by Jean Bedford
Rosa squirmed on the couch. ‘No. It’s quite clear that he isn’t. But there was this period, when we were first back together ...’ She gulped back a surge of nausea. Whatever Fran said, she felt she was betraying intimacies in a way that appalled her.
‘Yes?’
‘He liked me to dress ... oh, I don’t know. Like Marlene Dietrich or some vamp in one of those awful movies. Suspender belts and seamed stockings. Push-up bras. And black lace negligees. He’d ... take the negligee off me when we were making love. He’d put it on himself. It got him over the initial ... problem.’
‘His impotency?’
‘Yes.’ She was silent for a while. ‘Then I got pregnant, with Jessie. I don’t know ... the maternal hormones cut in, I suppose. I started to hate it, the sort of sex we had. It started to make me physically ill — I dreaded it.’ She sat up and stared at Fran. I wanted to be the woman. I wanted him to be the man. Do you know what I mean?’
Fran nodded. ‘How did he respond to that?’
Rosa lay back again. ‘We were both surprised. At first he was disappointed, then worried that he wouldn’t be able to ... But there was something about me being pregnant that compensated. He loved the thought that our child was building inside me. He loved it that when we had sex he was putting part of himself near our child. Does that make any sense?’
‘I think “compensated” is the important word here, don’t you? He needed something, some intermediate thing, in this case either dressing up, or your pregnancy, to divert him from his sexual fears. It’s not uncommon. Do you know much about his childhood?’
‘No.’ Rosa thought for a while. ‘Hardly anything,’ she said in a surprised voice.
‘Whatdo you know?’
‘His parents died when he was quite young. He was fostered out for a few years. He never wanted to talk about it.’ She sat up again. ‘Doyou know anything?’
There was a slight shake of the head. ‘How did his parents die?’
‘Don’t know. He ... it was as if he didn’t have a past before he went to university. I could never get him to tell me much before then.’
‘All right. Let’s go back to how you felt during all this. What happened after Jessie was born? Lie down, please Rosa.’
Rosa settled herself again. ‘It was OK for a while. We were both so delighted with the baby. He liked ... he liked my breasts full of milk. He liked suckling. But then, after a few months, there were problems again. I still didn’t want to do the kinky stuff. He did.’
‘Do you know why you were so reluctant? Have you thought about it?’
‘Yes. It’s what I said. I wanted to be the woman.’
‘Why did his ... dressing up ... make youless the woman?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I think you do, Rosa.’ Fran glanced at her watch. ‘Take away a question for next week, please. I want you to ask yourself very seriously how you perceive yourself. In every way. How do you look? How do you behave in the world? What sort of mother are you? What sort of daughter were you? What do you give of yourself to others? What do you hold back? What makes you a woman?’
Rosa smiled. ‘That’s more than one question. That’s heaps of questions.’
‘No,’ Fran said gravely. ‘It’s all the one question.’ She put her hands on the desk, the signal for the session to end, and Rosa got up from the couch.
*
Driving home, Rosa recited the list of questions Fran had suggested. She would write them all down when she got back. She would try to answer them honestly, she knew, but she also knew there was a dark area under them that she might not approach. She had never tried to talk to Tom about her own fears — she expected him to intuit them. She shook her head now, at her simplistic expectations. No, she thought, I have tried to protect him, as women always try to protect weak men. She grinned. Fran would jump on that ‘weak men’. It’s too hard, she thought. I don’t know what it’s about. But somewhere, she did. It was about not feeling feminine, about doubting herself as a woman. Some hangover from the teenage years when she had realised she was plain and not sylph-like, a girl out of step with the accepted model of femininity. Yet feminism had changed that, or so her generation had said. It was lip-service, she thought, now. Girls like me took to feminism as a validation, but we didn’t examine ourselves very deeply. It meant we didn’t have to.
She manoeuvred the car into her driveway and turned off the ignition. The kids wouldn’t be home from school yet. She should shop, but she thought she would ring for takeaway Chinese. She was living like a squatter here now that Tom had moved out. The children liked this anarchistic break in their routines, but she felt the daily world was slipping out of her control. She applied herself to work on the three days she spent in chambers, but she hadn’t been studying for her law exams. Next year, perhaps, she thought. What does it matter? She wondered what Tom was doing, what he was thinking. One answer she could give Fran: she didn’t see herself as a woman alone.
