Banksia Close

By C.L. Rowe

 

At the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, five ordinary people decide to breach restrictions and meet for dinner, where a single conversation will unravel their lives, destroy friendships, and forge new bonds. Why do we choose the paths that we do? Why do we believe what we believe? Where does bias come from? How well do we truly unde

• Language: English
• Publisher: Liberty Moth
• Release date: Aug 30, 2023
• ISBN: 9780645822809

Book preview

Banksia Close

C.L. Rowe

image-placeholder

Liberty Moth

First Published in 2023

Liberty Moth

PO BOX 5

Sassafras VICTORIA 3679

Copyright © C.L. Rowe 2023

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters, and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No parts of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published, and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

In real life or fiction life, every story has a soundtrack.

Scan below Spotify code to access the full playlist:

image-placeholder

All music is referenced within the narrative, and all are written by Melbourne artists.

For the full track list, see below:

Sweet Whirl – Patterns of Nature, Wurli – Rectify, Cry Club – DFTM, Leah Senior – Evergreen, Something for Kate – I Will Defeat You, Kee’ahn – Better things, Floodlights - Matter of Time

Gotye – Somebody That I Used to Know and Don’t Worry, We’ll be Watching You.

The Temper Trap – Sweet Disposition, Fader, Trembling Hands, The Sea is Calling, This isn’t Happiness, and Rabbit Hole

Vance Joy – Rip Tide and Missing Piece,

Hachiku – I’ll Probably Be Asleep and Busy Being Boring,

#1Dads – Run, Orion, and Fold

The Orbweavers – The Other Side, Double Thread, Spotswood, Loom, and Dry

Author's Note

This novel is written in Australian English.

I will only apologize once.

For the City of Melbourne, where all this began.

For the beach town of Lorne, where I wrote my first word.

For Ryan, who was there for our boys when I couldn’t be.

Damon

Echolocation: the ability to sense objects by echo. Bats use it to navigate, and hunt. I love bats. They hang above my head when I walk at night, like judgemental mistletoe. I walk every night, either because I can’t sleep, or because I wake up and find that I am unable to coax myself back. I roam the streets with my earbuds in, blasting tunes to drown out my frustration as the sound of my footsteps chase through the air half a second behind me. I glance over the fences and into the still yards of the neighbours. Some of them I know and some I don’t know, and I amuse myself by wondering about the things that everyone does. How they live, how they love, how they fuck, and then some. How do we compare? Are we really as lucky as we think, or are we all just immersed in what we know, with no idea that what we know is a poor substitute for what we could otherwise have?

Ana barely stirs when I leave our bed. She used to, back in the beginning, when she found the quirk odd. She’s accustomed to my nocturnal absences now. I could be gone for hours and she’d never know. Since our girls emerged from babyhood and began sleeping through the night, she’s returned to the sound slumber of her youth, as if catching up on every skerrick they stole from her. She was always a sound sleeper. It’s easy to be this way when you’re apathetic. Sometimes I envy it. Most of the time, I don’t.

She’s beautiful, my wife. The first time I laid eyes on her, everything in me stopped moving. My stupid, clueless brother had kept trying to nudge me out of my reverie, distract me with some shit I wasn’t interested in. I swatted him away like an incessantly buzzing mosquito and marched straight over to her, desperately needing to share whatever interests she had, so I had an excuse to talk to her, look at her, smell her. My arm brushed hers as we read about the fallen heroes of war, and I was instantly burning. I didn’t care what discourse she’d give me. I’d take her for a coffee, for a night, for the rest of my life, and hearing her soft, slightly husky, liltingly foreign voice sealed the deal. I’d had her within twenty-four hours and never stopped wanting to. Still didn’t stop wanting to. That was thirteen years ago.

Ana wears these adorable baby-doll dresses which hang in gentle folds above her lamb-like knees. Her sun-kissed blond strands are always loosely plaited down her back. She’s slender, lean and unbelievably nubile-looking at 37. She has that peasant village look of her Russian ancestry, all appeasing and sweet like blueberry pie. I still find her intensely exotic, and she has gifts I haven’t seen in a woman before. The first time I met her parents, they toasted every minute human interest with shots of vodka. Here is to friends. Here is to good food. Here is to life, freedom, democracy, family, togetherness, company, to Russia, and to Australia, to me, and to work, to Ana, and to Ana and I together, to prosperity, memory, history, and future. Have more, they said cheerfully. Have you tried the Syrniki? The Pirozhki? The Kotleti? Have it with some more vodka. Eat. Eat. Why won’t you eat?

