The Ice Shelf: An Eco-Comedy Page 17
Over the next few days, in between sex and talk I wandered around the apartment marvelling at its bright northerly aspect, at the view of the sea endlessly delivering itself to the wharves, and at the notion that town was a hop, step and a jump away. I know this is all just material, so in essence not important, but still I thanked my lucky stars—about everything, about Miles *and* the apartment. I was in love!
At that point the apartment was empty, but Miles’s parents had spare furniture in their basement in Noa Valley (from a grandmother or something), and we could have it as soon as we organised a carrier. Of course, a house-lot of furniture! Middle-class people always have parents with spare house-lots of furniture. Miles liked that I found it funny. ‘You’re funny,’ he said. And I was, all of a sudden. Miles thought it was fun roughing it for a while, and it was, plus it was summer. We slid around the bare parquet floors laughing, ate takeaways and drank red wine cross-legged on the mattress. We bought miniature cartons of milk which sometimes lasted until morning for a cup of tea, sometimes not. I hoped there’d be a fridge among Grandma’s things, and Miles said there probably was, which meant certainly, because she had everything. But when I asked him to check, that was the one thing there wasn’t. Still, it was ludicrous fun being in the empty apartment.
We lay on the mattress kanohi ki te kanohi (face to face, in this part of the world). Miles said he adored me. I said I adored him. I told Miles I’d never met anyone like him, I’d never felt this way before—which was all absolutely true; I’d gone bananas. Ditto, said Miles, and he gazed into my eyes. I fell into his deep brown endless pools and didn’t come up for air for a long time. Miles told me about his childhood, which didn’t take long because it’d been so happy. I told Miles about my childhood, obviously a bigger undertaking. I could keep Miles entertained for hours. Some of those stories I’ve unintentionally shared in these Acknowledgements. When Miles and I parted three years minus a day later, I hadn’t even got to the end of all my stories. But I digress. During those first magical days and weeks in the apartment with only a mattress on the parquet floor, Miles told me he couldn’t live without me, and I told Miles I couldn’t live without him. This was *forever*.
We’d been there about five days when something else miraculous happened. On a breezy cloud-scudding afternoon, I was alone in the apartment (Miles was down at the gallery), and I decided I felt like a vodka and orange, just a passing fancy. I thought, Why not, Janice, why can’t you give myself a treat once in a while? I went down Majoribanks to withdraw twenty dollars from a hole in the wall at Courtenay Place, and upon doing so I discovered that I had $10,020 in my account.
I would like to thank Wendy for handing me the opportunity to make a bit of cash. How curious that I was paid abysmally at the Glass Menagerie but that I ended up with this strange windfall—compensation for unfair dismissal and loss of wages. Despite Wendy maintaining to the Employment Relations Authority that I’d knocked over the shelves on purpose, it could never be proved. I was lucky that that afternoon there were no Bobbys, Clarissas or Felicitys in the shop. And, of course, I hadn’t knocked them over on purpose! It was all an utter and terrible accident.
At the automatic teller that afternoon, I stood like a statue while the printout of my balance fluttered in my hand and my hair blew all over my face. A queue formed behind me, and I jumped aside, got out my phone and dispatched online payments to Mandy—with whom my line of credit was hefty in those days—my credit card, and a certain debt-collecting company with not very pleasant customer relations. I realised with delight that I still had enough to buy a certain object that I was quite fond of. I refer to none other than the handsome fridge I’d seen in the secondhand shop in Kelburn. It’s true I had been starting to get on the verge of screamy at having a cup of tea in the morning with milk on the cusp of off. I headed straight up the hill on the cable car—no mucking about with steps.
As I approached the shop on genteel Upload Road, I was sure the fridge would’ve gone by now. Who *wouldn’t* want it? Strangely—call me pathetic—my heart was pounding. But the second miracle of the day was that the fridge was still there, its glossy flank beaming from inside the depths of the shop. I stepped inside.
