Stella and Margie

by Glenna Thomson

  Tyres on gravel, a car pulls in. If it’s Ross arriving home, I’m not in the mood to confront him. I hurry back across the family room and down the hall towards my room. My bladder reminds me I need the bathroom, so I turn right instead of left. I pass Ross’s office. And there he is, sitting silently in the old sewing room that he now uses to pay bills and work on his computer. So he knows I’m here alone and has chosen to ignore me. I pause. He’s wearing a t-shirt and jeans, and I see that tattoo on his arm he had done all those years ago when he and Stella were in Thailand. It’s faded to a pale indigo.

  Ross is staring into a large screen of weather maps that move. I hesitate, thinking I will speak. But words don’t come.

  ‘Ross,’ I say finally.

  He turns; he’s unshaven and his hair is overdue for a cut. ‘Yes?’

  The muted light, the casual way he’s sitting with an ankle over a knee, it could be Norman there. The resemblance between them has always unnerved me. And there it is, a thought that comes all on its own. I want it to be Mark sitting there, not Ross.

  ‘Are you sorry for the things you said?’ I say.

  ‘I’m sorry you treat Stella so badly.’

  ‘I’m sorry you don’t want me here.’

  All this saying sorry is ridiculous. It’s not a victory having the last word because Ross is looking at me, strong and detached, as though I’m a stranger he pities.

  After using the toilet, I return to my lovely room. The vase on the table is filled with gardenias, a gift from Jemima. I’m still struggling to rid myself of the dressing-gown when Stella rushes in, saying she’s sorry to be so late. That she’d taken Isobel to her piano lesson then gone shopping with Jemima, who fell off a metre-high wall she was pretending was a tightrope. She landed on her right arm and they went to the hospital.

  ‘A hairline fracture,’ Stella says.

  ‘Oh,’ I say. ‘Is she all right?’

  Mostly I’m hungry and would like her to bring my evening meal. I know all about fractured bones. They heal; it takes time.

  ‘Here,’ she says, ‘I got you these.’

  She’s gone before I open the plastic bag. I feel its weight before I look inside. There’s a new pair of tailored black pants with an elasticised waist. A rather chic cream blouse with silky covered buttons and a line of gathering around the neck. Two nighties: one mauve, the other pale blue. And underpants, four pairs.

  When Stella returns, I’m feeling the soft blouse; my thumb smooths over its little buttons, my eye taking in the gathering around the cuffs.

  ‘We’ve got pasta for dinner,’ she says. ‘Do you want to join us at the table?’

  She will see my stubbornness if I look up, yet she has done this very fine thing buying me new clothes, so I look away when I speak. ‘I’ll stay here.’

  ‘Do you like the clothes?’

  ‘Very nice,’ I say.

  Then she leans down, a soft quick kiss on my forehead. Her perfume brings to mind lavender. ‘Good,’ she says.

  And this time I cannot look up because I’m suddenly very sad with grief, and I don’t actually know why. But I see a flash of the pretty dresses my mother sewed for me – pinning the paper patterns onto the material, cutting the shapes with large sharp scissors, then stitching them up on her Singer treadle. I can even see her fingers effortlessly threading the machine; I recall the floral and lace pincushion, the yellow tape measure, and the smell of cotton.

  The way the pasta sits dry and flat in the bowl, I’d say Stella heated it in the microwave. I press a fork into a square shape filled with spinach and ricotta, in a thick tomato sauce. It’s a dish I’ve never had before and it’s quite tasty. She’s given me a glass of white wine, too – I think it’s a riesling, but I don’t know my wines very well. I would’ve preferred a brandy.

  After Stella delivered my tray, she pulled the lace curtains back to allow a clear view of the motley pink hues of the evening sky.

  I chew my dinner slowly and sip the wine. It’s peaceful and quiet in the room. The cicadas don’t bother me; rather, I enjoy their chirping song. There’s a certain lightness across my shoulders; perhaps for this moment I am happy.

  Outside the window, in Mark’s tree, a pied currawong calls.

  And I have some lovely new clothes.

