Being Here Read Online Free Page B

that.
    All those years. All those long and dusty years.
    Yes, the worm was in the apple even then. I knew it. But I had hidden the knowledge from myself.
    I attempt to focus on the girl’s words. They appear to float, insubstantial. Or do I detect an edge of irony?
    â€˜I was happy,’ I reply. ‘We were happy.’
    â€˜That farm you lived on,’ says the girl. ‘You said there were apple trees. But you must’ve grown other stuff. Or kept animals. How tough was it, way back then, being a farmer?’
    She has not turned off her machine. The red light stares at me, unblinking. This is one of my good days. On other occasions I might not have noticed it. Or noticed how this child is using words designed to nudge me from my course. She is pleased with her linguistic trick. But I am not fooled.
    The girl deserves an answer. Or perhaps she doesn’t. I give one anyway. This, I know, is the ritual of human interaction. You give. You take. None of it makes much difference.
    â€˜The farm was large when my father died. Thereafter, it shrank steadily. Inexorably, looking back on it.’
    â€˜So what did you grow?’
    â€˜Apples,’ I say, and my hands remember their cool hardness. ‘After my father died. Just apples.’ For a moment, the room fills with the sharp sweetness of their smell. Then it fades and a ghost-odour of disinfectant and fear lingers.
    â€˜Were you able to live off just apples?’
    â€˜No, which is why the farm shrank. Mother sold off parts of it, year by year. Not much during the Depression, but after. When neighbouring farmers eyed our paddocks, were eager to expand and had the money to do so.’ I smile, but keep my lips together. I hate the toothless grins of the old. They make us fools. Or reptiles. ‘Mother shaved our land like cheese. A slice here. A slice there. I didn’t know when I was a child, but the world was shrinking towards me. The stories I read led me to believe in worlds expanding to infinity. All the time, mine was becoming smaller, circling down onto a patch of apple trees and a girl.’
    â€˜Sounds tough.’
    I study the girl. We have spent time together and it is courteous to pay attention. She wears denim shorts and sits with her legs crossed under her on the chair. I wonder briefly where the confidence of youth goes. Does it wither with time or flee abruptly one hope-forsaken morning? She wears make-up that is inexpertly applied. Allied with that blue gash in her hair, it gives her a brazen look. She twists the curious metal bar in her eyebrow from time to time. It is a nervous gesture and I feel certain she is unaware of doing it. The tic sits uneasily with her veneer of assurance, hints at complexities beneath the surface. I think she struggles with something.
    Every person is a mystery. Most days I accept this. But today, for reasons I cannot fathom, I want to visit the inside of another head, if only briefly. There are stories locked away there and I am lonely.
    â€˜Tell me about yourself, Carla,’ I say.
    She twists her eyebrow stud and smiles, though that twists too.
    â€˜It’s Carly,’ she says. ‘And there’s nothing to tell. Sixteen. Student. What can I say?’ She waits, but I let the silence work. Most people can’t live in silence. They have to fill it, even if their filler-words rarely stick.
    â€˜What?’ She smiles and spreads her arms in appeal.
    â€˜Tell me about your family,’ I say.
    â€˜Oh, them.’ Her mouth bows downwards. ‘Well, that won’t take long. Older brother who is mega smart. Doing medicine at uni. In his third year. Going to specialise in cancer.’ She bites her bottom lip. ‘Dad is dad. Makes heaps of money from property. He calls himself a developer, but he doesn’t actually build anything. Just buys and sells. With other people’s money. Mum teaches kindy. That’s it.’
    â€˜And you?’ I