Ryan Howard is an author and journalist from Fitzroy. He describes Old French Love Songs as a story about shame. “I wanted to write about a date that went from bad to worse,” he explains. “I feel like everyone has those horrendous dating stories. This was me visualising just how bad they could get.”
It wasn’t really his fault, but if he hadn’t parked across my driveway, maybe it would never have happened. I can’t blame him for that. At the time it didn’t bother me. It was just after my daughter had committed suicide. Just after. I was driving back from the hospital. I hadn’t cried yet. It would be a long time before I did anything like that. I just pulled up in front of my house and saw his car there, right across my driveway. I wasn’t even mad. I just walked up to his house and asked him to move the car. He apologised and got the keys straight away, talking the whole time about how he’d been distracted and hadn’t really been paying attention to where he left the car. I told him that it was fine, but maybe I was acting a little strange, because he looked at me and asked me if anything was up, and I said, no, not a thing. And went back home.
But he found out later, when my ex-wife told came over to my place to pick up all of Sandra’s things she wanted to keep and my neighbour saw her and said, “how are you Martha?” And she looked over at him and said, “didn’t John tell you?” He found out after that. And then he started up with the flowers. Dropping over each night to apologise. He looked as though he was about to cry every time I opened that goddamn door. He was always so shaky around me, offering to make dinner, take me out to restaurants. He acted as though him parking his car across my driveway had been the thing that had killed Sandra in the first place. He kept going over that day in his head, asking me questions about it.
“So when you came over that day,” he would say, “you had just found out she was dead? When you asked me to move my car?” And I would nod, and he would start shaking and just saying, “oh Christ, oh Christ.” That got on my nerves. He had always been alright before that, I guess. A nice neighbour. He had a stepdaughter who he tried to introduce Sandra to, but, even in those days, Sandra didn’t like playing with other girls. She just sat in her room and sulked.
My ex-wife blamed me for Sandra. After that day she picked up my things and set my neighbour off she refused to come around. Didn’t even pick up my calls. She took everything of Sandra’s from my house. It was okay, I suppose. I didn’t know what I was going to do with it anyway. But even still, she could have left me something. She even took the drawings off the fridge.
My neighbour kept offering to get drunk with me. As though that would cement some friendship between us. I guess he saw the bottles in my house. Knew that I drank a fair bit. He might have even known that was why my ex left me. She probably told him that as well. But I hated having him over. He was always so goddamn nervous, and if I didn’t jump up and burst out in a grin every time he said something, he always acted like he’d said the wrong thing.
One day, he really blew it.
“You know I’ve got a sister,” he said. I shook my head. He fidgeted a little in his chair, and lit a cigarette.
“Really beautiful, she is,” he said. “Just broke up with a guy. She’s a hairdresser. I think you might like her.”
I shrugged my shoulders.
“You could let me do this for you,” my neighbour said. “Set you two up. She’d really like to meet you. I told her all about you.”
I looked at him.
“What did you tell her?” I said. My neighbour started fidgeting again.
“Oh you know, bits and pieces,” he said, and started picking his fingers with a used match.
I don’t know why I said yes, but I did. I suppose I just wanted to shut him up. He looked like I’d saved his life when I told him I’d meet up with her. He broke out in this huge grin, and started laughing.
“Christ. I thought you’d never say yes”, he said, and slapped me on the back.
He said he’d call her, and so the next day, he came around to tell me the news.
“She’s ready to meet you. She wanted to come over and have dinner or something. What do you want to do?” He asked.
“She might as well come over here,” I said.
He nodded.
“Yeah, that’d be nice. How does tomorrow sound?”
“Tomorrow sounds fine,” I said. “What time?”
“Well, she’s free all day. How about four?”
“Four’s a bit early,” I said.
His smile faltered a little. “Six then?”
