Trading Places

“You’ve been busy lately.”

“Pressure of work,” Franky lied.

There was one person she hadn’t felt able to put off. She used to meet Bridget’s sister Pauline almost every week for lunch. Today she was walking along with her while she did some shopping. They bought a couple of sandwiches from a bar in Lygon Street, then queued at a coffee shop.

Franky immediately knew she’d said the wrong thing. They never said things like “pressure of work” to each other. She felt like a double agent.

“How’s Bridget?” Pauline asked.

“Very fine,” Franky said, cringing at herself for sounding so awkward. “She’s got a full book of clients … Gidge is great. She’s absolutely great.”

Pauline looked at Franky with a new concern. “Is everything all right, Franky? Remember, this is my big sister you’re talking about. If anybody describes Bridget as absolutely great, there must be some kind of a problem.”

Franky laughed and Pauline laughed and the moment passed. Pauline bought a large bag of coffee beans and two takeaway lattes and they walked slowly towards Princes Park and found a bench. Franky relaxed a bit. It was a sunny, clear, but cold day, and the coffee burned her lips pleasantly.

“How’s married life?” she asked.

Pauline looked at her very seriously. She was a striking woman whose straight dark hair could suggest severity, if you didn’t know better. “I’ve stopped taking the Pill,” she said.

“Fuck!” Franky said. “Are you read for this? Isn’t it a bit too soon?”

“It’s always too soon, I think,” Pauline said. “Anyway, nothing’s happened yet.”

“So you haven’t started standing on your head after sex, or whatever it is you’re meant to do?”

They chatted about fertility and pregnancy and maternity leave and the more they talked the worse Franky felt. Up to this moment, she had thought of Erica as a strictly private betrayal. She knew she was doing something awful to Bridget but now, looking at Pauline, her cheeks flushed red in the cold but also with the excitement, maybe, of impending pregnancy, and her hands clutched round the coffee, and the mist from between her narrow lips, Franky had a sudden mad sense that all of it was operating under a misapprehension. The world wasn’t as Pauline thought it was and it was Franky’s fault.

They both looked at their empty coffee cups, laughed and stood up. Pauline gave Franky a close hug and pushed her face against hers.

“Thanks,” Franky said.

“What for?”

“I don’t think everyone’s ever trusted me enough to tell me they are trying for a baby before.”

“Oh Franky,” Pauline said reprovingly. “I couldn’t not tell you that.”

Franky casually looked at her phone as they broke away from their embrace. “I’ve gotta go,” she said suddenly. It was later than she thought and she was supposed to meet with Erica shortly. “I’m meeting up with Doreen and Joshie,” she lied.

“Where?”

“Oh,” Franky said taken aback. “In, er, Prahran.”

“I’ll take the tram with you. It’s on my way.”

“Sounds good,” Franky said, in anguish.

On the tram Pauline talked about her ex-boyfriend Guy, who had broken off with her suddenly and brutally not much more than eighteen months earlier.

“Do you remember the way I was then?” she asked, with a little grimace and looking, for the moment, just like her sister. Franky nodded, thinking frantically about how she was to handle this. Should she pick a shop at random and pretend Doreen was going to meet her there? Or a cafe, even though she’d just had coffee with Pauline? “Of course you do. You saved my life. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to repay you for all you and Bridget did for me then.” She held up her bag of coffee. “I probably drank about that much coffee in your house while crying into your whiskey. God, I thought I would never be able to cross the road again on my own, let alone function and be happy.”

Franky tapped Pauline on the knee. They say that the best friends are those who can simply listen and if that were true then Franky was the best of all friends during that tram ride. This was it, she said to herself, the terrible punishment for all her deceptions.

They alighted from the tram and walked along Chapel St. After a couple of blocks, Franky saw a familiar figure walking in front of them. Erica. Her brain dulled and she thought she might even be going to faint. She turned and saw an open shop door. It was to some sort of delicatessen. She couldn’t speak but she seized Pauline’s hand and pulled her inside.

“What?” Pauline asked in alarm.

“I need some …” she looked into the glass case on the counter. “Some …” The word wouldn’t come.

“Parmesan,” said Pauline.

“Parmesan,” Franky agreed. “And other things.”

Pauline looked around. “But there such a long queue. It’s Saturday.”

“I’ve got to.”

“Pauline looked indecisive, shifting from one foot to another. She looked at her watch. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’d better get back.”


“Yes,” Franky said, in relief.

“What?”

“That’s fine,” Franky said. “Just go. I’ll text you.”

