Walking on Trampolines

by Frances Whiting

  ‘I thought Raoul, maybe.’

  ‘Raoul?’

  ‘When I was an emo.’

  ‘Right,’ I said, trying not to laugh, and failing.

  But the boy who would be Raoul was, I was pleased to see, laughing too.

  ‘Stupid, really,’ he grinned.

  ‘Well, what about what I call you – DJ?’ I tried. ‘That sounds pretty cool, and it kind of fits you, don’t you think?’

  ‘Nah.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Too try-hard, everyone will think that I reckon I’m some sort of deck spinner.’

  ‘Right,’ I said, though I had no idea what a deck spinner was.

  ‘But I don’t mind JD.’

  ‘JD?’

  ‘Yeah, for Just Duncan.’

  *

  Just Duncan left with his mother the next day, Kiki explaining his school had given him compassionate leave, and had said he could return to finish the year out if he wanted to.

  He was certainly smart enough to catch up, but his mother thought he might want to finish it by correspondence, then start university as planned the following year.

  She added: ‘He said he wants me to call him JD.’

  ‘Well, it’s better than Raoul,’ I said, patting her shoulder.

  *

  Will came to see me the week after JD left.

  ‘I miss him,’ he said, ‘which is not something I would have predicted the day I picked him up in his vampire outfit.’

  ‘I miss him too,’ I replied, ‘but he’ll be back.’

  ‘I know,’ Will said. ‘I told him he could come and work with me anytime.’

  ‘Thanks, Will,’ I said, ‘it was really good of you to take him under your wing. I don’t actually know what I would have done with him.’

  ‘No problem, he was a big help, in the end.’ He leant on the door, one arm on its frame, his torso, I noticed, running half the length of it.

  I had told Kimmy there were no gorgeous men on the island, but I had been lying through my teeth. Will Barton was gorgeous, every salty inch of him, and I wanted, I realised, looking at him leaning in my doorway, his hands on me.

  Will caught my gaze, and made a half-move towards me, before I turned awkwardly out of his way.

  I was the last person on earth who deserved a man, let alone a decent one.

  After JD left, and I had ceremoniously dumped his coat in the outside bin, the house felt quiet and still again, as if all its windows had exhaled.

  I did a quick clean-up, threw on some washing, grabbed a book from the shelves and headed for the back verandah.

  ‘How’s the serenity?’ I smiled at Barney, who was lying sprawled across the stairs, but even as I said it, the phone was ringing inside.

  It was Simone, still apparently using her word shorthand. ‘Lulu,’ she said, ‘How are?’ I hadn’t seen her or Stella since I’d moved to Willow, but I spoke to both of them at least once a week, and planned to invite them over after I’d caught my breath from the last round of visitors.

  ‘Good,’ I answered, ‘how are you?’

  ‘Fine,’ she said, ‘but Stella’s not.’

  ‘Why, what’s wrong?’ I asked, instantly feeling anxious, Stella was the one person I’d never had to worry about.

  ‘You’ll find out when she gets there.’

  ‘She’s coming here?’

  ‘We both are. Your boyfriend Will is bringing us over at five o’clock.’

  ‘Today?’ I ignored her comments about Will, far more concerned for Stella.

  ‘I just said that, didn’t I?’

  I bit my tongue. ‘Okay, I’ll get the beds ready.’

  ‘Good,’ she said crisply. ‘I’m only staying tonight, got to get back for a meeting with the network Head of Misogyny, but Stella might be longer, she’s having a crisis.’

  ‘What sort of crisis?’ I asked.

  ‘Well, it turns out Saint Billy might need some sort of religious medal of his own to pray to.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I don’t know, Lulu, is there a patron saint for complete bastards?’

  ‘So it’s a marriage crisis?’ I said, trying to piece it all together.

  ‘Yes, but it’s much worse than that.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘I think she’s having a crisis of faith.’

  Then she hung up, leaving me confused and in a rush to get their rooms ready.

  I gave Stella the prettiest one with the bay window overlooking the southern end of Spanish Beach, and the nicest linen I had, white cotton sheets and a broderie anglaise bedspread.

