Too Close to Home

by Georgia Blain

  Freya said that was exciting, she was pleased for her, she hoped it would happen for them. She knew a few people, she added, who’d gone into similar arrangements. ‘With all kinds of different permutations. Some more successful than others.’

  ‘It was the main reason why I came back,’ Louise said. ‘Although this would have to be one of the worst countries in the world for making art. What returning will do for my career terrifies me.’

  Freya had never told her what she thought of her last film. None of them had. Except Anna. Anna had lied, complimenting her on the complexity of the work and the surety of her vision. Freya had stepped back from the conversation, one eyebrow raised as she listened, her amusement at the performance tinged with discomfort.

  ‘It’s called taking care of my next job,’ Anna had said unapologetically when Freya had teased her about it afterwards.

  ‘The industry here is so bloody small, and completely unprepared to take any kind of risk. All they want are happy, feel-good stories. And it’s not just film. You must see it in theatre too,’ Louise continued, and Freya wished she’d gone out for a cigarette after all.

  She agreed, and then said she had to go to the loo, she’d be back in a minute, and as she edged her way between the wall and the table, she leant down towards Anna in passing. ‘Having a good time?’ she asked. Anna squeezed her hand.

  ‘Fabulous,’ she replied, and she looked as though she really were.

  In fact, as Freya glanced up and down the length of the table to see them all, her friends for at least two decades, eating, laughing, leaning forward in conversation, pouring more wine, they all seemed to be enjoying themselves.

  Sitting in the toilet cubicle, under a buzzing fluorescent light, she stared up at the window and out to the night sky, black and still. A plane roared overhead, the noise deafening in the silence of the bathroom. If she were outside, she would see the cold metallic sweep of its underbelly, almost close enough to touch, followed by the choking trail of fumes.

  When it passed, she could hear the sounds from the restaurant again. Someone was laughing loudly but she could not quite place who it was. Outside, people were talking. It was Matt and Mikhala. She listened closely, but she couldn’t make out their conversation.

  She washed her hands, the pink liquid soap sweet and sickly, and stood for a moment with her back against the cool of the bathroom tiles. It was then that she heard him speak again, and this time, she managed to discern the words: ‘I guess I’m just bored’, floating up to her with a clarity that was surprising.

  Leaning in to the mirror, she looked at herself. She dried her hands slowly. Was it his work? Or the night itself with the same faces (lately this had come to be more and more of an irritation for him), and the same talk? Perhaps it was her? She splashed her face, the water cool on the heat of her skin as she edged away from this last possibility.

  From outside, she heard footsteps now, the crunch of the gravel as one or both of them ground out their cigarette butts, and from somewhere in the distance, the slow scrape of a goods train, metal wheels on metal track.

  Breathing in, she tied back her hair, twisting it into a knot at the nape of her neck, and rubbed a finger under the smudge of mascara around her eye. Opening the door to the restaurant, she stood still for one instant, before making her way back to where they were all sitting, her friends, there at the table on the other side of the room.

  IT IS HOT AND still on the afternoon that Matt first sees Shane again. He is out on the street unpacking the car after their weekend away. They had promised Anna and Paolo they would all go to Paolo’s place in the country for a smaller celebration, but none of them had been able to find a spare weekend until some weeks after her birthday.

  ‘For someone who didn’t want to acknowledge the event, she’s done a good job of marking it,’ he’d complained.

  Anna had been depressed, as he’d known she would be, and Paolo’s thirteen-year-old daughter, who was in Australia for the month, had only added to the heaviness of the atmosphere. She and Anna had sat on the verandah flipping through old magazines, making disparaging remarks about the clothes and women, while Paolo had cooked, the heat from the oven permeating the house.

  Matt had taken Ella down to the river, wanting an escape. As they cut through the blackberry bushes, taking the steep path two steps at a time, he’d heard Freya following with Ella’s swimmers.

  ‘She can go nude,’ Matt had told her, but Freya had insisted she would get burnt, and Ella had watched them, her head turning from one to the other as they bickered, until eventually she had held up her hands, taking the swimmers.

