by Carmel Bird
Geraldine marries Scott. I am a bridesmaid, with my three other sisters, in pink. It is a big wedding and is written up in the papers. Scott is a builder and he builds a house for himself and Geraldine. They live in the house while Scott builds a bigger house and Geraldine starts growing roses and has another baby. They get another house at the beach. Scott has an affair with his receptionist. Nothing much happens and Geraldine has another baby and they all move into a huge and wonderful house in a street lined with trees. Geraldine plays tennis with the other wives in the street. She has an affair with the husband of one of these wives. Again nothing much happens.
It was after Geraldine’s youngest daughter’s wedding that Geraldine got in the car in the middle of the night and drove to the beach house and then slept on the beach, her head on a piece of old driftwood.
I went down to the beach house to talk to her. She told me she often went to the beach house in the middle of the night. She would light the fire and eat toast and read a book and enjoy the quiet air and the solitude and the sound of the sea. ‘I came here a month ago,’ she told me, ‘and I brought with me a bundle of letters, dozens of letters from Scott. Old letters from when we were young. I kept them all this time, tied up with red ribbons.’ She said she had sat on the bed in the beach house and started to read through the letters; letters written on all kinds of paper; paper torn from exercise books, thick cream pages with deckle edges, the backs of menus. She said she seemed to be reading messages to somebody she didn’t know—words from a stranger to a stranger. Scott used to call her Jaffa. She called him Minty. She said she couldn’t decide whether the letters made her sad or not. They made her numb and blank.
The letters lay scattered on the bed for a month, some in their envelopes, some not. The night after the wedding Geraldine went down to the beach house just like any other time. When she got there she went into the bedroom and turned on the light. A colony of snails had gathered on the bed. They were feasting on the letters, leaving slimy trails; eating long wavy pathways through the stamps, the addresses, the messages of love and tenderness written on the pages.
‘I couldn’t stand the sight of them,’ she said. ‘Hundreds of snails gathered at a banquet on the bed, crawling silently all over one of the patchwork quilts Grandma made us and sucking at the letters. They seemed to be reading them, waving their horns and seriously considering every word that Scott had written.’ She closed the door and left them to get on with it.
She went down to the beach and walked for miles along the water’s edge. She went to sleep on the sand. If the old busybody from the post office hadn’t seen her and got in touch with Scott, there would have been no problem she said.
Geraldine took me into the bedroom and showed me the snails and the letters. We decided to wrap the letters and the snails in the quilt and empty them into the garden incinerator. We burnt the letters and the snails. Geraldine wanted to burn the quilt as well, but I said I would take it away and wash it and restore it. I said it was a family treasure and Geraldine said very sadly that she couldn’t care less. I rolled up the quilt and put it in the car. The quilt was made from small pieces of cloth—parts of dresses my sisters and I had as children. Our mother’s dresses too, and Grandma’s.
Geraldine said she was never going back to Scott. I told her I had been sent to make her see reason, bring her to her senses, persuade her to go home. But Geraldine said she had decided to stay put at the beach house. ‘I’m going to live here,’ she said and I could tell she meant it. ‘Scott thinks you have gone mad,’ I said, and she said, ‘Perhaps I have.’ And then she laughed. It was the first time I saw her laugh that day.
I told all this to Jean when we were listening to the music coming from the apartment down the hall. ‘Nothing e-ever stays the same,’ the man sang and his guitar was loud and mournful.
‘So you see,’ I said to Jean, ‘nothing is the same for Geraldine.’ And Jean said she could see my point. ‘Geraldine is Scott-free,’ Jean said and laughed. I saw one of her moods coming on. ‘Scott-free, free fall, free gift, gift horse, beware of Greeks. Is Scott half the Greek we think he is? Beware of Scott. The Ides of March. March hare. Mad.’ Tears rolled down Jean’s cheeks, turning from tears of laughter to the slower tears of sadness.
