Unzipped (14 page)

Saturday morning, the end of week two, I’ve received seven postcards. The Fed Square one, two from Bangkok, both palaces, the rest from France. I re-read Friday’s before sticking it to the fridge.

Mona Lisa reckons I’m hot.

She’s a woman of discernment then.

I spend the morning at Vic Market. I’ve lived in this city forever and only shopped at Vic Market twice. I’ve seen it more times on TV than I have in real life. When I return, Mark and Jasmine are driving away from the house, his VW Karmann getting a rare run.

I wave. It’s weak, but I want to see Jasmine.

The brake lights flash on, the gears tip into reverse. Here she comes. The top’s down. Mark is wearing a woollen beret and his collar up. Jasmine’s nose is red like her beanie and scarf. I can’t cook but I can knit.

‘She wanted to visit.’

‘Jasmine, it’s so good to see you.’

Her door is open before the car stops. She runs to me. I kiss her beanied head. Blonde wisps of her fine, fine hair tickle my nose. I’ve missed her.

‘Do you want to drop her off?’ My first words to Mark since the Susan Hilton phone call.

‘No, Margie wants me to stick around. I’ll just watch TV.’

We walk the steps up to the front door, the three of us, like we have a hundred times before. Time has stopped, gone backward.

Jasmine has been op-shopping again. She pays attention to what people like. She’s brought me a ceramic milk jug wrapped in tissue paper and tied with a ribbon. She knows I’ve linked teapots, teacups and silverware to Mum. Why didn’t I approach her mother? It takes a nine-year-old to do the right thing.

‘How’s Grade Four?’

‘Ms Smith makes faces when she talks about decimals. Like she wants to marry them. I like full stops better.’

Jasmine is my kind of girl.

We chat teachers and homework, comprehension and netball and I make us all a cup of tea.

‘Can you take this to Mark, please? I’ll be back in a minute.’

I haven’t seen her since Keith’s birthday. That’s six months and unforgivable. In her boots, jeans and cord jacket, she’s a little lady—she manages Mark’s cup and saucer with poise.

Jasmine and I sit at the kitchen table. ‘What are you reading at the moment, Jas? I have this for you.’

Ballet Shoes
was my favourite book when I was her
age. It has my name inside and my address—the street, suburb, country, planet, galaxy, universe. Jasmine has always reminded me of Posy. She’s elfin, always skipping when she could walk, and she does ballet, too.

‘How are you going out there, Mark?’ I lean back in my chair, two feet off the floor. I was always telling him not to do that.

‘Fine. How do you see anything on this TV?’

‘I sit close. Or I read a book.’

‘Did you buy it at Aldi?’

Mark hates Aldi. He doesn’t like having to pack the shopping himself; he doesn’t want to eat Spanish cornflakes; and he doesn’t understand how he can select thigh-high fishing boots, a printer, and jar of rollmops all from the same aisle.

‘Yes, I did, smarty. And a packet of paper-clips shaped like bananas.’

I reach into the third drawer of the kitchen cabinet and pull out a fistful of paperclips for Jasmine, piling them onto the table. They’re like bent and yellow pick-up sticks. Jasmine sets to joining them, she’s a demon clipper. A bracelet for her and me and a necklace for Uncle Mark.

‘It suits you,’ Jasmine says as she slips it over his head.

He’s close to the TV, in the remaining armchair, and Jasmine and I are at either end of the couch, shoes off, books open.

‘Peta, what’s a ration?’

‘In the UK during the second world war…’ A mini lecture on the war effort over red cordial and a Teddy Bear biscuit.

‘Peta, who did you like best, Pauline, Petrova or Posy?’

I look up from
A Gate at the Stairs.
There’s a kid
asking big questions in that book, too. ‘Petrova. She had grunt. But really, I loved all of them.’

We read long enough for Mark to watch the whole of
Apollo 11
and start
Master and Commander.
Jasmine and I make pizza for an early dinner, Mark helps with the dough. He starts a flour fight and clouds of white hang above the table.

‘Mark, we don’t want to send her home dirty; she might not be allowed back. Hang on, I’ll get a shirt.’

One of Mark’s striped business shirts. BJ used to wear it, oversized and sexy, when she wanted me to chase her round the bedroom.

‘That’s my shirt.’

‘One of the few things you missed.’ I button it up Jasmine’s back and we continue making pizza.

