Monkey Grip

by Helen Garner

  ‘Did you tell him how you’d been feeling?’

  ‘Yeah – on the way home.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘Oh, he hung his head, and said, “I suppose I was just trying to drag you into my sexist fantasy – I wanted to show you off to my friends”.’

  ‘Jesus, he must be a bit wet behind the ears.’ She pulled down the corners of her mouth. ‘But at least he saw what he was doing.’

  ‘But wouldn’t you think I’d see what I was doing?’

  ‘Don’t worry!’ she said, starting to grin. ‘You’re not the only one. The other night I went out with this guy – we were in my car, and he actually put it on me to let him drive.’

  ‘You’re kidding.’

  No! He just didn’t like to be in a situation where I was in control.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Well, I let him. I sort of wanted to see how far he would go. He started by making some casual remark about Volkswagens, how he always forgot to put them into top gear; and then he drove off round the Boulevard, to show what a great driver he was.’ Paddy raised her disdainful eyebrows, still half-smiling. ‘He was driving at an immense speed in third gear, and I pointed out, quite politely really, that it might be a good idea to change into top. “Oh!” he said, “fourth in a VW is really an overdrive.” Well, he could be right, I suppose, but . . . he wanted to drive handsomely – you know – scarf flying. Even my buying the ice-creams later was not quite right. And yet the thing was – he was putting himself across as one of us – into politics, teaching at Preston and being radical about that, living in Fitzroy’– she made an ironic grimace.

  ‘None of that means anything,’ I said gloomily.

  ‘Y-e-es . . . well . . . one wonders sometimes, doesn’t one . . .’

  ‘I wonder sometimes if we ought to be giving men a miss.’

  She laughed. ‘Oh, I don’t know.’

  ‘But to be perfectly honest, I’ve got no plans to do that.’

  ‘Neither have I.’

  On the contrary, two mornings later I was crawling round Gerald’s ankles outside the kitchen door, letting down his jeans.

  ‘If anyone from the women’s centre saw me doing this,’ I said, ‘my reputation would be shot to pieces.’

  He clicked his tongue in pleased exasperation. ‘I don’t even think it’s necessary. They were all right before.’

  ‘They weren’t. You look a dag with your pants flapping round your calves. Don’t you want to be cool?’

  ‘What does it matter?’

  ‘Well,’ I mumbled out of the corner of my mouth past the row of pins, ‘ultimately, of course, it doesn’t; but the world being as it is, one may as well strive for a little elegance of line, don’t you think?’

  ‘No, not really. But go ahead.’

  ‘Go on, admit it. You love it.’

  He laughed.

  ‘Turn round a bit – not too far! Back a bit.’

  He shuffled round in his boat-shaped Adidas runners.

  ‘And you need some new shoes.’

  ‘Lay off, will you? These are OK.’

  ‘I don’t want to walk down the street with a dag like you!’ I grunted crossly, and thought involuntarily of Javo, who never gave a moment’s conscious thought to his clothes but carried off the most appalling, smelly rags with casual flair. Comparing again. Vain and silly. But I went on folding and pinning, and turning him around.

  Joss rang from Hobart.

  ‘This is Joss,’ he said in his slow voice, offering me the gift. I wanted it, but had lost the grace to accept.

  I streamed drunk and stoned in at my bedroom door, Gerald one step behind me, at four o’clock in the morning: the air in my room was dense with Joss’s unexpected presence. Blown it, blown it. I retreated in panic, took the wrong option, made a mess of it. I lost my chance. My city skin had closed up tight again, like stretched canvas. I was unable.

  The telephone rang and rang, next day, with business calls for Nick who was out trying to score. Joss sat, puzzled, at his corner of the table, the ugly no-neck cat on his knee.

  ‘Please. Will you come and walk in the park with me?’ I begged, almost in tears.

  ‘Yes.’

  We walked, arms about each other, round the damp gardens.

  ‘You’re much stronger than I am,’ he said with a laugh. ‘I’d have cracked up by now . . . but you’re in touch with so many good people!’

