Libby Sommer
Down the road from Monique Barnes’ apartment block was a tennis club at the base of a rainforest. From her balcony she could see the coaches on the court, hear the thwack of the tennis balls as they rallied with their students. Around the courts was a green banner: WHATEVER IT TAKES. When she’d first moved in the words seemed to give her a boost—go for it, follow your dreams, take no prisoners. But who had she become? She’d stare at the signage, willing it to give her an answer.
She lived upstairs from a man named Clive, who enjoyed parading around the apartment block in his pilot’s uniform with a gold-embossed cap, even when not on the job. She liked to see a well-presented man, but all the same, she had her doubts about peacocks. She worked with high school boys all day and taught Mindfulness at a private boys’ school, and the most frowned-upon behaviour was students out in public without their blazers or with their boater hats at the wrong angle—innocent, non-threatening kinds of things. Other teachers warned her, “That’s nothing. You wouldn’t want to know what goes on in classrooms these days.” She wondered what they meant exactly.
Monique had grown up in a religious sect and been home-schooled. After she left the church, she didn’t seem to fit in anywhere, didn’t know how to read the signs.
Today, she and Clive were talking about health and heredity.
“Genetics,’ he said. ‘We can’t change that about ourselves.”
“Those long-haul flights must be hard on your back?” said Monique beside him at the front of the building as he waited for his taxi to the airport.
“Yes, sitting in a cockpit for so many hours is an occupational health hazard. You can look after your spine, but still have problems,” he grimaced. “Ten more years till I get to retire. In the meantime, I know not to bend all the way down to tie my shoes.”
She’d see him in the stairwell using a step to elevate his feet while doing up his laces. She’d stop for a chat and they’d compare notes about managing back pain.
“I don’t know how you keep flying those long flights.” said Monique. “But what would I know?” she shrugged. “I never get out much.”
“Why’s that?”
“In the church, we had no time off, apart from a ‘p’ day or preparation day. No down time or non-church activities. I was either working or studying.” This was her excuse for a lot of things.
Clive had his own sad mantra. “My mother didn’t want me. I grew up in foster homes. What I remember is the smell of urine from the chamber pot under one old lady’s bed,” he said as he signaled to the approaching taxi.
“That’s terrible, Clive. How awful. Gosh. But look at you now!”
“With a mother like that, it’s been hard for me to trust women.”
Monique was sure she could change that for him—he just needed the right person who could give him what he needed—someone just like her.
From time to time, Monique would give Clive a lift to the airport and wave him goodbye. She imagined him walking through the terminal doors—the captain. She knew how women loved a man in uniform; could see his commanding stature sending flutters through the passengers, his voice at perfect pitch down the cabin. Clearly other women fell for him; she recognised their look. She’d imagine him in the cockpit, the passengers safely strapped in, the flight attendants fussing over him, his co-captain keeping watch.
On the nights when she calculated he’d be flying home, she would sit out on her balcony, lie back on the couch, and wait for sounds of him in the cool night air.
Their balconies were one above the other, the bedrooms and bathrooms too, in an old art deco building with wooden floors—no sound-proofing. Monique would hear his key in the front door, hear the vibration of the pipes as he showered, hear him light up, the lighter’s lid snap shut, the scrape of his chair on the tiles, the smell of nicotine.
Sometimes she would call down to him over the railing. He would stub out his cigarette and answer, “Is that you Monique? I’m exhausted. I’m turning in for the night.”
Once he came back at midnight, more than a little out of it, and knocked on her door. When she opened it, he was sitting on the top step in the stairwell, eyes shut, captain’s hat with its gold embellishments in his hand. “Monique,” he muttered. “I saw your light on and thought you might help. Would you carry my bag up the stairs for me? I can barely walk.” She helped him up and into his own apartment then went down to the front door to collect his luggage. He was passed out on the bed when she got back.
Most days, she walked down to the tennis courts where WHATEVER IT TAKES signaled to her as she strode past. She hadn’t played tennis or any other sport while growing up, forbidden to do so many things she would have loved: ballet, new clothes, champagne, going out to a movie. The fulfilment she experienced recently came mostly from the students in her classes. She’d be leading them through a creative visualishation and when she told them to open their eyes and pick up their pens and start writing, the pieces they’d read out were astounding in their honesty. “Never give up,” she’d tell them. Whatever it takes.
She’d walk past the courts and then up through the rainforest reminding herself it was important to surround herself with trees, rather than concrete and traffic. Too often you forget how long trees had been standing. She would inhale the fresh oxygen with such deep gulps that she would almost hyperventilate and faint.
“A tree worshipper!” Clive laughed at her. “I feel like I’ve flown to Byron Bay.” Clive was a man who only believed in things that could be proven by scientific evidence. He was also a man who enjoyed his own company. “I watch my married friends and am pleased I have my freedom,” he said.
“Walk with your loved one through a rainforest,” Monique wanted to say to him. “Feel your feet on the ground.” But then she thought of him with his head up in the clouds, his gold epaulettes dazzling in the dimmed cabin, and thought that maybe she could absorb the benefits of nature perfectly well in silence.
“Mm,” she said. “I sometimes think it would be nice to share space with a loved one.” Must she spend the rest of her life alone? Forty-five and never been cherished by a man.
“You know my story,” Clive said. “No place to call home growing up. You’ve got a nice apartment upstairs. Why would you want to change anything?”
She had been day-dreaming about moving in with him although he’d never knocked on her door at midnight again and she’d heard strange animal-like grunts coming from his bedroom. Was he sick? She never saw his visitors enter or exit the block.
Monique thought about the Asperger’s boy in her class. A boy named Heinrich, who just yesterday had initiated a high five with her and said, “See, Miss Barnes, I can do skin to skin now.” This was a first for Heinrich. It was one of her rituals at the end of a Mindfulness session that she’d offer each boy a high five as they left the room. Monique had wanted to give him a big hug but said instead, “Congratulations, champ,” as something welled up behind her eyes.
Early next morning, when she walked down the back stairs to the rubbish bins, she heard Clive laughing. She noticed his back door open, knocked and wandered in. He was seated at his desk watching something on YouTube. Monique tried to look casual, had checked her face and posture in the hall mirror, shoulders back, stomach in, chest proud.
“I never get tired of Seinfeld re-runs,” she said, laughing with him at the screen.
Clive grinned at her from the other side of the desk, the hair on his forehead, without his hat flattening it down, curling in a soft untamed cowlick whorl, growing in different directions from the rest of his hair. He was sitting tall and handsome on his ergonomic chair and Monique wanted desperately to put her arms around him. And so, in a moment of fearlessness, she stood in between him and the computer screen and reached for his hand.
“Monique,” he said, retracting his hand and standing up abruptly. “I’m very fond of you, but I’m just not …’
She could feel the imprint of his skin, flesh against flesh, still there, hot like a kiss from the sun. “I hear things going on downstairs,” she persisted, ashamed of the resentment in her voice.
His eyes widened in surprise. “Look, there’s something I need you to know,” he said breathing out hard. “I think of you as my friend.” He looked out the window, took another deep breath and said, “The thing is, I like … men.”
She staggered backwards. “Sorry. I’m in a bit of a daze. I haven’t had my morning coffee yet.”
Without replying, she moved towards the door, ready to return to her own place where, she had no doubt, WHATEVER IT TAKES would be waiting to mock her from the balcony. She went back up the stairs, to where she knew she belonged.
