Earworm Read online

  At home, she found herself transfixed by an abandoned vial of aftershave in the bathroom cabinet. As long as she held it in view she could fool herself into believing her father still lived there. He was in the kitchen, perhaps, whistling while he washed up. Or in his room noodling on guitar. Or swearing at a politician on telly. Nicole had never realised how much he contributed to the domestic din. Now he was gone there was a chunk of silence that accompanied her from room to room. A hubbub snub.

  Entranced by the toiletries, Nicole tore her glance from the vial of scent. As she closed the cabinet door, her reflection swung in to confront her. I don’t have eyes but I experienced what she saw, projected into her head. She was jumbled, Picasso-faced. For a moment, she pretended to be her boyfriend. She wondered what Bryce saw in the tangled red thatch and muddy eyes. The rough terrain of her precipice frown: the lips restless, as if undecided how to set themselves. She prodded a blemish. Bright Bum, Dad had called her when she was little. Sunny Bunny. Then he’d crane closer, eyes narrowing, searching for gathering clouds in her countenance.

  Nicole’s ringtone: breezy and pointless as a puppy. I’ve been reduced to a ringtone and it’s demeaning. Anti-music, bereft of emotion. Brief and functional as giving yourself a big hand, if you know what I mean. Playing a solo on your intimate instrument, if you get my drift. Ringtones only exist for as long as they are heard. Real songs linger. I’ve never lodged in anyone’s head as a ringtone.

  It was the tune that signalled Bryce. “Your dad’s outside,” he said. “Keeping to the shadows. Like an incompetent spy.” He dum-de-dum-dummed a rendition of the James Bond theme. Nicole imagined Bryce peeking through the curtains. Spy versus spy.

  Nicole grabbed the car keys, her mute button pressed. Keeping mum around Mum. The house had become like the space between album tracks, resonant with what had gone before and tense with portents. Nicole had taken to wearing an iPod. iSolated. Mum was subdued, occasionally bursting into startling flurries of activity. Bang bang—Mum hammering. Photographs going up on the wall in the hall. Portraits of pop. Pictures of Nicole’s parents, hugging and mugging. Snaps of Dad and daughter. Tableaux of the trio, glowingly happy. Together forever.

  I’m married to myriad memories, yet sometimes Nicole uses me to forget. To lose herself, trample her troubles. As she drove to Bryce’s house, she slid a CD into the player and flicked through to me. Empty Fairground (Jones/Jones) (4.22). Ramped the amps. Batted the steering wheel to my beat. Wailed my words. It made her feel better. I’m good at that.

  4.22—that makes me laugh. Or it would if I had a mouth. A big operatic guffaw. That’s not how long I last. I echo between the ears. If you like me, I dig in. I’m a sleeper, waiting for the right moment to activate. Peek-a-boo! Guess who?

  The CD was a cheap compilation of popular love odes. I wasn’t enamoured with the company I was keeping, but that’s OK. I was the best of the bunch, and the one Nicole always flicked to. She had me on a few CDs. And on her computer and iPod. There was a film clip of me on an old videotape somewhere, and a vinyl single in the loft. Nicole has a special connection to me. I’m linked to those stories her mother spins. Tamed tales of ooh la la in a far off summer. That’s right—gettin’ jiggy as the Fresh Prince said.

  Nicole played me again.

  As she turned into Bryce’s street she spotted her father perched on a low garden wall. She pretended she hadn’t noticed him, that she hadn’t been summoned. Just a girl visiting her boyfriend. She parked and paused, gathering herself, then—One! … Two! … Three! … Four!—out the door. She ambled towards the house, giving Dad plenty of time to scurry across the road. Muffled music filled the air: a bombastic orchestral onslaught. It was an unsuitable suburban soundtrack. Apoplectic hip-hop or the rumble of rock would have been a better fit.

  “Nicole! Fancy meeting you here.” Dad accompanied the joke with a grin but extinguished it quickly. “I couldn’t come to our house.” He blanched, correcting himself. “Your house.”

  “Why not?”

  The leitmotif of his famished smile and aversion of the head. His aftershave caught in her left nostril and she rubbed at her moistening eye. Bryce’s door swung wide and a great wave of classical cadence broke over us. I was thrown, disowned. Scrabbling to get back in Nicole’s head. If I could breathe I would have spluttered. Bryce was framed in the doorway, beckoning them inside. I felt myself fragmenting in the symphonic shockwaves but thankfully Bryce reduced the volume as they entered the lounge. Still the notes niggled. As if the violinists were bowing my nerves.

