Something Wild
Jo Case
He is handsome, in the way men are at his age when there’s nothing really wrong with them. His dark hair is not thinning, or even grey. His stomach doesn’t push against his faded black t-shirt. He may be a dad, but he doesn’t yet remind her of hers. Worth noticing, in this company.
‘I guess we’re sitting with you,’ he says, pulling out the chair beside her.
‘I guess you are,’ she says. ‘I’m Kristen.’
‘Steve.’ He flashes off-white teeth. ‘I like your t-shirt.’
It’s a pop-art cartoon of a black-bobbed woman declaring she’s hitting the road after killing her parents. Kristen bought it at a concert, and the stitching has dissolved at the collar. She wore it every weekend when she was nineteen, but these days she wears it to bed. She’s washed it for the first time in a fortnight, especially for tonight’s dress-ups. She’d forgotten, when she put it on, that the whole point of being here is to present herself as a fellow grown-up, to get along with the others. She realises now – too late – that dressing in her teenage cast-offs was a bad idea.
‘Me too,’ she says. ‘I like my t-shirt, I mean. My son Ethan likes Green Day, so I suppose he’d like yours.’ Like her, he’s dressed all wrong. Though maybe it doesn’t matter so much for a man. The two men at the bookshop where she works dress just like him every day, right down to the Converse sneakers; if the women wear jeans, they’re paired with a silky shirt or fitted top. She didn’t notice the distinction until the day she wore Ethan’s Batman t-shirt to work, for a laugh: loose on him, it fit her perfectly, though it pulled tight under the arms and strained across her chest. Her boss pointedly asked her to work in the back room all day, pricing stock.
Steve laughs, in a way that signals he’s less charmed by her joke than by her short skirt. Kristen recrosses her fishnet legs, hooking a Doc Marten boot on the outside of the table leg. The woman beside Steve touches his shoulder and leaves her hand there, as if by accident. Like most of the women in the room, she’s wearing a grown-up interpretation of tonight’s theme: Something Wild. Black-lace dress, leopard-print heels, crimson lipstick. ‘This is my beautiful wife, Meredith,’ Steve says, leaning in to the woman. ‘My better half.’ It is an offering, an apology. He laughs again. His wife’s mouth bends in a smile, but her kohl-rimmed eyes refuse to be charmed or placated. She is not, in fact, beautiful, though she is trying. Careful make-up fails to hide the wrinkles like quotation marks at the corners of her eyes. Kristen is comforted by details like these, collects them as armour against the daily indifference that is, to her surprise, wearing her down.
*
She almost admires the woman’s hostility. She knows she deserves it. After all, she is flirting with her husband – partly because she’s bored, but mostly to hold his attention. Ethan’s been in Prep nine months now, and, apart from Cathy, this is the most interested another parent has been in her. Kristen doesn’t care about decluttering, or different ways you can use lemons, or bulk-buying groceries at Aldi. It means nothing to her that the house across the road from the back entrance of the school sold for almost $70,000 more than the listed price at last week’s auction. The rented apartment she lives in with Ethan is full of clutter: her clothes and books, Ethan’s toys, pieces of paper covered in drawings or shopping lists. She does her grocery shopping on her bike, while Ethan’s at school, cramming what she can into the baskets and her backpack. And her savings range, over the year, from $500 to nothing. She will never, in her whole life, afford a house in this neighbourhood. (She’ll probably never afford a house at all.) She has no interest in these conversations, as well as nothing to say. Yet she still feels excluded from them.
*
‘Steve, darling, let’s get a drink,’ says the woman, smoothing her dress towards her knees as she stands.
‘Would you like us to get you a drink?’ He dips his chin at Kristen.
She thinks about saying yes, just to see how his wife reacts. But instead, she shakes her head and watches as they blend into the dim light of the bar.
*
Her cheek is crushed in a lipstick kiss; she looks up from her phone.
