by Fiona Wood
There’s no way I’m going to dissuade them. I think about the letter I’ve only just written Janie’s parents and try to square my conscience with the thought that at least I’ve made an effort to talk them out of it.
I want to be good, but good is a slippery customer. I decide to settle for being loyal to my friends. Does this make me a pathetic pushover? Good or bad? Right or wrong? Who knows?
We’re supposed to find the arid garden, the eucalyptus lawn or the californian garden, but mostly people huddle together in the tropical glasshouse for warmth, and light up. Lou and Uyen head for the arid garden. Estelle and I set out in that direction as well, but she’s shivering so the two of us duck into the cactus glasshouse for a defrost booster on the way.
It’s so warm in here that the condensation dribbles down all the surfaces, but all those spikes make the warmth feel dangerous.
‘That’s better,’ says Estelle, her teeth still jittery.
I want to put my arms around her and warm her up, but – of course – don’t.
‘These don’t even look like plants,’ she says, mildly horrified. ‘They’re an affront to the whole plant kingdom.’
‘They look more like diseases,’ I agree.
‘Tumours.’
‘Or mutants that formed after the meltdown . . .’
‘Yeah, when plants and slimy things bred . . .’
‘. . . with barbed wire.’
‘And they’re all nasty,’ she says, wandering around. ‘Except you.’ She’s talking to an aloe. ‘Hello, Aloe.’ She breaks a tip off. ‘Got any scratches?’
I wish. It would be the high point of my life being dabbed with aloe by Estelle. I’d write a song about it. Or an epic poem. Or a tragedy. Depending on how things turned out.
‘Dan?’
I’m somehow leaning against a large spiky beast that’s hooked into my jumper.
‘Ouch.’
‘It’s trying to eat you. Even though you’re quite obviously not an insect,’ says Estelle, attempting to unhook me.
‘Oops,’ she says. ‘I got the little one unstuck, but it’s pushed you into the big one. Yuck, they’re not even leaves, they’re like big fat paddles or something.’
‘It’s poking into my back,’ I say. It’s quite painful. I’ll be in need of aloe any minute.
‘Hold still,’ she says.
Estelle is in extremely close range now, so holding still is pretty well impossible. Her proximity flicks the switch that reallocates the distribution of blood in my body. Throat constricted, head spinning. Paralysed. Like dream running, when you can’t.
‘It’s going to be easier if we get your jumper off,’ she says, and gently starts lifting it up. I raise my arms. It’s uncomfort-able feeling sexually charged and impaled on cactus spikes at the same time. No doubt it’s a popular niche activity in some circles, but not mine.
Reminding myself to keep breathing, I remove my arms slowly from my jumper, duck my head out, and step carefully away from the cactus, I’m stepping into Estelle’s arms, which are raised, holding my empty jumper. And I’m about to kiss her – totally without warning, and amazingly I can tell she’s expecting it, accepting it – when the foggy glass doors slide open and Uyen and Lou burst in with a rush of cold air.
‘Here you are.’
‘We thought you got lost.’ Is that a knowing look from Lou?
Estelle steps away from me abruptly, letting the jumper drop, still suspended on the cactus.
‘I got spiked,’ I explain.
Estelle lifts my jumper off the cactus. ‘We’re all going to have to get some out. Look.’
We stare at the jumper. It’s covered in cactus spines.
‘It’s not so bad,’ says Lou. ‘These big spikes are much easier to get out than the little furry ones.’
I look at Estelle, but whatever was about to happen has escaped through the opened doors.
When I get to Phrenology after school I hardly recognise Ali. He’s in the kitchen leaning on a bench, talking to my mother. Smiling. It makes his whole face look different. She’s smiling, too. They’re talking food and both actually looking . . . relaxed? What’s wrong with this picture? Ali chucks me an apron and tells me to start clearing tables.
Moving from table to table, I notice the little kids are eating my mother’s strange face biscuits – grumpy frowns, tongues poking out sideways, twirling moustaches, winks. They’re a hit.