‘Peta, don’t you love Mark anymore? Mum says you’re living with a girl now.’ She has flour on her nose and she looks even younger. And it is a much harder question to answer.

‘Jasmine…’

‘Mark, it’s okay. I need to answer her.’

Pizza in the oven, I lead Jasmine outside. We sit at the Formica table on the deck. The table has aluminium edges, like the chrome curve on a jukebox, and the red vinyl chairs match.

‘Uncle Mark was crying. Cammy and Lach said they hate you. I don’t hate you.’ She twists the tassels of her scarf round and round her fingers.

I miss those boys. Their exuberance. It’s bats and balls, toy guns and bandaids. Training runs with Mark, kickto-kick with him down the side of the house. Of course the boys hate me.

‘I cried lots too.’

‘But you’ve got that girl.’

‘Her name is BJ.’

‘What’s BJ short for?’

‘Belinda Jane.’

‘And you kiss her, a girl.’

‘Yes, Jasmine, we kiss.’

‘You’ve got BJ. Mark’s got no one.’

I take the other end of her scarf, wind it round my thumb and forefinger and rub it under my chin. I’m not telling Jasmine about Ruby; it’s not up to me. ‘Mark will have someone sometime. He’s a good man.’ I bring her onto my lap. ‘There is nothing wrong with Mark, or me, except we could have tried harder. And sometimes we did try. But not hard enough.’

Mark calls out, ‘Pizza’s ready.’

We go inside and eat, the three of us at the table. Like we’d done plenty of times before.

‘What time do you have to take Jasmine home?’

‘Margie’s coming to pick her up. I think she’s going to say something on behalf of her little brother.’ He’s a foot taller but she’s five years older and likes to show it. ‘I asked her to leave it, but you know…’

That is a sentence I can finish: You know she’s always right. You know how she feels about you anyway.

‘Okay. I have it coming. I’m getting used to this.’

We leave Mark to finish the pizza off. I take Jasmine to the bathroom to make sure she looks untarnished for her mother.

‘You’ll come back, Jas?’

She nods. My arms around her, I drop fresh tears onto her beanie.

There’s a hard knock at the front door. Mark sings out he’ll answer it and Jasmine and I have a last hug.

Margie kisses Mark hello and tells Jasmine to go and wait in the car. She turns to me: ‘I told her she’d never see you again, but she’s been stacking it on for weeks. Her brothers have told her she’s an idiot.’

‘Thank you for letting her come.’

The view is good from my high road.

‘Well, I don’t suppose she’ll be back.’

‘As I said Margie, thank you, it was lovely to see her.’

The air is thin and hard to breath, but when it gets into your lungs you feel ten foot tall.

‘Dad says that I’ve got to let it go, that Mark is old enough to look after himself, that we are all adults. But are we, Peta? Is this girl? Where is she today? Playgroup?’

Mark’s standing to the side. We both know Margie is impossible to stop once she gets going, but he tries anyway.

‘Margie, I’ve got to get on with my life. We all do.’

I’m heading for the lounge room. The high road takes some energy. Mark shows her out. The front door bangs.

‘Here.’ Mark hands me one of Ruby’s prom-queens. He has a beer. ‘Had Ruby around?’ He leaves his bottle cap on top of the TV. Why do men do that? Leave their bottle caps everywhere. This feels like yesterday.

‘Yes, a dinner party slash execution with Carole Smart. And Ruby barracking from the sidelines.’

Mark smiles. ‘Ruby’s full-on, isn’t she? She makes me feel alive. She doesn’t sit still and she’s more never home than we were. I think. I haven’t been home.’

We laugh, clink our bottles,
to not being home.
Mark drinks the last of BJ’s beer and my prom-queen is going to my head.

‘The banana necklace suits you.’

‘Forgot I was wearing it.’ He attempts to take it off, but it catches on an oddly placed button on his collar.

‘I’ll do it.’ I sit next to him and work to dislodge it but it’s attached. ‘I think you’re stuck with it.’

We look at each other.

‘You know what’ll happen next, don’t you, Pete?’

‘It doesn’t have to—you could go home.’

‘We could have another drink and I’ll stay.’

The high road is a quick trip down. You’d think the time it took to get there, the difficulty of the climb, the tough hilltop scramble, would make me think twice. But no, it doesn’t stop me.

Maybe it’s the alcohol.

Maybe it’s BJ’s night unaccounted for.