‘You must hate me,’ says Cathy, taking the empty chair at her left, the one without Steve’s jacket on it. A black bra strap escapes from one sequinned cap sleeve. Her hair hangs into her eyes and down her back, dark roots bleeding into blonde. Cathy is always like this: parts of herself trailing, as if catching up to the rest. Her house is the same. Dirty plates and glasses in a conga line to the sink; the couch a mosaic of abandoned clothes, Lego pieces and half-read magazines streaked with nail polish. Cathy’s chaos makes her own seem organised. More importantly, Cathy shares the language of exasperating exes and shared custody – from school jumpers that always seem to be at the wrong house, to weekends confronting eerily silent bedrooms. Kristen erases the text she’s halfway through – the one where she threatens to go home within the next ten minutes. She reaches up and tucks her friend’s bra strap back under her sleeve.
‘Don’t be dumb,’ she says. ‘I’m just glad you’re here.’ She doesn’t say that forty minutes late is a new record.
*
‘Having a good night?’ Cathy asks her. She doesn’t want to know the answer; she wants reassurance. She knows Kristen didn’t want to come in the first place. And she knows how she feels about this crowd. Kristen opens her mouth to reply, then closes it again. Meredith is back. She stands behind her chair, one hand resting on the steel arch of its back: poised for flight. Between Kristen and his wife, Steve anchors himself at the table. Kristen watches his denim legs disappear under the tablecloth.
‘She’s not drinking, so I doubt it,’ he says, answering for Kristen. He extends a hand as Cathy hitches her handbag up her shoulder. ‘I’m Steve, and this is my wife Meredith.’
‘Oh, hey, nice to meet you. Haven’t seen you around school before, are you new?’
‘I don’t get into the school much,’ says Meredith. ‘Steve does the pick-ups most days. From after-care.’
‘Lucky you to have someone so helpful.’ Cathy picks up Steve’s wineglass. ‘My ex is always busy, you know. Work comes first. Always has.’ She tips the glass to her lips.
‘Hey. You know that’s my drink?’ Steve says. Kristen stifles a laugh. Last Monday, at the bakery after drop-off, she ordered a coffee and Cathy drank it. She didn’t say anything, she even paid for it.
‘I am so sorry.’ Burgundy liquid spills on the table as Cathy shoves it back at him, leaving a stain like an inkblot. ‘I wasn’t thinking.’
‘Keep it,’ he shrugs. ‘We should get a bottle for the table to share anyway.’ He looks at Kristen. ‘Are you in?’
‘Sure,’ she says. Meredith looks at them all with dismay; sharing a bottle changes them from strangers who happen to be seated together to an active group. Kristen wonders if Steve is deliberately trying to annoy his wife, doesn’t realise he is annoying her, or doesn’t care. She is deciding, too: does she feel sorry for her?
*
Kristen wouldn’t be at this primary-school fundraiser if not for Cathy, who went through mother’s group and kindergarten with the others. Cathy understands comparisons with kindergarten teachers and can empathise about rising interest rates. Her kitchen may be messy, but she has a mortgage on it and can talk about tiles with some authority. She’s regularly invited to Friday coffees at the bakery down the road from the school, even if she’s no longer included in the dinner parties where the guests arrive in pairs. She says the dinner parties don’t bother her, but says it so regularly that Kristen can tell it does.
*
‘They don’t hate you,’ Cathy said, over red wine at her dining room table last week, while their sons played Lego under it. ‘They don’t know you.’ It made a kind of sense at the time. Of course she should make an effort! Of course she was imagining things! Of course she would come to the fundraiser! But after forty minutes where no one would meet her eye when she looked at them, forty minutes spent playing with her phone in an effort to seem busy, she knows that they really do hate her. At best, she’s invisible. Maybe it’s because she’s ten years younger than the rest of them. Maybe it’s because she and Ethan’s father are divorced (okay, never married and separated – but she says divorced because it seems more respectable). Maybe they think it’s catching. Or is there something else about her – something indefinably wrong – that they can all sense, and know to avoid?
