About a Girl

by Joanne Horniman

  But, I thought, you did want it. I could tell you did.

  And abruptly, in the middle of the night, Flynn left me. She kissed me coolly on the cheek and walked out the door, pulling it to, softly, and I couldn’t do a thing but sit and listen to her car start up and drive away.

  Chapter Eight

  I CALLED IN sick and stayed home from work, sleeping all day beneath a sheet on the sofa. I couldn’t face going near my bed, afraid it would still smell of her.

  When I woke, the unopened tin of cat food on the table reminded me that Flynn and the grey cat had both deserted me. I shoved the can to the back of a cupboard, and went out.

  Determined not to be disconsolate, I bought a bag of black jellybeans and ate them while reading Notes From Underground, which I’d borrowed from the shop the day before.

  I am a sick man … I am an angry man. I am an unattractive man. I think there is something wrong with my liver.

  A voice in my head told me that Flynn’s departure at this point was understandable. Everything’s happened so fast – of course she needs time to think. In fact, I probably needed time to think.

  But a self-pitying, red-eyed bug with a brain the size of a grain of rice had set up home in my heart, and it mewed, but I love her! Doesn’t she love me? If she did, she wouldn’t have done that! She may never come back, and nobody else will love me ever!

  I went back to the jellybeans and the book.

  Underground Man has a bad liver but he won’t go to the doctor. I know better than anybody that I am harming nobody but myself. All the same, if I don’t have treatment it is out of spite. Is my liver out of order? – let it get worse!

  I heard a noise outside the door. Flynn! I got up to look. It was nobody. Not even the cat. I checked my phone to see if it was switched on. I checked fruitlessly for messages.

  I once used to work in the government service but I don’t now. I was a bad civil servant. I was rude, and I enjoyed being rude. After all, I didn’t take bribes, so I had to have some compensation. (A poor witticism; but I won’t cross it out …)

  I had only come to the end of page one.

  Flynn had touched this very book. She’d picked it up from the kitchen table the night before and asked, ‘What’s this like?’

  ‘I don’t know – haven’t read it yet. But it’s pretty dark and disturbing, I imagine.’

  Flynn put it down. ‘Sometimes I get tired of dark and disturbing. I don’t want to be disturbed when I read, or when I watch a movie. I want to be happy.’

  But dark and disturbing songs were all right? I thought of Okkervil River. I thought of the love songs – the songs of lost love that I’d heard Flynn sing on the night I’d first seen her. They hadn’t been all happiness and light. But I hadn’t wanted to put anything between Flynn and me by pointing this out.

  Now I tossed aside the jellybeans and opened a tin of tomato soup. I changed my bed so that the scent would not remind me of Flynn, when all I wanted to do was to lie down in the dirty sheets and wallow in memories. I washed the sheets at midnight, pegging them on the line in the dark, detesting the artificial smell of lavender from the washing powder.

  In my fresh, forcibly celibate bed, I stayed up and read Notes From Underground. It described a dark underworld of unconscious desires, and the protagonist was scarcely sane, but reading it as I did, at a time when I was ill with desire for Flynn, imprinted it on my mind forever.

  I wanted her! How much I wanted her!

  At last, I dropped the book to the floor and fell asleep with the light still on.

  I finished Notes from Underground next morning over a cup of coffee, and in honour of Dostoyevsky, I dressed entirely in black. I returned the book to the shop, and managed to hand-sell a copy that very day.

  A boy came in, one of those confident, well-balanced looking boys with just the right degree of grunginess to make him look interesting. He scanned through the novels, picking one up, reading the back cover and putting it back again.

  ‘Can I help you?’ I asked, though my head had started to throb.

  ‘I’m looking for a book for my sister,’ he said, with a matter-of-fact grimace. ‘Birthday present.’

  ‘What does she normally read?’

  ‘Anything … everything … she loves reading.’

  ‘And, how old is she?’

  ‘About …’ said the boy, giving me an appreciative glance, ‘… your age.’

  ‘So, she really reads everything?’

