Indelible Ink

by Fiona McGregor

  She had woken in a rage.

  ‘I knew there was something wrong with you.’ Susan began to cry. ‘I knew it.’

  Marie held the phone away from her ear. She had fantasised about this moment often enough. By the sickbed of her dreams, perfidious friends and family would be sorry. All conversation would cut to the chase; there would be no bullshit. The worst offenders would be turned away at the door. Desperate for entry, they would recognise their villainy and beg for her forgiveness. The fantasies would end there, with her all-powerful in her throne-bed, deciding their fate.

  ‘When can I come and see you?’

  ‘Any time.’

  ‘Are your children with you? Louise said Leon was coming down.’

  ‘He arrived yesterday. Do you want a word?’

  Leon had just walked into the kitchen, his face creased with sleep, and without waiting for an answer from Susan, Marie handed the phone to him. He looked at her enquiringly. ‘It’s Susan,’ Marie whispered with a sadistic smile. She put the steaming phone into his hand then went to find her handbag.

  What she hadn’t factored into her fantasies was the burden of allaying the distress of others, let alone facing her own. There was no door: everybody had free passage, just like the tumour. And she wasn’t in bed, let alone on a throne. She was stuck in the corridor in the middle of the madding crowd. Illness clouded as it enlightened; old arguments remained unresolved. She was sick of answering questions that were unclear even to herself, and ashamed of her dysfunctional body.

  She needed to push them all away, she could only swallow the facts in private. This bitter pill, like a tapeworm writhing in her mouth, going down. She couldn’t bear their fear on top of her own, hatching an army in her interior, ready for its rampant feasting.

  She drove up to the Junction in a glorious roar of rage and burnt rubber, Mopoke on the passenger seat, chin and paws hanging over the edge. I’m not helpless, I’m taking my cat to the vet. You think I’m sick? Look at her. I’m the nurse, not the patient. Don’t even think about changing lanes, you bastard. I’ve got right of way, I’ve got cancer!

  She marched into the waiting room with Mopoke, realising at that moment that she had come out with her arms bare. She scoured the seats for someone daring to gawk at her. What would you know? she would say with a glare. Have you got cancer? But there was only a young man with a muzzled pit bull. One move on my cat, Marie thought, and you’re dead. The man glanced up, smiled vaguely, then returned to his yachting magazine. Marie strode into the surgery ready for battle with her diminutive vet, but he took one look at her arms and lit up. ‘What beautiful work! Who did those?’

  ‘Rhys,’ Marie snapped.

  ‘Rhys! I tried to get an appointment with her, but she was booked out.’ The vet rolled up his shirtsleeve and showed Marie the head of a tiger that was slinking around his elbow. ‘I got this done by Huey. Do you know him?’

  ‘No,’ said Marie, taken aback. ‘It’s lovely.’

  Mopoke crouched on the table between them. The vet secured his sleeve, put his hands on the cat and cooed. ‘And how are we today, Moey?’

  ‘She’s having trouble pooing again.’

  ‘That’s because her hips are getting so frail. The arthritis.’

  Mopoke let out a long miaow. ‘It’s alright, sweetie.’ Marie stroked her.

  The vet picked up the cat, kissed her on the forehead, and took her into the room adjacent to give her an enema. Marie stood behind the closed door, and at the sound of Mopoke howling, tears burst out of her face.

  Blanche caught a cab into town to drive Marie home from hospital in Marie’s car. Marie had parked on Missenden Road and, by the time her consultation was finished, a fine had been slipped under the windscreen wiper. She looked pale and unsteady as she shut her door. Blanche steered into the traffic. ‘This was the last test, wasn’t it?’

  ‘For the time being.’

  ‘God, it’s endless. Are you in pain?’

  ‘They gave me pethidine.’ Marie closed her eyes behind her sunglasses. She was happy that Blanche was taking her home but also wished she was alone, so she could fart freely. The longer she held her wind, the more the cramps increased.

  Broadway was a concrete valley divided by a stagnant metal river. Blanche wondered if her mother was asleep or merely absent. She inched down the hill.