They kissed each other on the cheek and Pauline left. Franky counted to ten, then looked out into the street. Pauline had gone. Franky looked down at her hands. They were steady, but her mind reeled.

******

That night, Franky dreamed that someone was cutting off her legs with a kitchen knife, and she was letting them. She knew she mustn't scream, or complain, because she had deserved it. She woke in the early hours, sweating and confused, and for a moment she couldn’t tell who it was she was lying next to. She put out her hand and felt warm flesh. Bridget’s eyes flickered open. “Hello, Franky,” she said, and returned to sleep, so peaceful. Franky couldn’t go on like this.

******

“Franky,” said Bridget, at the same time as Franky said, “Gidget.”

“Sorry, go on,” Franky said.

“No, you first.”

They were sitting on the sofa with mugs of tea, about six inches apart from each other. It was dark outside, and the curtains were closed. A football game played in front of them on the television. Bridget was wearing an old speckled-grey sweater, faded jeans and no shoes. Her hair was all rumpled up. They had spent the day lazing around the house. Bridget looked at Franky attentively. Franky took a deep breath. “I can’t keep on with this, Gidge.”

The words mustn't have computed in Bridget’s mind at first as the expression on her face didn’t change. Franky made herself go on looking into her kind, blue eyes.

“What?” Bridget asked.

Franky took one of Bridget’s hands and it rested limply in hers. “I have to leave. I have to leave you.”

How could she say it? Every word was like hurling a brick. Bridget looked as if Franky had slapped her really hard, bemused and in pain. Her look made Franky want to take it all back, return to where they had been a minute ago, sitting together on the sofa with their tea. Bridget didn’t say anything.

“I’ve met someone else. I never meant for this …” Franky stopped.

“What do you mean?” Bridget was staring at Franky, as if through a thick fog. “What do you mean, leave? Do you mean you want to stop being with me?”

“Yes.”

The effort of that word rendered Franky speechless. She gazed dumbly at Bridget. She was still holding her hand, but it lay nervelessly in her grasp.

“Who?” Bridget’s voice cracked a bit. She cleared her throat. “Sorry. Who have you met?”

“Just … I don’t think you know her. It just … God, I’m so sorry, Gidge.”

Bridget passed a hand over her face. “But it doesn’t make any sense. Everything has been going great between us lately. You haven’t been acting any differently towards me.”

Franky nodded. This was more awful than she could have imagined.

“I thought - I - how did you meet her? When?

This time Franky couldn’t meet Bridget’s gaze. “It doesn’t matter, that’s not the point.”

“I can’t understand it. You’re leaving everything? Just like that?” Bridget looked around the room at all their things, the whole weight of the world they had built up together. “Why?”

“I’m just trying to trust in my feelings, Gidge.”

Bridget’s whole body was slack on the sofa. Franky wanted her to shout, get angry or something, and instead she smiled. “Do you know what I was going to say?” Bridget asked.

“No.”

“I was going to say I thought we should have a baby together.”

“Oh, Gidget.”

“I was happy.” Her voice had a muffled quality. “And all the time you were, you were …”

“No, Gidge,” Franky pleaded. “I was happy too. You made me happy.”

“How long have you been seeing her?”

“About six weeks.”

Franky watched Bridget considering, revising the recent past. Her face puckered. She stared away from her, towards the curtained window, and said very formally: “How about we try to work through this together? Try to figure it out? Please.”

Bridget didn’t look at Franky. They both stared ahead, hand in hand. There was a great boulder in Franky’s chest.

“I’m so fucking sorry, Gidge.”

“Please, Franky,” Bridget said again.

“No. I can’t.”

Bridget took her hand out of Franky’s. They sat in silence, and Franky wondered what came next. Should she say something about sorting out her things later? Tears were welling in both women’s eyes. Franky put up a hand to caress Bridget’s cheek but the older woman turned away sharply, angry at last. “God, Franky, what do you want? Do you want to comfort me or something? I can't have you around me right now. Just go.”

Franky left everything. She left all her clothes and her makeup and her jewellery. Her books and magazines. Her photographs. Her satchel full of documents from work. Her bunch of keys. She took her wallet, her phone and her thick black coat and headed out into the cold.

******

Franky felt a desperate urge to see Erica, but after what had just transpired with Bridget she told herself she didn’t deserve to. Perhaps it would be a small sign of respect to her and Bridget’s relationship that she didn’t rush to Erica’s apartment the night that they had broken up. She didn’t feel like seeing her friends. She had wild thoughts of sleeping in the street, or on a park bench, but even self-punishment had its limits. Where could she find somewhere cheap to stay? It occurred to her she had never stayed in a hotel in Melbourne before. She checked her phone, located the closet one to her, and walked the eight blocks that led to it.