I was fucked within an hour as they, forcing it down my throat like liquid air, chastised my inability to keep up. Ana kept going, seemingly unaffected and amused by my weakness. Australians don’t drink vodka like this mama, I hear her say, as I grapple to find the walls of my own mind, thinking that Australians don’t drink water like this, when Australians are far from teetotallers. I was flummoxed at my position, being potentially judged by my girlfriend’s parents for my inability to handle copious amounts of alcohol, rather than my intent to consume it in the first place, but I learn a valuable lesson in the process, and this is that no one handles a spirit better than my wife. She drinks me under the table. She drinks my friends under the table, and half of my friends are alcoholics. Alongside her imperviousness to drunkenness comes her earthiness, her disregard for frills, and her ability to precisely sever her needs from her wants. As an Australian man accustomed to insecure Australian women, I am stunned by her acute disinterest in everything but books, food, and her slavish devotion to her historical research. She doesn’t want jewellery. She doesn’t care about fashion and is immune to vanity, not that she needs to be. Her organic elegance is inborn. She chastises our girls in Russian, borrowing the sharp tongue of her mother and babushka, and it always makes me hot under the collar. She looks all innocent, but there are glowing embers under her soft façade and a fierce intelligence that can burn you if you trifle with it. She looks like a fairy princess until she’s pissed, at which point, she transitions to terrifying, but only I recognise this. On the surface, she’s the kind of woman you want to take to bed because she looks like she doesn’t know what she’s doing. She looks like she needs educating. She doesn’t. Not anymore. She’s as trained for me as I am for her. Lately, however, even this hasn’t been enough. I’m an ungrateful arsehole, and I know it. I’m just beyond caring.

I lean in to stroke her back, gently kissing her slumbering head. Then, I slip out silently, first making my way into the girl’s room to check on them. It’s a natural action for every parent. You hear a noise, get up, take a drink, go to the toilet, and then - you check your offspring. It’s embedded in our DNA, like Beatles Lyrics. Imogen is sleeping like a swastika. It took me an entire day to put her Slakt Ikea bed together, and it has never been enough for her. She spills out everywhere but never seems to wake up, even when half of her body is on the floor. She’s her mother’s daughter. Miley is the opposite. She sleeps like a catalogue illustration. Her hands are clasped, perfectly symmetrical by her head. Her plump lips are puckered and her nose twitches when I stroke her face. She rolls over obliviously as I tuck her in. I don’t bother with Imogen. I couldn’t tuck her if I tried, and anyway, the night is warm. She is warm. I smile softly and leave the room, the house. My girls are entrapping cupids I can’t regret, even as I sometimes miss my former free life.

It’s the 2nd of October 2020, and it’s 1 AM - which is well past the 8 PM curfew enforced by our nonsensical government, headed by inimitable megalomaniac, Premier Dan Andrews. Yes, it’s emotive language. Fuck you. I’m not a journalist, and I don’t have to be neutral – as if such a thing even exists in the news media anymore. I’m a living, breathing human being existing under this iron rod. I’m officially a rebel who must lie about exercising what was, until just a few weeks ago, an unassailable democratic freedom. I went out for my hour of legally permitted exercise time earlier today, since I have nothing else to do. Mask up, eyes gleaming with contemptuous ire, I pass my fellow walkers, and fellow runners, and I wonder if they are thinking the same thing I am. I can’t tell if they are smiling or grimacing behind these bullshit fucking sheaths. Our esteemed police force, devoid of anything better to do, and wired to follow instructions like robotic military psychopaths, can’t seem to incorporate merit into a single decision they make. This is nothing compared to these bastards we elected to ensure our way of life, who deny the rights of even the most deserving citizens to bid farewell to dying family members, or access hospitals across state borders! It sounds dystopian, doesn’t it? It is, but apparently, that’s okay sometimes.

For the first time in my life, I’m on government benefits, which doesn’t really help when I own a restaurant, The Skillet; a 95-customer capacity, rustic boutique tapas venue which costs far more than their pissy offering to run. My staff are being paid for jobs which likely won’t exist when this is over. The powers that be apparently haven’t thought of that. They haven’t thought of a lot of things, it seems. I feel like the walking dead, and even with two young girls driving me crazy, I can’t find meaning. Neither can they, and they are too young to even know what meaning is. Dad, can we go to the park? Dad, can we go for a drive? Dad, can we go and see Babushka and Deda? No, no and no. Why not, they ask? You’d think the answer to that question would be complex when translating it for little people. For Ana, it isn’t.

"There are rules, malen’kiye angel, she says serenely. There’s a virus that’s making everyone very sick, and viruses are like the paint you don’t wash off your hands. It smears on everything you touch. With paint, you can just rub it off, but being sick isn’t like that. The people getting sick are dying, sweethearts. You don’t want people to die, do you?"

