Holier Than Thou (10 page)
I raised the doona and saw with relief that my jeans and singlet were still on. Even my bra, which was cutting into my back, and my thick Explorer socks were still on.
Tres sexy, Holly
.
I had to get out of there before he saw me in daylight, crusty, hung-over and clad in rumpled, smoky, unladylike clothing. I slipped out from under the doona, picked up my bag and my shirt and cardigan very softly and padded over to the door. I looked briefly at the large black-and-white poster of Tori Amos that he had on the back of his door, before turning the knob and escaping out into the chilly corridor.
I had stayed over at Liam’s many times, where we slept platonically side by side in his bed, and I’d woken in the morning to have a cup of tea with Ingrid. But that morning I felt like death. I knew it was probably a matter of time before my poor poisoned body would start purging itself, and I was desperate to get home and throw up in my own bathroom.
The light was on down in the kitchen, and I could hear the radio and the clink of crockery. I shoved my feet into my shoes, pulled my shirt and beanie on, sd bhenshivering partly with cold and partly with nausea, grabbed Liam’s keys out of the dish and started fiddling with the deadlock on the front door.
‘Liam?’ I heard Ingrid call.
I fiddled harder than ever, trying not to jingle Liam’s keys in the process.
‘Holly?’
Shit! I got the door open, threw Liam’s keys back, bolted out the door and pushed it shut. I ran. I actually ran out of there. The gate was so loud on its hinges! Oh god, the sunlight, the cars, the trees, the memories . . . it was all an assault on my senses and my stomach. I would pay for this. I would pay.
I got inside my own front door and saw on our clock it was 9:30 a.m. I climbed straight up the stairs.
‘Where were you?’ called Paddy, from the living room.
I staggered to the bathroom, got to my knees and waited only a short time before that first retch.
‘Mum!’ I heard Paddy calling somewhere in the background. ‘Mum! Holly’s sick.’
Muffled voices in the background . . . a long, drawn-out retching sound . . . oh, that was me.
‘Hol?’ It was my mother. ‘Holly? Are you alright?’
Then she must have registered the stale reek of alcohol on top of the vomit.
‘Oh for goodness sake, Holly . . . alcohol is a poison.’
She gathered my hair back for me.
‘I know, Mum,’ I panted, between retches. ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry.’
‘Paddy! Go and get a clean towel for Holly. And her pyjamas. And get her bed ready. And put a big glass of water next to her bed. And one of the big mixing bowls from the kitchen!’
She put me under a hot shower, got me out, dressed me in PJs and half-carried me to my bed.
‘I feel so sick,’ I moaned.
‘You’ll be sick all day,’ advised my mother.
I began to cry with my eyes shut.
‘Where’s Dad? I want Dad.’
He stopped breathing at about 10 a.m. Me, Paddy and Mum were all sitting on the bed with him. Sarah and Graeme had excused themselves when his breathing became extremely laboured, giving us our last moment with him before all was still. Mum was stricken, Paddy too. I folded my arms on top of my knees and rested my forehead on them. Life was extinct.
‘John,’ my mother sobbed. ‘We had . . . we had some good times.’ Then her crying became more of a wail.
I stepped out into the hall with the phone handset and dialled the number for the hospice.
‘St Mary’s.’
The operators at that place never said good morning, they just announced where you’d called.
‘Hello . . . um, can you please page Dr Sue . . . Dr Susan Townley please.’
She put me straight on hold.
‘Susan Townley.’
‘Dr Sue! It’s Holly Yarkov.’
‘Hello, Holly.’
‘My dad’s dead.’
‘Oh, Holly. Oh, sweetheart.’
‘Can you...’
‘I’ll be there as soon as I can.’
He went out on a gurney at about 2 p.m. Dr Sue came at eleven, removed the drip and all the gear, wrote a certificate and left. Sarah and Graeme arranged for the funeral people to come. We chose clothes for him to be laid out in and followed the men wheeling the gurney out into the street, where we stood blinking and oozing tears in the bright sunlight. Paddy was still in his school uniform. I knew people were watching from their houses. They loaded him into their vehicle and off they drove. Sarah guided Mum back inside. The phone wouldn’t stop ringing. Graeme answered all the calls.
At four o’clock it was time for me to get ready for opening night of
Kiss Me Kate
. Obviously Mum and Paddy couldn’t go, and Sarah and Graeme needed to be with them. Ingrid and Liam were to pick me up and take me, and bring me home as well. Ingrid arrived with a large cast-iron cooking pot filled with freshly stewed meat and vegetables. When would she have had time to cook it? She worked every day.
