Kay and Em discuss addiction. Libby, comfortable with a beer as well as her cigarettes, contrives to believe she was not a part of the addicted set. She is fighting a fogginess that is catching in the lethargy of sitting around. Jill will not talk about Meghan or what Margot Gorman is up to.
Kay says, 'The more you have, the more you need. You get used to it. Your body chemistry changes.'
Em laughs, 'Yes, Ellie nearly died when she had a taste in a buy we divided evenly. Couldn't take it.'
'What happened?' asks Jill.
'She dropped, fitted.' Em describes taking her to hospital.
Alison contributes, 'I aspire to detachment, like a yogi. Detachment is the complete opposite to addiction. All Western society is addicted. There's always something everybody needs, the whole thing works on that. Gotta have it. Everyone is hanging out, or grooving away without having shared it, or angling to get whatever it is they want. Because that's what it is, wanting and wanting and wanting.'
'Yeah, but some addiction is worse, like hankering, like, you know, hell.'
'Hanging out is hell you mean.'
'De-tox,' Jill advises.
'You ought to talk,' Sofia says sarcastically to Alison. 'I mean you know detachment, you're detached from yourself half the time.'
'But if you're really detached, you're dead,' comments Kay.
Libby watches her keenly. Kay looks interesting. Hash-heads goon out on the fudge cake. Cybil does not like eating in front of others, especially skinny women. She sits quietly in the armchair, longing for chocolate cake, but denying herself. The social dynamics are centred now in the lounge-room. Libby looks at her wrist-watch and cannot believe the time.
When she goes into the kitchen to say goodbye, Libby finds Maria collapsed on the table. She stifles a scream. Sofia comes into the room, giggles and cannot stop giggling. She hears someone behind her say, 'Greedy Maria. Naughty, naughty.' Everyone is in the kitchen.
Cybil asks, aghast, 'What did you put in it?' She stares at the mud cake.
'Better get her onto her bed,' Libby mutters.
'It'll take all of us, come on.' Kay mobilises the troops.
'Shouldn't someone call an ambulance?' Alison asks Cybil, who shakes her head, shivers with shock and pulls herself together. And get Sofia for criminal negligence or something? Hang on a bit.'
'She has just gone into system shock,' says Em. 'Blood sugar has probably shot down.'
Jill wants to escape. 'I'm out of here.'
'If you don't call an ambulance I'm going to,' Kay declares. 'I don't care if they report it.'
Alison says, 'Let's call Margot Gorman.'
'Why?' asks Cybil, confused by the idea of the detective.
'Give her some honey,' suggests Em.
Dee arrives in the midst of the commotion.
'No!' Libby is responding to Alison, 'Margot Gorman used to round up Aborigines in Redfern, put them in nice police cells so that they could hang themselves.'
Alison is horrified at the insensitivity of the foxy little woman at the same time as wondering what Cybil Crabbe was doing here. Maria begins gagging. Dee puts her head to the side and pulls out her tongue, calls for the honey. Cupboard doors are opened and slammed.
As Jill makes her way out she nearly trips over Sofia, rocking on the front step with her head in hands, rocking, rocking. Jill drops down to put her arm around her shoulder. Sofia does not respond when asked if she is all right. She shakes her off angrily.
'No, go,' she orders. 'Go.'
Then, hearing the echo of her own strength, Sofia gets herself up like a woman with a purpose. 'Get out of here, all of you,' she shouts. 'Go go go.'
'No Sof, calm down,' Em coos. 'We've got to get her onto her bed.'
Kay, crouching, slaps Maria's face, 'Maria, wake up. Please.'
Dee pleads, 'Maria, come on. Have some honey.' She spoons some onto her tongue. The sweetness slowly brings her round. She looks up to the others who are galvanised in horror, reflecting her own terror.
'We'll have to lift her,' Dee directs. 'Sofia, where?'
Sofia flaps her hand, 'There there. Down the hall and to the right.'
It is such a job moving Maria's bulk to the bedroom, the gurls stifle guffaws. While there have been episodes of unconsciousness in many heroin lives, no one really believes she could be dying. Sofia's cake was mild. In the dance with the devil, death is the ultimate drama. The edge in a culture of death is genuine fear of it. Cybil is paralysed by her morbid curiosity, fascinated.
'Just get her to bed and she'll sleep it off,' Em pants.
Back in the kitchen gurls hover around the filter-tips, roll tobacco into papers with trembling fingers and thumbs, make jokes, stand up, pace to keep their anxiety in check.
Alison freezes in the doorway of Maria's room. It is just as she saw written in the hand. She calmly finds the self in her who can cope. Maria is breathing, but white.
Her son, Lenny and daughter, Tilly, are suddenly at the front door, being brought in by a big black woman, who begins, 'Tilly… What's going on here?'