God, Ana! Our girls are four and seven, and the people who are dying are, in most circumstances, dying anyway. Apparently, the former can be explained by paint analogies, whilst the latter can’t be. Why bother? Why don’t you just tell them what you know underpins every psychological reaction you construct? Tell them about how your grandparents lived through Leningrad, or how being born of Russian ancestry makes you eternally grateful for anything that isn’t communist. Her roots are both buried deep, and on the surface, used like crumbling, soiled ropes to secure her optimism. She’s simply happy to be a naturalised Western citizen. Uplifted by the fact that she doesn’t live stuck in her ancestral memories. It was all so fascinating to me once. Me, the great-grandson of a Gallipoli frontrunner, grandson of a world WWII veteran, and son of a Vietnam veteran. Me, a born and bred Melbourne rug-rat with ancestrally uninteresting First Fleet tracings. Me, the son of the renowned Hemingford family. A military family. The bravery of my forefathers twinkles through our War Memorial like guiding stars. Guiding to our past, to our heritage, back through this great land as a reminder of why we have any freedom at all. Ana, temper fuming and at the ready, sharply reminds me that the sacrifices made for a little virus are nothing compared to the destitute repression of her ancestral homeland. In return, I am quick to chastise her for immersing herself in a life she barely remembers and intently remind her that there is a reason that this country has the freedom Russia never did. It’s called democracy. Our Anzacs fought for it. Sacrifices I can take, but repression I will not. My house is about to be mortgaged, my girl's education is suffering, my marriage is strained, my mental sanity is declining, my business is about to go bust and it’s the only thing I know how to do. My identity, my life, my very existence is swirling down a drain of bureaucratic bungling, and this is nothing compared to the economic price my children will still be paying in the bleak future for these decisions.

I see the goodie-goodie memes flood my Facebook, thick and fast. Patronising parodies between those of us who question the loss of our freedom to the fate of Anne Frank, among others. It's basically a passive-aggressive invitation to perspective, from morons who think themselves clever and profound. That's when you know people are getting truly desperate to remain positive: when they retreat to Godwin's Law in an attempt to sound enlightened, unaware that such antics really just relegate you to a pathetic cliché that is common enough to study. In the end, if we are truly going to compare anything in life to something as abhorrent as the holocaust, then we henceforth relinquish the right to be pissed off about anything. I'll remember to remind these idiots of this one day, when life goes back to normal, and they resume posting shit about the horrors of baristas fucking up their coffee or trains running late. In addition to this ludicrous curfew and the hour-long slot for exercise time, we can’t go more than 5 kilometres from our front doors. The park down the street is taped off, and even though the lake isn’t, there are only so many ducks you can feed. The girls aren’t excited by it anymore. They cry because they miss their friends, their school and kinder, their life. To top it all off, our great state has been polarised. The mates I once shared beers with, who stood beside me on my wedding day and are the godfathers of my children, give me crickets when I criticise the current situation. I don’t even know if it’s because they secretly agree, but don’t want to talk about it for fear of self-implosion, or if they disagree and don’t want to argue. It’s as if they are terrified of stating a position, lest our friendships disintegrate under the pressure. Maybe they will. There is only one exception to this rule, and that is my mate, Lincoln. Only exceptional because he’s a lawyer who gives the entire planet the finger without giving a shit about anything but critical thought. He hates lockdown too, for no other reason than the bungling idiots who run the joint. We give one another a generous listening ear, as we both try to continue living our lives on our own terms. Caring about such a thing feels righteous, without it also doubling as recklessness, because there is such a thing as believing in science, without believing in bureaucracy. Such comrades are few and far between however, and as the people I see every day become foreigners, old school friends that I barely speak to, somehow retain the status of sacred, sneaking their way back into my life on messenger for want of alignment. I suppose I should call that a silver lining.

All the mirrors of my life have been replaced by brick walls and empty space. Depression, yes. Hopelessness? Oh yes. The sense of community once so relied upon by everyone to maintain sanity has been putrefied, as our supposedly benevolent government actively encourages neighbours, family members, friends, and colleagues to report breaches of legislation that were never approved by parliament. Since when did we become a nation of dobbers? I stop short of mentioning the NKVD to my wife, the Russian history professor. It’s not worth the trauma.

I begrudgingly followed the rules during the first lockdown. It was a new and unprecedented experience then, and even I could confess to being considerably freaked out. Oh, Italy! Oh, America! We had to avoid that terrible situation, and we could have – had certain arseholes done their fucking job. Like New Zealand, we are completely surrounded by water. It should have been easy, but they’ve been flying blind since the beginning, as if pandemics are a new phenomenon. As if there was never a swine flu, a bird flu, or SARS. The fact that none of these ever reached our shores to the same level as Covid is immaterial. We pay these arseholes billions to protect us, and such responsibility includes forecasting the eventuality of a pandemic hitting this country. If they can do it for war and adequately prepare, then they can do it for viruses. As it was, they declined military help and hired unqualified monkeys to screw quarantined patients and break protocols, forcing us into another lockdown. Apparently, we, the people, need to do better. No, Mr Andrews, you need to do better. You need to answer questions. You need to be accountable, and whilst doing so, you need to stop pretending that your incompetent, egomaniacal bullshit isn’t destroying lives. If you can’t face the music, then let me introduce you to what once happened to incompetent leaders in my wife’s homeland. You need the crosshairs trained on you. You need to feel the cold chill of the mirrorless walls. You should be shot!

