Mean Jean
by Vanessa Blakeslee
[ fiction - july 11 ]
“I’m going to kill myself,” I yelled into the phone.
“If you’re going to kill yourself there, Michelle, you’re going to kill yourself here,” my father said calmly, before his end of the phone died.
Goddamn it. I had told him I wasn’t going to live with that old bag Aunt Jean one more week, let alone six months. Sticking an eighteen-year-old (me) with a strange woman old enough to be her grandmother had ended up worse punishment than my parents exiling me to the ends of the earth. Otherwise, I liked Australia. I had known it would be no problem finding cool friends in Sydney and I was right. But I hated, really and truly hated, Aunt Jean. She was around seventy, but acted ninety-five. When I arrived at the airport, I couldn’t believe the woman who greeted me. Skinny as a match, sickly and disagreeable-looking, she was the epitome of harsh. I didn’t want to live beyond forty if getting old meant turning out like her.
I stormed outside to the deck and lit a cigarette, staring at the waves, to consider my options and clear my head. My whole reason for being there, taking classes at the University of Sydney, was quite random. I’d screwed around in high school, and my parents had sent me this past year, my senior year, to reform school in Rhode Island. I hated that, too. I quit drinking and drugs there, except for smoking weed. That, I felt, was my own business and hardly a serious concern. But were my parents satisfied? No. They decided I needed to see the world and that would force me to get my act together; the real world they said, whatever that meant. Lucky for me my mom’s Aunt Jean, my great aunt, was Australian. She’d married my grandmother’s brother, an American banker, and they raised their family in Sydney. He had died, and Aunt Jean had lived alone for about ten years. I had never met either of them. “You’ll have a great time,” my mom had gushed. “Auntie Jean lives right on the beach, at Tamarama, and it’s beautiful. I can clearly remember visiting them, even though I was only nine years old. I wish it were me going back.”
Then why don’t you go? I had thought. But my parents, being rich and scared, then did what many of my friends’ parents back in Stuart, Florida do when shipping off their problem children - tossed in a cushion. So my best friend Sean from back home lived about ten minutes away on Bondi Beach. I wished I could live with Sean. His parents had rented him a flat. But if my parents wouldn’t do the same, I’d find a place on my own.
Someone slid the door open behind me. Brett, Sean’s girlfriend and my roommate, slipped out. “Aunt Jean’s home,” she said.
“Where were you?” I asked.
“At Sean’s,” she replied. “He’s down there.” She pointed in the direction of the beach below. A wetsuit-clad Sean crossed the rocks with his board. Brett asked, “Did you talk to your dad?”
“He didn’t go for it. He said we have a free place now, why should he pay for a flat?” I replied.
“Even Sean doesn’t understand,” she said. “Do you know what he just told me? ‘I’d put up with an old lady to be able to get up and check the surf from my deck.’”
“Sorry,” I said. “I just can’t appreciate our prime surfing location.”
“We’re lucky to have such a gorgeous place,” she said. “I don’t want to move into the suburbs, like Bondi Junction or Randwick. Do you?”
Brett was from Augusta, Georgia. I wasn’t sure I liked her that much. She acted like too much of a goody-goody at times, as if before she’d met Sean she’d attended one too many coming-out balls. But at least I had someone to talk to about Aunt Jean. Brett barely even drank, so I wondered, what did she have to like about Sean? And vice versa. They spent all their time together now.
“Did I tell you what Aunt Jean said to me this morning?” I said. “I wanted to run to the store for a few snacks, since we have practically nothing to eat in this house. She handed me the money but then she said, ‘Don’t break me.’ Don’t fucking break me. Do our parents not send her a hundred dollars a week to pay for our expenses?”
“Maybe she doesn’t have much savings,” Brett offered.
“She has money,” I said. “Her husband worked for Citibank and she worked, too. She pays for her grandkids to go to private school. She’s traveled the world. And this flat we’re in? Prime real estate, beachfront.”
“This place would be a million or two dollars if she’d ever want to sell,” she said. “But she’s so stingy. Look at it in there. The electric blue couch.” We exchanged looks of disgust.
