48
The first thing Sarkis saw was the dolls lined up in a way you might expect, in an Australian house, to find the sporting trophies. They occupied the entire back wall of the apartment, in a deep windowless dining alcove. They were lit like in a shop.
Only when Benny turned the neon light on, did Sarkis notice Mrs Catchprice sitting, rather formally, in the dining chair in front of them. She looked like an old woman ready for bed or for the asylum. Her long grey hair was undone and spread across the shoulders of a rather severe and slightly old-fashioned black suit. An ornate silver brooch was pinned to her artificial bosom. The skirt was a little too big for her. Her slip showed.
Sarkis clasped his knife in his fist. The air was close.
‘You like my dolls?’ she said.
He smiled politely.
‘I never cared for them,’ she said. ‘Someone gives you one because they do not know you. Someone else gives you a second one because you have the first. It’s so like life, don’t you think?’
‘I hope not.’
‘I do too,’ she said, and winked at him. ‘That’s why I like to have young people working for me.’
‘It’s Granny needs a hair-do,’ Benny said.
Sarkis tightened his jaw.
‘Not me,’ Benny said. ‘I said it wasn’t me.’
When Sarkis lived in Chatswood, his mother’s friends would sit around beneath the picture of Mesrop Mushdotz and pat their hair a certain way and curl their fringe around their fingers. When they asked outright, he said to them what he now said to Mrs Catchprice.
‘I don’t have my scissors.’
‘She’s got to have a hair-do,’ Benny said. ‘It’s an occasion.’
‘All my gear’s at home,’ Sarkis said. ‘You should go to a salon. They have the basins and sprays and all the treatments.’
‘But you’re a hairdresser,’ Mrs Catchprice said, ‘and you work for me.’
‘I thought I was going to be a salesman.’
‘You will be,’ said Mrs Catchprice. ‘When you’ve cut my hair.’
No one offered to drive him – Sarkis walked, first to his home for his plastic case, then to Franklin Mall to buy the Redken Hot Oil Treatment. The air was hot and heavy, and the low grey clouds gave the low red-brick houses a closed, depressed look.
When he returned to Catchprice Motors he washed the disgusting dishes in Mrs Catchprice’s kitchen sink and scrubbed the draining board and set up basins and saucepans for the water. He could see Benny Catchprice in the car yard below him. Benny stood in the front of the exact centre of the yard and he never shifted his position from the time Sarkis began to wash Mrs Catchprice’s hair until he’d done the eye-shadow.
There were people, old people particularly, so hungry for touch they would press their head into the washer’s fingers like a cat will rub past your legs. Mrs Catchprice revealed herself to be one of them. You could feel her loneliness in another way too, in her concentration as you ran the comb through her wet hair, her intense stillness while you cut.
Sarkis stripped the yellow colour from her grey hair with L’Oréal Spontanée 832. When he applied the Hot Oil and wrapped her in a towel she made a little moan of pleasure, a private noise she seemed unaware of having made, one he was embarrassed to have heard.
He did not ask her how she wanted her hair done. He styled it with a part and a french bun set a little to one side. It did nothing to soften the set of her jaw or the effects of age, but it gave her, in this refusal to hide or apologize, a look of pride and confidence. It was the same approach as you might take with a kid with ear-rings in her nose – you gave her a close shave up one side of her head, declared her ugly ears, did nothing to soften the features, and therefore made her sexy on the street.
He softened Mrs Catchprice a little with her make-up – some very pale blue eye-shadow and, from among all the grubby, ground-down Cutex reds she brought him, one Petal Pink.
‘How’s that?’ he asked, but only because he had finished and she had said nothing.
‘I look like a tough old bird,’ she said.
He was offended.
‘It’s just what the doctor ordered,’ she said. She opened her handbag and uncrumpled a $20 bill which she pushed into his hand.
‘Thank you,’ he said, although it was not enough to cover the cost of the Redken and the Spontanée 832. He brushed off her shoulders and swept up the floor and swept her hair on to a sheet of newspaper and put it in the rubbish. He folded the sheet he had used for a cape and placed it on top of the yellow newspapers on top of the washing machine. Then he let the dog out of the bathroom.
He came back into the living-room with the dog skeltering and slipping around his feet and found a pregnant woman with a briefcase, Benny Catchprice and Cathy McPherson all pushing their way into the living-room.
‘It is true?’ Cathy’s voice was tremulous. ‘Just tell me?’
Haircuts can alter people and this one seemed to have altered Mrs Catchprice. She led the way to the dining-room table and sat with her back to the row of brightly illuminated dolls. She looked almost presidential.
‘What are you dressed up for?’ Cathy asked.
