by Iris Lavell
The last sentence strikes Louisa as funny, as does the capitalisation of ‘Breast Assessment Nurses’ as though that is the official job title. Perhaps it is. She notices herself feeling light-headed, but puts on her professional voice when she rings.
‘I’ve just received a letter asking me to telephone one of your nurses following my mammogram.’
‘Sure,’ says the voice on the other end. It is a kind voice. Tactful. ‘Could I have your name and address please?’
Louisa gives it.
‘And your date of birth?’
Louisa gives it. The nurse introduces herself. Louisa doesn’t take in the name.
The nurse tells Louisa that they need to get some clearer pictures because of something on the left showing up on the mammogram, possibly a cyst, and on the right extending under the armpit, a thickening of glandular tissue, and that they will need to make an appointment for further tests.
‘Is there anything you’d like to ask?’ the nurse asks.
‘No, that’s fine,’ says Louisa.
‘The first appointment we have is in two weeks’ time at eight am,’ says the nurse apologetically. ‘I’ll book you in then.’
‘Is there a later time?’ asks Louisa. ‘The traffic is bad in the mornings.’
‘Our last appointment is nine-thirty,’ the nurse says. ‘I’ll book you in at nine-fifteen because you’ve got both breasts. You’ll need to bring a book and some lunch because you’ll be here all day. You’ll get most of your results on the spot. You are most welcome to bring a girlfriend with you if you want,’ says the nurse.
Louisa wonders about that. Who could she bring? When Harry gets home she tells him about it and asks him if he can drop her off, or stay for a while then go away and come back and pick her up.
‘Of course,’ he says.
‘It’s probably nothing. It is not uncommon for women to be contacted.’ Her tone of voice makes it a joke.
‘Is that so?’ he says.
Next day she drives to work with the opera turned up. When she gets there she thinks about resigning from her job. Life is too short, she thinks. I’ve always wanted to do art and open a B&B.
That night she goes to bed early and sits staring into the wall with the light on. Harry comes in and pats her arm.
‘Give me a hug?’ she says.
So he holds her close until she breaks away.
‘You’ll be all right, Lou,’ he says. ‘You’ll be fine.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
‘I don’t like getting attached to things,’ says Harry, with some irritation. ‘As soon as you get attached to things you lose them.’
He is looking for his glasses, but has the feeling that there is something else that he has misplaced, something that he can’t quite put his finger on. He thinks of baby Bella. He thinks of Yasamine watching him play. Yasamine with Louisa’s face. The two merge.
Harry feels like crap this morning. He’s got an unfinished job that he keeps shoving to the background, and has opened his computer to an annoying email from one of his clients. He realises that he was able to read this, so he must have had his glasses on then. He’s looked all around the desk in case they’ve fallen on the floor, but they aren’t anywhere to be found.
‘Have you seen my glasses?’ he calls out to Louisa. He makes the question into something of an accusation.
‘Where did you last have them?’
‘If I knew that I’d know where to find them,’ he says.
‘Well, retrace your steps,’ she says, but he can’t be bothered, so she comes out of the bedroom and starts looking around. She walks outside and comes back with the glasses in her hand.
‘How did they get out there?’ says Harry.
‘You must have gone outside for something. They were on top of the bin.’
It’s a mystery, as if she has a sixth sense about his things. Then Harry remembers that he went outside to give Buster a biscuit, but he doesn’t say anything.
‘What would I do without you?’ he says.
‘You’d be all right,’ she says. ‘Men always find someone.’
It is hard to be with people all the time. The only place where Louisa can be alone is in her car, but it is a glass box, and people can look in. She feels as if she is on display all the time. It’s Bentham’s panopticon, or Snow White’s coffin. She’s no Snow White, although when she was a girl she dreamed of being pure like that, innocent and desirable.
Now she can’t see the appeal. She decides that she doesn’t need it. She doesn’t want it. If she loses a breast or two what does it matter, as long as she is alive and well.