  Chapter 15

  Stella

  MARGIE isn’t at the dinner table, but she may as well be. We’re all out of sorts here. Ross is silent, hunched and staring into his iPad while absently forking ravioli into his mouth. He’s obsessing about the weather, the lack of rain – the long, dry days are now a problem. And I’m angry about the way he treats his mother. I’m not finished with him, not by a long shot.

  Isobel is withdrawn and eating distractedly like her father. She’s confused and offended because her piano teacher, Julia Zhu – a passionate woman with a grey buzz cut and red-painted lips who believes in Isobel’s talent – told me this afternoon Isobel hasn’t been practising enough: ‘At fourteen she needs to be at the piano for at least four hours a day. Five or six is better.’ Then, with a kind smile, she turned to Isobel. ‘Sweetie, Lang Lang was practising eight hours a day at your age.’ Isobel nodded. Then Julia said to me, ‘We are working on her feeling for the notes.’ In her next exam, performance flair and stylistic awareness are critical factors. Poor darling. She’s only fourteen, and I’d say her introversion and reserve are locked in.

  A sling holds Jemima’s plastered right arm against her chest like she’s swearing allegiance to God and country. She refuses to use her left hand, saying it’s too difficult to grip the fork. So in between my own mouthfuls, I feed her too. And while I’m doing this, I think about Margie: the way she was caressing the new blouse, and how a few inexpensive clothes from Taylors could have such an effect on her.

  So here we are. All I know right now is I’m tired and want to retreat to the dining room to read, or go to bed early. I need to recharge.

  When the bowls are empty, my instructions to the girls are clipped and impatient. ‘Brush your teeth, then reading in bed.’

  Isobel says, ‘No. It’s only eight.’

  ‘Do as you’re told,’ I say.

  Ross stands, unfolding and rising to his full height, looking at me. There’s a moment, the thought he’s going to challenge me, to take Isobel’s side. He sees the slow tilt of my head, daring him.

  ‘Come with me, my little honeys,’ he says. ‘I’ll read with you.’

  Ross wants coffee. It’s the way he’s fidgeting while slowly pacing around the dining table. He will not ask me because there’s this unspoken thing between us – I will not make coffee on demand because I’m not a waitress. It’s about giving; my gift to him is making him coffee. And right now he knows I don’t want to freely give him anything.

  I’ve just sent an email to the theatre group to set up our next Monday-night meeting. Felicity and Owen have already replied saying they’ll be there. In a way, a meeting is premature because the funding hasn’t been confirmed, but I’m impatient and want to get some momentum happening, for us all to make this work.

  Ross has his hands in his jeans pockets and is staring at the portraits. He stands in front of his father’s.

  ‘Your father was a complete bastard,’ I say.

  He turns and looks at me as if he’s got no patience for my opinion. I take that as a challenge. So I go and stand between him and the portrait. Ross and I stare at each other, and I see he’s all adrift, the searching in his eyes. Something needs to change around here.

  I twist around to the wall and reach up. With my hands on the polished maple frame, I feel its weight. Then I lift up and pull Norman off the wall. Cobwebs coated with dust stay in the empty space.

  ‘There,’ I say, as I turn Norman’s face to the wall. ‘Tomorrow he’s going out to the shed, maybe even into the rubbish.’

  ‘Come here,’ Ross says.

  I don’t move. ‘What?’

  He shrugs, and I see his need, but I can’t reach out to hi
m until he’s done something that I think he might be incapable of.

  ‘It was all such a long time ago,’ he says. ‘Please let it go.’

  ‘Are you serious? Your mother suffered your father’s abuse. He hurt her and made her afraid.’

  ‘What do you want from me?’

  ‘Be kind to her.’

  ‘Stell, you can’t make it better. We move on. I’ve moved on and I don’t want her living in this house when she despises how we live. She’s manipulating you, can’t you see it?’

  ‘A woman who caresses the buttons on a new blouse that cost forty-nine ninety-nine isn’t manipulating me.’

  We stand before each other, exhausted.

  ‘We’re tired. Let’s go to bed,’ he says.

