Yearning (17 page)

Max left her sobbing on the couch. He stayed with a friend until she’d moved out.

Max pulled scissors from the bathroom drawer and trimmed some stray hairs from his goatee. All his girlfriends had been a bit like Skye. It was their beauty that unstitched him. And terrified him. Loveliness seemed to make women vulnerable in some way and he couldn’t help but want to protect them. All of his girlfriends had been beautiful and empty-headed, floating into his life like living holograms and eventually disintegrating under his rough, practical hands. Each time it took longer to recover from the endings, even when he was glad it was over.

He checked his watch. It was only seven o’clock. As usual he was ready early. Plenty of time to work up a nervous sweat. He picked at a fraying fingernail. He knew he could talk himself out of going. Invent a cold, a flat tyre, a distraction. But he couldn’t keep doing that forever. If he did he’d end up broken and lonely like his useless father.

He was already thirty-eight and his days were as predictable as tabloid news, a dull dance with the clock leading him through his steps. The only interruption to
the tedium was an occasional fishing trip to a remote part of the mountains north-east of the city. He gathered with a small group of men in the glistening cold of early morning with rods and tents and slabs of beer, travelling for six hours to a place where the air and water were clean as fresh glass. A few of them would be drunk by the time they got there, hurling cans heartlessly out of the open car window as the tyres chewed up the miles beneath them. He would spend the weekend guffawing and boasting, drinking and eating fresh fish burned black in a pan over an open fire. Late Sunday night he’d return, filthy and stinking and grateful for being a man who belonged on this earth. It was welcome respite.

Opening the bathroom cupboard he pulled out some tweezers and sat on the edge of the bath to worry at a splinter in his thumb. The slivers of cheap chipboard that found their way under his skin were a necessary irritation of his job. Building custom kitchens wasn’t what he’d had in mind when he finished his carpentry apprenticeship. The carelessness of the production line, the ugly laminated panels and the repetitive orders for functional cupboards were for trained monkeys, not a carpenter of his calibre.

The feel of real wood made his chest expand. He swallowed bleak hours alone in the refuge of his shed, fashioning pieces of Tasmanian oak and red gum into beautiful furniture which he gave away to his sparse collection of friends. Breathing in the smell of real sawdust and machine oil, he gently sculpted the pieces to bring out the honey and treacle-coloured grains. Quality wood did exactly what he asked of it.

Outside the wind pushed hard against the walls and the house relaxed under its weight. Max winced as the splinter came free and a bead of blood slid across the pad of his thumb. He stuck his thumb in his mouth and pulled open the rickety cupboard door in search of a bandaid. A screw clattered to the floor and the door swung away from the hinge. He kicked at it in disgust.

‘Bloody thing.’

He’d been meaning to fix the door for weeks, watching it slowly work away from its moorings every time he opened it. Like everything else about the house, inside and out, it was ageing and fading and he was trying hard to ignore the silent demands for repair.

Max had grown up within these walls, returning to them like a beaten soldier after his mother had died and his brothers had scattered like frightened rabbits across the country. It hadn’t changed much from when he was a kid. He’d never taken down the childish prints of little boys doing wee-wees his mother had found so funny, and the six sherry glasses she’d won at Bingo still stood in a line in the glass cabinet, unused and smudged with dust. He could still make out the plaster patch over the old hole in the bathroom wall, made by his father the day he left.

Max’s hand unconsciously moved to touch his false front tooth, also a gift from his father that day. Max and his mother had been trying to protect one another from his inevitable drunken blows and a misplaced elbow in his father’s groin had sent the grown man spinning into violent rage. Max still remembered the bright flash of pain as his father’s open palm slammed hard up against his face, the humiliation of his knees buckling unwillingly
beneath him, the vivid blur of his mother shielding him with her body and accepting his father’s furious kicks in her ribs to save his skull from being smashed like a melon. They’d both ended up in hospital, broken but alive. The doctors and dentists hadn’t been able to save his tooth.

