The Amateur Science of Love (20 page)

I liked Donna’s term
keep
company
. It had her smell on it—citrus and aniseed from the gels she showered with. I liked her long, coy way of saying the word—
commpanyyy.
She made it sound like a foreign language. Tilda’s
congressing
was pompous, like she was better than fucking, too good for it.

I never intended keeping company in Donna’s house. When I arrived I was hoping for her to hold me like she said she wanted to, but even that seemed unlikely given her shyness and hesitancy. I had to make the first move. I asked her, ‘Can I have that embrace we talked about on the phone?’

She kept her head down and took two slow steps my way. I took a step her way to meet her more quickly.
Contact.
We made contact. Slow and tender contact, as if our skins might bruise. Citrus and aniseed were all through her hair. There was a peppermint breeze from her lips as they parted upward onto mine. She was shorter than Tilda, which meant a more physical kiss: I had to strain and lower my head down more.

We almost didn’t go further. I pulled away on seeing her brass bed reflected in the hallway mirror. It had four pillows—two each side. Her and Cameron’s pillows.
Their
bed, not Donna’s and mine. I tried to ignore that line of thought. I adjusted my kissing position to a deeper and more strenuous hold. I stepped towards the bedroom, still kissing, keeping Donna in step with me. I was not rushing her. I stepped and stopped, stepped and stopped, and she kept in time—a walk-dance. At that moment I thought of Tilda: how I was breaking faith with her. But it was a thought no more than a heartbeat long. Breaking faith was easy. I had given over completely to breaking it now. I slipped my fingers under Donna’s blouse and rubbed the small of her back to test her willingness. She pressed on tiptoes to kiss her
yes
.

But the mirror reflection kept bothering me. We could not do it on his bed, Cameron’s bed. We could not do it in his house. You don’t have to be alive to be a presence. I unkissed my mouth from hers to explain: ‘It’s not like I’m feeling his eyes looking on. It’s just, I’d love somewhere neutral. Somewhere
ours
.’

Her eyelids were half closed with willingness. She came down off her tiptoes, pulled her blouse straight and licked her bottom lip like a way of kissing herself to keep the kissing going. This drew me back to kissing. Then to stepping. The ‘neutral’ idea could not compete against resting my hands on her hips, running them up over her ribs to her bra strap. Then a breath, a pause to concentrate and savour what my hands were about to do. They were about to shift around onto two breasts. Two not one. No scar, no elephant fatness in the sandy shaved pit of her arm.

I could not stop looking at them. As we crabbed onto the bed her breasts transfixed me—two not one, as if two were unusual and I had never seen them before. Their little noses of nut-nipple, softer than Tilda’s body-part nipple. We were unwrapping each other from our clothes yet I had to slow up and stare at them, give my lips the pleasure of rubbing both. I said nothing of this to Donna. I just revelled in her to the point of over-delight. I had to close my eyes or else I’d need mathematics. I concentrated on removing my shoes, taking a moment to unlace and settle. Two breasts not one. And ribs not poking out but covered with a healthy layer of flesh. Rounded buttock and thigh, strong not skinny.

It is impossible not to compare one lover to another, even as you’re climbing into them. I was thinking how Donna’s diaphragm was not as deep in as Tilda’s. I butted its rubber and refrained from thrusting quite so deeply.

I could feel Cameron’s shape in the bed. The scoop where his body slept on the mattress. Even if I changed sides his scoop was still there under me. Donna put it down to my imagination but conceded somewhere neutral would be preferable. She agreed it didn’t seem right stepping over children’s toys and dolls in the hall and then doing what we were doing. Having been spreadeagled in one another’s arms, it was hardly romantic to get up and wash us from the sheets because Ruth liked to get into bed with her mother in the mornings.

What about we use the forest at Ringo Point? I suggested it because a motel was difficult: we’d have to drive halfway to Melbourne given the risk of tongues wagging. No one hires a motel room for the day in the country, not unless they’re up to no good. Besides, there was the expense of it. I knew all the forest at Ringo. I knew of clearings and cavities in the scrub where only kangaroos would see us. There was the risk of the odd reptile but that was okay, I would shoo any away and we could throw a blanket down. Consider it a temporary measure, I said, until I left Tilda. And I would leave Tilda soon, I promised.

The forest became our arrangement. Tuesdays and Fridays—Donna’s non-uni days. She dropped Ruth off at playgroup and drove an hour to me. We used an old doona cover she had, spread it at a spot three minutes’ walk west of the sundial where there was plenty of bush to screen us. Ironbarks stretched out enough for two people to keep company in shade. The ground was hard but smooth. There were no bull ants. We codenamed it Neutral Motor Inn.

