Animal People (20 page)

‘I'll just go get the other bag,' said Chris. They travelled with many bags.

Stephen's desire for beer surged towards urgent. He turned back to Belinda. ‘So there's a couple of empty shops in the Plaza near my place in Norton,' he said.

‘Really,' Belinda said, turning into the pram's cave to unbuckle Aleksander.

‘Yeah,' he said, reaching for another fistful of chips. ‘Where the discount shoe shop used to be, just near the Eye of Horus.' He liked saying
Eye of Horus
. The Eye of Horus was a tiny dark shop jammed full of Egyptian trinkets and smoky with incense, not far from the fish shop. ‘I thought you might be interested in it for another Belinda Burton's Naturaceuticals.'

Belinda flinched, but did not look up, grimacing as Aleksander wriggled in his seat, kicking her hand away, making it impossible for her to unbuckle the belt. ‘Stop it, Aleksander,' she murmured. The baby began bucking harder.

‘I could ask for you, if you want,' Stephen said.

Aleksander kicked more viciously at Belinda. She took a deep breath and tried to appear serene. She frequently explained to people that she was a very spiritual person; she had installed many stone Ganeshas in Chris's house, she burned essential oils in her spas. She sometimes wore red threads around her wrist that Stephen assumed were associated with her spiritual journey. She often left Chris with the baby for weekends while she attended expensive meditation retreats at out-of-town therapeutic spas. This had the dual advantages of tax deductibility and allowing her to spy on the opposition. Her spiritual path appeared to be separate from her business path, however—the latter was all steel efficiency. She once told Fiona about firing a distracted employee whose husband had just started chemotherapy. Belinda had no room for passengers in this life. That was another thing she often said. As a mother.

Stephen was surprised to find himself thinking ‘poor Belinda' now, as he watched her at the mercy of her baby. She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. Then she plunged her hand in once again to jab at the buckle between Aleksander's kicks. ‘Stop it now, darling,' she crooned. ‘You don't want to hurt Mummy, do you?'

His face seemed to indicate this was exactly what he wanted to do, but Aleksander stopped. Belinda exhaled a long, satisfied sigh, said ‘Thank you, darling,' and leaned in again to the buckle. Just as she unsnapped it, Aleksander convulsed with his full body so that his hard little leather shoe connected with his mother's left eye and cheekbone in a direct, savage kick. Belinda reeled back, letting out a howl of anguish, and fell against the fridge.

‘Shit,' said Stephen, and made as if to move. The wailing noise Belinda was making would not be out of place in one of Mandy's documentary reports from Gaza. At the sound of her shrieking Chris appeared, bolting into the kitchen. Belinda crouched by the fridge, two hands pressed over her eye and cheek, squatting in her swirling clothes and her expensive-looking pearl-coloured sandals. It was quite impressive, Stephen thought, how she kept her balance in those heels.

Chris took one look at the scene, taking in Stephen peering down, Belinda crouched gasping and sobbing, and cried, ‘What the heck is going on!' He dropped to the floor, his arms around his wife, and stared at Stephen.

‘He
kicked
me!' Belinda howled.

‘What!' Chris leapt to his feet, advancing on Stephen in horror.

Stephen ran his tongue over his teeth to dislodge the corn-chip sludge. ‘Not me, mate. Him.' He gestured at the pram.

Aleksander was now stretched calmly back with a bottle of water stuck in his mouth, flicking repeatedly at the bottle's nipple with his teeth in a satisfied way. His little feet pedalled the air.

Belinda unfurled from the floor, taking deep breaths and leaning on the bench. ‘Chris, could you please get me a camomile tea and some arnica,' she said in a low, urgent voice, the kind of tone surgeons perhaps used to speak to one another in operating theatres.

Chris disappeared down the hallway. Belinda moved to the table, dabbing at her cheek with two fingers, then checking them, as if for blood. Although Stephen couldn't see any discernible difference in Belinda's face, he leant down and said, ‘Are you okay?'

‘Of course I'm not,' she snapped. She tilted her head back and closed her eyes, putting her fingers to her eye socket and pressing tenderly.

Chris returned with what appeared to be a white doctor's bag. It had the Belinda Burton's Naturaceuticals Therapeutic Day Spas logo—a light green leaf—on the side. He popped it open in a practised way and rummaged inside as Belinda looked on. He proffered a small jar and she wrenched it from him. ‘Tea,' she said. Chris moved to the kettle.

