by Nick Earls
In the car we get most of the way through the Lemonheads’ ‘Big Gay Heart’ on the short drive to my parents’ place.
And I’m singing, maybe louder than usual, and wishing that call hadn’t come through today. I thought everyone knew now, everyone who might possibly have a need to know. I thought Wendy and Sylvia had a system for letting everyone know, and that they were handling it. I don’t even know why a GP would be trying to call on a Saturday. Who could need a dermatologist on a Saturday? I suppose there are some reasons you might. Maybe I should have put them on to George. Not that I really got the chance. The receptionist got off the line pretty quickly.
I lift the Bean out of the baby capsule, and she’s warm and clean and a bundle of kicking and noise.
Oh, yeah, we’re at the oldies’, aren’t we? I say to her. Let the fun begin.
My mother takes her at the door, and slips into babble mode right away. Walks down the corridor copying the Bean’s every noise and naming furniture and fittings.
And here’s Grandpa, she says, drawing out the ‘here’s’ as long as possible and swinging into the kind of build-up that might have worked for the host of a TV variety show, but that doesn’t make my father entirely comfortable.
He stands there like a man who was about to do a well-rehearsed piece of stage magic, only to discover he’s lost his rabbit at the last moment.
Hello, love, he says, sounding altogether too low-key. And then he suddenly becomes animated and says, Hey, I’ve got some new screen savers. I think she might like them.
And we always did want another computer geek in the family, I tell him. You’re just starting work on her early, aren’t you?
No. I think she might like them. There’s the dancing baby from that American television program, and one with pieces of pasta. They’re dancing as well. Lots of movement. I think she’ll like it.
Ally McBeal, my mother footnotes as he rushes the Bean into his study, and the pasta is macaroni doing the macarena.
And he hasn’t a clue, has he?
Not a clue. I once asked if he knew South Park, and his best guesses were that if I looked at the map I’d probably find it somewhere below North Park, or that it might be the old name of a football ground renamed as part of a corporate sponsorship deal.
Well, you can’t say he didn’t try.
No, no. Always prepared to give things a go. You know your father. Now, did I tell you we were thinking of going away next weekend? Just for a few days. Maybe a week.
No.
Just the usual kind of thing. Bushwalking and all that. So you’ll be all right then?
Sure. You don’t actually have to ask my permission to take a holiday, but . . .
No, I was thinking Lily. Your arrangements. Can you make arrangements for her, since we won’t be here on the eighth and ninth? If it's too short notice, we could reschedule.
I’m sure it’ll be fine.
We go back along the corridor, and through my father’s open study door I can see the Bean slapping spit-covered hands all over his computer screen as it plays the zany Guinness screen saver that’s a perennial favourite of George’s.
Go on, give him another whack, my father says, with some enthusiasm.
Before you ask, my mother says quietly, the answer is no, you would never have got to do that. He’s being a grandparent. Now, is it Katie Watts’s place you’re going to?
Yeah, dinner. A dinner party. I don’t know who’s going to be there.
Well then, new people. That’s not so bad.
Depends on the new people, I suppose.
And you’ll be back for Lily in the morning, then?
That’s the plan.
If you wanted to have a few drinks and catch a cab home, one of us could drive you back there in the morning to get your car.
I think I’ll keep it to a couple of glasses. But thanks.
And I can tell from her expression that she gets right to the edge of giving me some of her old ‘let your hair down’ advice, before deciding to hold back. It’s advice that should never be trusted anyway. For years at uni I didn’t get a lot of chances to make the most of it, and took it no further than drinking on Saturday nights at other people’s houses and reading the great, thin works of literature.
Then, one night in about fifth year, George took me along to a Trivial Pursuit party at someone’s flat. I played like an absolute bandit. I punned with flair, I told engaging stories about myself and, when the questions came up, I could name ferry ports on the south coast of England, pre-war American baseball stars, all the tributaries of the Orinoco. I owned the board that night. And I completely misread the signals from our host – mistaking them for friendship – and ended up in her bed a few hours later, with her throwing her clothes off and talking through the various options available to me. Several of them would have required at least one of us to have dislocatable hips (something I was learning to test for at the time, but it didn’t seem prudent to mention it).
