Photo by Marten Bjork on Unsplash
By Gabrielle Blondell
It crept out of my mouth before I’d thought to reel it back in. I was like that back then. I’d say anything if it sounded right, if the rhythm was right, you know. Like a pop-song lyric. It didn’t need to make sense. And I saw the blood drain from Phil’s face and then rise again, dark red.
‘I don’t give a flying fuck what your mother used to say.’ His hands were white-knuckled on the steering wheel.
The weird thing was I didn’t either. I hadn’t listened to my mother in years. This one bit of wisdom I’d absorbed without noting it. It was just something to say, but here it is, just so you know: Things happen for a reason. It’s rubbish right? So take Phil’s side, I implore you. What kind of person says this to someone they are supposed to love?
Phil had applied for a loan for his graphic design business. He was sick of working from the apartment my mother left us, well me. He wanted a proper office. I understand this now, of course I do. He wanted to be taken seriously, wanted somewhere to meet clients and make his presentations. As for me, I wanted him home working alongside me. Me making hair accessories at the dining room table. (My biggest sellers were the fascinators for Melbourne Cup and Derby Day). And he within spitting distance, back turned toward me in a halo of colours from his psychedelic computer screen. I liked his company, the clicking of the mouse button, the joint lunches and morning teas. So when he slipped into the driver’s seat after his meeting with the bank manager, I was thinking about lunch out, someplace we could both claim as a tax deduction. When he told me the bank manager had knocked him back, there was no shock, no mutual disappointment, just a void and into it I’d tossed this stupid line.
So, he was pursing his lips in his dark red face and swallowing as if I were hard to digest, when we caught up with the traffic in front and ground to a halt.
‘Bloody traffic’, I said. ‘They really have to sort this out.’
‘Traffic! Fuck the traffic and fuck you!’
He said it exactly, like that. It was an explosion, knocking bits off us before receding into a black-hole silence. In this bubble, we inched forward. For a time, I focussed on the broken white line separating our lane from the others. The slower Phil drove the more each line stretched.
A man in a big utility truck kept pace to my left. His elbow was crooked out of his window as if he were made for country roads and sunny skies. Our gazes met and he smiled briefly. He showed his teeth, so a real smile. I smiled back and Phil caught a remnant of it.
‘I’m glad you are enjoying yourself.’
‘I’m not enjoying myself. That man in that ute smiled at me. I was being polite.’
‘Is anything you do authentic?’ Phil asked. ‘Anything at all?’
It was impossible for me to answer that, so I didn’t.
The lane to our left was less congested and the bloke in the utility pulled away. On his back bumper just below the Toyota badge was a bright yellow smiley sticker. I smiled again.
‘Jesus, Nettie! You really don’t care, do you?’
‘Of course I do,’ I said. ‘You want authenticity, then give me a chance to catch up. First you want to save money and work from home and next thing you’re saying that’s not good enough. What do you expect?’
It was a good counterattack. I was proud of myself. I glanced at Phil. He felt it and very slowly he shifted his gaze from the traffic ahead and sneered.
‘Good try, sweetheart, but we both know you would rather me stuck at home with you while you’re making your stupid hair shit.’
Bang! I felt that in my heart. How dare he call my hair accessories stupid or shit for that matter. ‘Fuck off then, Phil.’
‘You fuck off!’ He was yelling at me when I saw a car door open up ahead and a guy jump out. It was the smiling man. I craned forward even while Phil kept yelling. I saw the guy rip open a door from another car and drag a man through it and onto the road.
Phil had noticed now. He, too, was craning forward.
The smiling man braced him against the tailgate of his own Nissan and threw a punch. It was so hard we heard the impact. Phil winced. I think I did too.
Blood gushed. Doors opened in the cars around us. I opened mine as well.
The Nissan owner struggled wildly. He threw a punch which landed on the side of smiling man’s head. The smiler staggered and copped another to the stomach. I heard him grunt. Their fortunes had turned. The Nissan owner knew what he was doing. He stuck his fist again into smiler’s belly and he dropped to the ground. Other men rushed to pull the Nissan owner off. I walked forward too. All I remember is that I wanted it to stop.
‘Leave it, Nettie! Get back here.’
But I kept walking. Let the Nissan driver hit me, I was thinking. If he did, he would cross a line. He wouldn’t be retaliating, just a mean bastard. He’d go to jail. I was so very sure of myself then. I thought he would pull back and I would be able to stop it like no man could. My femininity would be his kryptonite.
