by Liz Byrski
‘No it’s not,’ Gayle replied. ‘It’s just like a shell. It wasn’t my choice, not the location nor the house. It has no heart, no texture . . .’
‘Texture?’ Trisha asked, looking at her in amazement.
‘I know what you mean,’ Sonya said, sitting down on the other side of Gayle. ‘It’s about how you’d feel in it when you’re on your own in your old dressing gown or trackie pants.’
‘Exactly. This place is beautiful but it’s like our place, lacking that certain something.’
‘But Sonya would bring her own touch to it,’ Trisha said. ‘And your house has everything, Gayle. God knows how many bedrooms and bathrooms, the family room, the ducted vacuum thing, an intercom system, the pool.’
’But it’s got no soul, don’t you see?’ Gayle said. ‘It’s like a display home. It was Brian’s choice. He wanted it to show off, to impress his friends and his awful brothers. It’s never felt like a home.’
‘Well, whose fault is that?’ Angie said. She was the only one standing now. She walked over to the window and turned back to face her mother. ‘It’s women who make the home, isn’t it? You could’ve done what you wanted with it, made it your own, not handed the whole thing over to an interior designer.’
‘No, I couldn’t,’ Gayle said, looking straight at Angie. ‘It was so alien to me I wouldn’t have known where to begin. But your father was determined irrespective of what I wanted.’
The atmosphere was suddenly charged with tension.
‘Oh yes? And you argued with him, did you? Stood up to him? I don’t think so.’ Angie’s face was flushed, her eyes unusually bright. ‘You never stand up to him about anything. Have you ever fought for anything in your life, Mum? For the house you wanted, for him not to take that vile job, for something you believed in, for a set of taps even, or a colour scheme? No, you never ever fought for anything – not even for your own son.’
The silence in the room was deafening. Outside the window on the balcony rail a crow strutted precariously back and forth, and down on the street a garbage truck made its slow and noisy progress past the building. Gayle stared up at her daughter in shock as Angie dabbed her eyes with a tissue. Sonya cleared her throat and swallowed hard. The four of them coming here to look at the place and then going for coffee together had seemed like such a lovely idea. Now it seemed they were plunged into the middle of a family crisis.
‘Well,’ she began, struggling to her feet, ‘why don’t we –’
‘It’s all right, Sonya,’ Gayle said, putting a hand on her arm. ‘I’m sorry. Angie and I need to talk about this later.’
‘Yes,’ Angie said, ‘sorry, Sonya.’ She glanced around. ‘Anyway, I still think it’s gorgeous, and so near work too – ten minutes’ walk and you’re there.’
Trisha stood up and brushed down her jeans. ‘Coffee time,’ she said. ‘What about that place on the other side of the water? Gayle?’ She reached out her hand to Gayle, who took it and got to her feet.
‘It’s a lovely place, Sonya, and in the end you’ll do what feels right for you,’ Gayle said. ‘You have the freedom to please yourself. I’ll just say one more thing and then I’ll shut up. It’s about enmeshing yourself in debt. The real price of this place is your freedom. Suppose you wake up one morning with the feeling that you want to do something totally different – retire early and settle for less; travel, perhaps? Will this have been a wise move? Suppose one morning you wake up and just want to change your life completely?’
SEVEN
Deep in the bowels of the Department of Health, a form was being processed. It had arrived months earlier and had spent a long time with other similar forms in a file awaiting the quarterly meeting of the Healthy Ageing Programs Committee. Unfortunately, the chair of the committee had suffered a heart attack, not a good advertisement for the programs, and as a couple of other members were away, the meeting was three months overdue before the executive officer could assemble a quorum. When the members finally met, the forms were stamped and the file returned to the executive officer for action.
A few weeks later she actually got around to sorting out the guidelines and acquittal forms for successful applicants, and to drafting an accompanying letter. The form was dispatched to its destination without any of the people who had handled it giving any real thought to its potential to influence the course of individual lives. Almost nine months after the funding application had been lodged, the grant letter arrived at its destination.
