Earworm

by Colin Varney

  “You can’t escape the truth, no matter how far you run,” Sandor rasped. “You can see her. The little girl. You know she’s real. I’ve … I’ve seen her too.”

  Tenderness glistened in his gaze. The ramrod limbs on either side of her head kinked, and she sensed again the vulnerability beneath his mask of strength. She knew he wouldn’t let anybody else witness this. She fought the need to toss her arms around him.

  “Ghosts of the past don’t exist,” she stammered.

  He drove his pained grimace away from her. The curl at his temple quivered.

  “You’re refusing to understand.” The words wrenched from him. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe ghosts from the past don’t exist. But you know, don’t you? Deep down you know who she is.”

  The page ended. Spencer scrunched it again and lobbed it at the wall. He tried to resume his hobby, but with little success. Vivienne’s words made the bedroom cold and empty. And the notion of the uncanny girl troubled him. The heroine was denying the ghost’s existence, but Vivienne of all people should know that hauntings were real.

  He retrieved the bundled paper from the floor and straightened it again, rereading the last paragraph. He felt a deep antipathy towards the character of Sandor that he couldn’t explain. The hall of mirrors from my film clip miraged into his mind. Spencer saw himself as the hunchback, shambling and misshapen, while multiple Sandors were reflected back at him. After he splashes through the surface of the glass, it’s Sandor who swims in submarine green. He stops to watch a silhouette curve and slice through the murk ahead. Spencer recalled the auric afternoon in the shabby unit in North Hobart when he flurried at an invisible typewriter and presaged his future, but now the respected journalist and author who he describes to Rosemary seems to be Sandor.

  The final sentences nagged at him. What was the apparition that stalked the conflicted lovers? Spencer pretended he didn’t care, snuggling down. He wouldn’t allow Vivienne to hook him in such an obvious way. He refused to be that easily manipulated.

  He found himself creeping into her writing room and booting up the computer. It took him a little time to locate the passage she’d printed for him. Thankfully, she’d progressed further. He speed-read Sandor’s explanation. The little girl was a visitation, but from the future rather than the past. It was Sandor and Veronica’s daughter, projecting herself into her own pre-existence to make certain her parents met and fell in love. A supernatural matchmaker ensuring her own birth. Destiny’s child. Spencer gave a grudging grin: Vivienne was in tune with her readership and knew they demanded a twist. But he felt a spurt of peevishness. He moved to the lounge, where he ran a finger along the candy-stripe spines of her books. In Love Is Ochre an Aboriginal woman who has been told her stolen child had died discovers her daughter alive and well and working as a land rights lawyer. In Love Is Green an environmentalist who believes she lost her baby in childbirth in the forests of Indonesia ( while trying to save the orang-utan), finds her offspring tree-sitting in Tasmania and hopelessly in love with a saw-mill operator. It seemed to him Vivienne was continually denying her past in her fiction. He winced as if stung.

  Next morning he watched her fussing with the coffee pot. She yawned. Her hair was mussed and she was droopy lidded. He wanted to hover behind her, savouring her sleepy bed smell, but he hung back, resting a balled fist on the table. He hadn’t managed to complete his hobby the previous evening and his stunted desire was in a tight clinch with blundering anger. They bundled together like inseparable wrestlers.

  “It’s November,” he said.

  “I know,” she slurred. “That deadline’s too close.”

  “I didn’t mean that.” His tone was over-tuned. “It’s Bethany’s birthday soon.”

  Vivienne fumbled the spoon. Coffee grounds spilled across the benchtop.

  “We should do something to celebrate,” persisted Spencer.

  “Celebrate?”

  The word sounded foreign.

  “To remember, then,” offered Spencer.

  Vivienne was already edging towards the door. “I have to get some work done.”

  She stumbled out, her empty cup abandoned and the kettle asthmatically warming the water.

  Later that day Spencer found himself shuffling along the aisles of a toyshop. He watched a mother trying to wrench her wailing waif away from a desired game and fought back a smile. He wanted to buy the game and thrust it into the child’s hands. He felt the age of his body not as weariness but as cold, biological fact. A metronome tock-tocked within him. He imagined his sperm with microscopic best-before dates stamped on their undersides. He dawdled around the dolls, battling the urge to splurge. The shelves in his office were already overcrowded.