The air was cool. A mould and patchouli smell common to the secondhand trade permeated, with an overlay of furniture wax. I edged past shelves crammed with old souvenirs from Bali and Fiji, fringed table lamps, and big glass ashtrays with bubbles trapped inside. Although everything was moth-eaten, the shop reminded me of the Glass Menagerie with its surfeit of decoration, but did I feel the need to push one of the shelves over? Not a bit. (And not that I would ever consider doing that.) As my vision levelled out with the dimness, I noticed an old whiskery dude hunched behind the counter. I crabwised down an aisle created by chests of drawers, smiling like a New Zealander, and he reciprocated by glancing away in a Cinema of Unease-y manner.
The fridge was just as nice as I remembered it. Although the style was fifties, it was actually a replica, more like eighties (which is vintage, for a fridge). I had no interest in some new ultra-white thing with all the style of a dental implant. I liked this fridge. Without further ado, I went to the counter and handed over my fifty dollars. The whiskery man was small and yellowed from smoking, with not an ounce of body fat, as if all his reserves were poured into the shop. A silver thread of drool ran from his mouth as he rang up the purchase. He tipped himself off his stool, shuffled down the aisle and smeared a red SOLD sticker on the fridge door, reminding me of a photograph I saw once of the word ‘Red’ mown in green grass. I felt something warm up furiously inside my chest.
Back at the counter, the whiskery man gawped up at me, eyes yellow as banana lollies, ballpoint hovering over a fluffy invoice pad, and I gave him my address.
‘Steps?’ he croaked.
I described the Southeast Ridge to the best of my ability.
‘And it’ll be a hundred for delivery.’
My mouth must’ve fallen open.
‘Dollars,’ he added. And here the whiskery man adopted a folksy American tone which seemed to fit the occasion. ‘And it ain’t Monopoly money.’ Clearly he had no interest in the climate of his shop.
I didn’t *have* another hundred dollars. I told the whiskery man this, feeling, I have to say, a little ashamed. Money is like clothing. The whiskery man pulled a long, yellow-eyed face to indicate the sale was off, slapping his spongy invoice pad upside down for extra effect.
A pall of disappointment sank over me. I’d got used to the idea of fridge ownership and the loss of that, the loss of something which until just an hour before I hadn’t thought I’d ever own, was a very great loss indeed. I was wondering what to do with this feeling when I noticed that the whiskery man wasn’t opening the till to give me back my fifty. He was biding his time, and I knew the ball was in my court. This was a game. I realised then that the whiskery man wanted to sell the fridge as much as I wanted to buy it—maybe more. I called his bluff. I put out my hand to retrieve the fifty.
The whiskery man adjusted his position on his stool and looked out the window. As it happened, he said, he’d be driving over Mount Victoria way later. I tried not to seem too excited.
That very afternoon, the fridge was delivered to the apartment. The whiskery man grumbled in the courtyard, saying I’d kept the steps a secret—absolute lies—but he got on with it. I have to admit, the Southeast Ridge was pretty wicked, but finally the fridge was in the kitchen.
When Miles came home from the gallery, he did a double take.
‘I got us a fridge,’ I said.
‘So I see,’ he said.
We both looked at the fridge and walked around it, Miles in his loping, simian way.
‘Nice,’ said Miles. He asked if it was, you know, secondhand.
‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘but good secondhand.’
Miles nodded. ‘The thing about fridges is, sort of—’
‘What?’
‘Well, efficiency,’ said Miles. ‘Like, does th
e motor work, do the seals work, et cetera.’
We poked at the spongy rubber strip around the door, which was perhaps a little too spongy. It had never occurred to me it might not go.
‘And the, you know, energy rating,’ said Miles. He started fingering the fridge all over, mock frowning, but he could’ve been serious, it was hard to tell. ‘Somewhere there should be a sticker on it, with stars.’
I joined in, looking all over the beautiful green flank for stickers showing an energy rating.
‘On a scale of, you know, one to five,’ said Miles. ‘Five is the best.’
‘What does it mean when there are no stars?’ I asked.
We laughed, and I poured vodka and oranges to celebrate the fact that we had a fridge, even though it had no stars.
‘Cheers,’ I said.
‘Yeah, cheers,’ said Miles.
