Love and Other Perishable Items Read online

  “I wonder if he ever thinks about it,” I remark to Penny.

  “It doesn’t really matter what he thinks,” she replies, not unkindly.

  We are studying for our final exams, which are in a week. I’m grateful to have something to focus on. Penny’s dad has moved out. Her mum is “on the rampage.” Her brother, Jamie, is staying in his room a lot and missing a lot of school days.

  “Where’s he living? Your dad?” I ask.

  “Dunno.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “None of us know. He says he’s ‘staying with a colleague,’ but he won’t say where. Maybe he doesn’t want me to know so Mum can’t get it out of me.”

  I’m stumped. I cannot imagine my father doing this. Yelling at me? Yes. Not washing up the pots and pans? Yes. Leaving the family? No.

  “He’s supposed to be taking Jamie and me out for dinner this Sunday. But he hasn’t rung about it or anything.”

  Penny has been buying her lunch at the canteen lately. No more school lunches packed by her dad. Sometimes you can spend twenty-five minutes in that line, and the lunch period is forty minutes.

  It’s Sunday night and I’m studying in my room. My first exam is tomorrow. English. They always start with English. My desk is littered with past exam questions. I vaguely register that the phone is ringing.

  “Amelia!” my mother calls. “Phone.”

  I clomp down the stairs to where she stands, extending the phone to me.

  “Chris,” she says.

  I freeze.

  She looks at me, and I grab the receiver and scuttle back up the stairs.

  “Hello?”

  “Youngster.”

  “Hi.”

  “How’s things?”

  Play it cool, Amelia, play it cool. “Why haven’t you been talking to me?” Crap.

  If Chris is at all fazed by the question, he deals with this by simply not acknowledging it. He mustn’t think it worth answering.

  “I’m ringing to tell you some news.”

  “Yeah?” I’m back in my room now.

  “Yeah. I’m … uh … getting the hell out of here.”

  “You’re what?”

  “I’m moving to Japan.”

  I founder. And collapse on the edge of my bed.

  He continues. “I’ve got this job teaching English in a small town. An industrial town. It’s like a night school. During the day I’ll do lunchtime classes at a factory.”

  “For how long?” I manage after a considerable pause.

  “My initial contract is for a year. Then I can extend it if I’m having a good time. I’ve resigned from the Land of Broken Dreams.”

  “Uh-huh.” I’m at a loss for words and in any case need to concentrate on not crying.

  “I’m having a thing at my place next Saturday night. A going-away party. I fly out on Sunday night.”

  “Mmmm.” Strangled tones.

  “I want you to come. Work people will be there and some of my uni friends.”

  Silence.

  “Can you write down my address?”

  I scrabble about under the past exam papers on my desk and find a pen. “Yeah.”

  “Sixteen Acacia Terrace, Eastlakes.”

  “Right.”

  “Well, I’d better go, Youngster,” he says briskly. “Got a whole lotta people to call, and then a whole lotta packing to do.”

  “Bye.”

  “Bye.”

  I sit for a moment on my bed and then drop my forehead on my knees and wait for the tears. I don’t have to wait long.

  My sobs have started to dwindle to sniffling when there is a knock on my door.

  “What is it?” I call, using a tone meant to make it clear to the knocker that I did NOT say come in.

  But the door opens and Mum enters, closing the door behind her.

  “I didn’t say come in!”

  She crosses her arms and stands in front of me.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing.” I gather up the soggy tissues surrounding me on the bed and throw them in the bin. Not all of them make it.

  “What is the matter, Amelia?”

  I blink at her.

  “It’s this boy Chris, isn’t it? The one from work. What’s going on?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing? He rings and suddenly you are in tears the night before your exams.”

  I pick at the embroidery on my bedspread.

  “And not for the first time either,” she adds. “He doesn’t seem to be a positive presence in your life.”

  “He’s going away” is the only thing I can think of to say. “Overseas. To live.”

  “Well, good,” says Mum.

  “It’s not good!” I wail.

  “It is good, Amelia. There’s no sense in hanging around people who make you unhappy again and again.”