‘Thank you so much, Ingrid,’ said Sarah, taking the pot from her. ‘She needs a good hearty meal.’ My mother’s features looked pointy, so underweight had she become.
‘No worries. I’ll pick something up for the kids on the way too.’
‘I’m not hungry,’ I said. And I wasn’t. I could see Liam’s sad face in the car window.
‘Come on, Ingrid.’ I tugged her arm.
Sarah hugged me. ‘Amazing girl . . . ’ she whispered.
I stood in the wings, waiting for my cue. I could see the back of Liam’s head craning forward to read his music as he led the orchestra. Ffion’s best friend Megan was behind me, dressed in her mai {ed crad’s costume. There was so much action going on out there, so much concentration required, so much adrenaline in myself and everyone else. And yet I felt removed. Not far removed, just a little way away, not quite connected to the scene. I scanned the dark faces in the audience, looking for my father’s. Suddenly my knees felt wobbly and my chest cavity filled with sobs that were clamouring to push their way out. My eyes prickled. I pushed them back in with core muscles that would make a pilates instructor proud.
Then I stepped out under the hot lights, right when I was supposed to, and gave a sterling performance.
Craw called for silence in the dressing room after the show and told us we were the wind beneath his wings. He gave me a bouquet of flowers and told me I was ‘the strength’ of everyone and he hoped I would let everyone be my strength too. Then he showed me the program, which had an insert reading
This evening’s performance is dedicated to the late JohnYarkov, father of HollyYarkov
. He hugged me. I thanked him. I think.
Ffion wanted in on the drama too. She came over and hugged me tightly in front of everyone, wiping a tear away from her heavily made-up eye.
‘Oh, Holly . . . ’ she emoted.
The next week in school she would walk right past me in the corridor, ignoring my hello, quickly calculating that there was no reason to acknowledge me in that second. No audience. She couldn’t have me getting ahead of myself.
As I disentangled myself from her embrace in the dressing room I reckoned that she and Liam would be a couple by the end of the cast party on the fourth and final performance night. I was not wrong about that.
The funeral was on the day of the last performance. I was getting very nervous by then. My mother had been so busy picking coffins, taking the casseroles, phone calls and hugs of well-wishers, drafting the order of service, checking in with the printing place and writing the eulogy, she had yet to actually contemplate, much less confront, life without her husband. But I knew it was coming.
We all fussed about what we would wear and flapped around ironing things. Mum asked me to wash the car, which I did. The house was so full of flowers we had them sitting in the mop bucket, despite the extra vases Sarah had brought over. Sarah took Mum to have her hair cut and coloured. It’s important to look good at a funeral. For all that
it’s-okay-to-cry
palaver, your task is to project calm and show the world your best-groomed, strongest and most articulate self. To show the world that you and your family have not ceased to exist as a unit, that this is not a cue for looters and pillagers to descend upon the cave that now has no male defending it.You can collapse when you get home – you probably will – but for that one day you have to keep it together. And we did. Me, Mum and Paddy showed up immaculately dressed and groomed and made it through the day like champions. Looking like we were still a family.
The moment you see the coffin is like in a film when the camera zooms in on someone’s face while the background rushes away. Your stomach drops out as you address yourself to the contents of that wooden box. Surely this must be a mistake, a nightmare, something that’s happening to someone else? Surely there must {y todebe some avenue of complaint, of protest, to have the whole matter reviewed and then reversed? You demand immediate redress! Then you take your seat.
My only wobbly moment in the service came when it was my turn to speak. I put my handwritten remarks on the lectern and looked up.
I saw the chapel full to capacity of the faces of people who had loved my father, and had come here in suits and ties, in dresses with make-up and blow-dried hair, to indicate as much. For a second I was scared that I wouldn’t be able to speak, that my whole ‘keep-it-the-fuck-together-at-the-funeral’ plan would go to shit and the looters and pillagers would be approaching Petersham as the sun set on that terrible day. But my gaze was drawn to the left middle row where the faces of Liam, Daniel, Lara and Abigail looked back at me, their strength transmitted to me in their gazes. I had never seen just the four of them together like that. We were still not a group at school. I wished in that moment, however inappropriately for the occasion, that we could be a group. How much that would cushion the blow of that day and all the days that would follow.
I spoke without incident, looking up to the encouraging faces of my friends at regular intervals.
She’s such a strength to her mother
, I heard people whispering as I resumed my seat in the pew. Ha.
I didn’t make it to the cast party, of course. But the next week at school Liam and Ffion were a couple, as predicted. Liam had put a letter in my letterbox the day after the funeral. The day after whatever happened with him and Ffion had happened.