Maybe I’m sentimental and lonely and Mark is familiar.

We start in the lounge room, take it up the hallway, laughing, shedding our clothes, and we do it in every room of the house. We’d planned to, the day we moved in, but we never did. We make it to the bedroom late.

There is something to the expression the ‘cold light of day’. You can also call it the bad light of day, the what on earth have you done, have you lost your mind, have you learned nothing in the last five months, light of day.

Mark is on his old side of the bed. He rubs his head. ‘Well, that was a mistake, wasn’t it?’

Thank God. ‘Yes, it was.’ I throw the doona off. ‘I’m having a shower.’

Mark makes breakfast. Eggs. I’ve missed his eggs, the only thing he cooked, but his presence is not required in my kitchen.

We sit opposite each other in our old positions. I feel crap. I feel like BJ looked when she sat in the same chair, hunched, tired, unable to talk. She was with someone else, I know that now. When I looked in the mirror, after my shower, I saw the same sad, experienced look on my face. Mark’s making my face back at me.

He’s feeling guilty, too?

I’m tempted to ask about Ruby but I don’t. I’ve been in trouble before—look at me learning. Darth Vader says it’s 8.12. It’s never too early to learn.

We pack the breakfast things away. Mark stands at the door of his old fridge and inspects the photos and postcards. He sighs.

‘She is cute,’ he says.

‘Mark, last night, I don’t know what I was thinking. I did it to you with her, and now I’ve done it to her with you. I feel like I’m in
The Bold and the Beautiful.
I’m talking to myself, explaining my motives so the television audience knows what I’m up to. Let’s stay in touch but from a distance, okay. And please…’

He puts a finger to my lips.

‘Don’t say it. Be careful with Ruby. Let’s hope she’ll be careful with me. I’ve had enough heartache.’ He makes a bad-ham fall to the floor, I put my foot onto one of the big square pockets of his dark blue jeans and push him all the way over.

‘Get out of here. Take your banana necklace and go.’

I follow him to the front door and down the steps.

Karmann is as burgundy-leather beautiful as she’s always been. He turns the corner and she is gone.

When your girlfriend is in Paris, there is nothing more desolate than an empty letterbox. Unless your registration is due. I need a postcard, a letter, a tiny plastic bubblewrapped Eiffel Tower, wishing you were here type-thing to keep me from thinking about Mark.

Six days since he and I sat at the kitchen table, making pizza, talking like old times. He’d stuck up for me with Margie. The sex. How easy it had been. How bad I feel now. How I went behind BJ’s back the minute I could.

I’d love to ring Ruby and say: ‘I’ve done something stupid.’ She’d crack a joke, something unfunny and revolting: ‘What, have you slept with the bloke down the road and his trio of German Shepherds?’ I could chide her for her disgusting sense of humour. ‘Yeah, you’re right,’ she’d say, ‘that bloke’s over eighty and his dogs are a little long in the tooth.’ I can’t ring Ruby.

Keith. I could say: ‘Keith, my girlfriend has been out
of the country only two weeks and I’ve just slept with your son. Are you able to have me arrested? You still have contacts, right?’ I can’t call Keith and tell him that. I haven’t called him to say anything since the tram stop call. Pathetic.

No postcards. I’m sending BJ a text.

Hey remember that time you said you’d send me a postcard every day?

It’s about six in the morning in France.

Twenty minutes later.
The cheque is in the mail.

Nothing else.

A little abrupt. But that’s BJ.

The city at 7 a.m. Traffic is mainly taxis and my tram is half-empty most of the way. I recline into
Frankenstein.
Cliffs and ice and feeling misunderstood.

Library work is good for distraction from a guilty conscience and an empty letterbox. I catch up with subscriptions, journal abstracts, some of the more involved reference requests. A little like detective work, a lot like monotony, the library is what I need.

Too early to make any local calls, I send emails, interstate, overseas, across the building. My desk is proving too good a space for thinking. BJ and her hair, how it feels clumped in my fists, cool and soft, the last time I touched her, the glance over her shoulder as she wheeled her suitcase out my front door.

Manual labour.

I dust the shelves.

The cheque is in the mail.
That’s never said without a tone.

I dial Ruby’s number at twenty minutes past nine. She
answers, howareya, like Monday morning is Friday night, a good mood through the phone.

‘Ruby, what does “the cheque is in the mail” mean to you?’