  Marie had her eyes open now and was looking out the window. ‘I’m sorry you have to do this awful drive, Blanche.’

  ‘It’s fine. But I don’t understand why you aren’t at the North Shore.’

  ‘The Pacific Highway would be just as bad, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Probably. And it’s a bit of an abattoir, that hospital by all accounts. The traffic’s bad because everybody’s avoiding the cross-city tunnel.’

  ‘So they should.’

  ‘I use it. It’s quicker. Work pays.’

  ‘All these bloody tunnels and roadways. They carve up the city into little fortified towns then they make us pay for it. It’s a form of segregation.’ Saying so much made her bilious; Marie tried to settle her stomach.

  ‘There’s no public transport, and we need to get around. In all the surveys, people prefer cars. You can’t turn back the clock, Mum. Sydney’s a car city.’

  ‘Well, I’m sick of it. I’m going to move over this way, so I won’t have to drive so much.’

  Another pointless conversation about the future. Unlike her brothers, Blanche didn’t believe her mother would survive long enough to set up another house, but she played along. ‘We’ll find somewhere for you to rent while you recuperate. Hugh’s pretty confident he can stretch the settlement to three months. The owners don’t want to move in straightaway.’

  The owners, thought Marie. ‘They’re going to renovate, aren’t they,’ she said flatly.

  Blanche said nothing.

  By the time they reached Elizabeth Street, Marie could hold on no longer. A damp gust escaped and she sat there mortified. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘It’s okay.’ Blanche wound down the window and switched the air-conditioning to full. She gulped some air then told her mother, in an attempt at solidarity, ‘My chiro does this thoracic adjustment where he lifts me up from under the shoulders with a towel against my back, and yesterday, instead of cracking me, this big fart came out.’ She laughed to help the story along. Marie responded feebly. She could feel her mother’s effort and pain. She could still smell her. She tried not to gag.

  On entering the house, Blanche immediately went to find Mopoke. She was shocked by the crotchety wobble and poking hip bones. She plunged her nose into the fur. ‘She smells like old lady.’

  ‘I’ll take it that’s a compliment.’ Marie opened her handbag and stared in vaguely. She sat at the kitchen table then stood with a strange expression on her face and left the room. A thrumming began in her ears as she entered the bathroom then she was sliding down the wall. She slumped on the floor, head roaring, tiles icy beneath her sweating palms, then she crawled over to the toilet and hung over the bowl, every organ in her body heaving. There was nothing but bile. She gargled and splashed her face, then sat on the toilet till she had regained her balance.

  ‘You look like your name,’ she said to her daughter back in the living room.

  ‘Christ, we’re a pair, aren’t we. I just threw up in the laundry.’

  Marie took off her shoes and lay on the couch. ‘Have you had a pregnancy test?’

  Blanche looked incredulous. She couldn’t even remember the last time she’d had sex with Hugh, besides which, they used condoms. He slid into her mind as he had been that morning, pouch-eyed, saggy-hipped, slurping juice from the carton. She pushed him away. ‘I think I’ve got a bug. You’ve run out of lime cordial.’

  ‘Leon will be home with the shopping soon. I used to throw up constantly for the first three months, and with you I had something called hyperemesis. They put me in hospital for five days.’ She lay there stroking the cat, enjoying the breeze and the return of hunger. ‘
Blanche, darling, what we both need is mint and lemongrass tea. And toast with Vegemite.’

  ‘Okay.’

  Blanche walked down the stairs and through the rumpus room into the garden. The mint was scorched but the lemongrass was thick and high, sprouting seeds in the middle. She clasped some roots and yanked. One came free, the other sliced her palm. She began to cry. She cursed Terry and everyone at work. She picked some scorched mint, unable to stop crying. She felt like an idiot. She went into the laundry and ran water over the cut and rinsed her eyes, then went back upstairs.

  ‘You’ve been crying, haven’t you?’

  ‘I lost the Coke account.’

  ‘Oh, darling, I’m sorry.’

  ‘Terry’s furious.’ Blanche began to cry again.

  Marie watched her with pity.