Dear Holly,
I want you to know that I am thinking of you in this difficult time. I wish there was something I could do. Most of all, I wish you didn’t have to go through this. You should feel free to be as okay or not as you bloody well choose. I hope you know how much I respect you. Re: ‘Kiss Me Kate,’ well done.
You are a woman of steel. A lesser woman would have crumbled.
Lots of love,
Liam
I have kept this letter, and read and re-read it, looking at the text within the text. It’s interesting that he said how much he respected me. That he felt that point needed to be made. As if he knew on some level that his getting together with Ffion Mallon was disrespectful to me. He knew the second he woke up that morning. Jack Mallon’s withering ‘obituary’ was published the following week. I cut it out and kept it, alongside Liam’s letter. And the coaster from that night at the Royal.
We sat captive, the whole team, in the large meeting room, listening to Johanna. I sat up the front taking minutes – I was a compulsive volunteerer. Plus I was always struck by the crapness of the minutes whe ~at n taken by anybody else. Nick said I was a perfectionist. I said whatever, I just want it fucking done right, alright?
Tessa and Kristo sat next to each other, as always. Kristo was happily married with two adorable children, but Tessa was his work spouse. They used to work together ‘in the old days’ when resources comparatively abounded and economic rationalism had not yet reared its ugly head to such a degree. They’d tell stories from that time. ‘We had fire in our bellies,’ they’d say. ‘We were on a mission.’ ‘We had purpose.’ ‘We did good.’ My mission, in contrast, is not to tender my resignation at the end of every week. Times they have a-changed. I suppose I shouldn’t just blame economic rationalism for the whole mess of this job. Ice and hydroponic pot haven’t helped.
Nick sat up the back having slunk in late. Kristy was still up the road at the childcare centre feeding her baby, having run late after one of her clients arrived broke, drunk and hungry. The client staged a half-hour lie-in in the waiting room downstairs, saying she would jump in front of a train unless Kristy arranged for her to be admitted to Bannerman House. Then she sat up, removed her clothing and wrote derogatory words all over her body with a Sharpie from her handbag. Poor Kristy, what a shithouse morning. It had been so busy; I knew there were days when she ran straight from crisis to crisis, fitted in the midday feed, and didn’t eat anything herself. Her wrists looked like they could snap. Gareth and Hannah sat stiffly side by side, looking primed for a fight. Gareth was the union rep for the nurses. Hannah was the union rep for everyone else. Various other usual suspects abounded, all dissociating under Johanna’s less than enlivening managerial style. I would say her ‘uninspiring’ managerial style, but she did in fact inspire us. To anger.
‘We are way below target in entering our stats.’ She had a column graph on PowerPoint. Bless her. It indicated that, according to the statistics we had all individually entered on the new computer program, the staff at Elizabethtown Mental Health Service were actually only doing work for twenty per cent of the time. The rest of the time we were having cocktails and doing the cha cha while the mentally ill roamed the streets.
‘If we don’t reach the target next month, I have been informed by Area (
the gods themselves –
my thought italics
)
that it will become a matter of individual performance management of this core task. Which could progress to dismissal.’
My jaw clenched in anger, thinking of all the lunch breaks missed, the
toilet
breaks missed in that relentless, gut-wrenching job.
Don’t threaten me, lady. Just thank me.
‘If, as our stats reflect, we have eighty per cent more staff than we need, positions will be cut to reflect our true workload.’
Cut! Positions cut! Fucking bitch. I was sure it was just bluffing, but it was cruel.
I raised my hand like a schoolgirl. School had been so much less stressful than this. I wished I’d appreciated it when I was there.
‘Holly, please wait til the end for questions.’
‘No! We a#82="0em"
‘I’m in the middle—’
‘I want to know why we still have five full-time positions vacant on this team, three maternity leaves, one long-service leave and the senior nurse position, and we have all been struggling to cover the gaps ourselves for . . . months . . . and you haven’t even advertised them . . . ’
‘Hear hear!’ boomed Nick’s voice from behind me.
‘ . . . and if we weren’t doing our own jobs plus covering five vacancies, maybe we
would
have free hours to sit down at our dinosaur, one-between-four computers and enter some f—’
Don’t swear at the manager, Holly.
‘Er, stats.’
My colleagues clapped.
I am my father’s daughter.
Johanna adopted her tachycardic pose and fluttered her hands. I’d feel terrible if she ever actually had a cardiac arrest.
‘Are you going to advertise those positions?’ I cornered her.
