Green (32 page)

I pull on the clothes I dumped on the floor before I went to the bathroom. This will be a casual look, I tell myself, and a casual look can be good sometimes. I check in the hall mirror and I look pale and wet—artistic perhaps. Maybe we can talk film-making. There is no evidence of major facial bleeding.

It's only lunch, I tell myself, only lunch. Cuisine and conversation. Study, obstetrics, Ron Todd. Think anti-arousal.

I reach the door. And there's an opened packet of photos on the table just inside.

The mail arrived while I was at Toombul. It's the photos from the film I sent away. It must be. And my mother has looked at them.

‘Arse and biscuit', I'm thinking as the door opens. I'm swinging it open thinking ‘just arse and biscuit.' I want to check the photos. Need to check the photos. As I'm opening the door all I want to do is shut it, take a look at the packet and see if they developed those ones or not. But I can't. Imagine if they did, and she saw them. What would it say? ‘Hi, welcome to my house. What do you think of these? I've got some party pies warming out the back. Are you feeling photogenic?'

‘Hi,' she says, standing there with her basket, expecting something very normal.

‘Hi.'

‘I should have brought something, but I didn't know what to bring. So I brought books.' She holds up the basket as a joke. ‘I thought I'd bring this in, since I didn't want to leave it all in the car.'

‘Good move. Can't be too careful.' Shut up. ‘The library'd give you hell if someone lifted them all.' No, really, shut up. ‘Come on through.'

We walk down the hall to the kitchen, and the first hint of a baking aroma is there waiting for us.

‘Hmmm,' she says, in a way that sounds prepared to be appreciative.

‘It's getting on to the time of year when hot food doesn't seem out of the question.' I wish I hadn't said that. My part of the conversation is being overrun by platitudes. What's going on? ‘Wine? Wine and soda?'

‘Just the wine'd be good, thanks.'

‘No problem.'

I squirt us each some riesling and I still want to check those photos. Just once. I need to know.

She takes her glass and says, ‘Thank you. Um, do you have any ice? I know most people don't, in wine, but . . .'

‘No, that's fine.' Or, not fine. All the ice in the house has been pressed against my bleeding face, and is now in the sink. ‘Why don't you take a seat and I'll bring it over with the ice in?'

‘Oh, okay.'

‘I thought we might eat outside, so take a seat on the patio and I'll check how lunch is going and get you some ice.'

She smiles. ‘You're nervous about your cooking, aren't you?'

‘No, no. Well, a bit. And it's not really cooking, but . . .'

She nods, says, ‘I'll see you outside,' in an understanding way, still with the smile, and she walks towards the glass doors.

She turns around precisely when my hand is in the act of scooping ice from the sink and dropping it into her glass.

‘Ice,' I say redundantly. ‘You wanted ice?'

‘Yes . . . that seemed to come from the sink.'

‘Yes . . . overfilled tray. It was all clumped. One big piece. So I thought I'd break it in the sink. Before you got here. In the tray, which . . .'

She's nodding. She'd like to understand.

I toss a couple of cubes into my drink as well, as a sign that it's safe, that everything's normal. There's blood on my hand, a smear of blood from the ice. I check the pies, and that gives me a chance to wipe my hand on the tea towel.

‘They'll be a little while longer,' I tell her. ‘Why don't we take a seat in the lounge in here until they're done?'

‘Sure.'

Okay. So far, not exactly so good, but all still workable. She sits on the sofa and puts her basket on the floor by her feet. She picks up a cushion, sets it down on her lap, picks it up again and puts it back on the sofa next to her.

‘So . . .' she says, as if I'm to make conversation, or take the next step. I hand her her wine, and she sips it and says, ‘Mmmm.'

It's warm in here so I turn the ceiling fan on and, while I'm there, I release the pause button on the stereo. I sit down, and there's only the cushion between us. ‘Magic Man' starts playing, at just the right volume.

The first time through, nothing happens. Five minutes of hot, passionate Heart fuck song, and I'm pretty sure she doesn't even notice. She keeps smiling, but it's a smile that's starting to look for somewhere to go by the time the song's ending. That's not the same as arousal. She asks me how long we've lived here, questions like that. We drink our wine.

