A Hundred Small Lessons

by Ashley Hay

Now, in the kitchen of Elsie’s house, she pulled a petal off the palest pink rose and pressed its softness against the dent in the top of her lip.

  E or F. Elsie or Ferdi. It had to be.

  She let the petal drop.

  20

  The function

  The harbingers of doom, he might have called them. He had smelled their perfume, heavy, from the door, and he paused a moment when he saw them on the table, wondering what he might say.

  ‘For me?’ he tried.

  ‘For Mummy,’ said Tom, butting against his leg like a puppy.

  ‘From Mummy’s friend?’ Ben scooped his son up and set him on the table, between himself and the vase.

  ‘Ferdi Kiss,’ said Tom, agreeably, and the two of them stood and stared at the bouquet, then turned as Lucy came in.

  ‘Tom tells me that Ferdi Kiss sent these.’ Ben was holding his son’s hand.

  Lucy blushed, shrugged, and shook her head. ‘I don’t know.’ She held out the card. ‘And it’s Klim—Ferdi Klim.’

  Ben read the short message, saw the smudge, and shrugged in turn. ‘Who else, if it’s not him?’ Thinking, Think fast now, Lu, think fast, and wondering at the shape, the venom of his thought.

  ‘It’s an E,’ she said, straight off and certain. ‘It’s an E, not an F. I think it’s Elsie.’

  And he laughed at her then, so loudly that Tom joined in too. ‘It’s Elsie,’ Ben said after all the noise had stopped. ‘Of course it’s Elsie.’

  ‘I think the doilies in the yard were Elsie too,’ said Lucy quietly. ‘What sort of possum would get up to that?’

  There was no more laughing then, and in the quiet kitchen, Ben turned to face his wife, wondering what he might say. There were words, phrases, flashing inside his head—like Just stop. But before he could say any of them, he felt Tom’s hands latching onto his shoulders, the little boy hanging on and swinging free.

  ‘Piggyback!’ His voice was gleeful. ‘Piggyback! Make Tom fly!’

  Ben reached his hands up to his own shoulders, gripping onto his son’s. Those little fingers: part of him; part of her.

  ‘Make Tom fly,’ he said, stepping away from the table so that the little boy dangled down behind him like a cape. ‘That’s a very good idea.’ Flying him out of the room, away from Lucy, and on and on through the small square house. While his teeth clenched and his blood thumped.

  They came to rest at last in Ben and Lucy’s room, Ben dropping to sit on the bed and releasing his son’s tiny paws. ‘I think I flew you all the way around the world that time,’ he said, feeling the weight drop away from his shoulders.

  ‘Are you done?’ Lucy called out from the kitchen. ‘Can I come in?’

  From the bed, Ben could see the edge of the mirror—most of himself, sitting still, and Tom’s feet beside him, kicking away as if the bed was an ocean he had to traverse.

  When Ben was small, he and his mother had played for hours around her mirror, a freestanding thing on wide chromed feet—he’d been amazed that he could walk around the back of it and not find her standing there. He’d been amazed that there were angles from which he could see her in the reflection but not a trace of himself. Magic spots, he’d called them. Show me the magic spots, Mum. Making himself disappear.

  He shifted along the bed and craned to look again. There were Tom’s feet, swimming on, but Ben himself was invisible.

  Lucy sat down beside him, as close as she could. He glanced up, at the mirror, not at her.

  ‘Don’t do this,’ she said quietly. ‘I’m sorry. Maybe it is him. But it’s nothing to do with us.’

  Behind them, Tom had rolled over, as if to switch to backstroke.

  ‘I have to get ready to go.’ Ben stood up, squarely in the mirror’s frame again.

  ‘Go?’

  ‘Some awards thing—I did tell you. I came home to change. It’s black tie.’

  ‘Right. Sure.’

  He pulled a coat hanger from the wardrobe and flicked its shirt so it cracked like a whip. ‘I did tell you,’ he said again.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You did.’

  They were still there, the two of them, Lucy and Tom, when he came out of the shower. They were giggling and tickling, and he stared at them a moment, pushing down the strongest urge to ask why they had nowhere else to be.

  It’s no good looking for things that aren’t there. He heard his mother’s voice. Don’t make something out of nothing.

