Perfect Skin

by Nick Earls

  It’s the shadow I’m standing in, a rock I can’t push past. I don’t have it down to tellable size, so I don’t meet people. That’s how I work. And it works for now, and I’ll move on in my own time. So people shouldn’t ask me to dinner and think it’s some kind of date, particularly if they already know. They shouldn’t muscle in on my runs and play with my baby and tell me about their thesis topics. And make me like them and want to see more of them. Because I’ll lie by omission, and that’s not fair to any of us.

  I’m doing fine, in so many ways, but it’s still so hard to tell people. And I’m terrified of the moment when Lily is suddenly old enough to understand it. This horrible injustice that’s been done her. But that’s not yet. It’s telling people I meet now that’s become the issue.

  Ash. I mean Ash. Telling Ash. She’s becoming a test of this, and some measure of how little I’ve travelled these last six months. Not that I have any compulsion to rush beyond the people around me. I just hadn’t realised I’d been quite this insular. Lily keeps me busy. That’s genuinely part of it, and a good part of it. And work is too, the re-imposed routines of work. Three half days and two full days a week. Not completely like it used to be, but the right amount for now.

  We had to look at the business structure after Mel died, since I owned two quarters of it all of a sudden and I didn’t want to. We had to think about getting someone else to cover Mel’s share of the work, and we had to decide whether we’d do that with part-timers or get a new person to buy in.

  And I sat there, not really listening, and we’d stop the meetings when I’d visibly stopped caring, and we’d take it slowly. I’d sit there, remember a couple of years before, when we were putting it all together the first time, and it didn’t make sense to be having to go through so much of that again so soon.

  It probably wasn’t easy for the others, either, but I can’t say I noticed that.

  If I think back now to the meetings a few months ago, I can see the strain on their faces. I don’t think I’m inventing it, even if I didn’t register it at the time. And it’s different, still different here now. For them as well as me, and I’m not sure I knew that. They knew Mel too, after all.

  I remember when we set the practice up and how, if we hadn’t known each other so well, there might have been concerns about the structure, since a couple technically controlled half of it. But, from before we started, everyone knew it wouldn’t be a problem. We knew Mel and I would disagree on most things, since that’s what we did. It turned out that the four of us disagreed on plenty of things, but Mel and I had the advantage of being able to argue about it in the car afterwards, and at home for as long as we wanted.

  And, as a business devoted to laser surgery of the skin, we argued most about music. We argued about sound systems, then the types of music that might be played, then their implications. George said it worried him, that he could see where it was all heading. That, if we agreed on Vivaldi (to pick one extreme), someone some day could demand Metallica, and what would we do? Most of us would draw a line in there somewhere, but we’d all draw it in different places.

  We’re heading for middle-of-the-road, he said. We have to fight against that. We’re negotiating blandification. It’s the Classic Hits format. It’s stagnation. It’s a slow death. It’s emblematic of a civilisation in decay. In the years before the Roman Empire fell, they reverted to a Classic Hits format.

  And Mel said whatever music was played we had to be able to control the volume in each room, because she’d probably want it off most of the time.

  Then there was the issue of whether Laser West would be one word or two. And if it was one, whether or not the W would be capped.

  We agreed on which lasers we wanted without much debate, and they cost one hundred thousand dollars each.

  Then, after Mel died and I went back, it wasn’t like the same place. Patients weren’t even like the same phenomenon for a while. I could do the surgical things. I liked the parts of the job where the people shut up and I was down there close to the skin, working in microns. It was the talking parts I couldn’t handle. I’d find myself explaining and explaining before the procedure, working towards some kind of informed consent and suddenly I’d wonder why the hell these details mattered. And then I’d tell myself to stick to it, I’d remember the next detail and I’d be rolling again, with hardly a pause on the outside. It’s normal for there to be some mild redness and swelling around the treated area . . .