We walk home together after my shift and there’s more good news. Mrs Da Silva’s niece is getting married and she’s ordered a cake: the Marilyn. (Don’t ask. It sits on a bed of pink ostrich feathers.) Mrs Da Silva stayed with them the whole time and didn’t let my mother start with the ‘counselling’ caper. They stuck strictly with cake talk, price and delivery arrangements.
25
RUNNING IS USUALLY A good way to forget about everything. Slicing through the world, in the pump, the pounding, the thud, in the blur of images – I shed my worries like itching lizard skins and leave them way behind. The more power and endurance and speed I find, the better I like running. I don’t even mind the pain. The stretch and ache past comfort makes me feel stronger. There’s no thinking, just the machine. Usually. But not today. Today I have the near miss kiss to contend with.
I know, because I listen, that this is the sort of ‘issue’ girls dissect for hours on end. During class in notes, at lunchtime in urgent huddles, after school on the phone no doubt. What did the smallest look or comment mean? The exhaustive ‘on the one hand but then again on the other hand’ 360-degrees no-stone-unturned analysis.
I’ve run all the way from Fitzroy to the Tan track that loops around the botanic gardens, back to the scene of the crime. It’s already dark and the peak-hour traffic hurtling from the city fugs the air. The Yarra River, mud brown by day, is black, glittering with electric light pouring down from city buildings. I race, crunching along the compressed sandy track, badly in need of a fellow-dissector, a speculator, an interpreter. Fred won’t do, his approach would be ‘ask her’. Lou would say the same. The question is, (a) were you really going to kiss me? And (b) if so, what does that mean for me, for you, for the guy you’re taking to the social?
Her face as I was about to kiss her was almost too beautiful to bear. I’m surprised my retinas aren’t fried. Her expression was open, her message simple and complete: here I am, I show myself to you. The faraway land was close enough to touch, for half a second.
Or maybe I’m deluded, and it was a humidity-induced mirage, ninety per cent longing, ten per cent condensation. And how will I know when I see her again?
It makes me feel tired about how guarded we are the whole time. Without even trying we’re ready to make a joke of everything, serving up the day with big dollops of irony and derision and cynicism. As if. Sucked in. Kidding.
When I get home, panting, flicking my sweat-drenched hair out of my eyes, wiping my face into the shoulder of my T-shirt, Howard, my other pressing problem, is waiting for me right inside the front door. He stands stiffly and wags his tail. I scoop him up and carry him down to the kitchen. He doesn’t weigh much. ‘I’m sorry you can’t come running any more,’ I tell him.
Maybe I can ask my mother for some of the wedding cake money for the vet.
There’s something weird happening. An absence of Radiohead. Instead, my mother is playing some old blues music.
‘Do you like it?’ she asks. ‘Ali lent it to me.’
‘A change is as good as a holiday.’
I feel around for a diplomatic way to ask about money but come up with nothing.
‘Is Dad sending us any money?’
She sits down and starts laughing. It begins as a world-weary chuckle but ends as a genuinely amused belly laugh. I take it as a no. She eventually calms down, taking some deep breaths.
‘Do you need something in particular? Is it for the social? I can only suggest the op-shop, sweetie.’
‘Nuh. Just curious.’
‘I’m sure he’ll s
end something when he can. But he’s not working at the moment.’
I realise I haven’t had to avoid any phone calls for a while. ‘Where is he?’
‘At a “wellness” retreat in Byron Bay. Getting centred, or earthed, or grounded, or something.’
‘How long for?’
‘A month, he said.’
She starts laughing again. ‘Back to basics. Carry water, chop wood, meditate. Can you imagine?’
‘How’s he paying?’
‘That’s the best part, he’s organised a contra – they accommodate him, he does a business plan for them.’
I wonder if they know he sent his own business bankrupt. Try as I might, I cannot picture my adrenalin-fuelled dad leading this kind of life. I can imagine him bustling into some quiet courtyard in his Italian suit and silk tie, cracking jokes. But meditating?
