Australian Love Stories (13 page)

‘What about you, Mum? Have you met anyone nice?'

‘No, but I had a party here last week.'

‘And?'

‘It was lovely. We all drank too much of course.'

He pretended shock.

‘I'm pleased for you,' she said again. ‘I hope you meet someone you can have a good relationship with.'

What would he tell his mother about Amy? His Mum was just as likely to tell him she'd never liked her, that she'd never have told him that to his face though, because people must be free to be friends with whomever they choose. What would she think of Peter?

The women friends were standing in small groups debating the film. Debating where to go for dinner. He would have
liked to discuss
Gran Torino
with Amy right now. She was so good at deconstructing film narratives and she was up on the latest reviews. She always had an opinion about actors and she talked about them as though they were her best friends. It was disconcerting when she talked about Clint Eastwood like that. Or Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. He walked out into the late afternoon. The sun had gilded the plane trees on Lygon Street and the people sitting at the outdoor tables wore halos of golden light. He stood for a moment debating whether to walk into the city or back to Northcote. Should he ring Peter? Should he play it cool? He mustn't be too earnest, too determined, too much in love.

‘Jason!'

At one of the tables outside Ti Amo was a group of men and one of them was Peter. Jason walked over slowly, looking carefully at the group.

‘Sit down,' Peter said, giving him a hug. ‘Have a drink with us.'

All around him the chatter of people, loud boom beats from passing cars, Italian youths claiming their street, kids and old people, crows plane tree hopping. And Jason took a long swig of beer and let Peter introduce him to his friends, thinking how handsome he looked in his crisp blue shirt, his smile so welcoming, hands that would later trace the outline of his thighs, their mouths lip to lip. He was anticipating a good night after all and something to announce to his mother when he called her tomorrow.

Love—there he had called it at last. He would tell her he was in
love
.

The Edge of the Known World

DEBI HAMILTON

They drew Xs up and down the side of my breast. Someone asked later whether it was biro but I couldn't say. Then they sent in a specialist who was as professional and reassuring as a fresh sheet. No, wash some of them off, she said. Don't want the surgeon being confused. She marked the top of my breast with another X and left. The radiographer, a woman after my own heart, wrote
HERE
just below my collarbone and drew a long arrow to the specialist's X. They walked me back to another room.

When I woke up the first thing I checked was the territory under the gown.
HERE
was still there, the arrow pointing, the treasure of my breast still at the end of it. Pain swept in.

I used to imagine, at ten, a hollow space behind my bedroom wall. A cool, dark, rubble-speckled hideout I could dig into, if only the doorway I made could be hidden. Perhaps I read too many gothic novels; perhaps it helped to make a buffer. He was always angry, my father. That's when he was home, which he wasn't much. I filled my bottom drawer with stories and treasure maps. I wasn't sure what you'd do with a pot of gold, or a jar of diamonds and jewellery. I would've been happy with a whole packet of biscuits that no-one counted, someone stroking my hair.

I met Carmelita in the doctor's waiting room two weeks after my nineteenth birthday. I have a photo of her in a red chair in my head, which is silly because no one takes photos in waiting
rooms. She is sitting very still, her brown hair framing her quiet face, her hands folded in her lap, her 1980s heels pressed together. She is radiating what I think of as a Spanish beauty, the power of which derives in part from her complete oblivion to it.

It must have been the lunch break—we were the only people there. She made a noise and I looked at her. She was rolling her eyes.

‘I hate this song,' she said. I hadn't noticed it—the radio. It was that Cindi Lauper song, ‘True Colours', full of whiney sugariness.

‘Don't you wish women would sing more ballsy love songs?' she said.

I agreed, although I hadn't known it until this minute.

She was there to have a blister on her foot treated. I was there to ask the doctor about the Pill, although I didn't tell her that.

Carmelita, Carmelita. There. I like to think her name. If you want to hear a love story I can write you one. If you want a story in which someone breaks someone else's heart, this is the story for you.

Our first flat together had purple shag pile carpet. Carmelita stood in the middle of the lounge room in her velvet brocade jacket. It must have been winter. Her jacket was rusts and golds and it was an assault to see her on the purple shag pile. She had created a tropical garden I was to be invited into. The real estate agent went to check something in the kitchen and Carmelita raised her eyebrow at me.

‘Shall we take it?'

Of course we did.

Our first year settled around our shoulders; our first year beyond our family homes. A year of learning five lazy ways to prepare vegetables. A year of negotiating over the scrubbing brush, the vacuum cleaner. A year by the end of which the purple shag pile had come to seem so normal we were alarmed when guests did a double take at the door. Did the tuna mornay smell bad? Had one of us left a bra on the back of a chair?

I worked in the ambulance service, but only doing clerical work. I made a great cup of tea, knew where everything was in the filing cabinets, and was the first to tackle the computer system when it came along.

She was a social worker for a youth service. For a while there we had to laugh at ourselves. She dated men who didn't want to grow up. I dated adrenalin junkies who drank too much. But I never picked them mean. I couldn't bear to be in the same room as a temper.

We kept a wine cask under the sink, so no-one would know how undiscerning our habits were. On a quiet night we'd fill our glasses and empty them, sitting on opposite ends of the couch, our legs comfortably entwined.

‘You should paint your toenails,' she'd say. Hers were bright red—little sirens on her feet. I thought I could see the faint scarring where her blister had been.

‘Can't be bothered,' I'd say.

She'd tickle my feet, which I hated and loved.

‘Stop it! Stop, stop!'

‘Not until you tell me all about Brad,' she'd say. I was never game to tickle her back.

