Jean Harley Was Here

by Heather Taylor Johnson

  He’d wanted to look for something fresh inside the shell. He didn’t know why; he just wanted to see something of its life still inside. It seems like we’re meant to turn our heads from death and gore and the unclean nature of a body that has yet to go stiff or crust up, but Charley hadn’t wanted that, so he looked inside the shell and stuck his fingers in there and smelled for something maybe yellow and spoilt, but there was nothing. The shell had been licked clean. Charley had thrown up.

  If he wrote how angry he was that another animal had died under his watch, he’d be late for work, so he didn’t write that he’d lifted the shell above his head and screamed like a warrior and threw it hard onto the dirt, but it didn’t crack. That he jumped on it until it became many shells, screaming the whole time. That, when he finished, he’d walked into the kitchen and felt like he’d changed because this was one of those big events in life, those ones you end up talking about years afterwards, and he didn’t really know that turtle just like he hadn’t known that dingo, but this event and the one with the dingo had changed him.

  Charley had asked what was for dinner even though he’d felt sick in the stomach. His mum walked into the kitchen to check the oven and she touched his shoulder when she went to the fridge for a beer. She asked him if he was hungry. How could he answer such a question with the memory of an empty shell so raw and vomit still coating his tongue? She told him to go wash his hands, who knew what he’d gotten into.

  Charley shook his head, trying to transfer meaning from the dingo and the turtle onto Jean Harley. There was life and there was death, and in between there was more and more and more of the same. Is that all it boiled down to? And if that was the case, what the bloody hell would he ever say to Orion? Your mum was a big event in my life, like the dingo and the turtle? Charley felt dirty, went to shower, made sure as he passed the window that he didn’t look at the koala.

  Dear Charley,

  I’m sitting on the veranda again with a lukewarm cup of tea. I let it go cold – school holidays so the triplets are home. It’s never an ideal time to sit out back and read. I set them up with their daily dose of Freddy Krueger. They have a wicked plan to watch the entire Nightmare on Elm Street series and then move onto the Friday the 13th series. I’m not a fan at all but you should see them. Luke, Stephy and Grace are all sitting there together on the couch, their bodies touching in some way like they’re still in the womb. So comfortable with each other’s skin it might as well be their own. The TV is blaring and their eyes are stuck to Freddy Krueger and his fingernails. When Grace screams, Stephy laughs and Luke gets these really big eyes. They can’t be more different, yet they all agreed on the summer bloodfest, and turning back now would be admitting they aren’t old enough to handle it. At thirteen, are they? I’m unconvinced. It seems a ridiculous initiation to the teenage years but they want to do it and Cam thought he’d been about their age when he’d watched those flicks so I gave in. I miss the days of G and PG family films, but fine – let them watch it. Let them scream then laugh because it’s not real. What’s real can be so much worse.

  Much worse, yes. At thirteen Charley was in the park, minding his own business, kicking the footy around by himself. The toothless man who delivered beer to the Star Hotel said, ‘What do we have here? It’s the little shit, is it? Or should I say “big shit”?’ He was old. His hair was thick and dark, needing a good comb. His face, too, needed a shave. He asked Charley where his mates were. ‘Not so tough without them, are you?’ He kept walking toward Charley, tilting his head. ‘You’re just a little boy, aren’t you?’ Yes, he was. He was thirteen and he was scared. The toothless man got so close to Charley he took the footy out of his hands and tossed it up and down. He had an evil smile on his face. Charley knew he needed to get away, but something stuck him to his place. He couldn’t move. The man asked Charley his name and Charley told him. He hated that part of the memory most: that he told the man who pushed him in the toilet block and raped him like a fucking dog that his name was Charley.