The damned house was too full of memories. He should have sold it years ago, but he couldn’t get past the smarmy smiles and promises of real estate agents. Within five minutes of talking to them his fist was itching to smash their faces in.

He went into the lounge and stoked the fire. The house had always been cold. It was something to do with its aspect and the dense leaves of the ancient camellias growing thickly outside the wide windows. He checked his watch again. It was still too early to leave. He poured himself a glass of red wine and sat down at the dining room table crowded with CDs and magazines. Words were stirring again, secret words, the ones he kept to himself. Pulling a notepad towards him he picked up a pen.

My darkness blooms

full and round

like the camellia buds

aching at my window

spring does not come

closed buds bump with longing

against the sleight of window pane

feeling only winter

infinity of night

longing for light

my camellia and I

turn and turn in dark truth

He put the pen down and stroked his chin as he re-read the words. The phone rang out from the kitchen. He ignored it and took a gulp of wine. Scowling, he tore the paper from the pad and threw it into the fire. He stood and watched as the flames devoured the words. He drained his glass and grabbed a six-pack from the fridge before walking into the night.

He cursed as he pulled up behind a long line of parked cars. He’d have to walk two blocks to Danny’s house, an inconvenience he wasn’t used to. The irritating beat of ‘Gangsta’s Paradise’ ricocheted around the suburban street, not quite loud enough to drown out the squeals and shrieks of laughter emanating from the front yard. Ahead of him a sheik and a prostitute giggled with a Hawaiian dancer as she sculled a cider. Coolio and fancy dress? Fucking idiots, they need to grow some taste.

Max squinted as Danny dragged him by the elbow away from the blaring music into the blaze of the lit kitchen. She stood leaning against the cupboards, resplendent in fringing, feathered earrings and a headband.

‘How!’ She greeted him with a wry grin and a hand raised in salute.

He smiled in spite of himself. She was cheerful and earnest and he liked her immediately. As they talked he could see that she really listened to him, her eyes focused on his face as he answered her questions. Her fair skin was lightly freckled and fly away auburn curls framed her narrow face. This thin and pretty woman broke the mould. She was neither radiant nor empty-headed. Shyly he told her about his hobby of building furniture. She flashed him a hopeful smile and placed a hand on his arm.

‘Would you build me a bookshelf?

Max hesitated. He didn’t make things for people he didn’t know. She looked down at the floor, her hair hiding her face.

‘I’ve just bought a flat and I’ve got nowhere for my books,’ she said, looking back up at him. ‘I’ll pay you.’

Max felt a rush of pride. ‘Sure.’

Was she blushing? She was looking at her feet again, tapping the heel of her ankle boot against the kitchen cupboard.

‘Um, I’ll have to come and measure up. Is that okay?’

She continued to gaze at the floor. He felt his own face flush and wondered if he’d said the wrong thing. Then she looked shyly up at him from under a long fringe.

‘Tell you what. Why don’t you come over one night and I’ll cook you dinner – as a thank you?’

He grinned. ‘Okay. How’s Wednesday?’

‘Cool.’

Her face changed completely when she smiled.

The following Wednesday night he arrived ten minutes early and sat watching the clock in his car until it showed 6.57. He sprang to the door gripping his tape measure, a bottle of wine and a copy of a poetry book she’d mentioned. When he passed the book to her she flushed crimson.

‘That’s sweet. You didn’t need to do that,’ she said.

‘No trouble. It was in the bookshop window.’

While he took the measurements, she cooked a simple pasta. The shiraz loosened their tongues and he laughed at her stories about her experiences in share houses. ‘It’s so good to have my own place,’ she told him.

‘Nothing like your own place,’ he agreed.

On the drive home he slipped his favourite Muddy Waters into the CD player and thought hard about her, recalling her conversation, her warmth. She was a nice person. And sane. There was something about her, a vulnerability he thought he understood.

