For Everyone Concerned (2 page)

On fine weekends, when he had the kids, he liked to haul them out the door for a walk up into the town belt. Shake out the cobwebs, he told them. It was only a few minutes from the apartment and you couldn’t really mistake it for the real bush—the city was right there—but there were trees, pine cones, grassy slopes, shadowy tracks, new smells, and the kids were breathing it in. They stomped along in their various private moods for the first bit, then gradually the moods started to shift, until more or less the same feeling gripped them all: they were pleased to be there. They were his children and they were happy to be with him. He loved them and they could see it.

They had their route now, which took them off the main paths, and one day they found a sunny secluded
spot where a tree had fallen down. They were out of the wind. He said to them, why don’t we make this place ours? How? they said. They began to build a fort and then they said to him, but it isn’t ours yet. We need things here. So the next time they came up, they were ready.

His son brought action figures: warriors waving swords and monsters on their hind legs. His daughter fashioned sleep-outs for her dolls from leaves and twigs; the dolls never stayed the week in the town belt but the toy furniture did. Soon they were bringing more and more things out to their spot and leaving them there: little cars, a plastic stove, toy cooking utensils.

When they were walking in one day to their place the kids thought they saw a man, someone moving in the bushes. He was gone now but they’d seen him. Wearing a green beanie, a sort of disguise, his daughter said. Camouflage, said his son. A random guy, they said. Lots of people used the town belt, he told them. When they reached their tree, they dug little roads out of the dirt and made fences from twigs, and they said, this is our house, this is where we live, can we stay the night? No, he said, it would get too cold up here.

The following weekend he saw the man himself but this time the kids missed him. The man may have heard him; he was on his knees in the grass above the
path, pulling on his pants it seemed. Green beanie. He stumbled off, further up the hillside. A great rage blew up in him at that moment and if the kids hadn’t been with him, he would have taken off after the man. Torn at the leafy, moist bank to grab him. Held him by his worthless throat.

At the tree they pleaded with him to stay the night until finally he said, all right, all right. They hugged him and said he was the greatest.

They filled a pack and they dressed in layers of warm clothes and they went up to their spot. They ate chocolate biscuits, drank Milo from the thermos, listened to the wind in the pine trees and watched the dark come down. Occasionally there was a thud nearby; pine cones were dropping around them. They heard things moving in the bushes: possums. They couldn’t sleep. Have you had enough? he said. It was midnight. No way, they said. Shall we go down now? he said. No, they said. Later, when the wind cut at them, he asked if they wanted to go. You can’t run away all your life, they told him. What? he said. What’s that? He found their faces in their sleeping bags but they were asleep. Of course they hadn’t spoken. They were two children sleeping in the forest. All night he watched over them, nibbling the banana which was his breakfast.

For weeks we’d been living on our nerves in the gallery. We were overdue some blow-out time. Not because everything was sorted but because the tension was too much to bear, we secretly arranged a yum char date, slipping out of the gallery at agreed intervals so as not to alert the Director, one of the chief contributors to said tension. The Amsterdam show was opening the next day. Mondrian. Modigliani. Klee. There were things still to do, of course, but the paintings were up, the catalogue delivered, some friendly media already. The Director refused to see any of this. She was in her mad phase. ‘We’re not ready. Why aren’t we ready? Where’s my speech?’ Where I put it when I wrote it the day before. Migraines sent her home most afternoons. Mee-graines she called them, aptly. All about me.

We had to take one of the upstairs tables, where the heat rose. I liked these gallery girls. Jax, Belinda, Amy, Sara. They were all much younger than me, better dressers, better drinkers. I was a big sister figure in the kind version, possible aunt. They told me everything and I told them as much as they could bear. The restaurant was busy. We were drinking fast. Food kept coming; it landed there and everyone denied it was her who’d ordered. You did feel bad turning away the Chinese girls with their insistent trays. It was borderline hysteria, especially with the round table, the revolving, and of course the way we’d sneaked out.

