling more food into her cavernous mouth.
‘What?’
‘It’s not a bad thing, Noah,’ said my mother, ‘assuming the two are mutually exclusive, which is what Celeste believes.’
‘It’s not a good thing, also,’ said Celeste, stabbing skyward with her fork.
I had the impression I had been nudged into an ongoing, private debate. Celeste, never taking her eyes off my mother, shrugged.
‘Maybe I am wrong,’ she said. ‘Do you feel lust, Little Dips? Tell me.’
‘I’d rather not say.’
‘More wine!’ Celeste stood and walked to the kitchen, still chewing. Moments later I heard a cork pop from its bottle. My mother and I waited in silence.
‘So?’ asked Celeste, returning, a third bottle of wine held high as if maybe she intended to put out a fire with it. She had removed her jumper in the kitchen and her T-shirt revealed ample, fatty bosoms, bouncing with every step and sagging, udder-like, as she moved to sit down.
‘I feel lust, yes,’ I said, voice level.
‘You do?’ asked Celeste.
‘Yes.’
‘Good,’ she said. ‘You are a man in this case, and honest.’ She poured out wine for herself, urged me to drink, then offered the bottle to my mother in a casual, sweeping fashion. It was a token gesture because she set the bottle down before my mother could decline.
‘But now,’ Celeste said, hardly able to stay in her seat, ‘be sure, Little Dips. Lust. Do you feel this for the girlfriend? What’s her name?’
‘Matilda.’
‘Like the song?’
‘Like the song.’
‘Okay. So, do you feel lust?’
‘I said I did.’
‘Just yes or no, ne.’
‘Yes.’ I reached for my wine and took two gulps, disguising them as one. Celeste, glass to her lips, sipped steadily. Finally she said, ‘Then there is no love for Matilda, no?’
‘What?’
‘No love. Lust equals no love. Love equals no lust—for men. Sometimes women too, I think, but that’s different.’
When I looked to my mother she only shrugged.
‘What if I feel love and lust?’ I asked.
‘Not possible.’
‘Why? How do you define love?’
‘Love? When lust goes away, when it drops dead but you stay together, because apart is too difficult. Simple, ne.’
‘And lust?’ I asked, a little awkwardly.
‘Always want to fucking. Always. Morning, noon, afternoon, dusk, night, dawn. One, three, six, eighteen times a day. Never leave the hotel. Sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, and then more sex. If you are in lust this is your life. The life you have before this you think is death. You never want to be out of lust again. But you must.’
‘And what then? What comes after lust?’
‘After lust? There is love or nothing. And you are still in lust, so no love yet. Or maybe ever.’
Before I could retort (if I could have retorted) my mother cut in. ‘Celeste’s definitions are black and white. She has a low opinion of certain people and matters. She’s inclined to voice this dissatisfaction in the guise of healthy debate. So if I were you, Noah, I’d either tell her to mind her own business or find some way to change the topic.’
‘Actually,’ I said, struck by my mother’s unruffled calm, ‘I’m tired and a little out of it.’
Celeste’s face had turned nasty and her eyes hung on my mother’s nose. The two might well have been cheating at cards.
‘I really need some sleep,’ I added, ‘because tomorrow I’m going to visit this girlfriend.’ The declaration came as a surprise even to me. But now that it was a plan and not just an idea, now that I had set a date, it felt right. Celeste’s house was no more relaxing than my father’s; everyone was wrapped up in the one event, like tangled wool. I worried, far from unravelling anything, that I would only make matters worse. At least I could talk to Tilly. ‘She’s in Australia and …’ My drink-sodden head spun and my voice trailed off. I stood, picked up my plate, then put it down again. ‘Thanks for dinner, both of you. It’s been nice meeting you, Celeste. Where should I sleep?’
Celeste waved an arm off behind her, eyes still on my mother’s nose. She took a sip from her wineglass, then toyed with a napkin, twisting it and letting it spin back out. Both the glass and the napkin blurred and multiplied.
My mother, having watched all this, now rose. ‘I’ll show you the way to the guest room, Noah,’ she said. ‘You look a little sick.’
At ten the following morning, having spent most of the night vomiting, I dragged myself into the kitchen. My mother offered to drive me to the station and five minutes later we took Celeste’s Saab. It had that distinctive new car smell which, like everything else this particular day, made me nauseous. My mother never once searched for gears or needed to fiddle with the radio to find music. It was as
if she had owned the car all her life.
‘By the way, I think this is great news,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘About Matilda. Ignore Celeste.’
‘I liked Celeste.’
‘I’m glad, but she has her moments. Does Matilda know you’re visiting?’
‘No.’
‘No?’
‘She doesn’t know I’m in Australia. I never told her.’
My mother ran water up onto the windshield—the pump humming somewhere beneath the bonnet—then flicked the wipers. Bug intestines streaked and faded as the song ‘Karma Police’ rolled into ads on a commercial radio station. I watched the stereo’s digital columns jump and fall in time to a man shouting about furniture. Mami’s matching hotel lamps came to mind.
‘You look worried she’ll tell you not to visit,’ my mother said.
‘What?’
‘Matilda.’
‘I don’t know that I’ve thought that far ahead. Maybe. But she’s still sharing a room with me in Japan.’
‘Is she? So you’re aiming to surprise her?’ My mother shot me a sideways glance. She reached into the glove compartment for a cigarette, depressed the dashboard lighter, and lit up. Acrid smoke filled the cabin, killing the new car smell.
‘That’s about the size of it,’ I said.
‘Where does she live?’
‘Down in Gippsland somewhere. In the country. I’ve got the station name in my wallet.’
‘Then I might as well take you to Flinders Street Station. That’s where you’ll go from.’ Without warning my mother checked her rear view, then yanked sharply on the steering wheel. Like a cat being stroked the car could not have been happier to have some real attention. Four small bumps—tram tracks probably—caused my head to loll. The city, visible off in the distance, entered an unregulated spin. And when we pulled out, facing entirely in the opposite direction, I threw up.
Somewhere behind us a car tooted.
‘Sorry,’ I said, watching a puddle of watery vomit sink into my lap, as if through a sieve.
‘Nerves?’
‘Very funny.’
Tuvalu Page 9