Do I say any of this out loud? No, I do not, especially not on social media since you can wind up suspended. Rather, I beep like the sonar of a bat, looking for resistance, looking for a safe route to navigate through my social sphere. It’s a tense time in my state right now. This city I love, appreciated by many for such great things, is now globally infamous for one of the most anti-democratic, archaic, repressive measures of regulation ever known in a country which has never fought an ongoing war on its own soil, and war is relative. It’s everywhere right now, on a micro level, in people’s lives, livelihoods and homes. I have faltered, stumbled, and fallen away from my adoring wife, feeling isolated by her inability to feel my frustration, my anger, and my drowning fear for our family who, it seems, she is happy to uphold as a paragon of perfection so long as it doesn’t fall into the decline of communal living, black bread, and boiled potatoes. As if all I have worked for, strived for, and sacrificed, was never really of prime importance to her. What does she honestly think I was doing it all for? I can guarantee you it wasn’t for fun. It was for the girls. For her, so she can live the prosperous life her grandparents wanted; a life that she apparently doesn’t need.

I’ve done three laps of my block. It’s been nearly four months now, and I still feel too guilty to walk straight to Casey’s door, which is only five doors from us. She’s home from her shift at the hospital. She finishes at ten every night, and every night, she waits for me to come. I no longer walk at night because I can’t sleep. Now, I set my alarm and keep my phone on vibrate. I sleep with it under my pillow where its soft, persistent vibrations rouse me, and those shakes are coming earlier and earlier. Ana is asleep by ten. After that, the night is my playground. I become the bat, and my astute echolocation takes me to one place; the only place I feel I can shed myself of my fear, my anger, and the suffocating straitjacket that only I seem to be wearing.

They were best friends once, Casey and Ana. When Casey moved in five years earlier, Ana took her a fresh batch of borscht and didn’t come home for six hours. When she finally breezed through the door after dark, it was with a waft of exuberance I’d seldom seen in my sensible, even-keeled other half.

‘Is she a keeper?’ I asked, smiling.

Ana grinned, her eyes overflowing with awe as she nodded with deep sincerity. ‘She’s fabulous.’

Childless, professional Casey was like a salve for my intellectual wife, who abhorred mother’s groups and endless prattle about children. After Imogen was born, Ana insisted she could feel her brain dissolving with the mossy minutia of motherhood. She has a doctorate in political history and lectures at Monash University. As much as she was an instinctive natural with our girls, she wasn’t ever one to drown herself in the experience of motherhood. She doesn’t do working bees, the PTA, elaborate birthday parties or baby books. When people ask her how the girls are, she gives one-word replies before changing the topic to something more stimulating. She adores them. She is proud of them, but they are not her sole purpose. Making your children the centre of the universe is akin to deliberate self-sabotage in Ana’s eyes. After all, children are destined to leave you, and one never should never wrap their world around that which is designed to one day abandon you. Many consider her cold when she says this, so she feels alienated. With Casey, she could say such things without judgement. She could drink copious amounts of vodka without people asking her how she planned to take care of the girls the next day. She could go out nightclubbing and chain smoke without being gossiped about for her bad example. Most of all, she had someone who loved to fall down the bottomless pit of her brilliance. Casey loved listening to Ana talk about history and sought her opinion on political events. They watched documentaries together, and they both loved Rick and Morty. Casey, desperately wanting children but in the grips of a long fertility battle with her then-husband, snapped up the opportunity to babysit our girls, who quickly called her auntie.

The first time I met Casey, I was taken with her earthiness, her clarity, and the quintessential Australian qualities I sometimes missed with Ana. She is pretty, in that surfer chick way. She drinks beer, tans like a Vegemite kid, swears like a tradesman, and has an adventurous streak that Ana doesn’t subscribe to. She treks, travels, and skydives. She is alive, with that reckless, youthful spirit that usually peters out. I also noted how she looked at me, how her gaze would linger on my smile and warm in response when we talked. Flattering no doubt, even if it was all innocent. Her former husband, Graham, was a good guy. He wore cufflinks engraved with his initials, something I relentlessly teased him about, calling him a pretentious tosser. He, in turn, criticised my penchant for balloon wine glasses, insisting they were just as pretentious. He was a kindred spirit for me, really. In a short time, we were best friends and sought one another’s counsel on nearly every matter. Ana liked him because he enjoyed genealogy tracking and Greek myths. I liked him because he enjoyed sports, bourbon, and Simpsons reruns. I also liked Casey, even with the tiny whisper at the back of my mind that such flirtation could be dangerous, but I knew my place and was very content with it. Casey may have been a sexy Aussie woman, but I’d known tonnes of them and there were few surprises. My Ana, on the other hand, so stunningly clever, with that decadent accent still dripping through me like butter, could never be toppled. Such words of reassurance, however, meant little to her once she became aware of the tension that existed between Casey and me. Women like Ana don’t fold to delusions and lies. Russians are sober interpreters of life, of circumstance, of reality. Once she was on the scent, the lioness circled to protect her pride and her friendship with Casey, in the face of her realisation, was partially jettisoned. I tried to convince her to move past it, never admitting to the quiver of tension she insisted on seeing. After all, I wasn’t about to act on it. For reasons both circumspect and historical, I knew I’d never betray my marriage.

