He kissed Clementine on both cheeks. 'Because I remember you're a foodie, like me, right? We like good food! Last time we met at Erika's place I remember we talked food, you know.'
'Did you?' said Erika suspiciously, as if all conversational topics should have been first cleared with her. 'I don't remember that.' She handed Tiffany a jar of chocolate nuts. 'I hope you don't have allergies because these are nuts. Chocolate nuts.'
'No allergies,' said Tiffany. 'Actually I love these.' She wasn't just being polite. They made her feel nostalgic. Her grandfather used to buy them every Christmas.
'Really?' said Erika doubtfully. 'Well, that's good.'
She was a real odd bod, that girl, as Tiffany's sister Karen would say.
Clementine had lost her glazed expression and she was looking at Vid as if he were the answer to all her problems.
'Mum, this one is Ruby and this one is Holly. Can I take them up to my room?' said Dakota to Tiffany. Her eyes shone as she presented the tangle-haired little pixie girls, who wore fairy wings and appeared to have recently up-ended bottles of glitter all over themselves.
'If it's okay with their mum and dad,' said Tiffany.
'Dakota is very responsible, you know,' said Vid. 'She'll look after them.'
'Of course it's okay with us,' said Sam as he kissed Tiffany on the cheek, with a well-brought-up Aussie boy flick of his eyes at her body: up, down and quick, away!
'It's great to see you again, Tiffany,' he said with a slight exhalation, as if he were relieved to be here too. He and Clementine were like people arriving at a wake after a funeral, ready to unloosen ties and let the tension drain from their shoulders, desperate to eat and drink and remind themselves that they were alive. He hunkered down at the knees and fondled Barney's ears, and Barney reacted with no dignity whatsoever, throwing himself on the ground and offering up his stomach for a rub, as if no one had ever paid him any attention before.
'We appreciate your hospitality.' Oliver shook Vid's hand and then awkwardly kissed Tiffany too, as if he'd been issued a challenge not to let any part of his body touch hers.
'Come in, come in!' Vid shepherded the group inside. 'Let's have a drink before we go out to the barbeque.'
'I'm sorry the little girls are dropping glitter everywhere,' said Erika, watching Dakota lead the girls upstairs, followed by Barney who was now in a state of manic excitement.
Tiffany saw an irritated spasm cross Clementine's face, presumably because another woman was apologising for her children.
'Oh, it's fine,' she said.
'I set up a craft table for them,' said Erika. 'We thought they were doing crafts, but they were really just ...'
'Making a terrible mess,' finished Clementine, but she and Erika were both smiling now, as if it were funny.
Tiffany considered herself a pretty good judge of character and situations - her instincts were normally spot-on - but right now these four had her bamboozled. Were they friends or enemies?
'We brought champagne.' Clementine held a bottle of Moet aloft, with the sparkly pride of someone who doesn't buy Moet very often. (Vid had three cases in the cellar.)
'Thank you! You didn't need to do that!' Vid grabbed the champagne bottle in one meaty hand like it was a petrol pump. 'But the important question is, Clementine, did you bring your cello?'
'Of course,' said Clementine. She patted her handbag. 'I never go anywhere without it. It's right here. I've got a fancy new collapsible one.'
Vid stared blankly at her handbag for a fraction of a second and then he roared with delighted laughter. It wasn't that funny, thought Tiffany. Vid pointed the bottle of champagne at Clementine like a gun. 'You got me! You got me!'
Yes, she's got you all right, thought Tiffany as she went quick-smart to the cupboard for champagne glasses, because Vid was about to open that bottle in his normal jubilant fashion.
It was fine that Vid had the hots for Clementine. Tiffany understood that, she kind of liked it, and judging by the way Clementine was touching her hair right now, she kind of liked it too. That was just sex. Sex was easy. What Tiffany didn't understand was the other three people in the room, because as Vid uncorked the bottle with predictable 'Whoa!' results, and Clementine grabbed two glasses from Tiffany and danced about, laughing, trying to catch the spilling, frothing champagne, Oliver, Erika and Sam all watched Clementine, and Tiffany couldn't tell, with any of them, if it was with deep affection or utter contempt.
chapter twenty-one
Clementine placed her book face down on her lap in the circle of lamplight reflected on the duvet. She listened to the rain and looked at the dark empty side of their double bed.
