Perfect Skin

by Nick Earls

  They give three cheers, but I know Katie’s faking it.

  Someone asks how old I am, and I say, About thirty-five.

  Because thirty-four and a half isn’t a birthday. But it does mean I’m up for thirty-five next. I hadn’t thought of that before. It seems a lot older. There are going to be forms where I have to tick a different box. Thirty-five to forty. Thirty-five to forty-four. That seems like a whole different bunch of people. Men who like jazz and badly groomed beards. Shit like that.

  Jon, Anita says, beside me. I’m sorry about before. I just . . .

  It’s okay.

  No, I just didn’t realise you were both there. I didn’t know Oscar had arrived. Um, and . . . that you were in that situation.

  Um, I . . .

  No, no, it’s all right. How are your trousers?

  They’re okay.

  Good. Good. Well, happy birthday.

  Thanks.

  She smiles and goes to refill her plate. How are my trousers? For parents, these people are much more open-minded than I thought. Was that a Monica-Lewinsky blue-dress joke she was setting up there? I don’t think I can stay here, surrounded by cheery people who think I just got a happy-birthday blow job from Oscar in the lounge room. I’m used to living in a much more hung-up world than that. Things have changed while I’ve been out of circulation.

  Hey, Jon, Wendy says. Your birthday’s not till September.

  That’s right.

  So why did Oscar tell my mother Flag had his claws in your birthday-present pants and was on the brink of doing some serious damage?

  They’re very special pants. So what if my birthday was months ago? I’ve only worn them about twice and I didn’t want them wrecked. Someone had to get right down there to sort it out, or I would have had big loops of thread hanging everywhere.

  I tell her I’m going to get some food, and I go to find Oscar.

  Before I talk to anyone else, could you tell me exactly what you told everybody?

  Oh, yeah, sure. It got a bit elaborate, didn’t it? It was worth it though. I liked it best when the singing started. Your face was good. And you really are Big Jon in your birthday trousers today, aren’t you?

  George sidles up to us, and I’ve never seen him even attempt sidling before.

  Have you tried these pikelets? he says, with an almost peculiar enthusiasm. They’re still warm.

  Pikelets? I haven’t seen a pikelet for years.

  Pikelets are back. There’s a lot of thought behind this catering.

  Good of you to notice. I’m sure Katie’ll be pleased.

  Yeah. Maybe she is. He wrestles hard to suppress a knowing smile, but it breaks out anyway. We’ve, um, got coffee scheduled for Wednesday. She figured I’d get a break for coffee now and then. And I thought, why not? I’ve completely come to terms with the eighties. Unlike some people. So why not?

  Ash is holding Lily when I get home, rocking her, calming her, singing. Their noses touch, and Lily grabs Ash’s ear.

  She’s been a bit grizzly, Ash tells me, as Lily looks at the ear in fascination, and they bump heads. But I think we’re okay at the moment.

  We look okay.

  I put her back in her cot for a few minutes and had a quick shower. I borrowed a T-shirt. I hope that’s all right. I think it’s just the right size. She passes me Lily and holds her arms out to show me how well the T-shirt fits. What do you think?

  You might not know this, but there are some countries where the convention is to wear the elbow outside the sleeve. But I’d have to say that, to me, it looks just the right size.

  That’s when I realise I don’t want her to go home. That something’s missing when she’s not here. That if she stopped coming, there’d be another loss to cope with. That’s the sum total of what I’ve stopped myself thinking till now. Till now, walking in the door, seeing her with Lily. I want to tell her. I want to tell her now.

  Have you got a hair drier?

  No, I don’t think so.

  That’s okay. No big deal. We’ll just have to put up with the spiky look.

  She stays for lunch, and into the afternoon. She talks about going to do some work in the library, but it doesn’t happen.

  I make us cups of tea, and she sits there holding hers, both hands round it as though they’re cold. Which they can’t be. She’s looking down into the tea, thinking.

  I haven’t been completely straight with you either.

  What do you mean?