Marissa was sitting on the back verandah eating a piece of wholemeal toast with Vegemite and drinking a cup of herbal tea when she heard the postie’s bike turn into Violet Street and begin the stop-start journey past the mailboxes. She licked the crumbs off her fingers and wandered around to the front of the house and down to the gate. There was an electricity bill, a reminder notice to make her annual appointment with the dentist, and a bulky white envelope from the Department of Health. It was so long since she had written the funding application she had forgotten all about it, and at first she thought she must have got someone else’s mail. She checked again that it was addressed to her and then tore open the envelope: ‘Your application for funding for a demonstration tour to introduce belly dancing as a safe, healthy and rewarding exercise program for women over the age of fifty has been approved.’
Wandering back to the verandah, Marissa stared at the letter, barely able to believe its contents. There was provision for publicity, venue hire, travel and accommodation, and miscellaneous expenses for three dancers, for between five and eight days in each location. Marissa read the letter again. It referred her to someone in the department who would provide support with publicity material and mail-outs to local councils and women’s groups. Then she read the formal letter of agreement that she had to sign and the form on which she was to provide her bank details so the money could be transferred to her account.
And she sat back in her chair staring at the pile of documents, wondering how on earth she was going to do it. The two women who had volunteered to be part of it and had helped with the application were no longer around. How would she organise this alone and who could she get to dance with her? She paced up and down the verandah, wishing she had someone she could talk to about it.
Marissa occasionally experienced bleak moments of clarity in which she reminded herself that she did not have the sort of friendships in which she could share her successes and failures. Even in the informal group of Harley riders with whom she occasionally rode she remained comparatively distant. It was, she knew, largely due to her own unwillingness to become more fully involved. Not only did she not do relationships, she didn’t really do friendships; she found it safer to be friendly with a number of people but close to none. If her life were the poorer because of that it was also blissfully free from other people’s emotional baggage. But at times the idea of talking frankly and intimately with someone seemed very attractive.
She padded up the passage to answer the doorbell, wondering who would be calling at eight-thirty in the morning.
‘I was just passing and I thought I’d drop this off,’ Frank said, holding out a book. ‘Thomas Merton, The Seven Storey Mountain. You said you’d like to read it. I hope I didn’t wake you.’
Marissa shook her head and reached out for the book. ‘No, no I’ve been up for ages. Thanks for this.’ She paused, looking at the cover and then at him. ‘Cup of coffee?’
He glanced at his watch. ‘Yes, thanks, if it’s convenient.’
She opened the door wider and led him through to the kitchen and out onto the back verandah. ‘Have a look at this while I make the coffee,’ she said, pushing the grant papers towards him, and she went into the kitchen, got out the plunger and watched him through the open door while she waited for the kettle to boil. He was a fairly ordinary looking man, reasonably well built, light brown hair flecked with grey, and a generally amiable expression that could change from time to time to absolute remoteness, as though he had moved to another planet. This,
she assumed, was his police look – detached, chilly, impenetrable, unlike the person she was getting to know.
‘Can we do this again?’ he’d asked after their first dinner and, to Marissa’s own surprise, she’d agreed. He was easy to talk to, and interesting as well as a good listener. She liked his self-possession with its dangerously unknowable edge.
‘Congratulations,’ he said as she put the coffee, some milk and a mug down beside him. ‘You must be pleased.’
‘Pleased and a bit panic-stricken. I planned this almost a year ago with two women who were in my classes. Now one of them has left her husband and gone off to teach English in China, and the other’s gone to live in Brisbane with a man twenty years younger than her that she met on the Internet.’
Frank laughed. ‘The transformative effects of belly dancing!’
‘Mmm. But it leaves me wondering how I can cope with this.’
‘You still want to do it, then?’
‘Well, yes.’
‘Aren’t there any other women who’d go with you?’