That was then, before viruses and lockdowns and financial hardship came crashing down; before everything I built and held dear was placed on the chopping block for the greater good.

I keep walking as I listen to the music burst through my ears, taming my anxiety with the lyrical therapy of The Floodlights and their musings about governmental downfall. Telling me that it’s all just a matter of time. I can only hope so. I’ve never voted Labor, much to Ana’s chagrin.

I pause by Casey’s letterbox and stand, looking down the paved driveway where her Subaru Forester sits, still warm and waiting as I inch past.

Hands in my pockets, I pace. The light is on, milky and warm through the sides of the drawn blinds. I look down, up, around, lip bitten with a consternation I know I won’t yield to. Then, I quietly knock.

She’s lazily soft as she answers the door, exhausted from her shift. Like birds of a feather, we have always fondly co-existed at our Christmas street parties, kid’s birthday parties, for no-good-reason Tuesday parties. All the celebrations, events, and keen social butterfly days we are no longer allowed to have. She works in the trenches, head to toe in PPE, medically informed and still calling it all bullshit, like me, because, like me, she’s an entitled, sixth-generation Australian who doesn’t like her liberty to be trifled with. She is the type of woman I probably would have married before I met Ana. Ana who ruined me for all other women, who walks around in my arteries, trailing her slender fingers across every string of my being, my dreams, my life. As for Casey, there was once a line, first when we were both married, and then after I only remained so, and it stayed, fixed, wanting to be crossed but never breached, until this, because viruses don’t just infect the body. They infect your mind, your faith, your sanity, your loyalty.

I smile softly, looking at her in her scrubs. Her Minions lanyard still hangs around her neck, being tickled by her wispy chestnut flyaway hairs. We have time. Ana will be asleep until the girls get up. Even if she wakes up and calls, it’s an easy cover. I went for a walk, babe. I’ll be home soon.

I step forward, and she reaches for me. She smells of sterile exhaustion. My arms are around her, lifting her, stumbling forward and urgently looking for anywhere to lay her down. I’ve been looking forward to this all day. She kisses me, opens for me, and beckons me between her thighs. She’s wet, warm, and ready, and I’ve barely touched her. She lifts herself as I sink, drawing me in deep, begging me to fill her loneliness and vanquish mine. It’s violent, fast, and passionate. I tend to her needs just as she tends to her stunning English garden. Her escape but my Eden. I don’t stop until I know she’s had enough. She’s not alone when I’m inside her, and I’m not fretting with anxiety when she surrounds me. It’s like soulful bloodletting, and it seeps through both of us, warming, blissful, comforting, and becoming entirely too familiar.

Ana is gone from my mind the entire time, but distraction is cruel. Two rounds in and finally exhausted, Casey lies in my arms, stroking my chest and peering up from the nook under my arm. I gently scratch her back and kiss her temple, but my wife keeps fuzzing through my vision like phosphenes, floating in serene, judgemental orbs, awaiting my demise. I’m standing on the bridge to Hades and looking for coins, but I can never find them. I close my eyes, waiting for another force to press the silver upon my lids, but no one does. This is my life right now. This is my heaven and my hell. I know I’ll have to pay for it eventually. Last week, the week before. today? What’s the point of being a good boy at this juncture? I’m in this too deep now. We’re all in this now. A mellifluous voice lilts from the nearby speaker, singing to me about flowers, weeds, and better things.

I circle Casey’s scapula lightly with my fingertip and sigh into her hair. 'How was your shift?’

‘Long and sweaty,’ she murmurs, turning onto her belly. ‘I’m so exhausted. Tried to lift a patient that was vomiting, and it was like my arm gave out on me. Just turned to jelly right under the weight. I could barely get her an inch off the bed, and my wrist was aching. Stupid arthritis.’ She reaches for her bedside table and obsessively rubs Voltaren into her knuckles, bending and flexing her fingers. ‘I barely get time to do anything but work.’ She rolls her eyes contemptuously. ‘Nurse Ratched suggested I take better care of myself, even as she never offered to reduce my shifts.’

‘Is that Sara?’

She nods, groaning a little as she rubs her hand.

‘I thought you liked her.’

‘In small doses,’ Casey replies.

I frown. ‘Well, you’re only a spindly little thing. How much can you really be expected to lift?’

‘Never been an issue before,’ she replies with a sigh, ‘especially not with a three-year-old.’

‘What was wrong with her?’

‘Food poisoning,’ Casey replies. ‘Poor kid barely stopped puking the whole time and was too little to lift herself and do it over the side, not that they know how to at that age.’

I gently kiss her temple. ‘Don’t wait for your superiors to recognise your exhaustion and give you some time off. She might be a pain in the arse, but she’s right. You do need to take better care of yourself.’

‘You sound like my sister,’ she makes a face.

‘That’s not possible,’ I reply. ‘Karen hates me.’

‘She thinks you’re leading me to a baaad place,’ Casey drawls, turning her rickety wrists in circles. ‘She doesn’t seem to understand that I was already in a bad place.’

‘I’m not making it worse..?’

She considers for a moment and then glances up. Kisses me. ‘Not right now.’