But things had escalated and the spectators from the surrounding cars were involved. Misguided punches were thrown and strangers were clinched together, standing in bear hugs or rolling across the asphalt. One man’s head connected with a tow ball as he fell and I heard a dull thud and saw his eyes roll back into his head. I kept walking unmolested until I was in their midst. On the ground, and neglected, was the smiling man. I bent over him as he lay curled around his hurt belly. A groan escaped and I thought of punctured organs and internal bleeding. ‘Do you need me to call an ambulance?’ I asked.
He groaned again and I took out my phone. ‘Please come,’ I said to the woman who answered. ‘This man is badly hurt and there’s another with a head injury.’
The operator told me the police were already on their way.
Phil had remained near our car. His face, utterly blank. He looked old to me, older than my father in his coffin on the day we buried him. He was watching as pockets of men worked out their rage on each other and then he turned that same blank gaze on me. My crazy heart swelled. It burst in my chest like a firework and sent pulses of electricity through my limbs. I took in his brown eyes, his strong chin, his long-fingered hands. I almost felt their touch, but he stayed where he was.
‘What’s wrong with you?’ Phil hissed. ‘Why walk into the middle of all that?’ He cocked his head toward the grappling men, who were tiring now. ‘You crave attention. That’s it, isn’t it?’
‘No! I wanted to help.’ I had helped. I’d rung for an ambulance.
Phil screwed up his face. ‘You’re a narcissist, Nettie. That’s what you are.’
He was probably right. Not a full-blown irredeemable narcissist, mind you. Let’s say a normal person with narcissistic tendencies, but that was a far as I got, as an ambulance was nudging its way up the verge.
‘Over here,’ I called. One paramedic jumped onto the road and I guided her to the fallen men. Her partner followed us with a large medical bag.
I looked toward Phil’s car. His glasses flashed through the windscreen in the last of the setting sun and I knew he had retreated to the driver’s seat.
‘Can you tell us what happened, miss?’
I turned to see a police officer standing beside me.
‘I don’t really know.’
‘Just tell me what you saw.’
I did. ‘Will those men be ok?’ I asked him.
‘Can’t say. Not my field, I’m afraid.’
‘No, of course not.’
I knew I was buying time.
‘We’ll have the road cleared as soon as possible, so you better return to your vehicle.’
It was true. Other police officers were waving cars around a cordon they had established to protect the ambulance officers and the road was emptying.
‘I’ll escort you, miss.’
‘No, thank you.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes, perfectly.’
Back at the car, I opened the passenger door and slipped inside. Phil didn’t acknowledge me. He sat motionless in the driver’s seat staring through the windscreen. By the set of his face, I knew he’d come to a resolution, possibly about me. Okay then, bring it on.
The car ahead moved off and Phil followed. We passed the two paramedics at work on the injured men and the police officer, who nodded to me as we passed. We were waved into the far right lane and the further we inched away from the incident, the more disembodied I felt. It was as if I had remained there, and this self beside Phil was a husk. I looked over at him then. I took him in, not catching glimpses as I’d done in the past, but openly, squarely. I knew he’d noticed because he began gnawing on the inside his cheek and this gave him a dimple where one shouldn’t be.
‘Were you queasy? It’s okay if you were. Some people are, aren’t they?’
He shot me a look for my impertinence and sighed. ‘No, I wasn’t queasy.’
‘So, just callous then?’ Who was I, now?
He rolled his eyes, but I wasn’t buying it.
‘Why not help then?’ My chest had swelled, my stomach stilled, my neediness gone.
Phil indicated left and pulled onto the verge. He turned his whole body in his seat and fronted me. ‘It was none of our business, that’s why!’
‘People were hurt, though.’
Phil smirked. ‘Not really. It’s was a biff up, that’s all.’
I saw the man fall again and hit his head on the tow ball and the smiling man curled up in pain. I heard the concern of the paramedics who attended them. It was clear Phil couldn’t make room for them.
‘I want you out of my flat by the weekend.’
His eyes flew wide and the colour left his face. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘You heard me.’ I couldn’t look at him and I couldn’t stay seated beside him. I was out on the verge with my handbag on my shoulder.
‘What? So, I suppose you are going to walk home then? That should be interesting.’ He smirked again. He’d already convinced himself I was bluffing or was pretending I was. Freed of my own nervousness, I could see his method.
‘From now on, it’s none of your business what I do.’ I resettled my handbag into a more comfortable position and walked south, and the further I walked the more my chest opened and the deeper I breathed.
*