When Sam had come back from his 'drive', after her mother had gone home ('Another time,' she'd said robustly. 'We'll try again another time.') they hadn't said a word about their disastrous night out. They'd been polite and cool to each other like not especially friendly flatmates. 'There is some leftover pasta in the fridge.' 'Good, I might have some.' 'I'm off to bed.' 'Good night.' 'Good night.'
Sam had gone off to the study to sleep on the sofa bed that gave whoever slept on it a sore lower back. ('It was fine, fine!' guests would always assure them the next morning, discreetly massaging their lower backs.)
It appeared the study was Sam's bedroom now. They didn't even go to the pretence of starting out in the same bed, and then one of them creeping off in the middle of the night, pillow under the arm. We sleep in separate rooms now. It gave her a shocked, sick feeling when she actually let the thought crystallise like that.
The last time she and Sam had slept a proper full ordinary night together in this bed, a night without twisted-sheet dreams or teeth grinding or tossing and turning, had been the night before the barbeque.
It seemed extraordinary now to imagine them going to bed, sleeping through the night and waking up together in the morning. What had that last night of extraordinary ordinariness been like? She couldn't remember a single thing about it; except that she knew they'd been so different from the people they were now, just eight weeks later.
Did they have sex? Probably not. They so rarely got around to it. That's why they were so susceptible that night. To the sex.
Her mother would have been hoping that tonight's dinner at the fancy restaurant would have resulted in them coming home and 'making love'. If they hadn't come home early, if they'd walked in the door holding hands, Pam would have slipped off quickly with a wink, wink, nudge, nudge smile, and then she would have called the next day and said something horrifically inappropriate like, 'I do hope you weren't too tired to make love, darling, a healthy sex life is crucial for a healthy marriage.'
It would have made Clementine want to put her fingers in her ears and chant 'la la la' as she used to do when her mother delivered sex education lectures while she drove Clementine and Erika to parties. Erika, who practically took notes every time Clementine's mother opened her mouth, used to listen attentively to the lectures and ask very specific procedural questions. 'When exactly does the condom go on?' 'When the boy's penis ...' 'LA LA LA!' Clementine would yell.
Her mother had always been far too open and jolly about sex, as if it was something good for you, like water aerobics. She used to have The Joy of Sex sitting unabashedly on her bedside table as if it were a nice novel. Clementine chiefly remembered the hairiness of that book.
Clementine wanted sex to be something subtle and secret. Lights off. Mysterious. Hairless. An image came to her of Tiffany in that crazy backyard, before all the fairy lights came on: Tiffany's T-shirt bright white in the hazy light. A sweet taste filled Clementine's mouth. It was the taste of Vid's dessert. Now it was the taste of shame.
Two or three nights after the barbeque Clementine had dreamed she was having sex onstage at the Opera House concert hall with someone who was not Sam. Holly and Ruby were in the audience watching their mother have sex with some other man. Right there in the front row, legs swinging, while Clementine moaned and groaned in the most depraved way, and
at first they just watched with blank concentration, like they were watching Dora the Explorer, but then they started to cry, and Clementine called out 'Just a minute!' as if she were finishing the washing up, not her orgasm, and then her parents and Sam's parents, all four of them, came running down the aisle of the concert hall with disgusted faces, and Clementine's mother screamed, 'How could you, Clementine, how could you?'
It wasn't a hard dream to interpret. In Clementine's mind what happened would forever be tied up with sex. Skanky, sleazy sex.
Fragments of that revolting dream had lingered for days, as if it had been an actual memory. She had to keep reassuring herself: It's okay, Clementine. You never actually performed a sex show at the Opera House with your kids in the audience.
It still felt more like a memory than a dream.
They'd both had bad dreams that first week after the barbeque. Their sheets got tangled, their pillows stank of sweat. Sam's shouts would violently wrench her awake, as though someone had grabbed her by her shirtfront and yanked her upward to a sitting position, her heart hammering. Sam would be sitting up next to her, confused and gibbering, and her first instinctive reaction would always be pure rage, never sympathy.