‘He’ll do a good job,’ she says.
She’s wiping laugh tears with the back of her hand.
‘I miss him, Dan. This is exactly the sort of thing he’d do. He’ll end up franchising them.’
She fixes me with a serious look. I’ve walked right into a talk trap, totally unaware.
‘I’m still cranky about the business, but I knew about . . .’
Oh no, she’s going to talk about sex.
‘He was my best friend and...I mean, I guess I knew... stuff . . .’
‘Mum. Please.’ Read the room and shut up.
‘Things don’t always turn out the way you think they will . . .’
She gives me the attempted mind-read look, but my thought deflector screens are pretty much permanently in place these days.
Can’t she dredge the murky depths of her own adolescence and remember how disturbing it is to think of your parents being sexual at all? Regardless of sexuality. And that’s a bit of a light bulb. Parents + sex (straight . . . gay . . . any sex) = no-go zone.
I put together a quick self-help ‘nine stages of how I relate to my father’s sexuality’:
He’s straight, but I really don’t want to know about it.
The big gay revelation.
Shock.
Disbelief.
Anger.
Embarrassment.
Ambivalence.
Acceptance.
He’s gay, but I really don’t want to know about it.
In summary, I never wanted to know before, so why should I care now?
Maybe I can write a magazine story about this, and get a big cash injection for Howard’s operation.
My mother is chopping up a hunk of chocolate. She makes her own chocolate chips. She says it’s more ‘rustic’ than the little buttons you buy in a pack.
‘Perhaps I should have talked to you about this, but I’ve asked him to come and stay with us for a week after his retreat thingy.’
What?
‘I’m not going to let you two drift apart. And he certainly doesn’t want that either.’
‘He’s the one who pissed off.’
‘He’ll have to explain why things happened the way they did. Which is another good reason for him to spend some time here.’
Suddenly not so sure I’m evolving a mature understanding of my father’s situation, I feel anxious. I’m not ready to see him. That would mean speaking to him. The end of that conversation is me saying it’s okay that he’s gone. I just can’t put my head in that space. I’m ricocheting like a pinball, from ambivalence back to disbelief and anger, and bouncing around embarrassment again. Just when I thought I was getting somewhere. So much for my insights.
Howard gives a whingeing whine that turns into a sharp bark. He’s got surgery on his mind.
‘I think Howard wants his dinner,’ my mother says.
And food.
I pat Howard apologetically and try to bend the discussion back to money.
‘So, good news about the cake order.’
‘Just in time to rescue us from the snapping jaws of the bank.’
‘No cash to splash?’
‘None. It’ll cover the bills. Almost. And if I can keep doing some work for Phrenology when Anne gets back, we might just be able to keep our heads above water.’
‘That’s great.’
‘You know what? It really is.’ She looks genuinely pleased.
Pittney corners us two days later about the social to tell us we’re getting to the ‘business end’ of the planning and demands to know what exactly we have ‘finalised’.
All we really have finalised is a risky ‘getting there’ plan for Estelle and Janie, and that’s only if they manage the sleepover con, which looks to me like an outside chance. Apart from that not much is solid except the venue – the gym.
By the end of lunchtime I cave and we book Vile Bodies, the Year Twelve band. The transposable bracket girls are being difficult about refreshments so we ask if they’d like to take over that area and they say (omigod) (only) (like) (so) (totally). So now everyone’s happy.
No Radiohead again when I get home. Salsa. My mother’s grooving around the kitchen while she cooks. I personally don’t like seeing parents dance; it’s unnatural. But I can see it’s a good sign. I’m sure it has something to do with her getting out and about in the world with other human beings. Like Oliver said, good for her brain-health.
‘I’ve said I’ll go with Ali to his twenty-year class reunion.’
Twenty years out of school. That is so old.
‘That’s nice of you.’ Go figure.
