Chapter 17
CHAPTER 17
A t breakfast, before I’d managed even one sip of coffee, Mum launched in with, ‘Please have dinner with Bob and me – you, Matthew, the kids, Robyn. How about Friday night when Matthew’s back from Melbourne? It’ll be nice. You’ll see.’
But I knew it was more than dinner. I didn’t want to see him again, and I was especially averse to explaining Dad’s sudden appearance to Lexi and Angus. I couldn’t even explain it to myself.
‘Why do you want to get hurt all over again? Reopen old wounds?’
‘People change. Your father’s mellowed.’
‘People don’t change, Mum.’
She shot me her ‘you’re breaking my heart’ look. And I probably was. I’d tried the same look on Lexi and Angus many times. It used to work. It doesn’t anymore. There may be a time in the future when I can bring my heartbroken parental face back into circulation, but for the moment, it’s tucked away until I can be sure my real daughter has returned from Planet Teen.
When Angus bounded into the kitchen, I busied myself going over (and over) the seven times tables with him. Pure agony. How could I make it any clearer? Six lots of seven was the same as the seven lots of six we memorised ad nauseum for his six times tables. Giving up, we switched to his news item: My Favourite Australian Animal , due yesterday and which absolutely must be presented in class today, Mrs Lombardy said so. I found a moth-eaten toy koala lurking in a box under Gus’s bed and told him to improvise.
‘Sometimes I think I’m just a slave to this family,’ I said to the kitchen wall as I washed my mug in the sink and mentally wrote my to-do list: take Cleo to the vet for her yearly vaccination; worm Rupert; buy Bugs a new collar and harness. He chewed through his last one a few days ago, as I unfortunately discovered when I found him several houses away cavorting with several rabbits. I also needed to buy Lexi new sneakers. Not that she’d worn out her previous ones. The girl had bigger feet than me. As for Christmas, we still hadn’t put up the tree or decorated the house. Tick. Tick. Tick.
‘No, love, you’re the one who has it all,’ my mother chimed in, interrupting my thoughts. ‘You have choices. I was a slave to the family, remember. I had nothing to offer but my homemaking skills.’
‘Well, could you use them now and help me with this?’ I pointed at Angus who was throwing the stuffed koala at Rupert.
‘There’s no way I’m ever going to be a slave,’ Lexi said before licking Vegemite off her toast.
‘Lex, that’s disgusting. And besides, sometimes you have no choice. When you get married, you change, give up things?—’
‘You don’t have to.’ Lexi was indignant.
You do, I thought to myself as I glanced at an ancient print of mine hanging in the hall, but I wasn’t prepared to have another stand-up fight with my daughter. She’d learn soon enough.
‘You need to get a life, Mum,’ she said .
What? Other than the one I’ve been living for the last forty odd years? I resisted the urge to reply. Little wonder some animals eat their young.
‘I do have a life, Lex, and Delicious Bites –’
She laughed. ‘You don’t even like food photography. How could you?’
‘Excuse me?’
‘Even after watching every reality cooking show in the world, Lessons in Chemistry , and two seasons of Julia , you hate all culinary activities. Why don’t you do something you really want to do?’
Because, I thought to myself, when you have children, sometimes you need to make sacrifices – bow out of the world as you know it to raise a family. Unfortunately, when you’re ready to re-enter the world of the living, sometimes the living doesn’t want you anymore. Anyway, I know I can’t have it all – not all at once. It’s not possible. When I was younger, I assumed when I reached adulthood, I’d no longer have to answer to anybody. I’d finally be able to please myself. But unless you live alone on a deserted island, you quickly discover real life’s not like that. Life’s full of compromise.
‘Lexi,’ I said, choosing my words carefully, ‘the magazine’s a stepping stone, an opportunity to further my skills and get paid for it.’
Mum nodded. ‘I gave up tech after I married Bob and look where it got me. I didn’t get my first paying job until after Bob and I split.’
Lexi glared at me and Mum. ‘You’re both crazy. When I’m older, I’m going to be free. Free to do exactly what I want, whenever I want.’
‘I hope you are free, Lexi, but life is about choices. You make certain choices, and you live with them. For example, right now you could choose to take yourself upstairs and make your?— ’
‘I know the drill.’ She put up her hand to silence me. ‘I can make my bed or stay here and get nagged.’