  In Broome, a woman dum-de-dums me as she digests her husband’s sudden interest in grooming and trendy threads. In Kuala Lumpur, another woman wonders why her partner has to take so many phone calls in the next room and always comes back blushing.

  Next morning, Spencer wielded a clothes brush to my beat. It gave me a cool jazz sibilance that I rather liked. As Spencer scuffed, he struggled to recall a dream he’d had. He knew it had been lurid, but the details eluded him. I was curious too: I was certain it had something to do with me. I could see it just beneath the membrane of unconsciousness. It had something to do with a long, dark hall: a gallery. And I could vaguely sense myself there, as if I were staring back at myself from beneath the frozen surface of a pond. Eerie. Spencer’s subconscious was alien to me. Even with Nicole there was meagre access to that cellar of secrets.

  He’d shaved and combed more diligently that morning, snipping off outlaw wisps of hair. For the first time in years, he’d dabbed on deodorant. Spruced Spence checked himself in the mirror. Clean lines, streamlined; edges honed. He grabbed his bag, stopped by the writing room to bid Vivienne goodbye—I noticed there was no peck on the cheek this morning—and strode briskly for the door.

  Before he reached it, Bub brushed against him, bumping up around his knees.

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake, Bubby boy!”

  Spencer groaned at the fibres bristling his pants. He swiped at them ineffectually.

  The distant dream dug at him as he drove. Something about a hall with strange paintings, my roustabout rhythms spooking the air. As he strode up the hill from the campus car park, wind ripped past his ears and chapped his cheeks, blowing the residues of sleep free. He usually hurried through these hurricanes with their swirl of smog and the ferrous fumes of factories, but this one was glancing off the Adelaide Hills and felt crisp and clear. There was no grit to sting the skin and seek the eye. He thought he could detect grass and leaves and the bitter bite of bark. It reminded him of summer in Hobart. He tried to project himself back. Rosemary hadn’t been able to see him off when he’d left. She hadn’t been able to get away from Terry. Or so she’d said. There had been no final farewell. He remembered sitting in the drab transit lounge of the airport, tears trickling effortlessly. No need to resort to sobbing.

  Marla was late to his tutorial. His gaze interrogated her empty chair. When she knocked he almost identified the fast rapping sound. I tried to tell him: it was part of the snare onslaught from Anal Probe me. Marla was encased in her disguise. As she removed her glasses and unbuttoned her jacket, the dream dam burst. Spencer saw it clearly: he was strolling down a long, ornate art gallery, all marble floor and red velvet drapes. Pictures were arrayed on either side, but the images themselves—abstracts of viscous vermilion and burping purples—hung in the air in front of the frames, the paint disconnected from the canvases. Two-dimensional curtains of colour. He could faintly detect me, as if I was echoing from the next hall. My original incarnation. At the far end, Spencer could see frames that spewed hues in frozen founts: tongues of red and blurts of blue. Detonating in three dimensions. These works were more expressive: Van Goghs in comparison to the Ken Dones he was currently perusing. He fought to reach them, lumbering on languid legs, but the 3D sprees retreated as he ploughed forwards.

/>   Infected by phantasms, he made a dithery start to the tute. While trying not to stare at Marla, he realised he was ignoring her, rudely glancing elsewhere as she offered opinions. He made a sustained effort to be professional. By the end of the session he was drained. He called to her as the students shambled from his office.

  “If it’s going to improve your essays,” he said in a measured tone, “I’m prepared to help you with your art.”

  A smile refreshed her face.

  He felt disapproval emanating from the shelf of dolls.

  Marla’s flat had a musty yet feminine odour that unsettled Spencer. Springs pinged as he fidgeted on the decrepit couch. The lounge was crowded with photos: Marla’s mother and Griff’s children recurred in the sea of captured faces. The silent stares from the frames gave the room a lonesome, unvisited air. Pushed to the back of a bookshelf, distanced from the others as if contagious, was a snap of Griff. He was poised behind a drum kit, sticks rampant, gaze focused. Younger; cheeks plumper. Less entomological. Although hardly handsome, he had a charismatic sense of command. He was about to drum up thunder. When Marla wasn’t looking, Spencer stuck his tongue out.