‘But, Dan, because of the lead time for Mrs Da Silva’s niece’s wedding cake . . .’
‘Yes . . .’ I sense a favour about to be asked.
‘All the layers, and marinating the fruit . . . It means the last layer will have to be cooked that night.’
‘No problem. I’ll keep an eye on it.’
‘You’ll have to be utterly reliable, to the minute, or everything’s ruined.’
I try not to roll my eyes. Of course I understand this. Have I not lived through the product development, the cake trials, the advanced testing, the refining, the perfecting, the getting rid of clients?
‘Dan! Don’t drift.’
‘I’m listening! I can turn the oven off. I’ll remember. When is it?’
‘That’s the thing. It’s the night of your dance.’
‘Oh. That’s okay.’
‘But I’ve worked out the timing. I can put it in to be cooked by midnight. So long as you’re home by midnight it’ll be fine.’
‘Consider it done.’
‘It’s possible I’ll be home by then but it depends what sort of night it turns out to be.’
‘I understand.’ But I don’t really. She’s doing Ali the big favour, surely she should be able to cut and run when it suits her? She hugs me. Howard wags his tail, thumping it hard on the mat. Normally he jumps around barking if there’s any hugging going on. My mother notices.
‘Are you tired, little doggy?’
I wish I could tell her exactly what Howard’s problem is, but the last thing she needs is something new to worry about just when it seems the clouds are parting.
I give Howard an ear rub while my mother puts food on the table. We’re having one of my favourite dinners – piles of roast vegetables with homemade pesto. And there’s apple crumble for dessert.
When I carry Howard outside for a bedtime pee, Oliver is arriving home and he’s not alone.
‘Hey, man, this is Em. Em, Dan.’
‘Hi.’
Em looks scarily cool. She comes over and grabs a handful of my hair.
‘A-ha! Yes, I think we can do something with that.’
I get a warm bro glow realising Oliver must have spoken about me to Em.
‘House still standing? No burgs?’
‘Everything’s fine. I let a friend sit in there for a few hours on her way to Sydney.’
‘That’s cool. Okay, see you when we surface.’
‘Night.’
While I sit on the back steps waiting for Howard to select a suitable pl
ace to pee – it’s quite a ritual – I hear a door opening next door and Vivien saying an extremely firm ‘No’.
‘But I wouldn’t be leaving the house at all,’ says Estelle.
‘Save your breath. Janie may certainly not come over here. Grounding precludes all social activities, here or elsewhere.’
If anger and volume are anything to go by, they’re well into the argument.
‘We’re already missing our social,’ says Estelle.
‘There’ll be other school dances.’
‘Not if I die. Then I will never have been to a proper school dance. In my entire life.’
‘Don’t be dramatic.’
‘So I’ll be all alone, with no one to comfort me on the tragic loss of my one and only social. And you’re happy with that!’
‘Perfectly. Your father will be here. You’ll be fine.’
‘Fine!’
A door slams. Vivien exhales loudly, it sounds as though she’s smoking.
‘How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child, or whatever,’ she says to the night.
I’m not surprised to hear the manhole cover grating open a little while later.
‘Knock, knock, are you busy?’
I go into the storeroom. ‘Nah, come on down.’
I expect Estelle to be upset, but she obviously knows her mother better than I do. She expects to lose a few battles, it’s all part of a strategic wearing down campaign. She is confident that her mother, and Janie’s, will give up exhausted by the night of the social.
‘Especially if I can bring home an A or an A plus on something in the next few days, and I fill the house with Yo-Yo Ma.’
‘Rap?’
‘Cello.’
She looks right at home curled up on my bed next to Howard, her hair wet, wearing striped PJs. Ironically, she would be the perfect person to talk to about her.
If I had any guts I’d broach the near miss kiss, or, better still, initiate a new kiss, but instead I start telling Estelle about my father. The whole story – bankruptcy, gayness, Byron Bay. She listens completely, never taking her serious eyes from my face.