‘It's Phoebe, isn't it?' she says. ‘You're not really over her, are you?'

Time two for Heart, and she looks as though something unexpected has just happened when the song starts again. And it's not that she's suddenly twigged to my irresistibility.

‘No, no the Phoebe situation . . . it's hard to describe, but . . .'

‘It's okay. Was it recent?'

‘Yes. Well, not really.'

‘She got to you, didn't she? You're not over Phoebe at all. You can tell me.'

Nothing plausible about Phoebe crosses my mind, and we have ourselves a pause that could take on its own strange meaning. I drink a mouthful of wine.

‘So, what, um, what books have you got in there that people were going to steal from the car?'

‘Oh, uni stuff.' She looks down at her basket. ‘That's Simone de Beauvoir's
The Second Sex
on top.'

Which reminds me of our conversation of last week, so that gives me somewhere to go. ‘Do you think she had her own TV, or did she just watch Sartre's?' Except that wasn't our conversation. That was Sophie. ‘You didn't see that, um, article in the
National Times
?' Liar, liar.

‘We don't get the
National Times
.' The song finishes, and starts again. ‘What was it about?' She moves back further into the corner of the sofa, pulls another cushion out from behind her and pushes that between us as well.

‘Her, um . . . their, um, American circumstance . . . So naturally TV came up, since it'd pretty much have to. I didn't read the whole thing. It's not really my area. Not that I'm not interested. It's just that I've got exams coming up.'

‘Can I just ask—and don't take this the wrong way—how did it end with Phoebe? Did she really hurt you?'

When the now relentless bass line of ‘Magic Man' kicks in for the fourth time—and, guess what, there's not one suffocating garment loosened, even though it's definitely warm for the time of year—she starts looking twitchily around and saying, ‘What's going on? Is something stuck?' Her forehead turns puzzled. ‘What were you saying about TV?' She clutches her glass, looks down into her drink.

‘I just really like the song,' I tell her.

And the comment was supposed to be low-key but, bugger it, I've somehow picked psycho instead and made ‘I just really like the song' sound about as thoughtful and normal and non-threatening as ‘Have you checked the children?'

‘I think there's something in my wine,' she says. ‘Something . . . coming off the ice cubes.'

‘Probably just turbulence. There's a temperature difference . . .' Turbulence? I'm about to go for Bernoulli again. Have I learned nothing? ‘The riesling's warmer than the ice cubes, so . . .'

‘No, no I think it's the ice cubes themselves. I might go and get a couple of fresh ones.'

No, not the sink. But she's already standing, as though getting a couple of fresh ones is mainly a chance to put some distance between us, step away from this fractured conversation and its mesmerising ‘Magic Man' soundtrack.

‘I'll help you,' I tell her, as she walks around the far side of the coffee table. ‘I might check on the pies, too.'

‘No, no it's fine,' she says a little sternly. ‘Stay where you are.'

‘I'd really rather . . . you're the guest.'

I stand, but she's already up to the breakfast bar. The song's up to the chorus. Jacinta's up to the sink.

‘I'd really . . . There's some things I should explain.'

She stops, just as she's about to reach down for ice. ‘Phoebe things, would that be? You haven't been entirely honest with me about Phoebe, have you? And you've been creeping me out a bit with this music, I have to say that. I don't know what you were thinking with this tape.'

‘I'm not sure where to begin.'

‘Blood,' she says in a voice that's oddly deadpan. ‘There's blood in the sink.' She looks up at me, as though not a thing makes sense any more. ‘That's what's in my wine, isn't it?'

‘Phoebe's my mother,' I tell her, and straight away I know it's not how I should have put it.

‘Oh, Jesus,' she says, same voice as before. ‘Your mother.'

‘I can explain.'

‘You just have. Um, I have to go now.'

‘No, no it's not like that.'

‘I'm really sorry, okay? Really sorry. But I've got to go. I don't think I can . . . I just have to go. You should get help. You, and especially your mother. But you too.'