Stephen said, ‘Yeah, so, you know, I thought those empty shops in the Plaza could be a good spot for your—' and gestured at the bag with a corn chip.

Belinda turned slowly to face him, her expression now pure contempt. Belinda Burton's Naturaceuticals, she told him, was an
iconic luxury brand
. She waited for that to sink in, and then said her Therapeutic Day Spas were located only in the most suitable
high-end
consumer destinations. She unscrewed the cap of the jar and dabbed her cheekbone with a strong-smelling ointment, wincing as she did so.

‘Ah,' said Stephen, chastened. ‘Sorry. Thought you were expanding.'

‘I am ex
panding
,' Belinda spat. ‘But I have to be very careful with the
guardianship
of my
brand.
'

‘Oh. Right.'

Chris came to Belinda with a cup and saucer. She accepted it with a quick, tiny nod of her head as if it were an overdue apology, and he put it on the table.

‘I should see if I can help Fiona,' said Stephen. Chris and Belinda watched him make his way out of the room. As he walked down the hall he heard Belinda's voice hissing in disbelief: ‘. . . the little bogan slappers of
Norton!
'

But in the hallway Stephen met Fiona's father carrying a laundry basket full of supermarket shopping in plastic bags, and Stephen had no choice but to step quickly backwards into the kitchen, propelled by the unstoppable force of Pat and his basket.

Pat was a large, brick-shaped man whose central occupation was the maintenance of his physical health. He and Jeanette, scurrying behind him, made a neat, compact couple, as if he had chosen her for the fact that her body might fit neatly inside the frame of his own. They were like stackable Tupperware. When Pat was feeling affectionate he would refer to Jeanette as his
little mate
, but this was rare. Mostly he simply barked orders at her and distanced himself from her foolishness by pointing it out to others.

Today Pat wore a navy-blue t-shirt that said
PARIS
—
NEW YORK
—
ROME
—
PEPPERMINT BEACH
in white lettering on his chest. The t-shirt was tucked into spotless ironed jeans, and Stephen noticed once again that there was no sign of belly overhang at the plaited leather belt. On seeing Pat, Stephen had instinctively sucked his own gut in, but after a few moments had to let it out again. Pat wore polished tan boat shoes with black leather tassles, and tennis socks. He and Jeanette lived at Peppermint Beach. They called the suburb
Peppy
. Pat often reminded people that he was a life member of the Peppermint Beach Chamber of Commerce.

He lowered the laundry basket on to the bench and nodded at Stephen without smiling. He called out ‘Hello sweetheart,' to Belinda and strode across the room to kiss her. She winced.

Pat turned to Chris. ‘Whatsamatter?' He was not in the habit of speaking directly to women when something mattered.

‘He kicked me,' Belinda said in a small voice.

‘What!' Pat turned, aghast, to glare at Stephen.

Chris said, ‘Not him, Dad. Aleksander.
Accidentally
,' he added hurriedly.

‘Uh,' said Pat, disappointed. He turned to look for Aleksander. They had all forgotten the baby for the moment.

‘He's over there,' Stephen said. The baby swayed beside the modular metal bookcase where Fiona kept recipe books and the telephone. Aleksander had hauled himself upright, and for some minutes been supporting his wobbling weight not only by gripping the wire frame with both pudgy hands, but by latching his mouth on to a small nipple-shaped bolt protruding from the end of a shelf. He stood, happily anchored by the vacuum force of his suck.

‘Oh my God!' cried Belinda, glaring at Stephen and then catapulting across the room and prising her little finger into Aleksander's mouth to release its seal from around the bolt. ‘That's dirty! Chemicals! Dirty!'

She batted roughly at Aleksander's lips as she swept him into her arms, and then mouthed something at Chris that Stephen couldn't make out as she rushed to the sink and leaned over it, turning the tap on full.

‘It doesn't look
that
dirty,' Stephen said mildly. He was a little offended on Fiona's behalf, but mainly felt sorry for Aleksander. He remembered with a clear sensual pleasure the illicit tastes from his own childhood: the chill, salty, gratifyingly oily taste of metal or the sour, lemony wood of the mahogany pew in Mass. You could run your tongue along the grooves in the soft wood made by other children's fingernails, bite secretly into it to leave tiny, satisfying marks.

Aleksander was subjected to a mouth-hosing at the sink which he bore without complaint, only curving out of his mother's arms now and then to look longingly toward the metal shelves.