  Which was exactly what Lucy herself said when he spun around, fumbling with his buttons, and shouting that the flowers were from Ferdi: he was sure.

  ‘Don’t look for things that aren’t there, Ben.’ She had Tom pressed in close against her chest.

  He heard his own voice, yelling in response—the idiocy of this business with Elsie; the lunacy of her game. The words hung huge in the room.

  ‘You’ve got your stories backwards, Ben Carter,’ Lucy said at last, her voice low and level. ‘You want to make something out of nothing about Ferdi—and nothing out of something about Elsie. Why can’t they be from her?’

  ‘Because she’s a joke, a game, your crazy imagination. And you’re taking it all far too far.’ His buttons finally fastened, he was raking through the contents of a drawer.

  ‘I think this is what you’re looking for.’ Lucy was standing beside him, Tom balanced on one arm and his tie in her other hand. ‘Don’t frighten Tom,’ she added, and her voice was awfully low.

  And she put the little boy down gently on the bed, where he practised his frog kicks, while Lucy stood, quite calmly, fussing with her husband’s tie.

  ‘Don’t ever scare him.’ Lucy’s voice was quieter still, her fingers tying and retying the knot while Tom swam on and on.

  ‘Well—’ Ben swallowed the worst of his words. ‘Then don’t scare me.’

  ‘Where’s the do?’ She patted the tie’s smooth dark fabric, its knot flat at last.

  ‘Cloudland—I shouldn’t be late.’

  ‘Don’t be too underwhelmed.’ And she kissed his cheek, as if nothing had happened at all.

  It had been a magical place, the old Cloudland, a fairy-tale building up on one of Brisbane’s hills, with a beautiful arch at its entrance and a sprung floor that danced with the people who danced on it. He’d never been, but in his imagination it was somewhere ideal. His mum had gone there once in a while when he was tiny, leaving him in the care of a neighbour and coming home late at night, humming to herself.

  He was twenty years old and at work when she rang, astonished that the building had just gone. ‘Four in the morning,’ she told him later, ‘the wreckers broke it down; destroyed it all.’

  Like razing fairyland, Ben thought then and still thought now. When a new place opened that bore the same name—just before he and Lucy came north—he’d made a point of saying he’d refuse to visit. It seemed somehow sacrilegious. Which, he thought now, made it as good a place as any to take his bad mood tonight.

  He stood perfectly still as Lucy stepped away.

  ‘You always look good in black tie,’ she said.

  He’d never noticed before the way normal conversation had a kind of buzz around it if a fight was being ignored. Perhaps because he’d very rarely fought.

  ‘If you make your peace with the place, maybe we can go dancing there.’ She kissed his cheek again, but quickly. ‘But we’re OK here on our own, me and Tom.’

  He touched his fingers to the place her lips had touched, as if to keep the kiss there. ‘Yes,’ he said, still staring at his reflection, his face impassive, his shoulders hunched. ‘Yes, you are.’

  •

  In the carefully lit space of the function room, Ben found his nametag among the rows of others and clipped it to his lapel. Drinks, a few speeches, the inevitable jokes about people without Valentine’s arrangements. A few more drinks, a meal, and it would be done. He nodded at some of the people he recognised—a twenty-year-old entrepreneur who designed wildly successful apps; a colleague from work; a few people from
the universities—and smiled at a woman in a silky silver dress.

  ‘Nice drop,’ she said, coming over to him and raising her champagne flute as if to make a toast. ‘Happy Valentine’s.’

  ‘I don’t think they’re sparing any expense.’ He smiled. ‘I’m Ben.’ He pointed at his tag. ‘Now that’s a dress for Cloudland.’

  ‘Felicity Smith. Events. Publicity. And no, we spare no expense.’ She shook his hand, her grip firm.

  Felicitous, thought Ben. They batted pleasantries back and forth as the crowd grew and the canapés arrived.

  ‘And was this the gig you wanted when you were growing up?’ Felicity nodded at the newspaper’s name on his tag as she held her glass out towards a waiter. She made no acknowledgement as he paused and refilled her glass, nor of his friendly smile.