  I’d remember, you have to tell people things. You have to get them ready for the common things, and let them know the likelihood of others. Uncommon things happen. Medicine can be like that, sometimes even when it’s almost guaranteed to work out well.

  But it’s not guaranteed, and even when the odds are something massive to one, there’s still the one.

  The first forty weeks of Mel’s pregnancy were uneventful. It was the last hour when it went wrong.

  There was commotion first. Or concern, then commotion, then desperate measures, then a time on life support. Academic signs of death while ventilation was going on. Automatic-piloted decisions, and a brand new baby. I was there when things stopped. I remember the Intensive Care guy who talked to me so long it must have been an explanation. But it was like tinnitus. Like a sound that was ugly and nonsensical. With its content so impossible to put together that it was already a blur when it left his mouth, incomprehensible noise. And I noticed his hair. I noticed that he could at least have combed his hair.

  And we didn’t know what she’d be called. Lily was Mel’s choice, but I was never drawn to it. I don’t know how many alternatives I’d suggested. And then she was born, and Mel was dead.

  Months later I think I like it, even though I’m in the habit of something less formal.

  And we’re miles now from the uni campus, but she’s asleep. The car clock says two fifty-two. I turn the music down, and head for home.

  9

  I run anyway. Usually I start so slowly after one of these interrupted nights that I don’t even try to persuade my body to do anything at speed. I tell Ash about the teething, and not to expect much from me. She tells me she’ll be gentle.

  There’s been rain just before dawn, and we run around uni with wet smells lifting from the grass and the sun glinting from leaves, from droplets of water that will soon burn away. We run past the rowing sheds, past the City Cat ferry stop, past the colleges and the lakes.

  I get to work, I shower, I’m glad it’s a half day.

  There are ping-pong balls in my in-tray. There’s an email from George, entitled ‘International sign of disrespect’. It’s something to do with urinating on flags, and the UN Security Council. And George isn’t even here. Yesterday he was at uni and he’s back there today, re-enrolling in the part-time philosophy degree he’s been doing for the last couple of years. George says he needs to keep his levels of mental stimulation high. As demonstrated by his willingness to devote energy to tangents. What did he do to get this UN thing? Go to a search engine and key in ‘urinate’? I hope they work him hard in that degree.

  I go to thank Wendy for telling him, and for the ping-pong balls.

  That was actually Sylvia, she says, and fakes a look of contrition.

  What? Sylvia’s my parents’ age. She wears her hair in a bun every day. She’s not supposed to be making jokes about my ability to control my stream.

  Don’t be so ageist. Your mother would do it.

  She doesn’t have the bun.

  Don’t be so bunnist. Now, about Katie . . . She pauses. I wait. I’m not going to blow it now. I thought that was a nice email you sent her.

  Well, thanks. I hoped you’d like it. Should I have Cc’d you in? Except, when I was sending it, I had the idea it was just between her and me.

  Um, she forwarded it to me. I didn’t ask her to. She’d like to see you, for coffee, maybe. Casual. Just to clear the air, she said. So that everything’s all right between the two of you.

  And you can’t say no
to that, since it’d mean everything wasn’t all right between the two of you. And when you’re the one who’s soiled the other person’s pet you have to be prepared to go to some trouble to make up for it.

  But the day is better when I’ve got the whole issue out of my head, and I’m working on skin again. Into the rhythm of the laser as it zaps its way precisely into a skin cancer, working off the layers. And the vacuum hums away and Nigel talks to the patient, describing what’s happening, or chatting. Leaving me alone, moving precisely between shots, stripping away what I need to.

  My memories of six months ago are patchy. I wonder if they always will be. If it’s due to a receptive issue at the time – an inability to take much in – or if it’s all there, stored, linear and whole, waiting its turn to be accessed. The simplest things were complicated. Eating a meal all the way to the end, sleeping. A wild tiny baby needing care so often. All a blur. The cremation. The paperwork I had to go through. Looking up at the timber ceiling of the crematorium and seeing what appeared to be a couple of pieces of sticky tape, as though someone had once put a poster up there.

