A Lovely and Terrible Thing Read online

  I’m watching Frank and something happens to him as he tells this story. Right in front of my eyes he seems to age. He sags in his seat. Earlier you could see the guy he might have been twenty years ago, before whatever happened to him happened, but now he resembles an old bunyip with a comb-over. And, get this, I’m actually starting to feel sorry for the guy. So I ask him what happened next.

  He takes a swig of his drink and gives me a sour, bloodshot look. ‘What do you fucking reckon?’

  I press on. ‘What about your wife?’

  He looks at me like I’m an idiot, which I probably am, and then indicates the room with his glass. He’s drunk and clumsy and his drink slops onto the floor. ‘Well,’ he says, ‘the ocean was larger than I bet on. I never quite made it back, did I?’

  By now he’s giving off a swampy odour, like leaves in a drain. I actually don’t have a clue what he’s on about but when he offers me the bottle I pour some into my glass and throw it down the hatch. We talk about this and that until I find myself telling him weird things, incidents that seem so lost to memory that I wonder if they belong to my life at all, even though they must. I can’t explain it; it’s like confession. I tell him about the time Barry and I stole all the apples from Mr Willow’s orchard and chucked them into a neighbour’s pool. How we went to the Blue Mountains not long before my sister Mary was born and Dad sat on an ant’s nest. The time I dared Barry to jump off the shed roof and he broke his leg in three places. When we went on holiday to Darwin. The time he loaned me ten grand when I lost all my money in that lousy run with the horses. And I weep. By God, I weep.

  So me and Frank are drinking all this time, going at it the way that only two middle-aged men at 5 am can, and I lose track of everything until there’s a stagger in my step, something hooting in a tree, the taste of stale liquor in my mouth and a roar in my ears. Frank is helping me when I stumble through the muggy, half-lit dawn, and I wake later, hours or days, who knows, still weeping salty tears to find Julia kissing me all over my face and neck. She’s sort of laughing and sobbing at the same time and I let her kiss me but it’s only after a while that I realise she’s saying, over and over and over, ‘You taste of the sea. Where have you been, you old fool? You taste of the sea.’

  Growing Pain

  It began to grow in spring, as I suppose lichen always does. Or does it? Perhaps it’s a winter thing, all moist and dark? The only time I’d really seen it before was when I went with my mum and dad to Tasmania last year. We stayed in a lodge and went for walks around the place. There was bright green moss and lichen everywhere, on the trees and rocks and stuff. That was definitely winter.

  Whatever. In this case, in my case, it started in spring. At first, just a tiny I-don’t-know-what, a nub I guess you’d call it. Barely noticeable, and in fact it might have been there for a while before I even saw it. A dry lump, becoming more obvious over the next few weeks. I actually felt it before I saw it, a small shape beneath the surface where it was trying to get out. It hurt a little bit, but not too much. I didn’t tell anybody, even though I probably should have. It was only lichen, I guess, but it was growing along the underside of my right arm.

  I’d been painting my desk green and initially I thought it was a blob of paint, even though the colour was slightly different. I went into the bathroom to wash it off, and under the fluoro light I could see much better. It was the size of a ten-cent piece. I tried to flake it off with a thumb but it clung to my skin like a scab. It was on my triceps and I had to take off my t-shirt, hold up my arm and sort of pull the skin over with my other hand to see it. It was pale green and freckled. I put my nose right up against the lichen. It smelled woody and dark. It frightened me a little but I was also amazed. I had finally discovered a secret about myself.

  Then my mum banged on the bathroom door. ‘What are you doing in there?’

  I quickly turned on the basin tap and yelled that I was washing my hands. I hadn’t locked the door and was standing there dressed only in my jeans and a singlet. My mum was always checking on me, ever since my dad died. Always making sure I was okay, coming into my room in the middle of the night to see if I was asleep, stroking my hair. She even picked me up from school some days, even though I’d already been catching the bus home by myself for two years. Completely embarrassing when she appeared in front of the school, waving madly and calling out my name. I knew that she had been reading my diary and that she sometimes went through my drawers. I don’t know what she was looking for. She asked me about boys and kept saying we were two girls against the world now so we had to stick together. Anyway. There was no sound for a minute, then she said something and I heard her walk back downstairs. That was close. I knew she wanted to come in and see if everything was all right but I didn’t want her to see the lichen. I didn’t want her to know.

