Perfect Skin (15 page)

There's been rain just before dawn, and we run around uni with wet smells lifting from the grass and the sun glinting from leaves, from droplets of water that will soon burn away. We run past the rowing sheds, past the City Cat ferry stop, past the colleges and the lakes.

I get to work, I shower, I'm glad it's a half day.

There are ping-pong balls in my in-tray. There's an email from George, entitled ‘International sign of disrespect'. It's something to do with urinating on flags, and the UN Security Council. And George isn't even here. Yesterday he was at uni and he's back there today, re-enrolling in the part-time philosophy degree he's been doing for the last couple of years. George says he needs to keep his levels of mental stimulation high. As demonstrated by his willingness to devote energy to tangents. What did he do to get this UN thing? Go to a search engine and key in ‘urinate'? I hope they work him hard in that degree.

I go to thank Wendy for telling him, and for the ping-pong balls.

That was actually Sylvia,
she says, and fakes a look of contrition.

What? Sylvia's my parents' age. She wears her hair in a bun every day. She's not supposed to be making jokes about my ability to control my stream.

Don't be so ageist. Your mother would do it.

She doesn't have the bun.

Don't be so bunnist. Now, about Katie . . .
She pauses. I wait. I'm not going to blow it now.
I thought that was a nice email you sent her.

Well, thanks. I hoped you'd like it. Should I have Cc'd you in? Except, when I was sending it, I had the idea it was just between her and me.

Um, she forwarded it to me. I didn't ask her to. She'd like to see you, for coffee, maybe. Casual. Just to clear the air, she said. 
So
that everything's all right between the two of you.

And you can't say no to that, since it'd mean everything wasn't all right between the two of you. And when you're the one who's soiled the other person's pet you have to be prepared to go to some trouble to make up for it.

But the day is better when I've got the whole issue out of my head, and I'm working on skin again. Into the rhythm of the laser as it zaps its way precisely into a skin cancer, working off the layers. And the vacuum hums away and Nigel talks to the patient, describing what's happening, or chatting. Leaving me alone, moving precisely between shots, stripping away what I need to.

My memories of six months ago are patchy. I wonder if they always will be. If it's due to a receptive issue at the time – an inability to take much in – or if it's all there, stored, linear and whole, waiting its turn to be accessed. The simplest things were complicated. Eating a meal all the way to the end, sleeping. A wild tiny baby needing care so often. All a blur. The cremation. The paperwork I had to go through. Looking up at the timber ceiling of the crematorium and seeing what appeared to be a couple of pieces of sticky tape, as though someone had once put a poster up there.

I like the baby, now that I've adjusted. Even today I like her, after a night of moderate shittiness. I like her sense of adventure, her attachment to detail as she studies a broken Bonio or a plastic cup, like someone preparing for an exam on it. We're quite a household. The three of us. The Bean, me and a dog that's only just smart enough to blame me for rain, but not smart enough to know how dumb that is. Who insists on eating the corners of any piece of fruit toast in the vicinity. Who ignores his own name when he chooses to, but never ignores the word ‘cheese'.

Now, everything's organised for next week then?
my mother says when I get there after lunch.

I think so.

We'll be back on the eleventh or twelfth,
so
everything's back to usual on Monday the fifteenth.

It's in the diary. I think Sylvia's pretty keen about having Lily at work for a couple of half days next week, after that day not so long ago. She's novelty value. And a good reason not to do the boring bits of the job for a couple of days.

I don't mention the ping-pong balls I have to put up with as the downside of the deal. My mother gets out her bushwalking books and shows me where they'll be going.

And your father's printed off some information about the wineries in the area, so that's the afternoons taken care of.

When I call Ash, I get her answering machine. I'd forgotten she's at uni all day on Tuesdays.

Suddenly the outgoing message is over, I've got the beep and the tape's recording. I wonder if I should have had a reason to call her. So I invite her to dinner, tomorrow night.

I might be going to tell her about Mel. Or I might not. I might actually be wanting all that out of my head again and replaced with human company of the adult kind, but someone outside my too-close circle. It's like, piss on one cat, everyone knows. Everyone thinks you're not on top of your life until you've told them, in some detail, how you came to urinate on a coffee-friend's much-loved pet.

Still, it's better that they're giving me ping-pong balls than trying to rush me off into therapy. How could you bring that story up in therapy without precipitating a grim search for meaning?
Now, Jon, suppose I put it to you this way. Perhaps now that you're in the sole-parenting role, some issues are coming to the surface. Perhaps there's something with your parents, your own toilet training. How do you feel about your mother? Really. And tell me, how do you feel when people are late for their appointments?

Fine, I feel fine. Another moment's treasured laziness.
A chance to address my in-tray. Gaze at the horizon. Pass a little urine, maintaining surgical accuracy at all times. Woe betide any cats that cross my path, but I feel fine. And when I run in the mornings with Ash, she's the only one fit enough to talk. I called her because I felt like conversation, but you can't tell that to an answering machine.

And on the subject of therapists, what's Katie thinking about it? How do Jungians feel when you wee on their cats?

The phone wakes me. I've fallen asleep on the sofa with the Bean on my chest.

I swivel round and pick up, and my outgoing message cuts in. I press all the wrong buttons and the phone screams and wails before I can fix it. It's Ash.

Do
you know how to use that thing?

No. No-one ever told me. So I hit all the buttons until the noise stops.

Good system.

Um, I called you, I say to her, still waking up. I was going to invite you to dinner tomorrow night.

Yeah
. . .
um
. . .
I think you did if I heard the message correctly. So, is it still on?

Yes. If you can make it.

I can make it. It'd be nice.
Do
you want me to bring anything?

No, I don't think so.

