Love and Other Perishable Items Read online

  When she’d come to pick me up in the afternoon, I’d be plastered against the same piece of fence, still crying and looking out for her return. Mum says that leaving me at that place was one of the hardest things she ever had to do. Awful, she said. And your father didn’t seem to understand just how awful.

  Amelia reckons that these stories are important. Look no further, she says, the answers are in our homes. When I think of “oppression of women,” I think of the suffragettes, I think of things in the past or elsewhere, like women being forced to seek back-alley abortions, women being denied entry into universities, women having to obtain their husband’s written consent to leave the country, women being hung as witches or sold as sex slaves, women living under sexist, oppressive regimes. I don’t need to look so far away. It turns out my mum does defrost and clean the fridge.

  I once wrote Amelia a letter and told her that she doesn’t have to look very far to see difference—despite the narrative that is spun by the prime minister and co. about how swell everything is. I encouraged her to look close to home.

  She’s got me doing the same thing, hasn’t she?

  All of the cleaning-product ads—all of them—feature women. I was watching one tonight for some new variation of surface cleaner (“that can be used on ANY surface, even glass and wood!”). With her kids screaming in the background, our protagonist faced the camera and said something to the effect of “I work full-time. I have three kids. I don’t have time to switch between cleaning products!”

  Another one for sandwich bags features a professional-looking lady in her kitchen saying she doesn’t have time to faff around with cling wrap in the mornings when she’s making the school lunches for her tribe.

  Where are the husbands? Why is there not a single ad featuring some dude in a suit, or a pair of overalls, saying he’s a busy man struggling with the competing demands of work, housework and looking after the kids—he needs a reliable all-purpose cleaner or a no-fuss sandwich bag?

  No wonder the Youngster’s all pissed off.

  September 12

  Trickstered! Deceived!

  Mick and Suze. Mick and Suze are together. They’ve been together for almost a year! And keeping it a secret from their best mates! I don’t know if I’m more pissed off at the secrecy or the fact that they’ve found love while it continues to elude me. All those times—oh, never mind.

  I tried to ring Rohan tonight to debrief, but I couldn’t get hold of him. He’s probably got Stella up visiting. Mick and Suze and Rohan and Stella. That’s lovely. Oh, and then there’s Chris.

  This was not part of the deal! It was me, Mick, Suze and Rohan—four separate entities linking forces to lessen the blow of existence. A safe base to launch from and return to in the event of a critical incident. Bloody couple kingdom now! I bet we’ll never go out again—they’ll all just want to stay home to cuddle and watch movies. And if we do go out, I won’t be able to concentrate because I’ll be all like “Oh my God, Mick and Suze!”

  I handed my thesis in yesterday, a milestone that was somewhat overshadowed by this revelation. We went out to celebrate and they just came out with it.

  Everything is changing so fast. All the mainstays of my life from the last four years are changing. Have already changed. But I’m still here, dammit!

  I’m going to ring up that Japanese English school tomorrow.

  Fuck everything; I have to get out of here. I have to have something that’s mine.

  There’s almost nothing for me here.

  September 18

  I’m so fucking lonely.

  September 20

  I’m holed up trying to write my last essay. Three days in which to do it.

  I’m also filling out my application to the Japanese English school.

  Mick and Suze are moving in together. They both got the jobs they wanted. Rohan’s moved into his new house in Newcastle. Stella’s just got a job up there too.

  At least the Land of Broken Dreams mob remains relatively static. Ed’s having a birthday party next week.

  I’m twenty-two.

  September 21

  It’s sometime close to midnight. I’m in my room with my third giant glass of red wine and I’m just about ready to relay the events of the evening.

  Tonight’s Friday. Zoe and Terry came around for dinner. Dad fired up the grill and Mum produced steaks long-steeped in her red wine, garlic and honey marinade. Zoe, Terry and I sat silently allied through Dad’s interrogation about when they are going to buy real estate. They gave him the usual response about the difficulty in saving the required money for a deposit and then in servicing the mortgage. He said something about needing to make “sacrifices.”

  After a flicker of anger, we sighed and felt the usual lead weight of hopelessness settle on our shoulders. Terry changed the subject to the Australian Football League Grand Final. When Zoe and Terry left, I scraped the barbecue and wished that daylight saving would come a little sooner. I heard the phone ring. Mum brought it out into the yard.

  “It’s Michaela,” she said.

  And indeed it was. Her voice was at once so familiar and so foreign; I struggled to place myself in space and time.

  She was cordial, and to my surprise so was I. We talked for a while about safe things until she said quite abruptly, “You must wonder what kind of person could do what I did.”

  I didn’t reply.

  “Brad and I had been together since high school. Five years! Five years and a lot of implied commitment. He’s sweet and kind. My family adores him; so do my friends. He’s got his shit together. He loves me. He let me come to Sydney for six months because I wanted to. Not let me come … trusted me to come. I couldn’t break that trust.”

  “You did break that trust,” I couldn’t help pointing out.

