by Kim Kelly
She said: ‘Dan. I want to love you. I think I already do. But I’m not ready.’ As she said it, some knot within her unwound, a tension gave way; even as she added: ‘I’d be worried I might break us both.’
‘It’s all right, Addy.’ He sat on the step below her, his shoulders straight against the wall, his eyes still holding her. ‘I can wait. It’s taken me two months to get here, since the first time I saw you. I’m not a fast mover.’
‘Two months?’ She was surprised; she hadn’t really registered his being at all until this Monday night just passed.
‘Yeah.’ His smile curled crookedly, wry: ‘Remember that band comp night? At Manning Bar? First week of term?’
‘No.’ She’d have been too drunk, of course, so she had to presume – she had no idea what he was talking about.
He said: ‘When I walked in, to set up the sound desk for the comp, you were playing darts with Roz. You had on a bright orange dress and you were shouting some poem at her – I don’t know what it was, Shakespeare or something.’
I do. Memory deluged: it wasn’t Shakespeare she’d been shouting into the near-empty early-evening bar; it was John Donne:
And now good-morrow to our waking souls,
Which watch not one another out of fear —
THWACK – she’d smacked a dart into the board. She’d made a wish as she’d done it, too, a wish that she could stop being so fearful. The pictures strobed from there: an Indian meal; her laughter high and harsh; a club on the North Shore, all disco pop; waking up at Luke’s place, back in the city, in Glebe, her soreness the only evidence of her attempts at love, at courage, scuttling out before the sun rose, leaving a note, another lie:
Great night X
She said now, to Dan, to everything: ‘I’m so ashamed.’
‘Addy.’ He clasped her right foot in his hand, solid, assuring: ‘If I could make one thing happen, tonight, or sometime soon, it wouldn’t be for you to love me, but for you to not be ashamed. You’ve got no reason to be ashamed.’ He squeezed her toes and she looked at his hand on her foot as though it contained there the meaning of life – because it did. All love, all reason, sat in the atoms that lay between them, skin to skin, soul to soul. Moving his hand away, giving her the time, the space she needed, he told her, with that smile wry and shy together: ‘You want shame, I’ve got a whole drawer full of really, really bad poetry, all dedicated to you.’
‘You do not.’ She smiled back, a smile that reached into her hollow centre with such everywhere, all-over sunshine she could almost hear the seagulls of home, smell the lemon and salt sprinkled on fresh-cooked chips.
‘I do.’ He nodded, standing up. ‘Why don’t you go to bed? Try not to worry anymore tonight.’ Yes. More than sensible, that idea. He said: ‘Tomorrow will be a good day.’ His jaw clenched, something emphatic in it. ‘Don’t you worry about anything,’ he assured her again, and it sounded like a threat this time – because it was. She was far too beyond weary to know it, though; too almost obliviated to perceive the darkness that crossed his face as he turned away.
She virtually crawled back up the stairs and into bed, with only a vague concern that her dad might not have enough chicken for an extra person at lunch, and that this would annoy him. She’d call him in the morning, to warn him, though perhaps Nick would have let him know already. So strange, so very strange, to think of her brother and Dan Ackerman chatting. Whatever, if there wasn’t enough chicken, Nick could forgo and make an extra mountain of pasta for himself. Technically, Nick had invited Dan, hadn’t he? What? How crazy is that? Whatever, whatever, they could pick up a nice cake from some Sunday-opening café along the way, and that would make her father happy. Cheesecake …
Go to sleep.
She closed her eyes, but all she could see then was Christopher O’Rourke calling her a crazy bitch; she could still feel, deep in her scalp, where he’d pulled her hair. Her ankle throbbed. Did men know, she wondered, when they did things like this, a woman could never escape? She was trapped there forever, for that moment could never be erased. Time was the trickiest fish of all, wasn’t it? Most of it evaporated, unmarked; what was left, what was extracted in the limbeck of the mind, were the grains of our truths, pinches of highs and lows, of joy, wonder, grief and distress.