Not right now means that she will curl up and sob after I leave. I know she does this sometimes, even if she won’t admit it. I look at the ceiling and draw a deep breath, looking to change tack. I squeeze her closer to me and tilt her face up. Kiss her again. ‘Take care of yourself or you won’t be any good to anyone at that hospital.’

‘Blah, blah, blah…’ she muses. ‘My patients need me.’

I grit my teeth and shake my head. There is something innately stubborn about nurses. Something ingrained in their psyche where they truly do believe they can’t put themselves ahead of others. I say nothing, choosing to change the subject. I hate martyrdom, even as I can admire its subscribers. ‘What’s the Covid situation like there?’

Her soft breasts flatten against me in velvety pillows. They feel sublime across my constricted chest. ‘Morale is in the toilet. We need respirator masks, desperately. They say it’s not necessary.’

I shake my head, aware that respiratory masks were 96% effective, with surgical masks only 67% effective. My mind is boggled by our government’s inability to make logical fucking decisions. We are all locked in our houses because this pernicious virus is apparently so contagious, we can’t be within 1.5 metres of each other, even with masks on, and yet our medical crews are being told that they can’t have the most effective protection while slogging away in the trenches with the confirmed ill. Idiots. Where do these people get their credentials? I cinch Casey closer to my side. ‘Are you scared?’

‘Of course, I’m scared!’ she replies, resting her chin on her clasped hands. She smiles slightly. ‘You should be too.’ She frowns at me, rather adorably. There is humour flecking in her steady gaze. ‘You’re so badass, Damon. Not only are you fucking around on your wife, but you’re doing it with a nurse who could very well be infected, and you’re out past curfew.’

I shrug slightly. ‘If Graham were still around, would you quarantine yourself?’

‘No,’ she chuckles lightly, and then she gives her own little shrug, ‘but that could just be because I wish he was dead.’

I smile. ‘You’re not that cold-hearted, Ladybird.’

‘That’s right,’ she nods with faux conviction. She sits up and holds her arms out as if she’s at a pulpit, slamming her fist down into her open palm, making her abundant breasts jiggle. ‘I am a nurse. I live in servitude to others. I put myself second. It’s in my blood to walk around the infected and the dying without a second thought as to my own safety.’

I stroke her thigh with knowing amusement. ‘You deserve a medal.’

‘Well, all life is of equal value, Damon’ she replies lazily, laying back down by my side.

‘No it’s not,’ I scoff, placing my clasped hands behind my head and stretching out contentedly. She curls up into my side and listens and I stare up at the ceiling. ‘The girl’s lives are more valuable than mine. The law abider’s life is more valuable than the criminal’s life.’ I lean over and continue into her ear in a whisper. ‘The nurse’s life is more valuable than the addict that keeps turning up in the emergency room. The leader’s life is more valuable than that of the serfs.’ I sigh.

‘If all lives had equal value, we wouldn’t send healthy young men into wars for lost causes. If all lives had equal value, this virus wouldn’t have uncovered the abhorrent system failures impacting our most frail citizens. If all lives had equal value, then Tom Hanks would be back State-side, and all those towers in the ghettos of Melbourne would be evacuated and the residents put up in the Hilton. We convince ourselves of equal value because we like the illusion of idealism. It doesn’t make us true idealists.’

She sits up slightly and looks at me, all faux earnestness. ‘You should go into politics,’ she teases me. I smile broadly, aware that I sound more like my wife than myself. I digress.

‘Haven’t you noticed, by now, that I’m too efficient to be a politician?’

‘Okay,’ she grins, resettling herself into the upright position across my chest. She positions an invisible microphone into her clenched fist and holds it under my nose. ‘What would you have done, Premier Hemingford?’

Chuckling, I gesture as she humours me with a cute frown. ‘First, I would probably have taken the ADF up on their offer, like the rest of the country did.’ She nods sternly, holding her invisible mike steady. ‘Or even better, I would have told all those military boys to go home for a well-earned break, and turned those army bases into quarantine centres for all these returning travellers.’

She rolls her eyes and frowns incredulously. ‘Like concentration camps…’

I shake my head. If only she understood how ridiculous that comparison was. Nevertheless, I shrug, not wanting, or needing to explain the difference or how I know it. ‘Sure,’ I shrug. ‘Only you emerge with your way of life protected and not in tatters. Families happy, businesses running, the economy still healthy, rights still intact and not obliterated.’

‘Still,’ she counters. ‘People would have to voluntarily go. How on earth do you get people to agree to do that?’

I smile at her broadly. ‘You pay them and their families generous sums of money.’

I see the snap in her eyes within seconds. She is pondering as I await her reaction. I don’t get one, and as she continues to think, I keep going. ‘Then, you give medical staff the choice to risk their health, by offering them ample bonuses to quarantine themselves for that entire period.’ I look at her and smile. ‘Tell me, Registered Nurse Casey McLeod, wouldn’t you be more content to put your life on the line for thirty, fifty, a hundred thousand dollars? In the end, nothing is going to be as expensive as the path they’ve put us on now.’