Sofia brings the sugar bowl and begins dabbing grains onto Maria's tongue. Alison sees her repulsion at touching Maria. There is hatred there.
'Get away,' Alison yells, 'You are trying to kill her.'
Maria tries speaking. 'I am dying, I am going. I can feel it, floating away, no reason to stay. Alison? Sofia, where are you going?'
'Be back,' Sofia says, hurrying out.
When she sees her friends standing around in the kitchen, Sofia pulls at her hair, saying, 'Freaking out, freaking out. I'm losing it.' Her hands are shaking. 'I need a hit.' Kay pushes a joint between her fingers.
'Mummy? Mummy?' Tilly's voice tinkles.
Alison responds, 'Yes Tilly, hang on darling. Is it important?'
'Lenny said you said we could have Maccas tonight, can we?' singsongs her daughter.
'Yeah, but not yet, sweetheart. You go with Iris, okay?' She gently shoves her into the arms of her auntie. Iris ushers the kids out of the hallway. 'This is an emergency.'
Alison, feeling waves of panic crash through her nervous system, takes Maria's hand as she lies on her bed.
'Ring Margot, Alison,' Maria gasps. 'I told her it would happen. Get Margot. Keep police out of it.'
Alison responds to Maria's urgency, 'What are you talking about? What can Margot do?'
'Got to protect Sofia. Don't tell the police about the dope. The cake.' Maria's voice is thready. Alison is amazed at her self-sacrifice.
'This is about you, sweetheart. Don't go.'
Maria shakes her head in distress.
'Okay.' Alison asks, 'Do you want to talk to Margot?' Then she pleads, 'Don't sail away, Maria. Tilly,' she calls, 'grab the phone for Mummy, darling. Bring it in here. Maria, we slept together, yet you never told me much. It's okay, don't worry.'
Maria's voice is scratchy. 'I'll live. She won't let me go. She holds it over me. I abandoned her. Trapped in guilt. I love her, but I don't trust her, I have to watch her all the time. Don't let them lock her up.'
'No, no,' Alison assures her, 'Stop speaking now.'
'It would kill her, to be locked up, Ali.' Maria's eyes cloud over. 'I am going to die this time.'
'Here's the phone, thanks Tilly,' Alison keeps hold of Maria's hand. 'Has she tried to kill you before?'
'It's not her fault.' Maria's breathing is ragged, as if her throat is burning.
'Don't die,' Alison says gently. 'You don't have to die.'
'You understand.' Maria squeezes Alison's fingers, 'I didn't need to tell you.'
When she lets ago, Alison dials. Margot answers. She puts her hand over the mouthpiece and says, 'Do you want to talk?' Maria nods. She hands over the phone and leaves the bedroom.
In the kitchen, Kay, Em, Dee, Cybil, Libby, Tilly, Lenny and Sofia stand around the table. Iris is in an armchair, waiting. A normal conversation goes on, made reasonable by the presence of kids.
Sofia asks indifferently, 'Is sh
e all right?'
Alison wobbles her head numbly.
Em pipes up, brightly, 'How's the drama queen?'
Kay suggests seriously calling an ambulance. 'What's to worry about? Don't want to bring attention to the house?'
Sofia leaps up, 'Okay okay, I will call an ambulance.'
'Maria's using the phone,' says Alison and, as she does, she feels it is so absurd. Sofia disappears. Cybil tries to think of a way to leave. She catches Libby's eye. When Alison comes into the bedroom she sees Maria, certainly dead, with the telephone in her slack mouth. Those in the kitchen hear a blood-curdling scream. A telephonic voice is appealing, 'Maria? Maria?'
Sofia delicately picks out the receiver, and Alison takes it, calling 'Margot?'
'What's happening?' inquires Margot on the other end.
'Dead,' Alison says abruptly. 'Maria.'
'She's dead? How? I'll be there as quick as I can,' Margot promises.
Alison sees Libby scuttle off down the path. 'Like a lizard,' says Sofia, who is beside her. The sane women are still in the kitchen reassuring each other and chatting with Tilly.
'You got Maria's last words,' accuses Sofia.
Alison's person begins splitting, addressing Sofia as she were herself. 'And I understand because I, too, have trouble with the chemicals in my brain. It doesn't make me immoral, Sofia? Why did she say I understand? Did she mean Harold? What am I saying?' Alison turns back to the lifeless Maria. 'I could have loved you. I see sides of you that you have buried under mountains of…'
'Obesity,' Sofia says coldly.
Alison rakes her hair, musing, 'It may not be your fault, she has been slowly killing herself. What kind of guilt is that?'
