Rose Leopard (10 page)

‘Thank you for everything you do for me,' she breathed, nuzzling the crook of my neck as she did so. ‘I love you, okay? I love you!'

I nodded and smiled, kissed her back and held her against me before mumbling something about being missed and needing to get back to her guests. What I didn't tell her was that my right hand, pressed into the small of her back, was already marked with the scent of Francesca; we had met briefly in the downstairs garage only an hour before. Two women on my fingers at once — I knew then that it had to stop. Something had to give.

Mercifully, Francesca ended it for me. That same night, she announced to the surprised gathering that she was marrying the old windjammer Leo. I remember it well; there was spontaneous applause, a crate of champagne borne forth, much toasting and cheek-kissing and jibing about the difference in ages. I was watching Kaz as Francesca made her speech from a hurriedly manufactured chair-podium; the eagerness in Kaz's face suddenly faded, her mouth sagged despondently, she turned and took several steps away from the pool of light. That was when I saw all: Francesca had deliberately waited for this particular moment so she could hijack Kaz's party. She had superseded Kaz's time of exultation with the declaration of a ritual of even greater importance — the marriage of the eldest child. Worse, the old bitch Bernice had shamelessly colluded — how else could the champagne have been so conveniently at hand?

I sought the privacy of a nearby hedge and searched further into my synapses.
I don't hate anyone,
she had told me, then boldly played the coquette to my clumsy seduction. Except your younger sister, I thought grimly: intelligent, sociable, vivacious, witty, she is all that you are not and never can be. And I, I have been the fool who has given you a lifetime of power over Kaz, given you the chance — should you ever wish to exercise it — to utterly compromise her happiness.

Never before, or since, have I felt so low. Not until the hospital, two and a half months ago.

Sign here … dreadfully sorry … and here, please — it's awful but necessary — and here … thank you, dreadfully sorry, nothing we could do …

Francesca was married almost immediately. Thirty-four weeks later she gave premature birth to Amelia, her only child. At the subsequent christening I stood on a table, not-so-accidentally squashed part of the cake and announced the engagement of myself to Kaz, youngest daughter of Bug-Eyes. As we kissed passionately amidst baby balloons and marshmallow-coloured streamers, the cries and howls of surprise were only overshadowed by two events: my glimpse of the ferocious scowl on the face of my future mother-in-law, and the perfectly timed arrival by taxi of three crates of Bollinger, purchased via credit-card, of course.

Three

M
onday morning. Stu stumbles out, hair and body sadly awry. I'm draining a second mug of sugary coffee. Breakfast? Maybe a slice of toast mid-morning. I can't be bothered eating much these days.

‘I never know what to cook for you,' Kaz complained, more than once. ‘Some days you want nothing but fresh air and a glass of cask red. Other days you're a glutton. How do I pick which day is which?'

‘You don't,' I told her, more than once. ‘You just relish my inconstancy.'

‘Vince, I am a busy person. Emancipated go-getters such as myself have little time to relish the inconstancies of their fickle partners. We need order and predictability.'

‘Sorry. Can't do either of those.'

‘Vince, it's frustrating!'

‘Then … I shall cook,' I announced grandly. ‘As a NewAgeist in touch with my feminine self, I shall manacle myself to the microwave and usher forth mind-boggling culinary extravaganzas. Prepare for
coq au vin, tortellini al dente
and a bowl of chilled gazpacho Andaluz from the plains of Spain.'

Pause for reflection; sardonic gaze.

‘How about steak and mash?'

‘I'll get the potatoes.'

I scan the papers.
Thirty-one killed in Swiss avalanche. Suicide bomber blows up bus in Bethlehem. Fifty-four-year-old sacked zookeeper detained by gendarmerie for bungee-jumping off the Eiffel Tower. Indian teenager washes clothes in Ganges and loses penis to giant snapping turtle. Australian dollar hits all-time low. Australian road-toll hits all-time high.

All is as usual with this most bizarre of worlds.

I hear the sound of water swishing, a squeal of ‘too hot!', the extractor fan switched on. Amelia, bless her, is helping the children with their morning showers. And I am automatically reminded of a recent aberration: Milo, clad only in gaudy little-kid underpants, striding towards me, a bath-towel held up for my immediate inspection.

‘Dad, my towel stinks.'

It was brown, crusty-looking. Unlike their clothes, it hadn't been washed in ages.

Somewhere inside me, something irrational clicked.

‘So let's wash it,' I told him brusquely. Then, for no reason: ‘Better still, let's wash everything! Isn't that what your mother would've done? Washed everything? Scrubbed the lot?'

‘I … I don't know —'

‘Course she would! Come on, chop-chop! Time for a bit of domestic diligence, eh?'

So we embarked on a sudden fury of washing. At first it was a sort-of game — both children bringing me a bathmat, sheets, their daggy Disney doona-covers — then it became more serious because the stains wouldn't come out and clean was not clean enough and outside clouds gathered and rain fell so nothing would dry and as the day wore tediously on, I became steadily, ridiculously hysterical.