She nods slowly, blinking into submission. She shrugs in noncommittal agreement. ‘Money does talk.’

‘Yes.’ I nod. ‘That’s why the Queensland Premier is happy to let Hollywood actors and footballers in. They bring money into the state. Perhaps the grieving would be allowed access to their deceased loved ones, had they a million bucks to donate. Values, and rights; all on the chopping block to be divided on merit. This virus has brought out an ugly colour in this country.’

You can take the son out of the military, but you can’t take the military out of the son. We don’t need public health experts, or lily-livered political mouthpieces with arts degrees. We need cut-throat bastards with strategy. I hate that I sound like my father, and I hate even more that I agree with the version that I’m emulating in more ways than I care to acknowledge. I slightly move away from Casey, but she doesn’t notice.

Instead, she purses her lips and puts her head down, offering another take. ‘I think they’re just blind idiots.’

‘Well, here’s hoping they learn, because this will happen again.’

She smiles serenely at me. ‘So confident.’

‘Yeah.’

‘That’s why I love you.’

As soon as she says it, she winces. Her eyes close and her head crashes down and buries deep, concealing a blush of bashfulness. I sigh deeply, exhaling my regret and apology over her dewy shoulders. ‘I’m sorry…’ her voice muffles and cracks. ‘I said the L-word.’

I gently stroke her hair, but I don’t make her look at me. I’m carrying enough guilt. ‘You can say it.’ I say softly. ‘You just can’t expect me to say it back.’

She finally raises her face, her eyes closed in a regretful wince. ‘Can we just pretend that I didn’t say it?’

‘Casey – ’

‘I know who I am, Damon,’ she says with terse regret. She looks back at me. ‘You’re not the only cut-throat bastard in this room.’

Why are women always so intent to sever themselves from the emotion that softens them? Casey is far from cut-throat. She says it to keep me feeling secure, to keep me close. Or perhaps she says it because she thinks it mimics Ana’s strength. Ana who, from the second I met her, has never belonged with the flocks of gaggling girls, but stands alone with a charisma that you usually only see in men, whilst existing in a body that you usually only see on models. I keep having to remind myself of the factors that have led me to this affair. The sweet whirl of lyrics now muses on little minutes and small hours. Chastises me, telling me that I never stay long enough. I’ll never understand why women match their misery with their music.

I smile softly and pull Casey under me, distracting her with my open mouth and eager tongue. Casey’s austere assessment of life has always crosshatched mine. We are cut from the same cloth: that no-bullshit Aussie tapestry that is often mistaken for laid back, until you cross us. Our wanton communion is a cosmic, clandestine fuck you to those who deem to control us. We are the teenagers smoking behind the bus stop, exhilarated by our thrashing rebellion. We are managing to keep ourselves alive, whilst everyone else is gasping like deck-bound trout, trying to survive, day in and day out, breathing the stifling air of combustible familiarity. I love Ana. I love our girls. Being in their company is usually my favourite pastime, but recently, they have become a daily dish that I’m tired of consuming. It can’t be one-sided. I’m sure my wife is sick of the sight of me, stuffing up the routine she has worked so hard to build with the girls. I’ve been moody, short, and snappish. Fucking Casey, in the beginning, was just a desperate escape. A long-held curiosity which suddenly seemed like a palatable solution to my misery, but now I like who I am when I’m with her. Lying next to Casey feels more like coming home than home itself. I’m floating on my back, buoyant in our mutual distaste for our circumstances. In the beginning, I felt justified. Now, I feel guilty enough to grovel, if not stop. I pick Ana flowers and leave them on her pillow. I help around the house without her having to ask. I stroke her, kiss her, and tell her she’s beautiful. I take the girls out to the yard for games of chasey so she can nap. Fucking Casey keeps me even-keeled. Fucking Casey makes me question my worthiness. Fucking Casey, right now, makes me a better man, a better husband, a better father.

I empty her for the third time. Panting, she curls into me where I hold her and blink through my own vivid finish. We are up the other end of the mattress now, heaving and exhausted. I glance around the room as I subside, fixing my gaze on the picture above the bed. There is a weird, red, goat-like creature playing a blue violin as a green woman extends her hand toward it with flowers. There is a bunch of other stuff going on as well. Random lines, and some etching of people and buildings down the bottom. The background is bright yellow, interspersed with greys, whites and muted sage greens. I have no idea what the hell any of it means. Ana hates the thing. Thinks it’s hideous. She’s always goading Casey for it. It’s become something of an in-joke. When I first saw it, I thought it was ghastly. Now, it seems oddly striking. Beautiful even. I guess life is like that sometimes. You don’t always fall in love with it at first sight, especially the nonsensical parts, but after a while, it grows on you. I wonder if this is how I feel about my existence now. The fact that I’m lying here, doing what I am doing, was once an uncomfortable burn. Now, it’s vaguely numbing. I’ll take it.

Casey stills and looks up at me curiously. Her breath is still uneven. ‘Are you going to Tabitha’s tonight?’