  Oh, that’s rich coming from the unhappiest woman in the universe! “Then why do you hang around Dad?” Tears crowd into my eyes again. “And me?”

  “What?”

  “You’re unhappy! You’re unhappy with Dad, and with your job, and with me, and with everything. Every day you let me know how miserable you are and that somehow you’ve ended up with this awful life. And I can’t do anything about it!”

  “Darling—”

  “And it is awful that you have to work so hard and that Dad’s away a lot and when he’s here he doesn’t help. I bet he only hangs around because he’s got such a sweet deal here.”

  “Amelia.” Mum sits down beside me. “Now just calm down. Calm down.” She sighs.

  I sniffle and reach for a tissue.

  “There are things in my life that I’m less than happy about,” she allows. “But they’re my problems, not yours. And your father and I … well, I won’t pretend …” She looks down at the carpet. “It was clear pretty early on that I wasn’t going to have a marriage where the … labor was evenly split. He can be a very difficult person to live with. Obviously. But there’s no question of his commitment to me … or to his children. Or of mine to him and to you girls, even though I get … down sometimes. You shouldn’t say things like, ‘He only hangs around because he’s got a good deal.’ You shouldn’t say that about your father.”

  “But he makes me so mad! The way he treats you sometimes, the way he treats me.”

  “He loves you desperately. He’d kill for any one of you girls.”

  “I don’t want him to kill for me. I just wish he’d take his plates to the sink and rinse them. And help you more. What if you weren’t here to earn the steady money and cook us dinner every night?”

  Mum seems to grimace for a moment and then she says quite firmly, “Don’t try to understand other people’s marriages, darling, even your parents’. You’ll be lucky if you understand your own. The only thing you need to know is that Dad and I love each other, and we love our girls.”

  “But you’re miserable.”

  “Don’t you worry about it.”

  I’m suddenly exhausted and so is Mum. We say good night and Mum goes next door to check on Jess. I want to ask her to tuck me in and stroke my hair, but I don’t. I’m almost sixteen.

  Where the Beer Is Cold and the Women Are Friendly

  A couple of days later an actual invitation to Chris’s farewell party arrives in the mail. He’s gotten around to whipping up a flyer on the computer. There’s a picture of a sumo wrestler with Chris’s head Photoshopped onto it and a speech bubble saying, I think I’m turning Japanese.… Below this the text reads:

  I am deserting all you bastards for the Land of the Rising Sun, and I’m having a BBQ to say goodbye. So come on down to the Harvey Ranch, where the beer is cold and the women are friendly. 16 Acacia Terrace, Eastlakes. 5 p.m. onward.

  Poverty-stricken citizens catch the 851 bus from the city and get off at the corner of Gipps and Elizabeth Streets.

  He’s done a map from the bus stop to his house.

  I’m not going. I imagine myself standing a
wkwardly alone while Chris, the Land of Dreams contingent and his “uni friends” (who sound even more frightening) lounge around Chris’s backyard in easy fellowship.

  The only thing that had ever made me brave enough to go to the Land of Dreams parties was the knowledge that Chris would look after me. The bathroom incident has screwed everything up. If it hadn’t happened, at least we’d still be friends.

  His final absence looms large and I have the whole week to contemplate it. He worked his last shift at the Land of Dreams when I wasn’t there. I think about quitting too.

  Penny arrives at my house on Saturday afternoon ready to stay over and study for our two remaining exams. I’d offered to go to her place, but she’d said her mother was still “on the rampage.” By six my attention is wandering. Penny puts her highlighter down.

  “Look, there’s still time to go,” she says. “I’ll go with you if you like. We can get a bus into the city and then transfer to the 851.”

  I shake my head. “My mum thinks he’s a bastard.”

  “Well …” Penny looks as if she is restraining herself. “You’ll be miserable if you don’t get to say goodbye to him. He flies out tomorrow.”

  “I’ll be miserable regardless. He flies out tomorrow.”

  Penny gets picked up at about ten on Sunday. I put away the foam mattress and roll up the sleeping bag. Grudgingly, I get out of my pajamas and into jeans and one of my new T-shirts. Mum and Dad are in the kitchen, reading the paper over their pot of tea. Classic FM wafts throughout the house. Jess must be pottering in her room.