I said I guessed six would be fine. And so, the next day, at six on the dot, there was a knock at the door. I had been sitting around waiting for that knock from about four. Just sitting on the goddamned couch, trying to keep myself entertained. But I couldn’t relax. Not when I knew she’d be over. I never got this way usually. So, I was kinda glad when she arrived. I opened the door, and there she was. Beautiful, I suppose. At first glance. Her hair was long and blonde, and she had pretty good tits. She looked a little like my ex-wife. But then I looked a little closer and noticed the mole. It sat just on top of her lip, not very big, but black, and with a little hair coming out of it. I tried to make it look like I hadn’t seen it, but she noticed where my eyes went and how quickly they shot back up to look at her. She went red and shrugged her shoulders, as if trying to dismiss something I hadn’t said.
“Hi,” she said, and her voice cracked a little.
“Hi,” I replied. “Want to come in?”
She sat on the couch a little awkwardly. I guess she was looking at all of the bottles on the floor.
“I drank them all ages ago,” I said. “I haven’t had a proper drink in months.” It was true, I guess. For the last few weeks I had been drinking mixed drinks. You know, orange juice with a bit of vodka. I was weaning myself off the stuff. But that didn’t make the girl look any more comfortable. She just shifted a little in her seat.
“Want a drink?” I asked her. She shook her head.
“I’m fine, thanks,” she said. I smiled. I saw she was holding something under one arm – a big square thing, wrapped in black paper. She saw where my eyes went, again, and lifted the thing up a little.
“It’s for you,” she said. I took it from her hands. It was quite thin, but hard. I opened it up. It was a record – a vinyl by some French guy called Jacques Brel. I didn’t even know who Jacques Brel was.
“I don’t have a record player,” I said. She looked like she was about to cry.
“Oh God. Simon told me you did.” Simon was my next door neighbour. I shook my head.
“Damn,” she said. “I suppose I could take it back.”
“No, that’s fine. I’ll keep it next to the fruitbowl. It’ll be nice to look at.” She smiled a little, gratefully.
“Do you like Jacques Brel?”
“I don’t know who he is,” I replied. Her grateful smile disappeared.
“Oh. Simon told me you liked him.” She looked like she was ready to kill my neighbour. I think I was about ready to as well.
We sat around for about half an hour, talking about this and that. Mainly about her ex-boyfriend. I just listened. She was a good talker. She didn’t really need me to say anything. I just nodded my head every now and then and tried not to look at her mole.
Eventually, she mentioned the car and my daughter. I knew she was going to.
“I heard about your daughter,” she said. “I’m really sorry. One of my friends was an anorexic. She died.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, because I didn’t know what else to say.
“Simon was really cut up that he parked his car across your drive that day. He thought it was probably the last thing you’d want to deal with.”
“I told him it wasn’t a problem.”
“I know. It was just on his mind. Simon’s like that.”
I nodded. It felt like I was doing a lot of nodding.
Eventually we went and got an ice-cream. I was going to take her for dinner, but she said she wasn’t hungry. I guess I wasn’t either. We went to the bottom of the road, and while we were walking, I spotted a pack of cigarettes on the floor. I picked it up. There were still two inside.
“You smoke?” she said.
“I quit. But now, whenever I find a packet on the floor I always check if it’s got any in it. If it does, I smoke them. It was how I got myself to quit. It was a good way to do it. I never get lucky.”
She looked at me as if it was the most interesting thing I’d said all night. She actually looked a little excited.
We got two scoops each at the ice-cream place, and sat on the chairs outside. She didn’t look very comfortable. She kept looking around as if someone she knew was about to walk around a corner.
“You sure you were okay with just ice-cream?” I said.
“Sure. I don’t have much of an appetite.”
I looked at her. She was skinnier than I had noticed before.
I lit up the one of the cigarettes. I kinda had to now, since I had said all that about quitting. But the thing was in my mouth, not even lit, when this young guy came out. He worked at the ice-cream place. He had long black hair and a good body. The girl smiled at him when he walked over to us.
“You’ll have to put that away, sir,” the guy said. “We don’t allow smoking.”
“Oh. Alright.” I put the packet in my pocket. The ice-cream guy bowed a little at the girl and then walked back inside. I looked over at her. I knew what I looked like. Maybe that’s why I said what I said.
“My wife always says an ex-addict is the only thing sadder than an addict.”