  ‘Especially the classics,’ he said. He had lively, humorous eyes.

  I gestured with my hands, meaning, which ones?

  ‘Oh, you know …’ He thought for a bit. ‘The nineteenth century! Jane Austen, all that.’

  ‘Does she read the Russian writers? Tolstoy? Dostoyevsky?’

  ‘Especially the Russian writers,’ he said, leaning his shoulder against a shelf, and giving me a particularly attentive look.

  He was giving out distinct signals that he found me attractive. If I’d wanted, if I had been that way inclined, I was sure I could flirt back enough for him to ask me out. ‘I’d like to meet your sister,’ I wanted to say, perversely.

  Instead I said, ‘Here’s a book by Dostoyevsky that I’ve only just finished reading. I know the cover makes it look like a contemporary novel, but it was actually written in the 1860S.’

  The boy took the book and looked through it.

  ‘And it really does read like a modern novel in many ways,’ I told him. ‘The feeling of alienation and disaffection. And it’s full of all sorts of philosophy and ideas – the character’s quite repulsive, of course, but that’s not the point … if your sister has ever read Crime and Punishment she’d like it, because this character is another version of Raskolnikov.’

  ‘I’ll take it.’

  ‘You will?’

  ‘Yep. You’ve sold me on it. And if my sister doesn’t like it, I’ll read it myself. Actually, I think I’ll read it anyway, before I give it to her.’

  We returned to the counter. I glanced up at him as I took his money, and could see that he was about to say something else. And as I handed over the package with a smile, he said, ‘If you’re not doing anything later …’

  But I gave him a regretful look, and declined.

  I felt the pull of Flynn; she was so close, but so far away. I wanted to march up the stairs to her flat, and beg to see her again. But I could not. I must not, because she said she needed time away from me.

  And so I sat that evening on the wall overlooking the town, my legs drawn up to my chin. And there was no cat, and no Flynn. A blue-tongue lizard sat on the concrete beside its camouflaging pot of succulents, drawing the last warmth from the ground, as I did.

  When the rays of the sun shot red from the horizon, someone who was not Flynn came over from the flat next door with a bottle of wine and two glasses, and the person who was not Flynn said, ‘You look like you could do with some cheering up.’ Not-Flynn sat down beside me; I could feel the air stir feebly in protest. And the wine poured glug glug into the glasses and I reached out and took one. I sipped.

  Not-Flynn talked about his ex-wife and his children till the bottle was finished and the purple sky was flecked with circling bats. I was only able to make little noises of sympathy. The air was like a moist face-washer, and I felt suffocated by the misery and convolutions of his wasted marriage. I got up and squirted my face with water from the hose, and the lizard crept away to wherever lizards go at night. I stood on top of the wall with my arms stretched out to air them, and did not feel any drunkenness, only leaden reality.

  There was no Flynn; it all amounted to that. She might be down there among the lights somewhere, or she might have left town. It was no longer my business to know, because Flynn was staying away to think about us, about what had gone on bet
ween us. As if she wasn’t entirely delighted about it all, as I had been.

  ‘I’ll get another bottle,’ said Not-Flynn. I looked up, startled. I had forgotten he was there.

  ‘No, but thanks,’ I told him. ‘I think I might’ve had enough.’

  I put my hand on my forehead and pushed back my dampened hair.

  And I watched the person who was not Flynn take himself and the glasses and empty bottle off to his own flat.

  I went to bed and lay on top of the warm sheets and knew that I would not sleep. I went over everything that Flynn and I had ever said to each other, thought of every expression that had played across her face. Hearing a small sound outside the back door, I went out. It was the cat, which slipped into the house and mewed at me in the dark.

  I opened the can of food and put it in a dish. In the morning the dish was empty, and the cat gone through the window, which stood open as though allowing everything in my life to flee from me.

  At work I no longer loitered in the stockroom reading the books. They didn’t soothe me anyway, and being alone gave me time to think, something I wanted to avoid. I made myself extra busy, became more-than-usually charming to customers, but all the time my heart was heavy, because everyone was Not Flynn.

