Touching Earth Lightly (5 page)

‘Yeah. Like that. It’s awful, just the noise of them. It gets to me.’

Chloe’s eyes roved to the calendar. Janey saw, and squinted at it too. ‘What is it—the seventh? Oh. Well, at least there’s a reason
why
I feel awful.’

‘Dumped,’ said Chloe, ‘by a wave of hormones.’

‘I still do feel awful, though. Really
black
. Everything seems like a
bad idea
.’

‘Even coming round here?’

‘Yeah. Dumping my hormones on you again.’

‘Better than sitting at home blaming yourself for them.’

‘It feels better, now. In the end, though …’

‘In the end, though, it is better.’ Chloe crossed the kitchen and put her arms around her.

Janey’s hair, as she laid her head on Chloe’s shoulder, crunched lightly like steel wool. ‘I hate myself,’ she said feebly.

‘No, you don’t. Why would you? None of this is your fault.’

‘It all is.’

‘Yeah, like what?’ Chloe stood back, gripping and shaking her.

‘Being stupid, getting pregnant. You know, if I hadn’t, if I’d—I dunno—got the morning-after pill, that one time, I could stand … things wouldn’t
get
to me like they do.’ She wiped her nose on the wrist of her jumper, blinked aside at the floor.

‘Who knows?’ said Chloe. ‘I can’t say it’s not true, can I? But who knows? Who knows it isn’t keeping you as settled as you are now, having him in the world? Just knowing he’s alive.’

Janey tipped her head back, searched the ceiling through tears as if a rope-ladder might swing down to save her. ‘Just knowing he’s alive sends me
crrrazy
! That sweet little …’ She began to crumble. ‘Off away there!’

‘Yes! And he came from
you
, the sweetest part of
you
, that mothering bit you talk about. Just … the one that buys him Duplo, and Wibbly Pig books. That kid bit of you, from before. From when it was okay with you.’

‘Oh, it was never okay!’

‘It was too. You can’t tell me. I was there.’

‘But
now
! I can’t handle it!’

‘You can. You do, and you’ll go on doing.’

‘Yeah? Will I? How?’

‘One—way—or—another,’ Chloe insisted.

Janey gave a pained laugh and broke away to collapse at the table. Chloe made the coffee and put it down beside Janey’s snaggly head. ‘You want to come into town? Just for the heck of it? Just to get away from the happy children playing?’

The snaggles nodded.

Under the Queen Victoria Building, in a shop-lit warm fug of people and food smells, Janey walked upright, glaring straight ahead; Chloe went beside, not quite as tall as Janey, and attuned to every glance their way, every muttered remark as they passed.
God, who’d wanna look like that? Check out the hair. Aw, yuk
.

Some boys up ahead were bellowing—no, it was just one of them, enjoying his new deep voice. He fell silent midbellow, and Chloe saw him, and thought he looked familiar.
Yes, he must be
, she thought, catching his stricken glance at Janey. She felt the crucial moment pass when he decided not to shout something; she saw him suck the words back into his mouth. He huddled with his friends, who were not familiar to Chloe, and glanced out from among them, chin up to cover his fear—fear of Janey, of whatever she’d done to him. Jumped on top of him, probably, made him come too quickly. Chloe couldn’t work it out, how these little street rats could have such buckets of pride, still, that they were threatened by Janey’s jolly fucking, by having to do it her way. She was so amiable, so harmless, really. It was funny to know that and to see this guy shrinking into his group, terrified she might nail him again with his mates watching—his mates, who were shouting ‘Hey, Morticia!’, and falling about at their own wit.

Janey didn’t seem to even notice them. ‘Let’s go up the art gallery,’ she said. ‘I don’t really feel like shops. Is it school holidays or something? There seem to be a pile of kids around.’

‘No, these are just your regular delinquents, cluttering up the pavement when they should be in school,’ said Chloe, with the conscious self-righteousness of the new Year 12 graduate.

Janey in the gallery coffee shop, surrounded by rinsed perms, handbags and a few dapper suits, stirred a cappuccino and stared out at the docks. ‘Everything looks like artworks when you’ve been around the gallery, doesn’t it?’

Chloe glanced over her shoulder at the grey-variant slabs of water, warship, warehouse and dockside machinery.

‘That’s what I like,’ Janey went on. ‘It wakes up your eyes. It’d wake up your
hands
, too, if you could only
touch
a few things.’

‘You are so selfish, Jane,’ said Chloe severely. ‘How will the Australians of 2596 be able to enjoy their heritage if your sticky fingerprints have eaten it all away?’

‘Let ’em make their own,’ said Janey, still staring out, eating a spoonful of froth. Her lipstick had worn away in the middle, showing the rawer pink of her lips, glistening more lively than the dark-painted rim. It felt rude to look at it; Chloe fixed on Janey’s eyes instead, but the paint wasn’t perfect there, either, and she could see Janey’s eyes naked beneath it, the stream of her thoughts, the brush and twitch of her lashes as the eyes moved along the docks, into the sky.

‘When is that woman coming with our cakes?’ Chloe said, as an excuse to look away.

‘Person,’ said Janey automatically.

‘She
was
a woman, though!’

‘They might
send
a man, though.’

‘What’s this, anticipatory non-sexism?’

‘You got it.’ Janey grinned and sipped experimentally. Then she looked around the coffee shop for the first time, balefully, licking froth from her nude lips. ‘None of these people are
artists
.’

‘Artists can’t afford to do morning tea. They have to stay in their studios and slave away while the light’s good.’