Before the public were allowed in, while the paintings were still ours—this was a special time. For the last few mornings I’d had some private time in front of the Barnett Newman, before heading upstairs into the storm. A knife-wielding psych patient had slashed at the Newman in the Stedelijk some years before. It had been impeccably restored. One of the Director’s anxieties was a copycat attempt in our gallery.

I looked down on the diners below us and Ray came into the restaurant and sat at a small table in the front window by himself.

He was wearing a suit. I felt a pain in my side. A suit? He taught at a primary school—had he been made Principal? Was there a funeral he’d come from perhaps? If it was someone we’d both known, I should have been there too, I thought.

I hadn’t seen him in a year. His hair was cut short, neat. He’d met someone who liked him less woollen, less fuzzy than I had. This Ray had edges. I noticed his shoulders, the pleasing line of them. His ears. But his faults were not invisible: the jigging knee, the way his arms folded too tight so he looked like he had achieved some wrestler’s hold on himself. Through the bamboo, even if he looked up, he couldn’t have seen me. The girls were silly, loud from the Korean beer.

Belinda was beside me. ‘Don’t bump,’ I told her.

‘Bumper-dee-bumper-dee,’ she said.

‘Fine,’ I said.

The waitress carried another setting to Ray’s table and laid it out opposite him.

The girls attacked the pork dumplings in some sort of competition I’d missed the beginning of—hadn’t been listening. They said I could be judge. But judge of what? I didn’t understand what I was looking for, I said. Never mind what, they told me, just say who you think should win. Beside me Belinda’s hands held a dumpling. The red marks on her knuckles seemed vivid, unmissable in the restaurant lighting. These marks were from Belinda’s stomach acid—months and months of it. In the gallery toilets the previous week, she’d told me she’d almost beat it. I’m going to fight it and win. Yes, you are, I said. Know what happens in the last chapter? she said. You beat it, I said. You read my mind, she said. I wrote the book, I said. You? she
said. Sure, I wrote the book on that one. Bulimia? she asked. She seemed quite horrified, as she was entitled to be. For a day or two, she kept her distance. Then she’d decided to be close—physically attentive even. At yum char she’d moved swiftly to sit next to me.

They were discussing Sara’s boyfriend, who was a barista and a photographer. ‘If it’s not too disloyal,’ said Sara, ‘I prefer his coffee to his photographs.’

‘Are you still going to Spain together?’

‘But what if we had a fight in Barcelona or somewhere?’

‘Spanish boys!’

‘That’s true. I need to save more money though.’ Money money money, someone sang. Suddenly in the restaurant, like many around us—the place was full of businessmen—we thought of work and sobered up.

Jax mentioned the Director. Wasn’t it a bit sad she wasn’t here with us right now. It was a surprise to agree but we all did. We thought of the Amsterdam show, the amazement when the paintings first emerged from their crates. Bona fide great masterpieces of world art. We were proud of our gallery. Without the Director, it wouldn’t have got off the ground. The show wouldn’t have got here. Next time, said Sara, we’ll ask her out too. I like it at the gallery, Amy said, because it’s a family, right down to the annoying members but still a family. The Director
had moments of random generosity. She would give someone a day off, and often it was the right person. Without possessing anything in the way of empathy, she carried a divining rod which quivered in the proximity of upset. On feeling the twitch, she’d simply say, ‘You. Go home now.’

How any art ever came to be on the walls was a mystery. But the Director had a power. I’d been in meetings with very influential people—men, international dignitaries, patrons—and she’d come in late and say, ‘I’m wearing the wrong bra!’ And she’d mean nothing sexual and nothing sexual would be taken.

It’d be wrong to suggest she seduced anyone.

We had the Mexican Ambassador in over some delicate negotiations around a priceless collection and our Director made her entrance in a silvery jumpsuit with a hole at the knee and blood there. ‘I just fell over outside!’ Then the Mexican ambassador rose and said, ‘But my dear!’

