Getting Real

40. Other People’s Mothers



Somewhere between Glen and Tim accusing each other’s teams of incompetence, Jake’s phone rang. He let the practised insults fly and answered it, but his, “Hi Mum,” managed to arrest the attention of every man at the table. No mean feat given the honour at stake.

There was an echo of, “Hi Mum” and a chorus of, “Hi Mrs Reedy”.

Jake said, “Yes Mum, I’m at work,” and there was laughter when he added, “Yes Mum. The boys say hi,” followed by, “Yes Mum. They’re all listening, and yes I am embarrassed.”

Then he said, “No Mum. I’m not inviting any of the friggin’ bastards to dinner,” finishing with, “Sorry about the language, Mum. I’ll call you later.”

He put the phone down on the trestle table, looked up to see a dozen faces staring at him expectantly. “What?”

Glen said, “Reedy, maybe your mum could come and run our production meetings. She’d probably do a better job than you. She got everyone’s attention.”

“Mrs Reedy rocks,” said Bodge.

And Tef said, “Yeah and if there wasn’t already a Mr Reedy, you’d be angling to be little Jakey’s new daddy.”

Along with half the table, Jake groaned and Bodge coloured. They all knew Bodge had a thing for Jake’s mum.

“How many Mrs Bodges would that make?” said Lizard.

“Shut it Liz, or I’ll make you a Mrs with me boot,” said Bodge.

This was their last production meeting for the tour. Sydney, the last city, four shows in two days time. For most of the road crew Sydney was home so there were also distractions; family and friends to see, other jobs to line up. Keeping everyone focussed was a challenge.

When the meeting broke up, Jake called Mum, then he called Rielle. She was with Rand and Harry doing a studio shoot for the doco. He got voicemail and hesitated, unsure if a message was the right way to go, then said, “Hey Rie, if you get a chance, call me,” and left it at that.

Half an hour later she called. “Have you got all those black shirts in line?”

“Yeah,” he laughed. “Got something to ask you.”

“Okay. Now you’ve got me worried; you’re asking me if you can ask me something.”

Jake laughed again. “Pathetic huh.”

“You said it.”

“My mum has asked you to dinner tonight.”

There was silence and then Rielle said, “Me?”

“Yeah.”

“She knows about me, about us?”

“She knows you’re a singer and you’re in the show and we’ve been hanging out.” Rielle groaned and Jake felt embarrassed like he was still a teenager asking a girl home to meet his family for the first time. “She does not know about sex acts in hotel rooms or public gymnasiums. She will never see our porn tape. I’m sad to say I destroyed it.”

Rielle laughed. “God, Jake. I don’t do people’s mothers.”

An unexpected sense of disappointment played catch with his embarrassment. “Hey, that’s cool. I’ll see you back at the hotel later tonight. I’ll bring you some of Mum’s famous dessert.”

Jake ended the call, slid his phone back into the pocket of his jeans and looked about for somewhere to channel the irrational frustration he felt. It was such a dumb idea thinking Rie would want to meet his family, even dumber—the dumbest—to tell his mum she was in his life. Now he was in for the inquisition; the who, the when, the how, the what, and he deserved it. He was not cut out for casual romances with rock stars. Dickhead. Suddenly the idea of a home cooked meal felt like a trial instead of a pleasure.

Rand was doodling notes on a paper napkin and ignoring his ringing phone when Rielle rejoined him. They were waiting for Harry to set up for an interview segment.

“Something new?” She peered at his scratching.

He made a distracted, “Mmm,” and Rielle knew she’d need to be on fire before she got his attention.

In a saggy couch, in a draughty corridor outside a TV studio, using his thigh as a desk, Rand was in the zone. Whatever he was thinking was going to become a new creation. Not necessarily right this moment, but sometime soon. It might be a fragment of lyrics, a bass line, a riff, but somewhere in his head he was hearing music and it was consuming him.

Rielle eased down beside him, though she could’ve danced naked in front of him with an elephant and a brass band and he wouldn’t have noticed. How long had it been since she’d heard music like that—a year, more? Once she’d been the prolific one, always hearing something, always collecting pieces of music and strings of words. Now that part of her brain was silent, a black cavern of nothing. Now she only heard other people’s music.

Both Rand and Jonas assured her it was a temporary thing. That she had an innate talent and needed to be patient and trust the music was in her. But if it was, it was expert in the hide and seek business, tucked away some place she couldn’t find. And she’d looked and looked, trying all manner of tricks from exhausting gym sessions to long walks, to books and movies, and soaks in bubble baths by candlelight. She missed it, missed the sense of being in the pull of a creative energy that came unbidden from some unexplained font of cleverness.

For a while after the music stopped, it had been a relief, like a holiday from the nagging rattle of sounds and senses in her head demanding attention. But now it was as though her oldest friend had moved away and not left a forwarding address.

What if it was gone forever? She shuddered. She knew getting uptight wasn’t going to help, and it would be harder still to be creative if her body was busy manufacturing tension, like it had been since she agreed to the tour. She made an effort to breathe more deeply, stretched her neck and wriggled her toes.