  Then I went into the garden to pick some hibiscuses for her.

  They were her favourite flower, and sometimes she’d wear one to school, tucked behind her ear, until one of the nuns made her take it out, saying, ‘We are not in a Gaugin painting now, Miss Kelly.’ I put the flowers in a vase next to her bed, then I opened the windows wide and went downstairs again to the choose a book for her from the bookshelf.

  Stella was usually too tired at the end of the day to read, but she loved books and Billy often found her asleep in their bed with one still open in her hands.

  Stella and Billy.

  Billy and Stella.

  If what Simone had hinted at over the phone was true, Stella would be devastated.

  I grabbed some books and ran back upstairs to put them beside her bed.

  I would do anything to make her feel better.

  *

  They arrived at sunset, the two of them standing on the doorstep with Simone looking uncomfortable and Stella looking, I realised, angry.

  ‘Well, here we are.’ Simone gave a tight little smile. ‘Thelma and Louise.’

  ‘If that’s meant to be some sort of lesbian joke, Simone,’ Stella snapped, ‘I don’t find it particularly funny.’

  Behind her, Simone rolled her eyes as I slipped my arm around Stella’s waist and tried to lead her into the kitchen for a cup of tea, or a glass of wine, or, as Simone suggested later, a horse-sized shot of Valium.

  ‘We’ll have something to drink first,’ I said, ‘and then I’ll show you around the house.’

  ‘Just show me to my room please, Lulu,’ said Stella flatly.

  ‘Oh,’ I faltered. ‘I thought maybe we might have a quick look around and maybe a walk on the beach before dinner.’

  ‘No, thanks,’ Stella answered, ‘I just want to go to bed.’

  ‘But you haven’t eaten anything,’ I protested. ‘I made your favourite, beef stroganoff with parsley potatoes.’ I had, begging Will to do a late afternoon trip to the mainland for supplies.

  ‘No, thanks,’ Stella said again. ‘I really just want to go to bed.’

  ‘Well, do you want to just have some now, we could forget the walk . . .’

  ‘Leave it, Lulu,’ Simone’s voice cut in, ‘she wants to be by herself. I think that’s fairly.’

  ‘Obvious?’ I said, exasperated, ‘Just say it, Simone.’

  Stella sighed. ‘Stop it, both of you, I’m going to bed,’ and she began walking up the stairs. I followed her, and opened the door to her room.

  ‘This is you,’ I said.

  She nodded, and closed the door in my face.

  *

  Downstairs, Simone and I attacked my best bottle of red before dinner, and sat out on the back lawn to drink it while she filled me in on the precarious state of the McNamara marriage.

  Her name was Nadine, Stella had told Simone on the way over, she was a rental manager at the real-estate agency where Billy worked, and it had meant nothing, he said, though had admitted when she pushed him that it had meant nothing several times, in between open houses.

  And I was right, she was angry, that mood I’d caught at the front door, a simmering
rage even Simone had been a little unbalanced by – ‘Seriously, Lulu, the woman is about to erupt.’

  Billy had confessed to the affair one morning after church, where all the little McNamaras – scrubbed within an inch of their lives – had sat in the family pew while Billy helped to hand around the collection plate.

  ‘What a hypocrite!’ Stella had hissed to Simone when she told her. ‘What a fucking – yes, Simone, I said fucking – hypocrite, going on and on at me all those years about how we were a team, Team McNamara he called us, and then he goes and plays on someone else’s.’

  Billy had wept, she said, cried and cried and promised her it was over, that Nadine had left the firm of her own volition after Billy had told her it could not go on. He had promised Stella it would never happen again, the whole thing, he said, had made him realise how precious Stella was to him, how much their family meant to him, and how stupid he had been to risk losing it.

  He was staying at his mother’s with the children, after she, Stella, had personally rung the other Mrs McNamara to tell her she was sending him over and exactly why.

  Simone had gulped at that piece of information. ‘You told Mary Josephine?’ she’d said, remembering, as I did, Billy’s formidable and determinedly Catholic mother.