In the newsagency her eye is drawn to all the beautiful young women smiling out from magazines, wearing little, exposed to public view, simultaneously desired, envied, ridiculed for a presumed lack of depth and intelligence, underestimated, overestimated, constantly on display, nothing to hide, breasts out. What does that kind of public life feel like? She thinks of orang-utans, and how she read somewhere that they get stressed when they’re looked at all the time. So must people; or perhaps something else happens to them, to their souls.
Somebody emailed her to say that the man who told her about Bentham’s panopticon died last week. He is closed up in a wooden box now, alone at last, no one looking in. He used to sit next to her at work in another life, and they’d steal moments in their busy days to talk about philosophy and their dreams.
One day she would be a painter, but she was worried that she had no talent for it. One day he would start his own business, but right now he needed security. He was married with two or three kids. He loved his wife. He was a funny guy too – always laughing and joking around. But the office where they worked was open-plan, and their manager humourless, so they had to be careful to look like they were discussing work matters when they were really talking ideas.
One day he told her about the panopticon, a prisoner surveillance system, and how people who were used to being watched kept on behaving as though they were being watched even when they weren’t. From then she had a name for what she had been feeling all those years. The word gave her control. Her mind made her feel watched even when she wasn’t, filling in the gaps. Her mind could change and leave her more space to think.
That was after Victor and before Harry. Now Harry expands to fill the space available. She no longer feels watched. It’s one of the benefits of growing older. Even so, it is hard to find her space. At home she can’t be alone because Harry’s music, or football commentary, or the television, is on, even when he is not in the room. She goes into a room, any room, and Harry or the dog follows her. They are territorial. Or needy. She says as much and that she will go away for a few days to have some time to herself.
But Harry beats her to it. He has a friend with a house near the beach. He needs someone to mind his dog while he travels. Harry takes Buster and leaves early one morning, angry at Louisa for reading him wrong, he says, for accusing him of restricting her when she is the one who restricts him. For a change she sleeps in. When she gets up she notices that the bedroom is in need of a good sorting. She takes a bundle of plastic bags from the bag that holds all the bags and throws them on the bed.
I have too many clothes, she thinks. Too many clothes cluttering up the place. She begins to sort them out but it is time-consuming and tedious. It’s time I started to live more simply, she decides. So she picks out seven outfits, one for each day of the week, and then she takes the rest of the mess and shoves it into plastic bags. Then she takes a whole lot of other stuff, and shoves that into plastic bags too.
There’s still too much clutter, she thinks. So she starts to sort through Harry’s stuff. He’ll never miss it, she decides, shoving most of it into plastic bags. Louisa chuckles aloud. She feels like a naughty child, testing the limits of her power or their relationship.
Louisa decides that it’s time Harry faced his fear. It’s time she faced her own fear as well.
At the Jurien Bay beach shack, Harry indulg
es himself with fish and chips, beer and the game on the television. Later on, they’ll go for a nice long walk, just him and the dog. They might meet a mysterious and beautiful woman walking in the other direction with her golden retriever. Harry will spot her from a long way off. Buster will run on ahead and make friends with her dog. Maybe he’ll mount her. The dog. Harry will apologise. They’ll laugh and she’ll look suitably embarrassed. They’ll get talking and she’ll invite him back for dinner. ‘Bring Buster with you,’ she’ll say. ‘No, really. I’d be disappointed if you didn’t.’ He’ll go down to the bottle shop and get a nice bottle of wine.
Harry smiles and cracks another tinny. The dog lies on the couch. Here Buster can go and do what he likes. He can sit at the table and sleep in the bed, watch television with Harry, the two of them stretched out on the couch until three am, and piss on the patio for all Louisa knows. Freedom knows only the limits of Buster’s imagination and Harry’s indulgence.