Better to think about something else. Like Jake—how he’d looked when he stripped her of all her disguises; awestruck, like she’d honoured him, when all she’d done was try to show him why she needed to hide her face. And when she’d told him there’d be no children, he looked like he wanted to throw himself off the balcony for having raised the issue. She imagined he’d probably looked similarly distressed when she turned down his dinner invitation, but what was he thinking? Dinner with his parents? It’s not like she was his girlfriend or they were ever going to see each other again after this next week. The best thing that could happen to Jake was for this thing between them to end clean. The trip to the gym, that’d been all about showing him a good time after the rank ugliness she’d put him through and she’d do whatever she could to make him feel special before she left, to show him she cared for him. Well, almost anything.

She watched Rand rifle through his satchel, come up with a notebook and continue scribbling and scratching, a look of intense concentration on his face. He’d told her earlier he wanted Harry joining them on the rest of the tour, possibly with another film crew. He’d been excited about it. Rand had his music and his romance. That had to be the nasty feeling in her stomach. Not hunger, breakfast wasn’t that long ago and it was too early for lunch, but jealousy—yeah that was it.

Rand was in the right place and she wasn’t—that must be it, because the only other reason for feeling semi-crippling nausea was thinking about Jake and about how hard it was going to be not to see him again, not to have him tease her, back her, stand up to her and love her in a way she’d never been loved. Because he did love her, with his heart on his sleeve, out there in the open, pumping away, where she could poke and prod and crush it.

God, how stupid she was to get so deep with him—it was supposed to be a distraction. Why was it she was sitting here thinking it would be fun to meet his parents, see who he resembled, and have a home cooked meal? How the f*ck had she let him get so close, get under her skin and become the main game?

“You couldn’t bloody sit still could you?” said Rand, surprising her out of her state of introspection.

“Am I disturbing the creative genius at work?”

“Ah no, but you’re definitely disturbed. What gives?”

She bounced her boot heel on the carpeted floor. “Nothing.”

Rand sighed. “That’s why I love talking to you. You’re a font of information.”

“I’m all right if that’s what you want to know—after, you know.”

He looked up and studied her face. “I can see that. Whatever you did to get yourself together was a good thing. No more ‘if only’, Rie. It’s time.”

She would’ve protested but f*cking hell, it was enough for Rand. He didn’t need to know it wasn’t over for her. Would never be over for her. He deserved a normal life without carrying her baggage as well. So she nodded. And she figured he trusted that about as far as he trusted Jonas was doing well in rehab. And she sat by Rand while he worked and she thought about how it felt to talk about the accident with Jake. How it felt to show him why her real self was no good. She felt scoured clean from the inside out, as though a fresh start was possible for a person like her.

“Was it Jake?”

Rand was watching her. “Was what Jake?”

He rubbed the back of his neck. “You need your music back, Rie. If you won’t keep Jake, you need to get your music back. God knows maybe he can help you with that too.”

She looked away.

“Ah hell, Rie. He’s good for you, why can’t you see that? I bet you’re treating him like shit and good guy that he is, he keeps backing up for more, hoping you’ll change.”

“Ah—”

Rand cut her off. “Yeah I know—it’s like a religion with you. People don’t change. And you know what’s funny about that? You don’t believe in religion.”

Rand went back to scribbling and Rielle sat still but her gut rioted. “He invited me to have dinner with his family tonight.”

“Cool,” said Rand mid-scribble.

“Not cool.”

He looked up. “Why, because it’s someone’s family?” He glared at her. “Shit Rie, you can’t do that one thing for him after what he’s done for you?”

Rand knew exactly where to aim. Rielle felt his comment like the kick in the engine of the Harley, all engineered force and power but she fought back, flailing in the face of what she now recognised as the deepest truth. She loved Jake. “What’s he done for me?”

“Now you’re being wilfully stupid. He’s in love with you and the whole frigging crew knows it. You know it too.”

Her face felt hot. “So what, I didn’t ask for that? What am I supposed to do with that?” The nausea in her gut roared.

“Listen to it.”

“What does that mean?” She looked down the corridor. If she didn’t get out of this conversation she might throw up.

Rand caught her chin in his hand. “Stop making it so complicated.” She stilled and blinked her distress at him. She was not going to cry. She was not going to make this his problem. “Listen to your heart and quit talking yourself out of the best thing that’s happened to you in a long while.”

“But I’m no good for him.” She would take Jake’s goodness and poison it with her blackness. She would trash his honesty with her need to live her lies. Rand head-butted her lightly. “You don’t think he doesn’t already know what an insecure bitch you can be? But he keeps showing up doesn’t he?”

“Until one day he won’t.”

Rand released her and Harry appeared out of a doorway along the corridor and gave them a wave. They were ready in the studio. Rand waved back and stuffed his notebook and the scribbled on napkin into his satchel.

“True.” He stood. “But then you could do something about that if you weren’t so pig-headed.”

“What can I do about it? This is who I am, how I am. The only way I can face what I did.”

Rand held his hand out to her. “You could change.”