She didn’t know what to make of that.
“I didn’t know you’re married,” she said.
“Oh. I meant ex-wife.” She nodded her head, but she didn’t look any less concerned.
She started talking even faster after that. About all kinds of things I couldn’t keep up with. She was much more intelligent than I was. She kept mentioning the books she was reading, written by all kinds of people with funny last names. I was trying to remember the last book I read when she looked up from the ice-cream she wasn’t eating and grinned.
“So,” she said, “Simon says you worked in a morgue?”
I felt ready to spit. I hadn’t been at the morgue for years. It was the kind of thing I tried my hardest not to mention at parties. Everyone wanted to know how it was – how the bodies looked. Did people play music when they were preparing the cadavers? Had I ever accidentally left a phone in the casket? Had I ever lost a ring inside a dead person?
“It was a while ago,” I said. “It wasn’t really as interesting as you think. I only answered phones and that. I was essentially a receptionist. Talked to people as they came in. The guys who worked there didn’t like me very much. They never let me go and see the bodies. They took my daughter on a tour though.”
She stiffened at the mention of Sandra, and I realised it was a stupid thing to have brought up in the first place. But then I started thinking about it more, and couldn’t stop.
“Sandra always had a thing with morbid stuff. She wore black. Had this tall boyfriend with really long hair and tattoos. Nice enough guy, I suppose, but he used to wear these yellow contacts to make him look…I don’t know. Possessed or something. She brought him on this tour. I think one of the morgue guys had a crush on her. She saw everything. The bodies. The embalming fluid. Couldn’t stop talking about it for days.”
The girl nodded. She opened her mouth a little, but closed it again pretty quickly. I don’t think I had any idea what to say either.
We went back home after that. She sat on my couch again, and I asked her if she wanted a drink. This time she said yes. I poured her a tumbler of whiskey and handed it to her.
“A bit strong,” she said. I nodded.
She drank it, and I hoped that maybe that might mean she’d ease up a little. But her shoulders were still drawn so tight together.
“What was your daughter like?” she said. She was still thinking about that.
“Quiet. Never really talked to people.”
“How…How did she kill herself?
“Cut her wrists.”
“God. Were you the one who found her?”
“Yeah. She did it in my bathtub.”
The girl moved the empty tumbler back and forth in her fingers. I wondered if that meant she wanted another drink. But when I asked her, she said she didn’t. In fact, she said she had to go. She stood up.
I thought maybe I’d said something. But she was the one who had mentioned my daughter.
“I had a really good night,” she said. “You’re really nice.”
I thanked her, and walked over to the door.
“We should spend some more time together,” I said, before I realised what I was really saying. She faltered for a second, and looked embarrassed. She nodded, hesitantly. It was terrible. We both knew what she was thinking. It was worse when she had seen me staring at her mole.
“Well, sure.” She said. “Just talk to Simon.”
I nodded.
“Well, night,” she said.
And that was when I leaned in to kiss her. She looked a little scared at first. Like she didn’t know what I was doing. Then she moved a little so my kiss fell short of her lips. So I ended up kissing that goddamn mole. And that only made things worse. She pulled away and looked even more embarrassed than if I’d actually managed to kiss her on the lips. She nodded her head and worked backwards out of the door, saying goodbye over her shoulders. Christ. The door closed loudly behind her, and I wondered whether Simon could hear.
I hoped he could. I sat on my couch and made myself another drink. I felt worse than I had in a long time. Probably worse than the day I saw Sandra floating in the water, and the way she had turned all the lights off in the house before she had done it. That was what I kept saying to my ex-wife, while we were in the hospital. The way she had made it dark, before she did it. So she could lie at the bottom of the bath and didn’t even have to close her eyes.
I stood up and poured myself another drink. On the way back to the couch I saw the Jacques Brel record on the counter. I didn’t even know who he was. I tried to say his name out loud, but I couldn’t pronounce it right. It just sounded strange in my mouth. I thought about hurling the thing out the fucking window. But I just left it there. And drank my drink. And poured another.
Read another short story, Just by Joseph Earp.