  I couldn’t speak. My life looked to me like a stupid treadmill. I wanted to say, you’ve taught me to love differently, you have changed everything, this madness has only swamped me for a day, or two; let me try again at your extraordinary peacefulness; wait for me; teach me the lesson again.

  But he went away to Sydney two days earlier than he had meant to, driven away by my jangling. I wept over it.

  A FATE SHE HAD BELIEVED IMPLACABLE

  The phone rang one morning.

  ‘Nora? This is Angela. Can you do me a biggish sort of favour today?’

  ‘I guess. What is it?’

  ‘Can you drive me to the birth control clinic over the river? I’m going to have a try at an IUD, and I’ll need to be delivered and picked up later, ‘cause I won’t be able to drive. Would that be possible?’

  ‘It would.’

  ‘I’ll be over at ten.’

  Angela had been home only two days from her mother’s funeral: a sudden death from cancer. She talked about it as we sped along in Gerald’s car, up the hill on the sunny morning.

  ‘Willy wouldn’t come up to New South Wales with me,’ she said, her great brown eyes filling with tears as she spoke. ‘He said it was something I’d have to handle by myself. I s’pose he was right . . .’

  She looked out the window and let the tears run down her cheeks. Angela wanted from her relationship with Willy something he would not, could not give: something romantic, exclusive, complete; and Willy’s determined constancy in loving both Angela and Paddy, while living with neither, was no less painful to her for being ideologically impeccable. She absorbed and endured an infinity of small rebuffs. I silently envied the ease of her tears, the way she lived with her heart bravely on her sleeve, no levelling out of the violence of everything but full blast and shameless.

  ‘Was it awful up there?’

  ‘Pretty awful. But I’ve been reading A Very Easy Death, about Simone de Beauvoir’s mother dying of cancer – it’s just brilliant. It really helped me.’

  She wiped her eyes on her cuff, sat thinking for a moment, and then brought off one of her characteristic lightning-fast recoveries. She turned back to me. ‘I’ve been wondering,’ she said, that stubborn note of irrepressible laughter sounding again in her voice, ‘just what you are doing with Gerald?’

  ‘What do you mean, exactly?’ I asked cautiously.

  ‘Well – Nora – he’s so weird!’

  ‘Weird, you reckon?’

  ‘Yeah! You have scenes with really weird blokes. Javo – and now Gerald! I ask you!’

  She was looking at me with mock sternness, gloved hands folded on her lap, her head with its fine feathery flat-top cut cocked towards me on an admonitory angle. A wicked smile trembled at the corners of her mouth; I couldn’t help laughing, and when I started, she threw back her head and let out one of her peals of delight, her gold tooth flashing. There was something completely irresistible in her laughter.

  ‘Weird!’ I repeated, half to myself. She was grinning at me expectantly, tapping her hands to the music that was always running in her head. ‘You monster, Angela’, I thought in exasperation, ‘you are a monster and I just love you.’

  ‘Well, all men are as weird as hell, if you ask me,’ I retorted, still laughing in spite of myself.

  ‘Yeah – all men except Willy,’ she said, and pantomimed a loving sigh.

  ‘Willy?’ I shrieked. ‘Are you kidding? He’s the weirdest of the whole fuckin’ lot!’

  We were roaring with laughter.

  ‘But there’s somet
hing funny going on,’ she added, suddenly sobering up, ‘between him and Rita. You just watch.’ She nodded ominously.

  ‘Fair dinkum? First I’ve heard of it.’

  ‘Well, she wouldn’t be telling anyone – she’s such a fuckin’ sneak.’ She pursed her lips and darted me a sidelong look. I was shocked, and showed it, though I simply couldn’t help laughing at her outrageousness.

  ‘Angela! How can you say that?’

  ‘I’ve seen the way she comes on to him – I just can’t stand it. You know – what really shits me is how you spend years working on yourself to get rid of all that stupid eyelash- fluttering and giggling, and then just when you think you’re getting somewhere, you find out that guys still like women who do that sort of thing. I watch ‘em fall for it, every time.’

  I frowned uncomfortably, caught between being Rita’s friend and admitting the undeniable core of truth in Angela’s objection.

  ‘I guess she does come on like that sometimes – ’

  ‘Sometimes! That’s the way she operates, with men!’