  I was going out with the guy who handles the distribution of our tea, runs the web site, things like that. And suddenly the whole thing turned icky. It ended a few months or so ago. So you surprised me with the tea yesterday. I thought it could have been something to do with him. Which is pretty stupid . . .

  Well, it’s not rational, but I wouldn’t call it stupid. But you did tell me about the home page. It wasn’t too hard to get there and click in the right boxes.

  Yeah. Which is what I should have been thinking. But you know how things can do that? Trigger things that don’t make sense?

  Yeah.

  He was sort of into the relationship more than me. A lot more. When I talked about coming down here . . . that all became clear. What got to me was that it seemed to piss everybody off. My family – my father particularly – they like him a lot. ‘Part of the family’, I think the expression goes. So I think there were lots of people more into the relationship than me. It turned into a bit of a mess. It was like, You’re going to what? Dump the golden boy, quit the weekend tour groups, move to the other end of the state? What’s got into you? You’ll worry your father sick? What’ll you do for money? What’s wrong with everything you’ve got here? Etcetera, etcetera. I mean, welcome to Erikson Eight, guys. The nest is emptying.

  Did you say that? I hope you said it.

  Do you think it would have helped? So here I am. After all my bold counter-arguments like, Oh yeah? I’ll get a job. You’ll never hear me asking you for money. So here I am, wearing your T-shirt, having sponged six meals off you in the last few days. That’s independent. I can’t even have a period now without getting your help. She laughs at her own joke. And then I hassle you about not opening up, and I tell you none of this. That’s not very fair.

  You could have told me.

  And it’s meant to come out saying just what it says – to mean that I was willing to listen – but it accidentally sounds tougher, maybe critical.

  Hey, I have now. It just seemed insignificant compared to what you’ve gone through.

  No, I meant you could. It wasn’t compulsory. And I’m sure what you were going through felt pretty significant when it was happening.

  It still does. It’s not an easy time, going through all that.

  I know.

  And even that sounds patronising. I drink my tea. She drinks hers. Before I make a mess of this, I want to tell her how I feel. I have to tell her. Before I say the wrong thing. I have to work out how I feel, the right words for how I feel. How I felt when I walked in the door today.

  Do you think she’s getting another tooth?

  Who?

  Who? How many people round here don’t have the full set? Lily.

  Um, I don’t know. Look, we’ve been seeing a lot of each other lately . . .

  But that’s where I stop, and get stuck mentally rifling through all the things I might say next, suddenly feeling the risk I’m on the brink of taking.

  And? she says, as though urging a slow child.

  What do you mean?

  There’s an ‘and’. We’ve been seeing a lot of each other lately and . . . I should be paying for more things? Is that what you’re going to say?

  No.

  But? Could it have been a ‘but’?

  No. Give me a chance. Um, I’m not sure . . .

  That’s evident, she says, and I can’t believe how awkward I feel, how long it’s been since I tried to say anything like this. I don’t even know what I’m trying to say – the actual words anyway.

 
; You turned up at a strange time for me. And my mind was on other things. So I don’t always know . . . we haven’t . . . I didn’t think through anything when we started running. I’d always run by myself. And I know it’s a good idea to get into a routine when you exercise with people.

  You’re slipping back to that non-direct approach again.

  What?

  The non-direct approach. You’re talking about exercise theory.

  Yeah, right. And how many weeks did it take you to tell me why you came to Brisbane?

  I came to Brisbane to study.

  You know what I mean.

  At least it didn’t start off as a story about car number plates.

  Are you kidding? How was I supposed to tell you? I’d never told anyone before, not when it mattered. And you don’t exactly make yourself an easy person to tell, with your ands and your buts and your observations about the non-direct approach. And you could have told me that other stuff sooner. It wasn’t such a big deal. Relationships end.

  I knew that was bugging you. I knew you thought I should have told you.