Sam had begun grinding his teeth while he slept. An unbearable melody in perfect three-quarter time. Click-two-three, click-two-three. She would lie there, eyes open in the darkness, counting along for what seemed like hours at a time.
Apparently Clementine had started talking in her sleep. Once she'd woken up to find Sam leaning over her, shouting (he said he wasn't shouting but he was), 'Shut up, shut up, shut up!'
Whoever got the most frustrated would leave to sleep or read in the study. That's when the sofa bed got made up and stayed made up. Eventually they'd have to talk about it. It couldn't go on forever, could it?
Don't think about it now. It would sort itself out. She had other more important things to worry about. For example, tomorrow she needed to call Erika and arrange to see her for a drink after work. Then she would tell her that of course she would donate her eggs. It would be her pleasure, her honour.
For some reason a memory came to her of the first and only time she'd seen inside Erika's childhood home.
They'd been friends for about six months and Clementine was always (mostly at her mother's insistence) inviting Erika over to play, but the invitation was never returned, and Clementine, with a child's well-developed sense of fairness, was getting sick of it. It was fun going to other people's places. You often got treats you weren't allowed at your own place. So why was Erika being so strange and secretive and frankly, selfish?
Then one day Clementine's mother was driving them both to some school picnic, and they'd stopped at Erika's place to quickly pick up something she'd forgotten. A hat? Clementine couldn't remember. What she did remember was jumping out of the car and running after her, to tell Erika Mum said to bring a warm top as well because it was getting chilly, and how she'd stopped in the hallway of the house, bewildered. The front door wouldn't swing all the way open. Erika must have turned sideways to get through. The door was blocked by a ceiling-high tower of overflowing cardboard boxes.
'Get out of here! What are you doing here?' Erika had screamed, suddenly appearing in the hallway, her face a frightening grotesque mask of fury, and Clementine had leaped back, but she'd never forgotten that glimpse of Erika's hallway.
It was like coming upon a slum in a suburban home. The stuff: skyscrapers of old newspapers, tangles of coathangers and winter coats and shoes, a frypan filled with bead necklaces, and piles of bulging, knotted plastic bags. It was like someone's life had exploded.
And the smell. The smell of rot and mould and decay.
Erika's mother, Sylvia, was a nurse, supposedly a perfectly capable one. She held down a job at a nursing home for years before she retired. It seemed so extraordinary to Clementine that someone who lived like that could work in healthcare, where things like cleanliness and hygiene and order mattered so much. According to Erika, who was now able to freely discuss her mother's hoarding, it wasn't that unusual; in fact, it was quite common for hoarders to work in the healthcare industry. 'They say it has something to do with them focusing on taking care of others so they don't take care of themselves,' Erika said. Then she added, 'Or their children.'
For years, Erika's mother's problems had been something they all referred to obliquely and delicately, even when those shows started appearing on TV and they suddenly had a word for the horror: hoarding. Erika's mum was a 'hoarder'. It was a thing. A condition. But it wasn't until Erika had started with her 'lovely psychologist' about a year ago that Erika herself had begun saying the word 'hoarding' out loud, and discussing the psychology behind it, in this strange, new, clipped way, as if it had never been a deep, dark secret at all.
How could Clementine begrudge sharing her home and her life with Erika after she'd seen her home? She couldn't and yet she did.
It was the same now. She hadn't become a good person. She still didn't feel pleasure at the thought of helping her friend achieve her deepest desire. In truth she still felt the same overwhelming aversion as when they'd first asked her to donate her eggs, but the difference was that now she relished her aversion. She wanted the doctors to cut her open. She wanted them to remove a piece of herself and hand it over to Erika. Here you go. Let's balance the scales.
She turned out her lamp and rolled over to the middle of the bed and tried to think about anything, anything at all, other than that day. That so-called 'ordinary day'.
chapter twenty-two
The day of the barbeque
Erika watched Clementine try to rescue the Moet that was foaming and frothing from the bottle, while Vid stood in the middle of his gigantic kitchen, the champagne held aloft in both hands, grinning idiotically like a Formula One winner posing for a photo.
