Holier Than Thou (2 page)

‘Babe.’ He pulled me close to him. ‘I’m all stinky. Don’t you want me to have a shower first?’

‘Nuh,’ I said. ‘Want . . .Timbo. Now.’

We lurched down the hallway, kissing and pulling off each other’s T-shirts right there in the open. There was nobody around. It was our place.We reached the bedroom and I sighed the little sigh I used to tell Tim I meant business. We landed as one on the linen-less mattress.

I woke to the sound of the first big jet passing overhead. Ah, the inner west. It wasn’t as loud though as, say, Tempe or St Peters. In St Peters, you can actually see the rivets holding together the steel plates on the plane’s underbelly.

Here we are,
I thought, and turned to study Tim in the early light. We were lying on the greyish (formerly white) fitted sheet that we’d hastily applied in a fug of post-coital exhaustion the night before. He was in his usual sleeping pose – on his back with one arm stretched high above his crown and the other hand resting on the lower quadrant of his belly.

Even in the relaxation of sleep his lips retained their definition. His mother must have had a lot of folate or some kickarse pregnancy vitamin on the day those lips were forming in utero. They are prettier than my lips. I lightly kissed them. No response. A fierce stab of ownership threatened to pierce the tranquillity of my early-morning worship. Possession is nine-tenths of a relationship, I have always felt. Good thing I didn’t have to come of age in the 1970s. Free love would have pushed me over the edge. This one was
mine.
> ./> I gently heaved myself on top of him, carrying most of my own weight on my knees and wrists, marvelling at the jolt of life that his skin on mine always sent through me.

‘Here she comes,’ he said groggily, not opening his eyes. His arms went around me.

Timbo
, I thought.
My happiest accident.

As was our custom – at least in the time we had spent together
not
in our parents’ houses – we made love early and fell asleep again for a couple more hours, waking to fierce cravings for coffee and bacon. It was time to go and meet Abigail for brunch. The three of us chatted and read the paper, on the front page of which there was a big picture of a boatload of Sri Lankan refugees off the West Australian coast. They held signs saying
Please help us
and there was a man holding a baby, perhaps one year old, that was naked except for a nappy.
How would you change nappies on a crowded boat?
I thought.
Where would you put the soiled ones? What if baby got a rash? Do they have wipes? Where would a baby play?

There were people on the table next to us discussing the same picture, three women, about ten years older than us.

‘—you know? We’re full! We got our own problems.’

‘We cannot be taking in every fucking person who wants to come here.’

‘Our problems,’ I said. ‘
Our
problems are in a different league. Little League. Haven’t they read
Anil’s Ghost
?’

‘Shh,’ said Tim, worried that my voice would carry over to their table, which I didn’t give a damn about. ‘What’s
Anil’s Ghost
?’

‘It’s a book,’ said Abigail. ‘By the guy who wrote
The English Patient
. Set in Sri Lanka.’

‘Oh.’

‘And Hols,’ Abigail grinned at me, ‘they probably
haven’t
read it.’

‘Well, why would you come to breakfast in Petersham and mouth off like that? It’s putting me off my food.’

‘Hon,’ said Tim, ‘nothing puts you off your food.’

‘So Abs,’ I was happy to change the subject. ‘Still planning on palliative medicine next year?’

‘Mmmm.’ She looked uncertain.

‘Swinging back toward oncology?’

Silence.

I raised an eyebrow. ‘Back to obstetrics?’

Abigail had the brains, the empathy and the communication skills to be a w="3ls to bonderful doctor. She had this groundedness as well . . . It’s hard to describe, but people picked up on it. I knew she was going to be a force for good in people’s lives in tough situations. I could see her spreading calm and dignity in a sea of grief and terminal pain.The doctor that came to us when my father was dying was a godsend.

‘I just don’t know anymore,’ she said. ‘I’m conflicted.’

‘About . . . which one you’d be better at?’

‘No.’

‘Insurance premiums?’

‘No.’

‘What?’

‘Just . . . what I want my life to be like.’

‘
Tres mysterioso
,
mon compadre.
I have no idea what you mean. Timbo, what does she mean?’

‘Sounds like a quarter-life crisis if ever I heard one.’ He stood up. ‘Another round of coffee?’