*
Tom almost ran from the lecture hall to his car. There were three hours before he was to meet Diana, but he felt that if he was in his motel room, showering, getting dressed, sipping a whisky, it would be almost as if it had begun. He had bought a black flimsy G-string that he would put on under his jeans. And Diana had said she had a surprise for him. He felt the beginnings of an erection as he thought about it.
The phone rang just as he was drying himself. He stared at it, terrified that it was Diana cancelling their appointment. He wrapped the towel round his waist and lifted the receiver.
‘Tom?’ It was Rosa. He sat at the round laminated table and lit a cigarette, thinking that she would be furious if she knew he was smoking again.
‘Yes. How are you?’ He stared out at the rooftops of Glebe and Ultimo and the arcing curve of the bridge in the distance.
‘OK. How are you?’ There was a silence. ‘Tom, do you want to have dinner with me and the kids tonight? Just takeaway, but ...’
‘I can’t,’ he said abruptly. ‘Sorry, love. I’ve got a meeting.’ He felt dread beginning at even the suggestion that his date with Diana was in jeopardy.
‘Oh. One of your meetings.’ Her voice was cold and forlorn at the same time. ‘Oh, well, see you tomorrow when you pick up the monsters.’
‘Rosa ...’ She seemed like a stranger to him already, someone he’d once known in a different life, but he was aware of the need not to alienate her.
‘Yes?’
‘See you tomorrow. Are you managing? Do you need money?’
‘No, Tom. That’s not what I need.’ She rang off. He sat with the phone in his hand for a while, then placed it gently on its rest. He took the G-string out of its glossy brown plastic bag and put it on, watching himself in the mirror, pulling its strap hard between his buttocks, watching it swell with his tumescent cock. An hour to go.
*
At midnight he lay beside Diana, his hand limply on her breast. ‘Time to leave, Tommyo,’ she said, lifting her legs over the side of the bed.
‘But I don’t have to go home,’ he said. ‘We ... I thought we’d spend the night.’
‘Did you now?’ Her lipstick was smeared and her black mascara had spread into deep blotches beneath her eyes. Her hair was lank from the massage oil they’d used, falling in heavy bangs across her face. She unstrapped the dildo from around her waist, watching him as she let it slip to the floor. ‘I’ve got things to do tomorrow,’ she said. ‘And so do you.’
‘It’s Saturday,’ he said. ‘You’re surely not working?’
‘That’s none of your business,’ she said, frowning. ‘Come on, get up. I want to clear away. You don’t need to shower, do you? Since you’re not going home to wifey.’
‘Don’t, Diana.’ He heaved himself over the side of the bed. ‘She’s unhappy enough as it is.’
‘And you don’t want to compound your disloyalty by being bitchy about her?’ She gave him a sardonic look. ‘You’re a poor fish, Tom, really. I don’t know w
hy I bother.’
‘You love me,’ he said confidently.
‘Of course. Now get dressed and go, will you?’
Again she checked the rooms after he’d left. She showered and changed her clothes. Tonight he’d brought her freesias, early multi-coloured ones, glasshouse-forced, not her favourites, but they had already sent their perfume into the air of the flat. She was surprised into a moment of nostalgia at their smell and wondered whether to take them home with her. No, fuck it, she thought. Don’t confuse the issue. She lifted them from the vase and threw them into the bin. The room glowed blue and cream, pristine again, before she turned off the light.
*
Carly was woken by the doorbell. She sat up and looked at the clock — eight a.m. on a Saturday for Christ’s sake. By the time she had pulled on a tracksuit and made her way downstairs there was no-one there, but a large basket of flowers stood on the step. Freesias and stocks and Iceland poppies, with baby’s breath and fern in among them. A florist’s bunch. She picked up the basket and read the card. From Alastair, with love, apologising. For what? She shrugged and took the arrangement inside. She put the kettle on and removed the flowers from the basket. She found a couple of vases and shoved them in anyhow, finding that they fell naturally and gracefully. She shook her head; sometimes she spent hours trying to make a posy work just right, coming back to it again and again through the day, adding blossoms, taking them away, changing the containers.
