‘Think of your parents as people, rather than figureheads,’ Carl repeated. Joy waggled her eyebrows at her.
Chloe thought about it. ‘Well, they’re not … quite … people the way other people are people—like you, say,’ said Chloe. ‘But they’re not, like—these big, severe, laying-down-the-law types, either, if that’s what you mean.’
‘Yes, we’re too slack,’ joked Joy.
Carl gazed out through the glass roof. ‘I think I mean, more—my mother and father seemed to stand for everything I ought to be. People talk about how you grow up and start to see chinks in your parents’ armour, but I have never—I’ve always found them absolutely unassailable. I think—I think this is the root of a lot of my problems!’ he said to Joy, beginning to laugh.
Chloe liked Carl; he was gentle and civilised, and he had a good sense of humour—or had had one, before Gus got sick. It was struggling to grow back at the moment, like a plant pruned back too hard.
‘Wasn’t that irritating, though?’ Chloe asked. ‘Didn’t you ever feel like busting out and doing something stupid, just because they were always so right?’
‘I didn’t see the point.’ Carl smiled regretfully. ‘I knew I’d just embarrass myself, and possibly them too, which was just not … thinkable. It was as if I just absorbed their lessons and didn’t have to bother going out and learning them for myself. You can’t say that’s healthy,’ he added to Joy.
‘It sounds fabulous to me. I wish you’d been my child.’ She winked at Chloe.
‘Well, you guys never set yourselves up to be figureheads,’ said Chloe. ‘God, it’s not like we never see your chinks.’
Her mother hooted with laughter. ‘You can never bring your friends home in case we’re parading around with our chinks showing!’
Chloe conceded a smile. ‘You know what I mean.’
Joy leaned forward and rubbed Chloe’s shoulder. ‘I know what you mean. We’ve always tried not to have the last word on anything.’
‘Which drives a person mad,’ Chloe said to Carl. ‘I’m sure it’s just as bad as having really strict parents.’
‘It’s just as hard for the parents, that’s for sure,’ said Joy.
Chloe sat back, a bit surprised. Joy and Dane had a pretty light touch, it was true. She’d always thought it just came naturally to them, that they coped with having three children by making things as easy as possible for themselves. Sometimes she wished they’d make an effort to put their foot down like parents in books—‘Just where do you think you’re going, young lady? Just what do you think you’re doing?’ Instead, Chloe had simply gone, and done. Especially since finishing school last year, she’d informed them of her intentions rather than asking for their permission. If ever she went to them for advice, the discussion ended up with them saying, ‘Well, it’s really up to you. You have to make your own decision on this.’ They were always handing her life back to her—and now it seemed it wasn’t just laziness, but a conscious policy they pursued, sometimes in the face of their own doubts.
Chloe glanced down the table. Dane and Jube were wisecracking and laughing hugely, so she couldn’t catch any words from the conversation at the far end, which was mainly between Nick and Maurice now, with Isaac looking from one to the other and back, listening with all his attention. Beyond him, outside, Janey and Pete leaned against the unlit brick barbecue, talking companionably, Janey having a cigarette. Chloe tried to read Janey’s lips, but then Pete started talking with his head down and Janey was just laughing beside him, smoke coming from her mouth in little puffs and floating up into the leafless poplars.
‘What were you and Pete chatting about outside there?’ Chloe asked Janey later, when they were up in her room.
‘School.’ Janey looked up from one of Dane’s books about cabinet-making and started to smile. ‘Bad influences.’
‘What, is he one too, secretly?’
‘No, but he knows a few. Huh, don’t we all.’ She turned a page. ‘You are so lucky, having civilised brothers.’
‘Well, you know, you can borrow them any time.’
‘Up to a certain point.’
‘Well, as far as they want to be borrowed,’ Chloe said with a laugh. She expected Janey to join in and laugh too, but there was silence, and when she checked Janey there was only a hint of a smile on her face, and Chloe felt uncomfortable about asking her to explain.
Downstairs the phone rang. ‘Janey, it’s for you!’ Joy called.
Janey slid off the bed and clomped out in her platforms. ‘Who is it?’
‘Your dad. You want to talk? I can—’
‘It’s okay.’ Her voice went flat and hard as she spoke into the phone. ‘Yeah, what do you want?’