  Blanche walked rapidly to the bathroom but once inside found she couldn’t vomit. She didn’t know why she was crying. Because of the lost account, because of the lost house and the pathos of picking herbs there? Because her mother might be dying, because she might be pregnant. Because along with the dread that this possibility brought was a flash of soft baby’s skin, the wondrous lightness of a newborn. She hadn’t cried for years: this tear-streaked fragile woman of the last few weeks was a stranger to her. She was poise, cool, and smarts personified. She braced herself over the sink, wanting to purge all of it.

  Four hours later, Blanche rang her mother with the test results. ‘I can’t believe it. You knew, didn’t you.’

  ‘I’m not sure I knew anything much this afternoon, Blanche.’

  ‘Are you feeling better? Have you eaten?’

  ‘Much better. We’ve just had pumpkin soup.’

  Blanche could hear the television in the background, tuned to Channel Ten news like hers. When she spoke to Clark there was a delay, but the transmission on her mother’s set came in perfect synchronicity.

  Marie said, ‘You didn’t want this did you.’

  ‘I finally get the promotion I’ve been working towards for years, I bodge a big job. Now this.’

  ‘It’s not your fault, Blanche. Now listen. What are you going to do?’

  ‘I don’t know. Hugh wants it.’ It, she thought. This thing in her body. This replicating cell that her husband wanted, as something of his. And it was partly his. The simple biological imperative of reproduction — a part of one organism entering another to make something new — seemed preposterous.

  ‘Of course Hugh wants it. You’re thirty-seven, Blanche. Do you want children?’

  ‘I don’t want to have another abortion.’ Blanche’s voice trembled. ‘I couldn’t stand it. And I do want to have kids but I’m not sure if I’m ready.’

  ‘I’m sure abortions are less traumatic these days.’

  ‘No, they’re not; the procedure hasn’t changed at all, we’re just older. But that can make it worse!’

  ‘Try not to get worked up. You’re not going to do anything you don’t want to do.’

  As she soothed Blanche, Marie wondered if she had sounded as though she was encouraging her to have an abortion. She didn’t want that. She would have loved another grandchild. The mere idea of holding a little baby made her glow and Blanche in her opinion was leaving it too late. At the same time she was afraid that encouraging her to have the child would be seen as disregarding her career. Imagining Blanche in labour, Marie felt her blood rush towards her daughter in empathy. Helping Blanche through her abortion was, paradoxically enough, a happy memory for Marie.

  It was the beginning of the HSC. An end-of-school drunken-night pregnancy, no doubt. Marie knew the boy, John Reid, and thought he was nice, but just nice, nothing else. He and Blanche weren’t in love. She remembered Blanche haemorrhaging. Marie had bundled up the bloody sheets and gone down through the rumpus room to the laundry to avoid Ross. Instead she walked right by him, because he had taken his coffee with the weekend papers to the bottom garden.

  He lifted his head as she passed. ‘Blanche still in bed?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Marie went into the laundry and ran the tap.

  ‘It’s midday.’ His voice approached. ‘She’s got a Maths exam on Monday.’

  ‘She’s also got the flu.’

  He stood behind Marie in the doorway. Always the dandy, he was dressed in bone linen trousers and a salmon silk shirt. He watched her press the sheets into the tub. She angled her body to hide the bloodstains but it was too late. ‘She got her periods?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, she can clean up after herself, can’t she? We’re due at the Tottis’ at one.’

  ‘She has the flu, and she has studying to do. I’ll be ready in time, Ross.’

  Ross went upstairs. Marie could hear him moving through the rooms above. He was tyrannical with all the children when they did their HSC, reminding them constantly, Your mother and I weren’t lucky enough to get a private-school education.

  Marie never knew how Ross had found out: if he had found the papers from the Family Planning clinic or if he had found Blanche in a weak moment, easy enough as she had spent two days in bed crying and bleeding. By the time Marie had gone back up to the kitchen, Ross was fuming in Blanche’s bedroom above. This isn’t the time to be slutting around.