  The lichen grew, but slowly. After two weeks it was around the size of a fifty-cent piece. I checked on it all the time. At school I began going to the bathroom more and more. I would lock myself in a stall, loosen my tunic and touch it with my fingers. I liked the feel of it, this tiny rough island against my smooth skin. The other girls began to laugh at me and held their noses when I walked past. One day Eliza Foster came right up to me in the yard and said, ‘Is it true your dad died because of your smell?’ and ran off laughing with her ponytails bouncing against her back.

  But they were right. It did smell. I smelled, but I didn’t really care. Why would I want to be like them anyway? I was sort of proud of it, like having a dangerous pet, a python or something. In the dictionary it said lichen was a cryptogamic plant, but that didn’t really help me, although I liked the sound of it. I’d always been pretty sure I was adopted by my mum and dad, or they found me on the doorstep one day. That’s why I had no brothers or sisters. That’s why my dad had said No more whenever he talked about me with my mum. Whatever it was, I was special, not of this world. My real family would come to claim me one day soon. I had to be patient.

  My lichen seemed to stop growing so fast when the weather got warmer. It made life kind of tricky. I couldn’t wear anything short-sleeved so I kept wearing a jumper over my school tunic. Even when it was 30 degrees I kept my jumper on. Not that it mattered that much. Nobody wanted to hang out with me anymore. I sat under a tree with my lunch and watched everyone skipping rope or sitting in groups around the yard gossiping. It was boiling hot but it didn’t matter. I had a secret. I suddenly knew what it might feel like to be a superhero.

  My mum kept going through my stuff and reading my diary, so I was careful not to write anything in there about my lichen. I only wrote dumb girls’ things about boys and my teachers. I pretended to have friends and, after school, told Mum things about girls I didn’t even know. She cried a lot at night and always looked like she had just woken up, even in the middle of the day.

  One day I found her asleep on the lounge room floor when I came home from school. Her hair was messy and her skirt was pulled up above her knees. She looked afraid when I woke her and she grabbed me by both shoulders. ‘What are you doing here? Is everything all right?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Mum, it’s four-thirty. I’m always home around this time.’

  She straightened her hair and shook her head. ‘I meant to come and pick you up but I . . . Goodness, aren’t you hot in that jumper?’

  ‘Not really.’

  She stared at me. Her face was shiny with sweat, like she’d been exercising instead of sleeping on the floor. My shoulders hurt where she was holding me and I thought there might even be bruises there when I looked later. I wanted to ask her if she was okay, but was sort of afraid of how she might answer.

  ‘Do you miss your father?’ she said.

  I didn’t know what to say. I never knew what to say when she said weird things like this. So I shrugged. I was hot. I just wanted to go to my room and change out of my sweaty uniform. And my lichen itched when I got sweaty. I tried to step back, ou
t of her grip, but she held me even tighter.

  ‘Do you remember when we went last year to Tasmania?’ she asked in a low voice.

  I nodded.

  ‘To that mountain?’

  Maybe this was it, I thought. Maybe she was going to tell me something. Maybe she was going to tell me where I really came from and it had something to do with the trip last year with her and my dad. I nodded again. ‘Cradle Mountain,’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘That’s the place.’

  I didn’t think about my dad very much. He died three months ago, of a heart attack after his evening jog. There was a clumping sound from the shower and he yelled out and my mum went in there. I went in after and she was there with the water still running, going, Simon, Simon, and I saw my dad all nude and wet, like an animal. His hair was all over the place and his face was grey. He looked disgusting. I stayed sort of behind the door; he never saw me. He was probably already dead anyway. Massive heart attack, they said. Large and heavy, according to the dictionary. Having large volume or magnitude.