Chloe listened, heard nothing more. Then the phone was hung up, and the platforms stolidly thumped up the stairs. Then Janey stirred up the room again.
‘My old man. My dirty old man.’ She headed for the book on the bed. Chloe watched her, and she added, ‘Drunk. Hanging out. Playing with himself—you want to know more?’
‘Bleagh.’ Chloe went back to her own book, then looked up again. ‘Don’t you feel … don’t you feel something when that happens, something like that?’
Janey considered. ‘Not really. I mean, face it, who am I to complain? Huh!’
Chloe sometimes marvelled at herself and Janey, that this was idle conversation for them. Janey felt her doing it now, and looked up from the book and smiled. ‘I’m so cool.’
‘But you’re not. You should be—you should be cold and scary and hating everyone. You should be completely bent—’
‘Oh, I am that.’
‘Yeah, but you should be, you know, stuffed up. Bitter.’
‘Miserable, you mean.’
‘Yes! You should be miserable! Why aren’t you?’
Janey bobbed her head, embarrassed. ‘Lordy, I don’t know. Can’t see the point, I guess. At this moment. Like, when I’m sad it’s just a quick thing—comes and goes. The rest of the time—’ She shrugged. ‘It must be my famous hormones. Being oversexed keeps me happy.’ She flipped a page, rubbed her nose, sniffed. ‘What about you?’
Chloe baulked. ‘Well, if it’s a choice between miserable and oversexed, I’d go for something in the middle.’
‘Where you are, already. Happy-ish and undersexed. Or did he desex you, the rat? The scumbucket?’
‘Huh?’
‘Theo, dimwit.’
‘Oh. Just put me off for a while, that’s all.’
‘Why—he was good, wasn’t he?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t—’ Chloe started to laugh ‘—have any basis for comparison!’ She went silent, thinking. ‘He was okay, I guess. He just … it was his thing, that he did. It didn’t have much to do with me, except, I dunno, maybe trophy-wise, for him.’
‘Trophy-wise. A notch in the belt. Gawd, I wouldn’t have a belt that held together if I thought like that!’
‘It’s a good thing you’ve got those broad child-bearing hips to hold your pants up.’
‘Yeah.’ And Janey looked pleased.
As Janey left, she and Chloe passed Nick and Isaac arguing in the lounge room.
Isaac was saying, ‘You’ve got to find that place where your vision and your client’s vision can meet, you see—’
‘Where your vision and their wallet meet, you mean.’ Nick was going through some CDs, trying to read the tiny printing on them.
‘I think we have a fundamental difference in approach here,’ Chloe muttered to Janey, not intending that anyone else hear her.
But Isaac looked up. ‘We do. But I’m working on him, Chloe, I’m working on him.’
‘Ah, I’ll bring you down to earth yet,’ said Nick.
Embarrassed, Chloe saw Janey out. Then she went into the kitchen, where Joy and Dane were unloading the dishwasher.
‘Can you imagine these two in partnership?’ Joy cocked her head towards the lounge room.
‘Huh?’ said Chloe.
‘Oh, ha
ven’t you heard about the Grand Plan? Hunter Goldman & Associates? If they can find any associates who are ideologically pure enough.’
‘That’ll be the day,’ Chloe snorted. ‘They’ll never get anything actually built; they’ll just sit around arguing all the time.’
‘I think they’ll do really well,’ said Dane. ‘One’s creative, the other’s practical. Perfect balance.’
‘You reckon?’ Chloe looked out at Nick and Isaac, disconcerted. They were so confident now, about stepping forward and claiming their adulthood—how did they do that? Chloe felt caught in an endless hesitation, herself, with possible lives multiplying all around her, none of them notably more attractive than the others. Life was going past while she stood still, watched and wondered and looked for a good place to jump on. What if she didn’t find one? What if there wasn’t one, for her?
‘G’day, Cole,’ Janey said quickly. ‘You remember Bass?’
‘Sure,’ said Chloe, heart sinking.
‘Mind if I tag along?’ said Bass with what was meant to be an ingratiating smile but turned into a smirk. Bass was constitutionally incapable of warmth.
‘Sure,’ said Chloe again. Her mother sent her an enquiring look over Janey’s head. ‘Let’s get a move on, hey, if we’re walking.’