‘I cry,’ she said, ‘because I am unlucky. People think I am unhappy, but you see I am unlucky. My mother didn’t know any better and she used to dress me in green. Babies in green dresses always grow up to be unlucky.’ I took her hand and sat with her until the crying stopped, and we stared into the darkness that had gathered in the room. The music down the hall had died away. ‘I never go to the pictures,’ Jean said, ‘because I cry.’
I told her then some more about Geraldine’s life. I told her about the deb ball and about Grandma at the deb ball, and about Grandma’s birthday, the details coming back to me like the fragments of a dream.
‘Grandma,’ I say, ‘Geraldine is not enjoying the foxtrot, Grandma.’ And Grandma is silent, smiling down on the dancers in the ballroom, her face filled with dreams while millions of little stars reflecting from the mosaic of the mirrors dart and glance across her face. I see that Geraldine is Grandma’s flesh and blood. Flesh and blood of Grandma dressed in white tulle and satin. The tulle and satin are encrusted with crystals and pearls. A ballerina on a jewellery box, Grandma’s flesh and blood dances to the music.
When Grandma is eighty-something we give her a birthday party. ‘Your grandma has not been well,’ my mother says. ‘She gets tired from the excitement.’ So the spare room where we keep the sewing machine is prepared for Grandma. The sewing machine and the deb dress and the wedding dress and all spare furniture and leftover pieces of cloth. It is a room of unconnected parts and pieces and it never smells fresh. The pear tree grows outside the window. The old sewing machine dominates the room. You could take every little scrap of cloth and ribbon and lace from every box and drawer and suitcase in the spare room, and you could join them all together with stitches from the sewing machine. The spare room is ready for Grandma in case she needs to lie down.
The birthday cake is white with many candles, not eighty-something, but as many as we can fit. My father lights the candles and we all blow them out for Grandma. Geraldine removes the candles and Grandma cuts the cake and makes a wish. But as she cuts the cake, leaning over the table and pressing hard with the knife, some blood begins to trickle from Grandma’s nose. The blood splashes onto the icing. Grandma becomes bewildered and scarcely knows what is happening. The spare room is ready. My father calls the doctor.
When Grandma is safely resting in the spare room Geraldine wipes the blood from the surface of the cake and she smooths the icing over with a hot wet knife. Nobody eats the cake. Grandma dies in the spare room. Before she dies I climb into the branches of the pear tree outside the window. I balance in the crook of the branches. I see Grandma lying on the bed, beneath the thick white cover, her bloodless nose just bone and gristle pointing to the ceiling. My mother sees me looking and she flicks the curtain closed. The doctor comes; they take Grandma away. I am too young, they say, to go to the funeral.
‘I know I’m gonna miss you
And yet I’m glad you’re gone
Oh no-thing e-ever stays the same’
The man in the apartment down the hall plays his guitar and practices his songs. Jean says, ‘The surface can change. You move house. People come and go.’ She says that when she married Doug she really thought it was forever. ‘I thought I was related to him then,’ she says. ‘Like I am related to my mother and my father and my brothers and my sisters. Like you and your grandma. Like you will always be related to your grandma. It’s not like that with men and women. You can think you are related to a man one day, bound up with church weddings and wedding rings and promises. Then the next day, nothing. Believe me,’ Jean says, ‘Geraldine and Scott are less related than Geraldine and you.’
Once when I was very young I watched Geraldine asleep and I thought that she was beauti
ful and I knew that she was mine.
The sight of my mother as she knelt to trim Geraldine’s white ballgown with the nail scissors comes back to me in dreams. I see my mother’s fingers and I see the little scissors that were darker than they should have been. The metal was discoloured when my mother cast the scissors into the fire. She did this every now and again. She would use the little scissors (we always called them that) to cut cottons when she was sewing, and when she finished sewing she would wrap up scraps of cloth and cotton in a sheet of newspaper and burn the parcel in the fire. Sometimes the scissors would go into the parcel. My mother would clean out the ashes from the fireplace and there they would be, the little scissors, blacker than they were before. My mother would clean the scissors with a pad of steel wool and for a time she would take great care of the scissors, always knowing where they were. Then she would become careless and the scissors would disappear once more into the flames.
