Perfect Skin (33 page)

See?
Ash says.
If only someone had given me this kind of campus orientation when I'd arrived, instead of just that big map. If they'd gone, ‘There's a bird, See the big tree', I'd have known my way around straight off

And to the right, Lily, you'll see a new engineering building, and behind that a small brick place where all the rude people get sent. That's where Ashley has meetings with her supervisor.

Look at the big palm tree.

Too late. Did I tell you about my mother, when she was going to a meeting one day? When I was very young?

No.

This was in England, and I think she might have just got her PhD, so I was about one at the time. She was going to something entomological with a few other people and they were driving in her car, and there were
fields at the side of the motorway. I think she'd been worried about getting lost, but once she was on the motorway, she knew she was on the right track, so she relaxed. And that's when she started going, ‘Look at the cows, See the big blackbird in the tree.' I think she probably surprised them when she actually presented her paper. She says you get over it. But it takes a few years.

And you're just getting into the habit.

Yeah.

You seem pretty good at it, though.

Thanks.

No, I mean it. In a good way. I think you are good at it.

Like I said before, I think I have to be. I think, since there's just me, I have to be prepared to make a dick of myself naming every object in the vicinity, and singing along to anything that's playing. But it's okay. You don't have to sing badly in front of people too many times for performance anxiety to become a thing of the past. No-one expects quality from me. The Lemonheads they expect, quality they don't. I'm sure you know what I mean.

So
what was it like? Dealing with Melissa dying, and the time after? That must have been very difficult.

What?

What was it like?

Um . . .

No-one's asked you that, have they?

What do you mean?

No-one's directly asked you. About what you've been going through.

They ask me how I am. All the time.

That's not the same.

It's the same if I want it to be. I can tell them whatever I want. They're there for me. I know that. I can talk about anything I want with them.

But you don't, do you?

Yes I do. I don't always tell them all the details, but I could if I wanted to. There's all this bullshit about talking. It doesn't fix things, whatever people say. It's only a small part of fixing things. Sometimes you talk, but there are some things you can't explain. So there are times when you've got to keep it to yourself. Work it out yourself.

And present this calm, coping exterior.

What do you mean? What's wrong with coping?

Nothing's wrong with coping. I'm talking about the exterior. People who show everyone everything's working on the surface, while they hide beneath and try to sort things out.

What are you on about?

I'm on about
. . .
It's like what you were saying in the Great Court that day, last Saturday, about skin. How it works. Maybe it's like that. If you want to see it that way. An opaque outer layer. The exterior that stops the interior being seen.
And she's saying this slowly, as though each word needs weighing and measuring before being let go.
I don't know what gets let in, but you don't seem to let much out.

What am I supposed to be letting out? Am I supposed to be reaching right in and pulling stuff out for people? What kind of pop-psych stuff are you reading for this degree?

There's a pause. She looks away, shrugs. I should talk.
I've taken it too far. I wasn't expecting this. I wasn't expecting her to wade into it the way she has.

All right. My mistake. You're obviously totally fine then.

Sorry. Sorry about the pop-psych thing. For all of that.

She looks back at me. It's almost a glare, but she's letting it pass. She nods.

But, you know, if you'd like to reinterpret my life in terms of the ‘The rise and fall of Tickle-Me-Elmo' I'd be very keen to hear that.

A small laugh, but nothing more said.

What I'm saying is, I don't totally get what you're saying. So much of this is only mine to deal with. I don't know how it would be fixed by wearing it all on the outside.

Which is not what I was saying. You have friends. You have been through something that
– 
correct me if I'm wrong
–
could reasonably be called a very significant loss. I don't know why you don't talk to them.

I talk to them. All the time. But in a particular way.

I'm shitty with her again. I'm shitty for ‘correct me if I'm wrong' and for ‘significant loss'. As though she's out-debating me, out-flanking me with technicalities. As though what I'm going through can be reduced to technicalities.

It's not as easy as it seems.

I'm sure it isn't.

How? How can you be sure? How can you know? Look, this is how it works. This is how life works . . . Sorry, that's really patronising.

Good pick up.
So go
on.
She smiles, since she's entitled. I said the dumb thing, and she's letting me off.
Tell me how life works.

Yeah, okay. Here's what I think. With all the people you know, you've got this repertoire. There's a range of things you can be. And outside that things feel weird. I've got a history with these people. I've known George half my life, and the others for a while too. Just about as long, even though there was a gap in the middle. There's a way we do things. Over time, you fall into a way of interacting with each other, and supporting each other. And that kind of talk isn't what I want them for. I want to be okay. I want them for when I'm okay, even though I know they'd be there, whatever. They make that clear. George deferred his degree to cover for Mel not being there. We said it was just to cover for Mel, but he's been covering for me too. We both know that. We both know how important it is, in a practical way. And we don't have to keep talking about it. And I don't want to handle that another way. I don't want to change the way I relate to these people. I don't want to remake my relationships based on how I deal with Mel's death. I have the right to try to keep some things the same. What can I say, anyway? I don't know what I'd say.

We walk a few more steps.

I hadn't thought of it that way.

Well, neither had I until I had to. Plus, you have different relationships with all the people you know. There's a lot to take into account when it comes to dealing with this. And I know this situation's not just about me, not just about me and Lily. It's tough for the others too, but I'm not ready for all those conversations. Not yet. And if that's selfish, they'll let me be selfish. They're good that way.

Lily points at a passing car, so I tell her, Car. Blue car.

I've got no idea about this, have I? I'm sorry. I've got a headache. I'm not feeling the best today, so
. . .