  She sat with Blanche later that night, forcing her to drink tea, rubbing her back, thinking a mantra, Don’t turn out like me, my baby. Get a great mark, get a degree, don’t have children so young, Blanche, don’t turn out like me. And she was happy in that moment. She felt strong. Her daughter needed her. Marie knew that part of Ross’s rage was due to this mother–daughter bond; he was also threatened by the burgeoning independence of his princess. But together, she felt her and Blanche to be invincible. She was proud of her daughter’s sexuality and of her support of it. But even as she congratulated herself, an atavistic thought rose from the back of her mind, enjoying the price that Blanche was paying: Well, you have choices now, don’t you?

  Blanche almost failed her Maths exam but passed her HSC with a good enough mark to get into art school. She didn’t turn out like her mother at all. She turned out like her father: moody, ambitious, demanding. As demanding of herself as she was of others.

  ‘I’ve never wanted to have an abortion,’ Blanche was saying. ‘I’ve just had to. It’s never been my intention. Does anyone ever plan an abortion?’

  Marie had only been thinking of that first one but she wondered now how many Blanche had had. And where she, Marie, had been. She knew why she held her at arm’s length: getting involved in her daughter’s life brought with it so much responsibility. All that love she would have to give, which she didn’t feel she had.

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Did you want all of us?’

  ‘I suppose I might have had an abortion with Clark if it had been available. I was barely nineteen. I had to give up uni as you know. I considered giving the baby up for adoption but Ross wanted him. So we got married. I’ve never said this to Clark and I don’t think you should either. Of course I fell madly in love with him when he was born ... I had an abortion when I was in my late thirties.’

  ‘What? Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘Blanche, you were too young.’

  ‘Was it before mine or after?’

  ‘Before. I remember Leon was twelve because I remember thinking I can’t have a child thirteen years younger than his brothers and sisters.’

  ‘Was Dad supportive?’

  ‘He picked me up from the clinic, made me a cup of tea. You know we didn’t expect the same things from our husbands then. They didn’t necessarily come to the births, for instance. And I don’t think I wanted him there, to be honest.’

  ‘Why not? Wouldn’t you want the comfort?’

  ‘I didn’t want him to see me like that. Screaming in agony. All that mess. My body like that. I just wanted to get it over with.’

  Blanche went silent. Louise Jones had told her she had split half her perineum, and that it hurt so much she nearly passed out. T
here was blood everywhere; she had to have a drip afterwards. Seventeen stitches. And her husband saw everything. God, it was barbaric the things that nature put women through. Blanche could hardly bear to think about it. ‘Were you okay afterwards?’

  ‘You just forget. You have your beautiful baby, and that’s that.’

  ‘I mean after the abortion.’

  ‘It was a horrible experience. I didn’t feel liberated, just robbed of something I hadn’t wanted in the first place. As contradictory as that may sound.’

  ‘So there might have been four of us.’

  ‘Five. I had a miscarriage a few years earlier.’

  Her mother’s voice began to fade. She must have been exhausted. Chemotherapy had been offered as a means to reduce the tumours and, along with them, the pain, but nobody suggested it would cure her.

  ‘Are you going in tomorrow?’ Blanche asked her.

  ‘Yes. I’m going to see my medicine woman too.’

  ‘The tattoo woman?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘God, Mum, don’t get any more tattoos!’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Haven’t you got enough? Isn’t it a bit excessive?’

  ‘The picture isn’t finished yet, Blanche.’

  Blanche put the phone down in an even more acute state of distress. Such rare intimacy, then back to the schism. She flung herself onto her bed. Loud disco came through the window. She had seen André and a woman dancing when arriving home that evening. Through a gap in the blinds, two pairs of feet bounced across the parquet to KC and the Sunshine Band. André’s new Nikes and a woman’s sandals, to and fro like birds in a mating dance, the sandals tapping on the spot, a trainer insinuating itself in between. The entire place seemed to be shaking with the honeymooners.

  Was it an age or only yesterday that she and Hugh were dancing their own celebration at finding this house? Hadn’t they also been that happy and danced in their living room on a weeknight just for the hell of it? She had taken it all for granted: the initial daily lovemaking, the comfort, the euphoria. Five years ago, she and Hugh were the couple downstairs and André was her now, fighting with his ex-wife. And so it continued, the endless circle.