Clementine laughed as if it were all a great hoot, as if it didn't matter that expensive champagne was being wasted. She shouldn't have spent that much. It wasn't necessary to turn up to a backyard barbeque with French champagne. She and Sam always lived beyond their means. The mortgage on their damp little trendy place! Erika and Oliver couldn't believe it when they heard how much they'd borrowed, and then they'd taken the little girls off for a holiday in Italy last year! Fiscal madness. They'd put the trip on their credit card even though the children would have been just as happy with a one-hour drive to the Central Coast, but only Tuscany would do for Sam and Clementine.
That's why Clementine really needed to get the full-time orchestra job. She always got herself worked up over auditions, suddenly doubting herself. Erika couldn't imagine having a job where you doubted your ability to perform it. In Erika's world you were either qualified for a job or you weren't.
Perhaps Erika had misinterpreted the expression on Clementine's face. It wasn't that she didn't want to help them by donating her eggs; it was just that she had so much on her mind at the moment. They should have waited until after the audition to ask her. But that was months away. If she got it, she'd be starting a new job. If she didn't get it, she'd be devastated. It was now or never.
Maybe it was never.
Was that tablet she'd taken affecting her balance? No, of course it wasn't. She was fine.
'Here you go!' Clementine handed Erika a glass, not quite meeting her eyes.
'I'll have one of those too,' said Oliver. His disappointment with the way their 'meeting' had turned out tugged at the corners of his mouth, so he looked like a sad clown. He'd been so hopeful about today. 'Do you think she'll say yes?' he'd said suddenly last night as they watched TV, and Erika could hardly bear the yearning in his voice, and her fear made her snap, 'How would I know?'
'Yeah, I'll have a drink too,' said Sam. It was like everyone was dying of thirst. Erika had served sparkling mineral water at her place, with lemon. She took a big mouthful of champagne. She wasn't that fond of it. Did everyone just pretend to like champagne?
'Well, I know it's not very classy of me, but I'm
having a beer.' Tiffany went to the giant stainless-steel refrigerator and stood with her hip jutted at an angle. She wore denim jeans faded to almost white with rips at the knees (they were plausible rips; Erika could almost forgive her for them) and a plain white T-shirt, and her long blonde hair had that just-off-the-beach look that movie stars favoured. Just looking at Tiffany made Erika think about sex, so God knew what she was doing to the men, although when she looked at her own husband she saw that Oliver was looking out the window, staring at nothing, dreaming of babies. The perfect husband. Just in need of a perfect wife.
'Actually, I'll have a beer,' Sam put down his champagne glass on the island bench, 'if one is going.'
'I've got some struklji in the oven, just five more minutes,' said Vid. He opened the oven and peered in. 'It's a savoury cheese strudel, very good, Slovenian, an old family recipe, no, not really, I got it from the internet!' He roared with laughter. 'My auntie used to make it, and I asked my mother for the recipe, and she said, "How would I know!" My mother, she's no cook. Me, I'm a great cook.'
'He is a great cook. Very humble too.' Tiffany tipped back her head and took a long swig of her beer, her back arched, her chest thrust out, like a girl on a sexist football commercial. Erika couldn't look away. Did she do it on purpose? It was extraordinary. Erika caught Clementine's eye, and Clementine raised one eyebrow back at her, and Erika tried not to laugh, and everything Erika cherished about their friendship was encapsulated in that secret, just-for-her raised eyebrow.
'I'd love a husband who cooked,' said Clementine to Tiffany. 'Where did you pick him up?'
'That would be telling,' said Tiffany sparkily.
See, this was the sort of conversation Erika didn't get. Wasn't that kind of inappropriate? Flirtatious? And Clementine and Tiffany were being so familiar with each other, as if Erika were the outsider and Clementine and Tiffany were the old friends.
'Hey, I cook!' Sam flicked Clementine's shoulder.
'Ow,' said Clementine. She said to Tiffany and Vid, 'The truth is, we share the cooking but neither of us is very good at it.'