I was so embarrassed I hid in the back garden, taking off up the side of the house once the fracas had died down and I was sure everyone had returned to their canapés, the low simmer of small talk now firmly fixed on poor Henrietta and her unfortunate children, this being our extended family’s default setting. What I have yet to reconcile, however, is why the intensity of the feelings continues to be as blistering today as when I was crouched beneath my aunt’s camellia bush, batting away bees, trying not to cry. It makes me wonder if perhaps emotions don’t also have phases (though I would have hoped that this one might have passed by now) fixed in stable form, like matter, until their conditions are changed. Liquid doesn’t just transform into vapour and then evaporate away. First it must be exposed to heat. ‘You know, Mum, I hate your pumpkin pie,’ I tell her as she compiles her shopping list.
She puts down her pen and looks at me, completely aghast. ‘Well, stuff you,’ she finally says. ‘I hate the way you eat your cornflakes dry without adding any milk.’
At the christening my nephew snivels and cries, an appropriate response I think to all that ruckus. The priest drips water on his head, small droplets rolling into his eyes, which I dab with a tiny embroidered handkerchief, the same one my uncle had dabbed at me.
Earlier that morning my sister came to find me as I was minding the baby while she got ready for church. ‘There’s something I need to tell you,’ she said. ‘I know in the scheme of things it probably doesn’t matter, but you were right when you accused me of taking Dad’s Wildcats T-shirt to spite you. I did. You were always so philosophical about everything. I was trying to make you angry.’
I don’t know what I’d expected her to say, but in that moment I was so relieved it wasn’t something more alarming I would have forgiven her just about anything. ‘If it makes you feel any better, I never lost your Snow Queen book,’ I confessed. ‘I kept it because Dad had inscribed it: To my daughter. I liked pretending he’d written it to me.’
For a second there I thought she might attempt to seize the moral high ground, but she didn’t.
‘I’m really sorry,’ she said.
And I was too.
So this is how it is now, our family. All chips off the old block, but slightly new. Even the baby, who I’ll concede actually looks a lot like Dad, or the way I remember Dad to be. He has the same chin and eyes and when he smiles I can see Dad smiling at me, the whole history of our clan distilled down to this one tiny moment, transition after transition, phase after phase, me and my nephew tucked up under a rug on the couch, my finger in his mouth, gently rocking.
Phoenix
Dear Nathan,
I am sorry to have to break this to you in a letter, but I have left you. Ralph came by in his convertible and we just took off. Into the wild blue yonder. It was exhilarating, that kind of reckless irresponsibility. Though much windier than I expected. It made a mess of my hair. Wisps everywhere. I tried pinning it but it didn’t make much difference. Then Ralph said it looked charming. No, natural and charming. That’s what he said. That, and that I should always wear it that way. So I took all the pins out again and here we are.
At a little motel, somewhere in the desert.
After dinner, we played The English Patient. I lay down in the sand and pretended to die. Ralph cried and cried. From the way he carried on you would think it was real. He is such a good actor.
Then he picked me up and carried me back to our room. It is nothing special. Modest really. But it has an enormous window overlooking the dunes. We stayed up all night so we could watch the sunrise together. Then we made love behind the thin, drawn curtains, the room flooded by a muted desert red.
We drained the minibar of all its spirits. Can you believe it? By five am there was only beer and orange juice left. I’m not usually one for beer, but this morning I was thirsty and the carbonation made it seem almost like drinking champagne.
It reminded me of that night, just after we were married, with the sparkling wine. Do you remember? Although this time nobody vomited. Just a touch of a headache. And a kind of lassitude. I wouldn’t describe it as tiredness. There was nothing that mechanical about it. More, it was an emptiness, the feeling of being consumed. Literally, of being exhausted. No surprise then that we spent the best part of the day in bed.
By three o’clock I was ravenous. Ralph wanted to go to the motel restaurant, but I didn’t feel like going out. Also, I noticed the night before that we’d passed a KFC not that far down the highway. It took a little canoodling, but I finally talked him into getting takeaways. He said it was the way I nipped him on the shoulder that persuaded him. He nipped me back. Just gently. Then he growled at me like a playful puppy dog before he jumped out of bed.