  Despair at the coming day paralyzes me. And so does the thought that my reward for surviving it will be another Chris-less day. And another one after that. Get your sneakers on and go for a walk, I tell myself urgently. Keep moving; don’t stand still.

  Our door knocker raps loudly and breaks my paralysis.

  “I’ll get it!” I shout, thinking Penny must have forgotten something. But as I approach the door, I see through the baubled glass what looks like a delivery guy holding a box of something. I open the door.

  It’s Chris. Wearing an ancient T-shirt, clutching an old wine box and looking unshowered.

  “Where the hell were you last night?” he demands.

  “I couldn’t come.”

  “Why? You know I’m leaving today.”

  “I know you’re leaving today,” I concur softly.

  “You didn’t even ring!”

  Mum appears in the hallway behind me.

  “Who is it, Amelia?” she calls, eyeing the scruffy young man with the box.

  “My friend. It’s all right.”

  She hesitates and then goes back out to the kitchen.

  “I bet I’m really popular around here,” Chris says. There’s something in his tone that makes me think he knows how hurtful he’s been.

  “Mmmm.” I can’t think of anything to say.

  “Listen, Youngster,” he says. “Men are bastards. You can’t trust any of them. No matter how genuine they seem.”

  “I’ll remember that.”

  “Do.”

  I’m crying. Not blubbering and sobbing, but everything inside is pushing its way inexorably out.

  “Youngster,” he says. “Amelia. It wouldn’t have worked.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Really, I do.”

  “You don’t!”

  Having been struggling with the box’s weight, he lets it down onto the doorstep. It looks to be full of notebooks.

  “I brought you something,” he says. “Somethings.”

  “What are they, uni notes?” I sniff.

  “They’re my diaries. From when I was fifteen until now. Read them. So you know you’re not alone.”

  I gape at him, then down at the box and back up again.

  “I want you to look after them. Will you do that for me?”

  He’s waiting for me to answer.

  “Yes.” What else can I say?

  “You know,” he says gently, “you figure quite a bit in the later ones.”

  I take this in and scuff softly at the box with my shoe.

  “I’ve got to go,” he says briskly. “More packing. Take care of yourself, Youngster. I’ll send you my address and stuff when I get settled. So we can keep up the letters.”

  And he kisses me, roughly, malodorously, on the cheek.

  A white Commodore sedan, old but well kept, is parked outside our house. He shuts the gate behind him, gets into the car and starts the engine.

  “Chris!”

  He rolls down the window.

  “Yeah?”

  “Shave!” I rub my cheek where he kissed it.

  “Will do!”

  The Commodore pulls out and drives to the top of the street. Its indicator blinks left and then it disappears around the corner.

  I look down in disbelief at the haul at my feet. Squatting down, I pick one notebook out at random and leaf through its pages. It’s full of Chris’s handwriting, and the chill in my heart starts to thaw. This is quite a consolation prize. As far as consolation prizes go. I lever my fingers underneath both ends of the box and struggle to my feet.

  “Darling?”

  It’s my father. The sound of teacups being put down on saucers and chairs scraping back. My father appears in the doorway, and then my mother, both of them having moved through space and across the parenting continuum to voice their concern for their middle daughter, the one in no-man’s-land between the trenches of childhood and adulthood.

  “Is everything all right?” asks my father.

  “Yeah.” I smile at them. Weakly, but still a smile. And I take the box up to my room.

  May 2

  There were a few more pages left in the purple notebook, but I felt the sudden need to make a clean break. So here we are on the fresh first page of the black notebook. Oh, the possibilities of a blank diary! The purple one has been relegated to the pile with the others, where it collects dust and insects and waits patiently to never be read.

  Rohan’s coming to town next weekend for his birthday—his parents are throwing a party for him at their place on Saturday night. The upside of that, apart from seeing Ro again and eating his mother’s amazing cooking, is that the engineering set will be there. This will most likely include the lovely Stella, who is soon to be a master brewer. There has been no sex for Chris since She’s-big-she’s-blond, so I am keen to rectify that. Ed makes frequent reference to my “drought.” It amazes me that I’ve never pointed out that his drought is so perpetual as to render it not really a drought but just the climate. He has been continuously stoned since he was sixteen. Alana (one of Bianca’s young chums among the checkout staff) has let him know she’s interested a few times, but it just doesn’t register with him.