  Fuck. Look, I’m sorry. It was a big deal. Of course it was a big deal. And it doesn’t matter when you told me. I just . . . please don’t get into the number-plate stuff again. I can really do without it. I mean, that’s all to do with the person I married having died, you know.

  There’s a pause. She looks down at her tea and the muscles in her face clench.

  Do you think I’d forgotten that? For a second? How am I supposed to deal with you? How is anyone supposed to deal with you? I’ve got to be so cautious around all of that. I just forgot how to handle you for a second, okay?

  Handle me? What are you? A zoo keeper?

  Shit, Jon, what am I supposed to say? There’s another mistake. Sometimes you’re so far in there, running around, that you don’t even know what’s happening on the surface. How temperamental you are. How carefully people treat you. How nothing gets sorted out.

  Well, there goes the careful handling. This is nice and direct.

  I’m sorry. I’m not sure what to say. I’m really sorry that the person you married has died. And I’m sorry that you didn’t like her. And I’m sorry that you don’t really know how to deal with that, and that no-one ever talks about any of it. She stops, leans her forehead forward onto her hand. What am I doing? I’m sorry I’m saying all this now. It’s not my business. I can’t know what you feel like.

  Particularly if I don’t tell you. And I’m working on that. And I’ve made it your business. So don’t say it’s not your business. It’s your business now more than it’s anybody else’s.

  I think I’ll go home.

  What? Don’t go.

  No, I think I will. She stands up, goes to the coffee table in the lounge room and picks up her keys.

  I follow her in, watching this. Watching her being angry, and leaving.

  Don’t leave. Please.

  I’m not leaving. Don’t say it that way. I’m just going home for tonight. Because right this minute you are shitting me off. Hugely shitting me off. But I will see you tomorrow, idiot. I’m not feeling very well. I’m not up to this conversation. If we’ve been seeing too much of each other lately, you can have an evening off tonight and pick a different day to tell me. If there’s some problem with the running, then . . . She shakes her head.

  No, that’s not it. That’s not it at all. You’ve got it totally wrong. I don’t want to see a minute less of you.

  Really?

  Really.

  Okay. Okay. But I think I should go home, for today. I can’t be careful enough right now. I’m not feeling very well, so I’m going to go. I’m going to go, I’m going to take my tablets, I’m going to watch some TV and go to bed early and I’ll see you tomorrow.

  I don’t know that you should drive.

  Don’t tell me that I shouldn’t drive.

  I was just . . .

  Yeah, I know. And don’t ask me to stay, and don’t offer me a lift, and for god’s sake don’t offer me money for a cab or I’ll fucking kill you.

  Kill me? Is that just the cab one or all three?

  She laughs. Don’t. Don’t even try to make a joke out of it. Being your . . . friend is very strange. Sometimes too strange. But I kind of have to be, because you’re the only person like me that I know. You get me. People don’t get me often. Most of the time, I think I get you. I’m going home now, and let’s not make a bigger issue of it than that. I will talk to you tomorrow.

  What about food? You don’t have any food. Wait. Wait.

  Sit, good girl, sit.

  That was not my dog voice. That was my sincere for-fuck’s-sake-you-need-food voice. Give me a break. I’ll be one second.

  I run to the kitchen and I wonder what the hell I’m going to give her. What kind of food will make her come back tomorrow? Am I that tragic? Giving myself one second to plunder my kitchen for commitment food? Everything’s half-open jars when I look in the fridge, and I yank a bag out of the fruit section at the bottom. It looks like there’s a lot in it, but it turns out it’s only grapes.

  Two kilos of grapes, she says. Thanks.

  Look, it could have been a two-kilo chunk of pumpkin. And if you’re anything like me the only thing you’d know to do with that is cook it, mash it and serve with a tiny plastic spoon and a lot of aeroplane noises.

  I can’t imagine what you had in mind with two kilos of grapes.

  They’re bite-size. They’re totally ready.

  21

  It got better towards the end. With or without the aid of my try-hard jokes, it got a little better. But it could only get so good. I blame it on the material. I’m sure I made mashed pumpkin as funny as it can be.