But, despite the colour being as delicate as the underside of a leaf, the silver fittings like dew, I could tell he didn’t like the fridge. Nevertheless, this was our fridge now. We walked it into the space where a fridge should be—hilarious, because we’d had a few celebratory drinks by now—and moved into it, transferring the few food items we had from the cupboard, to-ing and fro-ing flirtatiously like a rendition of the clean-up scene in The Big Chill, but of course we’re much too young for that. We’re not the generation that took all the money and stuffed up the planet. When we were done, Miles nodded his head in approval. It did look stylish, and if there’s one thing Miles likes, it’s style.
When we plugged it in, it went; it was a tenor. One minor spanner in the works, which I didn’t mention to Miles—he was sort of passed out by then—was that the door didn’t close properly. I tried and tried to make it fit tightly, to no avail. The squishy white seals pressed softly like the gloved hands of elderly cousins who don’t quite like each other. Unfortunately, when it comes to fridges and doors, there’s no halfway. I dashed down to the general store on Majoribanks Street (stopping at the liquor store on the way to visit my French New Wave cinema buddy, who I’d only just met at that point in time) and bought a stick-on kit with a hook, and while Miles snoozed, I fitted the little lock onto the side of the fridge. It wasn’t too conspicuous, and it allowed the fridge to function, although it was quite loud, growling incessantly and, every hour or so, making an alarming noise like someone with sleep apnoea turning over in bed. The power bill from then on was always rather astronomical. But I still loved the fridge; I still got a kick out of having my very own fridge, or rather a shared fridge, because Miles and I shared everything in those days. On that night, when Miles had roused himself and come into the kitchen to make a pre-bed snack, he hesitated only briefly before unhooking the new lock and retrieving his special sandwich ingredients. I smiled from the kitchen doorway.
‘Cheers,’ I said.
Miles pursed his lips just a little. He really was the quintessential New Zealand man.
But a funny thing happened. As I lolled about in the kitchen, thinking idly about writing and things—because I’ve found that that is when the best ideas come, when one is thinking idly, and this to the tune of Miles’s bumbling about—I began to feel not so good. I can’t really explain it. I began to worry about Miles and me.
What say it wasn’t true that we’d had an immediate rapport and laughed at the same jokes? What say it wasn’t true that, when we kissed, my whole body and person thrilled to some new tune? What say when he fucked me I might not always lose myself in him? What say we stopped spending hours kanohi ki te kanohi whispering sweet nothings into each other’s faces in a manner in which I hadn’t known before? What say he didn’t continue to care about what I thought? What say we stopped trying to make sure the other was happy? What say he stopped thinking I was pretty and stopped saying so on a daily basis? What say I stopped thinking that his simian body and big square head were sexy? What say I stopped telling him everything about my life, and he stopped telling me everything about his? What say he didn’t want to be with me forever? What say, if I got pregnant, he wasn’t ecstatic and it didn’t make him the happiest man alive? What say it wasn’t true that he loved me?
I worried that it might not be true, and he might not be true and we might not be true. And then it looked like none of it was going to turn out to be true, as if I’d walked around us and looked at us from a different angle. Although Miles and I were compatible in every way, and especially in the way animals are compatible, and although Miles still managed to get up and go to work and I managed to progress with things, looking back, I guess things can’t have been perfect between us. It didn’t take long for little contretemps to erupt. Try five days after we’d moved into the apartment. Over trifles, I can’t even remember what—a fridge. I do remember it was hard to discuss things productively with a character from Cinema of Unease. I admit I had the odd drink during this period. So did Miles. Although we fought a bit, overall it was good. No one is perfect. Miles is not perfect. I am certainly not perfect. At least we did manage to move all the furniture from Noa Valley into the apartment, which was a kerfuffle because of the Southeast Ridge and because furniture means things are serious and suddenly the fifties apartment was very full of big thirties mahogany and oak tables, chairs, bed, desk, swivel chair, couch, and easy chairs that were a bit formal with their curled arms and overstuffed damask cushions—not that I’m complaining, I hasten to add. There were good years, three, no two, well one, give or take a few months.