“Covered in Pippen hair,” I added. Aunt Jean’s dog, a Jack Russell terrier, was anything but cute. I had loved animals all my life, but this was one creature I adamantly despised. He resembled more of a pig than a dog, he was so tubby. And his bark. All he did was bark, morning, noon and night, and at what? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Cars. People walking and jogging along the path that wound around Tamarama Beach to Bondi through the rocks below. He shed everywhere; his hair carpeted our clothes.
“Get rid of that dog and her,” I said, “bring some new furniture and art in here, and throw out her stooches and clutter and that damn old lady clock that dings every fifteen minutes, and this flat would be very, very cool.”
“Actually, the furniture is kind of retro,” Brett said.
I said nothing, just shot her a you’re-being-too-sweet glare.
“But do you think we’re overreacting?” I asked. “Are we acting mean and just not,” here I paused to probe for the right word, “accepting?”
“I hate moving,” Brett said. “And it’s not in our heads. Listen, she’s calling us into dinner.” With the breeze at our backs, we dragged ourselves indoors.
Inside, Brett and I set the table, awkward silence hanging in the air as we made our trips from the kitchen to the dining room. Pippen blocked my path and I cursed at him under my breath. He cowered immediately and I smiled, pleased at his piggy eyes filling with intimidation.
“All ready, girls?” Jean said, voice crackling. She plunked a big bowl of beef stew on the table. Brett’s eyes met mine in dismay. No matter how many times we told Jean, politely suggested and hinted that we liked fish and chicken and sushi, not beef, she just didn’t give up. We ate beef and the same overcooked vegetables, potatoes and broccoli, five nights a week.
“Aunt Jean, we really feel bad about you having to cook all the time,” I said. “Really, let Brett and I make dinner once in a while.”
Aunt Jean flitted a hand at me and said, “No, no, perfectly fine. I like to cook.”
“I love to cook, ma’am,” Brett said.
“How many times have I told you girls, it’s damn insulting when you call me that name,” Aunt Jean cried. “Downright rude! I never liked it when I traveled to the States.”
“I’m sorry,” Brett replied quietly. “But I was raised to say it, ma’am.”
“Call me Jean. I think it sounds terrible!” Pippen was barking his high-pitched, staccato yelps at who knew what, his nose pressed to the deck door.
“What is he barking at?” I moaned.
“What is it, boy? Let him outside, Michelle,” Jean said, smiling at the dog. “Go out! Go on now. He’s doing his job, you see.” Several minutes passed of his running around the deck spastically before Jean called him back inside: “That’s enough now, Pip. That’s enough!” The dog crawled under the table and snuggled up against the heater. Australians didn’t heat their homes centrally; they only used small space heaters which made their homes feel like trolling the Atlantic on my dad’s sportfishing boat in the winter. We were into spring now in Sydney so the days were warming up. I kicked Pippen with my socked foot and he scampered in retreat to the living room.
“See that map on the wall,” Aunt Jean said. “I keep it there to remind me how close those Japanese are. They nearly invaded us in the war, you know.”
“Sydney has a lot of Asians,” I said. “Don’t they come here for work?”
“Too many, if you ask me,” Aunt Jean said. “They’re allowing more foreigners in here every year. And our resources are limited. We can hold twenty-five million, maybe. But there are far too many Japs.”
“Where are all the Aborigines?” Brett asked.
“The Aborigines! Worthless, lazy drunks, the lot of them,” Jean said. “Why, they ask for more money, more land, rant on and on about how we took away their babies - well, I’m telling you, most weren’t fit to be mothers. Their babies would’ve died if we whites hadn’t intervened.”
“But they were discriminated against,” I said.
“Yes, but they could help themselves,” Aunt Jean said. “Now they could. I’m just telling you what I think. I know you find it harsh, but that’s fine.” She scraped the last of her vegetable mush off her plate, adding, “All these dishes I have to do so that I don’t miss my six o’clock program.” She sighed as she wobbled off into the kitchen.
The ancient grandfather clock in the hallway chimed quarter-past six.
Brett and I stiffened. If Aunt Jean didn’t want us to help with the housework then why did she always give signs of complaint? We’d told her she didn’t have to do our laundry, but she wouldn’t let us near the washing machine. The week before it rained for five straight days and we wanted to clean our sheets and because, like most Australian homes, we had a clothesline and no dryer, she refused to let us change them until the weather cleared.