Okay, sorry. I think I wasn't expecting it, this conversation, and I've handled it like an idiot.

I had this idea that you could tell me things. And then I wondered if you told anyone. If it's not my business to say that, tell me. And tell me how I should handle it. I want to get this right. You told me about Melissa days ago, and ever since then you've steered conversations around her. That's how it seems, whenever I've mentioned her, but George did it too, the other night.
So
I don't know what I'm supposed to do.
She looks away from me, down at the ground in front of her.
And you have to try to tell me what to do. If you don't tell me, I won't know how to talk to you. I'm sorry if that's not like George
. . .

No. No. Don't be like George. I've got one of those already. Okay. This is how weird it was. We went out one night, Mel and me, about a month before. Or a couple of months. It was a slightly wanky place. I was never into wanky places, Mel kind of was. Goes with the Beemer, I suppose. Which is fine. I'm not being critical.

Ash looks back at me. It's not fine. Already I've swerved from the truth of the story, or at least failed to meet it directly.

Fuck. Okay. We didn't actually get on. That's what I haven't told you.

I didn't realise.

No, you didn't realise. You couldn't realise. I kept that all back. We didn't tell people. At least, I haven't told people and, as far as I know, Mel didn't say anything either. So that adds to the mess, really. How can I
tell them about it now? And how can I talk about any of it without getting into that? It makes it hard. Too hard, to be honest, and that's the real issue. Anyway, there were problems. We were working on them, and one night we went to this restaurant. Wanky place. And what I hate about those places is how they're all about making you feel like an idiot, when that's not what I go out for. If I want to feel like an idiot, I can just sing or name nearby objects, or spit on myself.

My favourite was the spitting.

And you haven't even seen me in action with people's cats. Anyway, these restaurants. It's like they've got a competition going to put as many stupid words as possible on the menu just to let you know who's boss. Well, this one had a pasta dish with lardoons of bacon. I saw it on the menu and I said something about it, because the rest of the description made it sound pretty interesting, so Mel said, ‘Why don't you have it?' That's very Mel. Order the thing partly because you don't know what it is. It's not me. I always expect those things won't work out, so I don't order things with words I don't know. Mel had a go at me, about how I never take any kind of chances, how I can't even risk it with a meal if there's a new word in there. And I was actually really sick of that – I think there'd been a bit of it around at the time, not that I'm saying I was faultless – so I didn't let it go, which led to an argument, which kind of wrecked the night. Actually, you might have read about it in the paper.

What? Must have been a hell of an argument.

No. It was just, like so many things, misunderstood. I had acutely had enough of it, and I knew the evening
was shot, so I decided to go. Leave and catch a cab. Mel followed, and we argued all the way to the cab rank about me and my risk-taking, me and what was my business, all of that. And then we talked all the way to the car park, once we'd decided to go home. And we'd forgotten to pay. And have you seen, in the weekend papers, the articles a couple of times in the last year about people scamming free meals from restaurants? We're the ‘professional couple having a row' story.

Couldn't that just be anyone?

They named the restaurant, and they described us pretty well. As if we'd gone to some trouble to costume ourselves so that we'd look just like a professional couple. Even the seething that went on between the entree and main, so obviously we hadn't kept that to ourselves as much as we'd thought. And the woman was pregnant, or faking a pregnancy. That's how I really knew it was us. They even speculated about us doing that to draw focus from the scam. But that's off the track. It was also very strange reading the articles, since they came out after she was dead, but that's off the track too. A week or so after she died I was in a pretty bizarre state. She was gone, the Bean was home. I was totally sleep-deprived. I dropped in to work – I don't know why – and I was walking around Toowong Village and I found myself in the bookshop, standing there with the biggest dictionary they had, looking up ‘lardoon'. Which is the fatty cut of bacon used to lard other meats. So I was entirely justified in not ordering it. And I happened to see, I think, someone who looked a bit like Mel in my peripheral vision, and I turned and I told her, with my finger still in the dictionary, what a lardoon was. As
though I was the winner. And then I thought, Oh, fuck, she thinks I'm mad, so I tried to explain. And when I explained I said something like, Sorry, you look a bit like my wife. She's around here somewhere. And I think it wasn't a lie. It was wrong, but it wasn't a lie. I think, just in that second, seeing that woman, I thought Mel was somewhere nearby. See? That's how it works. How do you find the right way to tell that to people? Because what's the right way for them to respond?

There's a message on the answering machine when we get home. Wendy, saying that Flag will be discharged in the morning.
Katie's having a welcome-home morning tea. As you might expect. It'd probably be good if you could put in an appearance. It's at ten-thirty. And you know the address.

Flag's the cat, I tell Ash. The cat I stepped on on Monday.

Do
cats like morning tea?

No.

I chop garlic and chilli and basil to go with some linguini, and Ash feeds Lily.

As I'm chopping, my mind won't shift from the restaurant fight, the day in the bookshop. The futility of that night out, the waste of time and money and energy and life. Another game about surfaces, gone wrong. The professional couple, out for dinner close to term. Anger in a double string of pearls. It's anger we were hiding, not an intent to steal. I'd done something. I don't know or care what. It's only every part of it that's futile, so it doesn't matter why we were at the restaurant and not getting on that night.

And maybe, a month later, I had some idea that if I found out what the word meant I could close the story, put it away. Perhaps go back to that night and say, I know what the word means, so let's talk about something else. Not my minuscule sense of adventure. Let's talk about you. Let's talk about what went wrong today. Let's make sure it doesn't happen again. But by the time I looked the word up, nothing could happen again.