String Bridge (20 page)

I walk into the office almost two hours late—worn out. I head straight for the coffee station for a double dose with my bag still hanging over my shoulder. I open the cupboard above the sink to pull out the jar of Nescafé. But there’s only decaf.

Okay. Percolated.

No filters left.

Shit. I need coffee!

Just as I think things can’t get any worse, I look down at my feet—and there it is—the
almost
reality of the turn-up-at-school-naked dream. I’m wearing two different shoes—one flip flop and one sandal. Not the
most
embarrassing combination in the world, but noticeable. If I didn’t manage to coordinate shoes this morning, I dread to look at my face in the mirror. I didn’t even wash off my make-up from last night.

I’m about to run back to my car to see if I have any shoes in my boot when my mobile rings. It’s Heather.

“I’m in the coffee station,” I say, leaning against the counter. I hit my head on the corner of the cupboard I left open. “Ouch!”

“What was that? What are you doing in the coffee station? How long have you been here? Why are you so late?” Heather speeds through the questions as if on
Who Wants To Be a Millionaire
and she’s using the call-a-friend lifeline.

“Um …” I close the cupboard. “Hit my head. Trying to find some coffee. About two minutes. Long story,” I answer in much the same fashion.

“There’s no coffee,” says Heather.

“Uh … duh!”

Duh? How old are you?

“What?” Heather asks, probably thinking the same thing. “Well, meet me on the lawn. I brought in a thermos of Jarrah’s coffee.”

“Really? Where did you get it? I thought they didn’t sell it here.”

“Long story. Come. Lawn. Now. Desperate.” Heather hangs up.

I run back to my car to seek out a matching pair of shoes. Thankfully, I have an old pair of sandals in the boot from the island.

“Thank you thank you thank you, whoever is out there, thank you,” I whisper.

I catch a glimpse of my wrinkly shirt in the rear view mirror. I freeze.

Don’t do it. Don’t look at your face.

I bend down toward the mirror—my eyes clenched shut.

Okay, do it like the Band Aid trick. Open quickly and it’ll all be over.

I open my eyes.
Oh. Mascara a bit runny. Nothing that a bit of saliva can’t fix
. I lick my two forefingers and rub away the smudges.
Not too bad. I smile at myself. But then I remember.

“There’s nothing to be smiling about, Melody.”

I look toward the tuft of trees at the end of the street. Anesthetized in this semi-humid, pre-summer atmosphere. Stagnant — numb — the way I should feel inside. But I don’t even feel that. I’m beyond numbness. I’ve been through numbness, emptiness, nothingness. What I am, is detached.

You can’t pretend everything is alright forever.

I cough away a swell in my throat as I push the side-view mirror in. The flick resonates through my fingers; the snap through my ears. I kick the car door. Dent it. Fuck you. The sound of reality making its mark.

Musician. Mother. Wife. Editor.

No.

Mother. Editor. Musician. Wife.

No, no, no.

1: Mother / Musician

2: Musician / Mother

3: Editor

4: Ex-wife.

Cheater. Liar. Bastard. Asshole.

As I reach my desk, the girls mumble “hi”, as if programmed on a timer, all staring at their computer screens. A very temperamental bunch—on and off like bipolar emotions—switchless too. It’s like the PMs have sprayed the office with a sedative gas. And it’s so quiet that the most dominating sound in the office is my feet separating from the sweaty soles of my sandals as I crouch down to pick up a fly-away post-it.

I catch a glimpse of Heather pacing back and forth on the lawn, swigging her thermos of Jarrah’s as if a bottle of beer.

“Okay, Heather. Cough it up. What’s up with you and the thermos?” I ask, scratching behind my ear.

“My daughter!” she wails, almost choking on her coffee. “She brought her boyfriend home last night and I let him stay over. I’m so irre
spon
sible; they were at it like flippin’ seagulls at fish. All I could hear,
all
night, was her wardrobe rattling. She’s too
young
for this. I thought he was just going to
in
nocently sleep over. Why am I such a sodding fool?” She takes another swig of coffee. Swallows it like whiskey—wincing at its potency.