‘Yes please.’

‘Yes . . . ’ Abigail sounded drained of energy. She wouldn’t look at me, which was awkward, given we were now the only two at the table.

‘Oh, Abs. I don’t know how any of us are supposed to make the choices we make. Someone put a UAC form in front of me . . . I ticked a box . . . I was seventeen. Why do you think Dan and Lara work for those empires?’

‘Money,’ said Abigail. ‘And status.’

‘They could have money and status elsewhere.’

‘Not in the same amounts, Hol. Nowhere near the same amounts.’

‘Not to mention pride and . . . making a real contribution. Those firms just suck and blow, and charge four hundred dollars per hour.’

‘Most people don’t give that sort of thing the same amount of thought that you do. And Liam did. Does. One assumes.’

‘Don’t you remember Dan at school? Organising all his Free East Timor lunchtimes, anti-mining, anti-nuclear-power fundraisers, wearing those T-shirts, going to rallies against mandatory detention? Collecting for Greenpeace. He used to “give it thought”.’

‘You don’t know what Dan thinks about,’ said Abigail, almost sharply.

‘It comes down to what you want out of work,’ I said. ‘Money and status . . .What do you want, Abs?’

‘I want . . . ’ She sounded heavy. ‘I want to work during the day and sleep at night.’

‘Yeah. Nights and on-call are a bugger.’ I had one coming up the next weekend, I remembered with a sink of the heart.

‘What do
you
want, Hol?’ She looked into my eyes.

‘I . . . want to know that I’m using my powers for good, and—’ ‘You want to make a dead man proud.’

‘Whoa!’

‘You want to put bandages over severed arteries that really need to be sewn shut.’

‘Um—’

‘You want the moral high ground. You and Liam both. And you know what? He and you shouldn’t presume to weigh in on the decisions that other people make in their lives.’

‘Let’s leave it there, shall we?’ I rifled through the
Sydney Morning Herald
folded up on our table. ‘Let’s read some newspaper again.
Good Weekend
for you, sunshine?’

‘
News Review
.’

Tim and I drove to Burwood Westfield for what turned out to be breathtakingly expensive trips to Target and Woolies.The bond on the flat and all the new stuff had put me outside of my financial buffer zone.

‘Thank god it’s pay week,’ I muttered to Tim, as I studied my account balance receipt at the ATM.

‘Babe, I’ve got nearly a grand left in my account. We’ll be sweet.’

When evening came, we were too exhausted to have a maiden voyage in the skanky kitchen, so we slunk over to my mum’s place hoping to be fed.

It was weird to be sitting down to dinner at the big old table as a guest. Weird, but somehow so much less strained. Tim and my brother Paddy giggled over an episode of
Flight of the Conchords
on Paddy’s iPod, while Mum and I topped the strawberries for dessert.

As soon as we had finished eating, Paddy adjourned to continue moving his stuff into my old room.

‘He’s pretty excited about having this place to himself,’ said Mum, pushing her dessert bowl back. ‘Oh, there’s a present for you both on the hall table.’

I found a big David Jones bag and brought it back to the dinner table.

‘Sorry it’s not wrapped, guys,’ she yawned.

Inside was a new set of double-bed linen – crisp white damask.

‘Oh thanks, Mum,’ I cried, instantly bucked up by the prospect of our bedroom looking a little less grim.

‘Yeah thanks, Missus Y,’ said Tim, using the nickname for her that was their special joke.

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‘You’re very welcome. And if they’ll let you get rid of those blinds, I’ll make you some nice white curtains to match.’

‘Mum?’

‘Yes, Holly.’

‘Can we wash the sheets here? It’s three bucks a pop in our laundry, and they might get nicked off the communal line.’

Monday morning. Moment of truth. The alarm sounded at 6:30 and of course, being a school day, we both slept through the morning jumbo-jet cacophony to moan in indignation at the Liszt blaring from Tim’s mobile phone alarm setting.

I ironed our shirts with the new iron and ironing board while Tim was showering, and he made us toast and a plunger of coffee while I showered. We ate standing up in the kitchen – the next weekend we planned to go to IKEA and buy a little kitchen table and two chairs, which would just fit in the corner.