  At home I wondered whether music could distract me, flipping through my CDS, but I couldn’t bear to listen to anything.

  I love Okkervil River, too, she had said. I stopped at an album, and the title taunted me: Don’t Fall in Love with Everyone You See.

  But I don’t, I whined in my head, pathetically. I hardly ever meet anyone I’m really attracted to. And there’s nobody like Flynn. So intense, and beautiful. I love her mouth, the way she holds it when she’s thinking about something. And when we’re together it’s as though we’re the only two people in the world.

  I jumped up and paced around the flat. It was so deathly silent! But music would tear at me, and release emotions I’d rather forget. I couldn’t stand my own bedroom, and the sofa, where she had sat, loomed at me.

  I raced out to the supermarket and was overwhelmed by the lights and people and all the useless shit you can buy, none of which could fill the hole made by Flynn’s absence.

  On Sunday, I slept all day. I didn’t dream of her.

  The cat didn’t return. I tipped the remainder of the tin of cat food into the bowl and left it outside on the wall. Something came and ate it.

  My mother rang to remind me that she and Molly were driving up the following weekend. Towards the day of their arrival, I stirred myself. I cleaned every surface in the flat and laid in a stock of food. I went to a chain store and bought a pile of cheap, cheerful cushions and threw them onto the old sofa so that they appeared charmingly disarrayed. On Saturday afternoon after work, the day they were due to arrive, I brought home a big bunch of lilies, a cake from the bakery and a sketchbook and crayons for my little sister. I sat on the sofa with a cushion hugged to my chest, waiting.

  Chapter Nine

  THE CAR CREPT into the driveway without me noticing. And they were suddenly there, standing at the door like people I’d dreamed about and forgotten. The hereness of them was a shock for me, because I had been so tied up with thoughts of Flynn.

  Here was Molly’s pale little face; here my sister’s arms round my neck. Here my mother holding me close as if she did not want to let me go. She said,‘Hey, you’re not crying, are you? Oh – come here, you silly girl …’

  Their things dumped in the middle of the floor. My mother’s exclamations at the view. Molly bouncing on the sofa. The whole flurry of arrival.

  ‘I should get a teapot,’ I said, half to myself, as I dangled teabags in two cups. I should get a teapot and call it a crazy name.

  Flynn was everywhere and nowhere. She had sat on that chair, the one my mother now pulled out and was sitting in with her chin propped on her hand, her elbow on the table. Flynn had sat on that sofa where Molly sprawled, her face suffused in smiles …

  ‘It’s so funny, Annie, seeing you here in your own place.’

  I think I flashed a wary smile.

  ‘And are you okay? I mean, really?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I am.’

  ‘And you’ve made friends?’

  ‘Well, not really …’

  ‘But someone arrived that time I called …’

  I shrugged. ‘More of an acquaintance, really.’ I wondered exactly what Flynn and I were to each other. If she decided she didn’t want to be with me, I didn’t see how we could ever be just friends.

  At least I wouldn’t have to explain her to my mother.

  The cat came in through the open door. Molly jumped up and cried out, ‘A kitty! Anna, there’s a lovely little kitty!’ Just as if it lived there, the cat rolled over to have its belly scratched.

  ‘Oh! Do you have a cat?’ My mother put down her cup and craned her neck to see.

  ‘No. It’s a stray … at least …’ I didn’t want to explain the on again-off again nature of my relationship with the cat, and edged it with my foot towards the door.

  ‘Don’t make it leave, Anna! I love it! And it loves me!’ Molly seized the cat and dragged it up off the floor so that it dangled in her arms.

  So I relented and let it stay. Molly put it down and it rushed at once to the place where its bowl had been and looked expectantly up at me, purring. So I went to the cupboard and opened the tin of cat food I’d bought while I was stocking up on everything else.

  While the cat ate, I went to Molly, and took her face between my hands. It was such a pretty face, but her eyes were almost expressionless. ‘Molly,’ I said. ‘Did you have a good trip?’