She put the vases on shelves in the living room, wondering if the various strong perfumes would become cloying, then unable to resist plunging her face into a clump of mauve stocks. The smell was almost overwhelming, and it stayed in the back of her throat while she sipped her coffee, like an added flavour. The empty basket stood on the kitchen table, the pale cane tawdry and badly woven. She set it outside the back door with the rubbish bins. Alastair was feeling guilty because he hadn’t been home the other night, she worked out. Playing games. He didn’t realise she hadn’t gone round there. She’d had other things on her mind. She’d rung once to tell him she wasn’t coming and, getting no answer, had forgotten about him. That’s just about run its course, she thought. He’s getting too possessive, too inquisitive. She yawned and checked the time. A shower, some toast, then she’d be due at the clinic.
When she left the house half an hour later the clashing scents of the flowers wafting from the doorway stirred in her a sharp, almost sexual pang. She wondered what Tom was doing.
*
Rosa was becoming increasingly anxious about where Tom was. The children had been dressed and ready now for half an hour. She’d tried ringing the motel but there was no answer. Jack crouched over the computer pretending to play monster games and Jessie stood at the window biting her lip. It was their first weekend as what Jessie called cheerfully ‘children from a broken home’ and the reality was finally affecting them.
‘Here he comes,’ Jessie said suddenly, her voice full of relief. Jack simulated lack of interest, punching keys with renewed energy, screwing up his eyes in concentration on the screen.
‘OK,’ Rosa said, not sure how to behave now. Should she invite him to have a coffee? Or would it be better if they all just left at once? She opened the door before Tom had to face the dilemma of ringing the bell or simply turning the handle, and they stood awkwardly, not quite seeing each other.
‘Kids ready?’ he said. He looked tired and drawn, and embarrassed to be standing like a stranger on his own doorstep. Rosa felt like weeping, like throwing herself at him in such a way that he would be forced to embrace her.
‘You’re late,’ she said. ‘Surely you realise how important it is for the kids to get here when you say you will.’ She turned around and left it up to him whether to follow her inside.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, coming no further than the hall. ‘I slept through the alarm.’
‘Late meeting again, was it?’ She had no control over the anger in her voice. His miserable helpless expression made her want to slap him. But the children stood, still in the living room, waiting for the signal that might show them how to deal with this situation, their faces reflecting Tom’s unhappiness. She took a deep breath and dredged up a smile and a cheerful voice from somewhere in her maternal repertoire.
‘Got your coats?’ They nodded and sidled towards Tom.
She turned back to him, watching his tentative patting of Jessie’s hair, his hand half held out to Jack. ‘Where are you going? I mean, how are you going to spend the day?’ She felt bitingly sorry for him.
‘Oh, to Mick’s, first,’ he said vaguely. ‘He’s taking us up to the Hawkesbury, to his sister’s place. She’s got kids this age,’ he said. ‘Look, we might stay the night, is that all right? Mick said something about going out in the boat, and a barbeque.’
‘Sure,’ she said, struggling to keep her voice light. ‘They’d better take some overnight things, then.’
She ran upstairs and packed a bag with pyjamas and fresh underpants, adding jumpers automatically in case it got cold on the river. When she came back down Jack was asking excitedly what sort of boat and what the boy’s name was. Jessie gave her a slight frown from under her fringe, but she, too, seemed pleased to be going somewhere different. Tom had relaxed, he was his old indulgently teasing self with them. Rosa kissed the children goodbye and watched from the door as they all walked up the street, Jessie swinging from Tom’s arm, Jack turning circles in front of them, chattering.