  I like the baby, now that I’ve adjusted. Even today I like her, after a night of moderate shittiness. I like her sense of adventure, her attachment to detail as she studies a broken Bonio or a plastic cup, like someone preparing for an exam on it. We’re quite a household. The three of us. The Bean, me and a dog that’s only just smart enough to blame me for rain, but not smart enough to know how dumb that is. Who insists on eating the corners of any piece of fruit toast in the vicinity. Who ignores his own name when he chooses to, but never ignores the word ‘cheese’.

  Now, everything’s organised for next week then? my mother says when I get there after lunch.

  I think so.

  We’ll be back on the eleventh or twelfth, so everything’s back to usual on Monday the fifteenth.

  It’s in the diary. I think Sylvia’s pretty keen about having Lily at work for a couple of half days next week, after that day not so long ago. She’s novelty value. And a good reason not to do the boring bits of the job for a couple of days.

  I don’t mention the ping-pong balls I have to put up with as the downside of the deal. My mother gets out her bushwalking books and shows me where they’ll be going.

  And your father’s printed off some information about the wineries in the area, so that’s the afternoons taken care of.

  When I call Ash, I get her answering machine. I’d forgotten she’s at uni all day on Tuesdays.

  Suddenly the outgoing message is over, I’ve got the beep and the tape’s recording. I wonder if I should have had a reason to call her. So I invite her to dinner, tomorrow night.

  I might be going to tell her about Mel. Or I might not. I might actually be wanting all that out of my head again and replaced with human company of the adult kind, but someone outside my too-close circle. It’s like, piss on one cat, everyone knows. Everyone thinks you’re not on top of your life until you’ve told them, in some detail, how you came to urinate on a coffee-friend’s much-loved pet.

  Still, it’s better that they’re giving me ping-pong balls than trying to rush me off into therapy. How could you bring that story up in therapy without precipitating a grim search for meaning? Now, Jon, suppose I put it to you this way. Perhaps now that you’re in the sole-parenting role, some issues are coming to the surface. Perhaps there’s something with your parents, your own toilet training. How do you feel about your mother? Really. And tell me, how do you feel when people are late for their appointments?

  Fine, I feel fine. Another moment’s treasured laziness. A chance to address my in-tray. Gaze at the horizon. Pass a little urine, maintaining surgical accuracy at all times. Woe betide any cats that cross my path, but I feel fine. And when I run in the mornings with Ash, she’s the only one fit enough to talk. I called her because I felt like conversation, but you can’t tell that to an answering machine.

  And on the subject of therapists, what’s Katie thinking about it? How do Jungians feel when you wee on their cats?

  The phone wakes me. I’ve fallen asleep on the sofa with the Bean on my chest.

  I swivel round and pick up, and my outgoing message cuts in. I press all the wrong buttons and the phone screams and wails before I can fix it. It’s Ash.

  Do you know how to use that thing?

  No. No-one ever told me. So I hit all the buttons until the noise stops.

  Good system.

  Um, I called you, I say to her, still waking up. I was going to invite you to dinner tomorrow night.

  Yeah . . . um . . . I think you did if I heard the message correctly. So, is it still on?

  Yes. If you can make it.

  I can make it. It’d be nice. Do you want me to bring anything?

  No, I don’t think so.

  Okay. Now, could I ask you a favour? And if it’s not convenient say no, and it’s fine.

  Sure.

  Are you going straight home after work? Because if you are, my car’s got a few problems and I need to get some groceries. I wondered maybe if I could meet you at Toowong Village when you finish work and I could buy them and we could take them to my place.

  Yeah, that’s fine.

  If it’s not feasible that’s okay. If there’s a problem with childcare, or something.

  No. It should be all right. I’ve got some stuff to buy too. I was going to be there anyway.