  Without even finishing the letter Lisa had sent him, Charley got out his writing pad, found a pen, scribbled on the pad to make sure it worked and took them back to the table where he lit himself a cigarette. Dear Orion, but he ripped it in half, then in half again, then in half, in half, until it was too small to rip anymore because all of it had been out of his control, just like the accident with Jean Harley. He hadn’t expected the bike to be in front of him but then it was, and it was like it had happened in slow motion. He could still see her falling. Each thrust of the toothless stinking arsehole man. He could see her fingers spread like she was trying to catch the rain and why the hell had it been raining in December anyway? Why had he ever teased the bastard motherfucker? If it hadn’t been raining, would this have even happened? If he hadn’t teased the man? Would it have? He swore he could count the seconds it took him to brake. He swore he counted each thrust. He could feel the van drive over her body. The man’s dick when he’d come inside him. It was the second person he’d killed. It was the first time he’d died.

  The House of Noise

  There is nothing sadder than an unmotivated philanthropist. A woman with her fists full of good intention – and yellow, too – intention the colour of fifty-dollar notes. Watch her fists open. Watch the yellow intentions drop to the floor, swaying in slow motion like a sheet of leaves falling as the wind whips them from their branches, and the heart just breaks.

  Marion’s heart was breaking at 10 am this Sunday morning because Jean Harley was still dead. Almost eleven months had passed since they’d pulled the plug on her daughter-in-law, though it had been much gentler than it sounds. She doubted Jean had felt any pain, and the fact that she’d been in a coma led Marion to believe that Jean hadn’t had the means to mourn her own passing. But the pain in the waiting room had been heavy as Marion held her grandson in her lap while he played with an old pocket Magna Doodle, completely oblivious to any colours in his periphery, not to mention the gravity of the situation. When she imagined her son saying goodbye to his wife’s sunken body, so sunken she seemed lost in the sheets, so white she blended in, the thickness of the pain had shrouded her.

  While Jean had been in a coma, time, for Marion, had been too grand to be ticked off into seconds or even beeps of the wretched monitors. And then, when the beeps had ceased, time seemed to have stopped. It certainly had for Jean. And now, eleven months later, with cancer eating away at her own sunken body, time was mocking Marion. It seemed to be moving too slowly and too fast all at once. Lately the days dragged themselves as if through sand, weighty and long. Always the certainty of Marion’s own death, the refusal to rest her eyes on a calendar in a newsagency or gift shop, knowing she might not see the year out. She’d forgone the chemo and radiation so of course she knew time was limited. She could hear it and see it lagging behind her and racing ahead of her in the strong wind that seemed determined to blow the lake’s surface to the shore of her back doorstep. Yes, she lived on a lake, but today it sounded like an ocean.

  In the days before Jean’s death, while she’d been planning the grant and getting things in order, it had all seemed so urgent. Then Jean died. Aside from signing official papers to tie things up, the project went into hibernation. Now, with the application deadline five weeks past and the applications from women-of-a-certain-age-wishing-to-be-playwrights sitting before her, energy was lacking and she did not know how to get it back. The house was too silent; the house was too lonely. Maybe it was time to consider Stan’s suggestion of moving in with him.

  Marion walked to the glass doors that opened to the violent wind and its compliant lake. She felt sorry for the borders of the artificial lake, that the wind could go on and onto far-off places but the waves of the lake stopped at the shore. And though the water tried to leave its prison and come closer to her back door, it was no use. It would never know the kind of freedom that the ocean had, being both here and there, both Adelaide and Antarctica, both
Sydney and America. The ocean. The ocean.

  ~

  In her son’s front yard two birch trees bent to the ground, finding nothing there to help them stand. It had been a relentlessly windy spring, and now, four days into summer, it seemed as though it was going to stay that way.

  ‘You don’t have to do this, Mum.’

  ‘I want to, love.’

  ‘You sure you’re up for it?’

  ‘Well, I’m having a good week. I feel strong and I’m not dead yet.’

  Stan had aged five years in the last eleven months and, though Marion knew it was not a good thing, she had to admit, as clichéd as she knew it to be, a bit of grey never hurt a man, a bit of crease around the eye only added character; it was the sudden onslaught which had brought it on that hurt her to consider.

  Orion came running out the front door with a backpack fit for a boy at least seven years older than he was. Digger the dog pulled him towards the car.

  ‘Let him go, Orion. He’ll jump in.’