I tried to pick a really slow option, but she thought it meant I was sensitive rather than baffled as to how I came to be there, and she made it clear that far more complicated things were on offer. And if the whole interaction wasn’t enough like Porkies already, that’s when her fiancé, a man not previously mentioned that night, turned up. And I got to spend several hours under her bed, being closer to many of the previously mentioned activity options than I would have liked.
I caught a bus home at seven a.m., wearing the day before’s clothes. Feeling proud about having let my hair down, but seriously disorientated at the same time. And my parents, who had urged me for years to have nights like this, were pacing the lounge room having not slept for hours, thinking I’d come to grief and supposedly on the brink of calling the police.
It’s kind of sad when you’re in your twenties and your mother thinks a night out is more likely to end with your death on the roads than it is to end in sex.
My father couldn’t stop the pacing, even when he’d adjusted to the fact that I’d made it home alive.
Your mother was so worried, he kept saying, long after she’d brought out tea and a plateful of biscuits.
I wonder how I’ll be the first time I confront the same issue, Lily coming home long after she’s supposed to. I won’t get to project in quite my father’s way. Pacing while clutching a dizzy whippet and telling her, Elvis was so worried, just isn’t going to work.
But I hope that moment’s twenty years away, and I can’t know how things’ll be then. I’m the full set of parents now, so there’s no projection, no buck passing, no taking turns. Maybe that’ll change, maybe it won’t. But that’s all too odd to think about for now. It’s George and his date talk that’s got me here, thinking about this kind of thing – my life and Lily’s in the future – when I should be dealing with each day as it comes.
And sometimes I actually want to keep her to myself.
Katie’s street is empty, other than two cars parked near the top of the hill, about ten houses away from hers.
I ring the doorbell and she’s there in seconds, wearing slightly more make-up than I’d expected. Slightly more make-up, large interesting earrings and several bangles. Katie has gone for that ‘splash of colour’ and her Little Black Dress is going under for the third time.
Australian champagne equivalent, I say, and hand over the bottle I’ve brought. For launching the kitchen.
Oh, how nice. You didn’t have to do that. I might pop it in the fridge for now. I’ve just opened some wine. Would you like a glass?
Why not? Thanks.
We walk down the hall and she says, Don’t look in there, as we pass the bedroom, where most of the contents of her wardrobe appear to have been tipped onto her bed.
She sits me down on a vast overfilled sofa, gives me my glass of wine, nudges the bottle back down into the ice bucket with a rattle of bangles and watches me take a sip. It seems as though a comment might be in order.
That’s nice, I say, since I can’t
go for wine-wanker words. What is it? Is it all chardonnay?
Um, yes, is that okay? It’s unwooded.
It’s very nice. And chardonnay is good. I’ve got no time for those wine gurus and their temporary attachment to riesling, or whatever. Besides, I’m no expert. I’m sort of out of the habit of drinking wine much anyway.
Oh, sorry, she says, as though she’s forced me into it.
No, this is good. It’s just a health thing, like eating better and running more. It doesn’t mean I never drink. It’s not as if wine’s bad for you. It’s probably more that the only other person in the house is underage by about seventeen-and-a-half years, so it’s not as though we share wine over dinner.
No. Pistachio? she says, leaning forward and holding up a bowl. Vine leaves stuffed with semi-dried capsicum and capers? They’re from Angelo’s. You know Angelo’s?
No.
At West End?
Not really my side of town.
Oh.
But I’m sure they’re great. They look great.
Flag, she says with a pressured kind of glee, as though the moment’s been saved by the arrival of a cat, and my deli ignorance is instantly less of an obstacle.
Flag jumps up onto the arm of the sofa and checks me out. I pat his head and he drops down onto the cushion next to me. I bite into one of Angelo’s vine-leaf creations and make the right kind of Mmm noise, but a little too quickly. Flag stretches his front paws into my lap, pushes his claws out and starts kneading. I wonder if this is a territorial gesture, a gender-based warning that I shouldn’t be getting any big ideas here. But Flag can’t know I’ve got no ideas at all, and that the other guests are probably arriving any minute.