  ‘Oh, that’s a bit rough, Ange.’

  ‘Well, what about the way she dresses – those see-through shirts and high-heeled sandals?’

  I thought of Angela’s small store-room full of almost-discarded clothes, which once she’d worn in a normal day’s march but were now brought out only for singing gigs and for her more repressed friends to dress up in on acid trips: crippling ankle-strapped towering shoes sprayed silver, lowcut satin dresses with shoestring straps, baubly jewellery, feather boas. I looked at her now, dressed in overalls and blue boots – no matter how plainly she might dress, she had some eccentric spark which, even in the interests of ideological purity, she could not quite snuff out.

  ‘You’re not exactly a frump yourself, mate, are you?’ I ventured, struck with timidity.

  ‘But at least I fuckin’try!’

  We pulled up outside the clinic. Angela gathered her bag and coat together and reached for the door handle. For the first time I noticed how pale she was.

  ‘You’re not scared, Ange, are you?’

  ‘Course I am, dummy. I’m terrified of pain.’ She tried to smile. I scrambled out of the car, thinking, ‘She needs me, she actually needs me.’

  ‘But it’s not going to hurt, is it? I didn’t feel a thing when I had mine put in.’

  ‘You’ve had a child, Nora. And probably a couple of abortions‘– she elbowed me in the ribs with a touch of her old bravado. ‘All that helps to stretch the cervix, you know.’ She drew herself up: something magnificent about Angela and her gynaecological expertise, most of it laden with pessimism and doom. I felt small and a bit shrivelled next to her. She was like a ship in full sail as she advanced up the steps and through the glass doors to the reception desk. But she seized my arm and hissed to me,

  ‘Nora, you will come back for me, won’t you? They’re going to give me a general – I might be a bit dopey.’

  ‘Of course I will.’ I dared to reach up and kiss her wan cheek. Too preoccupied to notice, she was ushered away by a nurse. I ran off to the car.

  Two hours later I pushed open the door again and stood at the foot of the stairs looking up at Angela who was coming down very shakily on the arm of the nurse. Her face was quite white. She saw me and gave a tremulous smile. Seeing her thus reduced, prey to the unpredictableness of her female organs, I felt for her nothing more complicated than total allegiance, love for one of my kind.

  I helped her to the car and drove her home. She was quite quiet, arms folded over her belly, waiting for the first twinge of pain. When none came, she was surprised, as if at an undeserved release from a fate she had believed implacable. I installed her in her bed in the empty house and made her a cup of tea.

  ‘Bring the phone up here, will you Nora?’ she called. ‘I couldn’t stagger down the stairs again, and the others won’t be home till dinnertime.’

  She settled down among the pillows with the latest Rolling Stone, still white-faced but almost cheerful.

  ‘Maybe this time I’ve found a contraceptive I can live with,’ she said. ‘Or maybe I haven’t.’

  I laughed. ‘Give it a chance, Angela. Well – I’ll see you soon, I guess.’

  ‘Thanks, Nora!’ she sang out after me. ‘You’ve been terrific.’

  ‘For you, anything. You’re welcome.’

  Between her bed and the door I spotted a small photo propped against the mirror: a performance photo, all black but for one glittering lower corner: I peered closer and saw Willy’s shining head among his cymbals, sticks raised, eyes closed in that mysterious musical transport – is that how he looks when he fucks? face hard with concentration and yet at the same time utterly melting? No wonder she loves him. I passed by quickly and thumped down the steep, narrow stairs.

  FALL IN THEIR OWN GOOD TIME

  Nick rang up.

  ‘Is Gerald there?’

  ‘No, he didn’t stay here last night,’ I said. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘At his place. He is supposed to be meeting me here.’

  ‘I don’t know where he could be.’

  I didn’t know anything about the parts of his life that I was not in. We existed outside his daily round, though well inside the domestic part of mine. I liked it that way, but I wasn’t sure that he did. I wondered what he wanted. I mean, what did he wish for. It seemed a bleak life, sometimes. I could only guess.

  ‘I never get jealous,’ he said, and I believed him. Sometimes I wished to fade through his inscrutable skin and see what there was inside him.

