Good Oil (17 page)
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 including the lovely Stella who is soon to be a Master Brewer. There has been no sex for Chris since She’s-big-she’s-blonde 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 ours 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. 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 aft er 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 enquire if he reckons he is below .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 booze-bus 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, how 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 pissed.
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 shits me is the damage he could cause to other people.’
I fetched two cold beers, and we perched together on the warm bricks of the front fence, the temperate dusk air surrounding our skin. 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 Honours 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 thing as a Hills accent, but there’s something distinctive about the way she talks. It creeps in around the edges. The only examples I can think of right now are that she pronounces ‘new’ as ‘noo’ and ‘stupid’ as ‘stoopid’. And 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’.
She told me about the trip to Europe that she and Stuart took Brianna on earlier this year, and also the aggrieved story about one of Brianna’s teacher who, several years ago, told her that Brianna had ADHD. Which she doesn’t. I’ve heard both of these stories before. But I don’t mind hearing them again, especially if it gets me out of talking to Uncle Jeff.
Our barbecue is under the carport and a good few metres away from the main hub of the party. I’d thought that manning it might get me off conversation duty for half an hour or so, but oh how I was wrong. Uncle Jeff saw an opportunity. I was a sitting duck – all alone under the carport, wearing Mum’s apron and tending the steaks and sausages.
He swooped, beer in one hand, fold-out chair in the other, and set himself up next to the barbie. I was his captive audience for the duration of the barbecuing. There were quite a few orders for well done too, so I was fucked.
He sat there, happy as Larry, finding fault with my talents (or otherwise) as a barbecue chef. At one point he stood up and without warning poured his beer over all the sizzling steaks, washing away Mum’s prized marinade.
‘Gives ’em a bit of flavour, eh?’
I stood still and considered my options for response. I said nothing.
I was in the home straight, transferring the steaks onto a platter and keeping careful note of which ones were rare, medium and well done, when he came out with what he’d been saving for last:
‘So, Chris, you got yourself a girlfriend yet?’
‘No, I . . . I don’t have a girlfriend.’
‘Oh well, that’s all good. Not all young fellas have
girl-
friends, you know. And that’s all right, nothing wrong with it. Just the way things are, right?’
I stared down at the heavy platter of meat, considering a range of responses to his insinuation that my girlfriendless existence was due to being gay. I looked down the yard at my Dad and saw him laughing with Uncle Stuart, Zoe and my mother.
‘This lot is ready,’ I said to Uncle Jeff lightly. ‘Dig in. You gott a be quick around here.’
Zoe and I did most of the cleaning up afterward, leaving Mum and Dad to have some down time. I carted everything in and scraped the dishes. Zoe rinsed them and put them in the dishwasher. She washed up the big platters and salad bowls that wouldn’t fit into the dishwasher. I dried them and put them away. When we were finished I got two beers out of the fridge and we sat down out the back.
‘Uncle Jeff reckons I’m gay,’ I said.
‘No, he doesn’t. He reckons he can get a rise out of you by implying it. Did he?’
‘I ignored him.’
‘That’s so grown up. You could never have done that a year ago.’
‘Yeah, well. I didn’t want him to have the satisfaction of making me ruin Dad’s birthday party. That would just confirm his pet theory that I’m a useless, precocious little bastard. Plus it’s time he learned that the gay thing just isn’t the insult it used to be.’
We sat in silence for a moment.
‘Hey, are you still cut up about What’s-her-face?’ she asked.
Ever since Michaela pulled my still-beating heart out of my chest à la
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
, Zoe has referred to her only as What’s-her-face.
‘Um, sometimes,’ I hedged. ‘Most of the time. Yes.’
‘Amazing. It’s been over a year.’
‘Yeah, well. You know my “passion for unhappiness”.
How’s What’s-
his
-face?’
Zoe’s boyfriend, Terry, is a fellow Commerce graduate. She doesn’t bring him round much. They both have graduate positions in accounting firms. Whenever I’ve met him, he’s had very little to say. But I know better than to try to understand what attracts people to other people.
‘He’s good,’ she said. ‘Um, hey?’
‘Hey?’
She sounded as if she had something to say.
God, is she marrying him?
‘I’m out.’
‘You’re out? Of where?’
‘Of here. I’ve found a place and I’m moving out soon.’
‘Shit!’