‘Take a cab, why don’t you,’ said her mother. ‘It’s freezing out there.’
‘We’ll stay on the move.’ Chloe kissed her. ‘See you later.’
‘I’ll wait up, as usual,’ lied her mother.
She closed them out into the night, and they fell into a step made awkward by the narrow footpath and the fact that Bass held Janey’s hand. Janey was in boots and tight jeans, but a giant jumper swamped her top half. Bass was neat, all in black, his mean punched-flat little face like a clock-dial sticking out of his skivvy neck.
‘So what’ve you been doing with yourself, Bass?’ said Chloe to break the silence.
‘Oh, hanging around.’
Yeah, whose neck? ‘Working?’
‘Yeah, a bit. What about you?’
‘Oh, the same.’
‘Still living off Mum and Dad, I see.’
Chloe cleared her throat and shot a glance at Janey. ‘Where are you kipping these nights, Bass?’
Janey laughed nervously. ‘He’s with me,’ she apologised.
‘Paying much rent, Bass?’ Chloe asked softly. ‘Putting in for food, are you? Running a vacuum over the carpet? Putting out the garbage?’
‘Oh yeah, and you’re so good, Chloe,’ snapped Bass. ‘So bloody perfect in every way.’
‘Oh, stop it, you two,’ said Janey weakly.
‘Like, it’s so cool cleaning the toilet,’ Bass added.
‘Like, it’s so cool sitting on a dirty one,’ Chloe murmured.
‘What, you scared some bacteria might migrate onto your squeaky-clean arse? Only living thing that would.’
‘Oh yeah? I seem to recall someone, sometime not too long ago, sitting across from me at Connie’s, cooing, “So who’s the real Chloe Hunter, then?”’
‘Will you two, please … ?’ Janey sighed. ‘All I want you to do is sit in a darkened room for ninety minutes together without killing each other.’
Chloe halted, and the other two collided with her and fell back. ‘I’m not sure that’s possible, actually,’ she apologised to Janey.
‘Yeah, why’n’t you dip out now?’ said Bass, pulling Janey in beside him. She staggered and looked at the ground.
‘Because she deserves better company than a leech like you.’
Bass shrugged. ‘If the girl wants to be sucked, I’m happy to do the sucking.’
Chloe looked at Janey. ‘When did he turn up?’ she asked conversationally.
‘Couple of days ago.’ Janey’s eyes pleaded with Chloe.
Chloe nodded. Bass stuck out his chin and hissed at her. Janey looked down again.
‘You know you’re too good for him,’ Chloe said.
‘Get fucked. You think you’re too good for anyone.’ Bass made to step around Chloe, tried to drag Janey with him.
‘Call me if you need me, Janey.’
‘Yeah, I will.’ Janey looked up, and for a moment it was as if just the two of them were standing on the street together. Then Bass tugged her hand and Chloe saw the shutters go down in Janey’s eyes, and turned away so she wouldn’t have to watch her going.
‘Bum.’ Chloe slammed the front door.
Pete and Joy’s heads lifted above a Scrabble game. Dane glanced around the paper, feet up on the couch.
‘Was that that cad and bounder who left Janey in Coffs?’ said her mother. Chloe nodded, still too disappointed to speak.
‘Well, I’m glad you’re back,’ said Pete gloomily. ‘You can help me think of a word with seven consonants.’
‘Sounds like fun compared to what I was facing. Let me get this coat off.’
As she went upstairs, Nick’s laughter rolled down to meet her from his room. Chloe felt unaccountably depressed by it. Glancing in as she passed, she saw Nick with his feet on his desk, Isaac lounging on Nick’s bed.
Isaac was saying, ‘… eighteenth-century silver snuffboxes or something. I’m not interested in that. I’m talking about how they live, how they move around—’
Chloe went into her room and threw her dustcoat and scarf on the bed. She felt like throwing herself down, too, and crying for hours. She felt bone-tired and old. She listened to the voices wordlessly vibrating her wall and door. What would it be like to have a friend who stayed on an even keel week in week out, whose state of mind didn’t have to be always monitored and tinkered with? It would certainly be more peaceful, and she might have the time to be more sensitive to other changes—milder ones like her own premenstrual sadness, or the way her father turned short-tempered in humid weather—if she weren’t always keeping an eye on Janey’s huge ups and downs and trying to minimise their effects.