  ‘I’d like to crack you,’ I said.

  ‘The only way that could happen would be if I burst into tears,’ he replied, not wanting it to happen.

  What was this urge? I could have left him closed. But the sneaking little wish was always there, to worm my way past him and into him and make him split open and cease to guard himself. I did not like it: it was for the conquest.

  He said, one day, that he felt himself to be softening, a process which he liked. Driving in the red truck, while the town filled up with warm rain, he remarked,

  ‘I’ve never said I loved anyone, except you, and the kids.’

  When he did open out, in his particular way, I was always too surprised to speak. Once, in the middle of the night, lying beside me with his arms round me, he asked,

  ‘Do you feel loved?’

  In my astonishment, I said, ‘Yes,’ but in such a tone that he may have felt dismissed.

  Often in the evenings when the house was still he would play his guitar and I would lie in bed reading: strangely peaceful interludes in a cranky relationship. Once, I felt the waves of sleep coming, and put the book down.

  ‘Don’t stop playing,’ I said. ‘I love hearing it when I’m falling asleep.’

  And then I was asleep.

  When he came to bed he put his arms round me and said,

  ‘You give me whole lots of confidence, you know.’

  ‘Whaddayamean?’ I mumbled out of my pillow.

  ‘I never thought anyone would like falling asleep while I was playing.’

  Gerald stayed with me two nights. I was ill-tempered and snapped at him.

  ‘There’s a limit,’ he remarked, ‘to the amount of time I can spend in your house without becoming a threat.’

  So I slept alone in my low bed. Juliet fell asleep downstairs, and Rita went out visiting, to try and stop her heart from aching after the careless heels of Nick.

  I dreamed I was trying on my mother’s clothes: everything was either too big for me or not attractive enough. I woke to another dull, warmish, rainy morning. I remembered how many mornings I had spent on my own in that house, when we first moved in and Javo was in jail in Thailand. I liked it: but became dried out with loneliness.

  I went out with Rita, drinking brandy alexanders at the Southern Cross, eating at Jimmy’s, visiting Easey Street. I saw Javo there: smiled at each other. He looked white and unbuttoned, his hair standing on end. At home ag
ain I sat up in my bed, feet sore from walking. I was wondering if Gerald would come around. How many times have I lain in my bed waiting for footsteps or the sound of a car? Too many.

  No more.

  Maybe.

  I was sound asleep when he came down our side lane and pushed at the locked front door. I was on my feet and down the stairs before he had time to go round the back. Glad to see him back from his gig, lugging his huge flat case and grinning at me in the rainy doorway.

  I was lying with my back into his curve, when he began to hug me, and stroke me, and to kiss my neck and ear. As any human being would, I turned to face him.

  ‘Are you really horny?’ he suddenly asked. What a word!

  Caught unawares, I made a surprised joke,

  ‘I dunno – want me to consult my metre?’ We laughed, up close with our arms round each other.

  ‘It’s just that I’m not, particularly,’ he said.

  I felt as if I’d shrunk, instantaneously, to the size of a pea. I must have gone stiff, or made some move, because he said with half a laugh, as if at his own bluntness,

  ‘Well, that certainly put a stop to that! Some nice things were happening.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ I said, wanting to say, ‘It’s not all right, you bloody great oaf,’ but obeying some unwritten law, blood-deep, too deep to be fished up at that moment to the light of rational scrutiny.

  ‘Do you know what?’ he remarked conversationally after a small pause, as if nothing untoward had happened; ‘I think Willy and Angela actually still fuck.’

  He can’t be that cool.

  I had an irresistible urge to punch and pummel Gerald; sometimes I hurt him and he yelled, with more annoyance than anger. In a shop, between the shelves, he teasingly bent my arm up my back, keeping it carefully this side of real pain. I laughed as if at a clever mimicry.

  Javo, trying to be helpful or to ingratiate himself, went to the school to pick up Juliet without asking Rita first. The teacher refused to hand her over; he came into our house cursing, filthy, stained with paint and pin-eyed.

  Juliet told me,

  ‘When Javo came into our classroom, he had red stuff all over his hands, and the other kids thought he’d killed someone.’