‘Are you doing the cryptic? You know I hate those, so vague, the answer is almost always an accident.’

‘BJ texted that after I sent her a text asking where my postcards were.’

‘Sounds like she’s telling you it’s on its way. In the mail.’

‘You’re right. I’m just missing her.’

‘She’s due back soon, right? The twentieth? Nine days. Be cool. I’ll come round tonight and cook you dinner. Sevenish.’

Still looking after me.

I hang up hoping one day to return the balance to where it should be. I’ve lost so much credibility. One lesbian, one head injury, a busted marriage and nobody believes you can manage anything.

A meeting before lunch, two after, and Monday is gone. On the tram I climb back into the Swiss Alps.

Balwyn is coming home to itself. On the short walk from the stop, I smell dinners, the news on in the background, talking heads in the lounge room, all hands in the kitchen. Driveways fill with second cars. A nod at the Irish wolfhound bloke and his dog. From the corner I can see the shadow of my letterbox across the footpath.

No postcard.

A letter. French stamps, Australian scrawl.

I tear it open.

Peta, can you sell Thunder for me? I’m running out of money and I’m planning to stay longer. Justine will buy her. I know she won’t rip me off. Paris is amazing. The people are amazing. It turns out my French teacher wasn’t amazing. Love to you. BJ.

‘How much longer?’ Ruby dumps her bag on the kitchen table. I pick it up and put it in a corner of the hallway.

I’ve memorised the letter, especially the love to you, not love you, not I love you, but I still study it again before replying, ‘It doesn’t say.’

It’s more an instruction than a letter.

‘How much will she get for her bike?’

‘I don’t know and I don’t care but it must be enough— Justine’s coming round. And anyway wouldn’t Carole Smart pay to keep her over there and away from me?’

‘It might not be too much to worry about. She’s in Paris, having fun, spending money, experiencing life.’

‘Having fun meeting young and sexy Frenchwomen.’

‘Pete, cut up the bread for me, and can you chop the parsley? We can do some more worrying after dinner. Did I tell you about Nathan?’

‘The altar boy?’

There are things you don’t want to know about your sister. There are things you wouldn’t want to know about the woman sitting opposite you on the tram. What she does in her time off—latex, fake fur, high-tensile steel—is no concern of yours. I have always known too much about Ruby. So I hear about the altar boy and them leaving the cinema early, too much to do at home, how he’d brought out a bit of a kit from the bottom of his wardrobe.

A knock at the front door. Justine. I can’t help being disappointed. BJ isn’t having me on, after all: telling me
she’s not coming home, just to see my surprised grin at her unexpected presence on my doorstep.

I bring Justine into the kitchen.

‘Ruby Justine, Justine Ruby.’

‘Rude! Sorry Justine,’ Ruby shakes her hand, ‘Peta’s in a mood. I’ve made soup. There’s more than enough if you’d like to stay for dinner.

‘About this bike…’ I’m chopping parsley.

‘Thunder,’ Justine smiles.

Ruby is overseeing my chopping, she doesn’t want the parsley bruised. Bruised. For God’s sake.

‘About Thunder, do you want to buy it?’ I hope she says no. BJ would be out of money and have no choice. Love is selfish.

‘Her. Yes, I’ll buy her. BJ and I talked about it before she left and decided on a price if she had to sell her.’

Ruby is at the stove, her back to us. ‘BJ was planning on not coming home?’

‘No. But she likes a contingency plan. You know BJ.’

‘Actually, Justine, I don’t know BJ, not really. She’s brash, she spent a night unaccounted for away from home and Peta loves her.’ She places three bowls of soup on the table and reaches for the salt and pepper. To me: ‘You were supposed to cut up the bread.’ To Justine: ‘Peta doesn’t really know her either.’ To me: ‘Don’t look at me like that. Has it even been six months since the couch?’

Funny how Ruby has adopted
the couch
as the term for that night. I can’t see a black leather couch without wishing I was on it, back there, shocked, excited, disgusted with myself and unwilling to stop. Ruby wishes there had been hard-backed chairs, spine-breaking cold concrete and no lift home in the first place.

‘Contingency plan?’ Ruby continues. ‘I know she likes to smoke, wear leather, pash off married women, that kind of thing.’

‘Can we just eat?’ I nod at the soup, pass the bread.

‘All she said was that she might sell Thunder if she needed the money.’