‘You wanna wash?' I screamed at them, late-afternoon. ‘So look at this! We're washing, together — like a good family should! Wash-wash-bloody-wash!'

They cowered near the edge of the laundry.

‘It was only my towel,' Milo began.

‘No!' I shouted above the rattling-churning noise of the machine. Then I leaned close to their faces and hissed: ‘Everything here is unclean! Everything here is infected! Everything here needs to be washed — not once, not twice but a thousand times!'

‘Daddy —'

‘Go on — get it all! We haven't finished yet! We're washing today! The family is washing!'

‘I … I want Mum!'

‘Well you can't bloody have her! None of us can!'

‘Daddy, please —'

‘Shut up! Shut up and let me wash the goddamn towels and shirts and make the socks white again and get those beautiful bright colours back in — o fuck … fuck it, Kaz'

Amelia, who had taken the bus to get a new sketch-pad from the newsagents, found me huddled in the laundry, arms crossed around my bent legs, head tucked away from the universe, feet turned in. I was rolled up inside myself, a pathetic, ragged bundle of selfish misery.

The children were in their bedroom. Otis had packed all of her remaining clothes away so that I couldn't get to them. Her blackcurrant eyes were laced with tears. Milo lay facedown on the bed. He was using his still-brown towel as a pillow.

‘Let's have nachos for tea,' said Amelia calmly.

Of course, I have no mandate for obsessive behaviour. We're all obsessive in our own peculiar ways. Errol my nearest-and-dearest-neighbour is obsessed with polishing his red wank-mobile, that gleaming totem of the
nouveau riche.
He is also obsessed with buying power tools that he cannot use. Delphine his wife is obsessive about her garden: trimmed edges, neat lines, trapezoids of hand-clipped lawn. Stu is obsessed about cracking the uncrackable BIG time. Francesca is obsessive about her manicured, fragrant appearance.

‘What's your obsession?' I asked Kaz one evening. We were sitting outside beneath a full moon and the rustling, shadow-strewn eucalypts.Beyond us, the dry and silent bowl of Australia was subsumed by an enormous sky.

‘How do you mean?'

I shifted position, rubbed my numb bum.

‘Given that we are all mere integers in the great equation of life,' I said, ‘it sustains each of us to have an obsession. How else can we cope with the knowledge that we are such transitory beings, our greatness as fleeting as a summer shower?'

‘Have you been drinking?'

‘No drinking, bwana, but plenty thinking. Come on, Kaz, what's your obsession?'

‘What's yours?'

I plonked my hand into her lap and delved before she squawked, slapped me away.

‘That's just one,' she smiled. ‘There are a few others.'

‘Such as?'

She took my hand again, pulled my arm around her thin shoulders.

‘Seriously?'

I nodded.

‘Well,' she said, ‘your writing for one thing. You pretend to treat it carelessly but that's just typical male bravado. You are very very sensitive to any criticism of your writing, and you're obsessed about being taken seriously — as an author. Am I right?'

Of course she was. But, refusing to give her that satisfaction, I said nothing.

‘Of course I am,' she continued, batting away a pesky mosquito. ‘You also hate noise. People who make noise. People who like to tell everyone how well-organised they are. Men who go shopping without a shirt on. Any American sitcom. Summer TV. Ignorance and bigotry. No newspaper on Christmas Day and Good Friday. Blokey blokes who drink premium lager and talk about their golf swings. Born-agains, of both the spiritual and fitness-fanatic variety. Women who steer their husband's four-wheel drives around like suburban tanks. Fat men in dick-togs. How am I going?'

‘Very Freudian, my little love-glove.'

‘You asked. What else? You're obsessive about your opinions being better and more correct than anyone else's opinions. Obsessed about solitude. Don't like crowds, queues, parties where people force small-talk. Film reviewers who automatically praise bad films because they're getting a cut from the production company. Newspaper editors. The pro-gun lobby. Being forced to listen to people. Ezy-spread butter that doesn't spread easily. The fact that we spend most of our income on triple A batteries for the children's toys. Fried eggs sticking to the pan and breaking up. People who send bad-taste jokes via email … '

I took my arm away, turned her puckish face towards mine, brushed her lips gently with a kiss.

‘You're a genius, Kaz. But now it's my turn.'

‘Fair enough. What's my obsession?'

I didn't hesitate.

‘Order,' I said, spitting it out like a pip. ‘Here's the mantra: order — cleanliness — organisation.'

‘That,' she grinned slyly, ‘is in direct response to your disordered, dirty and disorganised world.'

‘Like hell it is. Your whole family is the same. Frannie has fifteen showers a day. Visitors upset you because they disrupt your vacuuming and bench-top polishing routines.'

‘Now you're being ridiculous —'

‘Kaz, it's true! Your mother is the worst. She is the matriarch of domestic obsessiveness. This is the woman who washes your plate before you've finished eating from it, the woman who begins preparing for Christmas during the January sales, the woman who scrubs her wheelie-bin every week — every week, Kaz! — with Pine-O-Cleen. Totally, utterly obsessed — all of you.'