She switched on the bedside lamp, stretched across it for the paperback there, her copy of The Fire Flight, her eyes falling straight upon the line: ‘“We’re going to do it for Australia!” he yelled above the thrashing propeller blades …’
She couldn’t recollect who ‘he’ was at this moment, or anything much about the story so far, except that the war which would soon be declared would probably require a lot of mutton from the sheep station, Rowallan’s Run, and that the complex moral dilemma separating the lovers was about to get gratuitously convoluted. The story wasn’t the point, not tonight. She fell into the words, holding the book in her hands as the hero flew above the wide, brown land; holding the book tight to her body, with the wordless, everywhere, all-over prayer, that one day her thoughts would make a book of their own – make one great crazily courageous flight. She thought perhaps she heard Kathleen McAllister laugh at that from somewhere not too far away, throaty and affectionate. Probably mad. Two mad people, author and reader, their spirits whispering together over these pages, between these lines, inside the stamp of the printer’s ink, inside the tiny carbon-black particles of the realest and truest of all life …
And then, at last, to the tumbling drum of the washing machine downstairs, she gave herself to sleep.
THE ANSWER IS ALWAYS LOVE & QUANTUM PHYSICS
‘There is not enough cheese on this sandwich,’ Frieda Stevenson was talking to someone – someone wearing that stunning chiffon frock, pale gold, rain-spot speckled with tiny sequins. She had her hair pinned up, a neat twist of boring brown, just the way Addy wore her —
Elke? Mum? Mummy?
Addy knew she was dreaming, not least because that frock wasn’t old enough for her mother to be wearing in real life. The chiffon was nylon and the drape of the skirt was definitely 1970s, more ballroom-dancing gown than mid-century cocktail. It was also impossible that Frieda and Elke could have known each other to be talking about cheese sandwiches at all.
Are you me? she asked, but the woman didn’t respond.
She said something to Frieda in German, too quick for Addy to catch a single word.
Then Frieda replied in English: ‘I agree. She should wear it. She probably thinks it’s too beautiful, though. I don’t know if we can trust her to keep her promises.’
You can trust me! Addy tried to shout, but the audio system in this dreamland wouldn’t let her be heard. She wanted to know what promise she should keep. Please!
The zebra snorted at her shoulder; he said: ‘Don’t mind them. You’re perfect and important, just the way you are. Remember?’
She reached out and stroked the tufted mane between his ears; it was soft, yet stood firm, like an old-fashioned clothes brush. You’re alive? she asked him.
‘We’re all alive,’ the zebra said. ‘And I’m the one who bought the dress, remember that as well. So you just do what you want to do. Be … Just be …’
Yeah … Guitars. Drums. Piano. Somewhere …
‘You’re the real thing, Addy Loest.’ The zebra laughed and she felt his breath on the back of her hand. ‘Be the best thing, for us. For all of us.’
Light filled the shop window now, like sun bursting through thick cloud, obscuring her sight, but it was glorious and warm, warm, warm.
‘I have some more cheese in the storeroom,’ she heard Frieda say, as she moved away.
Addy smiled, slipping between the dream and the day. She sensed a steady pulse under her hand, under the touch of fur; a small face nudging hers: it was No Name, stretching in the crook of her arm, his tiger-striped head at her chin.
The sun was high, blasting through the grime of her own window: she had indeed slept in – and odder still, the realisation bro
ught her no impulse to panic or dash out of bed. She shifted around to look at her clock: it was eight thirty-seven, and even the red Doomsday glow of the numbers seemed to say in some gentler way, Good morning, Addy. She smiled: someone must have switched off her alarm in the night. Dan? The warmest thought, not a thought at all, but a feeling. Or maybe it was Roz? Love, in any case: it whispered, just beyond hearing, everywhere around her.
As she curled back around No Name, she felt the faint throb at her ankle, the remains of yesterday’s terror, and even that had changed: I fought back. She had got away from the one who’d meant to hurt her, and in a great spray of washing powder: soap flakes hung like crystal mist over that memory. She had given that ape-brain O’Rourke a deserving serve, hadn’t she? And in front of his ape-mates. Yes, she had. That was no dream.