  Classical music. It interferes with me. If I’m in somebody’s head when it’s around it fogs what that person is seeing, feeling, remembering. Sometimes it evicts me altogether. Beethoven the bailiff. Sibelius the usurper. Bryce’s lounge room fuzzed, breaking up like bad TV reception.

  Here’s a humble admission. I’m a perfect pop treat, finely constructed. A sweetmeat of melody and melancholy. I fiddle with feelings and flaunt with affections. There aren’t many art forms that can compete with my compact sublimity. But classical music can. Sure, it can be flabby and bumptious, but it harmonises with the emotions and attunes with the intellect. Often without lyrics. It makes me come over all I am not worthy. Even modern classical, like the piece Bryce was enjoying.

  “What’s the racket?” asked Dad.

  To be fair, it had hit a prolonged passage of pandemonium.

  “John Zorn,” replied Bryce. “Musical polymorph. He composes jazz, classical, surf—”

  “And rackets.”

  Bryce batted a button and the music died. Ah yeah. I had a clear experience of the environment again, as if someone had adjusted the aerial.

  Dad skirted chairs, investigated furnishings. He was like a novice vocalist summoning the courage to croon while an impatient band reiterated the introduction. His jacket, crumpled from over-wear, fussed around his frame. He glowered at a picture of Nicole’s boyfriend that hung on the wall, showing him standing stolidly in a lake in the wilderness, his reflection thrown beneath him. Twice the Bryce.

  “I dabbled with modelling. In my crazier days.” Bryce struck a pose, staring heroically skywards. He had the square-jawed precision of a matinee idol, marred only by a teardrop birthmark at the lower crescent of his cheek. It rode up as he flashed a grin.

  Nicole sank into an armchair. “Why are you here, Dad?” she prompted.

  Dad glanced at Bryce, wishing he’d vanish. “I want you to do something for me.” Dad towered over Nicole as she hunched in the chair. “Let me support you while you’re at uni. I mean, Jesus, why be a waitress? That’s valuable time you could spend cramming. I can give you a weekly allowance, buy your books. You probably need a new computer. I’ll see off your fees.”

  As Nicole listened, a racket returned. I thought Bryce was at the stereo, jacking up the volume, but he was nowhere near it. The room fuzzed again. Jamming signals were thrown up. The link between Nicole and me was compromised. It had something to do with the blockage Nicole felt in her throat. The seethe of emotion triggered by her father. I recalled the ensemble of apes from the ritzy restaurant.

  Nicole shook her head. “Why now, Dad? What’s changed?”

  Dad spun away from her and paced again. “I know you treasure your independence. It’s all tied in to your stubborn politics. But kids of well-off parents enjoying an unfair advantage is as Tory as you can get! Right, Brycie?”

  Nicole and Bryce shared an eye-roll.

  “Let’s make a deal,” she said. “You tell me why you left home and I’ll consider it.”

  “Nicole, education is important. Even fucking economics.”

  Dad liked to characterise accountants as myopic, snivel- ling and uncreative, whereas Nicole considered economics a pragmatic path to fulfil clients’ dreams via management of resources. They were both romantics.

  Dad moued apologetically at Bryce, who gave an amused shrug. Nicole had first encountered Bryce at the firm of financial consultants where he worked. She’d be
en researching a university assignment but her contact hadn’t shown up. Bryce had found her wandering, abandoned, and taken her under his wing. She remembered sitting in his cupboard-cosy office, sizing him up. He’d worn an unflattering grey jacket that blunted the squareness of his shoulders. His hair was side parted and he wore horn-rimmed spectacles. His handsomeness hampered. Like Jeff Buckley’s words sung to a Tiny Tim tune. Nicole was intrigued.

  Her memories of Bryce filled her with sweetness and the racket abated. The aerial adjusted; the room cleared.