Stephen shouldn't have said anything. Aleksander's quiet diligence at the shelves was one of the things he admired about children. Their silent dedication to tasks that nobody else found interesting, or necessary, but to which they could devote long, happy hours of improvement. It seemed an adult preoccupation to stop them from completing these tasks, but children understood their pleasure, and so did Stephen. Last week he had phoned and Ella answered, and they chatted amiably. ‘What are you up to?' he'd asked her.

She'd sighed. ‘Well,' she said, ‘I'm
trying
to stick these tissues together. But it's not working very good.'

‘What are you sticking them with?'

‘Just spit,' she said.

‘Oh,' said Stephen. ‘And what about Larry?'

There was a pause. He pictured Ella walking about the house with the phone tucked beneath her chin. He listened to the congested snuffle of her breath into the phone as she walked, and felt a stab of love. ‘Ah yeah,' Ella said then. ‘She's in Mum's room cutting up a banana skin wiv' scissors.'

When Larry was small Fiona had once found her in the kitchen, working her way around the room with the pastry brush, diligently and thoroughly painting each lower cupboard door with margarine.

But now Stephen recalled the girls' faces hardening against him earlier. He would never again speak to them on the phone, never be allowed these glimpses of their private lives, their inventiveness, the intricacy of their minds.

He really needed a drink.

A horde of girls in fairy costumes came whirling through the kitchen, squealing and giggling, Ella at its centre, Larry bringing up the rear. A stray, wan little boy in a wizard's hat, anxious and dreamy-looking, bumped along in the middle of their swarm. Aleksander yelped, and then began to cry. Belinda held him struggling in her arms until the children had run out through the glass doors and then, exasperated, let him down to the floor. She crouched down then, saying into his blank little face, ‘Don't touch dirty things! Okay? Mummy said
no dirty!
'

He smiled at her and fell down on his soft, padded bottom.

The kitchen grew crowded. Jeanette stood washing her hands at the kitchen sink. Whenever Jeanette arrived anywhere she could be found washing her hands at the kitchen sink, and then obsessively folding and refolding a tea towel. Fiona, too, had finally reappeared, ushering the morose-looking mother of one of the children into the kitchen before her.

‘This is Maureen, everybody—Joshua's mum,' called Fiona. ‘Can somebody get her a cold drink or a cup of tea or something? I have to go talk to the fairy.' As she left the room Fiona raised her eyebrows at Stephen. Her rueful smile said
it will all be over soon
.

The woman Maureen stood in the middle of the kitchen, pale and aimless as her son.

‘Hello, love,' Jeanette sang to Maureen, the kettle in her raised left hand. Stephen saw the wiry length of Jeanette's bicep muscle slide back and forth beneath the slack skin as she filled the kettle and plugged it in. She and Pat both exercised daily as if their lives depended on it, striding the suburbs in baseball caps and gigantic athlete's shoes. Stephen supposed their lives did depend on it.

His mother in Rundle came to him again. Sweating before the television screen, the greying, once-velour tracksuit pants from 1989 stretched across the broad beam of her bum as she pounded away on her Wii Fit, whatever it was. The idea of his mother sweating upset him. What if she had a heart attack, sweating on her machine? What if it happened today? His last words to her had been curt and cruel.

The afternoon sun was boring in through the kitchen windows, making the room even hotter. Stephen pulled his t-shirt away from his body. The rancid oil reeked up at him again. Was he the only one sweating like a pig? He looked around. Jeanette, despite her general nerviness, appeared never to perspire. She competed in the seniors section of the Peppermint To Pier half-marathon every year, and once Stephen went with Fiona to pick her up at the end. Apart from a rosy, excitable expression and prattling even more than usual, she seemed completely unaffected by the run. Stephen was astounded.

Today Jeanette wore a watermelon-coloured top with short petal-like sleeves and soft frills down the front. The top billowed, yet somehow still showed Jeanette's figure as slender. She wore white cropped jeans that emphasised the slim uniformity of her legs, and white sandals on her tanned, bony feet. On her fingers were the four or five gold and jewelled rings she always wore, and a heavy gold chain hung around her neck. Stephen sometimes wished his own mother would wear clothes like Jeanette's, instead of the blotchy floral blouses and roomy, elastic-waisted navy pants she had worn since his childhood. But Margaret would find herself ridiculous in such clothes.
Far too young
, she would say. Which was why she had always looked old.