‘I agree, she should wear it …’ Fragments of the actual dream she’d just now been inside returned as she lay there, waking, wondering at the promise she was supposed to keep. She could only remember that she’d promised Frieda Stevenson she’d visit her, and of course she would, only not today, though – obviously. Sundays were for going home, and she didn’t know if The Curiosity Shop would be open on a Sunday, anyway. Then again, if Dan is going to drive, was her next thought, maybe —
Dan was going to drive her home, to Port? That still seemed the least believable thing that had ever happened to her – that, and his apparent chat with Nick. But it was true, too – wasn’t it? And yet —
‘I don’t know if we can trust her,’ Frieda had said. But to whom had she said it? Who was that other woman in the shop? What did it all mean? These wonders began to crowd and whirl, one on top of the other.
Stop it, Addy – it was only a dream. Really. There was a talking zebra in it. And you’re just not used to waking up on a Sunday without a pounding hangover, are you? Not used to having ordinary, actual dreams as opposed to blackouts.
No. That was too true.
Still, she decided to hedge bets: she’d get up and get dressed, just in case she had imagined the whole thing with Dan, so she’d have time to make the ten o’clock train if need be. I’ll be late – and no more or less mad. She’d ring her dad; he’d understand; he always did – he’d drive back into Wollongong to pick her up, grumbling that she’d thrown out his cooking schedule.
Either way, what would she wear? The garden dress sprang first to mind, not unsurprisingly but most inappropriately: it was a party frock, and summery, not something to be worn mid-autumn, however sunny the day. Not something to be worn to lunch at her dad’s, where she’d probably end up going for a walk along the beach and maybe fishing if she stayed late. Even still, the notion lingered with an insistence that she should wear that dress today: it tugged at her in the same way the dream had – like a promise she couldn’t quite recall. She couldn’t wear that dress, though, not today; it would be too silly. In all honesty, it was one of those dresses she would probably not wear very often anywhere, simply because it was a bit too beautiful. It was precisely the kind of investment dress one bought with every intention of making every day beautiful, and then —
But every day is beautiful. The epiphany hit her as she stood at the wardrobe doors: I am alive. That’s pretty fricken beautiful. She suddenly realised that to consider life as anything less than marvellous was a dishonour to those who were no longer here. To those who had made her own being possible. To those who had survived, carrying burdens of all kinds.
She would wear the garden dress today – she would wear it for them, all of them. She would wear it for her dad. She would wear it for herself. Why not? She might die in a car crash on the way there or the way home, she might choke to death on a chicken bone, in which case she’d die without having worn the most beautiful dress she owned. That would just be too stupid.
She looked at all her frocks now, all her colours, all her stories there, and promised them that she would wear every one of them, each in turn: she would be beautiful every day, in one way or another. Even when she didn’t feel like it. Especially when she didn’t feel like it. No one would ever take this beauty from her again. This joy.
Here, right where she left her, carefully pressed, the garden dress seemed to shout: ‘Yes!’ Poppies and cornflowers and tiny white camomile stars, all tumbling endlessly through limitless sky, she would let herself fall as these flowers fell: into their field of infinite possibility. Into life.
And into Dan.
But could she?
I think I want to. I think I really do.
She washed and dressed quickly, forbidding further equivocation in the rush of doing, of choosing jacket and boots, both black – too black – and rummaging for her flame-red scarf for contrast. There: and she liked what she saw in the mirror. For the first time in her small forever, she liked all of it. The teaming was a little eccentric, perhaps, but it was honest. It was one-hundred percent Addy Loest. It was her best foot forward into the future, an immediate future in which she was determined not to worry about where Dan Ackerman might be, or if he might be, or how long she should wait for him before making her way to Central Station for that ten o’clock South Coast train.