  Canvases with thick dollops of colour were scattered about. An easel stood on black plastic. Despite the protective cover, the carpet was acned with paint. Fawn fingerprints spotted the wall. As Marla shuffled around the easel she trampled a discarded canvas depicting an aqua whirlpool. The swirls converged in a tight surge at one corner. Spencer couldn’t help envisioning the east coast of Tasmania and the moment he’d ducked beneath the waves to watch the indistinct blotch of Rosemary arcing through the dark.

  He could hear an insistent tock-tock, but could see no clock. It sounded pitiless without an ameliorating tick: inexorable as a drum machine. It took him a while to realise it was coming from the adjoining flat. Through the open bedroom door there was a box full of pelts or small dead mammals: Marla’s jumble of wigs.

  The room was cramped. Marla kept the easel between them, fiddling uneasily with her brush.

  “I used to dream of being a famous artist,” she gabbled nervously. “Now I realise painting is just for me. The process is more important than the product. It helps me work things through. It’s like … a duet with myself.”

  Love a musical analogy.

  The flat was stifling. Spencer felt the heat packed around him. His clothes adhered and his arms sheened. Marla wore shorts and a T-shirt. She looked insubstantial without her baggy trousers and enveloping jackets, like a sinewy tortoise sans shell. Tattoos poked from beneath her sleeves and hems. Spencer noticed a ridge in the material of her shirt and realised she had a ring in one of her lady bumps. He drove his glance from it and tried not to notice again.

  Instead, he found himself fixed on her left arm, where rungs of scars climbed to the inner elbow. This time, she saw him looking.

  “Yeah,” she said nonchalantly. “That was an adolescent thing.”

  “You cut yourself?”

  “I was a bit stupid. But because of that, I read your wife’s book. You know the one.”

  Love Is Black and Blue concerns a kick boxer with a history of bad boyfriends and self-harming. A few days before a major bout she tears a ligament during training and can’t compete. She feels her body is out to get her and refuses physiotherapy, falling back into old habits of self-injury. A young therapist helps her regain her trust in herself through a combination of discipline, exercise and incendiary afternoon delight.

  Spencer squirmed. It didn’t seem right to mention Vivienne.

  Marla had already played my original version, standing ready with her brush, waiting for Spencer to describe the unfurling purls. He’d sat mute and helpless, seeing nothing. He was embarrassed in Marla’s abode and was disinclined towards the thoughts of chick-a-boom, chick-a-boom that would uncage the Colours. He perched on the couch longing to be elsewhere, despite a dull excitement deep inside.

  It felt naughty being alone with another woman.

  I gambolled among his gagged desires. As a Love Song I have ready access to those blips of libido and ego that are smothered as soon as they are ignited. There’s a scene in his bean he is trying to ignore: he pushes it down but it trampolines back. It’s not a lush fantasy—the production values are tatty. The sets are from stock and the lighting is substandard. The plot involves Spencer listing towards Marla and risking a kiss. She responds. The end. They both have clothes on—daggy ones, at that. Unambitious costuming. Quite frankly, I’ve seen better. Spencer is capable of so much more. There’s one starring Rosemary that involved a shagpile rug before a blazing fire. I believe it’s set in a ski lodge. High definition, rich Technicolor with lighting that emphasises skin tones. They’re listening to Coltrane. Pulsing purples and banners of blue invade the room. In a surrealistic twist, Spencer and Rosemary cavort in these Colours, folding them around legs and torsos. Kaleidoscope grope. The Colours shred and tatter, ribboning limply around them. Beyond this point, I have to admit, imagination flags. Coltrane plays a wacka-wacka rhythm on sax and the quality of the script deteriorates.

