Fish and Chips - Three, 3.

I can’t really remember the guy's face, instead I remember someone else’s and I put it there on his shoulders. He is sitting in the back seat, drunk. You are sober, controlled but I feel your anger simmer next to me like a hidden ember. We are driving home after a club night at the pub. He is joking, being crude and I laugh. I can feel a change in the air, resentment building, I am tired of it and continue to laugh. The car stops and you order him out, we drive away leaving him there on the side of the road. I am shocked but I say nothing. Later after we have settled to watch tv in your room, you stand up and announce you will be back later. You drive out and pick your friend up from where he is walking home and quietly deliver him back to his place. You tell me that neither of you spoke and I mustn’t say anything about it again. For the first time I realise there is an angry side of you that I have never seen before. It is so crowded, Joan Armatrading blasts across the room, I scan the room for people I know and see Brett at a table, he waves, I squeeze my way through the crowd, I am always happy to see him, we laugh and chat. I feel a hand around my arm, tight. “We are leaving” you say. I try to say goodbye, I am pulled from the room, I protest, “We just got here”. Outside I am angry, I don’t want to leave. The backhand across my cheek is a total shock, I fall down and try and stumble away, we argue more, I want to go back inside, but pride stops me, I cannot go in with marks on my face and mud on me. I let myself be pushed into the car and we are leaving. I am stunned; I cannot believe this has happened. We argue in the car, you accuse me of being a slut and tell me that you have heard a story about me from a guy who I dated a few times before I met you. The story is partly true but I am so shocked at this guy being such an arsehole and talking about me like that, that I deny it. You know I am lying and you pull over on the side of the road and hit me hard in the face. I get out of the car but when I realise that we are miles from anywhere I hesitate and you grab me and push me back into the car before you drive home in silence. I am in complete shock and am shaking uncontrollably, I try to crouch in the car until we get back to your place where I eventually meekly follow you inside and crawl into bed because it is freezing cold and I think I have no choice. In the morning when I wake up I am reeling with shock, I am horrified ashamed and terrified. I want somebody to tell me everything will be okay and when I finally brave to show my face in the kitchen I see them look at me then look away, they draw away from me as if I have a disease. Nobody speaks to me, finally later, your mother says “But what did you say to him?” I open my mouth to try to explain to her that it wasn’t justified but the accusing look in her eye makes me realise that I will get no support here. I tell you it is over once I have convinced you to drive me back to my flat. You beg my forgiveness and cry and promise me you will never ever lose your temper like that again. I can’t explain now why I believed you or why I wanted to believe you so much. You let me drag you around the shops and choose your jacket and your shoes; you want me to be proud of you. We buy some clothes that are like what I have seen my sister’s boyfriend wearing. You really don't scrub up too badly. I don’t remember how I feel, except that I am touched that you are trying so hard for me. This is my graduation. I drink and laugh and maybe I have a good time and perhaps not, I don’t remember but in the photos we are smiling. I have a clear memory of thinking that I couldn’t imagine life without football; I am all the All Whites ground. I guess when you put on your jersey and ran onto the field you were happiest. You were very good; you would just push yourself so hard and never care how much it hurt. I remember looking at you lying on my bed after a game. You are bruised all over. You are in agony. I just cannot understand how you can do this to yourself. It makes me feel distanced from you, like part of your life I cannot share; at that time we are sharing everything else. I think a lot about ending our relationship but there seem to be so many reasons not to. I look at you as you lay sleeping and you look so much older than me yet so helpless. I give in, in the end, to my need to be needed. I hate the thought of you playing against Brett’s team. I am terrified you will hurt him; you pay him out and tell me he is “a poofter”. I decide to ignore you, when we get back to the flat one afternoon he has just taken Nadia to “our” restaurant. I am shattered. I cannot let you see this, I hate myself for still caring about him when he cut me off the way he did. I don’t understand why he has to torture me by hanging around and looking at me with accusing eyes. I know I will never be good enough for him any more. I still love him and you know it. I deny it because I think I have no choice. I go to Brisbane with you for your sign on meeting. You take me into the clubhouse with you and they treat me like I am your wife, I am 18 years old. They tell us how much we will love it there. That this suburb is like a big country town so we will feel at home. We are really excited! They tell you they will organise a share house for you with some other team members and a job for you as well. It seems to good to be true. You sign for the agreed fee, and today is the first day of the rest of your life. A few weeks later Brett signs with the same club. When you hear about it you look at me with an accusation in your eyes, as if I had planned it all. ................................................................ I cannot understand why I feel the way that I do, after all of this time, surely of all the things I should feel the very first would be relief? Why do I feel as if my heart has been torn from my chest? You were no longer anything to me, or at least you should not have been. The fact you are gone should not make the slightest difference to my life, and yet I just want to cry. So what does this all mean? That I still loved you? That is almost laughable, after all that happened. I am trying so hard to understand this, so I can get past it and feel normal again. The phone just rang. The line was silent. How many times has this happened since I last knew you? I suppose a few, and every time in the back of my mind I have thought that it was you. Well it can’t have been this time, can it? I have to almost laugh at my imagination. Laugh at the conceit of me to even consider that you would have wondered what happened to me; and then cry because I always wondered what happened to you and now I know and I don’t like it.