‘No, it's complicated.'

The song moves from languid guitar solo to sensual synthesizer, plus wailing.

‘These things are never simple. The blood, for example. I can't guess . . . Could you step away from the basket? I have to go right now, and I'd be much more comfortable if you'd step away from the basket.'

‘No, you have to let me . . .'

‘Okay, let me put it another way,' she says, every syllable louder than anything before. ‘I'm likely to scream if you don't step away from the basket.'

I step away, three slow backward steps towards the French doors. A gust of air blows in from the garden, the curtains billow.

She moves forward, watching me all the time, even when she's picked up the basket and she's feeling around in it for car keys, backing away past the coffee table.

‘We'll talk later, though,' I say to her, in a way that sounds somewhere between a question and completely stupid.

‘No, no we won't. I'm sorry. I can't be the person to get you through this.' And then, in the ultra-firm voice again, ‘I don't even know what the blood's about.'

She gets to the pantry and the kitchen door, checks the hall, and runs. She's at the front door in seconds and it slams behind her and her feet clatter down the wooden steps outside.

‘Magic Man' starts for the fifth time. The enticing aroma of party pies fills the air. Outside, a car engine roars into life and rubber scorches into bitumen as Jacinta leaves the scene.

I hit the stop button on the stereo, walk into the kitchen and turn off the oven. My appetite's gone. Won't be back for some time.

There was a better way of saying that. Sure, there was also an ice-cube management issue, but there was a better way of explaining Phoebe. There were probably many better ways, but I would have settled for any that didn't imply I was fucked-up because my last relationship was with my mother. Someone once told me that when you try to explain things you should get right to the point. Now I know that's not always the best approach.

I go into the spare room and I pull the sheets off the bed, fold them and put them back in the cupboard.

 

*

 

The only lucky break that comes my way is that the lab didn't develop Frank's photos. The packet couldn't be more innocuous—straggly roses, people at a party doing nothing special, compositional exercises showing that I still have a thing or two to learn about perspective and framing. These photos—that's where my life is. My life is made up of dull backyard things, and I shouldn't try to be so bold with party pies, and shaving at the last minute and some song about a man with a kind of chick magnetism that can't be explained by science and has to be put down to magic.

I should have masturbated. At least it would have put a couple of minutes pleasure in my day.

A while later, Frank calls. ‘If it's a bad time . . .'

‘No, we've done the bad time.'

‘I just thought I'd see how it was going.'

‘Thanks. It's sort of gone. She's gone. It's a long story.'

‘It's never a short one.'

‘Oh, look, it's nothing major. Just a misunderstanding. She got some funny ideas in her head about my relationship with my mother, and I kind of cut myself shaving and some of the blood got in her drink.'

‘What?' He's laughing. ‘You bled in her drink?'

‘In her wine, yeah. But not directly . . .' A pager goes off in the background. There's a muffled voice somewhere but it's drowned out by Frank, still laughing. ‘Where are you?'

‘Um, still at the Mater.'

‘Yeah, the pager was a hint, but we're not rostered on this afternoon are we? I thought it was only the morning I was missing. Has anyone noticed I'm not there?'

‘No. I was working for Dad last Friday, remember? So I missed Antenatal Clinic and I thought I'd do double today. After what happened in surgery I'm taking no chances. So I've stayed on for the afternoon one. But forget that. You served a girl a drink with your blood in it. Have you hooked up with a vampire and not told me?'

‘If she was a vampire she'd still be here. You should have seen her. She didn't so much leave as flee.'

‘You've got to call her and straighten it out, before she gets any strange ideas.'

‘She's got them. Trust me.'

‘No, call her. I know you don't want to but it'll only be worse if you don't. Call her and explain. What have you got to lose? You don't want her going round saying you put blood in drinks.'

‘Yeah, I . . .'

‘I've got to go. I've got to call the next patient in. You have to call her, right? Don't stress. She'll never go out with you again. It's fine. It's just damage control, and you're very good at damage control. Yeah? Pretend I've got myself in some situation and you're bailing me out. It gets down to explaining. You're good at explaining.'