Unzipped (10 page)

When you cry on a tram, people notice. I have my head turned into the window, my elbow resting on the sill, tears won’t stop.

The old dear opposite me leans forward. ‘Are you all right?’ Hers will be the last compassionate look I get when this comes out.

I sniff, shake my head. ‘No. I’m sorry.’

Back to the window: shops, houses, parked cars, blurry. When I was with Taylor I could do this. On my own, the worry is back.

Three missed calls. One from Mark, two from BJ. Mark is in Sydney, due back tonight and BJ’s round the corner, eighteen minutes from my house including a stop at the florist. Both she and Mark are too close.

I have a shower and go to bed.

In the morning I find a note on the kitchen bench.
Pee-wee, didn’t want to wake you, can we talk tonight? M.

Hmm. Maybe.

It’s Friday, but I go back to bed. The library owes me days, months.

My doona has hard edges. My whole house does. Everything reminds me of Mark. Photos on the fridge, the sideboard, the mantelpiece. Birthdays. Weddings. Babies. A photo of my nephews and niece in their paddling pool, the water glinting silver, the blue plastic of the pool the same as the sky. Jasmine is wearing exactly the same look as me in my paddling-pool photo. Thirty years apart but the same expression: look at me, don’t look at me. Across the generations, is that what little girls do?

I want to be back in BJ’s bedroom waiting for her to get out of the shower. The wait hurting, the first beautiful touch of her fingers hurting too.

Or I want to be before the couch. Not knowing. Never knowing.

I stay in bed. Push myself into the corner, back cold against the wall, doona over my head. Curtains drawn, I lie in the dark, my phone switched off, the landline unplugged. Twice I hear knocking at my front door. I ignore it.

There’s a scrabbling down the side of the house. Ruby is outside my window, leaving another message. ‘Call me back!’

She doesn’t do patience.

Glass breaks and the back door unlocks. Footsteps down the hallway. The door opens.

‘Peta!’

‘You’ll be paying for that.’

‘I don’t care.’ She’s outlined by the mid-morning light in the hallway. ‘I thought something happened to you.’

‘Like what?’

Ruby sits next to me on the bed, a hand on my hip. I cry.

‘Since when do you miss work? I talked to Mark. He told me you’re sleeping in separate beds.’

‘I’m not moving, Rube, you wasted a day off.’

‘I spoke to BJ.’

I try not to show I’m listening harder.

‘Yes,’ she smiles. ‘She wants to know what’s happening, says she has stuff going on in her life, too. Told me to tell you this, word for word. I wrote it down.’ She hooks a piece of paper out of her pocket.

‘Hey remember that time we stole the movie and you were too afraid to watch it?
And,’ Ruby continues,
‘Hey remember that time I gave up smoking and you gave up swearing and it didn’t happen because you don’t swear and I’d never quit.’

I smile a too-little-too-late smile.

Ruby lies down next me. I cry into her hair. Shorter than mine, a dark auburn bob, the neat ends prickle my eyes and nose. She turns onto her side. ‘It won’t always be like this. You’ll decide.’ She stands up. I’m going to get some instruction. ‘You look and smell disgusting, have a shower. I promise I’ll go home after I’ve seen you shower and eat something.’ She heaves the doona off me. ‘For fuck’s sake, eat something. If you’re hoping to become invisible you’re well on the way.’

In the bathroom I stand in front of the mirror. My ribs and hip bones are prominent. I don’t mind it. I’m going
through something and it shows. My cheeks are hollow and the skin around my eyes is purple. My lips are pale, almost the same colour as my face.

I shower until there’s no hot water. When I get out it’s like stepping into a hot velvet fog. The walls are beaded with moisture and bubbles slide down the mirror. I brush my teeth hard.

Tracksuit pants, sports bra, T-shirt, cap. My shoes and iPod next to the pile. Ruby’s never subtle. I join her in the kitchen. She’s made poached eggs, spinach, muffins, hollandaise, the whole big breakfast. She brought everything with her, knowing we’d have nothing in the fridge.

‘Ruby, thanks. Thanks for this.’ Upfront, in case I forget later.

‘Mmm, the smell has gone. What are you going to do when I go home? Any ideas? Obviously, you’re going for a walk.’

When did Ruby become the bossy one?

I pour the tea.

‘I know what you’re thinking,’ she says. ‘It’s okay, Pete. The wheels are bound to fall off the Ruby-wagon the minute yours are screwed back on. I’ll be as bad as ever and you can spend your life fixing me.’

She sips her tea.

‘What would you do?’ I say.

‘I have no idea,’ she shrugs. ‘Probably freak out, hide, let everything go. Find a bridge to live under. What about a separation? Finding out without pulling your life apart.’