Jack said my mother was the Fate who cut the gold and scarlet thread of life. He said as far as he could tell she was always either using scissors or looking for some scissors to use. She cut up fish and chickens and vegetables and flowers and meat and cloth. She cut hair and fingernails and pieces of string. Jack was half-laughing when he said this, but his ideas went into my dreams. And when I dream about my mother and the little scissors I wake up with a sad awareness that I do not know where the scissors are now.
When I was living with Jack I imagined he and I were related, that we could never part. We met when we were twenty-one and Jack was at the university and I was working in the stationery department of a bookshop. I stood all day among the greeting cards—Happy Birthday, Congratulations and Get Well. I had to dust the cards and keep them straight and all in the right places. People would come in and look at the cards and put them back in the wrong sections. The woman who managed the bookshop inspected the cards for what she called ‘mis-placements’. ‘A Juvenile mis-placement in the Sympathy display.’ She had a way of saying those things. And a way of wearing her hair coiled around her ears. Jack said her hairdo was meant to be two snakes and he referred to her as Mrs Serpent-Ears. We used to joke about her and wonder about the romance in her life. And a strange thing happened once, a thing that connects me to this woman in a particular way.
When my grandmother died she left her jewellery to her granddaughters and I got her Regard ring. This is a ring set with six precious stones, the initials of the names of the stones spelling out the word ‘Regard’—ruby, emerald, garnet, amethyst, ruby, diamond. It is a ring for a lover to give his lady. I never wore it. I kept Grandma’s Regard ring in a case in the drawer of my dressing-table.
I was living with Jack and we were careless about locking the doors and windows. Someone got in through the kitchen window and took the stereo, the typewriter, the housekeeping money, a pair of jeans and Grandma’s ring. The police said we could not expect to see the things again. One day, about two years after the robbery, I saw that Mrs Serpent-Ears was wearing my Regard ring. When I told Jack he said I must be mistaken, that rings can be identical. But one thing about Regard rings is that no two are alike. It was mine. I asked the woman where the ring had come from and she said it was a gift from her fiancé, who had bought it at an auction. Auction yes, Jack said; fiancé no. We imagined the woman going to the auction, bidding for the ring. We also imagined her as a member of a gang of thieves.
I left the bookshop, and I know no more about the ring, the woman or the fiancé. But the circumstances of my loss and the other woman’s gain have brought her close to me. I dream about her too. She is some kind of member of my family by virtue of the ring.
Jean told me that when she and Doug were divorced she took her wedding ring to a pawn shop and with the money she bought three T-shirts.
‘I knew a woman,’ Jean said, ‘who lost a very valuable ring that she loved. It was stolen, just like yours. She was living in Japan and she told me she appealed to some men called the Soldiers of the Round Valleys to go out and look for the ring. These men are modern detectives who belong to an ancient cult that dedicates itself to the finding of lost things. They found the ring and brought it back and they took no payment for their trouble. They said, though, that in her will they expect the woman to leave the ring to them.’ Until Jean told me this story I hadn’t thought about what will happen to my grandma’s ring when Serpent-Ears is dead. Will she leave it to a daughter or a niece? Will my Regard ring go back to the auction room?
Jack goes to the auction. Collections of old books and oriental rugs, antique toys, sets of silver goblets, miscellaneous jewellery. Jack believes he recognises the ring and he bids for it. The ring is still in its old blue velvet box lined with thin white silk. The silk has begun to disintegrate; the ring is more beautiful than ever. Jack comes up to the apartment and he says, ‘I got your ring back. After all these years. This ring has had adventures, been around. I thought that you’d be pleased.’ I say I am. I say I’ll wear it this time, never take it off. Jack is sitting by the window and he looks the same as always. Jean comes in. I say, ‘He found the lost Regard ring at an auction. Look.’ Jean is pleased and says it’s wonderful. And then she says how nothing changes in the end and she refers to the Soldiers of the Round Valleys and the recovery of lost things.