The light was feeble, wintry. Janey’s stirring hand looked sculpted. Chloe could identify at least seven levels of light, shade and reflected light among the fingers, and down the cushioned outer side of it to the wrist. They changed, flitted away, affixed themselves in different ways to different things as if
they
were the living things—like Peter Pan’s shadow—not the objects, bodies, movements that interrupted the light.

‘I’ve got it too,’ she said.

‘What?’

‘An attack of artist’s eyes.’ Chloe stared as if mesmerised at the spoon cavity in Janey’s foam.

‘Don’t worry.’ Janey patted her hand. ‘It’ll go away, in time.’

It was Sunday at Chloe’s place, with all Joy and Dane’s friends, and Janey and Isaac. Chloe sat between her mother and Joy’s old friend Carl, her attention drifting as they dissected people from their past she didn’t know.

She heard Isaac getting passionate at the far end of the table. ‘… I mean, you build people these little Toytown apartments to live in, and they’ll start having
play lives
. Tack on all the tack, all the latticed balconies, the cute little bargeboards, the roof ornaments—and the lives inside will start
fitting into
these prettified boxes. You live in that kind of space, you end up thinking that’s the only space you deserve. And it’s bad for the people outside, too. When these things stop being eyesores and start being invisible because they’re so familiar, I think everyone should start to worry about what’s happening to us inside, to our eyes, to our minds. Why accept it
now
, when we didn’t accept it when it first went up? We saw
then
that it was wrong and ugly, and it’s
still
wrong and ugly. I think we should go on wincing.’

‘Maintain the wince,’ said Maurice, reaching for his wineglass. He nudged Jube next to him, who was talking to Dane. ‘Did you hear that, Jube? Isaac says we should
keep
letting our morning walks be spoiled every time we pass “Ashdene” and “Bellamy Towers”.’

‘He does?’ Jube looked mystified.

‘You should,’ said Isaac. ‘For the good of humankind.’

Maurice smiled benevolently at him. ‘For our collective consciousness’s sake. Very well, I shall.’

‘Bingo—another convert,’ said Nick, who was stretched out behind them in a lounge chair.

‘Nick’s still holding out on me,’ Isaac explained to Maurice. ‘I’m nearly there, but the lure of the quick buck is pretty strong.’

‘Just as a means of supporting those few fantastic touch-earth-lightly-type commissions, if you know what I mean,’ said Nick.

‘But if we only do the kind of work we can stand to do, that we feel
should
be done, we’ll have a clear profile, we’ll get a reputation, and more of that work’ll come our way.’

‘… do you, Chloe?’ Carl poked Chloe’s arm, and laughed at her blank look.

‘Sorry? I was dreaming. Do I what?’

‘Think of your parents as people, rather than figureheads,’ Carl repeated. Joy waggled her eyebrows at her.

Chloe thought about it. ‘Well, they’re not … quite … people the way other people are people—like
you
, say,’ said Chloe. ‘But they’re not, like—these big, severe, laying-down-the-law types, either, if that’s what you mean.’

‘Yes, we’re too slack,’ joked Joy.

Carl gazed out through the glass roof. ‘I think I mean, more—my mother and father seemed to stand for everything I ought to be. People talk about how you grow up and start to see chinks in your parents’ armour, but I have never—I’ve always found them absolutely unassailable. I think—I think this is the root of a lot of my problems!’ he said to Joy, beginning to laugh.

Chloe liked Carl; he was gentle and civilised, and he had a good sense of humour—or had had one, before Gus got sick. It was struggling to grow back at the moment, like a plant pruned back too hard.

‘Wasn’t that irritating, though?’ Chloe asked. ‘Didn’t you ever feel like busting out and doing something stupid, just because they were always so
right
?’

‘I didn’t see the point.’ Carl smiled regretfully. ‘I knew I’d just embarrass myself, and possibly them too, which was just not …
thinkable
. It was as if I just absorbed their lessons and didn’t have to bother going out and learning them for myself. You can’t say that’s healthy,’ he added to Joy.

‘It sounds fabulous to me. I wish you’d been my child.’ She winked at Chloe.

‘Well, you guys never set yourselves up to be figureheads,’ said Chloe. ‘God, it’s not like we never see
your
chinks.’

Her mother hooted with laughter. ‘You can never bring your friends home in case we’re parading around with our
chinks
showing!’

Chloe conceded a smile. ‘You know what I mean.’

Joy leaned forward and rubbed Chloe’s shoulder. ‘I know what you mean. We’ve always tried not to have the last word on anything.’

‘Which drives a person mad,’ Chloe said to Carl. ‘I’m sure it’s just as bad as having really strict parents.’

‘It’s just as hard for the parents, that’s for sure,’ said Joy.

Chloe sat back, a bit surprised. Joy and Dane had a pretty light touch, it was true. She’d always thought it just came naturally to them, that they coped with having three children by making things as easy as possible for themselves. Sometimes she wished they’d make an effort to put their foot down like parents in books—‘Just
where
do you think you’re going, young lady? Just
what
do you think you’re doing?’ Instead, Chloe had simply gone, and done. Especially since finishing school last year, she’d informed them of her intentions rather than asking for their permission. If ever she went to them for advice, the discussion ended up with them saying, ‘Well, it’s really up to you. You have to make your own decision on this.’ They were always
handing her life back
to her—and now it seemed it wasn’t just laziness, but a conscious policy they pursued, sometimes in the face of their own doubts.