She is probably spending time with her friends, having them round while he’s away. He can’t understand how she can see her friends so often and still have anything left to talk about. Obviously they don’t. The focus was all on him that night at Simon and Rhianna’s. He made a fool of himself, but it serves them all right. It serves her right. She knows – he’s told her – that he feels like he is having frequent contact if he sees his friends twice a year.
Yes, she’s either home alone or seeing her friends yet again, probably seeing Carole. Why worry? Carole won’t say anything. She won’t want a rift between herself and Louisa, and she’ll have some other guy in tow by now anyway. Not the gay guy, some other guy. Gordon knows and turns a blind eye. Best to just forget anything happened, put it behind him. Good old Gordon.
Besides, if worse comes to worst it wouldn’t be too bad living his life like this, just him and the dog, a six-pack of beer and the game on TV. Except that Gilchrist has just missed a chance.
‘What’s wrong with you?’ he yells at the television. The box sits there and takes it, but Buster diplomatically leaves the room.
‘Oh now that’s just great, isn’t it?’ says Harry. ‘Now my dog is leaving me.’
Two days later Harry is home and he and Louisa are arguing over his missing stuff. ‘How could you throw out my blue and white polo top?’ he says. ‘There was nothing wrong with it.’
‘It had a big oil stain on it,’ she says. ‘Honestly, Harry.’
‘It wasn’t yours to chuck out,’ he says. ‘It’s like stealing.’
The phone rings. Louisa listens for a moment and then slams down the phone.
‘I’ve had enough!’ she screams. ‘I’ve had enough of calls from people I don’t know trying to sell me things I don’t want, and I’ve had enough of people crowding my life, and I’ve had enough of being taken for granted and treated like I don’t exist until I do something, and then I think that the only way I am ever going to exist for anyone is when I cease to exist!’
The worm has turned. Harry is backing off in the direction of the car keys. He has the urge to laugh, but manages to control himself. Better get out of here, he thinks. Give her time to cool down. She anticipates his movements and inserts herself between him and the keys.
‘What do you think I am?’ she screams at him. ‘What do you think I am?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he says.
This is not strictly true. He has an idea. They’ve been coasting along for years. She’s been there in the background, like the old furniture that he brought with him when they amalgamated their households. Everything has mixed in together very nicely, Louisa included, as though it has always been there and always will. She’s a familiar object but he recognises with some surprise she would leave something of a gap if she were gone. It’s something he hasn’t seen coming. You don’t really know that things have changed until they have. One day you realise you’re living a different life. You’re a different person.
Louisa is crying. He panics and does the wrong thing. He pats her arm in a formal show of sympathy, while maintaining a safe distance. It doesn’t work. She jerks away. He tries another tack.
‘Shit, Louisa,’ he says. ‘Pull yourself together. You can do better than that.’
‘How the fuck would you know?’ she says, but her voice is jerky. ‘You don’t know who I am. I don’t,’ and at this point she tries to say something but whatever she is thinking has started a new bout of tears. ‘I don’t–’ she says, but whatever it is that she doesn’t do, or think, remains a mystery.
‘Say it,’ he says, but she can’t. He is feeling agitated, unsure of which way to go. ‘Look, look what about me?’
‘What?’ says Louisa.
‘It’s not fair on me.’
She’s always been a sucker for fairness. But she moves away from him, to the other side of the room, breathing heavily, picks up a mug that is sitting on the bench top and throws it at him. It misses and smashes on the tiled floor behind him, spilling a residue of cold coffee amongst the shattered pieces.
He stands there for a moment in shock or surprise.
‘Why did you do that?’ he says, but now her arms hang limply by her sides. She is crying again, silently, her face strangely impassive, as if she is in shock. She doesn’t answer. She goes for the broom, the clean-up, and he sees that her hands are shaking.
‘No,’ he says. ‘No, Louisa. Let me do that.’ He takes the broom from her hands, leans it against the wall, and puts his arms around her. She shudders her sobs into his shoulder for minutes before she is able to speak.