  Ben held her gaze as he drained his own glass. The last bubbles burst against his tongue. He could invent his life; he could make up a new version of himself, right here and now. He could tell her anything. And that might be a bit of fun. But he shook his head—at himself as much as her question—and tilted his empty glass towards the waiter.

  ‘Of course not,’ he said, watching the champagne’s level rise. ‘I wanted to be an astronaut—didn’t every little boy?’

  ‘Been to Cape Canaveral?’ asked Felicity, as if everyone had.

  ‘No,’ said Ben. ‘Although I have interviewed Andy Thomas. Why? Got any contacts?’

  Felicity smiled. ‘I always know someone,’ she said. ‘In fact, I met a guy the other day from some mob getting up a reality show that’ll send you to Mars. I could try and put you in touch, if you like—but I guess that’s a one-way ticket.’

  ‘I think my wife would have something to say about that.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Felicity. ‘Your wife.’

  They sat next to each other at dinner. The napkins on the tables were folded like the starbursts of the doilies in his yard.

  As if Elsie could have done that.

  ‘Did you ever really try to be an astronaut?’ Felicity shook out her napkin. ‘I don’t have children myself, but what a shame for them to grow up with disappointed parents.’ She smiled as though she was joking, but there was a merciless chill to her voice. ‘Such a thing, to give up on your dreams.’

  Ben took a first mouthful of the rich seafoody thing in front of him. ‘And was it your dream to organise black-tie events and schmooze journos?’ He gave a kind of smile. No need for hostilities, surely.

  ‘I’m just saying that there are always ways, you know. I wouldn’t let a thing become impossible. Why, the European Space Agency was recruiting astronauts a couple of years back. Maybe your wife would have moved to Cologne?’

  ‘She’s never been a big fan of that scent.’ He smiled at his own pun. ‘It’s a grandmotherly kind of a smell.’

  ‘Perhaps she’d prefer something like this?’ said Felicity, leaning towards him and holding out her wrist.

  He used to do this all the time, this banter. It was easy to do it again. If flirting was a game, Ben knew he’d always played it; it was part of coaxing stories out of people.

  He took a deep breath and recognised the fragrance. ‘Chanel. Very Marilyn Monroe.’

  ‘Well, you know how she wore it,’ said Felicity. ‘Should we try to get onto the roof somehow before the main courses come?’

  As quick as that? he thought, and then—

  ‘Ben.’

  He felt a hand fall on his shoulder and looked up to see the twenty-year-old man who knew how to design the best apps.

  Good timing, he told himself, and meant it.

  •

  It was a mild night when he stepped back onto the street, with the kind of perfect pitch of balminess—sweet, warm air and the city’s lights all brightly twinkling—that made him decide to walk home. He and Lucy had done it once, across the bridge, around the top of the cliffs, past the hospital, up the hill to the old cemetery and down the other side. Eight k’s or so—he’d be home in just over an hour. He walked onto the Story Bridge, loving the way the wind picked up as he reached the thick metal frame of its cage. Tom thought this was where his father worked—the place where stories came from—and that always made Ben smile.

  It wasn’t Sydney. It wasn’t the harbour and it wasn’t that city’s famous arch. But Ben loved the way Brisbane crowded along this stretch of the river, as if it had been especially designed to look its best from this modest span of elevation. He loved the way the river described its particular line from the Customs House through the busyness of the CBD to the gardens and on past the old Commissariat Store, almost buried now by high-rise and freeway. He loved the way, at night, the lights of the buildings twinkled like Christmas. He loved Brisbane most at night; it looked like a jewel box.

  It was something, coming home, bringing his family here. He’d never thought it would feel settled, or so right.

  He sighed. Why fight with Lucy? He’d had just enough to drink to decide to let it go.

  Coming down off the cliffs, he cut under the motorway and up past the hospital. An ambulance whizzed by, and he thought of the hospital in Sydney on the day that Tom was born. There’d been no drama in the first hours, and then total drama in the last: he’d half expected sirens and flashing lights to activate somewhere. They’d sliced his wife open—he still didn’t really like to look at the scar—and it was done. Thomas, loudly come into the world.

  One day in their lives, and it changed everything. Him. Lucy. Everything they were.