Sofia and Alison stare at each other, mutually accusing. Big, generous Maria's spirit hovers above them. They kneel either side of her dead body, murmuring, grasping a hand and stroking it. Sofia on the right and Alison on the left. They stay that way until the ambulance arrives.
When I got to Maria's the ambulance had come and gone. Sofia had a glazed look about the eyes. Alison was not there, she had taken her kids to McDonald's with Lenny's auntie. Cybil was a little bit sarcastic, but I think it was just her manner. Although she was not an intimate of this household, she explained that Sofia had made a dope mud-cake. They thought Maria had eaten too much of it, that her body had toxic overload. They needed me to liaise with the police in case Sofia should be had up for manslaughter. All the heroin had been removed from the place and they had stashed the marijuana. A bottle of brandy was on the table. Em, Kay and Dee sat around it. Jill David had been here, they said. And Libby Gnash. Alison again, always there when there is a crisis. Judith Sloane. A similar crowd to the barbecue.
'The hospital will have the cops around here in no time,' I said. 'Don't touch anything in the bedroom.'
Sofia was locked in a kind of stupor. I looked at the brandy and said, 'You don't need alcohol now. You need something hot and sweet.'
'Chocolate is brain-food,' opined Kay. 'I really believe that. Maria loved to talk, she was having a great time,' she continued.
'Maria was just a porky when it came to food,' Em said, affectionately.
'She had a great sense of humour, of symbol, of the dramatic,' Dee commented.
'But,' Kay still had a point to make, 'she was highly educated and political. She ate more cake than anyone else because she was thinking. Brain-food.'
'She's dead. Died with a phone in her mouth!' blurted Cybil.
Dee reckoned, 'I wouldn't have put it past her to have sucked the means of communication to represent how she had been silenced by this community, which is as good as death.'
I went over to the kettle, took off the lid to fill it up and exclaimed, 'What's this?' In the kettle were lumps of flesh and little bones. 'Someone has boiled a frog!'
'They're toxic,' informed Dee.
Sofia leapt out of her stupor, saying, 'Shulamith. No. Not my familiar. Oh no.'
'Your pet? Sofia, you didn't really get that cane toad?' exclaimed Em. 'You idiot!'
'My cane toad. I needed auric protection, powerful enough to take on demons on the astral plane, a grey landscape where I have been, where hulks, and sculls, and cloaks are all moving, automated by inner emptiness. I have been there, when the devils transport me.' Sofia raved on. She got up and paced up and down. We stood horrified, looking at each other. The madness was so sudden. Sofia grabbed our attention, pulling at our clothes with her fingers. 'She killed herself.'
'Are you saying she suicided?'
'I don't know. I don't know. I mean, no. No. She didn't do herself in. She didn't have to. No, I don't think she meant this. All I was saying is that she could have put the thing in her mouth to say something to me—I saw it—by saying nothing,' Sofia was nutting it out, slapping her forefinger on her other palm.
Cybil asked me. 'Why was it so important to ring you?'
'I don't know,' I replied. 'She rang me when she was in trouble. All the time.'
Moments like these I wished I smoked. My wonderful fitness does not need smoke or nicotine or tar or whatever, but if I smoked, I would have had something to do, like sit down, roll it and light it. Instead, I went into cop mode and told them what I thought would happen in a practical sense. Realising what I had to do, I leapt into action, unplugging the kettle. 'Admit something, though.'
It was best the gurls dealt with the cops who turned up in their own way, as if I hadn't come and sanitised the site. I advised that they get rid of the cake, crumbs and all. This caused panic as they didn't want police finding them digging or anything. I thought of the Crank and his extreme crime-fighting methods in his personal war against drugs.
Kay went through their story. I accepted her dissemblance. 'Dispose of the cake. Absolutely.' Cybil was in two minds. Eventually she departed with the offending food in the boot of the Excel.
'Excuse me,' I went to find the phone. I called Philippoussis.
'Margot?' He was cagey. I took the kettle with me when I left, leaving Kay in charge of a group of stoned women in disarray. Uniforms in a patrol car passed me as I crossed the rail at the level crossing. I went straight to CID. The kettle with the remains of the cane toad was suitably placed in a plastic evidence bag and my fingerprints taken as a matter of routine, but they would find nothing definitive down that path.
Philippoussis filled his immediate superior in on the details, including Maria's weight.
'That would be about twenty-five stone,' the older man said. 'No, mate, no worries, forensics won't want to deal with that, unless they have to.'
'It was an accident,' I assured them. 'There is no point in considering foul play.'
The detective sergeant agreed with me. 'Yes, we won't waste valuable resources on this, Phil,' he said. 'However get the toxicology report, witness statements and wrap it up. Crankshaw will want a neat summary to release to the press, it being an odd way to die.'
Darkness more visible Page 42