  The water was cool and clean, trickling gently over banks and small islets covered in tufts of spinifex. The low branches of willows dipped down, leaves trailing in the river like long wet strands of hair, and there was no sound, other than the slow flow of river over sand.

  He had submerged himself completely, rising to splash Ella, who squealed and screamed.

  ‘Don’t do that,’ she said, and he grabbed her legs and pulled her under.

  ‘Try to get her to swim,’ Freya called out from where she was sitting in the shade of a desert oak, and he shook his head at Ella, winking as he told her to ignore her mother.

  ‘Come in,’ he suggested to Freya, but she already had her head in a book.

  The river was shallow and he and Ella walked down to a bridge at the bend, their voices echoing back from the rise of scrub on either side.

  ‘Pretend you’re Batman,’ she said to him, ‘and I’m Catwoman, and we have a fight and I beat you.’

  He bent down and seized her round the waist, hauling her up on his shoulders.

  ‘I’m a cat and I eat bats.’ Her squeal was high pitched as she pummelled his shoulders.

  He slipped on the rocks, only just regaining his balance before they both fell, and he looked back, anxious that Freya had seen.

  When they returned to where she was waiting, Ella lay down next to her mother, her body sleek and pale, her head resting in her lap. He bent down to kiss her, but she only clung to Freya and pulled away. This was how it seemed to be these days, their closeness leaving him adrift.

  ‘Anna’s in a foul mood,’ he said, and he nodded his head in the direction of the house.

  ‘It’s getting older, not getting any work, all of that.’ Freya scratched a circle in the sand with a twig, tickling Ella’s spine with her other hand.

  Anna did better than most actors they knew. She made at least one film or television program a year, and now that she had met Paolo, she certainly didn’t have any financial worries.

  He kicked his feet in the cool of the water, watching the spray. ‘At least she does what she wants to do.’ He uttered the words softly and Freya didn’t respond.

  ‘Why won’t she get any work?’ Ella asked.

  ‘She will get work,’ Freya explained. ‘But she’s worried that women often get less when they get older.’

  ‘That’s not very fair,’ Ella said, and Freya told her that no, it wasn’t.

  That night they played cards. Katrina, Paolo’s daughter, stayed in her room watching television and Ella was asleep, leaving the four of them sitting out on the verandah, the night warm and clear, the stars a confetti of silver across the soft darkness.

  They had drunk a few bottles of wine, and they were all slightly heavy from the alcohol. Paolo rolled a joint and held it up to examine its shape in the light. Matt dealt, wishing he wasn’t sitting opposite Paolo, who played meticulously, counting the trumps, barely restraining his anger when he lost, and insisted on analysing the play at the end of each hand. Matt, on the other hand, had trouble even remembering what the bids had been.

  ‘You know,’ Anna said, as she examined her cards absent-mindedly, ‘I wouldn’t mind living here.’

  Freya drew back on the joint, grinning as she did so. ‘You barely manage to make it here a couple of times in the year, and when you do you never leave the verandah.’

 
Anna didn’t look at her. ‘That’s because I’ve always been busy.’ She folded her cards and put them on the table. ‘But now that looks set to change – well, who knows?’

  After they won the first couple of hands, Matt said that he might go for a walk and then hit the hay, but Paolo insisted that he stay.

  ‘Someone has to reach 500,’ he said.

  Freya, who’d also become bored with the game, began hinting as to what was in her hand.

  ‘You can’t do that.’ Paolo glared, Freya’s thump on her chest to indicate hearts too audacious to ignore.

  ‘I shouldn’t have,’ Freya apologised, attempting to be serious, and then giggling with embarrassment. ‘I’m sorry. Let’s not count it. We can just play again, or say you won.’

  Anna looked confused. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘She let you know what to put down.’ Paolo stared straight at her. ‘Don’t try to tell me you didn’t see.’

  Anna’s innocence was convincing. ‘I didn’t,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t even looking at her. I knew that card would win.’

  Paolo stood up. ‘The actor.’ His disgust was evident. ‘We’re going to have a performance.’

  Anna rolled her eyes. ‘Oh, for crying out loud. I’m not performing.’

