I nodded.
‘Good.’ She smiled. ‘In that case . . . all is forgiven.’
Mum held out her arms for a hug indicating I should hoist myself upright. This, I think, was Mum’s favourite part. The forgiving. It made her feel like a good mother, an honourable, noble mother. Her eyes shone with goodness. But the whole time she held me all I could think of was how much longer I would have to wait before I could ask my honourable mother for that glass of juice.
FERN
Wally drives me home. I’m not used to being in a vehicle at night. It’s dark outside and the noises are sharper, more delineated. The click of the car’s indicator while we wait at the traffic lights. The sound of the steering wheel moving under Wally’s hands. It’s almost hypnotic. By the time Wally pulls up in front of my house, I’m practically in a trance.
‘How are you doing?’ he asks when I don’t get out of the car.
‘Not great,’ I say. ‘Pretty embarrassed.’
‘Embarrassed?’ Wally pulls up the handbrake. It’s loud in the quiet car. His gaze settles over my shoulder, as usual. ‘Fern, can I tell you something?’
I nod.
‘Before I lived in this van, I developed an app called Shout! with a friend of mine. It allowed people to order food and drinks from their table without having to go to the bar, and it allowed restaurants not to have to employ waiters to take orders, only to ferry food back and forth from the kitchen. There are several apps like it now, but it was the first of its kind. I was the programmer – I designed it, coded it, tested it. And it was a huge success.’
‘Congratulations.’
‘Thanks. It was pretty exciting at first. But then I had to start doing other stuff, apart from coding. I had to go to marketing meetings, I had to network with investors, that kind of thing. My partner kept saying things like, “This is the most important meeting of our careers.” We’d go to cocktail parties and have to talk to people – not even about Shout!, we’d just talk about sport or horseracing or whatever the other person found interesting. I didn’t understand what I was doing there, and I hated it.’ Wally glances at me briefly, then back over my shoulder. ‘The pressure was enormous. It wore away at me. I stopped going into work. I stopped getting out of bed. I think my partner would have ditched me, but we were so close to selling. Then we did sell it, and we got this ridiculous amount of money and everyone was ecstatic and I . . . just fell apart. The night after we sold, when everyone else was celebrating, I was in the emergency department, with chest pains. I thought I was having a heart attack. I was referred to a psychiatrist and kept as an inpatient at a mental facility for nearly a month. A full-blown nervous breakdown, apparently. I was so ashamed that when I got out, I left my big successful life behind and moved to Australia.’
‘Why?’
He shrugs. ‘You can’t get much further away than Australia, can you? And I had a passport, because of my mom. I thought, over here, I’d get another chance to just . . . be me. One of the reasons I got the van was because I needed to make my life small.’ Wally shakes his head. ‘But over the last few months, I’ve been developing another app. That’s what my meeting is about tomorrow. Some investors are interested. My point is that lots of people get in over their heads. It doesn’t mean you can’t try again.’
‘Are you suggesting I try bowling again?’
He thinks about this. ‘Or not. But don’t let it scare you off trying things.’
Wally looks away from me, at the windscreen. His arms loosely grip the steering wheel and I fixate on the dark brown hairs on his arms, his slender wrists, his long elegant fingers.
‘Was it the touch?’ he asks.
I wonder if I missed a critical part of the conversation. ‘Pardon?’
‘At the bowling alley. I touched your arm. Before you screamed. Was that what upset you?’
‘Oh. No . . . Well . . . it wasn’t just the touch. It was the lights, the music, the smells, the staring. And the touch.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he says.
‘It’s all right.’
‘I should have known.’
‘You should have known that I don’t like to be touched? Why would you know that?’
‘Because,’ he says, ‘I don’t like to be touched either. I’ve learned to do it – to shake hands, to hug, to pat someone on the back – because that’s what people do. But I don’t like it.’
‘But just because you don’t like it doesn’t mean that I won’t like it.’
‘True,’ he says. ‘But . . . you are little bit like me.’
I open my mouth in surprise. Alike? I want to cry, What ways are we alike?
But then it hits me.
The way that Wally looks over my shoulder.
His commitment to being punctual.
His failing to attend his interview and his frustration at himself afterward.
He doesn’t like to be touched.
Wally is indeed a little bit like me. How had I not noticed this? The idea of this brings on a flood of comfort and security. Like I’m being seen and understood. I feel like a foreigner in a new country who, after months of not being understood, has finally run into someone who speaks my language.
‘You . . . don’t like to be touched?’ I ask. ‘Not at all?’
‘Some touching is okay,’ Wally says. ‘If I’m expecting it, it’s not so bad. And a firm touch is better than a light one–’
‘Light touches are the worst!’ I exclaim. ‘Light surprise touches.’
‘I’m okay with my loved ones touching me,’ Wally says. ‘Though, usually they know how to do it right.’
‘Or not do it at all,’ I agree. ‘What about sex? Good or bad?’
Wally thinks about this for a minute. ‘Good. And bad. Depending on