‘My life is apart. Having an affair is ugly. It’s all orgasms and duplicity. It’s exhausting. I want to sleep with BJ in a bed I’m allowed to sleep in.’

‘What does BJ think?’

‘BJ thinks I should move in with her. BJ’s twenty-two. I love her, but she doesn’t know what this is like.’

Ruby is at the sink, emptying the teapot onto news- paper she’s spread on the drainer. The almost clear sky, its white drift of cloud, is framed in the top left of the kitchen window.

‘Haven’t you talked to her about it?’ She’s refilling the teapot, one for you one for me one for the pot.

‘No.’ New tears come. The tea brews while I cry.

‘Why not? Yes, she’s young but she’s smart. And she’s queer. So she’s coming from a less mainstream perspective. Well, I’m assuming.’

Ruby sits down and pours us another cup of tea, dumping two sugars into hers. A tiny clink-ker-clink of the spoon hitting the teacup. Our mother’s teacups.

‘I didn’t want to scare her off.’

‘You might not even be the first married woman she’s been with.’ Ruby says, dumping another sugar into her teacup. ‘I don’t know how you ladies do it, but I guess some lesbians know early, and others must be like you, finding themselves in some girl’s tight back seat.’

‘It was a couch, not a car. I’m not you.’

‘Don’t interrupt. They get there, lesbian, almost by accident. What do you think? Do you think it was there and you hadn’t noticed? Or maybe you’d never have gone there because the right woman hadn’t happened along?’

‘I have no idea. I can’t imagine another BJ happening along. God, she’s so gorgeous.’

‘She’s okay. I like them more feminine.’

‘You’ve been looking?’

‘No, Pete. I’m never going to meet a woman with a big enough cock.’

‘God, you’re gross.’ I push Ruby off her chair, onto the floor, and sit on her.

She heaves me off and we lie under the kitchen table. ‘What are you going to do now? What next?’

‘It’s going to be hard. I did love him. And Keith and the kids. There’s a bed in the spare room just for when Jas stays. There’s a lot to lose, isn’t there?’

‘Nobody’s going to die, Pete. They’ll come round even- tually. I’ll be here.’

‘God, I wish Mark was a bastard. Don’t look at me like that, you know what I mean. If he was doing something wrong, I’d feel a whole lot better about this.’

‘You’re talking about guilt, Pete. You should feel guilty. You have betrayed Mark and all he did was love you.’

‘From a distance.’

‘Okay, from a distance. You were the same. You let each other go. It’s a mistake to think just because no one’s complaining that everything is fine.’

Within a forest of table legs and chair legs and the normally unseen underneath of chair upholstery, I know she is right.

That’s it.

I roll out from under the table, stand up too early, bang my back on its top. Cups wobble and tea splashes onto the table. I don’t care.

Keys, phone, money. I grab a sponge from the sink, throw it to Ruby.

‘Sorry, can you fix that? Do you mind letting yourself out? I’m going around to BJ’s. Get your passport and bridesmaid’s dress ready, Rube. I wanna marry her.’

I buy irises. Outside the florist, I send her a text.

Hey, remember that time we drove CityLink all night, the Bolte, the Westgate, the Sound Tube, lap after lap?

Eighteen minutes up, I park in the spot I parked in all those weeks ago. BJ’s Honda is in the driveway. I check my appearance in the passenger window: in the curved glass my head looks wide, my curls wider. I inspect my teeth and lipstick, smooth my blouse and straighten my skirt.

‘So, you’re not dead then?’

BJ is in her dressing-gown, her eyes and nose are red. She has blue tissues tucked into her towelling sleeve. I have reduced my cowboy girl to this. We kiss. She tastes like tears and relief.

‘Come on.’ My arm around her shoulder, I’m being the assertive one. ‘Let’s get you in the shower.’

‘You could have texted.’ Petulance and she’s no less attractive.

I undress first. Drape my skirt, blouse and underwear over the red chair in the corner, stand my boots at attention underneath. I hook BJ’s dressing-gown on the back of the bathroom door. She’s skinny. Her head tucked into my neck, I try not to look too long at us in the mirror. Pale, unhealthy, lovesick and stupid.

‘I didn’t know what to say, BJ. I haven’t done this before. I’m not talking about girls, I’m talking infidelity. I wasn’t ready to fall in love, for you to love me.’

‘Neither was I. Love hurts and I didn’t want it.’

I turn the shower on, hold my hand under the warming water. BJ is sitting on the side of the bath. Ready, we step in. Kissing in the shower is not impossible, it’s like a pleasant drowning. Water up my nose, I pull away.

‘Falling in love is like getting a brand new car.’

‘What?’

I massage apple shampoo into her hair.

‘Well…you get a new car, you love it. It has that new-car smell and you drive it everywhere. No trip is too small, no drive too long. You put on weight and you’re content. But you owe it. You’re responsible for it, and then it owns you.’