Don’t worry, Katie says. It’s only a problem if you don’t have a couple of layers of fabric.
At that second, Flag proves her wrong and prongs me in the groin, making me wince. And I’m not sure if it’s best to tell Katie that I actually do have underpants on, or not. It could affect the dynamics of the conversation. Maybe, for future reference, she needs to know that Flag finds two layers of fabric relatively easy.
Um, no Flaggy, she says quietly, Be nice to Jon . . . Oh, god, music. I’ve forgotten to put music on.
She goes to the corner of the room, flicks through some CDs. Ah ha, she says, and just as I’m fearful she’s about to play a Scandinavian one-hit wonder from the eighties (or, at best, early nineties) Elvis comes out of four speakers. ‘Love Me Tender’.
This must be a joke. She and George must have colluded. Twee nibbly things, ice bucket, an Elvis love-ballad album. Pulled out with an Ah ha, as though it’s quite the perfect choice. Any moment now, George will lurch from a cupboard laughing. That’s what I’m telling myself. Or maybe just hoping. Katie’s wardrobe maybe, which would explain why all her clothes were on the bed. Or, alternatively, half-a-dozen Jungian therapists will arrive, talk shop all night, and I’ll never be brave enough to mention seven references to fish in one afternoon, and I’ll never get invited back. And that’ll all be for the best.
I miss home, bath time, little plastic boats, a stern but silent dog, quiet battles over apple puree.
But no, we’re onto Elvis, talking Elvis now. Katie’s saying, So what do you think of Elvis? and I can only answer, He’s the best dog I’ve ever had.
I tell her the story of how I wanted a dog and Mel didn’t, so we did a deal over naming rights. I could have the dog if I was prepared to accept the name she would give it, and certain other conditions. So I said fine, and she said the name was Motherfucker. And my father had to call it in for dinner.
She won that time. No dog. But months later, in a less-considered moment, she suggested Elvis, thinking there was no way I’d go for that either.
And I’ve always got laughs out of that story before, but not this time.
Katie goes into the kitchen. I pour myself some more chardonnay, even though my head’s feeling out of practice with this stuff, and I go to take a look at her CDs. They’re on a rotating stand, and the side facing out is all Elvis. I’ve probably seen enough.
This isn’t going well. I shouldn’t have mentioned Melissa. And one Elvis song should have been enough to make me cautious. I shouldn’t have told a story that suggested that anyone who knew me well would know that naming a dog Elvis was something I’d rank only marginally ahead of naming it Motherfucker and having my father call it in for dinner.
I go to the kitchen to apologise, figuring this is best cleared up now. On the way, I pass the dining room. Which has candles, and is set for two.
There will be no Jungian therapists arriving here this evening. No opportunity to be useful in making up numbers, or to contribute an eighth of the dinner-party conversation before slipping discreetly into the night. Flag runs past me on the way into the kitchen, tags my ankle and I almost trip.
See, Katie says, a quick recovery from the Elvis disappointment in progress. Flaggy likes you. He loves a game, but he wouldn’t play if he didn’t like you. And don’t worry. He’s not a big Elvis fan either. More an eighties man.
I’ve got nothing against Elvis, I tell her, as the prelude to the apology. He did some great stuff. A lot of that old stuff is great. It’s just an embarrassing name to call your dog. Any time we go out for a walk anywhere and he runs off, I’m standing there shouting Elvis, Elvis. It doesn’t look good.
I hadn’t thought of it that way, Katie says, and it seems fixed up. Linguini con . . . what’s Italian for prawns?
She fusses me towards my seat, serves the meal, says something about dinner music and goes off to change the CD. Sinatra’s singing before she’s back in the room.
You know, I really like some of this old stuff too.
Yeah. It’s timeless, some of it. Isn’t it?