  “Yes, I know,” she said. “I’m just trying to explain … the situation.”

  I felt sorry for her momentarily, the sucker that I am. No one wants to be a bastard to a decent bloke.

  “For the record, I think you’d have debunked me pretty quickly,” she said. “If we’d, you know, stayed together. I’m pretty annoying once the honeymoon is over. And has it not struck you in hindsight that there you were falling in love with me ’cause I was apparently so principled and full of the strength of my convictions, when our very relationship was proof that I have no convictions and no principles?”

  “Michaela, I’m not sure what you’re trying to tell me.” Maybe she’s working up to saying sorry, I thought. But she’d fallen silent.

  “Why did you ring me?” I pressed.

  “Brad proposed. We’re engaged.”

  Whack! Pow! Bam! Holy horrible punch in the face, Batman!

  “That’s ridiculous. You’re too young to get married,” I said weakly. Which was bollocks—I’d marry her tomorrow.

  “Not really. I’m twenty-three now; he’s twenty-four. We’ll have a long engagement. I’ll probably be twenty-five before we actually get married. It’s not unreasonable.”

  “No,” I managed, “I suppose not.”

  “A decision had to be made is what I’m saying, Chris. And I made it.”

  Silence.

  “You sure did. So, are you going to tear my other ball off, or will that be all for now?”

  You can always count on me to turn civilized proceedings ugly.

  “That will be all,” she said stonily. “I wanted to tell you how it was.”

  “Fabulous. Well, thanks for calling—”

  “And I only cried the once, you know.”

  “What?”

  “When you sent me those flowers at Christmas, you wrote something about how I used to cry when we made love.”

  Damn “Romeo and Juliet” song!

  “And I’m telling you,” she continued. “I only cried once, so let’s not get carried away.”

  And that, as they say, was that.

  So let’s raise a glass—I’m going to anyway—to Michaela and Brad—wishing them a lifetime of
happiness together. And perhaps a pustule-causing disease or two.

  I keep thinking I can feel bile rising in my throat. I wash it back down with more red wine. I’ve emptied Mum’s bottle of Bin 555.

  September 24, 11:30 p.m.?

  Since Friday night, I have been rampaging around like a bull in a china shop. I’m off-kilter. I’m discombobulated. I’m disaffected. My cup runneth over with corrosive acid. The last glimmer of hope for Michaela and me has died. I didn’t even realize I had been holding on to it until now.

  If I were less preoccupied by the universe’s persistent policy of ripping me off, I might feel a shred of guilt about the Youngster. Last night was Ed’s birthday party. Although my memories of the evening are hazy at best, I do remember spending most of it with my lips around the neck of a bottle of cheap vodka and also, I’m sorry to say, on Amelia. That’s right. I’ve sunk to a new low of drunkenly sleazing on fifteen-year-olds.

  I’ve been horribly sick today—my last vomit was at four. Thank God my parents weren’t around.

  Amelia rang just as I was starting to feel human again this evening. It was too much. I let her have it as straight as I could, which was a huge effort in my delicate state. I think she thought that we’d be going steady. I just can’t do that. I can’t.

  Yeah, if I wasn’t a black-hearted bastard with sludge in my veins, I’d feel bad.

  Must sleep now.

  October 5

  I’m going to Japan. Strange. Sudden. Unreal. One-year contract to start. I’ve already signed it. It seems like a big commitment. I asked for six months—in case it’s awful—but they said a year or no deal, so I agreed.

  I’ve told Mum and Dad. I’m about to ring Zoe, then Mick, Suze and Rohan. I resigned from the Land of (Broken) Dreams at the end of my shift tonight.

  They offered it to me yesterday afternoon and I took the night to think about it. Latish last night I sat down at the kitchen table with Mum. We were finishing off the bottle of red from dinner.

  “Mum,” I said, “I really need to get away from here. For a while. I’ve been here for too long. I don’t fit anymore.”

  “Here?” she asked, gesturing to the house. “Or in Sydney?”

  “Both.”

  We were silent for a moment.

  “Well,” she said slowly, “I guess you’ve decided then. You’re going to Japan.”

  “Yeah. Yes.”

  “Yes. Good.”

  “Except.”

  “Except what?”

  And I didn’t even know what I was saying, but I was saying it.

  “This girl.”

  “What girl?”

  “My friend Amelia. She’s from work. She’s special.” I clear my throat hard. “To me. And in general. Special.”

  “Oh,” said Mum. “Are you …?”

  “She’s fifteen.”

  “Oh!”

  “Nearly sixteen.”

  “Still.”

  “I know. It wouldn’t work.”

  “Not now.”

  “It’s just …”

  “It’s hard.”

  “Yeah.”

  And we drank our wine and I knew I was going.

  And I remembered kissing Amelia, even though I’d told myself I didn’t.

  I leave in two weeks.

  I’m skipping out. I’m going to Japan. See you there.

  Christmas is a week away. Penny and I take the bus down to Bondi Beach on a Friday afternoon. It’s hot and there’s hardly any surf. Lake Bondi.