She got that collection too. An old woman in Mexico City, who never loaned, gave up three early Kahlos. The Director was possibly the most honest person I knew—that is, incapable of an untruth. It was for the rest of us to make good on whatever she’d said spontaneously, thoughtlessly. Also there was a stubbornness. Once convinced of something, she went for it—even to the extent of buying certain
trouble. There was, as it came to be known, the gay porn show.

The Christians hated us of course, they wanted to burn us down and stamp us down. Sodomites, they called us. Anti-family. Polluters. Sodomites. There was a picket once, and someone I knew standing there—an old neighbour. ‘Shame!’ he called out to me as I walked into work. ‘Shame on you!’ That was one reason the Amsterdam show was so stressy. We’d been put on notice by the Board. Their nostrils strained for even a whiff of gay porn.

Belinda wanted to give me a lift back to the gallery but I said no thanks, I needed the walk but first I needed the toilet. We all kissed in the last great gas of the Korean beer.

In the toilet I thought, why should I try to leave through the restaurant kitchen, the kitchen staff thinking me crazy, picking my way through the skins of this and that? In the kitchen they’d have little kids working like slaves with their dumpling-coloured faces, which of course was unkind. I was feeling this way. All the unkindness in me was flooding me. Blindly, I walked to the front where Ray was sitting.

‘Hello, Angela,’ said Ray.

Too fast, I said, ‘Hello Ray.’

‘How are you?’

At the table there was an Asian boy, about eight years old, sitting across from Ray. He held out his
hand for me to shake. ‘This is Kenneth,’ said Ray. ‘He’s very polite.’

‘Gidday, Kenneth,’ I said, shaking his hand.

‘I didn’t see you,’ said Ray.

‘No,’ I said.

‘How’ve you been?’

‘I’m working in high art.’

‘You look good.’

‘Got to talk to people, you know.’

‘You look the part.’

‘Ah, but you. You, Ray.’

‘Yeah.’ Ray touched his suit material. Kenneth was staring at me. ‘I stopped being a teacher.’

Betrayal! I wanted to know what he did now but I couldn’t ask him. I was refusing to ask him. It was a bitter stand-off.

Finally Ray smiled at me. ‘Listen,’ he said. He lifted Kenneth’s wrist up, turned it over. How oddly he handled this boy, tenderly, without confidence, as you might a vase in a shop. Kenneth still stared at me. ‘This is my son, Angela.’

I stared at Kenneth and he nodded. Then he put out his hand again for me to shake. Ray said to him, ‘Kenneth, once is enough.’

Kenneth put his hand down and looked at the table. Quickly, with the blade of his index fingernail, he cut his chopsticks apart. ‘Look, Dad,’ said Kenneth.

‘So he’s really yours,’ I said.

‘He’s my son, Angela. Kenneth.’

‘And you’re in suits now. Your hair. Kenneth. Hell, Ray, it’s all coming together for you, isn’t it.’

Ray grinned, felt the arm of the suit for the second time. He had a teacher’s horror of suits. Then, as if remembering, he moved his hand to rest on the boy’s arm. ‘And what about you?’

‘Me?’

‘Yeah. The high art.’

‘Oh, no. It’s an office job, that’s all. No.’

‘You’re talking to people.’

‘Who?’

‘You said.’

‘Oh, no. Yes, I am.’

‘Well,’ said Ray, picking up a menu. ‘What’d you have?’

‘Ray,’ I said, ‘I come in for yum char and you lay on a whole smorgasbord!’

He said, ‘Still wearing your badge, Angela.’

‘What badge?’ I said. ‘What badge?’

Ray pulled Kenneth’s head towards him, put his hands over the boy’s ears.

‘What badge?’ I said. ‘Who is this?’

‘Kenneth,’ said Ray.

‘You’re kidding.’

‘Kenneth.’

‘When he was born.’

‘Kenneth.’

‘When his mother first laid eyes on him.’

‘Named him Kenneth.’

‘When his father, who was his father, Ray?’

Ray looked at me. He was still smothering the boy.

I pulled open the restaurant door. The wind came in and rolled the separated chopsticks about on the table. Kenneth snapped his hand down on them. The paper lanterns swung, returned.