“Um,” I say, short and quick, uncertain whether it’s my cue to speak. I wait for a signal. Heather throws up her arms and eyebrows in unison.

“Sorry if this is an insensitive question, but what’s this got to do with the thermos of Jarrah’s?” I step in front of her, halting her stride, and grab the thermos from her hand. I gulp down half a mug’s worth. The warmth and smooth coffee aroma coats my mind with pseudo reprieve. “And
please
stop pacing up and down. You’re making me dizzy.” I sigh and hand her back the thermos.

“Well,” Heather exhales, collapsing cross-legged on the grass. “She made it for me, my daughter, to stop me from asking her questions this morning. She was ever so helpful, making my lunch, brushing my hair, choosing clothes for me to wear—the whole shebang. Talking like a parrot in order to prevent me from talking about the wild sex I could hear last night. She talked right up until the moment she stepped out the door to go to school.” Heather frowns—tears lingering in the corners of her eyes. “Want some more?” She holds the thermos above her head, like a wagging teen drinking a bottle of cheap champagne cross-legged on the train platform.

“Yeah, thanks.” I take it and swig it—sit by Heather’s side on the lawn. “So, what are you going to do?”

“To be frank, I have no sodding idea … can’t bear to tell Chris. He’ll ground her. I don’t think a girl should be grounded for losing her virginity in her own
home
. I mean, that’s pretty good, right? I mean, at least it wasn’t in some dirty old public toilet in order to keep it a secret. Right?” The corner of Heather’s mouth turns up in a seeming effort to look on the bright side. But the lurking smile is instantly retracted when she clenches her fists and brings them to her chest, “Oh my God! What if that
wasn’t
the first time?”

“Heather, don’t worry.” I try to sound as if I’m in the know. “She was all right when she got up this morning, right?”

Heather nods, sucking in her bottom lip. It reminds me of how Tessa slurps spaghetti.

“Don’t worry. I’m sure it was her first time. As you said—be happy that she did it at home.”

But what I
should
remind her is that if it was her first time, there’s no way she’d be able to do it all night because she would have been in pain.

I remember the day I lost
my
virginity. I had just turned fourteen and had a crush on a young drummer called Seb, a couple of years older than me. Many girls left love letters in his locker, decorated with heart cut-outs and photos of themselves. But I couldn’t even bring myself to utter “hello” every time I passed him in the corridor. Because I was the pretty, shy girl who looked the part of everything I was not and sung remarkably well in the daggy school choir, and he was the outgoing artistic version of a football star. A popular boy with a twist. Not twisted. Like me. I would dream though. Alone in bed at night. Pretend that my pillow was his face. But I didn’t have to dream for long.

The day we met, I was putting books in my locker after class, and he appeared by my side with a huge grin on his face. His shoulder-length floppy blond hair hung over his narrow brown eyes as he tilted his head forward and rested his dimpled chin on my open locker door.

“Hi,” Seb said. He pushed my locker door shut and held out his calloused hand for me to shake, “You’re Melody, right?”

“Um, yep. Melody,” I shook his hand, nodding, trying to think of something cool to say. An entire corridor of students looked our way. Their scrutiny burned holes in my stockings. I was sure they could see my knees shaking. Perhaps this is where it all began—the stage fright.

“I’m Seb.”

“Uh, yeah, I know.” I giggled stupidly, wondering why I was acting like the “other” girls.

“You have a free period now, don’t you?”

“Yeah … how’d you know that?” I was stunned by the possibility of Seb paying attention to my class schedule.

“Um, I just know.” He smiled so wide I could see his full set of wonky, but very white teeth. “You wanna jam with me and my band?”

I couldn’t believe it. Was this for real? I didn’t want to risk being humiliated if someone was playing a prank on me, so I pulled myself together and said, “Well, I was just about to go to the canteen to buy some lunch. You can join me if you like. We can go and jam after I eat.” I was so proud of myself for not letting him dictate the next move. If he wanted me to jam with him, he would have to wait.

“Oh.” Seb sighed, sounding a little disappointed. “I don’t really want to sit in there. There are too many … you know, of those
girls
in there. I was hoping we could just skip lunch.”