The Pedicure

He is concentrating, intent. His hands are so gentle on my feet, carefully he trims each toenail, I giggle when it tickles and he admonishes me, "Be still".

We are sitting either end of the sofa in his parents loungeroom. His mother is in the kitchen. She is always in the kitchen in my memory, teatowel in hand. His father sits across the tiny room from us, his feet up, newspaper dripping over his legs and his glasses halfway down his nose. Occasionally he turns his head and stares me in the eye, a comment thrown into the conversation or just that look again, the one he gave me when I arrived.

I don't remember where we caught up, probably down the main street or at the local pool. He asked me back to his place though and it was like a time warp, as if everything was alright again and when I arrived his parents greeted me the same way they had for lunch every day. Well, almost the same way. His father smiled "Lissie!" his pet name for me, the only one who ever calls me that, then he peered at me that moment too long. He took in my face, the purple marks, the swelling and his sigh said everything and nothing. She came to the kitchen door. Did we kiss hello? I don't remember but then she exclaimed "What happened to your face?"

I muttered something about friends and hockey sticks, her eyes told me she knew I would lie even before I spoke. She started to comment then pulled herself up and turned and went back to the sink.

We are sitting there laughing, chatting, the four of us feel like a family, like it always was. I want so much for this to be the reality and not the dream, he moves onto the next toenail and chides me again for not looking after my feet better. "This is horrible", he says when he comes to the toenail that was infected when I was fourteen, I flinch because it is sensitive and it grows crooked and scarred and because I am more ashamed of it in that moment than I am of my face. His mother comes to the kitchen door again, she leans lightly on the timber frame of the open glass slider.

She starts a conversation asking me about my work and my flat, then she asks about him. Her words are clipped and her eyes are hard and she tells me that I must know what I am doing. I can't look at her and instead I focus on his fingers on my feet, his hand is trembling and his skin flushes red and white. His dad is staring at me hard again, over the top of his spectacles his frighteningly familiar blue eyes bore into me. Inside I am crumpling, I am screaming, my face is hot with unspent tears. Then the dishes clang in the sink again and the I hear the crackle and flick as the next page turns. The man who writes the newspaper all week and reads it all weekend.

He runs his hands gently over my feet now, a light massage like one I gave him not long ago and aeons ago, his eyes hold mine and his touch sends tingles right through my body. It is one of the most erotic moments in my life. "Come on", he says and we stand and I grab my bag and smile goodbye, I will see you soon and his mother turns and looks hard at me again. "Take care.." she says and his father doesn't look up, "See you, Lissie." and we walk out the door.

We climb into the car. THE car. It has a bench seat in the front, it is impossible to sit in his car without thinking about all the time we have spent in there. He starts to drive and we do not speak, he doesn't switch on the radio or the tape player. He drives straight down his street heading to the school, out of town and on towards the weir, he drives by habit. I cry silently. It is very quiet.

He called on friday to wish me a happy birthday and tell me his mother is in hospital. This whole post might sound a bit foot-fetish like(ewww) but it is really about my love for his parents and something beautiful that had to be broken.

On hold

I am on hold on the telephone. They play some recorded orchestral music, tinny through the handset. I listen half heartedly as I gaze out the window at the leaves dancing in the breeze. Then suddenly, she is there. Her fingers tracing the air as she plays the conductor, the twinkle in her eye laughs at my expression and laughs at her joy in the music, then I see him out of the corner of my eye. He is smiling at her. My memory plays this moment like a scene from a movie and I know that part of the reason I feel so fond of him still is because she loved him too.
She lives so vividly in my heart, she walks through my days in her words and her ways and her love and that she is gone now can never really be true when I feel her so close as I do. Perhaps I value him more than I should because when I think of my happiest times with her, he was there too. When I hear his voice I remember the utopia of that time, which can never be lost as long as I remember. So I love to hear his voice, it may not bring my Grandma back but it seems to bring her closer.