‘Sorry. Sorry,’ she whispers into him.
‘No Lou, don’t say that,’ he says. ‘I’m sorry. I just don’t know what to do sometimes, that’s all. You’re my girl. We’re an item. Aren’t we?’
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
‘Do you think I’m in denial?’ Louisa asks Harry.
‘Do you know what the definition of denial is?’ he says, and she knows what he will say. ‘A river in Egypt.’
‘Yes, funny,’ she says. ‘I knew you were going to say that. I must be a bit psychic.’
He goes back to reading the paper.
‘We could go out,’ she says.
‘I’ve got stuff to do today. How about tomorrow?’
‘I’m already going out tomorrow,’ she says. ‘I told Carole I’d catch up for morning tea.’
‘Oh yes,’ he says. ‘That’s right.’
‘I think I’ll go and see my mother.’ Louisa kisses him on the lips. It is Good Friday.
When she arrives she discovers that her mother is having a bad day. Louisa pulls out the chocolate that she bought as a gift for Easter Sunday. But her timing is wrong.
‘Aren’t you coming Sunday?’
‘I thought you might like something to wake up to.’
‘I don’t like chocolate.’
‘It doesn’t matter. They’re only small.’ Louisa puts them on the kitchen bench.
‘Do you want a cup of tea?’ her mother asks.
‘That would be nice. I’ll make it.’
‘No, I’ll make it.’
‘All right.’
They drink tea and eat a hot cross bun. There is nothing to talk about.
‘Would you like to go for a drive?’ Louisa asks.
‘I’d like to get some flowers. I have nothing in my vases.’
‘I thought people didn’t get flowers on Good Friday,’ Louisa says defensively, ‘or I would have got you some.’
‘People go away at Easter, they have parties, I don’t see why I shouldn’t have flowers,’ she says.
But she brightens up once they are in the car. Louisa puts on some music that she might like. Her mother tries to sing along, first going too high and then, when her voice doesn’t hold, too low.
‘I could have been a singer once,’ she says.
‘Why don’t we go up to Kings Park?’ Louisa suggests, and her mother brightens up further.
As they drive through the city her
mother reminisces about buildings, some gone and some still preserved, where she has worked. Time compresses in her memory. It seems like yesterday when she was a young woman working in the city. Some of the old buildings are still there, but the Barracks Arch has nothing behind it. It is just a façade.
‘My cousin used to work there,’ she says. ‘But it’s gone now. Why did they just leave the archway? Silly, isn’t it? Where does the time go?’
She has remarked to Louisa on these things before. Louisa, in turn, finds herself responding as she has before. They drive slowly through the park. It is a typical blue-sky day and the park is lively with the usual mixture of tourists and locals. Louisa tries to see everything as if for the first time, like a tourist, or a child, but she can’t. Too many thoughts, ideas, interpretations intervene. They stop for a coffee at one of the park’s cafes. There are more lively people, colourful in their holiday clothes, children, a girl carrying a guitar, another with a digital movie camera, viewing life as it happens, on the small screen.
‘Harry says that how you see life just depends on where you happen to be looking.’
Her mother searches for something to say. ‘Harry’s a nice man,’ she says.
‘Yes.’
‘You were lucky to meet him. Lucky to meet each other.’
‘Yes, I think so too.’
They sit in silence for a moment. Louisa can’t remember her mother ever saying anything much about Harry before, good or bad.
‘I’m so glad you got away from that other horrible man.’
‘Victor?’
Louisa finds herself disorientated for an instant. She wonders where this has come from, after all these years.
‘Of course Victor. There haven’t been any others have there? I always felt that I should have stopped you marrying him.’
‘Did you? Oh no, Mum. Don’t say that.’
‘I never did like him.’
‘I thought you did.’
‘No I didn’t. A mother tries to be supportive of her daughter.’
‘What about Dad?’