  Dad’s knees cracked as he knelt beside her. Face bunched, suddenly old. They were too close: maladroit melodies flooded back. Like John Zorn performed on comb-and- paper and busted squeezeboxes. I’ve experienced this effect before, in Nicole and in others. There was a woman in Launceston who would play me to stop herself musing over her father’s surrender to Alzheimer’s. She believed she could actually see his memories of her fizzling away as she peered into his pupils. As I tried to engage with her, Zorn played the blues. A man brushed the parchment cheek of his mother on her eightieth birthday and Zorn mangled a madrigal. Another man repaired the watch of his deceased dad and strapped it to his wrist as Zorn waxed forlorn.

  Parents and children spawned the Zorn.

  “I’m begging you to let me do this,” said Dad.

  “The deal stands,” Nicole replied.

  Arpeggios chipped at her anguish; chords clouded her confusion. If only she could zap the Zorn, I could get a firmer grip on the situation. Bryce circled the armchair and laid a hand on her shoulder. Abruptly the racket became tinny and distant, as if her pain were siphoning out of her and into him. At the same time, he was willing strength into her. There’s a line in me that many have sung with great passion, faces aimed heavenwards, hands clenched into fists. Most belt it out with such fervour they go alarmingly out of tune. Tender heart, steel soul, they screech. It reminds them that the power of love can embolden them, make them fierce. Ready for any sacrifice. I knew Bryce in that moment. I knew he would love Nicole forever. It was the man teetering on one knee who perplexed me.

  Actually, the line is misinterpreted. It’s Tender heart, steal soul.

  Nicole’s stare bored into her father. They were hypnotised by each other.

  “Tell me why you left.”

  Dad aimed his rueful smile at the rug. Nicole laid a hand on his leg. The material felt tacky, needing a wash. She was used to seeing him in jeans and shapeless sweaters. In a suit he seemed exotic and wrong: a chamber quartet version of a bubblegum hit. She knew he only dressed like this when he felt the symptoms coming: the gnawing in the pit of the gut and thoughts with a physical weight, immovable as squatters. It was as if he believed depression could be shamed from afflicting somebody who dressed so formally.

  “Is the Zeppelin coming?” she asked softly.

  He snorted. “Naw. It’s in the air but it’s going to be a Hindenburg. I’ve been jogging. Playing squash. Exercise is good for me.”

  The Zeppelin: via Churchill’s black dog via Led Zeppelin’s Black Dog. Said that’s all right!

  “Talk some sense into her, Brycie. You’re a bean counter. You know the value of my offer.”

  Bryce endured the condescension with an indulgent semi-grin, self-assured and dignified. Fingertips kneading Nicole’s nape, transmitting tenacity. Zorn eased.

  “Actually, Nicole,” said Bryce, “if I was your financial adviser I’d recommend you accept.”

  He squeezed her shoulders and she gave a dry smile. She shook her head again, emphatically.

  Dad sighed. “OK. I’ll leave you two alone.” The suit rustled as he struggled to his feet. “Hey, better take care of her, Brycie.” He kissed Nicole on the forehead. Then leant lower to whisper in her ear. “Love you, Sunny Bunny.”

  There! That’s the problem. Humans are lazy. They’ve hijacked the word “love” to denote the sentiment between parents and offspring. But trust me, I know what Love is. It’s swelling strings, not apron strings. Being helpless with heartache, not helping with homework. As her father hissed the endearment it stirred up a storm of Zorn.

  Bryce accompanied Dad to the door, while Nicole remained in her seat, gripping the armrests. Skin marbling over knucklebones.

  A few days later a new computer appeared on Bryce’s doorstep. Nicole was furious for a week. Then she unpacked it and plugged it in.

  In the restaurant, as Nicole placed tiramisu in front of the man with the tragicomic comb-over, she glanced about, expecting to see Dad peeping from behind a fake Italianate column. I saw the vial in the bathroom cabinet clip across her consciousness. I wanted to tell her it was the cheap reek from Mr Combed Dome’s jowls that was troubling her, but I had no direct lines of communication. I could fiddle with her fantasies and dabble with her dreams, but was incapable of injecting a direct thought. Figments are my forte.

  As she leant in to place desserts along the long table, she caught snatches of comment about collectivism and carnivorous capitalism. Earnest editorials and sneering satires. Across the table, political writer and broadcaster Ray Symonds sat in state. Arch and arrogant as a soloist awaiting his virtuosic moment. He began to sing in a bullish bass and comrades chimed in. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not genre-ist, but propaganda songs are under-evolved. A lesser species. Jackbooted, Pavlovian; manacled to a marching beat. A cross between football club chant and advertising.