She shrugged. ‘I’m not sure. I seem to have a lot of women with young children at the moment, which would be difficult, because we’d be away for a couple of months. And, anyway, this is to encourage older women, so the people doing the demonstrations need to be around my age.’
‘And there aren’t any?’
‘A few, but not ones who I think would be willing to take off on a tour like this.’
‘Sounds like you need to get a couple in training.’
‘There are a couple in the beginners’ class who might be okay, if I could get them up to speed in time.’
‘Beginners? Don’t you want people who’ve been doing it for a while?’
‘No, not really. I want them confident enough to dance in public and to be able to talk to other women about what the dancing has done for them, but I don’t want them too polished. This is for women who want to get fit and feel good, so dancers who are new and not intimidatingly good would be the best way to go.’
‘And these two might do?’
Marissa nodded. ‘Maybe . . .’ She paused, considering it. From the first night Gayle’s aptitude for the dance had surprised her. There was no doubt that she had a feel for the music and she had picked up the steps with comparative ease. At first it had seemed that Gayle was only there to please her friends, but she kept coming back, and after the first month she had also turned up alone at a Saturday class. ‘I’m enjoying it,’ she’d said. ‘I go away feeling really good and I’ve been practising at home, with your video. And . . . well, I haven’t mentioned it to the others, so if you don’t mind . . .’
‘Sure,’ Marissa had said. ‘Sometimes friends can be distracting. You’re improving a lot, Gayle, but you’re still rigid, especially around the neck and shoulders.’
‘It could work, I suppose, if they were willing to have a go,’ Marissa said to Frank. ‘One of them, Gayle, is really quite good, and her friend Sonya could be – she’s certainly got potential. Only thing is, they come with another friend who’s absolutely hopeless.’
‘Maybe they don’t need to travel in a pack,’ Frank said. ‘The third one probably knows she’s not any good.’
Marissa laughed. ‘I wish. Sometimes the ones who are the worst on the floor have an incredibly high opinion of their talents.’
‘You won’t know till you ask,’ Frank said, nudging the papers towards her. ‘Send back the acceptance forms now. You’ll get those two organised or find someone else.’
‘You think so?’
‘Sure. Go on, I’ll witness the signature for you.’ He pulled a pen from his inside pocket and handed it to her.
Marissa hesitated. ‘There’s all the organising, the paperwork and so on. It looks so messy and complicated.’
Frank leaned across the table towards her. ‘Marissa, you’re an intelligent woman, a businesswoman. This stuff is child’s play. You can do the paperwork and the organisation standing on your head if you stop panicking and just get on with it. Fill the form in and sign it and I’ll post it for you on my way to work. Then you can get on the phone to those women and sweet talk them into shimmying their way from Albany to Hedland and all stops in between.’
Sonya paid her first visit to the university campus on a Friday, knowing that this was Gayle’s day off and she wouldn’t be likely to run into her. She knew it was silly to feel guilty – she and Oliver were simply friends – but with Oliver being such a drama queen about Gayle, Sonya felt as though she were responsible for upsetting their friendship. As she got to know Gayle better she had grown fond of her and the last thing she wanted was to hurt her feelings. She’d told Gayle that she and Oliver saw each other from time to time and that he’d written to her from Berlin; now he was back but still on leave and had wanted to show her around the campus. But somehow meeting him there made her feel she was trespassing on Gayle’s territory.
‘It’s okay,’ Oliver said as they strolled up to the restaurant for lunch. ‘Gayle’s never here on Fridays and, anyway, I met her last week and we talked.’
‘Yes, she said she’d seen you. Have you sorted things out? Got back on track again?’
‘Not exactly. I did as you said and called her and came in here to meet her – on familiar ground.’
‘Excellent! And you apologised and told her . . . what did you tell her?’
He cleared his throat. ‘Nothing really. I mean, I told her I was sorry I hadn’t been in touch, that I’d been busy since the wedding, then Berlin and everything . . . you know.’