  It’s Dad’s birthday this Friday, and he wants to have a family barbecue at our place on Sunday, including, of course, Uncle Jeff and whatever of his progeny can be rounded up. Run, you buggers, run! After Sunday, I’m going to try to avoid Jeff until Christmas. Maybe I’ll even find a way to avoid the annual Christmas visit too. Seriously, if I round the driveway and see his car in it, I’ll go up to the pub and sit there for a few hours until he’s gone. I’m sick of his bullshit. He can’t pick at me if I’m not there. No, that wasn’t a mistake—Jeff picks at me rather than on me. Today I imagined Christmas after Christmas stretching out into the future. More Jeff getting pissy and belligerent and drinking all my father’s good beer. Then, as “his generation” is wont to do, getting behind the wheel and driving home.

  Oh, I feel fine, he dismisses me or Zoe when we gently inquire if he reckons he is below 0.05, knowing very well that he’s drunk over ten full-strength beers over the course of the day.

  Limit, what limit? I have no limits. I’m a smug baby boomer! Back in my day there were none of these DUI inconveniences. They just make trouble for people trying to get home; it’s a revenue-raising exercise designed to squeeze yet more money out of a man! I’m fine to drive. Anyway, ho
w else am I going to get home?

  Zoe and/or I offer to drive him home in Dad’s car.

  What? he splutters. But then I’d have to get back here tomorrow to pick up my car!

  Zoe offers to drive his car for him, and I will follow in Dad’s car to take Zoe home again.

  Oh, stop fussing. You young people.

  The car door slams. Zoe and I send appealing looks in the direction of our parents—won’t they intervene? No, it seems they will not. Either they don’t feel it’s their place, or they secretly support Jeff’s right to drive home drunk.

  The dark green Lexus spins off and Zoe and I are left standing in the driveway.

  “You know,” she said last Christmas, “he’s got the right to kill himself, I suppose. You reap what you sow. But what pisses me off is the damage he could cause to other people.”

  I fetched two beers, and we perched together on the bricks of the front fence, watching the dusk fall all around us. It was the first enjoyable moment of the day.

  Seriously, missing out on Christmas has got to be at the top of the list of reasons to live overseas for a while.

  May 6

  Dad’s birthday barbecue went much as expected. Uncle Jeff turned up with his daughter Ashley in tow. She’s twenty and in her third year of arts/law, but not at my uni. Zoe and I have always regarded her and her siblings warily, as I’m sure they do us. Again Jeff proved that his problem is with me and not “my generation” by not picking at Zoe or Ashley. Just me.

  “Saint Christopher!” he boomed, subtle menace lurking behind his bonhomie. “So, what kind of a job are you going to get next year?”

  He asked that question knowing and relishing that it is the most frightening question you could ask a sociology student. When I failed to answer immediately, he turned to Dad and said, “What do you reckon, Rob? What’s your boy going to do next year?”

  Dad too appeared flummoxed—no, shamed—but thank God for Zoe, who arrived at that juncture with a fresh round of beers. She must have been listening.

  Mum’s sister, Sue, showed up with her husband, Stuart, and their eleven-year-old daughter, Brianna. They live somewhere near some hills. Baulkham Hills, Beaumont Hills, something like that. I don’t know why, but Sue loves talking to me at these things. She makes a beeline for me every time, announcing to no one in particular that she’s “going to talk to Christopher.” Sue, bless her soul, has none of Jeff’s menace, but she talks at you with this incredible pressure, and any attempt to actually contribute to the conversation—that is, to break into her monologue—gets ridden over. I’m not sure if there is such a thing as a Hills accent, but there’s something distinctive about the way she talks. It creeps in around the edges. The only example I can think of right now is that instead of saying, “Yesterday the man finally came to fix the washing machine,” she says, “Yesterday the man finally come to fix the washing machine.”