‘No.’ At least she looked at me. ‘There’s an area-wide freeze on recruitment.’
‘What? Why?’
‘GFC.’
Oh for fuck’s sake. Those bloody bankers. Their bloody ‘free markets’. Don’t even get me started on that. But how the GFC translates to Elizabethtown Mental Health Service’s workforce being cut is beyond me. In fact it sounds like a bit of bullshit.
‘Well, Johanna,’ said Hannah, ‘I think that’s not good enough, and Gareth and I will be calling meetings with our members to discuss what action we will be taking.’
‘Yeah,’ I added. I loved it when Hannah got bolshie. She was usually a sweet-faced Christian girl, one of the meek who will inherit the earth, except when she was being a union rep.
‘Hannah, you and Gareth can call whatever meetings you want,’ said Johanna crisply. ‘As long as it’s in the lunch break. If I find out that union activity has been going on during paid working hours—’
‘It’s always in the lunch break, Johanna,’ cut in Kristo. ‘You know that.’
‘Well. You know that my advice to you all has always been to work smarter not harder.’
‘Yes, thank you, boss, for that pearl of wisdom. You’ve sorted it right out.’ Sarcasm is one of the services I offer.
‘Holly, I don’t know why you are complaining so much, you are actually one of the better performers.’
‘That’s because I stay back after work to do it. Not an option for people who have children depending on them or, well, lives, or who feel they should be paid for their trouble.’
‘It’s your choice to stay back.’
‘It’s not actually—’
‘Let’s move on to the next agenda item,
please.
’
I slumped in my chair, temporarily defeated. It was quite rare for me to lose my fight. Maybe I was burning out at last.
My work phone vibrated an alert on my belt. I opened it.
From: Nick work moby. Hang in there.
I canna do it captain.
I texted back.
‘On-calls.’ There was ominous silence. Johanna looked rattled. I knew she was about to deliver some bad news.
‘As of next month’s roster, you will all be doing one on-call per week.’
‘What?’
‘
Why
?’
‘No way!’
The room had erupted with protest and movement and pissed off sounds.
‘You may or may not know that two more of the registrars have resigned this week and without them we can no longer cover the after-hours roster.’
‘So, your solution to burning out the registrars is to burn us out too?’
‘Look . . . people.’ Johanna looked almost sympathetic. ‘This has been handed to me, okay? It’s a fait accompli. There’s no use arguing; it comes from above.’
‘It’s probably got nothing to do with resignations,’ said Kristo ‘It’s because we are cheaper labour than the doctors. Right, Johanna?’
‘Johanna, what if we refuse?’ Gareth’s face was red. ‘You can’t
force
us to do one on-call a week.’
‘If you check your contracts and your position descriptions,’ Johanna replied, ‘I think you’ll find I can.’ ‘Come on, wrap it up.’ Nick hung over the partition between our desks. ‘It’s almost six.’
‘Can’t,’ I said, madly clicking the mouse and hunching my shoulders over the keyboard. ‘Not finished. Must reach target. Must reach—’
‘Holly, she just said in front of the whole team that you are one of the better performers.You don’t have to worry. You’re far from the first in line to get shot.’
‘Better? What, better than you and Gareth? Better than Kristy who hasn’t slept for over a year? I have never, ever been . . . I was in the
top
percentile band in
every
subject, school
and
uni, this is a blemish on my perfect record.’
Click. Double click. Click. Click.
‘It is beer o’clock, Hollier-than-everyone. You have sat here for an hour, unpaid, and you are not a charity.’
I ignored him.
‘Yarkov. LOG OFF.’
I deflated. ‘This mouse is filthy,’ I whimpered. ‘This keyboard is filthy; there’s crumbs in it and the keys are caked in gunk. This desk is messy. I have file notes from last week to complete, I still haven’t finished my stats . . . ’
‘Sweetie, you’re a perfectionist.You can’t control everything. Or even most things. Just do your best and everything will be okay. You waste so much energy freaking out about stuff.’
He came around to my cubicle and placed his hands on my shoulders.
‘Where did you learn that you have to be perfect all the time?’ he said, and massaged my shoulders with an absolutely sterling mix of firm and gentle. I unclenched almost immediately.
‘Where in God’s name did
you
learn to do that?’ I managed.
‘Well, I did a course, but I think I just have the gift, you know.’
‘You . . . sure do.’
I let him continue, even though some remote part of my brain registered that I was being touched by a colleague in an empty office building. It just felt so good I couldn’t form the resolve to put a stop to it. For a minute or two.
‘Thank you so much Nicholarse,’ I said drunkenly. ‘Now le’s get outta here.’