  ‘Yes I did,’ Stella had said defiantly. ‘I hope she crucifies him.’

  ‘Is she leaving him?’ I asked Simone.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she answered, ‘but I think that’s why she’s here, to find out.’

  *

  Simone left the next morning and I found I was living with my second ghost in as many months. Stella glided from room to room, barely making an imprint on the furniture, and not eating anything. ‘I’m sorry, Lulu,’ she would say, ‘I’m just not hungry.’ I would take the plate away and wait for the phone to ring.

  Billy rang repeatedly, the tone of his calls ranging from affable, anxious, to demanding and desperate, but she would not take them, shaking her head at me silently, or gliding out of the room.

  ‘Look, Billy,’ I would say, ‘I think she just needs a bit more time. I promise I’ll try to get her to ring you the moment I can.’

  ‘I need to talk to her, Lulu.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘When is she coming home?’

  I had no idea.

  About a week after Stella’s arrival, we had Will over for dinner. I had asked him because I needed a distraction, and there were other reasons I refused to even begin to entertain, starting with the fact that since JD had left, I missed having Will around.

  He brought a bottle of wine, and Stella, to my surprise, said yes when he offered her a glass, drinking it quickly and asking for another. It did not, I knew from experience, take much at all to get Stella drunk, and she hadn’t really eaten for days, so I should have seen what was coming.

  After we’d eaten, and she was onto her third glass, she started twisting her hair, moving closer to Will and saying, ‘No, really, do I look like I have five children? I do, you know – five, can you believe it?’

  ‘No, I can’t,’ Will smiled, ‘you look terrific, Stella.’

  ‘I do, don’t I?’ Stella agreed, then, lifting her shirt up added, ‘Look at this stomach.’

  We looked.

  ‘Very impressive,’ Will said, gently withdrawing his hand as Stella tried to guide it to her navel. ‘Well, I think I should probably turn in.’

  ‘No, don’t go,’ Stella said, pouring the last of the wine into his glass, giggling as it splashed over the edge. ‘We’ve got some more wine, don’t we, Lulu? This party’s only getting started.’

  I winced for her, Stella, who had never in her entire life said ‘This party’s only getting started’, who didn’t realise that nobody said ‘This party’s only getting started’, Stella, who was clearly floothered, as Duncan would have said – an Irish expression, apparently, meaning completely and utterly stonkered.

  She was standing up now, behind Will’s chair, whispering something into his ear.

  He stood up and put his hands on her shoulders to steady her. ‘I’d love to go for a walk on the beach,’ he said, ‘but I really do need to get going. I’ve got a really early start in the morning.’

  Picking up his jacket, he pecked us both on our cheeks. ‘Good night, girls. It was lovely to meet you, Stella, and we’ll take that walk tomorrow,’ he said, and ducked through the door, leaving me to my floothered friend, who watched him go and said, ‘Is he gay, or what?’ before sliding to the floor at my feet.

  *

  The next morning I held Stella’s hair back with one hand as she emptied the contents of her stomach underneath a struggling azalea bush – which now had absolutely no chance of survival – and held Barney back with the other.

  ‘Get away, Barney,’ I said, pushing at his wet nose. ‘Even for you this is disgusting behaviour.’

  I’d woken up to the low wails of the curlews nestling in the casuarinas outside my window, and the slightly less pleasant wails of Stella doubled over in my garden.

  ‘I tried to seduce that man, didn’t I?’ she asked me sadly, when there was nothing left in her poor stomach to get rid of. ‘That Will person?’

  ‘No,’ I answered, ‘you just asked him to go for a walk on the beach. It was hardly a full frontal attack; you didn’t get the peekaboo nightie out.’

  ‘I don’t even own a peekaboo nightie,’ she said, sadder still.

  ‘Nobody does,’ I told her, putting a wet washer to her forehead, ‘except maybe Kimmy.’

  As it turned out, getting as drunk as a lord seemed to do Stella the world of good, once she’d stopped being sick. That night she came down from her room, where she had slept all day, ate a huge plate of pasta, and asked if I wanted to go for a walk on the beach.