And then I find that I do love him and it is two years and a hundred-and-something days into the relationship. But it’s too late. And as you know, Things Fell Apart. There was the little warmth that had become cold, and I was a murderer. And on Sago Pudding Night I ended up in the study, perusing the Arts New Zealand website, my finger hovering over those magic words, How To Apply. I know that without the formative influences outlined above, I would not have had the oomph to hit that button. But I am getting ahead of myself.
In the Kōwhai Room, I whip from my manuscript a few pages in which the protagonist has a brief career in retail and falls head over heels in love. To be honest, I’m a bit rattled by the loss of this section, but I know it’s for a good cause, that I’m practising restraint towards the overall economy of the text. In any case, as I screw up the ball of paper and add it to the others in the Chinese vase, someone pokes me and I realise my name is being called over the microphone. I shove the remains of my manuscript back into my laptop bag and trot up to the podium, where the CEO of Arts New Zealand pumps my arm and hands me a piece of cardboard which no doubt announces my Antarctica Residency. On the periphery of my hearing I’m aware of everyone clapping madly. Truth be told, I am a bit overwhelmed. I try to say thank you to the CEO, but no words come out.
Then it’s over, and I feel myself spirited by the movement of the crowd from the Kōwhai Room to the woody landing. Chatter rises and falls around me like a didgeridoo and faces are chewing-gummy in the olive twilight, and I am still dazed, I think. That is, until I happen to glance over the balcony and am brought up short by the sight of three faces looking up at me with what seem like grotesque mock-smiles, but it must just be the stormy light falling on them through the tall glass doors. I remember with a jolt that the artists with whom I will go to Antarctica and I have arranged to go for a drink together. I give the threesome a queenly wave and scurry to collect my fridge from its parking space near the bathroom. As I sidle down the stairs trying not to squash people’s toes, one of the Antarctica artists calls up to me, ‘Where were you?’ but it could be any or all of them because by their obviously established bonhomie they are already one. I arrive beside *them* in the foyer with my fridge, and feel my face emulating their three-headed leer. This is very promising.
Up close they separate into their entities—and of course I know them very well after our Antarctica training. Beatrice Grant, sporting a tonne of pancake makeup and wearing her signature long and only slightly pretentious eighteenth-century frock coat, looks me up and down and after a
beat asks, with dancer-type eye-widening, what my fridge *is*. I laugh because the question is actually quite funny.
Tom Atutola is walking around the fridge with his arms folded, scrutinising it from somewhere deep, and after this assessment he eyeballs me and asks why do I *have* a fridge? The three of them stand in a crescent shape watching me. I explain, looking at each of them in turn, that I have a fridge because I like to keep food cold, and is that such a crime? This causes Clement de Saint-Antoine-Smith to roll his eyes just a little, but it doesn’t escape me.
‘I get that,’ says Tom Atutola. ‘I guess I meant’—he adopts an ironically pedantic purse-lipped smile—‘why do you have a fridge on you right now?’
‘About your person,’ adds Beatrice Grant. Do I imagine her hands framing her face like Marcel Marceau?
At this moment we all move spontaneously through the glass doors and out into the musty twilight, collecting a blast of chilled wind on the parapet. As we trickle down the wide steps (like R.A.K. ‘boldly bring I up the rear’ Mason, with my fridge), I fill in the crew, at least their backs, briefly on the sorry tale of how I was evicted from my flat just this morning and I have nowhere to put my fridge. I’m hoping one of them will tell me they have a flat just over there and that they’ll look after it.
‘Fair enough,’ says Tom from the street, ‘but what will you do with it when we go to Antarctica tomorrow?’
‘I don’t think they’ll let you on the plane with it,’ says Beatrice Grant, and they all laugh, a bit unkindly, but I don’t care, I’m made of tougher stuff. As I join them on the footpath, I tell them I’m hoping the evening will provide a solution. Clement de Saint-Antoine-Smith sweeps his hand out as if to indicate the sepia twilight city spread before us with all its possibilities. I decide to take this at face value and I nod, but no one offers anything.