He courted her gently. He was in no rush. In between her warm welcomes came times when she would suddenly retreat from him, leaving his phone messages unanswered for days. Confused, he would leave her be. While he waited for her he wrote her letters filled with every day thoughts – why blues were better than jazz and country music had no right to exist, how new technology and computer programmed machinery was changing his job, how necessary gun control had become after the terrible massacre in Port Arthur – long accounts penned in the dull light of his fire late at night. When he visited her he brought her creamy bunches of camellias picked from his garden. Smiling, she reached for the posy with one hand and for him with the other, drawing him inside.

Slowly she materialised into his life, bringing freshness and colour with her. The first time she came to his house she read him Banjo Paterson while he cooked dinner, then Byron and Keats in front of his fire while they drank the expensive red he’d bought for them. He fixed leaking taps and unhinged cupboard doors in her flat. She flattered him ceaselessly.

When they finally kissed it was electric. It was months after their first meeting and he melted against her with relief, the feel of her body against his igniting him like a gas jet. Their lovemaking was slow and cautious. Heat
swelled between them as they tentatively moved towards each other. Max was fearful that, at any moment, at any wrong move, she might run off, disappear like the others. But she stayed, a sudden, solid rainbow in his life. And with wistful hope he imagined they might have found love.

By night on my bed I sought him whom my soul loveth: I sought him, but I found him not.

The Song of Solomon

For the first time in the eighteen long years since Solomon she felt her body awaken under Max’s hands. She felt hopeful about this gentle soul of a man with poetry in his veins. The gaps between lovers had become longer and longer and now she was nearly thirty-four and watching all her friends partnering and planning a shared future. She was becoming the extra chair at every dinner, the set-up date at parties, and she was thoroughly sick of it.

It had taken a long time to stop looking for Solomon, although, strictly speaking, she never really did. She had no idea where he was now. He’d left her home town just over a year after her parents had packed her off and no one could tell her where he’d gone. For a long time she fantasised he was searching for her in the city. She looked out for him everywhere she went, hoping to catch sight of him in the crowds on the street or in the queues at the
cinema. She attended book launches and writers’ workshops, hoping she might run into him, but he remained elusive.

Eventually she consoled herself with memories. They were all she had – internal pictures of the past and the nagging questions about their affair. Instead of fading with the passing years her curiosity about what had happened between them only increased. She wanted to know what she’d meant to him. Had he used her like her mother had insisted? Or had he felt something for her? He’d been so considerate, so thoughtful, she couldn’t believe he’d taken advantage of her. But she’d been so young and stupid. She’d had no idea what she was getting into.

Now she was wiser. After nearly twenty years of failed love affairs, she knew that Solomon was unique, one out of the box, a magus. Against him most men were a clueless bunch. She’d dumbly thought all men knew what Solomon knew, that all men understood how to make love, how to be intimate, how to make a woman’s body sing. The truth had been a rude surprise.

The lovers she’d had since Solomon had been in turn rough, rushed and lazy. None of them laid her out and cherished her body they way Solomon had. She’d felt like a toy in their hands, as though they were interested only their own arousal. The repeated ineptitude took her by surprise. She struggled with each of them to rediscover the quality of desire Solomon had introduced her to, tried to tell them what it was she wanted, but they either didn’t understand or didn’t care. Eventually the aching need inside her grew so wide all her words fell into it and she became numb and mute. When she made love, she closed
her eyes against her lover of the moment and descended into fantasy, recalling in erotic detail the way Solomon’s body moved her to ecstasy.

She imagined she kept some sort of psychic connection with him and by thinking about him she could tune into him, no matter where he was. She believed she could feel him thinking of her, as though some invisible thread connected them across miles and years. In writers’ workshops recreated him on a blank page. Solomon became the hero of every story, the epicentre of her other-world. Each time she put pen to paper she reconstructed him in finely imagined detail – the earthy depth of his voice, his lustrous curls, the smooth contours of his skin, the patterns of his touch. She took all his best qualities and polished them until he shone like an angel in her mind. Warm waves of heat flowed through her as each story poured from her fingers. Her word became a prayer, an oracle of what would come to be when the two of them finally reconnected again.