Jack is wearing a ring too. His ring is made from the tooth of a rat. I recognise this ring for what it is because I saw such a ring when I used to study rats. If a rat loses an upper incisor the corresponding lower tooth will grow, and, having nothing against which to grind, may be turned upon itself and will in time form a circle.
Acknowledgments
The stories in this collection have previously appeared in the following publications:
‘Made Glorious Summer’
Meanjin, Vol. 61 No. 4, 2002
‘Shooting the Fox’
Island, No. 100, 2005
‘Cave Amantem’
Strange Attractors, edited by Damien Broderick, Hale and Iremonger, 1985
‘A Taste of Earth’
The Woodpecker Toy Fact by Carmel Bird, McPhee Gribble, 1987
‘Woodpecker Point’
The Woodpecker Toy Fact, by Carmel Bird, McPhee Gribble, 1987
‘A Telephone Call for Genevieve Snow’
Strange Fruits, edited by Paul Collins, Penguin Books, 1995
‘Major Butler’s Kidneys’
Automatic Teller, by Carmel Bird, Random House, 1996
‘The Golden Moment’
Australian Short Stories, Pascoe Publishing, No 50, 1995
‘Goczka’
Syllable, No. 2, 1984
‘Oklahoma’
Risks, edited by Brenda Walker, Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1996
‘The Girl in the Freud Museum’
Certifiable Truths, edited by Jane Messer, Allen and Unwin, 1998
‘Buff Orpington and the Disasters of Middle Life’
The Woodpecker Toy Fact, by Carmel Bird, McPhee Gribble, 1987
‘The Man in the Red Car’
Not Now Jack—I’m Writing a Novel, by Carmel Bird,
Picador, 1994
‘The Right Stuff’
The Woodpecker Toy Fact, by Carmel Bird, McPhee Gribble, 1987
‘Automatic Teller’
Dark House, edited by Gary Crew, Reed Books, 1995
‘Kay Petman’s Coloured Pencils’
The Woodpecker Toy Fact, by Carmel Bird, McPhee Gribble, 1987
‘The Hair and the Teeth’
Australian Short Stories, Pascoe Publishing, No. 24, 1988
‘Pomona Avenue’
The Common Rat, by Carmel Bird, McPhee Gribble, 1993
‘Higher Animals’
The Woodpecker Toy Fact, by Carmel Bird, McPhee Gribble, 1987
‘Buttercup and Wendy’
Australian Short Stories, Pascoe Publishing, No. 16, 1986
‘The Enlargement of Bethany’
The Woodpecker Toy Fact, by Carmel Bird, McPhee Gribble, 1987
&nbs
p; ‘One Last Picture of Ruby-Rose’
She’s Fantastical, edited by Lucy Sussex and Judith Raphael
Buckrich, Sybylla Press, 1996
‘Why Breezy McCarthy Drank the Cider’
Smashed, edited by Matthew Condon and Richard Lawson,
Random House, 1996
‘The Horse Might Talk’
Automatic Teller, by Carmel Bird, Random House, 1996
‘Now Ida Haunts the Car Park’
Australian Short Stories, Pascoe Publishing, No. 47, 1994
‘Ties of Blood’
Picador New Writing 1, edited by Helen Daniel and
Robert Dessaix, Picador, 1994
‘Affair at the Ritz’
Automatic Teller, by Carmel Bird, Random House, 1996
‘The Picture of Doreen Gray’
Sydney Morning Herald, 6 January 1999
‘Kawasaki 500’
The Common Rat, by Carmel Bird, McPhee Gribble 1993
‘Special Connection’
Australian Short Stories, Pascoe Publishing, No. 30, 1990