*
Cathy talks and Meredith endures it, responding with pursed lips and repeated ‘hmm’s. Kristen wonders sometimes if her friend overplays her absentmindedness: if behind her seeming incomprehension, she’s just doing what she feels like and pretending not to notice the response. She watches the teacher’s table across the room. She’s heard that the teachers are planning a surprise group performance from Cabaret later in the night, and their costumes back up the rumour: the deputy principal, who doubles as the school’s drama teacher, is wearing a corset trimmed with red ribbon, black hotpants and fishnet stockings. She seems as comfortable in her outfit as if it were her pyjamas. Ethan’s teacher, one of the few men on staff, is wearing a suit and suspenders, with a trilby. (Is he supposed to be a gangster?) He sits stiff-backed next to his boss in her underwear.
*
‘You can’t go past a good schnitzel, can you?’ Steve heaps cauliflower and potato in lumpy cheese sauce next to the glistening breaded chicken on his plate. Kristen lifts the lid of the casserole dish nearest her, leaking steam and revealing peas, green beans, sliced carrot and broccoli. This is what she gets for her $70 ticket? She craves leftover chilli con carne – or even grilled cheese on toast – in front of the television. The playlist shifts to the Spice Girls. So, I’ll tell you what I want, what I really, really want …
‘Oh, this is classic,’ laughs Steve. He sings a line before forking chicken into his mouth. ‘Don’t you love it?’
‘Yes!’ says Cathy. She squeals and sings a line. If you want my future, forget my past … Meredith shrugs.
‘Classic rubbish,’ mutters Kristen. She’s never heard a man enthuse about the Spice Girls before, at least not about their music. Ethan’s father was a fan of Ginger Spice. And of Charlie from Hi-5. And, in a long-cherished childhood crush, of Noni from Play School. She’s noticed that men – at least the men she knows – compulsively comment on the hotness of children’s program presenters, as if reminding themselves of their masculinity. It’s the same with girl bands.
‘How can you say that?’ asks Steve, clutching his chest. ‘The Spice Girls were hot. Especially Baby Spice.’
‘If you’re into the little-girl thing,’ says Kristen. She gulps from her wine. ‘They’re all awful, but the hot one was Ginger, surely?’ She repeats what she’s heard her ex say a million times before. ‘The Union Jack corset, the Wonder Woman boots.’
Meredith cuts her schnitzel into tiny triangle wedges, her eyes on her plate. Cathy sings.
‘Okay, you’ve convinced me,’ says Steve. He picks up the bottle and refills Kristen’s empty glass.
*
She rests her chin on her hand and leans in to laugh at his stupid jokes, feeling in control for the first time all year. Is this how Ethan feels when he acts up at school, telling jokes that make his class laugh and his teacher angry? He’s found it almost as hard to fit in here as she has. ‘He’s not a bad kid,’ the deputy principal told her, the last time she was called into the school office. ‘But he needs to learn the word no. He needs to know when to stop.’ Seeing herself through the teacher’s eyes – young single mother with unbrushed hair and retail job – she was too embarrassed to defend herself, to explain that Ethan hears no (and obeys it) all the time at home. He doesn’t listen to the teachers because he doesn’t like or trust them like he does her. What can she do about that?
‘I loved the Spice Girls when I was at uni,’ says Cathy. ‘I always wanted to be Posh Spice, because I liked her clothes.’
Meredith looks up from her mobile phone and puts it her handbag. She dabs a serviette at her mouth, erasing imaginary crumbs.
‘If you’ll all excuse us, we’re being beckoned from across the room,’ she says, hooking an arm into her husband’s. ‘Come on, dear.’ She wields the word as a weapon.
‘I’ll be there in a sec,’ says Steve, turning his smile on his wife.