Then we pulled the door shut behind us, descended the dubiously fragranced stairwell of our new abode and stepped out into the street looking, for all the world, like two grown-ups heading off to work.

At the station, the platform was crowded with people waiting for the city train, and I didn’t envy Tim the ride in, all squashed in like cattle. My ride out to Befftown was very roomy by contrast. One of a few perks.

We kissed goodbye in the crush as my train arrived first, and I watched as Tim was swallowed up by the crowd.

Only God knew where my iPod was in all that mess at the flat. I had only my own thoughts for company that morning, and for as long as it would take to find the tiny little thing.

I sat in my usual seat – third row from the rear, upper carriage, two-seater side – and tried to enjoy the view from the last half-hour of reprieve from work.

The warehouses and distribution centres gradually gave way to sparse, unsightly suburbia, which by now was very familiar. I really wasn’t a new grad anymore. After almost a year I could no longer blame every fuck up on being a baby social worker. Come to think of it, I’d been fucking up quite rarely, and when I did it was less monumental and my recovery time was quick.

And now I had the trifecta: a job, a handsome live-in boyfriend and a flat in a red-brick block. On track for all life goals. I thought about the day ahead, starting with where my first at-work coffee would come from. I workshopped some possible toilet breaks into my schedule – you have to try to plan these things in my line of work, and be strict about adhering to them, otherwise you can go a whole day with no toilet break. Which can’t be healthy. I ran through some possible scenarios for excusing myself from ‘manual handling’ training that afternoon.

Then I saw the flag flying on top of Westpoint Square, still far off, but signalling that the train would soon be at Befftown. I fumbled around in my bag for my lanyard with my swipe card and ID attached, hung it around my neck like a yoke and leapt down the stairs in one ehoairs ingo. When I stepped onto the platform I could feel the temperature was at least three degrees warmer than it had been at home. Maybe five. And it was only 8:15 a.m.

I climbed the stairs up and out of the station singing that Clare Bowditch song ‘Divorcee by 23’. Not that I was getting divorced, or even married, but the meditation on being twenty-three was a bit of a theme that morning.

I crossed the Old Town Square among columns of school students on their way to the high schools near the station. My long hair and bare legs bobbed along in a sea of navy-blue hejabs and long pants.
I must look old to them,
I thought, as their eyes flickered over my neatly pressed white shirt, grey skirt and sensible closed-in shoes as per OHS requirements. Thank god for my satchel-style leather handbag, worn sideways across my body, which alone stood between me and decrepitude some days.

The Elizabethtown Community Health Centre was a two-storey building, an oddish pale orangey-pink, that stood amid many businesses up and down the street. By 8:20 there were no parking spots left, but there was a feeling of space and the absence of crowding that you don’t find in the inner city.

I hurried around to the side entrance for staff. As I raised my swipe card to the little black box, I noticed someone huddling in the alcove. It was Niah from Drug Health, with her back to me hissing into her mobile phone.

‘—but it’s more weird if you just totally ignore me at work.You completely avoided eye contact yesterday . . .Yes, you did . . .
That
looks weird; that’ll give it away. Just say
hello, how’s it going
or something, as if I’m . . .You know ... how you used to . . . ’

I hauled open the heavy glass door and got through it quick smart before I found out anything else I didn’t want to know. The bottom floor of the building holds the interview rooms, the reception and waiting area, some speech pathologists, the Drug Health team (comprising 1.5 five full-time equivalent positions, but they call themselves a team so who am I to rain on their parade?), the Domestic Violence counselling team, who have looked progressively more haggard since the changes to the Family Law Act came in, the two Ethnic Health workers and the Child, Youth and Family team. The whole first floor is Mental Health and seeing as it was first thing in the morning and I had a tiny bit of energy, I bypassed the lift and took the stairs two at a time.

A long corridor led to an open-plan area of cubicle-upon-cubicle-as-far-as-the-eye-could-see. There were six offices along the corridor, inhabited by various managers, one for the senior psychiatrist, one for the senior social worker and one for all the registrars to share. All the doors were open, and I was now humming an Interpol song as snippets of various Monday-morning shitstorms floated out of the office doors: ‘I’m not saying there’s
no
risk, I’m saying there’s no
foreseeable
risk.’