  She nodded.

  ‘We stayed in a motel last night, didn’t we?’ said my mother. ‘That was fun! Wasn’t it, Molly? Tell Anna about breakfast.’

  Molly looked blank, then remembered. ‘On a tray!’

  ‘Yes. Little packets of cereal … what did you have, Molly?’

  ‘Cornflakes.’ She allowed her head to loll to the side. I stroked the side of her face. I could hardly see the scars now, on her forehead and chin. They were just fine lines on the clear skin. ‘I have a sketchbook for you,’ I told her. ‘And some crayons.’

  ‘Draw with me, Anna!’ said Molly. ‘Draw with me!’

  So I sat on the floor and drew with her while my mother fetched the rest of their things from the car, inflated the airbeds she’d brought and made them up in one of the spare rooms. And the cat came purring round us and flopped down onto the paper; Molly pushed it away, but it kept coming back.

  The next day I took my mother and Molly to a market, and there, among the rainbow flags and the milling crowds of people, I thought for one second that I saw Flynn. I felt a pain stab somewhere inside me – I looked again, hoping and fearing it was her. But it wasn’t, and I felt ill with disappointment.

  At a potter’s stall, my mother stroked a teapot with a glossy black glaze and green stripes and murmured, ‘You said you should get a teapot – how about I buy you this one? It’s rather lovely, don’t you think?’

  I did think, and caressed the cool, smooth glaze. ‘It is beautiful, but I don’t really need a teapot,’ I said.

  I couldn’t explain to my mother that it wasn’t the right sort of teapot, the sort of Flynn-like teapot you could laugh gently at, and in any case, I didn’t really want a teapot, I wanted Flynn.

  That night, Molly lay with me on my bed while I read to her, which only meant showing her pictures in a book and talking about them. It’s unlikely that Molly will ever read Dostoyevsky. I wondered if it was such an advantage to be able to read all those complicated novels, if you could not be happy. And Molly seemed to be happy.

  She fell asleep on my bed. ‘Let her stay,’ I told my mother, when she came to pick her up and take her to her own bed. I wanted the
closeness and companionship of another human being breathing beside me, and I loved Molly. I was surprised how much I had missed her.

  During the night there was a certain amount of clashing about of limbs and meeting of foreheads, because Molly was a restless sleeper, and so was I. Finally, I fell into a dreamless sleep, and woke with someone holding me by the hand, staring into my face. For one blissful moment I imagined it was Flynn, before realising that the hand was far too childish and small.

  That was the week I got to know my mother; I began to stand back a little and see her as a separate person. And in a funny way I think it made me love her more, seeing her as separate from myself.

  She had grown thinner, these last couple of years, and allowed her hair to go grey. But it was nicely cut, as ever. My mother had always had a certain comfortable elegance. In winter she’d wear a neat wool coat with big buttons down the front, and stylish boots, and a close-fitting hat. She was the kind of mother who stopped off at a smart bakery on the way home and bought good sourdough bread. And then in summer she’d be in crisp pants and top and fashionable sandals, not looking at all hot and bothered in the dry heat. It was all part of the way she coped, like standing up for Molly, making sure Molly got the help she needed at school – that was all part of her.

  Now she stood wiping down the sink in my kitchen, keeping an eye on Molly playing outside with the cat. She’d bought a sarong one day when she and Molly went to the beach while I was at work, and was wearing it tied up underneath her armpits, leaving her shoulders bare. They were slightly burnt, freckled shoulders. And her feet were bare; they were freckled, sturdy feet, quite pretty really. I imagined her wearing the sarong in the garden on a Canberra summer evening.

  My mother glanced once more out the window towards Molly and said, ‘I thought you should know – Morgan’s pregnant. Your father hasn’t said anything about it to you, has he?’ She turned to me and wiped her damp hands on the sarong. Her face looked strained.

  ‘No,’ I said. I was flabbergasted, and I didn’t want to know, really. I willed my mother not to go on.