  I tell him about the repeating image in my head of his mother being pushed into the kitchen bench, her arm up her back, Norman degrading her.

  ‘Was she crying?’ I ask.

  ‘Don’t go there.’

  ‘Was she?’

  ‘For fuck’s sake. I shouldn’t have told you. I’m going to bed.’

  The swing door flaps after him. I swipe the cobweb on the wall where Norman’s portrait had hung. The blue Windsor wallpaper that hasn’t seen light for half a century is bright, with bouquets in a layered pattern.

  I’ve never kept anything from Ross before. Today, rehab admissions in Wangaratta called me when I was at Taylors holding up two blouses – deciding which one would suit Margie, worrying over the correct size, a ten or twelve – saying they had another bed for Margie and that I could bring her straight in. My secret. I refused it and told them not to worry. ‘It’s all going well now, there’s no problem.’

  They won’t be calling again.

  The chime of an incoming email, and I go to the dining table. It’s Chester, asking if he can come around to discuss the set designs. He’s got some ideas and would like to make a start.

  And I think, because he knows Margie, it might be an opportunity to coax her out of the room, like a possum taking a bait.

  Come for lunch tomorrow.

  He replies straight away.

  Love to.

  In the dark bedroom I drop my clothes on the floor and lie down beside Ross. He’s on his side, the rhythm of his breathing is slow and even, and I know he’s sleeping deeply. And because he won’t know I’m touching him, I roll into him and feel his warm skin. It’s the safest place on earth, it’s where I can dissolve, and sleep too.

  Chapter 16

  Margie

  THE girl who comes to help me shower is called Alicia. She’s quite short, with heavy breasts that I think must be uncomfortable. Her fingernails are long, painted white and have silver glitter on them. All her actions are efficient. I’m a job unit, which means we don’t talk and I’m just fine with that. She doesn’t hold towels up for my privacy like Stella did, but because she’s a stranger, and I’m just a body to her, somehow it’s different.

  I’m sitting on the shower chair and she’s using the face washer on my back. It’s a lovely feeling. I lower my head and notice how frail my body is – flesh and bones, lungs that breathe, a heart that beats – and I wonder how it all keeps on working. Then water gushes over my head, I’m under a waterfall, and I close my eyes so the shampoo doesn’t sting. Alicia uses the flat of her fingers to slowly massage the conditioner into my scalp. She rinses, and the water stops.

  ‘Got to get a wriggle on,’ she says.

  She tells me she has another appointment in twenty minutes in Kithbrook, that she’s running late. She’s too quick with the towel, so I assure her I can manage by myself. I prefer to take my time because I have no need to hurry. When she pulls her handbag off the vanity and shuts the door behind her, I slowly bend to dry my legs.

  There is a small purple bruise below my knee and I don’t know how I got it. I’ve always bruised easily, but they healed in the normal way, slowly fading from mauve to yellow. My fingers are light as I feel my neck, the slight tube-like rise of my windpipe, and I remember the bruises I’ve had there.

  The thing is, when Norman was angry, mocking, backing me up against something, wall or bed, his fist raised, sometimes an open hand – I swallowed the shame because it was my fault. Of course it was. I’d failed as a Ballantine wife and needed to try harder. For years that was the only explanation I came up with for his brutal punishments. It didn’t take much to set him off: a minor misdemeanour, such as not having a favourite shirt ready, or if the homemade ice-cream he liked had been eaten by someone else. Sometimes weeks would pass where Norman was relatively even-tempered, so I was often confused. I tried everything I could to keep things calm and settled, but whatever the riddle of his moods was, I never worked it out. Leaving him was inconceivable – I had children, no money, and nowhere to go. The threat of the public scandal alone was enough to make me endure. So I worked hard and tried to keep out of his way.

  That all changed when Mark died. When he wasn’t around anymore, I was prepared to not be around, either. I spent days and nights thinking of ways to end my life. Pills seemed easiest. The upset it caused when I did it, everyone thinking it was grief for the death of my son. And it was, but not only that.