For six weeks we made a brief bed there, never fully naked in case we heard humans. We did a drill, just so we’d be ready, pulling our clothes up as fast as possible. We were never interrupted except by parrot voices. Afterwards we shared water from Donna’s thermos and watched the ticker-tape effect of sun through the swaying branches. We could not remember, either of us, being so happy, so peaceful.

I said, ‘You’re the love of my life.’

She answered, ‘I’m very respectful of Cameron, but I feel love like you do too.’

Her saying that always gave me such resolve. I would go home from Neutral Motor Inn determined to tell Tilda goodbye. I whipped myself into a state of contempt for her, the right frame of mind to deliver the ruthless news. I rehearsed it: ‘I am leaving you, Tilda. I am walking out. I am not in love with you. I am in love with Donna Wilkins.’ I walked in through the back door without so much as a ‘Good evening.’ My jaw was clenched for conflict. I hadn’t showered, hadn’t washed Donna from me. Surely I reeked of the off-smell of wetness dried and clotted in my trousers. I deliberately breezed by her so she might catch the scent, but failed to provoke her into getting the whole smithereens of us underway. Call me spineless but I baulked at igniting it myself.

Those six weeks provided me a sordid balance: I had Donna waiting in the forest and still had a home to return to afterwards. I had it both ways.

I began writing these pages in the first of those six weeks. My daily regimen. I suppose I was hoping they would help me make my decision. The unhappiest people in the world must be those with too many decisions to make. Even one is too many. In my case, Tilda or Donna.

Donna pressed me only slightly. She said, ‘Promise Neutral Motor Inn is temporary?’

I promised. And I did mean it when I was with her, though I avoided giving an exact timeline.

The excuse I used was Tilda’s health. Towards the end of the six weeks she got so thin. She didn’t eat, stayed in bed as if wasting away. Surely this time it had to be the cancer. How could I leave her in that predicament?

‘You can’t,’ Donna said, tears in her eyes. ‘This could drag your leaving on forever and ever.’

‘It’s not my fault.’

‘I know it’s not.’ We pulled up our clothes and lay in sun-leaf dapples. The only obvious utterance to make was: maybe Tilda will die and leave the way clear. We bit our tongues. Neither of us was going to reveal that we were capable of such a statement.

Anyway, it wasn’t cancer. It was me. Tilda didn’t need Roff to confirm that for her. She’d put the whole heartwrecking puzzle together.

Donna would park her car at the sundial area. I always left the Commodore out of sight up a narrow track half a kilometre from Neutral Motor Inn. In all the years I had run up the track I had never seen another person. It wasn’t our cars that gave us away. Nor did I ever call Donna from home—the phone bill didn’t spring us. Yes, I overused the Hastings Road phone box in broad daylight but I couldn’t help it: when you’re in love you simply have to hear your loved one’s voice constantly. I called from the office three or four times but I made sure everyone was out on a tea break.

It was the underpants I bought from O’Connor’s Manchester. I believe I set out to sabotage myself. Brand new underwear after years of the same old saggy ones. I was ashamed of saggy ones with Donna. I replaced them with bright blues and purples—four pairs, tight-fitting with bulgy Y-front pouches.

I didn’t take care to rinse off the stains before throwing them on the wash pile. Surely it was sabotage—my way of telling Tilda without actually telling her. I was letting dried wetnesses do the work for me.

I was standing at our backyard oleander, running the filter end of a cigarette around my mouth to simulate Donna’s nipples. It was here I had first seen the crease of her bottom. I smiled at how far we had progressed from that to Neutral Motor Inn. I lit the cigarette and had just drained the dregs of a vodka and ice when Tilda walked up behind me. Her arms were crossed tightly. Her hair was frizzing loose from her plait as if it had been picked at. There was such a narrow-eyed strain in her face you’d have thought she was lifting a heavy invisible weight. She said, ‘Have you got a problem with your water works or something?’

‘Ay?’

‘What else would leave these kinds of stains?’ Her fist threw me the purple underpants I’d worn yesterday, which was a Donna day.

I held cigarette smoke deep in my lungs for courage. Let it stream out of me like a long, calm purge. I did not answer.

The weight in her face got heavier. ‘It’s Donna Wilkins, isn’t it?’

Here it was—the smithereens. I filled my lungs for more courage. ‘Yes,’ I said. A pitiful whimpered yes. I was so scared. Scared of life itself for being so different with that yes—so wild and shattered and free.

Tilda locked her two fists into one and threw her head back and made an awful vomiting sound. ‘I am such a fool,’ she said to the sky. She took one lunging stride towards me, eyes and nose teeming. ‘Get out. Get out of this house. Get out of my home.’

I attempted a consolation
sorry
but she covered her ears to keep sweet-talk out of her mind. ‘Get out!’

Plenty of windows would have heard her. I headed to the back door to get out of sight of neighbours.