The pregnant woman with the briefcase sat next to Mrs Catchprice. Benny sat opposite the pregnant woman.
Cathy took the big chair facing the dolls’ case, but would not sit in it. She grasped its back.
‘What are you dressed up for? Is it true?’ she asked her mother. ‘Because if it is, you really should tell me.’
‘The investigation,’ Mrs Catchprice said, ‘has been stopped.’
Sarkis did not know what investigation she was talking about but when he saw her speak he saw her power and thought he had created it.
‘Mrs Catchprice …’ the pregnant woman said. ‘How come you’re dressed up?’ Cathy asked.
‘How come you know?’
‘She doesn’t know,’ the pregnant woman said. ‘There’s nothing to know. Mrs Catchprice, Mrs McPherson, you can all calm down. The investigation has not been stopped. Once a Tax Office investigation starts, it has to go on until the end. Not even I could stop it.’
‘It’s been stopped all right,’ said Benny in a thin nasal voice that cut across the others’ like steel wire. He was trying to smile at the pregnant woman. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. He used her first name, ‘Maria.’
Maria was pushing at the pressure points beside her eyes.
‘We like you,’ Benny said. He used her first name again. ‘We don’t blame you for what you did …’
‘Maria’ coloured and tapped on the table with her pencil.
Mrs Catchprice held the edge of the table with her hands. She seemed to spread herself physically. Sarkis thought of Bali, of Rangda the Witch. She had that sort of power. The whole room gave it to her and she threw it back at them. It was not the haircut. It was her.
‘Can I remind you all,’ Maria said, ‘that I’m the one who’s from the Tax Office.’
Mrs Catchprice gave her a smile so large you could think that all her teeth were made from carved and painted wood. ‘You’d better phone your office,’ she said. ‘Use the extension in the kitchen. It’s more private.’
The Tax Inspector hesitated, smiled wanly, then left the room. Mrs Catchprice turned to her daughter.
‘So now you can go, Cathy,’ Mrs Catchprice said. ‘You want to go square dancing, you go. I’m taking the business back for safekeeping.’
‘It’s not yours to take back.’
‘That’s irrelevant, Cathy,’ said Benny. ‘You get what you want. We get what we want.’
‘The business isn’t hers. It’s not her decision. She’s a minority shareholder.’
But Mrs Catchprice did not look like a minority of anything. Her jaw was set firmly. Her face was blotched with liver spots and one large red mark along her high forehead below her hairline. She looked scary.
The Tax Inspector, by contrast, looked white and waxy and depressed. She had not come all the way back into the room, but stood leaning against the door jamb with her hand held across her ballooning belly. Her hands were puffed up, ringless, naked.
‘I’ve been called back to the office,’ she said.
‘How lovely,’ said Mrs Catchprice. ‘You’ll be closer to the hospital. What hospital was it? I forget.’
‘George V,’ said Maria Takis. All the colour had gone from her wide mouth.
‘It’s a lovely hospital.’
‘My mother died there.’ The Tax Inspector clicked shut her briefcase.
‘Let me,’ Benny said. He took the briefcase from her, smiling charmingly. ‘I’d like to walk you to your car.’
49
At the bottom of the fire escape, Benny took the car keys from the Tax Inspector’s hand. She let him take her briefcase, imagining he would carry it to her car, but he immediately set off across the gravel towards the back of the yard where a faded red sign read
LUBRITORIUM
.
‘Wrong way,’ she said.
He turned, and his lower lip, in trying not to smile, made a little ‘v’ that was disturbingly familiar. ‘You can’t go,’ he said. He threw her car keys in the air and caught them. ‘It isn’t over yet.’
‘It’s over. Believe me.’ She did not know how the audit could possibly be over, and she was confused, and mostly bad-tempered that it was. It was not logical that she should feel this, but she felt it. She held out her hand for the keys.
Benny grinned, then frowned and held the keys behind his back. ‘I’ve got stuff I want to show you.’
‘Come on, I’ve got work to do.’ She was going to the Tax Office to shout at Sally Ho. That was her ‘work’.
Benny pouted and dangled the keys between his thumb and forefinger. She snatched them from him, irritated. The minute she had done it and she saw the hurt in his face, she was sorry.
‘You should be happy,’ she said. ‘Isn’t this what you wanted when you came to my house? Isn’t this exactly what you wanted to achieve?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Sort of.’
She began to walk slowly, purposefully, towards her car. ‘So?’ she said.
He was close beside her – a little ahead. She could feel his eyes demanding a contact she did not have the energy to give him.
He said, ‘I thought we might be, sort of, friends.’
She began to laugh, and stopped herself, but when she looked up she saw it was not in time to stop her hurting him. By the time they reached the car he had a small red spot on each of his cheeks.