‘I don’t own you,’ she says.

Soft hands, soap, she turns me around, cups my breasts, releases them, runs her hands in a soapy serpentine to my hips, lower.

‘We said I love you.’ She kisses my collarbone. I kiss her head, her ear, the shampoo-slick, black spikes of her hair.

‘We said lots of things. I said I could manage. I lied. And I said nothing. I didn’t do right by you or by Mark.’

BJ scowls. I turn her around, rinse the shampoo out of her hair. Foam slides crazy-paving down her back.

‘It’s been Mark and me for seventeen years. Part of what you like about me is a product of Mark and me.’

My chin on her head, I think about how I’m getting used to talking about Mark in the past tense. Was. Was. Was.

She scowls again, pokes her tongue out.

‘BJ, you’re such a kid.’ I smile, gliding my hands down her back to the curve of her bottom. ‘Where is your maturity, young lady?’

‘I ain’t no lady,’ she says and drops to her knees in the shower recess to prove it.

I hear her moan into my cunt.

My hands in her hair, my knees buckling, an orgasm around a ragged corner. I lean against the glass door.

It unlatches.

We tumble out onto the bathroom floor. I crack my head on the toilet. Blood. A bright spray, outlandish and unreal. My vision is smudgy. There’s a horrid swarming seasickness. BJ shouts my name. I hit the tiles.

BJ says the paramedics tracked bloody footprints up the hallway.

She never dreamed heads could bleed so much.

I’m glad I wasn’t conscious for what happened next.

BJ says her mother turned up to see if she was okay because she’d been leaving messages and had had no response.

Carole Smart called Mark.

‘Carole said you banged your head. I came as soon as I could.’ Mark dumps his satchel on the end of the bed and the hospital clipboard clatters to the floor. He picks it up, tries to replace it, gives up and sets it on the drawers beside me.

As soon as he could.

It’s the end of the financial year, time is money, but four hours later is a joke.

A trio of questions: ‘You hit your head on the toilet? How did Carole Smart find out about it? She said you’d tell me. Did you faint?’

‘No, I fell.’

A nurse enters the ward. She stops at the foot of the bed opposite. I signal to Mark to pull the olive-green curtain round. The nurse’s feet are visible under the curtain. A pair of dark pants and black shoes join her. A murmured conference.

‘Why does Carole Smart know you fell in the toilet?’ He’s trying to picture how you could fall onto our toilet; he’s squinting, his head at an angle. It’s excruciating to watch.

‘No, Mark. I fell out of the shower and hit my head on the toilet.’

‘The shower?’

‘It wasn’t our shower, Mark.’

‘What does Carole Smart have to do with this?’ Mark’s voice rises. The murmuring stops. Two pairs of feet turn towards us. The feet withdraw. Visitors’ voices drop. Somebody says, gotta go. Curtains swish.

I breathe the tricky air.

‘I’ve been having an affair with BJ.’ I try to sit up, but the room tilts. I drop my head back on the pillow. ‘We were doing it when it happened.’

‘BJ? Belinda?’

His face is white. It’s like throwing a switch: ruddy, tanned, three weeks of a Chicago summer, to dirty snow. ‘You’re fucking my boss’s daughter?’

‘I love her.’

Mark flings his coffee at the wall. The cup explodes. Coffee bursts brown up the wall, backwards into the air, onto my sheets and blanket, onto his white shirt.

‘Do you know how this is going to look? This is a joke, right? A pay-attention-to-me thing? Do you have any idea how fast this is going to get around? Who at the firm is going to take me seriously now?’

‘So that’s what you care about? Carole Smart?’

BJ is somewhere not far away, in the cafeteria perhaps. Last time I saw her she was bruised, worried, standing in the arms of her mother.

‘I go away for a few weeks and you turn into a dyke?’

‘You’re away when you’re here.’

‘Fuck off.’ He grabs his satchel, throws the curtain open, and stalks off. His coffee still sliding down the wall.

I close my eyes. That went well.

‘Did you know your sister is a fucking rug-muncher?’ Mark confronts Ruby in the corridor just outside the room.

It’s late. Nobody in my four-bed ward is getting any sleep. Can’t they talk about me someplace else?

‘She’s been at it with my boss’s daughter.’ It’s as if he loves the sound of it. Boss’s daughter.

Ruby: ‘Ssh. Let’s sit.’ The chairs must be just outside the door.

‘Did you know?’

‘No.’ Smooth liar, much smoother than I am.

‘You must have known. She says she loves her. They were fucking in the shower or something when she fell… We were going to have a baby.’

‘Peta’s pregnant?’ This is the first time she manages to sound surprised, as if the news of your sister running off with a woman is an everyday occurrence.