‘If she needed the money to not come home, you mean?’

Ruby is all go tonight. I feel for Justine. Would you like an inquisition with your soup? Still, I can’t help asking, ‘There was the possibility she’d stay longer?’

‘That’s what I thought.’

‘What does her Facebook say?’

‘She doesn’t do Facebook, Rube,’ I say. ‘She says she’s seen too many people virtualising their relationships. She also says she only wants to friend people with her skin. In real life, that is.’

‘I’ll bet.’

I’m happy she’s not on Facebook. If she was overseas updating her status and not sending me postcards, I wouldn’t be able to take it.

‘Peta, maybe she just needs more money,’ Justine says. ‘Anyway, I can put the money in her account tomorrow.’

‘I don’t have her account details.’

‘We’ve bought stuff for each other before. Bike stuff.’

‘What else do you know about her?’ I take over the inquisition.

‘I know she gave up her room. She talked about you all the time. Peta this, Peta that. She lost her brain over you.’

I’m feeling a bit better. ‘She did?’

‘Bloody hell. Nobody says anything else until the soup is finished. Get on with it.’

Letting go of a lifetime of big-sisterness is a consequence
of the couch I hadn’t bargained on. If I’d known, I might not have done it. BJ’s bike in the hallway—I haven’t stopped touching it—and I’m thinking,
might not…

Justine has come prepared. She’s brought her lights, raincoat, helmet and shoes. She wheels Thunder out into the night. Down the street, her tail-light flashing, she turns the corner.

‘Sugar soap will get that off.’ Ruby points to Thunder’s scuffy prints on the wall.

‘When I’m ready.’

‘It doesn’t have to mean anything.’

I can’t be bothered saying it’s not true. Thunder being ridden by another girl means something.

‘Want to tell me what’s really going on?’

‘Nothing.’

‘You are a shit liar, Pete. The worst. The cheque is in the mail. Ha! When you don’t want to tell me what’s happening you concern yourself with bullshit.’

How could she be both so right and wrong like that?

‘And the other thing you do is withdraw.’

My phone bill loves the introspection.

‘Come on, Peta. Haven’t we been through enough?’

‘I did something stupid.’ I blow out a sigh and slump into the couch, hug a cushion to my stomach. A patchwork shield.

‘Stupid needs reclassification with you, Pete. Your recent something stupid has reached heights nobody could have seen coming.’

Ruby is opposite me in the armchair, waiting. Annie Lennox is reflected large in the windows behind her.

‘I had sex with Mark.’

She stands up. ‘I just don’t believe this. We’ve spent
half the night trying to make you feel better about your girlfriend, the person you dumped your husband for, and now you tell me you’ve been fucking him again. Tell me, Peta. Was it nice, getting some proper sex?’

Now we’re both standing. ‘It was only one time.’

I don’t see the flash of her hand. Her palm on my cheek. It burns.

‘You are such a fucken idiot. I hate you.’ She storms into the kitchen, three wooden thuds of chairs hitting the floor. ‘Where’s my bag?’

‘What is your problem?’ I grab her bag, zip it open and spray its contents down the hallway. I empty her wallet separately, flung her cards, coins, everything, into the air.

‘You must be the stupidest person alive,’ she says. She’s in the hallway, picking up her lipsticks, condoms, perfume, wallet. I stoop to help, she pushes me over. ‘I don’t need your help. She just fucked your brain right out of your head, didn’t she? I love him.’

‘You love Mark?’

I’m still on the floor. I think I’ll stay here.

‘Yes, you stupid, fucken bitch. I love Mark. Are you happy now?’

‘You
really
love him?’

‘Well, I’ve always loved him. So there. I tried not to and it wasn’t too hard. You were happy, a unit. I knew you had problems now and then, but so what, every relationship does.’

‘You should have told me.’

‘Why? Why should I have told you?’ Her bag is over her shoulder, her keys in her hand.

‘I would have felt better about Mark.’

‘It’s all about you, isn’t it? What difference would telling
you have made?’ She’s at the front door. ‘You think it would have made what you did less shit?’

‘And you know all about shit behaviour, don’t you, Rube?’

The front door is open, she steps out. ‘Oh piss off, Peta. You’re just as stupid and shit as I ever was. Nobody’s going to come out of this looking good. Especially you.’

There goes the door. Bang!

Ruby is right.

I haven’t looked good for months, only to BJ. And she’s gone.