Brett leaned over and hissed, “She’s so set in her ways. Why did she take two college girls in if she didn’t want her routine interrupted?”
“I don’t know,” I answered. “My cousins stayed with her and said she was really hospitable. But my cousins aren’t exactly cool. One fences, the other plays the trombone.”
We cleared the table, whispering, confessing that before our arrival we’d each pictured Aunt Jean like a rugged but cheery Australian granny.
In the living room, Jean released a hacking cough, paused and burst out another round. She was sitting in her chair, the space heater and the dog at her feet, loud PBS music blaring.
“She doesn’t sound good,” I said. “I wonder if she’s got an illness we don’t know about.”
“Look how boney she is,” Brett replied. “She barely eats, that’s why she could be miserable. But that cough. Did she used to smoke?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “She was hospitalized last year, I overheard her saying.” I studied Jean and lowered my voice another notch. “I think she drinks and hides it.”
“I can’t relax with her around,” Brett said. “We can never play music.”
Suddenly Jean growled, “Hurry, Michelle, come in here. Hurry!”
“What?” I called. My voice sounded like a slap.
“Come and watch this,” Aunt Jean said. “I think you’ll like it.” Her bark drove me from the other room until I slumped into a spot on the other sofa. “I want you to watch it with me,” she said.
The documentary was about St Petersburg, Russia, and I could care less. I shivered on the sofa for two minutes, too far away from the heater to feel anything. After Brett sat down to suffer my punishment with me, I got up and lugged in the space heater from the dining room.
Aunt Jean said, “Don’t need that one on. One is plenty.” Her tone stated simply that all was said and done. I was doomed to freeze.
“I’m cold,” I said.
“There’s an afghan over there,” Jean said, nodding at the sofa’s arm. “Go ahead.”
I said nothing. I wanted the heater’s warm radiance and good feeling. Not a scratchy wood blanket from some damn sheep. “No,” I said. “I’ve got to have heat and I’m not getting any. You can be sick if you want but I don’t feel like getting a cold. So I’m leaving anyway. Enjoy your program.” I stomped down the hall. That old lady and her rat dog, I thought. Of all the nice dogs to own, and she has that piggy thing. I want to kick it over the rocks.
I picked up the phone in the hallway, but who to call? I wanted to call Sean but I knew Brett would be headed over to his place soon. He was always up for getting stoned. I didn’t even care so much about that anymore. The clock rang seven o’clock. I picked up the phoned and dialed.
Aunt Jean greeted Sean like a long-lost grandson. “Been out on the surf this afternoon?” she asked. “You’re a good one on the surf. When I was your age I greatly enjoyed it. I had my own board and everything. Oh, I wasn’t much good, used to get scraped up a bit from being so tossed around. You have to watch those rocks out there, mind you. But it was lovely fun, just lovely! That’s where I met my husband. He was one of the Maroubra boys. Oh Pip, don’t bother Sean now.”
I threw my Marlboro Lights with the large print SMOKING KILLS across the box front, Aussie government-style, into my bag and rummaged for my lighter.
The door shut behind us. “Thanks for rescuing me,” I said, a spring in my step as we headed for the path down to the beach.
“She’s just an old lady,” Sean said. He pulled a joint out from his pocket and stopped, cupping his hands around the end. The wind kept blowing out the flame, but on the third flick we were in business.
We decided to escape the wind, so we sat underneath one of the gazebo-type huts on Tamarama Beach.
“Are you going to move out, for sure?” Sean asked.
“If Brett and I can find a flat together,” I answered, taking a hit. “But we haven’t talked about it yet.”
“I wondered if the two of you were getting along,” he said. “If you liked her.”
“She’s not an easy girl to read,” I said. “Sometimes she’s shy, but she’s smart, even shrewd. Cautious, that’s the word. Occasionally she’s too aware of it, and that gets on my nerves.” I passed the joint back to him and he didn’t take it right away. Our hands touched.
“Because you both could move into my flat,” he said, snapping his fingers. “Easy. You could take the second bedroom and she’d stay with me.”