She spent the next hour cleaning the empty house in a rage of efficiency. Then she made a coffee and put a Janis Joplin disc on, loudly. She sat outside and tried to think her way calmly through what she was feeling. It’s partly resentment, she thought, as if she were explaining it to someone, Fran perhaps. Never once has he suggested we might all go up to Mick’s sister’s place for a weekend. I didn’t even know Mick had a sister, let alone nephews and nieces. In fact, we never see any of the old crowd except at the annual picnic, or for dinner occasionally. It’s as if Tom’s had this secret world, this network he can tap into whenever he needs it, but it hasn’t been there for me, too. Or not for us together.
She sat staring at the blue and white hyacinths by the back steps. ‘It’s malice, too,’ she was aware she was speaking aloud. ‘I have to be honest. I want him to be suffering. I want him to have a terrible time on these weekend visits with the kids, to live out the cliché of the single father. I want him to miss me and the family so that his heart nearly breaks, like mine has. I want him to yearn for us, so that whatever else it is he’s got on his mind just recedes, becomes unimportant. I want him to know what he’s lost. I want him to want it back.’ She hurled her cooling drink into the garden. ‘And I want the power to decide whether he comes back or not. I want some power. I am powerless and bereft and he is coping. That’s why I’m furious.’
For a moment she felt lightened, pleased that she had been able to analyse her reactions, then her mind abruptly emptied and she felt only desolation.
She went back inside and wandered through the clean, unpeopled rooms, humming along with ‘Me and Bobby McGee’. She had made no plans for herself this weekend; she hadn’t thought beyond the moment of seeing Tom, as if time would stop or go back then, or everything would magically transform itself.‘Nothing left to lose,’ she muttered to herself, and dialled Carly’s number. Two could play at the old mates to the rescue game. And he would hate it that she turned to Carly.
‘Hi, it’s Rosa,’ she said to the answering machine. ‘I’m at a loose end and wondered if you were, too. Ring me back if you are. I’ll be at home all day.’
She loaded the player with discs, rock and roll of the fifties and sixties, and set it to pound them all out at random. Then she lay on the couch and closed her eyes tightly against the sliding tears.
My parents died when I was quite young,in my early teens.You know that,already. Such a terrible thing, something so terrible that you might never get over it,you said.You never believed in false comfort,empty optimism.Y
ou spent all your energies trying to erase my self-blame over their deaths.You warned me I would have to deal with lasting guilt,especially as they’d treated me the way they had.You told me over and over that I was not to blame—not for their sadism,nor for their deaths.You told me the only way to make a decent life for myself would he to forgive them the damage they did me;to confront it and describe it and put it behind me.I nodded,and told you what you wanted to hear.
We constructed a scenario that came close to explaining them,the way they behaved to me. To explain is to understand: to understand is halfway to forgiving.You had a fund of clichés.I never have explained my parents,or understood them.Or forgiven them.The stories I told you were all false;the histories I gave them—my father the child of German immigrants,beaten and cowed by them,a narrow unimaginative man who having been a victim could only victimise in his turn.My mother the same.From a wild home of drunkards and semi-criminals,almost cretins in their lack of education or knowledge of the world outside their family.No wonder,we agreed,that she so seldom spoke,that she had acquiesced in everything my father did.
The truth is,I hardly know anything about their backgrounds.I believe my father’s ancestry was Yugoslavian,but it may have been Polish.My mother’s family could have been anything.She could have sprung fully formed from one of the bogs or marshes in the hills behind our house:a hank of hair and a splinter of bone combined with foetid mud and grass,an evil incantation or two,the injection of a semblance of language and thought,designed as a mate for my father only.But that is being too compassionate.Created like that she would hardly be responsible for herself,and she was responsible.Everything she did,the few things she said,were all deliberate and done with malicious intent.I have never believed that ignorance is any excuse,anyway.
*
The afternoon they died was a glorious one in very early spring.Wild freesias still carpeted the banks with their creamy fragrant flowers.The fruit trees were heavy with white and pink and deep puce frilly blossom and the wattle trees blazed pale yellow to burnt orange through all the gullies.My mother didn’t have a flower garden—she couldn’t see the point of plants that didn’t hear fruit or vegetables—but at school there were prim beds of stocks and primulas,all blooming,and the fading daphne in a pot outside the headmaster’s office exuded a sharp,almost unbearably sweet spoor.