So I'd tell her about Brad and how he'd love me all night and then rise before dawn to go surfing while I slept. He'd be
at work a few hours later, laughing, eyes dark with the pleasure of himself.

‘One morning he left me a map,' I said.

‘What?'

‘A map. Of the coast, with an X where he was going to surf.'

‘What did you do?'

I was embarrassed. ‘I got up and drove down there.'

‘Then what?'

‘He wasn't there.'

‘What happened?'

‘I drove home again and when I saw him at work I said what was all that about? Where were you? And he just laughed and said I should learn to read maps.'

‘Arsehole,' she said. Actually, I had to agree, but it didn't change anything.

‘Anyway, you should talk,' I said.

Matt had had her hooked for six months. A thirty-eight-year-old Peter Pan, he went clubbing with people twenty years younger, refused to learn to cook or figure out how a bank account worked or ever, ever talk about where a relationship might be going.

‘He pleases me,' she said, ‘and that's all I want for now.' She was so self-contained, so apparently relaxed about it that I wasn't prepared to push it any further.

We were served a notice to vacate. We had no idea why anyone would want to reclaim the purple shag pile, but we found another flat. It was bigger and more tastefully decorated. Brad and Matt changed names and faces but came essentially from the same store. Somehow, they never stayed over.

‘I don't think I could stand someone else's man at breakfast,' she said. I suspected her feelings weren't only about a man labelled ‘someone else's'.

We still talked, end to end, on the couch. We graduated to bottled wine.

Once, near the end of a bottle, she said, ‘I don't know about this whole man business.'

‘Oh?'

‘Well, sex is fun and all…'

This was a subject we never handled with our gloves off.

‘But what then? Can you imagine the same guy's dirty socks under your bed for years?'

‘No, since you put it like that. I supposed I just thought one day someone might make me change my mind.'

‘But why? And how? Maybe what we've got now is as good as it gets. We share the housework without all that his work/her work crap. And we never argue.'

That brought me up short. We hadn't. Argued. One or other, and sometimes both of us, had been irritable sometimes, but that was it.

‘Maybe we just haven't grown up yet.'

She snorted and grabbed my foot.

‘You're not wrong there! When are you going to make your feet look nice, eh?'

She looked tired but I didn't know whether or how to say something. Instead, I got up to put the kettle on.

About a month later we were installed in our usual way on the couch.

‘Let's have another bottle,' she said. This was new.

I'd never been this drunk.

‘I've never been this drunk,' she said.

I looked at the second empty bottle. Was it a mindreading elixir?

I got into her bed with her. The room was spinning so much neither of us wanted to be dizzy alone.

We talked for a few minutes—what time do you have to get up? Do you want the window open? I waited for sleep. It didn't come.

An hour later—I know because I could see the bedside clock— her arm came around me. Her hand cupped my breast. Perhaps she was asleep and thought I was Matt/Nathan/Jerry, whoever.

She said my name. ‘Kiss me,' she said.

I had no idea what to do with this moment. My future self stood in the corner, her arms crossed, her face black with disappointment. Trouble was, I couldn't tell which outcome she was upset about. I loved Carmelita, I realised. She was a hot flower; she was a velvety bar of dark chocolate. I saw these things, but none of them seemed to be attached to my wanting to kiss her. Wide awake the rest of the night, I did my very best deep sleep snuffly breathing.

We never talked about it. For weeks I kept looking at her mouth while she was talking. Could I have kissed her? Should I have kissed her? I thought about touching her breasts. Nothing greater than mild curiosity stirred in me.

I met Jeff, whom I kissed with no equivocation. The more he grew on me, the more distant Carmelita became. She was irritable. We stopped our couch and wine evenings and I didn't have the good sense to miss them.

One morning she dropped the blackberry jam. I had my back turned and heard the shattering of glass. I turned to see her,
adrift in shards and splattered fruit. Her feet were speckled, as if the nail polish on her toes had detonated. For a frozen moment I waited for the Carmelita who would have laughed, or sighed tolerantly, at this little accident.

‘Jesus Christ!' is what she said. ‘What're you staring at?'

‘Don't move,' I said. I imagined her bare feet bleeding across the havoc of the kitchen floor.

‘Don't move?? Is that the best you can do?'

‘Keep your hair on,' I said. I wished I hadn't. ‘I'll get the dustpan.'

‘If you kept things clean it wouldn't have slid out of my hand.' ‘What?'

‘You're so bloody messy. It's all Jeff, Jeff, Jeff and never wiping things down.'

She was crying. I'd never seen such a thing. I cleaned the floor around her while she stood still. We didn't speak again until I was done.

‘I'm going to have a shower,' she said, and stalked off.

Sometimes the wrong man grows on you. The reason he does is that you have avoided some inconvenient truth about yourself and chosen someone who answers all the wrong parts of you instead.

Jeff was a flirt and I was plain. Carmelita was exotic. She was angry with me and I thought it was my fault.

On the day I moved out, she went to work without saying a word. Jeff helped me pack my life into boxes and unpack it again in his flat.

‘She seemed strange,' he said. I didn't want to talk about it, so I kissed him. I still didn't want to talk about it when I went out
early the next morning to go for a walk and found an envelope propped against the door of the flat.

I'm sorry I've been awful to you lately. I don't know what's come over me. I do love you, and wish you all the best. When Jeff lets you down, here are two places you can go.

She'd drawn a little map of our suburb, with an X marking her place and another marking the local beauty salon. She'd attached a voucher for a foot massage and pedicure.