  Nicole tried to dodge Symonds’s line of sight. I felt her reasoning that he wouldn’t recognise her, had only met her once, briefly. He must encounter hordes, fans clamouring for his anointment, hopeless hero-worshippers like her dad. To test the hypothesis she turned to face him and their gazes locked. Did those swilling pupils sharpen? She looked away.

  Dad had invited Symonds to the house months earlier. Both felt betrayed by their beloved Labor party: Symonds had just famously quit as their speechwriter. Now they planned a campaign for Symonds to run as an independent at the upcoming election, with the broadcaster wielding his political clout and Dad contributing his marketing skills. Dad gambolled around his guest, honking too loudly at his wit, nodding too ardently at his pronouncements. Symonds supped red wine while Dad scribbled notes. Nicole lingered in the doorway and Dad waved her in and introduced them. When she stood behind Symonds pulling faces her father tried not to react, lips worming with suppressed amusement while his eyes glinted with ire.

  After Symonds left, Dad genuflecting behind him, father and daughter spouted politics, their voices molto crescendo. Dad had a special way of regarding Nicole during these confrontations, his vexation that she wouldn’t see sense tempered by pride that she was defending her values so vociferously. They parted, roiling with rage.

  I’ve been forced out of many minds by politics. We’re often unable to coexist. Politics confounds me. Not like classical music—it doesn’t muddle matters or render them ungraspable. It’s more like, say, quantum physics. You know it’s important and has an enormous effect on everything happening around you, but the mechanics of it are best left to the experts. It all seems so determined: forces beyond the control of the everyday human. My natural inclinations lie elsewhere. Left wing, right wing—neither is of interest.

  I know one thing: Love has two wings.

  Oh yeah. Ohh ohh yeah.

  Nicole returned from the restaurant kitchen with another tray of desserts. As she set down gelato and zabaglione, thoughts of Dad multi-tracked. Gloom generated by the artless mood lighting fused into father figures at the edges of vision. Beyond the large shopfront windows the street was a screen of shifting patterns and amoebic movement, uncertain and unreal.

  She’d felt haunted all day. That morning, she’d come across Mum arraying more family photographs around the lounge, her father’s frozen grin in every one. Mum looked shrunken: her sun-creased complexion had cracked further overnight. When Nicole clicked the radio on, defying the pious hush, she heard a jaunty advertising jingle written and sung by her father, the marketing mastermind. She snapped it
off.

  She’d been unable to concentrate on study, instead concocting theories on why Dad had departed. He had a boyfriend somewhere, or a harem of prostitutes satisfying a forbidden predilection that Mum had uncovered. He’d found out Mum voted One Nation, or adored One Direction. He was a criminal, a drug mule. Screwball scenarios. None of them fitted her potty pop, with his faith in family and delight in knocking out derivative folk rock.

  She averted her face from Symonds as she lowered his dessert. Panna cotta, her father’s favourite. A large vase in an under-lit alcove was transforming into Dad. A few seats away, Mr Comb-over waved his tiramisu, proclaiming he had the wrong dessert. Nicole scurried across. Symonds was intoning a monologue about the Labor Party atrophying and abandoning its values and how it would be up to a New Generation to rejuvenate it.

  “Isn’t that right? Wouldn’t you say that’s right, Nicole?”

  In the ensuing silence she allowed herself to be impressed that he’d remembered her, but the only thing she could bring herself to say was: “My name’s not Nicole.”

  Symonds raised his eyebrows. Nicole’s eye stung: assaulted by scent. Cologne prone.

  Mr Comb-over uttered a short, unpleasant cackle. “Then that must be the name of her left tit.”

  Nicole glanced down: she was wearing a name badge. Her hand flew to cover it.

  “You’ve probably got this place organised,” said Symonds. “Unionised. Being your father’s daughter.”

  She wanted to tell him nobody working there was in a union but it felt like betrayal: a denouncement of Dad as his presence pervaded. She muted, lips slightly parted as if about to reply. Expectant expressions drilled into her. Mr Comb-over was enjoying her embarrassment. The preoccupations of her day crowded in: the graven grins, the jingle, the crazy conjectures. She swabbed her afflicted eye with the back of her hand and something snapped in her joints. She felt herself folding, crimping into a crouch.