  Then Tom turned one. And then they came here. Came home, he supposed—he’d looked sometimes for his long-gone Mum. They’d bought the house; he’d thought it would help Lucy settle in, but she still seemed so lost in this place. All this nonsense about Elsie. And now came Ferdi Klim—her past, of course, and Ben wondered, for the first time, if she might wish she’d made some other choice.

  But Tom was her choice; clearly hers.

  He stopped in the middle of the footpath and rubbed fast at his head with both hands.

  I miss how she was. I miss how we were.

  Miserable things seemed so much bigger in the darkness. And of course Tom was a glorious boy.

  But Ferdi. What did he think—that Lucy would run off with him into the sunset? Family number four? Forget it. Ben knew her better than that.

  A procession of empty taxis went past, each with a little speck of light bright on its roof. Ben walked on, imagining the lonely figure he made along the footpath while the cars and all their passengers rushed on by. He’d be home soon enough—up the hill, down the hill, and around beside the river. He liked the quiet dark space the water cut through the landscape too, a pause in the lights and the life.

  Modest, he thought, compared to the bustle and glitter of Sydney. Welcome home. And it did feel more like home with three of them: he’d never seen the truth of that before.

  My boy, thought Ben simply, loving his son, the very idea of him. He caught the edge of Felicity’s predictable perfume at the back of his throat and hated how close he’d leaned in to smell it. Here was Tom; here was life. He was walking to his home. That was worth more than fumbling in a fire exit stairwell.

  A taxi slowed by the kerb, the driver leaning over towards the passenger’s side. ‘Walking far, mate?’

  And Ben reached for the door, wanting to be there already. He gave the address—Elsie’s house, he almost said, and almost smiled.

  He shut his eyes for the short drive and saw darkness flecked with starlight behind his lids, like a spray of white across a darkened lawn.

  •

  He was half-asleep as he stood in the bathroom taking off his tie and fiddling with his cufflinks. He brushed his teeth and left his suit, his shirt, his underclothes, all tumbled in a pile on the floor. Lucy had left his pyjamas on the towel rail, just like she did for Tom, and he sluiced himself under the hottest shower his skin could bear, relishing the warmth and the steam even on this tropical night.

  Halfway into the bedroom, his hand
already reaching for the covers and his eyes adjusting to the shape of Lucy sleeping in the darkness, he realised there was someone else sitting in the room—on a chair by the window, a chair he wasn’t sure he’d ever seen before.

  ‘Elsie?’ he heard himself say before he realised he’d thought it. And then, more surprisingly, ‘Ferdi?’

  There was a metallic crash as a possum leapt onto the roof of the front porch; Tom cried out in surprise and Lucy was up and moving through the house before Ben had time to hail her. He looked back at the corner of the bedroom. What he’d seen was the step stool that Lucy used to get to their highest cupboard, a furry toy of Tom’s perched on the top.

  ‘Hello, you,’ said Lucy, coming in again and brushing against his shoulder. ‘You’re very late; lucky I wasn’t waiting up.’

  He smelled her hair as she went by, its scent like a rich and familiar balm.

  ‘I walked,’ he said, and he climbed into bed alongside her.

  ‘I threw those flowers out,’ said Lucy in the darkness. ‘We don’t need them here—whoever they were from.’ And then she turned and slept again, he was sure, her body still and one hand holding his.

  Ben lay there, waiting to sleep, watching Tom’s toy by the window, thinking how easily the shape of another person came in and out of focus.

  21

  The visit

  But Lucy didn’t sleep. She lay there still and quiet, listening to her husband’s breathing and wondering what to do. The flowers had looked so perfect lying on the compost, but what had she looked like, marching across the yard to dispose of such an elegant bouquet? A lover’s tiff? A break-up? An unwelcome advance? Well, whatever—she wished another Lucy Kiss had had to deal with it. Not her.

  When the possum jumped again, she went back into Tom’s room and sat beside his cot—better to be awake alongside him, she thought, fitting her breathing to his.

  They were exquisite, all these moments of watching him sleep. The still point, somewhere separate from that swing between pleasure and frustration, or the different swing from fractiousness to fear. Just contentment. Just this moment. Here they were: they were all right.