As soon as he said it, I realized how all of our recent conversations had been leading up to this, him wanting me to give permission. The crashing waves against the sand gleaming white in the moonlight swallowed up the silence between us. For an instant I imagined he and I waking up and laughing in bed together, and then this disappeared just as quickly, like a wave curling back into the sea. Truth is never one-dimensional: so I had been in love with him for awhile and we would never have more than what we had in this moment on Tamarama Beach.
“I do my own thing, Sean,” I said. “But I could never live with you as long as you’re with Brett.”
Neither of us said anything for awhile. A couple and their dog appeared near the rocks on the far end of the beach, figures like black sticks. The dog dashed into the surf. Every so often, the man’s whistle carried sharp on the breeze. The couple walked and took turns throwing a ball to the dog, and in between throws they held hands.
“Look at those swells,” Sean finally said. “Storm’s coming in.” He stood up to leave but reached over and grabbed a handful of my hair. He held it for a few moments before he let it go.
I hugged my arms and just stared at the couple strolling, the ball soaring, the dog leaping. Tears washed down my face and dropped with my footsteps into the sand.
The next morning, I awoke in the living room to a blaring church choir. “Wrong couch,” Aunt Jean said. I didn’t reply but squinted over at her. She sat propped up in her chair, wearing her dingy pink bathrobe that made her appear even more decrepit and alien. She was eating our beef stew from last night for breakfast. As the scent of the cold stew engulfed my nostrils, my stomach turned even more sour.
She said, “If you sleep in here, sleep on the other couch. That’s the good couch, the one you’re on.”
I headed for the bathroom. Brett stood there brushing her teeth but waved me in. “What happened?” she asked.
“Apparently if we’re to pass out wasted in there, we need to make sure we select the good couch,” I answered. “Please, both couches are such pieces of shit anyway. I barely even remember coming in last night.”
The couch was only the start of Aunt Jean’s bitching tirade that morning. Brett told me we had no hot water so I’d just have to wait awhile for the shower, and Aunt Jean yelled from the kitchen, “Yes, and I’ve got to have a shower, too!” I said to Brett, “Did I just hear that? Did she just say what I thought she’d said?” Then, while Brett was taking the clothes off the line in the backyard, the devil dog attacked. Pippen spazzed out over some great nothing and nipped at Brett’s ankles, so ballistic he knocked over a potted plant and broke it.
Raindrops were starting to fall, faster and faster. Aunt Jean hurried over to investigate the commotion. She bent over and clapped above Pippen’s snout.
“Oh, did that girl frighten you, my boy?” Aunt Jean asked. “She shouldn’t do that.”
“Jean,” Brett exclaimed, breathing hard, “that dog, I didn’t do anything, and he - “
“Don’t you yell at him. He’s doing his job, guarding the flat.” Aunt Jean was almost screeching. “Don’t you ever yell at my dog!”
The incident and Aunt Jean’s coddling and defending of Pippen pushed Brett over the edge. “That’s it,” Brett said in my room, stomping around. We yanked the clean sheets over my beds. “Not only am I going out and getting drunk for the first time tonight, because of this, I want to move. I do. Can you honestly imagine six more months of this? We’ve got to move now, before she gets worse.”
“We’re doing it,” I said. “That lady is a Disney villain and the dog is her animal sidekick.” We walked in Brett’s room to find Pippen perched on top of Brett’s bed, the bundle clean sheets bunched underneath him.
Brett screamed at him to get out. Pippen just looked at her and panted. She yelled three more times before he jumped down and scuttled off to find his mistress.
“Oh, Mr. Pippen might just have to have an accident,” Brett said, grabbing the sheets. “The wind might just have to blow him over the deck. Those cars come around the corner pretty fast, too.”
I burst out laughing.
But that was the night everything changed upside-down. I came home to find Brett and Sean boozing and laughing with Aunt Jean in the living room. Brett was pouring her heart out to Jean, slurring her speech. A picnic of food and wine glasses crowded the end tables. A regular party. What had happened to Aunt Jean?
“I never was a smoker,” Jean was telling Brett. “Only when I drink, you must have a cigarette then, to go with the taste.”
“A social thing,” Brett replied.