I groan. Tabitha Curran and her husband Tommy live next door. Ana has known Tabitha since they were seven, with the latter assigned to be Ana’s guide when she immigrated and started primary school. Ironic, since Tabitha isn’t fit to guide a steady hand into a loose pocket. Rather, it’s Ana who ultimately took that role, not just for school, but for life. Tabitha is a legacy friend, existing in the present for the sole reason of being rooted in the past. My wife has never been able to shake the woman, to the point that Tabitha, so reliant on Ana’s loyalty and friendship, deliberately moved in next door so she could live out this fantasy life they’d outlined in their school binders as naïve ten-year-olds; the one where they live happily ever after and raise perfect children. The only problem with this is the stark contrast that exists between Ana’s blind rationality and Tabitha’s childish optimism. She’s a Panglossian pain in the arse, a perpetual Pollyanna, too busy floating on bubbles of denial to see what a train wreck her life is. I suppose when one has lived as rough as she has, the word wreck becomes relative. That’s what she and Ana ultimately have in common: acute gratitude that things aren’t as bad as they could have been, even if the current situation is still dire. With Ana, this only applies to lockdown, but with Tabitha, it applies to life.

She and Tommy have two girls. Their names are Rain and Pebble. Tabitha affectionately asserted the names were distinguished. Ana calls it child abuse, even though the former is her goddaughter. No human being named Rain or Pebble will ever be Prime Minister, although, given the current crop of idiots, they probably couldn’t do worse.

What was initially polite tolerance has segued into a weird form of social Stockholm Syndrome. I care about these people, even reluctantly, because I live next to them and have gradually been worn down by their presence in my life. Ana chastises me for my harshness. She loves Tabby, even though they could not be more different. She is the earth mother that Ana usually mocks: a clean-living, green smoothie-guzzling, anti-vaxxing vegan who looks as though she is perpetually listening to Enya. She’s also a clusterfuck of complexity, which she believes makes her more interesting than your average suburban mother. No such interest here. I know where Tabby’s complexity comes from, and as such, I know that much of it is self-perpetuated. She defines herself by shit she should have long left behind, and it dictates everything she does, including enslavement into a marriage which couldn’t possibly have occurred had demons not been calling the shots. She and her husband have so little in common that they placidly repel one another. I have no idea how they managed to procreate their girls. Thankfulness on Tabitha’s part perhaps, after Tommy swooped in and rescued her when she was a pregnant twenty-something fresh out of rehab. Her son, Shaun, works for me as an apprentice chef, and up until Ana came begging me to help him on behalf of a too-proud Tabitha, was constantly in trouble with the law and had been expelled from school. Tabitha completely lost control of him after she had the girls, and after Tommy unsuccessfully tried to straighten him out by sending him to the army cadets, they were out of options. He’s a good kid at heart, just a bit fucked up and angry like we all can be at that age. He has no idea who his father is, and whilst he has a close relationship with Tommy, seems still to be rebelling over something he felt was stolen from him. We bonded well and would chat late into the night as he stayed to clean up the kitchen. I gave him a jigger of bourbon here and there, and let him offload as he did the prep. I saw myself in him a bit, albeit for different reasons. He’d tell me that there was nothing worse in the world than not knowing who your father was. Nothing worse than having to conjure fantasies about who sired you. I disagreed. The worst thing in the world is knowing exactly who your father is and realising he’s a prick. Can’t conjure fantasies about that reality. You just accept it.

Since Covid hit and The Skillet has been closed, Shaun has retreated. I catch him walking sometimes, for his one hour of exercise time, ears plugged in and blasting the death metal his mother won’t let him play. There is nothing else for the kid to do but surf the net and download tunes, since Tabitha doesn’t own a television. Weirdo.

Tabby has regarded me with distant contempt since the first time I met her. It had been Ana’s birthday and we were all in our twenties. She’d sweetly asked me if there was any vegan food to eat. I’d smiled just as sweetly as I flippantly confirmed that there was water in the tap. Since then, she’s been passively polite. We can talk about surface shit, but we both know this is as far as we can go. She smiles and nods and does all the right things, but I can still see the dislike in her eyes. I know when a woman hates me, and she hates me.

‘I don’t think I have the energy for Tabitha Curran,’ I mutter, turning into Casey’s hair. Like Ana, she also adores Tabitha and chides me with a frown. ‘She’s harmless, Damon.’

‘So are butterfly wings.’ I reply. ‘Yet they can cause typhoons.’

‘What?’

‘Never mind.’

‘She means well,’ Casey pressed. ‘Besides, it’s the only opportunity we all have for a little social time.’

Since being in lockdown, the constricting fingers of this Stockholm Syndrome have tightened. Our quiet court, Banksia Close, has become a play on words. It’s no longer a location for the mailman, but a metonymy to represent the acute dysfunction which occurs when you cram already overly familiar people into a box they can’t escape. Our combined girls are hostages, joined at the hip twenty-four hours a day, traversing the gate through our boundary fence with an ease that hadn’t existed before. Tabitha babysits