  Whistling for Barney, we went through the back gate and padded barefoot to the water. Barney walked in front of us with the long, stately gait he used when he had no energy left but was still determined not to miss out on anything.

  ‘Don’t you get scared here, Lulu?’ Stella asked, flexing her toes in the sand. ‘Living by yourself?’

  ‘No, not when I’ve got Barney.’

  ‘But do you reckon he’d actually attack anyone?’

  ‘Not sure, but then he doesn’t really need to, all he has to do is breathe on them.’

  Our eyes went to him, scrabbling at a dead jellyfish in the sand. Stella leant down to pick up a spiky green seed, and rolled it in her fingers.

  ‘I don’t know if I could live here alone. This is the one of the only times since I was married I’ve slept in a bed by myself,’ she said, inspecting her find.

  ‘You’re kidding.’

  ‘No, Billy and I made a pact when we got married that we would never spend a night away from each other unless we could absolutely help it. Ridiculous, isn’t it?’

  I considered the idea, and also the fact that she had said her errant husband’s name aloud for the first time in days.

  ‘Well, it wouldn’t work for me, but you and Billy are different.’

  ‘No, we’re not, Lulu,’ she said, and I felt the sadness in every single word.

  A wave came in, nibbled at the hem of my skirt.

  ‘Yes, you are, Stella,’ I said. ‘I know he’s apparently had some kind of slip-up . . .’

  ‘Oh, is that what you call it? A slip-up?’

  I caught the accusation in her voice, but did not flinch. There was a certain irony, I could understand, in me of all people trying to navigate my friend through the murky waters of adultery.

  ‘What? No, it was just an expression – look, Stella, I know you are very hurt and confused right now, and not sure whether or not you can take Billy back.’

  ‘Oh, I’m taking him back.’

  ‘You are?’ I said, surprised. She had not given any hint of this decision as she had glid
ed seemingly aimlessly through my house.

  ‘Of course I am, Lulu. I’ve got five children who are at Mary Josephine’s thinking their mother has gone on a holiday right in the middle of their school term, two sets of grandparents who adore them all and could not bear to see us split up, no job, no skills, no money, nowhere to go and the entire primary school Christmas Pageant Committee waiting for me to get back and tell them how to make papier-mâché angels.’

  ‘You don’t want to let those committee gals down,’ I smiled. ‘I hear they’re pretty ferocious.’

  ‘No,’ she smiled a little back, ‘you don’t.’ She let out a sigh as long as the night and turned back towards the house.

  ‘So you’ve decided to forgive Billy?’

  ‘It’s not Billy I’m angry at, Lulu, it’s God.’

  ‘I see,’ I said, even though I didn’t.

  ‘I think I’m past all that Leviticus stuff by now . . .’

  ‘Leviticus?’

  ‘You never listened in Sister Monica’s bible study, did you?’ she sighed. ‘Nobody did, except me . . . you know, Leviticus: “If a man commits adultery with another man’s wife, both the adulterer and the adulteress must be put to death.”’

  ‘Sounds a bit harsh, couldn’t you just make her sit through one of Billy’s old stand-up routines?’

  She laughed, and it made me ridiculously happy to hear it. I had always loved Stella’s laugh, like little tinkling music notes rising through the scale – Simone used to say she’d like to catch one and keep it.

  ‘Listen, Lulu, I can forgive Billy because Billy’s a man and their flesh is weak.’ She shot a warning glance at me. ‘But God is another matter altogether.’

  We were at the gate. Barney walked straight in and up to his bed, without a backward glance, while Stella and I sat, then lay down on the grass and looked up to see faint ribbons of lightning darting over the sky.

  ‘I’m angry at God,’ she began, ‘because when we were growing up and you and Simone and all the other girls were collecting pop star cards, I was collecting saints – saint cards, Lulu, all right? When you went to the beach on the weekend, I went to church; when everybody went off to schoolies, I went to Little Mountain Bible Camp, and do you know how we spent our time there?’