  Matt yawned.

  Freya said she was going to bed, hauling Matt up with her. ‘We both are.’

  When they were in their room, her eyes widened as she asked him whether she had been truly terrible doing that, the dope making her momentarily paranoid. And then she shook her head in disbelief. ‘It was just a game of cards.’

  ‘For Paolo, there is no such thing as Just a Game of Cards.’ Moving in close to her, he brushed the fine sweep of her hair back from her face, tracing her pale mouth with the tip of his finger.

  She smiled.

  The irritation of the day dissolved, because this was what happened when you were with someone for years, he thought. You could swoop, swinging from emptiness to completion in a matter of minutes. The trick was in trusting that there would be a turning when you were down low.

  The next morning, Matt said that he wanted to leave early. ‘Let’s get home,’ he whispered. Ella was still asleep in the corner of the room, her body curled in a small perfect ball beneath the sheet. The house was quiet.

  Barely awake herself, Freya looked at him. ‘We have to wait until lunchtime.’

  She lifted back the curtain with a finger, revealing the harshness of the bright sunlight. It was hot already. She kicked back the sheet, and waved at a fly that buzzed idly around her face. He saw her nude body, delicately white, familiar, and he kissed her gently on the shoulder.

  She turned to face him, her eyes cool in the morning light.

  ‘We’ll wake Ella,’ she whispered, but she turned, quietly, to where he was, her mouth warm on his.

  Later, when they were driving through the hot sprawl of outer suburbs, he told her that he didn’t want to do that again.

  ‘What?’ she asked, searching through the glove box for a new CD to listen to.

  Have one of those weekends. Just sitting around. Drinking, eating, bickering. He tried to explain, but he knew how his words sounded.

  She looked annoyed. ‘You’re never happy. Couldn’t you just enjoy it?’

  She was right. He often seemed dissatisfied. He contemplates her accusation, vaguely disturbed by the truth of it, as he takes the last of their things from the car, putting them just inside their front gate. As he turns to shut the boot, he hears someone call out his name.

  ‘Matt.’ The greeting is hesitant, and then when it is repeated, more certain. ‘Matt Johnson.’

  He looks up the hill, but the only person he can see is there on the other side of the road. A tall man, dark-skinned, long black hair, with two kids, a boy and a girl. Matt half raises his arm, and the man crosses the road, kids following.

  ‘Bin a long time, ay?’ and he takes Matt’s hand in his own, shaking it firmly, before pulling him in close, the smell of his sweat citrus sharp. He stands back and grins as he looks at Matt who, in that moment, remembers it’s Shane.

  ‘Shane Craigey.’ Matt shakes his head in amazement.

  Shane’s voice is soft and deep, teeth missing when he smiles. ‘Surprise, ay?’

  ‘These your kids?’ Matt looks at the boy and girl who cling to Shane’s legs.

  Shane nods, still grinning. ‘Darlene and Archie. Say g’day,’ he tells them. ‘This is my old mate. We haven’t seen each other for, what’d it be,’ and he rubs his brow, ‘ten, fifteen years?’

  ‘At least,’ Matt says.

  ‘Reckon the last time I saw you we was runnin’ from the cops in Brisbane.’ Shane looks at the house behind them. ‘This your place?’ he asks, and Matt tells him that it is. Archie, who is younger than Darlene, climbs halfway up the gate and starts swinging.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Matt steps back and takes him in, eyes still wide with surprise.

  Shane points up the hill. ‘Livin’ round the corner. Bin there a couple a days. Took a job down here.’

  At that moment, Freya opens the front door and comes down the steps, holding Ella’s hand. She is dressed in a bright green skirt and white cotton top, her red shoes catching the sunlight. She has make-up on, and her face is a series of sharp defined lines – an oblong of deep auburn hair, oval ocean-coloured eyes and a slash of crimson mouth, all against white skin. She is meeting a friend for a drink, an arrangement she’d forgotten about until they’d returned.

  ‘Sorry to interrupt,’ she says, ‘but I’ve really got to get going, and Ella has been waiting for you to take her to the DVD shop.’ She hands him the bag of returns and smiles at Shane.