Still, she stayed. In the three minutes it took to go through Angus’s times tables again, Lexi and Mum had moved on to Mum’s date, chattering excitedly. I lived in hope her enthusiasm for Dad would wear off once reality set in. In the meantime, I had to put up with Mum cooing like a lovesick teenager. Just what I needed – two adolescents in the house.
All this meant I arrived at work on Tuesday morning feeling no better than I had at midnight. Probably because I’d barely managed three hours’ sleep.
‘You look like you need this.’ Arnaud bent down and handed me a coffee. ‘Thought I’d drop in to see how you’re getting along.’
I was in the studio measuring distances between the floor camera and the dining table, which I’d already set according to Graeme’s specific instructions. It was number five on my menial list. In fact, I’d spent the morning doing all sorts of dogsbody jobs: loading film into some of the Hasselblads and digital backs onto others. There were several cameras, ranging from the digital SLRs, small enough to fit into the palm of my hand, to the huge floor camera resting on a three-metre-high tripod.
Earlier, I’d put some test prints on Graeme’s desk. Mercifully he hadn’t been there. It was the first time I’d been into his office and had a moment to look around. Sixty Thunderbirds were lined up in a huge side cabinet, staring out across the room.
Right now, I was involved in focus pulling, measuring the distance from the camera to the dining table. Well, as involved as I could be given Arnaud was hovering above me and I was on the verge of having a full-blown anxiety attack. Inappropriate thoughts raced through my head. My breathing was shallow. What if I dropped a camera? The tripod? What if I got the distances wrong or tripped over the electrical cables, stepped on a laptop and broke my ankle… or neck? What if Graeme, Fern and Arnaud realised I was an incompetent fraud?
Arnaud was staring at me.
‘Thanks.’ I took the cup from him. ‘That obvious?’
‘Not to the untrained eye.’
‘What are you doing up here anyway?’
‘After yesterday’s excitement, I need to inspect the damage myself. Rumour has it Graeme overturned the utilities table, non ? And trashed the pots and pans and kicked an enormous hole in the wall.’
‘Really?’
‘ Oui . And you, Katie, lived to tell the tale. How is it?’
‘Graeme’s got the whole tortured-artist gig down to a fine art. He’s like no one I’ve ever met before. Fern likes him though – says he could be working in London or New York but stays here out of loyalty to her. Mara lets his nonsense wash over her. Meanwhile, everyone else walks around on eggshells, trying not to upset him. Is it normal for people to throw dinner plates around?’
‘Define normal. Wait till you get to know him better.’ Arnaud’s French accent was becoming sexier with each word.
‘He gets better?’
‘No, but at least you won’t feel so bad about calling him tortured.’
I sipped my coffee. ‘Graeme’s not too bad in small doses. He’s very clever with an extended zoom and does some innovative moves with angles and lighting.’ I took a deep breath and changed the subject. ‘How did things work out with Mardi?’
‘Ah, Mardi… still networking to get Benjamin into the A’s, co mplaining most of the boys are big for their age because they’re being fed steroid-filled battery chickens for dinner.’
‘Kate!’ Graeme shouted from outside the studio.
Startled, I completely missed my mouth with my coffee. Excellent. A stain blossomed on my pale-pink shirt. I already felt insignificant and frazzled in Graeme’s company. Now he was going to think I was a klutz as well.
‘You all right?’ Arnaud fossicked around the bench and produced a dripping, grey dishcloth.
‘These stills are okay.’ Graeme was waving a print sheet in the air and leering at the breast with the coffee stain. ‘The lighting needs fine-tuning and the colours are all wrong but the essence of what I’m after is here.’ He threw the prints on the table and kept walking.
I was relieved because everyone sees things differently through the lens. It wasn’t a given Graeme would automatically see what I saw or vice versa. It often took years of working closely with someone before you were in sync – even then, there were no guarantees. You couldn’t get every picture, you miss things… looking through the viewfinder, as in real life, no one sees exactly the same image, even when it’s staring you in the face.
Arnaud picked up one of the contact sheets. ‘But where is the food? This is a picture of two wooden blocks and a pink napkin.’
‘The blocks are just a stand-in to fix the viewpoint. The food will come later. And the napkin’s not pink, it’s cherry.’
‘Photographers!’
After Arnaud left, I thought about what Graeme had said and couldn’t wipe the smile from my face. For the first time since starting here, he’d made me feel like I was a real photographer.