Ashes
Muz was going through a mangled and angry
red scar of a divorce. Ryan, as his best friend, felt it was his fraternal and
loyal duty to speak ill of the soon to be ex-Mrs Muz, who we had happily spent
every Friday night with for the last year. However, it was clear that Muz wanted
and needed distracting and who better to sidle with in such circumstances than
The Rumpled Aristocrat who made it his
occupation to shirk responsibility and pursue all that was hedonistic. His bony left-wing fiancé was part of the
package and Muz was willingly inhaled into our whacked out world. The boys had
roomed together, along with two others, at an exclusive private boys school on the
North Shore of Sydney, designed to create little Lord Faulteroys, future members of the Royal Sydney Golf Course and generally splendid young men.
My brother had declined a scholarship there
years earlier. He stayed silent the entire time as the amiable broad shouldered
man with cricket ball stains on the right thigh of his white pants took us on a
tour of the grounds, pointed out the architecture and facilities, spoke warmly of
the exceptional opportunities.
Too
much grass muttered my brother at the end
of the tour, and that was that.
In the final years of school Muz studied
while Ryan guzzled cask wine with the other lazy kids, whom he made it his business to find, basking in the generous alpen-glow of self entitlement. It was to
become a theme. Muz put the Little Lord Fauntleroy education to use, was
hot-housed through university by the corporation courting him at the time and
wound up with some extraordinarily high paying job in telecommunications.
He had been seeing the soon to be Mrs Muz since
they were 16 and at 24 they married. I remember being late to the wedding,
pushing the heavy mahogany doors of the church open, little hands grasping giant
bronze handles. I tried to sneak in but a billowing gust of wind blew down the
blood red carpeted aisle of St Patrick’s, filled the cavernous roof of the
church with a euphonious echo, the harbinger of blood soaked rainbows. The
whimsical silky folds of a gold halter neck dress flew forwards, long brown
hair following from under a brushed gold tiara with sparkling crystals.
Everyone in the church turned around and stared at me. The bride and groom were
standing at the alter facing each other. Two hands held two hands, evidently
mid-vow, as Orthros turned its two heads. In that moment with one fell swoop I
cursed their marriage, a drunken aunt would tell me at the reception. I was
mortified.
It was a lovely reception. I discovered
that Muz and I were related (Hey Cuz! he
exclaimed when we figured it out. Twice
removed!). I discovered that boarding school boys sniff amyl nitrate at
otherwise civilized weddings and that I am definitely not sending my kids to
one particular school. We spun around a little, Ryan started to put his hands
up my skirt and kiss my neck, said something about his duty as a best man. We reappeared, my tiara at a crooked
angle.
The newly weds would soon become a version of Da Vinci’s allegorical sketch of
pleasure and pain, a two-headed creature looking in different directions.
I gave them bathrobes embroidered with Mr Muz and Mrs Muz as a gift. Mrs Muz took hers with her when she left.
Why
on earth would she want to keep that? I asked as
she stormed out the door after I witnessed four signatures effecting the sale
of the matrimonial home. The buyers, now long gone, had sat side by side,
holding hands, brimming with excitement about starting their life together. We
put on a half decent show for them.
You
will be happy here. It is a perfect first home said
Muz with a waxy expression. Mrs Muz sat stiffly on the other side of the table, not
making eye contact, except to smile thinly at the young couple.
Marita
has always wanted a little cottage with a herb garden!
How
nice. Well. Now you have one.