He’s been wearing that red scarf I like so much. That and the brown leather jacket. The combination is really wonderful on him. It flatters his skin tone. I have persuaded him not to shave as frequently, so he is now sporting a little growth. The overall effect is terribly masculine. Rugged, yet dashing. He worries that it looks slovenly. But as I’ve said, first, it doesn’t. And second, apart from me, who is here to see it?
He must have driven like a maniac because he was back before I could fully touch up my makeup. With a bucket of legs, coleslaw, mashed potato and gravy. He spread it out on the bed, along with serviettes, plastic cutlery and a couple of cans of Coke. I swooned (if one can swoon when applying mascara). ‘You are too much,’ I said to him. This appeared to make him very happy. He smiled at me in that way of his, then set about taking off his clothes. The two of us sat up in bed, naked, at four in the afternoon, and proceeded to stuff our faces.
I wonder who came up with the recipe for Kentucky Fried Chicken coleslaw? All those teeny little pieces, sweet and multicoloured, cradled in just the right amount of dressing. To me, it is a joyful mystery. As is Ralph. He dives into the salad with almost as much enthusiasm as I do. And the way he eats chicken, with such rigorous absorption. Yet, at the same time, managing to imbue the process with a certain delicacy. Or perhaps grace would better describe it. Watching him eat, I can understand why the practice of gluttony is considered a sport of kings. There is a ruthlessness to it, absolutely necessary, but also a compassion. And skill. To pry off a tenacious morsel, say, without getting gravy all down your chin. At the very least, one requires good teeth. A degree of strategic cunning also doesn’t go astray.
Ralph grins at me a coleslaw smile. The sight of the minute pieces of shredded cabbage peppering his teeth arouses me. I climb on top of him and let him feed me a chicken leg. Then I lick his chest. He pauses long enough to take a deep swig of cola. When he kisses me his mouth feels cold and slightly fizzy.
Sweetheart, I feel bad you had to find out about us in this way. I would have preferred to talk with you about it. In person. Face to face. But it just didn’t work out that way. For one thing, there wasn’t enough time (I didn’t want to have to wait around all day for you to get home from work). And now that I think of it, I probably wouldn’t have known what to say. But that’s the way life goes sometimes, isn’t it? It throws up these challenges and sometimes you’ve got to go with it. Yes, sometimes you’ve just got to say, ‘What the heck, why not. Let’s give it a whirl. Let’s try it on.’ Like a new jumper in a different style. Or a shirt, perhaps, in a different colour.
Anyway, darling, I hope you are okay. I want you to know that in my own way I really do love you. And the girls. But it’s not every day that a movie star appears at your front door and says, ‘I love you, I have always loved you, please come away with me so that we can be together, just the two of us, forever.’ I’m not saying I would have understood if it had been you and that Jenny girl. The one from that show you like. I know, I know, I’m not being fair. But...
Now I’m rambling. Anyway, I must finish up. Ralph will be back any minute, and I still haven’t finished taking out my curlers.
Please try to spend a little
time with Olivia going over her homework. She really needs some encouragement with maths. And don’t let Heidi spend the entire weekend in front of the television. It’s not good for her. If you don’t get a chance to get to the supermarket, there are some meals in the deep freeze (the big one in the garage). They’ve got labels on the lids so it should be easy to work out what’s what. Just put on some Quikrice and throw the dinner in the microwave. Five minutes on high. That should do it. But don’t forget to rinse out the container afterwards. Tupperware really seals in the flavour, but it also retains the smell.
Your loving (ex) wife,
Joannie
Not Like Cherries
The summer they built the 7-Eleven, Mary, the housekeeper, found a pack of strawberry-flavoured condoms in Sunny’s dresser and Mr Carson hit the roof. Sunny was fourteen, only a year older than me, but she already had her period, used Glitz gel to style her hair and smoked Alpines. In winter she taught me to blow smoke rings in the back shed. As it poured with rain outside the two of us huddled under a menthol cloud, practising pursing our lips and clicking our jaws while keeping our mouths in a perfect O.