  We have a marathon swim. Seriously, we are in for about two hours. We can feel our faces and shoulders burning, but cannot extract ourselves from the cool, clear water. We float on our backs; we swim right out to where the waves are breaking and dive down for handfuls of sand; we swim back and forth across the length of the flags; we swim underwater for as long as we can, opening our eyes to the green beyond. We look back at the crowded beach from the deep water.

  “We are going to be the first to get eaten,” Penny says slyly.

  “Don’t!” I squeal, and swim back a few yards to be level with another swimmer.

  “We”—she swims over to me with clean strokes—“are going to have buff arms.”

  “Can’t believe I’m not tired yet.”

  “How good is this?”

  I start thinking about the realities of another family Christmas. We are buying presents tomorrow after Penny picks me up from my morning shift at Dymocks. After quitting Land of Dreams I got a job as a seasonal staffer at Dymocks Bookstore—hopefully they’ll keep me on when school starts up.

  “I can’t stand the suspense,” I remark to Penny. “I need to know if we are going to have Miss McFadden for senior English.”

  “We’ll know soon enough.”

  “In five weeks’ time! What if we don’t get her?”

  “We might not even be in the same class.”

  “Don’t say that!” I’m horrified at the thought. “I’d rather neither of us gets her than one of us.”

  “That is so you.”

  At last we swim to shore and flop on our towels. It’s got to be at least five o’clock. Maybe even six. We drink water from formerly frozen bottles and eat the lunch box full of watermelon we brought, now warm from the afternoon sun.

  “Heard from your dad this week?” I ask.

  “Yeah, I had lunch with him at his work on Tuesday.”

  “Has he told you where he’s living?”

  Her face contracts, but only slightly. Only a practiced eye could tell.

  “No.”

  “That’s …” But I can’t find words for what that is. “I’m so sorry, hon.”

  “Thanks.” She looks intently at the horizon, chin up.

  “How’s your mum doing?”

  “She’s … she’s worried she’s going to get screwed.”

  “Financially?”

  “Yeah. And also she gave him the best years of her life.”

  It blows my mind, the conversations that Penny must have with her mother. My family pisses me off sometimes but I can’t imagine us not all together. I can’t imagine my father … ceasing to exist as a part of us. Moving his things out of the house. Not being contactable except through work.

  “Heard from Chris lately?” Penny changes the subject.

  “Yeah. He rang at, like, three in the morning a few days ago, drunk in some nightclub in Tokyo. Said he misses me but he’s ‘spanking the J.’ ”

  “Whatting the what?”

  “I don’t know. I might have misheard him. There was loud techno in the background.”

  “He sent me a book for Christmas. By Kate Jennings. It’s essays. He wrote in the card that not only will I love it, but it fits into an evening bag, and I can take it places, read it on the train.”

  “You don’t have an evening bag.”

  “No, but I have that little satchel thing that I take when we go out.”

  “True.”

  “I could get an evening bag.”

  “Okay.”

  “You don’t think I could?”

  She holds her hands up in an I’m not armed gesture.

  I pour water over my sticky hands, and then on Penny’s.

  “How’s the missing?” she asks.

  “Pretty bad.”

  “What a gyp.”

  “Sure is.” I feel deflated just thinking about it. “It’s such a long time to wait.”

  “Wait?”

  “Until he comes back. Almost a year. How am I going to manage for a year?”

  “Wait? Manage?” Penny slaps my arm with the back of her hand. “You are not waiting. You are not … We are not … We have plenty to be getting on with.”

  I’m silent.

  “He might not even come back! He might stay. He might go traveling. He might marry a Japanese girl!”

  “No!”

  “Who knows? And if he does come back, we’ll be finished with high school and out and about. We’ll be going off to uni … and heaps of stuff. And
if he wants to hang out with you, you might let him. But you will not be sitting around waiting. You will not be on hold. On ice. On … anything.”

  I look at her. Her brown eyes are brilliant in the pink light.

  “We have plenty to be getting on with, Amelia.”

  “We do? Like what?”

  “Well, I’m glad you asked. Like, for example, I am going to get you into a dress before the summer is over.”

  “No, go on.”

  “I am. Maybe even tonight.”

  Tonight we are going to the movies with Scott and some of his friends and some other girls from our group. I’ve made my peace with them. They’re actually not bad guys. And I’m a little less bad-tempered these days. Which works out well for everyone.

  I know, right here and now in the warm summer air, that I have to accept Chris’s absence. That wishing is irrelevant. That a box of diaries and drawer full of letters do not a betrothal make.

  “Plenty to be getting on with.” I try it out, digging into the sand with my heels.

  “Right.”

  “Plenty!”

  I squeeze her hand, she squeezes back and we sit, watching the shadows lengthening on the sand.

  Acknowledgments

  The author wishes to thank Mara Print, Julia Shearsby and Stephen Mansfield for their exhortations to start writing this novel, and their encouragement to continue.

  And Jamie and Margaret. For everything.