The Busker
written by: Sarah Kelleher
We’re flying with the sun. It’s been dusk for the whole flight. My oval window is black-and-stars above, a blush of daylight below, and now I can make out the rainbow that is the horizon, a razor sizzle of red and purple and yellow. But most of all, mint green. I realise this is the sun shining through seawater.
I only see it because my eyes have had the chance to adjust. A two-hour sunset. It’s an unnatural state of the planet only witnessed by people who seal themselves in a metal tube and fling themselves from one country to another, in this case, from Auckland to Coolangatta. Only I seem to appreciate it. Everyone else is headphoned as their small screens flash with Tom Hanks or Leonardo DiCaprio or whomever the under-thirties are making famous these days. Ariana Grande. I don’t know.
Tomorrow. That’s what the sunset says. Tomorrow! A new day in a new time zone! I should be looking forward to relaxing: a bit of me time, a bit of self-care. But I’ve learned to be suspicious of this Tomorrow business. You never know what it’s going to bring.
I feel a silly urgency to say something. Everyone on the left, look up! Look outside! Everyone’s missing out, and I’m responsible.
Damon, look! Look outside!
That’s what I would have said about now, if Damon were here. It’s a reflex. Funny how that never goes away.
My heart sinks as I reflect on how this plan for Coolangatta has gone off the rails. That’s what happens when you mention a fun destination to your nineteen-year-old twin sons, and how could I say no? Tell them I’d rather go alone, spend my twentieth wedding anniversary alone? That’s what you call wallowing. And I can hardly blame them. To them, the Gold Coast means sun and theme parks, and Mum’s paying. For their father and I, it was just the done thing: an affordable honeymoon weekend for two broke kids trying to make it in Canungra.
We’d left for our little Coolangatta road trip right as the barbecue was getting out of hand, a pile of charred sausages rolling into the dead grass while men hollered and the man responsible swore. Damon had grown languid and clumsy in his shorts and collared shirt, and I acted girly and squealy as he scooped me up; I murmured in his ear that this was a bad idea right as he knocked us both against his red Commodore, a white ribbon in a V across the bonnet. I hated that side of him. His sneakered shyness always vanished around his drunk idiot cousins. But I also saw how important it was to let him look manly from time to time, so I took it in good humour, slithering from his arms to my sandals without a word. I climbed into the driver’s seat and laughed for him to get in the bloody car, shaking my head, rustling the veil I’d just pinned back on my head for the driving-away photos, which were snapping in earnest, two digital cameras raised by the laziest-looking of Damon’s cousins. They were doing a good job.
I looked in the mirror as we rumbled down the driveway. Everyone was scattering in slow motion, wandering for their previous sitting spots. The cameras were gone, Lazy One slouching with his beer can, Lazy Two dancing like he was going to hurt himself. My smile faded. What did I expect? Life carried on, didn’t it?
Once accelerating down the road, I leaned into the steering wheel before me. ‘Can you …?’ I said.
‘Ah. Yeah.’ Damon grasped the zipper of my dress. As his hand vibrated finely down my back, the fabric relented, uncupping from my shoulders, and the tight seam over my pregnant belly relaxed. Despite looking the same from the front, I felt loose and naked, and the hot-breath air conditioning had fresh access to my neck.
‘Better?’ Damon said.
‘Yes, thank fuck.’
Back then, I swore a lot.
Tomorrow. It always comes eventually. Here it is, ready or not.
I’m the one who plonked myself on the beach, but I’m still annoyed that sand has gotten everywhere, turning my legs into a gritty, sunscreeny mess. I really have become domesticated. Above, a small white plane is a chainsaw in the air, sawing its way down the beach, so low I can squint and make out the name of the scenic flight company on its side. It flies with the polite point of a propeller on its nose and fat white feet partly hiding its tyres.
Buzz off.
I have no one to say that to, because Bevan and Mark don’t fly in until tonight. As I shift my weight in the soft comfort of my towel, my gaze returns to the surf, to a guy wobbling on his big boaty surfboard: another leathery middle-aged tourist, just like me. He is a Vitruvian Man stretching wide his muscular arms, shaggy hair wet on his head, staring at his feet, his swollen belly pointing his bellybutton downward. Damon never had a paunch. He always ate whatever he wanted, too. The skinny prick.
I like this athletic, pot-bellied ape. I like how he monitors the surfboard beneath him as it quivers, and flinches, and forces him to jump yet again. It soothes me how he fails, like I’ve met him before, or might as well have.
Am I enjoying this? I have no one to discuss it with, so I’m not sure. Funny how that works. I will when the boys turn up at the motel in their Uber. It’ll be a real family holiday. It’s comforting even though it feels like a job.
I’ll be showing them around a different Coolangatta to the one Damon and I knew. The ratio of surfer dudes to corporate wankers like me has become worrisome. Now it’s a baking tourist town packed with balconied holiday towers and metropolis glints that blinded me as I paid for my lunch of chopped melon and a sausage roll at a superette. Which tasted a lot better without unborn twins pushing into my stomach and bladder. But now, on the beach, I contemplate shifting into one of these skyscrapers’ shadows that cover the beach in stripes. I’ve lost my Australian tolerance for proper summers. This is desert heat. Umbrella-on-a-sunny-day heat. Bad mood heat. Maybe I should thank my Australian corporate wanker friends for the shade.
But the shadows seem to be ruining the mood. The mouse-like girl in a bikini – all long neck and goofy ears and bony hips – is rolling up her towel.
There’s yet another chainsaw in the sky. I squint. I can’t spot it. Returning my eyes to the water, my ape friend is missing, now carrying his surfboard under his arm as he winces across the sand and grin-pants. His efforts have been valiant. I look to my big white tote bag.
I push myself to my feet and drag over my black one-piece, the flowery dress I came in. The dress pinches at its tightest point, under my bust, as I flap sand from my towel. It never used to be tight, this dress.
Feeling fat inspires me to go and buy an ice cream. I flap down baking streets in my snap-snap-snapping jandals until I find someone who will sell me a cone of magenta gelato dotted in raspberry seeds. Accepting it from the shop’s wide service window, I thank the girl and stand aside with my cone, watching the busker across the street get ignored by wandering couples. The young man is a ventriloquist doll brought to life: big teeth and friendly eyes, blonde hair shining with too much product. Worst of all, he wears a bowtie as he sings Somewhere Over The Rainbow, eyebrows rising with every spread of his grinning, singing mouth. A bowtie. It seems like something his mum probably told him to wear.
I guess this is a good song to play if you have a ukulele, but it’s also a funeral song, isn’t it? It’s a sour-sweet twist of two opposites: children and their rainbows and bluebirds and faraway lands, and the cutting undercurrent only adults can handle. The faraway land. The ripped emptiness of things that should have come to pass. A father walking in on his boys’ first day at school instead of messed up in a Commodore.
The busker finds my eye. He squares himself to me, and the attention makes me want to scream. He delivers to me a long, grinning line of the song.
I smile encouragingly. This hoists a glob of blurriness into my vision, but I pretend it’s not there. It’s the sort of thing a mum does.
- The Busker - April 10, 2025
- Getting Out of Here - November 7, 2024
- Moccona With Two Sugars - March 10, 2024