When she reached the hotel, sitting at the front desk was a very fat man. He said something urgently to Franky that she couldn’t understand because of his accent. Franky looked around and realised that the hotel was extremely seedy - two-star at best. Maybe she would have been better off on a park bench. “Can I get a room?” she asked the man.

The man nodded his head and carried on talking. Franky wasn’t even sure if he was talking to her or shouting at somebody in the room behind. She wondered if he thought she was a prostitute, but no prostitute could have been as casually dressed as she was. Yet she had no luggage. A little corner of her mind was amused by the thought of what kind of person he took her for. She extracted a credit card from her wallet and put it on the desk. He took it and scanned it. She signed a piece of paper without looking at it. He handed her a key card.

“Is there a mini bar?” she asked.

“No mini bar,” he shouted.

Franky felt as if she had asked for a cup of meths. She considered whether to go out for a drink but couldn’t face it. She took the key and went up two flights of stairs to her room. It wasn’t so bad. There was a wash-basin and a window looking down on a stone yard and across at the back of another house on the other side. She pulled the curtain shut. She was in a hotel room in Melbourne on her own with nothing. She stripped down to her underwear and got into bed. She got out of the bed and chain-locked the door, then dived under the covers again. She didn’t cry. She didn’t lie awake all night pondering her life. She went to sleep straight away. But she left the bedside lamp on.

She woke up late, dull-headed, but not depressed. She got up, took her bra and knickers off and washed herself in the basin. There were communal showers down the hall but she vowed she would never use a communal shower again after Wentworth. She dressed and went downstairs. There seemed to be nobody around. She looked in at a dining room where all the tables had plastic chairs around them. She heard voices from somewhere and could smell fried bacon. A woman entered the room from a different door who was a similar age and shape as the man she had met the night before. Franky guessed it was his wife.

“I was leaving,” Franky said.

“You want breakfast?” said the woman, smiling. “There’s eggs, bacon, tomatoes, mushrooms, beans, cereal.”

Franky shook her head weakly.

“You paid already.”

Franky accepted some coffee and drank it alone at one of the tables. Before she left, the woman looked at her with a concerned expression. “You all right?”

“Yeah, why?” Franky replied sternly.

“You stay another night?”

Franky shook her head again and left. It was cold outside but at least it was dry. She stopped and thought, orienting herself. She walked to the nearest tram stop and jumped on the next tram to Prahran. When she arrived she looked around the shops for a while. She bought some lemon-scented wipes, a toothbrush, mascara and eyeliner from a chemist and then some underwear. In Malvern Road she found a decent clothes shop. She took a black shirt and a simple jacket into the changing room. She put on her new underwear as well, wiped her face and neck with the wipes until her skin stung, then applied some makeup. It was an improvement.

At just after ten, she rang her boss, Louise. She had intended to make up something about having gastro or some other contagious illness, but once she got her on the line, some odd impulse made her fall back on partial honesty. She told Louise that she was having a personal crisis that she had to deal with and was not in the the right frame of mind to appear in the office the next day. She must have caught Louise in a soft mood as she had never heard her show so much sympathy.

“Take the week off,” Louise concluded. “Your work has been exemplary since you’ve arrived at the firm, you’ve earned a leave pass. I’ll think of something to tell the other clerks.”

“Just remember to tell me what it is before I see them.”

From Malvern Road it was only a few minutes walk to Erica’s apartment. When Franky reached the street door she realised that she had almost no idea what she was going to say to her. She stood there for several minutes but nothing occurred to her. The door was unlocked so she walked up the stairs and knocked on the apartment door. It opened. Erica was still in her satin nightie, her hair mussed up into a pony tail. She looked alarmingly beautiful.

Franky fixed a goofy smile on her face and leant her hand on the door jamb. “Honey, I’m home,” she said in a cheerful tone.

Erica looked deeply into Franky’s green eyes. She saw the truth in them and the pain behind them. Franky didn’t have to tell her what had happened, it was obvious. Erica grabbed Franky’s hand, dragged her into the apartment, closed the door behind them and pulled her into a loving embrace. Franky buried her face in Erica’s neck. The enormity of what had happened in the past twenty-four hours finally hit her. She shed a few tears, but she felt safe. Safe in the knowledge that she was where she wanted to be and where she belonged.