It didn’t matter to Mr Carson that the condoms were a joke, a Valentine’s Day present from Danni Connors. As far as he was concerned a condom was a condom, there were no two ways about it. Besides, he said, ‘If it’s not one thing it’s another. I won’t have it, not as long as you live in this house.’
My parents didn’t mind condoms, though they thought Valentine’s Day was an abomination. My father actually used that word. ‘An abomination,’ he said. ‘Next thing they’ll be commercialising Christmas.’ That was his idea of funny. He and my mother were lawyers and wanted me to be independent. I had a clothing allowance, a taxi card and was responsible for preparing two meals a week. We were all equals in our house.
Before Sunny was grounded, we would spend every Sunday at McDonald’s. We’d go to the trash ’n’ treasure market first, then meet everyone after for a chocolate thickshake and some fries. You could still smoke there then. They had these flimsy aluminium ashtrays, about the size of burger patties, embossed with the golden arches, stacked in a pile on top of the bins by the serving trays. By mid-afternoon the tables would be strewn with them, butts overflowing onto the formica, half-empty thickshake containers like mini rubbish bins, stuffed with paper serviettes, tomato sauce sachets and leftover chips. It was like a party. If Justin was working we’d get free apple pies.
That was the year Mrs Carson was away. She would never have got so upset about condoms, but she worked for Save the Children and was in Sudan because of the drought.
‘But what about The Restless Years? You know Dad won’t let me watch it,’ Sunny cried as they said goodbye early one morning on the front verandah. Mr Carson had already left for work.
‘Don’t be so selfish, darling,’ Mrs Carson replied and she kissed Sunny on the forehead, waved to me, and jumped into the taxi. A Silver Top. We watched it all the way to the end of the street.
Mrs Carson’s first name was Babette and she always said call me Babette whenever I addressed her as Mrs Carson. Dad thought she was flighty, but that’s just because she was a vegetarian and practised transcendental meditation. I went around there once when Sunny wasn’t home and Babette invited me in and lit incense and poured me a mug of chamomile tea. When I got home Mum said my clothes smelled of cats’ pee, but I liked it, the whole experience: sun streaming through the stained-glass windows casting purple and green shadows across the breakfast nook, the low meditative chorus of chanting monks coming from the stereo, the sweet perfume of sandalwood and myrrh mingling with the chamomile steam rising from my cup.
‘She’s going to be a hippie. I told you, the girl needs some discipline,’ Dad said to Mum over dinner that night.
‘You still wash regularly, don’t you, Ali?’ Mum asked, concerned. ‘Let me see your fingernails.’
‘Mother!’
Dad winked at me.
‘There,’ said Mum, like she’d won something, and punched the air with her knife.
Sunny was grounded for an entire month. She could go to school and to the library, but that was it. No phone calls, nothing, other than hanging around with me. I lived down the road, which was most likely why. I guess Mr Carson was so used to seeing me that he forgot.
‘What do you want to do?’ I said as I scratched the remaining ‘A’ from my left thumbnail. Lisa had brought blue nail polish to school and insisted on doing everyone’s initials, one on each hand. It was Sunday, but McDonald’s was out of the question.
‘Your place?’ Sunny suggested.
‘No. Can’t. Scrabble brunch.’
As bored as I was sitting around re-reading Dolly, it was vastly preferable to being anywhere near my parents and their friends during this monthly ritual of scrambled eggs and triple letter scores. They’d probably try to include us, then we’d be stuck all afternoon. That was one good thing about Mr Carson, he left us alone.
‘I know,’ I said. ‘What about the 7-Eleven?’ It had already been open a week and I still hadn’t been there. The place was trimmed with decorative blue and yellow plastic flags fast curling in the February heat. A photograph of a red slurpee filled one window, with the words Only 50 cents! written across in emphatic white type.