I ran up the stairs, stood in the bedroom, thinking: What do I need? What do I need? I need clothes, of course. My cheque book—it was a joint cheque account with Tilda—I had the right to keep my half of our money. My typewriter, I needed that. Toiletries—razor, toothbrush. Take a flannel, some soap, a towel. All would fit easily into the Commodore boot. If I needed to I could sleep on the back seat overnight.

Then panic hit me. I could go to Tilda and undo the
yes.
I could lie that I was joking. Or I could beg with many apologies and congress with her until she wilted and changed her
get out
to
please stay
. Oh, I was scared of life all right. So scared I slowed my packing hoping she’d come and save me with kisses of tender absolution. I piled belongings on our bed and folded and shoved and slowed.

Eventually fearlessness straightened me. Donna’s face, her two breasts were restored to my brain; her voice, her
I feel love like you do too
to my ears. I was in such a penduluming madness—packing, slowing down, terrified, ecstatic,
Come save me, Tilda
one minute,
I’m on my way to you, Donna
the next—I did not smell smoke until the air was faintly foggy with it. Even then I sniffed my fingers to check it wasn’t cigarette stink.

It wasn’t. It was fire. The fog was denser the further around the hallway I investigated. It was coming from the bathroom. Smoke was blacker there and petrolly in its stench. It burst up out of the bathtub, curled off the top of rearing flames with chunks of half-burnt newspaper. Tilda was feeding the tub with splashes from a turps bottle. The invisible weight was still in her face but she had a sneery smile now, as if achieving something.

A paper chunk broke up and blew my way. I stomped it to ash on a patch of threadbare carpet. Another chunk smoked and crumbled onto the lino at Tilda’s feet. She yelled for me to ‘fuck off’ when I tried to stomp it. She held the turpentine out like a liquid threat, gave it a shake to warn me off. I saw my Donna underpants, every pair, burning in the tub.

Tilda let me stand and look at them. She smiled wider and said, ‘Every drop of the bitch’s cunt juice is going to burn. Fucking burn. Every rancid trace of her. It’s like burning her, that’s what it’s like. Wouldn’t that be justice and beautiful to burn her to fucking bits? Tell me you want that. Tell me she deserves it.’

At which point the smoke got into her breathing and she gagged and threw the bottle into the tub and coughed her way past me to gulp fresh air. Flames flicked faster; half the shower curtain was melted. I turned on the shower head by dabbing the taps open with my thumbs—the steel was stinging hot. My arms had to bear a few seconds among flames before the taps were open enough and water ran. I yanked the window up as high as it would go and used a towel to fan away smoke.

Surely neighbours would have called the fire brigade by now. How was I going to explain a burnt bath? I fanned and thought up excuses: an art experiment with burnt clothing as a medium. I kept the water running to rinse the tub down into a minor-looking incident. I didn’t know where Tilda had gone. I concentrated on fanning and throwing my sodden, flame-chewed undies out the window. I scooped ashy newspaper into the toilet and flushed.

The neighbours were not a worry. I had put the fire out in time. If they were spying from their curtains they must have thought we’d taken to having barbecues indoors. Tilda was the problem. She was downstairs dialling the phone with a stabbing finger. She kept getting the number wrong she was stabbing so hard and furiously. She must have reached innocent people more than once because when I arrived she swore ‘Fuck, not again!’ into the receiver. She poked her fingernail into the back of the phone book where we jotted numbers. She recited Donna’s number with seething slowness.

I ran up to her, snatched the receiver. ‘What are you doing? Give it to me! Give it here!’ She snatched it back and hissed and elbowed my jaw to keep possession. Donna had answered. I could hear her saying ‘Hello. Donna speaking’ down the line.

Tilda let fly: ‘Slut. You fucking slut whore. You betraying slutty bitch. How could you? How could you touch my husband, you fucking lowest form of life?’

I made another snatching attempt. Tilda grunted and gave me a shove, shouting, ‘Watch my arm! Don’t you dare hurt my arm.’

I wasn’t hurting her arm. I had my hand on hard phone plastic, not her, but I retreated anyway to stop her accusing me. I tucked my chin to my chest to beg a truce but she jabbed the receiver into my cheek. I hunched to deflect another hit but
bang
came one on the bone behind my left ear.
Ding
on bone higher on my head. White wires of electric water fizzed across my vision. My skull went numb, then seared.
Ding
again between my shoulder blades. The cord had pulled out from the wall. Tilda followed, swinging the phone like she was batting.

I took each blow, resigned to deserving them. What else could I do? I couldn’t retaliate—my size against hers? I would break her in half. So I took the hiding. Walked up the stairs more proud than defeated. The white wires and the searing were punishments I accepted. I withstood them. They were worth it to be able to be with Donna. They helped drive me towards Donna. I would be with her tonight. I was getting my belongings and leaving.