“Well, yes. Yes, it is, when appropriate,” my aunt answered.
I slipped off to my room to stow my baggie of weed; the old clock chimed eleven o’clock. When I returned Jean was telling Brett all about her forty-four day tour of the Soviet Union, and how nice the Russian people were, and how poor but giving to travelers. I sat down and for almost half and hour, Jean went on and on, just glowed. I watched in disbelief. Something had to be up. She must know we’re planning on leaving; there’s no other explanation, I thought. But I don’t want to stay if she’s just going to be nice for another week and then go back to her old ways. Two kinds of cookies sat on the coffee table. She hadn’t bought us cookies since we showed up.
Brett and I discussed the new Jean on the bus ride to the University. During breakfast, Jean did not make a single nasty comment. She had been more than mildly pleasant, which was all we wanted. “I don’t think the two of us are that bad to live with,” I said.
“Let’s wait out the week,” Brett replied. “Moving is a last resort, remember?”
“But are we going to judge six weeks of hell to one sudden, hundred-eighty-degree turn to Grandma?” I asked. “There’s something behind it. She’s not stupid.”
“Sometimes I think she’s losing it,” Brett said.
“She’s sharp,” I said. “So a few more days?”
Brett said, “A few more.”
We didn’t have to wait. That night Jean made a definite treat, tacos (with chicken, not beef) - and asked if we wanted any dessert. She offered positive suggestions if we shared something about school or our parents - lots of things. Then after dinner she said she was pouring each of us a glass of sherry and we were going into the living room for a “chat.”
So there we were, Brett and me on the blue couch and Jean in her chair.
“Drink it, drink it,” Jean said, raising her glass in a toast. “Now, recently in this house I have been sensing an undercurrent if you will, that I’ve never encountered with other guests, or girls, ever. And I must say you two have been plain bastards these past weeks. I’ve never seen anything like it; it’s rude. And if we don’t do something to make sure things are different, well, I don’t know what we’re going to do. I’ll ask first, where did I go wrong?”
A long moment of tension gripped the room. I took a sip of the sherry and held back a cough at its strength. How could Jean drink that nasty sweetness? I didn’t know how to answer her. Pippen trembled in the corner. The view from the window was scary. The whitecaps went on for about half a mile; the waves reared up like walls. Never screw with the ocean, Sean always said. It felt eerie, how the wind was howling and whistling and blowing so hard. Hopefully the weather would clear by tomorrow.
“Why do you complain about doing work if you won’t let us help you?” Brett finally asked.
“I like doing things for you,” she said, “because I don’t have anything else to do. You have better things to be doing, you shouldn’t be worried about getting laundry done. You should be enjoying your time here, which, I think, is precious little. You’re young, take advantage.”
The tension, from here forth, dissolved. Everything seemed to be put in better perspective. I saw Jean differently - a person who couldn’t take part in life like she wanted. Aging confused her, scared her, made her frustrated and cranky. I could only imagine that having us running in and out made her jealous, but to what degree I couldn’t be sure. Her body was failing but she didn’t miss anything going on around her. Her stubborn pride was fighting.
Several days later, Sean and I were sitting in a spot we liked in particular on the walkway that ran between the beaches. “So, you guys are staying?” he asked.
I said yes. I missed his insightful conversations. He was always with Brett. Part of me was sad, I guess, in accepting that things weren’t how they used to be with him, and never would be again. They had changed, shifted to a different level. But I was also struggling with other emotions. Jealousy? Because of Brett I could never have Sean all to myself like I used to, even in friendship. The memory of Sean and I skateboarding on afternoons after school back in Stuart seemed almost like it had never happened; it was such a world away. I didn’t know exactly what I was feeling, but I knew deep down that I loved the way Sean was intense and open at the same time. And being with him was complete torture because I knew every time I was thinking of him in those ways, he was thinking about her.
“Do you know Brett wanted to get stoned the other night?” I asked.
“She did?” he said. “A couple times since we’ve been here she’s tried it. But I thought she didn’t because I got into all that trouble. I’m finally putting it all behind me, you know? And she’s mostly the reason. You, too.”
