The pedestrian crossing is beside a beach, at the bottom of a steep hill. There’s a dairy on one side, a set of public toilets on the other.
“Don’t go in there,” my friend warns. “That place is notorious all over town.”
“You mean I’ll get arrested by an undercover cop?” I ask.
She laughs, but doesn’t answer.
The cars keep zooming by. Too fast, I’m thinking, for a suburban area.
“Yeah, it’s terrible. Every morning we have to wait till the way’s clear before we can let the kids cross.”
My friend holds up her hand. The small red car nearest to us stops – somewhat reluctantly, it seems. We begin to walk across.
Two cars whip through on the other side. We pause, irresolute.
A station-wagon draws up with a screech of brakes, straddling the painted lines.
My friend walks behind him, I in front. I suppose I’m glaring because the driver starts to shout at me. I can see him foaming and gesticulating behind the wheel, small children crouching behind him in the back seat. I can’t hear a single word.
I shout back: “I’m taking down your number. I’m going to report you.”
He rants on. I don’t know what about. The accident we’d almost caused by daring to cross the road, I suppose.
Later, when I’m coming back along that road myself, I’ll realise that he might have been blinded by the afternoon sun in his eyes.
Reason enough, I suppose, to drive at full speed through a pedestrian crossing with a cargo of kids in your car.
•
As we continue up the hill towards my friend’s place, she gestures towards the first few houses on her left. The ones she’s singling out are built out of brick and tile, on straggling, brushy sections.
“Those are the Housing Corp tenants. They’re selling them off, but not all of them have gone yet. Some of our friends were quite shocked when they heard we were moving in here.” “Why?”
It seems a prosperous, leafy kind of suburb, in a good part of town. The homes get larger and more luxurious as we mount the twining road.
“Notorious for crims and dole-bludgers. We told them we felt quite safe, though. Nobody’s going to rob a house in a cul-de-sac, especially not in their own street. They only go for places with easy escape routes.”
A few of the tenants are leaning across their fences, staring at us. We keep on walking. I don’t wave because my friend doesn’t. Further up the hill it’s a different story – cheery nods and hellos to each new dog-walker or jogger.
•
“I heard about a guy who was suffering from low self-esteem …”
Is she trying to reassure me?
“At any rate that’s what they told him was wrong.”
Maybe not.
“He was the father of a friend of mine. Anyway, he went to therapy, and did all sort of confidence-building exercises – told himself that he didn’t care what other people thought of him, stopped tailoring all his comments to what he thought people wanted to hear.
And it was successful! After years and years of groups and one-on-one sessions, he was cured! He didn’t give a stuff what people thought of him.
He was a nudist. They all were. Spent every summer vacation at a Naturist’s retreat …”
I can see the backs of the little family group ahead of us on the path stiffen a little. At the use of the word “nude,” I suppose. They don’t want their children overhearing any such filth. The kids – a little boy and a girl – prance on, undisturbed.
“So one day he was out swimming. It must have been early in the season, because the water was quite cold. He came out of the water and looked down, and – voilà, significant … what do you call it?”
“Shrinkage.”
“Shrinkage! Yeah, that’s right. And that was that! All those years wasted. He found out that he cared desperately what all the people on the beach thought of him – wanted to reassure them that it really wasn’t …”
“Especially the girls.”
“I guess. The men, too – in case they wrote him off because of it.”
The family in front pick up their pace. It’s too late now, the high, whinnying voice of my companion has already conveyed the fatal information. All they can hope is that their children are still too young to make sense of all that rigmarole. Why would they pay attention to another set of adults babbling away? They never have before. Hard enough to make them listen to the simplest instructions from their elders and betters.
As we overtake them I feel a sudden impulse to turn and apologise. For what? My companion? My own shortcomings as a man? Theirs, as insufficiently vigilant parents?
•
“It’s like before the war,” I say.
“What is?”
“In the 1930s, that kind of time. When everyone can see that something’s coming, but nobody knows quite what. They know it’s going got be bad, though.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“All this – these people, their lives. The things we do and talk about.”
“What things?”
“The way the street’s cut in two – them down there, you up here.”
“Are you calling me a snob? Saying I think I’m better than them?”
“Well, you do, don’t you?”
“We’ve worked for what we have, worked really hard. I don’t think you could understand just how hard we’ve worked.”
“I’m not denying that – it’s not about you. I’m not trying to accuse you …”
“It sounds like you are. You’ve been weird all day. Is there something on your mind, something else, I mean?”
“Nothing in particular, I don’t think. It’s not about us, if that’s what you mean.”
“What ‘us’? You know it’s not a good time …”
“Yeah, yeah. I know you don’t want to upset the applecart, how important your family are to you – we’ve talked about that before. No, it’s something else, something bigger.”
“Bigger than you, you mean.”
She starts to snigger at her own joke.
But yes, bigger than me …
•
On the way home the other cars seem relentless in their desire to cut you off. They barge into queues like wild dogs, ignoring all your attempts to keep a safe two-second distance clear in front of you.
You can see their hungry faces behind the wheel, tongues lolling, mouths slack.
Eager for blood, you think, eager for prey.
When the ice-cream truck draws up in front of you, there’s hardly time to brake.
“What does he want?” you think, as the men and boys boil out of the back.
“Are they trying to sell me something?” as the bats and crowbars start to rise and fall.
Bravado 16 (2009)[6/2008]
[1126 words]
[Published in Bravado 16 (2009): 7-8.;
Kingdom of Alt (Auckland: Titus Books, 2010): 135, 145 & 179.]
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