Then again, it might be boring. There’d been plenty of straight, steady people to hang out with at school, but they’d all seemed timid beside Janey. Teachers had warned Chloe that Janey was ‘not a good influence’, and their warnings had been like a signpost: INTERESTING THINGS COULD HAPPEN HERE—STICK AROUND. Chloe had watched in a kind of awe as Janey met life head-on, knocking aside doubts and hesitations like so many plywood stage-flats. She’d been grateful to be rescued from her own timidity, her own steadiness. She’d felt herself change, gaining courage and curiosity and some of Janey’s weird sense of humour.
But Janey was so undiscriminating—that was what got to Chloe sometimes. Janey was probably quite happily letting Bass bully her into seeing the Van Damme movie instead of the Daniel Day Lewis one. It was only when Chloe and Bass were there together, and going for each other, that Janey suffered. Otherwise it was perfectly fine for her to be with Bass or Chloe separately. Couldn’t she see how much of herself went to waste, was lost on a person like Bass? Couldn’t she hear how leaden and boring the conversation had to become to include him?
‘Come on, Clo,’ said Pete when she appeared at the top of the stairs. ‘It’s our turn and I’m desperate.’
‘Brmfskg,’ she said. ‘Qltwrdl. Chmplnk. Any of those.’
‘Because I miss you, turkey,’ Janey had said on the telephone.
‘As long as you don’t bring Bonzo.’
El Bahsa’s windows and door were steamed up. When Chloe opened the door the cappuccino machine was gasping and shushing desperately to keep pace with all the customers.
Janey sat right down the back eating chocolate-powdered milk froth. She looked up and gave an ashamed smile. ‘He had nowhere else to go,’ she insisted as Chloe slid into the seat opposite.
‘You pop-head—where’s he been for the past three months, then?’
‘All over the place.’
‘Yeah, I’ll bet he has. Keep moving, keep running away.’
‘Well, it was a bit like that. You know what happened to him in Coffs Harbour?’
‘Let me see now.’ C
hloe’s eyes ran along the pyramids of biscuits and pastries.
‘He was raped.’
‘It must’ve been pitch dark,’ said Chloe. ‘Cappuccino, please,’ she said to the passing waiter.
‘It’s true! Like, he went to a bar and this guy, this accountant, said he had a bottle of Jim Beam in his hotel room—’
‘Don’t tell me,’ Chloe jumped in. ‘He woke up in the morning bleeding, with about fifty metres of blue toilet paper up him.’ Janey looked stunned. ‘He was too ashamed of what had happened to come back and talk to you, and settle up the motel bill. He got this idea in his head that the guy was after him. He just went, man, he was so freaked.’
‘When did he tell you?’
Chloe fixed Janey with a look. ‘He didn’t. It was all in Saturday’s paper. It happened to a guy called Matthew Barnum two years ago.’
‘What, the same thing?’ Janey looked horrified. ‘What, the guy’s still on the loose? After two—’
‘Don’t you get it?’ Chloe grabbed Janey’s hands. She made herself speak gently. ‘Bass runs out of friends. Bass finds paper in garbage bin. Bass reads about Barnum. Bass sees Janey. “Ah, free accommodation. Maybe even some money,” thinks Bass.’
Janey pulled her hands away.
‘“What happened up the Gold Coast, you fleck?” asks Janey. Bass opens mouth—Barnum story tumbles out. “Poor Bass,” says Janey. “Come on home with me.”’
Janey stared at the shortbread crescents drenched with icing sugar. ‘You really think?’
‘I really think.’ The cappuccino came. Chloe sugared and stirred it. ‘Monkey see, monkey do. You’re lucky you didn’t end up stuffed with blue toilet paper.’
Janey looked startled. The laughter hit them at the same microsecond. Chloe’s cappuccino froth flew off the cup, giving her a white goatee and snowing to the table. They shook and swayed about, their faces red.
‘Oh God, what a dreg,’ Chloe moaned when she could.
‘Who—him or me?’
‘Him, of course.’ After some more sighing and giggling, she asked, ‘Will you please give him the boot?’
‘Oh, Cole. You know me. I’m so weak. He won’t hang around long.’