Except that some neuroses were too ingrained for any resolution, weren’t they? She thought she should maybe call Nick first, to confirm that all arrangements were true and correct, but that thought was interrupted by a flash of guilt at the very idea: I don’t call my brother. Ever. Because I’m a terrible sister. And that’s why I didn’t know he was gay, isn’t it. How could your own sister not know you’re gay? I should call him now, absolutely – right away. Then again, if I have made up everything that I thought might have happened with Dan, Nick won’t be at home, will he? He’ll be on the train already. Fuck. How am I going to get through life with my brain like this? Without alcohol?
She was halfway down the stairs, halfway back to that more familiar place of crippling uncertainty, when she saw exactly where Dan Ackerman was: just where he’d been last Tuesday morning as she’d crept down the stairs desperate for a hamburger, except this time he wasn’t asleep on the brown couch – he was reading a book. He looked up from it and followed her with his eyes as she stepped around the end of the bannister: ‘Wow.’
‘Wow.’ She thought the same thing, all uncertainty vanishing at the sight of him. He’d gone home and got changed at some stage, into impeccably perfect Sunday-lunch jeans, not too dressed up, not too dressed down, and he’d shaved so cleanly she wanted to kiss the roses in his cheeks – not that she could have allowed herself to do anything quite as mad as that. She glanced at the paperback on his knee instead: it was that cultish space-farce thing, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy; she wasn’t at all interested in science fiction, but she had a feeling she soon would be.
Every atom she owned was a smile; she said: ‘Hello. Would you like a cup of tea?’
‘Sure —’
‘Addles!’ Roz appeared at the doorway to the kitchen, wrapped in a crimson kimono, kettle in hand: ‘Look at you. Look at that dress – hubba hubba, hooley dooley.’ But the look on her face was saying, Get over here, and with some urgency.
Addy did as she was bid; she made her way into the kitchen and stood with Roz by the stove as she lit the gas – whoomp – with the question: ‘What the holy fucken hell happened here last night?’ Roz flicked her eyes at the laundry door, now upright against the side of the fridge; while the soap powder had been swept up, there was no disguising the damage done to the wall where the track had come away from it: the plasterboard was torn and a great chunk of paint sheared off, exposing a layer of wallpaper, shit-brown ground with ick-yellow tulips on it – gaggingly hideous.
‘Um. Well …’ Addy didn’t know where to begin. She should have just come out and said it: Christopher O’Rourke tried to rape me in there and I fought him off. But shame had a mind of its own; she couldn’t get the words out, not even to her best friend. She couldn’t one-hundred percent trust that Roz would take her side against the Fine Young Liberal: be
cause shaming women works precisely this way – doubt worms and worms through even the sanest brains. She glanced again at the wallpaper: Someone was paid to design that …
‘Addles?’ Roz blinked at her insistently.
I don’t want to be Addles anymore – and I definitely don’t want to live here anymore. She didn’t want Roz to be stuck with contributing to the cost of repairs, though, either – and most definitely didn’t trust Harriet not to make an issue of it, if she hadn’t already – so, with a sigh of resignation, Addy said: ‘Don’t worry, I’ll get the door fixed.’ Somehow. Maybe she could ask Nick – he’d always been pretty good with a hammer. And it wasn’t as if it needed to be a fabulous job: the place was just about derelict, waiting to be condemned.
‘The door?’ Roz squinted at her, uncomprehending for a second, before lowering her voice again: ‘I know what happened to the door – fucken fuckers – Dan told me everything when I got in last night. You poor darling. Are you all right?’
‘Oh.’ Addy shuddered with all of her relief. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’m all right. Now.’ And she was, remarkably.
Roz clicked her tongue with a little grunt of contempt: ‘O’Rourke will get what’s coming to him – I’ll see to that.’ She gave Addy a squeeze around the waist: ‘I have the photographic evidence, to make sure of it.’
‘Photographic evidence?’
‘Of Chubs and Rourkie – you know.’
Addy shook her head: ‘No idea.’
‘Remember that night Chubs fell asleep in his own vomit out the back of Jane Buckingham’s parents’ house – you know, on the garden furniture?’
Addy shook-nodded, remembering the vomit but not the house, apart from its very posh garden furniture, Chubs lying there with an empty chip packet on his head, like Satan’s favourite cherub crashed to earth.