She’s leaving me here! She’s leaving me here, the sole loser adult child at 16 Acacia Terrace.
‘Don’t leave me here!’
‘Chris, I’m turning twenty-four next week.
It’s time
. It’s beyond time.’
I pondered this truth.
‘Where?’ I asked lamely.
‘Leichhardt.’
‘Who with?’
‘Sylvia.’
‘Have you told Dad?’
‘Tomorrow.’
It was nearly 11 p.m. We went inside and watched
Star Trek: Voyager
. It was another one where a holodeck program gets out of hand and threatens to overrun the whole ship. Will they never learn?
May 13
I went to Rohan’s birthday party last night, then had to drag my sorry arse in to the Land of Dreams for four hours this afternoon. I felt so rotten and tired this morning that I was within a hairsbreadth of calling in sick. But if I start calling in sick because I’m hung-over, I’ll never make it in there at all. Thin end of a wedge. Youngster Amelia was the only one who didn’t make a point of telling me I looked like shit.
As for Rohan’s party – well, what can I tell you? Oh, I know! He and the lovely Stella are apparently an item. Completing for one Rohan Levinson the trifecta of a house, a job and a girlfriend. I’m happy for him. For both of them. Really.
I’m going to go out on a limb and say that things come pretty easily to Rohan. He’s smart, good-looking; he has a well-off family behind him. He’s the only and much cherished son. He did well at uni. He has a good job and a string of pretty girlfriends. And all these things he accepts smoothly as though they were inalienable rights. If it was me I’d be like a frumpy girl at the school dance who gets asked to dance by the captain of the football team. Pathetically grateful and not a little bit surprised. I’d be like:
Oh my God! I fill this shirt out nicely. That’s so cool! I’m so lucky to have these nice broad shoulders and dark good looks. What? Money for a deposit on a house? Dad! That is the most meaningful and valuable gift ; I don’t know what to say except thank you so much! That’s a huge load off and there is simply no way I could have done it without help. And Stella. Being able to stand here at a party with my arm around you is so special. You’re a beautiful and smart girl and I can hardly believe that you are going to let me get your gear off later tonight! Thank you! That’s tremendously exciting.
Anyway, I ate huge amounts of Rohan’s mother’s
burek
, drank beer and fell down. I didn’t fall down at his parents’ place though; I fell down when we all went into the city afterwards. Just like old times – me, Mick, Suze and Rohan. And now Stella.
Right, let’s take stock:
Zoe is leaving me to face my pathetic life-stage limbo at Mum and Dad’s alone.
The Field is very slim pickings at the moment.
I haven’t heard from Michaela since well before I sent the flowers at Christmas. I don’t think I ever will. That’s a sobering thought. With some chronological distance from the whole thing I can see that it’s likely there will be no further congress between us. Ever. It’s not as if there’s a chance of running into her around here. I have these weird daytime fantasies of running into her in the street ten years from now. Perhaps I have my first-born child in tow. Perhaps she has hers. Our partners don’t figure in the fantasy, which I have to admit is lifted mainly from the cut scene in
Great Expectations
where Pip and Estella run into each other in the street years later. Pip has Joe and Biddy’s little boy with him and Estella thinks he is actually Pip’s child. Pip is working hard and doing well. Generally getting on with his life. Estella looks sad. She
is
sad. Her life has been pretty shit on account of choosing to marry some violent prick instead of Pip.
In my fantasy, Michaela looks pale and thin and pained to see me – pained because she remembers how amazing we were together and regrets choosing Brad over me. He’s turned out to be one of these totally absent husbands. I break off the conversation first, saying I have to go. I’m meeting my again-pregnant wife for lunch. I kiss Michaela chastely on the cheek and walk off holding my little son or daughter by the hand. I don’t look back. She looks after us with tears in her eyes, clutching the hand of her own child, for as long as she can see us.
I love this fantasy. I replay it again and again.
June 5, 11 p.m.
Kathy is doing her teaching prac for the next few months, so she has cut down to one shift a week. Stuart Green has resigned. Bianca says he’s got a grown-up job somewhere. Bianca also says he and Kathy are not a happening thing. I honestly don’t care. Bianca is making some not-so-subtle attempts to get me together with some of her youngsters at work – particularly Donna and/or Alana. Both are sixteen, but they seem older. I get on fine with them. Let’s face it, I can get on fine with most people if I need to.