We walked up to the station together in the dark. A few drops of rain fell.
‘I miss daylight saving,’ I said. ‘I hate going home in the dark and the cold.’
‘Hmmmm. Me too.’
‘Hey, how do you wash those?’ I pointed at his dreadlocks.
‘Just like normal. I shampoo them and rinse them.’
‘Huh.’
‘Shall we have that beer at this end or at the ’ville.’
‘The ’ville, definitely the ’ville.’
Sometimes we did have a drink at Befftown RSL Beinitely thbut we tended to run into a lot of our clients putting their disability pensions into the pokies. Which is depressing. And awkward.
‘So you and Captain Tim have a pretty good thing going on hey.’ Nick was shredding a coaster as we sat quietly drinking our beer in a corner of one of the classy establishments in Marrickville.
‘Yep. It’s pretty sweet.’
‘You’re lucky. To have that sorted.’
‘Ticked that box.’
‘Indeed.’
‘It wasn’t always that way though,’ I qualified. ‘It’s not like I haven’t done my time in the wilderness. Not even the wilderness. I mean . . . had actively shit outcomes.’
‘Really?’
‘Really.’
‘What, really shit outcomes?’
‘Yes!’
‘How do I know that your version of really shit isn’t like . . . Clayton’s shit? Shit Lite. Shite.’
‘Are you serious, Nicholarse? ’cause I could tell you some very sad stories.’
‘Not as sad as mine.’
‘I doubt that very much.’
‘Oh really. Let’s hear it then, Hollier-than-thou.’
‘Alright. It’s a dump-off.’
He stood up.
‘I’ll get us another round, then, if we are going to have a dump-off. That’s thirsty work.’
‘Get some tissues too . . . ’ I called after him.
‘Okay. Where to begin.’ I gulped a mouthful of Little Creatures Pale Ale. ‘I think we will skip past Frank Musset. If you look up the word “pathos” in the dictionary, you will find a photo of my sixteen-year-old self on the night he dumped me.’
‘A-hole.’
‘Chuh! Um . . . a series of learning curves through uni . . . but I think the saddest story I’ve got is for someone who was never even my boyfriend.’ I pretended to look straight into a camera with my head cocked and one eyebrow raised. ‘Or was he?’
‘Intrigue! I love it. What was his name? And how long did it go on?’
‘His name was Liam. And we were friends for a long time. Since high school. We were neighbours.’
‘The boy next door.’
‘Well, a ten-minute walk away.’
‘And where is he now?’
‘He’s gone. From my life. His choice.’
‘Oh. So what happened?’
I drew in a deep breath. I was really going to tell that story. I didn’t think I’d ever told the story to anyone. Not even to Lara or Abigail. Daniel knew something of it, but we’d never discussed it in depth. He just turned to me one day and said, ‘You were a bit keen on Liam, weren’t you?’ I panicked like a cornered rat and it occurred to me to lie, but I have a deep trust for Daniel so I just said ‘Yes.’ He’d nodded and that was it.
I looked at Nick opposite, with his ever-growing pile of shredded coaster cardboard, and I knew he was the right person to tell.
‘We caught the train to and from school together,’ I began.
‘A commuter romance.’
‘Hardly. Then to and from uni together. We got on like a house on fire. He was smart and funny and everyone wanted a piece of him . . . popular, as the Americans would say. But in a marched-to-the-beat-of-his-own-drum way, you know?’
‘I do. Alternative hot.’
‘He was a year ahead of me and, um, he was at my dad’s funeral, which meant a lot to me at the time. His mum was so nice and she was like the mum I never had. His company was relaxing and stimulating at the same time. We could talk about anything and everything. We’d have long conversations about . . . ice-cream. You know . . . like, the new Magnum sandwich, which I would get excited about and he’d be like, “A Maxibon by any other name, what’s the big deal?” And he was a big fan of the Magnum Ego – remember that? – and I’d be like, “It’s too rich, what’s the point of an ice-cream that you pay three dollars fifty for and then can’t finish?” We liked the same music and he played the piano like . . . I can’t even tell you. He’d play a lot of Tori Amos. Have you heard of her?’
‘Have I heard of Tori Amos?’
‘Have you?’
Nick laughed. ‘He was so trying to get it on with you.’
‘What? He never tried to get it on with me. That was the problem.’
‘Trust me. If he was playing you Tori Amos, he was trying to get it on with you. It’s a classic move, but not many guys know about it and it only works on a certain type of girl.’
‘He liked the music, Nicholarse! He’d play it with his eyes closed . . . ’