‘No, not yet. But we were going to try when I got back from Chicago…’ His voice cracks.

‘I’m sorry, Mark. I had no idea.’ The truth sounds honest. ‘Come here.’ The chair squeaks vinyl and I know she has him in her arms.

They sit outside my room and cry. Ruby has always been close to Mark. At our wedding reception she announced he was the big brother she’d like to fuck. Most people laughed. That’s Ruby, aiming for shock-value.

‘What are you going to do?’

‘Go back to work, I guess.’

‘Are you planning to sleep under your desk, George Costanza—style?’

He laughs. It’s good to hear it. The chairs squeak as they stand and it’s quiet as they hug.

‘Keep in touch,’ she says. ‘I mean it.’

Ruby kisses my cheek. Tiny teardrops glisten on her lashes.

‘I didn’t know you were going to have a baby.’

‘He was. I was thinking about it and not thinking about it.’ I shrug. Wrong move. I see stars: a milky, dark-night constellation.

She’s in the chair next to my bed, her bag in her lap. She’s brought in toothpaste, soap, pyjamas. The pyjamas are hers. I won’t be walking anywhere, so hot pink satin won’t matter.

‘So, you were fucking in the shower? And this,’ she points to my crêpey, hospital turban, ‘a sex-injury.’

‘My first.’

‘Carpet burn?’

‘Can you call carpet burn a sex-injury, Rube? Carpet burn is standard. A rite of passage, like L plates and lease documents.’

‘Not if it’s on your face.’ She smiles the smile of a good memory and I’m not going to ask.

Sex-injury talk goes only so far. ‘Is he going to tell everyone?’

I haven’t seen Alex and Rob, Theresa and Ravi recently but I care what they think. They’ve been in my life a long time. Secondary school, prom night, abandoned love affairs, graduations, so many twenty-firsts we got sick
of them. Weddings, a divorce, babies. Three of us have suffered the death of a parent and Alex lost her brother last year in a car accident.

‘Peta, he’s in shock. It was a brutal way to find out. This is nobody’s idea of a great Friday night.’

‘I want to talk to him.’

Ruby grinds her teeth. ‘Why? How are you going to make it better? You think he can forget you were fucking someone else?’

I wish Ruby would stop telling it like it is.

‘I get it. I deserve all the shit that’s coming.’

‘Yeah, you do.’

I roll away from her and she says she’s going for a walk, she’ll be back. Moments later I sense someone at my bedside.

‘Go away.’

‘Should I come back tomorrow?’ I hear the unzipping, the jacket coming off, and feel the light pressure of it on my bed. Cigarettes and leather mixed with the antiseptic hospital.

I roll back over. Stars again.

There’s a bruise on BJ’s arm and her left eye is purple turning black. I can’t stop looking at it, the pugilistic shine, the eye itself, bloody and marbled.

‘I think it was your elbow.’ She touches it. ‘I guess it could have been a knee.’ She grins. ‘I have had worse, but I never got it better.’

I make room for her.

‘Wouldn’t you two be more comfortable in the shower?’

Ruby is back.

‘I’ve just been on the phone with Mark,’ she says. ‘He’s
going home to get some stuff and he’ll stay with me until you decide what you’re doing.’

She has a spare room, a spare bed, towels, food, space. But I can see him in her bed, his polished shoes at its foot, their customary overnight position. I can see her holding him when he cries. Hot tears, hot faces, mouths turning to each other.

‘He’s staying with you?’ Anger rises, a burning surge, through my stomach, up to my face. ‘Well, Ruby. Isn’t that nice? I guess you’ll get what you’ve always wanted.’

‘What do you care? You said only this morning you wished he’d meet someone else.’

BJ holds my hand.

‘God, could you leave each other alone for a minute? It’s revolting.’

‘Fuck off, Ruby. Go home. You’re not helping.’ BJ says. No more unhappy girl, skinny and hunched over; now she’s my best defender. ‘Come back tomorrow and be an arsehole.’

‘I don’t understand you.’ Up on my elbows, head throbbing. My voice is low, menacing. I don’t mind. ‘This morning you knew the decision I was going to make. You said you’d be there. If you’re going to hang around making noises, Ruby, BJ’s right, fuck off.’

I have never sworn at her before. Not even the time she didn’t just jam my fingers in her car door—she locked them in and spent a minute looking for her car keys in her handbag before remembering they were in her pocket.

Ruby dissolves.

‘I didn’t expect it to be so quick, Pete. I thought you’d
have time to do it better. I’ve never seen Mark cry.’

‘Darling girl, I wasn’t planning on smacking my head on the toilet. It’s an inauspicious beginning, isn’t it? And you know how I feel about germs. Come here.’

BJ turns and brings Ruby into our huddle.