We begin forced conversation. We do what we can with Sinatra, which isn’t much. I drink more than I should, and by eight-thirty I know I’ll be taking a cab home and coming back for the car in the morning. I don’t want to drink, but Katie keeps pouring wine for both of us and, with the ambient anxiety she’s generating, there’s a sense that I’d wreck the evening if I said no to anything. More wine, more linguini, another piece of homemade crusty bread. We force the conversation like a Jenny Craig ad director forcing a before-photo fat footballer into a too-small suit. There’s something cruel and uncomfortable about it, and no-one gets to laugh. I encourage Katie to tell me about her renovating, and I realise I should have fussed more about the kitchen.
I never wanted to be in this position. I realise that as she’s telling me how much thought goes into bench heights and how many times she had to get the ceilingfan guy back. I never wanted to be thirtysomething and sitting here in the middle of summer with too much chardonnay in me (unwooded or otherwise), some old crooner droning in the next room and a ceiling fan misfiring above my head. Feeling sweat run down my back and watching it carry the make-up quietly off the face of the person who’s deciding the evening will be fine if there are no pauses and every minute of her renovations is thoroughly discussed.
She tells me she’s thinking of having her bedroom airconditioned. She tells me some rooms are completely finished, but that other rooms still have slatted pantry doors instead of solid timber, and she doesn’t know what kind of person would have done that. She tells me it’s so good that she’s met me properly now, so good she’s getting to know me when, all these years, I’ve just been Wendy’s friend. And who would have guessed this kind of thing could start happening?
Which is when I choke, and a chunk of dinner flies up into my nasopharynx.
I excuse myself, go to the bathroom. Choke and snort and cough, and eventually a rather soiled piece of prawn flips out of my nose.
From this point, the evening gets worse.
I return to the dining room and Katie stares at me, unable to come to terms with the beastly sounds I’ve subjected her to. I think I’ve spoiled her new bathroom, maybe forever. I drink more. So does she.
There are two things I can’t b
elieve. I can’t believe I’m on a date and I can’t believe I’m so bad at it. Three things. I can’t believe she went to the trouble to try to translate her prawn dish into Italian, and I left the room to blow it out my nose. I didn’t think it was going this way. I thought we were coffee friends. I thought there’d be Jungian therapists.
We adjourn to the lounge room. Katie brings coffee and a plate of little chocolates, handmade by a very delicate man from yet another part of town. If she had travelled any further to put this dinner together she’d have scored frequent-flyer points. She probably met the prawn trawlers on their way back in from the bay this morning too. If Katie came over to my place for dinner, I’d know just which Thai takeaway would be my first choice. It’s not the same.
She puts the chocolates in front of me, presumably watching to see which orifice I bung them into, then which I blow them out of.
Shit, there’s dessert wine, she says. She fetches a bottle, and starts to drink it. Oh Jon, I just want you to be happy, she says, in a particularly melancholy way. Should I have bought a cigar?
What? I’m not sure that’s what my happiness is depending on.
No, I just thought, people are into them at the moment. Separate thought to the happiness. You have to move quickly.
Right. I don’t smoke. It was smoking it that you were thinking about? It’s like grape varieties. Even if cigars are temporarily in, I don’t smoke. So no cigars was perfect.
Excellent. The conversation pauses there. She looks at me, intently. Drinks more of the dessert wine. You’re not always an easy person to read, you know that? You showed me baby photos. You have to realise that. She takes Sinatra off and puts on Men Without Hats, ‘The Safety Dance’. Not a lot of people have this album, you know, she says, implying some angry kind of exclusivity that I don’t really understand.
I get up to go to the toilet, and Flag tags my ankle again. Twice, and then he follows me in there. I’ve had too much to drink and so has Katie, but she’s kept pouring, making sure the evening won’t fail through an insufficiency of wine. Flag winds his way between my legs, purring, and it’s here, standing up in the glaringly bright bathroom, away from Katie’s discourse on renovations and the big sofa and the mood-lit lounge, that I realise it’s all too difficult, and I know I have to go home. Apologise for the misunderstanding, for anything I’ve done wrong, and leave before anyone’s dignity is put seriously on the line.