‘I don’t see why not,’ he said. He held out his hand for the keys and she gave them to him, in compensation for her laughter. He unlocked her door and held it open for her. She squeezed herself in behind the wheel. He passed her the briefcase. She held out her hand for the keys. He wagged his finger and danced round the minefield of puddles to the passenger side. She watched him, wearily, as he unlocked the passenger side door and got in. He locked the door behind him.
‘O.K.,’ she said. ‘But now I’ve got to go.’
She held out her hand for the keys. He placed them in her open palm. She inserted the keys in the ignition switch then turned it far enough to make the instrument lights, the three of them, shine red.
‘I came to talk to you last night,’ he said. ‘I thought we could, you know … I came by myself.’
‘Why?’
‘Why not?’
She moved the gear stick into neutral.
‘I got the company books for you,’ he said. ‘I brought them to your house. I was going to leave them on the veranda, but you didn’t come home all night.’
She felt her hair prickle on the nape of her neck. ‘I was at my father’s,’ she said.
‘That’s who you had dinner with?’
‘Yes. It is absolutely who I had dinner with.’
‘But you went out to dinner with Uncle Jack.’
She turned to look at him. He was smirking.
‘You don’t want to waste your time with him,’ he said. ‘He’s a creep.’
‘Benny, what do you want from me? What is it?’
Benny shrugged and looked out of the window at a pair of men at A.S.P. Building Supplies loading roofing iron on to the roof-rack of an old Ford Falcon. ‘How old are you?’ he asked, still not looking at her.
Maria started the engine.
‘How
old
are you?’ He turned. He looked as if he was going to cry.
‘I’m thirty-four.’
‘I like you,’ he said. ‘I never liked anyone like that before.’
‘Benny, that’s enough.’
‘This is serious,’ he said.
‘Enough.’
But he was unbuttoning his shirt.
Maria turned off the engine and opened her door. ‘I’m going to get your father.’
‘My father is a joke,’ said Benny. He pulled down his jacket and his shirt to show her his upper arm. ‘Just look, that’s all. Please don’t turn away from me.’
Maria Takis looked. She saw a smooth white scar the size of a two-cent piece surrounded by a soft blue stain.
Benny looked at her with large tear-lensed eyes. ‘My mother did this to me. Can you imagine that? My own mother tried to kill me.’
‘Benny,’ Maria said. ‘Please don’t do this to me. I am an auditor from the Australian Taxation Office.’
‘I was three years old.’
‘What is this serving?’
‘For Chrissake.’ Benny kicked out and smashed the glove box. It flipped off and fell on to the floor. ‘I’m trying to show you my fucking life.’ He looked at her. His eyes were big and filled with tears. ‘You wouldn’t come with me. I wanted you to come with me. I can’t
stand
that.’
‘Benny, what can I do? I’m a stranger to your family.’
‘You’re kind,’ he said. He rubbed his nose with the back of his hand. He picked up the glove box lid and tried to fit it back on. ‘I know you’re kind.’
‘Benny,’ she gave him a tissue from her bag, ‘just take my word for it – I’m very selfish.’
He wiped his eyes and blew his nose. ‘You care about other people, I know you do. You live all by yourself and you’re having this baby. That’s not selfish.’
Maria looked forward out the window, not wanting to hurt him, fearing his anger, wishing it would end.
‘You could have had an abortion.’ He persisted with the glove box lid. Every time he closed it, it dropped to the floor.
‘I often wish I had.’
‘No, you don’t.’
‘You want to know the truth? I wanted to hurt the baby’s father. That’s why I’m having a baby – to make him feel sorry for the rest of his life.’
Benny took the glove box lid and squinted at it, as if trying to read a part number.
‘You’re kind,’ he said. ‘You can’t put me off by lying to me. I can replace this glove box,’ he said. ‘If you come back tomorrow I’ll replace it free.’
‘Benny I’m not coming back. I’m sorry.’
‘You come out here, you try to screw my life. I’m interested in you. I’m interested in your baby, everything. I like you, but you don’t even take the trouble to see how I live. You know how I live? I live in a fucking hole in the ground. You wouldn’t even use it for a toilet. Come and look at it. I’ll show you now.’
The Tax Inspector shook her head. She looked down at her skirt and saw it rucked above her knees. They looked like someone else’s knees – old, puffy, filled with retained fluid. In the middle of the anxiety about Benny she had time to register that she had developed œdema.
‘You can’t just dump me. You think you can go away and leave me to rot in my cellar, just let me rot in hell, and nothing will ever happen to you because of it.’ He was folding his jacket. He was opening the car door. He was leaving her life.
Maria Takis waited for the door to slam. It did not seem smart to start the engine until it did.