  ‘Go, Digger.’ Orion laughed at either his dog’s eagerness or his dog’s ability to follow orders. Whichever it was, it made Marion smile at the pair of them. Stan’s brow remained creased.

  ‘The wind will be worse at the beach, Mum. You know that.’

  ‘We’ll be fine,’ she said, patting Orion’s car seat for him. The boy took off his backpack and handed it to his nan. Marion said, ‘Thank you,’ then grimaced and shook her head. ‘I can’t stay in that house another second. It’ll kill me and no one will know I’m dead.’

  ‘I think I might know what you mean.’

  Marion touched her son’s face, the strong male skin with the weekend’s stubble. He was close to the age she was when she’d left Donald, and he looked so much like him now. She pulled him to her, cherished his linger, felt she could safely melt because it was Stan, not Donald, and Stan had always been the biggest love of her life. ‘We’ll all be better for it.’

  ‘I’ll pick Orion up around noon. I’ll bring a chook over for lunch.’

  ‘Oh, my lucky day! My favourite grandson and my favourite dog are spending the night with me and my favourite son is going to buy me lunch.’ Marion bent over to buckle Orion into his car seat and felt her back momentarily lock as she tried to move within the car door’s frame. It was not only the cancer that her body hated, but age too.

  ‘Let me get that, Mum.’

  ‘I’m fine, Stan. Just old. Just riddled with tumours. Nothing new.’ She moved aside for Stan to say goodbye.

  ‘Have fun, mate.’ He kissed his boy. ‘See you, Dig.’ He patted his dog.

  From the driver’s seat Marion looked worriedly at her son. ‘Just get some rest, Stan. Or go out and have fun tonight. Do something worthwhile. I’ll have a bottle of riesling chilling for us when you come tomorrow.’

  ‘Ah, my favourite mum taking care of my favourite son and my favourite dog and I get wine, too?’

  ‘Against doctor’s orders. Just watch us enjoy life.’

  ‘Yeah, how dare we?’ Stan looked down at his left foot, which kicked at a clump of weeds growing through the cracks of the drive. He bent over to pull it out as Marion started the car.

  If Marion looked at the waves long enough she became lightheaded. No one else was at West Beach – they must’ve all known that being in wind like this would be far less than pleasant – but who would’ve known by looking at Orion? The boy wrote his name in the sand with cuttlefish; he picked up piles of seaweed and threw them back into the ocean, yelling, ‘Live, seaweed, live!’; he walked into the mutinous surf and screeched when he got wet past his bathers; he searched for snails in the foam, yelling, ‘Nan!’, his smile as vast as the shoreline. And then there was Digger, who hopped and danced across the wet sand and in and out of the inevitable waves. He weed on every pile of seaweed he sniffed and kept coming back to Marion for ‘good dog’ pats. Marion felt feeble and small holding her body against the wind but her lungs felt enormous. She would sleep well tonight. They all would.

  Back at the house by the roughness of the lake and nestled within the silence of the walls, Marion washed Orion and his clothes, made them toasted ham and cheese sandwiches and heated up some pumpkin soup for tea while Digger slept on a rug in the lounge room. How good it felt to fill the house, bringing it to life. She’d lived alone in it for more than twenty years. There’d been small gatherings, dinner parties, out-of-town guests and friends down on their luck, just as there’d been lovers, but never for long. Stan and Jean had once lived in the spare room for ten months following their year abroad. They’d discovered new landscapes – mountains, rapids, cities and a jungle – then found they needed to save money when they’d returned. They used to try to muffle their lovemaking so Marion wouldn’t hear, then giggle after it had clearly been impossible. Jean’s exuberance made Marion cringe while the low tones of her son’s pleasure never ceased to amaze her. They were sure and young and in love, and the house had been alive then, like never before. Jean had turned thirty that year. Marion and Stan had baked her a cake.