Okay. Now, could I ask you a favour? And if it's not convenient say no, and it's fine.

Sure.

Are you going straight home after work? Because if you are, my car's got a few problems and I need to get
some groceries. I wondered maybe if I could meet you at Toowong Village when you finish work and I could buy them and we could take them to my place.

Yeah, that's fine.

If it's not feasible that's okay. If there's a problem with childcare, or something.

No. It should be all right. I've got some stuff to buy too. I was going to be there anyway.

So dinner is on. With her head still on my chest, the Bean is looking up at me with her woken-too-quickly face and she's unsure if she should get upset or not. I do some quick talking, anything to force a laugh, then we're okay.

I can't even use the answering machine. Mel died before telling me how to use the answering machine. She set it up when we first got it, and any time we call-screened she cracked before I did.

It's not as though I'm useless. She couldn't use the video or the blender, and I was the only one who could operate the dishwasher without the cups ending up with grungy sediment appliqued to the bottom. There are too many machines in life now for it to make sense for everyone to try to master them all. Mastery of a new machine, in a couple, must sensibly fall to one party or the other. And then, if you're uncoupled, you have to face taking up the slack or you have to decide not to couple again until you meet someone whose skills exactly match your deficits. I'm learning. I'm fearless at programming the CD player now, embarrassed at how easy it is to do rice in the microwave.

But I still can't use the answering machine. The instructions must be somewhere.

Coffee with Katie. Why did I say yes to coffee with Katie?

The garbage truck comes early in the morning while I'm feeding Lily before taking her to childcare. The evidence of towel theft is now permanently disposed of.

I thought the email would be enough. I thought we could leave it there. But I don't suppose I could duck Katie forever, so maybe she's got the right idea. Maybe it is best if we clear the air now. All morning, as I see patient after patient, I don't want to. It's on my mind most of the time, coming back to me as one archetypal dread-filled scenario after another. Being at school and having to think about fronting the principal and telling him it was a once-only error of judgement and won't be happening again, whatever it was. Being sprung wanking in your bedroom by your mother, who's just coming in to put your laundry away, or offer you a drink.

Okay, maybe that's a little too specific to count as archetypal. I think it's a friend-of-a-friend story I heard when we lived in England for a year. One afternoon, when the friend of a friend was about sixteen and his mother was making dinner downstairs, he told her he had homework to do and retired to the privacy of his
room. He shut the door, lay on his bed, took in a few pages of a porn mag perhaps, put his headphones on and started listening to the Stranglers. And an onanistic thought crossed his mind. He closed his eyes, allowed the onanistic thought some breathing space and tossed himself off something stupid. Then opened his eyes and glanced at his bedside table, only to notice a steaming mug of tea.

So, I'm telling myself as I catch the lift to ground at lunchtime, things could be worse. Maybe the air-clearing moment of reckoning isn't so bad.

When I get to the cafe, the airconditioning's broken down. Katie's at the same table as last time, with today's
Courier-Mail.
She has already put a row of nervous little rips along the edge of the front page, each of them reaching as far as the text but no further. Is she actually trying to freak me out, or am I getting there myself?

Hi,
she says, in a truncated kind of way.
I got you water. I didn't get you coffee though. It would have gone cold. Could have gone cold. Depending on when you got here.

I order a long black, and I sit down.

It's hot in here without the airconditioning. Really stifling. Don't you think?
Sweat beads on her upper lip.
I didn't know it'd be like this.
Do
you think we'll get a storm later?

Maybe. It'd be good if we did. It'd get rid of that humidity.

Yes. So
. . .
how's work today?

Its usual self. No ping-pong balls in the in-tray today, so that's good.

We're supposed to laugh at this, share a laugh over it.
We don't. Sweat is now beading on Katie's forehead as well.

You play table tennis? I didn't know that. Just as a hobby, or
. . .

Not very often, actually. It's a long story.

Snorkels. Sometimes you see them in the tops of snorkels,
she says, gripping onto the ping-pong-ball idea with all the appeal of a bull mastiff grabbing you round about mid-calf.
Is that it?

No, it is more to do with table tennis. It's an old joke. And not a very good one. And it involves some of the biophysics of lasers. Wendy might have told you. You know how the CO
₂
laser has a wavelength of 10 600 nanometres?

Um, no. It's okay. Don't worry about it. And Flag's all right. In case you were wondering.

Good.

I think he liked you. He was a bit funny on Sunday, though, but I think cats can detect anxiety. They can detect lots of things. They're quite perceptive.

I think I'd heard that.

Katie takes her cup in both hands, stares down at the table. Whatever's going on, it looks vaguely religious.

I'm sorry about mentioning the towels,
she says.
To Wendy. I had no cause to add things up that way. No cause. I knew there had been
. . .
an incident, but just because I've misplaced some towels, and I heard a car and heard something in the bushes
. . .
of approximately human size
. . .
There's no excuse for it. There are some big dogs in my part of town, and I should have remembered that. All I can say is, I was distressed at the time I spoke to Wendy. My bathroom was in a bit of a state
and Flag wasn't himself. He spends time in there now, and he didn't used to before Saturday. And maybe I just have to adjust to that.

I'm sure it'll be okay.

Yes, but I don't want you to think I'm spreading allegations about you all over the place.

No, that wouldn't be like you. I wasn't thinking that for a second.

That's good. Thank you. Thank you, Jon. But I would have understood if you'd had some concerns like that. And it was wrong of me to think it, and to say it to Wendy. And that's been playing on my mind.
So
I wanted to see you.
To
clear the air.

About the towels?

Yes.

Consider it clear.

In the end, there are very few parallels between coffee with Katie and being sprung wanking by your mother and her load of clean laundry or steaming mug of tea.