I read in Ray’s look this: Applause for Angela, proud bearer of misfortune!

I said I had to go home early from the gallery. ‘Look who’s leaving,’ said Jax. ‘Look who has to go home.’ There was great jocularity among the girls. I was their big sister, who they’d never seen drunk. I was going home to sleep it off. Ha, ha. Can’t take you anywhere. My, my.

Belinda, dear bulimic Belinda took me aside. She’d run down the stairs to catch me. ‘Are you all right?’ she said. She led me away from the entrance. ‘You’re not going to drive are you?’

‘I’m fine,’ I said.

‘Give me your keys.’

‘Really,’ I said, ‘I’m fine, I had one beer or two.’

She was livid, terrified. ‘Don’t talk to me like I’m stupid.’

‘Okay,’ I said.

‘Who the hell do you think you are, that you think anyone can’t see you’re not fine? If you don’t want to talk, don’t. But don’t go get a mee-graine on us, will you.’

She was twenty-two years old. I didn’t see my younger self in her. Her all-round daily ballsy confidence was awesome. Totally unlike me at that age. Our connection—chanced upon in the gallery toilets—was unlikely and, frankly, hard to accept on both sides. But here she was—marks for persistence— waiting for me.

‘You don’t want to know,’ I said.

‘Don’t I?’

Then I told her about Ray, my ex, who was sitting back at the restaurant with his son. Ray used to ask anyone with kids, so tell me how you work it? What’s the day-to-day? Then he’d report back to me on this case and this case. And I’d say, everyone’s different, Ray. If we were parents, who knows what would happen. Precisely, said Ray. Why risk it? When we first met, I looked at him in school with all these kids and I thought, what a natural. Turned out that was the only setting he liked them in. When he left for the day, really he put a line under it. Goodbye kids. Goodbye little shits.

In telling it to Belinda, I was asking myself, what’s your point exactly? That this man was happy now? That he wasn’t allowed to change his mind? It was a
miserable point. Still she nodded, listening. I sensed behind the astonishing sympathy and patience her utter incomprehension. Kid-trouble. Baby-trouble. Wanting different things. For a moment I heard myself in her head—that was when I had some earlier version of me going in Belinda. And I felt very warm towards her for that. She was herself and she was me, way back then. I was thirty-eight years old. Ray had had the use of me for eleven years. But what had I thought, that I could work my magic on him? Well, yes.

There was a sudden grinding noise. We were standing in the shadowy corridor beside the service lifts by the emergency exit. The doors of the lift opened. Bert, our older security man, stood inside. ‘Ground floor,’ he said. ‘Ladies’ underwear.’ He always said it. Good old Bert. One day someone was going to push him down the stone stairs. Empty wooden crates lined the walls of the lift—from these crates our masterpieces had stepped forward though this side of it was a nothing to Bert. He was the original peasant. Bert walked out of the lift but kept his arm wrapped around the door to prevent it from closing. ‘Can’t hold it all day,’ Bert said. He let the doors close. They were closing and in a panicky moment I took a step towards the gap. Where was I going? My friend held my arm, stopping me but very gently. Someone was calling the lift from above us. It went.

Then the Director appeared, hobbling, carrying one of her shoes. ‘Bert,’ she said. And she gave Bert her shoe to look at. In the gallery’s family, he was, I guess, Useful Uncle of Limited Intelligence. I was certainly heading for Aunt with Issues. At the last staff meeting she’d called in Bert to hear her concerns about the knife-wielding maniac who could show up. Bert listened carefully, then said, ‘A knife? I don’t deal with anything of that nature.’ Then he walked out of the room.

On seeing us, the Director came over. ‘I’m worried about the show,’ she said. ‘It’s too predictable, the whole masterpieces thing. No one will come.’

I looked her in the eye and said, ‘I don’t think that’s true at all.’

She stared back for a moment as if she’d been slapped, brought around. As if she’d landed somewhere. Hello, we were back on Planet Earth. This was actually part of my job, to reintroduce reality. ‘Why does everyone smell of something?’