  There’d been other birthdays too, and Christmases and Mother’s Days and sleepovers for Orion. The first time he’d spent the night Marion rose to his cry at 2 am and rocked him to sleep with a warm bottle, humming a made-up tune. The house had continued humming after she’d stopped and laid her own body down that night and it had lulled her to sleep. From the time Orion was two until Jean died, Marion and the house embraced him for a mid-week sleepover: 7.30 Tuesday mornings until dinnertime on Wednesdays. Those nights the house was loudest with noise: rapid movement and huge belly-laughs. But after Jean’s death, Stan seemed to need his son near him with great desperation – something Marion knew all too well – and she only got Orion to herself on Tuesday afternoons. There was noise then, but too much quiet after he’d gone. Too much quiet for the next seven days. But now he was back for an entire night and things were loud again. They were back on track. This was Orion’s first sleepover since Jean’s death and Marion could feel the pulse of her house beating, Digger’s tail occasionally catching on.

  At 8 pm the wind was still making itself heard, but the birds were louder, bidding one another goodnight. Marion set her cup of tea next to the pile of applications for the Jean Harley Fellowship on the bedside table and crawled beneath the covers. Her body felt used, past its expiry date, and the bed was not firm enough to lend a hand in this most intricate manoeuvre. Her abdomen felt full of toxic pain so she had a quick puff from the marijuana pipe next to her teacup – more toxicity but less pain. She reached over to the pile, which had earlier been so menacing and now held such possibilities, and it was an awful stretch indeed. There were eleven applications; obviously not too many women over the age of fifty living in Australia were keen for a new career as a playwright. But at least there were eleven.

  Marion closed her eyes. She was tired but she was fulfilled, her heart sighing in relief. The house was quietly snoring now, exhausted from the evening’s action of Orion’s bath, his chatter, his rediscovery of favourite toys and CDs, Digger’s trotting down the hallway when a neighbour’s dog barked. Exhausted and hypersensitive to the boy’s young dreams and his night-time breath, to Digger lying at the foot of the bed dreaming of seagulls or of the waves that kept coming and shouting next and next and next. Tomorrow the house would be whipped into action with morning and the breakfast table, more noise, more movement, more living. This was good, this giving back. This getting stuck back into life. Dying was so abhorrent.

  Marion squinted then picked up her glasses. ‘Lesbian Mechanics.’ A young woman falls in love with her boss, the head mechanic, a confident and beautiful lesbian almost twenty years her senior. No romance, just strong friendship. It sounded OK. Another application read ‘The Long Road’, and its synopsis was as generic as its title. Marion perused the applications, reading bits and pieces of the forms, getting familiar with the pool of candidates before she
got up close and personal.

  The tenth application listed ‘Untitled’ as the play’s title, striking Marion as sloppy. She herself had spent days, up to a week, getting a single application ready for a grant or a fellowship so that it would be just right, so that the panel knew she would not waste their time or their money; she expected as much from these applicants. She flipped through the proposal, grumbling that it was useless. Even the font seemed unprofessional – Comic Sans – unlike the other, more solid Times New Roman or Calibri. But this woman, this Rosalind Cox, wasn’t a practicing writer waiting for her big chance, so she mightn’t know that certain fonts were unacceptable in submissions and others were standard. She was an actress, had spent twenty-two years in various theatre companies in Perth. She said her favourite roles had been Desdemona and Lady Macbeth, and here was where Marion had another sip of her tea and sat up that little bit straighter.

  Three years ago I was diagnosed with an aggressive form of MS and because of it I’ve had to stop acting. No one wants a cripple. As one might assume there was a period of mourning, as there always is with loss, but my creativity didn’t dwindle with my legs, now resting in a wheelchair. My creativity shifted. I hope you enjoy the sample I’ve included of my first attempt as a playwright. It is called ‘Untitled’ and it is about a writer who gets in a terrible accident, leaving her blind, but is determined to finish her novel. An old friend of mine, a playwright, recently told me to write what I know about what I don’t know. Having followed his advice, I hope you think I’m onto something.

  Marion set down ‘Untitled’ and thought about time: Jean’s time cut far too short; her own time persisting when it should be winding down; Rosalind Cox’s time thrashing at borders, a lake dreaming of being an ocean, and this is what she wanted to do while there was still time. She loved the applicant’s confidence, her naivety and her optimism. She took another sip of tea and held the cup for a very long time.