Good Oil (16 page)

R
ADIO SILENCE

When I get to work the next day Chris is standing at the service desk looking at the roster. Bianca and Jeremy see me before he does.

‘Hi,’ I say, slotting myself in beside him.

He looks at me briefly. ‘Hi,’ he says, then passes me the roster and walks rapidly away. Bianca and Jeremy snicker, or I imagine they do. She’s put me way up on register sixteen again.

Not a word or a gesture all shift.

Bianca takes Chris off register at about 7.30 p.m. to collect trolleys. He walks past me several times and doesn’t even make eye contact.

Jeremy and Bianca seem to be conferring down at the service desk, and then Jeremy is dispatched to my register, ostensibly to take a change order.

‘What’s happening with you and Harvey?’ he asks, as if it is his right to ask such things.

‘Nothing,’ I reply, cursing myself for even giving him that much.

‘He ignoring you or what?’

‘He’s not ignoring me!’
Unbelievable! This guy hasn’t spoken to me in over three months and now he thinks he can show up and question me about the sorest of sore points.
They can sniff out a weak spot, Bianca and her minions, that’s for sure.

I slap my change order down on the conveyor belt. He pockets it and raises his eyebrows, then saunters back down to Bianca.
Does he ever actually serve customers?
I think, as a customer with a loaded trolley approaches my register.

Surely Chris will say something to me before the shift is over. He has never, ever not spoken to me at work. He’ll come and talk to me and demonstrate to the minions that I am still his favourite youngster and the minions will have to quit – or at least reduce – their snickering. Nine o’clock approaches. Everybody starts cashing up.

Chris and I usually walk to the back office together, to hand in our cash drawers. Before I have finished counting the money in my drawer I see Chris yank his drawer out and disappear around to the back office with it. I follow as soon as I can, feeling minion eyes upon me, only to see him bolting out of the staff exit. I stop in my tracks. Ed overtakes me, carrying his own cash drawer.

‘Ed!’ There’s a desperate tone in my voice that even a stoner can pick up on and wish himself elsewhere.

‘Yeah?’

‘Chris . . . Is Chris not talking to me or something?’

‘I dunno, Amelia. Sorry.’

He continues on. I slowly put one foot in front of the other until I hand in my drawer. I collect my backpack from my locker and head to the staff exit. Outside, Bianca, Jeremy, Donna and Alana are lined up against the wall, taking drags on their cigarettes.

Bianca looks at me with a satisfied expression. Satisfied that I have been put in my place at last. No more swanning around thinking I’m smarter than them and riding on Chris’s coat-tails. She’d have been dripping with saccharine, though, if it had gone the other way and I had emerged as Chris’s girlfriend.

The others don’t look at me, but I see smirks through the smoke. They don’t say goodbye and neither do I.

On my way home I walk past the pub and see Chris sitting alone at a table with a beer, waiting for the others to join him. I stop to torture myself with a good long stare. Then I walk home. Tonight, walking alone through the dark streets is frightening. The wind whistles through the power poles and makes shop signs rattle against their fastenings. Once I am past the main roads I walk in the middle of the street to avoid whatever might be lurking in the shadowy footpaths.

G
ETTING THE HELL OUT
OF HERE

Two weeks to the day pass since Ed’s party. Work sucks.To make the whole Land of Dreams thing seem worthwhile, I blow my savings on two new pairs of jeans, several new T-shirts and a new pair of Cons. Blue. One of the T-shirts is cream coloured with brown edging. It has the words
Can somebody please help me?
written across the front in small lettering.

Chris has continued to cut me dead. Well, not exactly cut me dead, but he makes swift maneuvers to avoid situations where he might have to look at me or talk to me. If such a situation becomes unavoidable I get the curtest of nods.

I miss him something fucked and often have sudden recall of cool bathroom tiles and the taste of lime and tequila.

Street-cred Donna hangs around him a lot, retying the long purple laces on her steel-capped boots. They all go off to the pub together after work. I hover around in the locker room until they’ve gone so I won’t have to parade myself past them all milling around the staff exit. Behold The Dumped. The Publicly Dumped. The Embodiment of Dashed Hopes. The Uninvited.

‘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 School Certificate 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 knows. 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 handset out to me.

‘Chris,’ she says.

I freeze.

She looks at me, and I grab the handset 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.’

‘16 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 doona cover.

‘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 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 . . .
labour
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 goodnight 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.

W
HERE 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’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. Everything laid on.

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 awkwardly 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 mates.

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 hers, but she’d said her mother was still ‘on the rampage’. By 6 p.m. 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 get an 851. Say we’re going to a movie.’

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 10 a.m. on Sunday. I put away the foam mattress and roll up the sleeping bag. Grudgingly, I get out of my pyjamas 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. ABC Classic FM wafts throughout the house. Jess must be pottering in her room.

Despair at the coming day paralyses 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. ‘Something
s
.’

‘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.