  The current production isn’t in the same league. Spencer tried to ignore it but it persisted like a rash. I tried to push the vision forwards, but the essence of fantasy is that you often don’t want it to eventuate. Do you really want to be that super spy with all the stress of dodging bullets? Or be that model with the draconian diet and gruelling gym jams? Fear swarmed Spencer’s fraught fancy like antibodies.

  Do it. I said do it. Love is born of risk and venture.

  It would be different if Vivienne cared for him. I wanted to yowl at him with an eighties rock ballad beseeching screech.

  Your wife does not love you.

  Since she’d played me, I was in Marla too. She entertained what she saw as a quirky attraction to Spencer. She liked his big-limbed gaucheness, his quaint fatherliness. She’d noted his improvements in barbering and felt flattered. She also flirted with fancies, imagining them tumbling into each other’s clutches, almost as if they’d both tripped and stumbled against each other. These thoughts made her uneasy. Griff was peeking at her from the back of her bookshelf. Traces of love for him lingered like a stain you can’t remove. And there was the whole inconvenient business of Spencer’s marriage. Still, she was intrigued.

  I love humans when they’re like this: tender and malleable. All fluttering hearts and guttering hopes. Moan of hormones. Reason rattled by recklessness. It’s ravishingly romantic. I snick into place like a jigsaw piece.

  What if Spencer did launch to his feet and lunge towards Marla, propelled by passion and careless of consequences like a character from one of Vivienne’s novels? He’d gather her to him, lips pursed and palpitating, only to glance beyond her shoulder to meet the multiple manifestations of her mother. Spencer surveyed the snaps. Most of them were taken in happier times, except for one atop the TV that showed ma propped in a hospital bed. Her smile is forced, unsupported by her eyes. Flesh papered to bone. Marla followed his gaze. She leaned towards the TV and plucked a picture from behind the one he was studying. It showed her mother brandishing a placard and yelling.

  “This one’s better. My commie Mummy. Always wanted to go into politics. Never did. Spent her whole life as a slightly grumpy teacher.” She set the frame back on the telly, obscuring the hospital pic. “I quit my job the week after she died. Came and bothered you instead. Took a little longer to leave Griff. The time never seemed right. The kids and … you know.”

  “You’re good with those kids.”

  Marla’s mouth twitched. She took a few random swipes at the canvas with her brush. “Let’s try listening to the song again,” she murmured.

  “You’d be a good mother.”

  Spencer felt the words spilling, unmoderated and uncensored. He was intoxicated by his own unpredictability: words bubbling free of that obtuse excitement in his stomach.

  Marla shook her head. “Bad timing. Just now, I’d rather be a motherfucker.”

  “You cou
ld be both. You just need the right partner. A stay-at-home dad. Someone who’s writing that book they always wanted to write …”

  “Yeah, he could write in his spare time. Between nappies, baths, feeds, squalling … You’ve got no idea.” They shared a smile. Her face softened. “Have you considered having another?”

  “Vivienne can’t.”

  “Oh, I … I’m …”

  “Vivienne only stays with me because she needs a secure base to write from.”

  In the 4’ 33” that followed, Spencer seemed to leap from his own body to study himself. He’d been enjoying the irresponsible gush of words. Now he sat, motionless for the first time, forehead etched, wondering if he’d meant what he said. The kissing fantasy pestered despite vigorous mental shooing. He found himself recalling the heady rush of almost being discovered by Terry all those years back. Yeah yeah! Now you’re getting it, Spence. I tried to synch my beat to his pulse and tie my harmonics to his alpha waves. When he acknowledged me he thought of Rosemary and that spangled summer, and I wanted everything she represented to resonate within him. Spencer deserved a dalliance. And let’s face it: he was no stranger to the delights of deceit. It made him bilious and bumptious at the same time. And doesn’t Vivienne betray Spencer every day she types new salacious scenarios? Doesn’t she ignore him in favour of her “art”? Spencer couldn’t bring himself to admit he was a cultural cuckold. As a Love Song, I’m a kind of Agony Aunt. We’re used to dispensing advice. She gotta hold you tight, she gotta treat you right. Run to his arms, succumb to his charms. Hold him and enfold him. Dense Spence won’t accept that Vivienne don’t “treat him right”.