  So dinner is on. With her head still on my chest, the Bean is looking up at me with her woken-too-quickly face and she’s unsure if she should get upset or not. I do some quick talking, anything to force a laugh, then we’re okay.

  I can’t even use the answering machine. Mel died before telling me how to use the answering machine. She set it up when we first got it, and any time we call-screened she cracked before I did.

  It’s not as though I’m useless. She couldn’t use the video or the blender, and I was the only one who could operate the dishwasher without the cups ending up with grungy sediment appliqued to the bottom. There are too many machines in life now for it to make sense for everyone to try to master them all. Mastery of a new machine, in a couple, must sensibly fall to one party or the other. And then, if you’re uncoupled, you have to face taking up the slack or you have to decide not to couple again until you meet someone whose skills exactly match your deficits. I’m learning. I’m fearless at programming the CD player now, embarrassed at how easy it is to do rice in the microwave.

  But I still can’t use the answering machine. The instructions must be somewhere.

  10

  Coffee with Katie. Why did I say yes to coffee with Katie?

  The garbage truck comes early in the morning while I’m feeding Lily before taking her to childcare. The evidence of towel theft is now permanently disposed of.

  I thought the email would be enough. I thought we could leave it there. But I don’t suppose I could duck Katie forever, so maybe she’s got the right idea. Maybe it is best if we clear the air now. All morning, as I see patient after patient, I don’t want to. It’s on my mind most of the time, coming back to me as one archetypal dread-filled scenario after another. Being at school and having to think about fronting the principal and telling him it was a once-only error of judgement and won’t be happening again, whatever it was. Being sprung wanking in your bedroom by your mother, who’s just coming in to put your laundry away, or offer you a drink.

  Okay, maybe that’s a little too specific to count as archetypal. I think it’s a friend-of-a-friend story I heard when we lived in England for a year. One afternoon, when the friend of a friend was about sixteen and his mother was making dinner downstairs, he told her he had homework to do and retired to the privacy of his room. He shut the door, lay on his bed, took in a few pages of a porn mag perhaps, put his headphones on and started listening to the Stranglers. And an onanistic thought crossed his mind. He closed his eyes, allowed the onanistic thought some breathing space and tossed himself off something stupid. Then opened his eyes a
nd glanced at his bedside table, only to notice a steaming mug of tea.

  So, I’m telling myself as I catch the lift to ground at lunchtime, things could be worse. Maybe the air-clearing moment of reckoning isn’t so bad.

  When I get to the cafe, the airconditioning’s broken down. Katie’s at the same table as last time, with today’s Courier-Mail. She has already put a row of nervous little rips along the edge of the front page, each of them reaching as far as the text but no further. Is she actually trying to freak me out, or am I getting there myself?

  Hi, she says, in a truncated kind of way. I got you water. I didn’t get you coffee though. It would have gone cold. Could have gone cold. Depending on when you got here.

  I order a long black, and I sit down.

  It’s hot in here without the airconditioning. Really stifling. Don’t you think? Sweat beads on her upper lip. I didn’t know it’d be like this. Do you think we’ll get a storm later?

  Maybe. It’d be good if we did. It’d get rid of that humidity.

  Yes. So . . . how’s work today?

  Its usual self. No ping-pong balls in the in-tray today, so that’s good.

  We’re supposed to laugh at this, share a laugh over it. We don’t. Sweat is now beading on Katie’s forehead as well.

  You play table tennis? I didn’t know that. Just as a hobby, or . . .

  Not very often, actually. It’s a long story.

  Snorkels. Sometimes you see them in the tops of snorkels, she says, gripping onto the ping-pong-ball idea with all the appeal of a bull mastiff grabbing you round about mid-calf. Is that it?

  No, it is more to do with table tennis. It’s an old joke. And not a very good one. And it involves some of the biophysics of lasers. Wendy might have told you. You know how the CO2 laser has a wavelength of 10 600 nanometres?