  But then my mum looked like she was going to cry. Her mouth was wobbling. ‘It was fun, wasn’t it?’ she said at last.

  ‘What?’

  ‘That mountain. It was fun, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That walk around the lake. The snow. Do you remember the cute animals?’

  I nodded again.

  ‘Your father loved you, Sophie. You know that, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, Mum.’

  I waited for her to speak again but she seemed to be waiting for me to say something. She was scaring me a little. Even so, I waited because I was sure she was going to reveal something about my past, about how I was from somewhere else. But she just nodded and told me I was a good girl and how I should go and get changed out of my school clothes.

  My lichen then began to spread more quickly. Another bit appeared under my left arm, the other arm and across my belly. The next week there was some on my thighs and behind my knees. Late at night in my room I examined every inch of myself. I ran my hands all over my new body. At this rate it wouldn’t be long until I was completely covered. I imagined I would soon be able to disguise myself in any sort of garden or forest. On the weekends and after school I practised climbing trees and being able to crouch absolutely still for long periods, like an insect. How not to blink for minutes at a time. Mum watched me from the kitchen window. She was worried because I suppose she knew it wouldn’t be long now before I went back to my people. She talked on the phone to her friends about me and kept looking through my stuff. She picked me up from school most days now. But I would not be held back, I thought. I would not be held back.

  But then, of course, everything went wrong.

  Every thirteen-year-old girl knows how to get out of school phys. ed. or swimming classes, especially if it’s a guy teacher. Five little words: But I’ve got my period. Always does the trick, always starts them blushing. After all, who’s going to argue with that?

  But when Mr Davies was away on his honeymoon, the vice-principal, Miss Hamer, took us for sport. Hamer the Hammer. It was hot in the indoor basketball court, as usual, and we were meant to bring our phys. ed. uniform of blue shorts and a yellow t-shirt. I told The Hammer that I had my period and went to sit down on the bleachers with a book. It was where I always sat when Mr Davies took the class.

  But The Hammer came over and told me to go and get changed quick smart.

  ‘But I’ve got my period,’ I said.

  ‘So what? You’re not sick, are you? Come on, Sophie. Get changed, please. It will do you good to get out of that uniform for an hour.’

  ‘But Miss –’

  ‘Sophie. Right now.’

  Some of the other girls were coming out of the change rooms and giggling and pointing at me and Hammer. Eliza Foster was showing off some ballet steps she was learning. I was starting to get really scared. The Hammer was usually not to be messed with. My lichen was all over my legs and upper arms by now. There was even some poking out around my neck, but it would still be a few weeks before I had fully transformed and I wasn’t ready to reveal myself yet.

  I thought of something I’d heard some of the other girls talking about. ‘But Miss Hamer. I’ve got cramps.’ And I leaned over with my arms across my belly and put on a face like I was in real pain. I had no idea what cramps were, and in fact had no idea about periods, other than what my mum had told me last year, but who was to know?

  The Hammer was pretty and always smelled a bit like roses. She sighed and looked down at me. I sort of liked her, even though I wasn’t supposed to. Some girls said she was a lezzo because she wasn’t married, but I’d seen her at the supermarket with a man and she was holding his hand. The man was handsome and dressed like a businessman or a doctor. They were laughing and carrying a loaf of bread and some fancy pasta. I imagined them drinking red wine beside an open fire, with their perfect teeth. They would have lots of children and live to be old.

  ‘Sophie,’ she was saying. ‘We’re aware of what you’re going through, but we think it’s a good idea for you to start doing some exercise and sort of get back into things. What do you think?’

  I didn’t say anything. Could they know? The Hammer sat down beside me. ‘Your mum is very worried about you, Sophie. You used to be such a good student but your results aren’t so good this year. I know about your father and I can’t imagine what that must be like for you and your mother, but it might be time to get back on the horse, as they say.’