We got two slurpees and Sunny bought a pack of Alpines. This was a boon. Usually I’d buy her ciggies for her because George at the milk bar knew Sunny’s dad. But the guy at the 7-Eleven didn’t know our parents. He didn’t know the law either, or he didn’t care, because he didn’t even ask for ID.
The slurpees lasted all the way to the park. Sunny got a lime one, and I had a cherry, just like in the picture. It was sweeter than I expected and didn’t really taste like cherries. By the time I got to the bottom most of the flavour was gone. I poked at the ice with my straw. We sat on the seesaw and Sunny lit up, her batik wraparound skirt hitched under her floral Cottontails, the snow-white Alpine hanging from her mouth. She held up the match and let it burn right down to the end, the blue flame lingering defiantly against the background of eucalypts that bordered the neighbouring houses.
Dave, or Wimple as we called him, was one of the teachers coming on this year’s camping trip. Everyone knew he was a pervert and had been fired from his last school for making the students go skinny-dipping on a boating excursion near the Otways. This played on my mind as I posed for a photograph on the front lawn, trying to stand up straight under the weight of my backpack as Mum mucked around with the camera settings.
I would have been more excited if Sunny was coming along, but she was banned from the camping trip too. Instead, she was going to have to spend the week in with the first-formers. Mr Carson said it would give her something to think about.
‘I hate him,’ I said.
Mum let out one of her sighs.
‘Christ, Leslie, give it to me,’ said Dad. ‘She’ll be back before you’ve figured it out.’
The bad things about school camp were driving for three hours in a bus to get there, and having to use outdoor toilets for a week. The good things were sleeping in a sleeping-bag, eating barbecued sausages for dinner, and playing Red Rover after dark. Our team won two nights in a row.
On Thursday morning we all got back on the bus and drove another forty minutes to Euroa High. We were to spend the day there getting to know the students, seeing what life was like for them. After the first painful hour, where we were stuffed in a classroom, two to a desk, with their teacher, Mrs Clark, and Wimple standing side by side up the front sweating and asking dumb questions like, ‘Where does your family get their milk?’ and ‘Who here has driven a tractor?’ we went outside to the toilets for a smoke.
My hostess for the day, Shelley, checked under each cubicle, then handed me a Winfield Blue. Shelley was ten centimetres taller than me and wore a tiny little skirt with a skin-tight forest green V-neck T-shirt on top. She and
Mandy (her best friend) laughed a lot and told us which of the guys they’d fucked, and how on Saturday nights they went to the pub and got pissed on tequila sunrises. I did the drawback perfectly. I could see Lisa watching, trying to copy.
To celebrate my return Dad cooked lasagne, my favourite. You could smell it right through the house. I took a shower. I put on 3XY as loud as it would go and stood under the water until the hot ran out.
Everything at home was just the same, the bathroom window opened a crack to let the steam out, my Fiorucci jeans freshly washed and folded in the top drawer of my dresser, my parents drinking white wine, carrying on in the kitchen.
‘There she is,’ said Dad as I joined them for tea. He pulled out a seat for me at the table. ‘Wine, madame?’ he asked, like it was a restaurant.
I nodded. ‘That’s mademoiselle, thank you,’ I said and took a mouthful, making a great show of smelling it first, then sloshing the chardonnay around in my cheeks before swallowing.
After dinner we went for a walk. The air was still warm. The jasmine smelled even sweeter after dark. Mum linked her arm through mine. She said the hot air pockets were happy ghosts. We counted nine. We walked up the hill, past the milk bar and the park, past Sunny’s. The lights were on but Dad said it was too late to drop in. I could see that Babette’s orchid had bloomed. We walked right through the neighbourhood, then looped our way home, down past the church and the 7-Eleven.
It was strange to see something so bright at the end of our street, and at this time of night when most people were tired and starting to think about going to bed. Up by the park we’d heard the rustle of the leaves and the slow rattle of gumnuts as they dropped from the trees. But here you could barely hear your own breath, and the smell of jasmine disappeared under the car exhaust and petrol fumes as strangers pulled in off the main road to fill up.
Like Being a Wife Page 15