  I carefully stand and pull on my new black pants, buttoning the cream blouse. At first I ignore the mirror – only the centre is clear, the rest steamed up from my shower. I comb my hair without looking, only a brief glance, as proof that it’s actually me there. Yet I’m curious about how the blouse looks, the gathering around the neck. So I raise my chin and lean in, half-expecting to be surprised, that by some strange quirk of light I will be beautiful again.

  My secrets go deeper – into a private garden with a climbing clematis that trailed along a rusted corrugated shed roof into a Granny Smith apple tree. In spring the clematis pods grew, and when they burst the purple flowers were as big as my hand and wove among the apple blossom. During summer the vine sprouted; the apples ripened. By autumn the clematis flowers had withered, and the tree glittered with red, gold and brown leaves. In the coldest months the vine was bare, its tendrils stretched along naked apple tree branches. I watched those seasons come and go for ten years. It was one of Chester’s sheds, a place where I knew love.

  The location was far from his house, beyond a row of holly oaks, and hidden within a copse of tulip trees and flowering ash. In a nook behind the shed’s back wall, which once may have been a stable, he built a bed for us – it had a dip in the middle, which didn’t matter because it kept us snugly together. My offering was soft quilts and a pillow. The time we had there was urgent and always tender. The last time we met there was on the Tuesday afternoon before Mark and Justin smashed into the tree near Gall Bridge. Our ten-year affair ended then; we were too broken. The things I have suffered. In some ways, the moment of losing Chester was the worst. My soul craved him, but no further arrangements were made.

  After the incident with the pills – the ambulance trip, drinking the black medicine and returning home – I moved from the marital bed to the enclosed front porch. I lived there for three years until Norman died. An unexpected benefit was being closer to the birds. Magpies, mostly: their carolling was constant from early morning and late into the night; even hours before dawn I heard their song. They were company and heralded life, a new day. I found it was possible to exist under the same roof with my husband and be estranged. As long as there were meals on the table, laundered clothes in his drawers and wardrobe, and a pretty smile when we were in public, it was all right. After Mark died, Norman never touched me again. He knew my weapon.

  I put my wet towel over the bathroom rail and return to my bedroom. Stella informed me this morning that Chester is coming to lunch today. The thought of it terrifies me. It’s too much of an intrusion and I am unwilling to cooperate. So I do nothing. I wait.

  Sitting in the cane chair, I feel self-conscious. The clothes Stella bought me fit very well. I still don’t have my lipstick or the pink sapphire earrings. My thin hair has dried on its own without
Stella’s hands straightening and pulling it into position with the hairdryer. It is out of the question to ask her to fix it.

  My hair was long and thick once, the colour of honey – mostly tied back to keep it out of the way. But it was too easily yanked, so for a number of years the most practical option was to keep it very short. My prison-camp hair was also a private statement about my suffering and grief.

  Enough. It was all such a long time ago and it bores me to remember.

  I listen for the birds, and there’s no sound. I play with the left cuff of my blouse, straighten it. It’s almost twelve and Chester will arrive very soon. Then Stella will present herself and demand that I go to the family-room table. Not to cooperate would be churlish, but really, all this carry-on tires me. This business of the play and Chester’s involvement seems an odd quirk of fate. And what of Laura? I don’t want all that fuss back in my life.

  I stand and push my walker into the centre of the room. I’m anxious and wish for distraction, but don’t know where to go or what to do. Stella gave me a crossword puzzle book, but it makes me feel like an old woman to sit here and try to nut out the answers. She asked me if I’d like a television set up in my room, and I think that would be nice, but I said no because I cannot go along with anything she suggests. I don’t understand myself. If I could have anything, it would be a decent book. But I won’t ask. I also recognise that I don’t use my manners, thank you and please, because somehow that feels like giving in – but to what? I’m now unsure. The urge to cry comes to me and I cannot even do that.

  The sun is warm through the window and it’s now almost one. I can’t hear any voices. Stella hasn’t come for me. I listen for Chester’s car and my thoughts return to that soft bed in the nook, with fragments of memories: our bodies together, the curve of his neck, him playing with my hair, his gentleness. Chester is beautiful to me. He loved me once. I know he did because he told me many times – and even to this day, I cherish those memories.