  She went on like this for a bit longer, talking about my dad and everything, how my mum had been in to see her, about how concerned everyone was for me. All the other kids were standing around in groups or fighting over the few basketballs. Occasionally they would look over and whisper among themselves but The Hammer didn’t care. She even put her arm around me. I didn’t say anything the whole time. I didn’t even look at her. The bench we were sitting on was kind of grooved and you could run a thumbnail in the grooves and it fitted perfectly, almost as if that was why they were put there in the first place. I imagined a whole bunch of people in a factory running their thumbs down lines drawn along the wood in pencil.

  Somehow Miss Hamer convinced me to go and get changed, even when I told her I hadn’t brought my uniform in. I don’t know why I didn’t hold out a bit better. She sent Emily Croft into the bathroom with me because she had a spare uniform and was about the same size. Emily didn’t look very happy about it and some of the other girls laughed at her but I heard Miss Hamer telling them off. In the bathroom she grabbed the shorts and t-shirt from her bag and threw them to me. ‘There you go, spaz.’

  I don’t remember even looking at Emily Croft while I was changing. I decided I didn’t really care who knew about my transformation and it would be all over the news soon anyway. She would see. Everyone would see. She sort of stepped away as I took off my jumper and then my shirt and tunic. By the time I had gotten into her gym costume, which was a little big but okay, she had backed out of the bathroom altogether.

  I jammed my clothes into a locker and stood by the door, where I could hear what was going on outside without anyone seeing me. Now that the moment had come, I wasn’t sure how to make my entrance. Even with all the girls screaming and calling out and the sound of basketballs bouncing off the backboards, I could hear Emily Croft talking loudly to Miss Hamer. I imagined her dragging The Hammer over to the bathroom and the gaggle of girls running along behind, all excited and ready to laugh and scream their heads off.

  ‘Miss Hamer. I think you should see this.’

  Petrichor

  So many things to recall about the summer I turned sixteen. The drought, an incredible dust storm. There was the relentless heat, cicadas shrilling in the trees like furious little angels, thousands of them, millions maybe, but rarely seen. The way they would unexpectedly fall quiet and how large and spooky was
the silence that followed. Most of us, I think, have one such season: days we remember with a disproportionate fondness which allows us to believe that, despite all evidence to the contrary, downturns in fortune are only temporary.

  I was alone most of the time in those weeks; school was yet to begin for the year, my brother had left home and my parents were absorbed in their floundering marriage. Some afternoons the sky turned orange with smoke drifting across from bushfires burning along the coast. Occasionally, charred leaves would float into our garden, on which there might have been scrawled messages (of help? of warning?), were I only able to decipher the parchments before they disintegrated on my palm. But the most memorable aspect of that season was when I discovered that by standing on an upturned bucket in our back shed and craning my neck to peer through the grubby louvred windows, I could observe the lovely Claire Dixon as she lounged by her swimming pool. Claire Dixon, almost naked, only three or four metres away. Claire Dixon running a thumb idly beneath her red bikini top, the purplish imprint of elastic on her sun-soaked ribcage. Claire Dixon. My God.

  My neighbour was no ordinary beauty. She could bowl a mean bouncer in backyard cricket, she understood algebra and, although only eighteen, she used words such as authoritarian and pusillanimous without any self-consciousness. She was contemptuous of the boys and girls who lusted after her, but she had always been generous to me. A few years ago the neighbourhood brats discovered it was lucky to rub the hump of a hunchback; outside the milk bar they pounced on me, so many of them that I toppled to the footpath like a baited bear. Claire shooed them away and, once I was upright, told me to open my mouth, placing a wad of her part-chewed Juicy Fruit on my tongue as, I suppose, some form of consolation. Between other kids such a gesture might have been one of those acts of sublimated violence for which the young have a gift, but her smile at my craven gratitude confirmed it was one of immense kindness. Sad to say, it remains a highlight of my (admittedly meagre) erotic life. Claire was scornful of most people her own age yet for me she reserved scorn’s kinder sibling: pity. And pity, as I sensed even then, is the best a man like me can hope for.