  Matt introduces them. ‘We knew each other years ago,’ he says, and then he turns to Ella. ‘And this is Darlene and Archie, Ella.’ The three kids just stare at each other.

  ‘Come in,’ Matt says, and he steps back as Ella pulls at his hand.

  ‘I want to get a DVD.’

  Matt is about to tell Ella off but Shane speaks.

  ‘No worries,’ he says. ‘Told the kids I’d take ’em to the park anyways.’

  ‘I won’t be long,’ Matt promises, not sure how this has all happened, because surely Ella can wait.

  Shane tells him he’ll come past again. ‘We’re always walkin’ down this street,’ and he points to the playground at the bottom.

  And then, as they head off, Matt gets into the car, turning to follow them. ‘I’ll be back in ten,’ he says, winding down the window as he catches up. ‘Come past on your way home.’

  FREYA IS MEETING MIKHALA in a bar behind Central. She’s early, and she takes a seat in a dark corner towards the back and looks around the room. It’s Sunday evening but still relatively crowded. Most of the people are younger than her and as she glances across at a man leaning against the bar, he catches her eye. She wonders what it would be like to sleep with someone else again, the strangeness and excitement hard to imagine.

  She picks up one of the free news sheets on the table in front of her and flips through until she comes to the pictures of people in a nightclub; faces pressed close to the lens, they leer in to the camera, features distorted. They are all having a Good Time. Was that what it was really like? She remembers how insecure she was when she first started university. She had studied Arts, majoring in drama with a vague notion that she would act. She was painfully shy, appalling on stage, but surprisingly confident when it came to devising productions.

  She met Matt through the theatre group. He helped with set building and she watched him from a distance, unable to believe it when some months after he broke up with Anna, he kissed her, late one night at a rehearsal.

  ‘Why are you with me?’ she would ask, and there was no reassurance he could give her that would dispel her doubt that she wasn’t worthy.

  She adored him. She smiles as she remembers the intensity of that longing, made all the more sharp by her fear of losing him.

  ‘Come on, if An
na wanted you back – would you go?’

  Sometimes when he was out and she wasn’t with him, she would be certain he had met someone else. It was like poison. Lying awake and waiting for him to come home to her place, her despair would no longer be imagined but would seep, viscous, through her blood. When he finally turned the key in the lock, gently, so as not to disturb her, she would be sitting rigid, fists clenched, accusing him of all she had come to convince herself was true.

  And then, just as she had feared, as soon as he finished his architecture degree, he told her he was leaving. She still remembers that night. They ate dinner at his flat and walked along the beachfront. The warmth of the evening meant there were more people out than usual. A group of backpackers swam, the sea sleek and black, broken only by a line of white as a wave crashed into shore. She could hear them shouting, joyous, drunk, and she wished she were with them and not here with Matt, about to hear news she didn’t want. Because she knew, before he’d even spoken a word, that he had asked her over to tell her what she’d always dreaded, and she’d looked at him, suspicious, angry when he suggested they go down to the ocean for a stroll.

  ‘Go on, say it. Just say it.’

  And he had finally snapped. Yes, part of the reason he was going away was to get away from her. She suffocated him. He’d had enough. No, he didn’t know how long he would be gone. He just wanted to travel. He wanted to be by himself. Freya closes her eyes momentarily and tries to recall the pain. Sometimes she likes to remember, to summon up a replica of that feeling, a ghost of its intensity. Kicked in the guts, reeling, nauseous. Everything had fallen apart. Her hands hold her stomach.

  When she opens her eyes and looks up, Mikhala is there.

  ‘You all right?’ she asks, and Freya tells her she’s fine.

  ‘Just thinking,’ she laughs, slightly embarrassed.

  ‘Sorry I’m late.’ Mikhala sits opposite, her feet resting on the table between them, her beer perilously close to the edge.

  Her hands are paint stained and she smells slightly of turps. She’d been working, she tells Freya, lost track of the time. She kicks the news sheet Freya had been reading to the floor and talks about her painting, the impossibility of capturing her vision.