  I wish she’d stayed. And I couldn’t watch her go. I had to stand where I was and listen to her feet on the steps, her car driving off. Was I supposed to follow? Who knows? With this kind of thing, I always used to pick the wrong option, and I don’t suppose that’s changing now.

  In the middle of the night, I think Ash was right. There’s teething going on. Lily sounds restless. Or perhaps it’s me not sleeping, and noticing every snuffle on the monitor. I wait, willing the grumbling to settle. It doesn’t. She wakes and opens her mouth wide and really lets me hear it.

  When I pick her up she’s a bundle of tense muscle. I check, and there’s a new red bump not far along the gum from tooth one. I give her Panadol and rub on some teething jelly.

  Neither of us exactly has our shit together tonight, do we? I say, as we walk up and down the hall.

  Soon we’re in the car, and I’m saying, You’ll like this. Nice soothing motion, four-speaker sound, as if I’m trying to sell it to her.

  See what it looks like out there at night? Look at the streetlights. Look at the trees in the dark. Look at the cows, I add, just for the hell of it. Look at the no traffic. Can you get that kind of thing yet? An absence. Other than the absence of comfort and trust connected with teething. Which, by the way, I do not cause. Like rain. I don’t do rain and I don’t do teeth. They’re both beyond me. Listen to the fire-engine. Do you hear that? Fire-engines, and they’re coming closer. Must be something happening this way.

  And the fire-engines swoop over the hill behind us and fly past, red light and sound bursting into the car, swamping Lily’s brain with stimuli and then vanishing ahead of us and over the next hill.

  Wow, they’re in a hurry, aren’t they? Did you notice the Doppler effect, the subtle change in siren pitch from when they were coming towards us to when they were going away?

  From the back she looks at me, quieter now. As if she’s just seen the great red flashing teething monsters who hate whining kids, and it’s in her best interests to shut up and hope they won’t come back.

  It’s okay. It’s nothing to do with us. We haven’t done anything wrong. We’re just out for a drive and they happened to be passing.

  I turn the CD player on.

  Why did tonight end the way it did? I’m thinking of Ash
again. I can’t help it. I don’t think I always avoid conflict, or the tough issues. Okay, I’m thinking of Ash, and I’m thinking back on a few therapy sessions. But what’s going on? What was I going to tell her anyway? What’s happening with us? All this talk about talking, and we don’t talk about that. And I don’t raise it in case I’m getting it totally wrong.

  We’re close to uni now, on the edge of my running-track street circuit. I hope Ash is okay with those kilos of grapes. I turn left. I should have given her bread. I look around, and the Bean is peaceful.

  We’ll just go by Ash’s place, and then get you home to bed, I tell her, in the gap between tracks.

  But there’s a red light somewhere, flashing. I can see it through the trees and on the front of a cream-coloured block of units at the T-junction ahead. I turn right when I get there, into Ash’s street. The red light fills the car again. From up ahead, red light.

  Red lights, lots of them. From right where I park in the mornings. From Ash’s house. The fire-engines have pulled up outside Ash’s house. Through the neighbours’ trees I see flames. Ash’s kitchen windows with flames spouting out of them, bursting out between the boards of her kitchen wall. The crews are connecting hoses. I can see them, lit by the fire, moving towards the house.

  I’m already shouting her name before I get to them. Shouting to let people know there’s someone inside. Shouting so that she can answer me back and tell me she’s out of there. I’m halfway up the path when I’m grabbed.

  Mate, what are doing?

  There’s someone in there.

  No, it’s a derelict house. They’re going to pull it down.

  Someone’s in there. Ash.

  What? What ash?

  Ash. Ashley. Fuck. She’s inside.

  I break his grip and run for the door. I hit it hard with my shoulder. Something cracks, but I think it’s my shoulder. I hit it again, I kick it. I probably start screaming.

  One of the fire crew comes past me with an axe, and another takes me by the arms. It’s the guy I pushed aside.