‘Oh we're not that bad! Are we?'

‘Worse. Ever seen your mother leave a newspaper lying around? Ever seen Frannie act spontaneously and, Heaven forbid, enjoy herself?'

She was silent for a moment, considering.

‘That's the point about obsessions, isn't it?' She leaned forward, face caught like a child's between her hands. ‘For people to get on well together, they need to have opposing — or at least different — obsessions. Two ordered beings will always clash, as will two who are disordered'

‘Possibly.' I stood and stretched, watched the moonlight dapple leaves and branches. ‘But think about this. I am completely the opposite of old Bug-Eyes, and we'll never get on. Will we?'

The phone rings. It is Bernice; clipped, distant. She proceeds through the standard routines — How are you? (she'll be horrified if I ever tell her the truth), How are the children? When are they coming to see me? — before the purpose of her call is finally revealed.

‘I gave Katherine a photo,' she says, ‘taken by a professional photographer on the day that she graduated from the Honours program. She had it framed, I believe.'

I know the photo well. Edged by Baltic pine, it sits atop the dresser in our bedroom. An inspired shot, it is Kaz in academic robes, her hair tossed back by the breeze, the University pantheon as a backdrop. She is gleaming, powerful, sleek, ready to rise. Her smile is the meeting of relief and victory. She reminds me of a wild animal; explosive, cat-like, her litheness captured forever by the eye of the camera.

‘One of my favourite shots,' I tell Bernice but cautiously — I can sense a disruption here.

‘Mine too.' She is equally guarded. ‘That's why — I was wondering if you could perhaps … if I could have the photograph. I don't have many shots of Katherine — you tend not to, with the second child. We took so many of Francesca — you just sort of forget, I suppose, with the next one. So if I could perhaps have that particular photo, it would make me very happy.'

Pause for reflection. What choices do I have?

Plenty, Kaz would tell me. You can acquiesce (because after all, by law she's family and it's the right and honourable thing to do). You can say no (because you love that photo too, and possession entails ownership). Or you can stall (because your mind isn't clear, you dislike the cow and you want this phone-call to end a.s.a.p.).

‘I'll think about it,' I tell her. ‘Now, I really must go. The children are playing Frisbee on the roof.'

Her dragon-snort of alarm warms me as I click off the phone.

In fact the children are with Amelia, as they so often are these days, playing Twister or Lego or cricket on the front lawn. She is an intriguing character, my niece, remarkably eclectic for a teenager. I remember her as a wilful child, always happy to live within a stillness and isolation that contravened the stereotype. More recently that independence — once seen by her parents as a positive quality — has been translated into what they believe is an unhealthy teenage self-absorption. In the public domain Francesca has always glossed over her relationship with Amelia: pat statements like ‘she's fine' or ‘she's doing well' have been seen as sufficient record of their relationship. But less than a year ago Kaz and I saw beyond the veneer, spied a glimmer of the unease that has pervaded their apparently perfect household. It was summer solstice, a balmy evening with only light north-easterly winds to disturb the sagging heat. We were seated on their terrace preparing to feast on the usual — Terrence's pork kebabs (as burned as they were renowned) and Frannie's low-fat potato salad — when Amelia poked her head past the edge of the sliding door.

‘I'm going to the movies,' she announced.

‘You'll do no such thing,' Francesca said calmly. ‘Go get Alex and Sara; we're about to eat.'

But Amelia didn't move.

‘I'm going to the movies,' she said again, her tone unvaried. It was, Kaz said later, as if she was a film actress, effortlessly re-doing a botched line.

Francesca bit her lip, slowly.

‘Get Alex and Sara,' she repeated.

‘Mum,' said Amelia without rancour, ‘you're not listening. I said, I'm going to the movies. Blaine's mother is driving us. I'll be home by ten-thirty.'

She turned to leave and that was when it happened — an event so extraordinary that we could do nothing but sit and wonder how not to become involved. Terrence, mild myopic Terrence, launched himself towards his daughter, grasped her shoulders, shook her hard.

‘You listen to me!' he hissed. ‘You've been told. More than once, you've been told!'

They waited; there was a clear exertion of wills. Eventually —

‘I'm going to the movies,' Amelia said blandly, and I could see that she was deliberately rag-dolling her body, making herself inert. But he pushed his face closer to her, gripped her even tighter.

‘You know the rules! Do as you're told, or leave this house for good. Understand?'

‘Let me go,' she said quietly.

‘Do you understand?' he thundered and it was loud enough, angry enough to disturb a flock of lorikeets on the nearby fruit-trees.

Amelia waited, took in the details, allowed her look of disdain to rest momentarily upon her mother.

‘Arsehole,' she said.

The sound of his slap was remarkably sharp and configured; it echoed about the confines of the terrace. I heard Kaz's startled breath next to me, stole a glance at Francesca and saw the effort required for her to remain inscrutable as she continued to serve large spoonfuls of low-fat potato salad.