‘Come on,’ she repeats.
‘The little woman needs me,’ he says to the table. And he gives his wife a purposeful pat on the arse as he stands to join her.
*
‘Marriages like that that make me grateful I’m single,’ whispers Kristen across the table, but Cathy doesn’t laugh.
‘What are you doing?’ she says.
‘What do you mean?’
Cathy looks at her for a long moment. ‘Nothing,’ she says eventually.
Kristen is glad she doesn’t have to answer, because she doesn’t know what she’s doing. She doesn’t even like Steve, though she is attracted to him: mostly because of the wine and the fact that it’s been months since she’s even kissed someone. She watches him across the room, deep in the fold of the other parents, and wonders what it would be like to have his mouth on hers, his hands under her clothes. She’s been trying to do the right thing for so long: working amicably with Ethan’s father to share custody, even though she hates him for leaving; working a job that bores her, because it gives her the flexibility to take Ethan to school and pick him up; even coming here tonight to try to make friends with people who look down on her. She’d forgotten the thrill of doing what she feels like, just to see what happens.
*
‘He-LLO Footscray Primary!’
Rock Star Mum is at the microphone, leading a band of parents with varied experience – from touring the country and being in the Triple J’s Hottest 100 (Rock Star Mum) to playing around on Friday nights in a friend’s garage (most of the others). Kristen remembers watching Rock Star Mum perform with her band when they were both much younger, before Ethan was born. Looking up at the red-curtained stage of The Esplanade Hotel, part of a sweaty, drunk mass of bodies heaving to the music, her brother and best friend beside her. She misses being with people so familiar they don’t have to talk; regrets that it’s been replaced by boring conversations she has to work at. Conversations that miss the mark even when she tries, like there’s a script everyone knows, except for her.
‘Let’s dance,’ she says to Cathy, pushing her seat back.
‘I don’t think I’m drunk enough to dance.’
‘Well, I am,’ she says. ‘Come on, bring your drink.’
*
Cathy dissolves into it, swaying her hips and snaking her arms as Rock Star Mum belts out ‘I Love Rock’n’Roll’. Kristen squints deliberately at the stage, imagining herself back at The Espy, watching the same dyed-red hair and fire-engine lips. But Rock Star Mum’s curves have seeped into stockiness; her leather pants replaced by a funky yet forgiving wrap dress. And Kristen can’t forget that Rock Star Mum is no longer the lead singer of a band whose CDs she owns; she’s now one of the popular girls at school who won’t speak to her. In fact, if she’s honest with herself, Rock Star Mum is one of the few who always smiles and says hello when she passes her at the school gate or sees her at the supermarket, even though her son is much older than Kristen’s and she has no reason to talk to her. But Kristen’s not in the mood to make distinctions. She tilts her head back and sways, trying to submerge her awareness that she is out of time, that her body can’t locate the rhythm that has captured the crowd. And then she feels a body against hers; someone standing too close, standing still.
‘Do you smoke?’ asks Steve. She surprises herself by saying ‘I do’, even though she quit two years ago. Ethan would kill her if he knew.
*
They crouch on the footpath outside the hall. The cars and trucks of Whitehall Street roar through the darkness. Down the hill, the docks shine orange and white against the sky; cranes and scaffolding made beautiful, at least for now, by garlands of pinprick light. Kristen shivers in her t-shirt. She was almost too hot inside, where the heat had been turned up to accommodate short sleeves and bare skin. Out here, a biting wind blows her hair over her face and across her lips. She pushes it away so Steve can lean in to light her cigarette. He cups one hand around it as he flicks the lighter with the other.
‘I have experience at this,’ he says, concentrating on the uncertain flame. There is a familiar burn in her chest as she inhales, then a release as smoke curls into the night air, silvery under the streetlight. He settles beside her and lights his own cigarette. His knee touches hers, then rests against it. She doesn’t move.
‘I bet you do,’ she says.
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