As much as I wanted to jam with him, I had learned enough from watching American high-school sitcoms to act hard-to-get, so I said, “Um, no thanks, Seb. I’m starving. Maybe another time?”

I walked away, down the corridor, toward the canteen with wallet in hand. He just stood there, in front of my locker, watching me get away. But, just before I disappeared around the corner, he called out, “Party! My place! Saturday!”

I did go to the party that Saturday night, hearing my mother’s recent act of parenting playing over and over in my head:
Here’s a condom. Don’t even
think
about using it.

His house was located in one of the rich suburbs of Melbourne. It was a two-story mansion with about six hundred square meters of garden surrounding it. His parents were away for the weekend, hence the party. Of course. I silently gagged at the cliché. The entire first floor was full of grungy-looking pot smokers, gothic lesbian couples snogging each other in every possible corner and hardly coming up for air, and the blaring sound of Nirvana rattling the ornamental pebbles scattered all over the place like confetti.

Of course, I got a little drunk to shed myself of inhibition, and I can’t remember doing much else than
snogging
and
snogging
and
snogging
until my lips stung. That, and taking intermittent sips of Smirnoff vodka straight from the bottle to top up my fuel.

Somehow I ended up in his en-suite watching him run a bath. I closed my eyes as he undressed me, and then himself, and we both lay in the bath together. The steam engulfed me like heavy fatigue. The heat of the water and weightlessness of his silky smooth body on top of me was like swimming in fog. That was until … well, the whole bath turned red. Oblivious to the pain in my drunken state, Seb had already sprung out of the bath and wrapped a towel around himself, when I opened my eyes. Shivering, he wailed, “Freak!” and left me there to clean up.

“Heather? Shouldn’t we get back to our desks? Where are the PMs?” I ask, hesitant to walk near the window where they might see me.

“Oh. Don’t worry. They’re at a conference. They won’t be back till late afternoon. They won’t even know you were so late.” Heather stands and brushes dry grass off her bum.

“Oh-kay. Then why is everybody so quiet?”

“Because they’re gullible. When the PMs left this morning, they said they’d activated the hidden video cameras.” Heather laughs. “Jodie winked at me, knowing very well I know there aren’t any. Poor sods—look at ’em working their bottoms off … oh, and Dianne told me to tell you they won’t be expecting you to write those kids songs anymore.”

“Fine.”
I couldn’t care less.

“Oh!
Damn!
Look at me going on and on about myself. What happened to you? What’s
your
long story?”

“Oh, nothing really,” I shrug. I brush away a strand of Heather’s hair caught in her eyelash. She blinks and smiles a thank you. “Just one obstacle after another this morning. Couldn’t get myself together.”

Seventeen

Instead of heading straight home after work, I do something I wouldn’t normally do. I send Alex a text message to say I won’t be home for dinner—to take Tessa out for a kebab. No explanation, no mention of where I’ll be at. I imagine, well hope, he makes an event out of it, by eating them in Lykabettus with the dog, for instance, instead of plonking Tessa on the couch to watch a movie while he messes around with emails. Wishful thinking?

I, however, drop my car off at home, and go to the only Irish pub in town—a place guaranteed to be brimming with raucous expatriates—a place where privacy is indeed given a new meaning. This place is always so crowded and noisy that it seems to reverse the effect—chaos turned silent white TV fuzz.

I drink
three
pints of Guinness, eat
two
plates of fish ‘n’ chips, and wander around the Plaka in the dark—a vibrant flea market by day, a seemingly abandoned crime district with hidden side-street gems by night.

The Plaka is situated below the Acropolis, which you can see from almost every angle of the city—especially at night, when it becomes a glowing dynastic beauty. Its cobblestoned streets are splashed with traditional taverns left, right, and center, with loitering waiters trying to lure in passersby. On Sundays, these streets become even more alive when the flea market thrives with bargaining tourists and manipulative shop owners.

I buy myself a coconut ice cream cone, sit in the square by the metro station, kick my sandals off and watch. As. They. All. Glide. By. Me. Like over-exposed photography. A sea of kebab skewers and gyros wrappers, gypsies rummaging through the aftermath of tourist mayhem for leftover food.