“We’ve been keeping an eye on each other,” I said. “But listen. So Brett was stoned and stirring the taco meat on the stove too fast. I started laughing. I thought Jean would say something for sure. But Jean made no comments, none.”
“Didn’t she used to yell at you to clean your plate?” he asked.
“But later, Jean tells Brett, ‘I know you girls get stoned.’”
Sean said, “Hey, Jean’s a woman of the world. Next time I see her I’m going to ask her to come with us.”
“I have a little trouble picturing Aunt Jean smoking a joint on her deck,” I said.
“I don’t,” he said. “She probably does when you two leave. ‘American brats, stressing me out.’” He grinned at me and we laughed.
Then silence blanketed us, as we looked out over the glassy sea. From here the lights from Bondi Beach and the waves with the moonlight dancing on top looked trippy and unreal, like a dream world. We were sitting up on the rock wall, our meeting place on the path because it marked the half-way point between his beach and mine, Bondi and Tamarama. Getting stoned was about the last ritual I shared anymore with him. At least it didn’t look like Brett was going to take that from me. How sad the way relationships took such tolls on friendships, too. I felt partly relieved not to be in one. But maybe spending time with Sean like this made things worse when I couldn’t have him. I felt even lonelier. I loved him and I was lonely, for sure.
We stood up and Sean hugged me in the darkness. His long hair brushed my cheek; he had the best hair. He always smelled like the sun and the sea. The breeze blew and smelled salty and clean, and the waves crashed below at the bottom of the cliffs. The whitecaps erupted and fizzed amongst the rocky tidal pools and lingered in the surf. Hiking back to the flat, I felt like the rocks were ancient, millions of years old, and something within me somewhere felt old, too.
In the flat Jean was washing dishes. Brett was sleeping. “Hello, love,” Jean said. “You just missed Catch Phrase. I thought you’d make it.” Jean was all about her game shows.
“I was out with Sean,” I replied.
“And how is he?”
“He’s fine.”
“You’re good friends, the two of you.”
“Best friends. We don’t hang out much anymore, though. Things are different.”
“Sounds like you miss him,” she said. “You like him a lot, don’t you?”
“How can you tell?”
“There’s something between you. When I have seen you together, you both laugh a lot. You’re happy.”
“But he’s going out with Brett. He likes her so much, Aunt Jean. I don’t have a chance.”
“Don’t say that,” Jean waggled her finger. She lowered her voice. “Don’t get me wrong, Brett is a lovely girl, lovely. For right now, he snoozed and lost. But be patient and don’t worry - you’ll have tons of boyfriends.”
I said nothing.
“I can tell these things,” Jean said. “Don’t forget, I was young once, too. Things change.”
I thought if Aunt Jean were my age, she’d definitely be all about Sean - she was still prattling on. “What about Spencer?” I asked.
Spencer was an old Englishman Aunt Jean took to social events and to the Opera House once in awhile.
“I’m mad at him,” she said with a huff. “We were supposed to go to lunch and he didn’t ring today. So I’m not ringing him.” But that was for companionship at her age, she said. He was a widower, too, with quite a sense of humor.
I wandered into the dining room and stood at the sliding door, peering through the glass to the ocean, to think awhile about Sean, and Brett, and how Jean was so right about things changing. Things always were changing, and in Australia, faster than I could keep up. I couldn’t predict how life would end up at the end of my time there. It was closer than I thought, too. I wrote in my journal because I like to spill things out on paper, and felt better. I must have written for a long time because when I looked over into the darkness of the living room, Jean had fallen asleep watching TV on the blue couch, with Pippen at her feet. Her legs curled up in a very youthful manner, not like how an older person would usually sleep on a couch. She’s a young person inside, no different than Brett and me, I thought, only trapped by time. She went out to pubs like we do now, she surfed these beaches. How strange that will be someday to have the same mind but to keep getting older. I tried to picture Sean and me as old people, but instead I saw us like the couple with the dog on the beach that windy night. Against the shadows of the surf and the rocks, I hadn’t even been able to tell their ages.
I would miss Jean when we left. I pictured Jean alone in her flat with only her little dog by her side, how empty it would be, and I shuddered. Pure silence. And then Jean’s clock down the hall chimed the hour.