‘But you didn’t tell her how you felt? You didn’t tell her you knew about Brian’s job, or the son or anything?’
‘No. How could I, Sonya? It’s not my business. I’ve got no right to demand explanations – that’s her family life and our friendship was outside of that.’
‘Until she invited you in by asking you to the wedding. Of course you can raise it. You’ve been friends for a long time, there’s a level of trust. If you think the trust is broken you need to talk about it, not compound it by letting her think there’s nothing wrong. What’s the matter with you, Oliver? You’re always going on about the importance of honesty.’
‘It’s just too hard,’ Oliver said, shaking his head. ‘It’s as though she’s an entirely different person from the one I knew. She didn’t say much and I didn’t know where to begin.’
‘Well, you have begun, and you’ve done it by going backwards,’ Sonya said. ‘You weren’t straight with her and that’s unfair. Gayle’s not stupid, she must know something’s wrong, the wedding was in November and now it’s the end of April and when you finally meet up, you pretend nothing’s happened. Gayle thinks the world of you and you owe it to her to get this out in the open.’
They sat down at an outside table, and Oliver pretended to study the menu although he actually knew it by heart.
‘The fish of the day is usually good,’ he said.
Sonya sighed loudly. ‘This is unworthy of you, Oliver.’ He looked up and she saw a distinct flash of ‘rabbit in the headlights’ cross his face and knew she’d hit the spot. ‘If this is the best you can manage after years of friendship with Gayle, I’m not sure your friendship is worth anything at all.’
He was acutely embarrassed now. ‘I know, I know. I’ll talk to her again. I promise, it’s just so . . . so . . .’
Sonya let the laminated menu drop onto the table with a slap. ‘You are being a total dipstick about this. You’re the one that put Gayle on some sort of pedestal and now she’s toppled off and got a bit chipped and you’re too damn precious to try to sort it out. She’s my friend too now, Oliver, and if you don’t tell her why you’re behaving like a moron, then I will.’
Oliver was not the only person with whom Sonya found herself in a difficult situation with regard to Gayle. They had met through Angie but, now that age and shared interests had brought them closer, and since witnessing the spat between mother and daughter, Sonya found herself feeling protec
tive of Gayle where Angie was concerned.
‘So what did you decide to do about that place?’ Angie asked as they walked together from the car park to the office.
‘I’m holding off,’ Sonya replied. ‘What Gayle said made a lot of sense. What am I moving for, anyway? Probably because I’m bored and restless, and that’s not a good reason. I’d be better to take some of my leave, get away for a while, see how I feel after that.’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, don’t listen to Mum,’ Angie said. ‘She’s never done anything of her own volition in her life. What would she know?’
Sonya sighed with irritation. ‘Well, she’d know how it feels to be in her late fifties and to realise all of a sudden that time is limited and that there are all sorts of possibilities for change,’ she said.
‘Change? No way, not Mum. I mean, she’s wonderful and I love her to bits, but change is not her thing. Dad makes the decisions, always has, and she grumbles about it but always backs down and lets him get away with it. Honestly, Sonya, you’re single, you’re a professional woman and you’re used to doing things off your own bat. Mum’s totally different, and she’s not going to change at this time of life.’
‘You’re being a bit unfair,’ Sonya said. ‘I think your mother is a great deal more complex and decisive than you realise. She may well surprise you one day.’
‘Look,’ said Angie, pressing the lift button, ‘the most contentious thing my mother has ever done is to keep up occasional secret phone contact with Josh – and years ago she used to send him money too. That’s it. I tell you, Sonya, there are very few things in life over which she’s exercised a choice, and those are small things, like what she wears or domestic stuff. Oh, and deciding to do this PhD on women and libraries, but she’d probably give that up if Dad really pushed her.’
Sonya shrugged. ‘Of course, you know Gayle better than I do, but sometimes we don’t see those close to us the way outsiders do. Now I’ve got to know her a bit better, the word that comes to mind is fortitude. Sometimes the greatest strength lies in inaction.’