Closed for Winter

by Georgia Blain

  I did not understand and she did not explain.

  She was the only one of us who cried on that day.

  In fact, sometimes I wonder whether those tears are the only tears that have ever been shed in that house. At least since we had been living there. It seems impossible, but it may be so.

  You see, I am like Dorothy. I do not cry.

  I do not know how.

  It is Monday morning and I am on the number 12 again. Travelling in the old direction. From the sea to the city along the road I know so well.

  Last night I sat in the stillness of Dorothy’s kitchen and I laid the four postcards I bought from Mrs Thompson on the table in front of me.

  Dear Martin. The words were already written on the back of the first one.

  I picked up my pen and wrote on the second. Don’t.

  The third lay blank before me.

  Half of the flowers that Martin had brought for Dorothy were still on the bench, the empty vase on the windowsill.

  The first time Martin bought me flowers was the first time anyone bought me flowers. Pink roses.

  Leave me.

  I put them in my bedroom and hoped that Dorothy would not see them. I do not know whether she did. She never mentioned them, but that does not mean she did not see them.

  On the fourth postcard I wrote one word: Here.

  All four cards laid out in front of me.

  Dear Martin, Don’t Leave me Here.

  Dear Martin, Don’t Leave me Here.

  This morning, I put the postcards in my bag.

  Rather than going to my usual stop, I walked down to the beachfront, to the terminus on The Esplanade. The bus was waiting. The engine turned off, the driver reading the newspaper in silence. He did not look up when I paid him my fare.

  Sitting by the window, I looked out at the kiosk, the roller doors pulled down and firmly locked, and, beyond that, the deserted jetty. In the still of the morning it was clear the worst of winter had passed. Soon it would be summer again.

  Dear Martin, Don’t Leave me Here.

  I am hoping he has not left yet, that he will be at work and I will be able to talk to him, to tell him it is a mistake. I am thinking about what I will say to him. I am planning my words, staring out the window, dry-eyed and certain that I can convince him to change his mind. That we can go back to the way we were.

  But when I arrive at work, it is clear that he has gone.

  He left at seven, Maria, his secretary, tells me.

  I did not really need to ask. The door to his office is open, and I can see his desk. Everything has been put away. This is what Martin does before he goes on a trip. He puts everything in order.

  I ask her if she has his number and she looks surprised.

  He gave it to me, but I lost it, I tell her.

  My voice is louder than it should be and in the open plan of this office, I know everyone can hear.

  In the box office, Jocelyn asks me how Dorothy is.

  I tell her.

  She asks me where Martin has gone.

  I tell her that as well.

  Bad time to go away, she says, and I nod my head in agreement.

  She looks at me and she looks concerned. She is tapping the desk with her fingernails. They are dirty, bitten down to the quick.

  Am I your friend? she asks me.

  Yes, I tell her.

  Then you should talk to me, she says.

  I look at her and I remember bathing her face when she cried in her kitchen that night. I don’t think she has ever told anyone, not even Nathan, about what happened.

  I look at her weekly motto, taped on the side of the computer. I am a creative person, worthy of giving and receiving love. I smile.

  We have had that one before, I say.

  She just looks at me.

  I am sorry, I say. I am having a bad time with Martin.

  I know, she says.

  I am expecting her to give me the number of her therapist, to suggest some self-help books or even that I come to group workshop with her. She doesn’t. She is remarkably quiet.

  And I tell her that I think we are breaking up.

  I tell her that I think he wants to leave me.

  And I am finding it hard to cope, I say. I am finding it hard to keep it together.

  Tell me, she says.

  And I try.

  25

  I am sitting at home drawing myself as a mermaid. My fingers are flecked with different texta colours, a confetti of hues from my pack. A line of green has found its way to the corner of my mouth and a circle of violet near the tip of my nose. But I am not aware of this. I am the mermaid in my picture.

  When they questioned us, there were always certain eyeteeth that had to be extracted. The important points. The relevant facts. This was where they wanted to pick it up again. They wanted to listen.

  But not to me.

  I am at home, drawing. This is not important. It is Dorothy they turn to. Please, they say. They nod in encouragement, and she lights another cigarette.

  From when I left the house? she asks.

  From when you left the house.

  She draws back and exhales slowly. They push the ashtray closer to her.

  Okay, she says, I will try.

  I am sitting on the floor. They have given me a book, pencils, a toy to play with, but I am not interested. I am listening to her.

  She is not telling a story. She is trying to tell the facts. And it is something I have never seen her do before.

  I cannot imagine what she felt. I cannot know what she thought. I can only imagine how it would have been for me if I were her. This is the way it is with her and me.

  Sometimes she tells them what was going through her mind, using different words every time. Anxious, worried, frightened. I look at her as she speaks and I try to see her as she describes herself. But nothing fits. I am not used to her saying how she really was. I am used to her telling us how she would like to have been.

  She tells them and I listen, seeing her as I imagine her to have been.

  I see her park the car at the kiosk and I see her sitting with the engine idling, looking out to sea. Smooth and still. There is no wind and in the quiet she can hear everything. Someone laughs and it dances out clear across the ocean. She can see the shadow of the fishermen under the lights at the end of the jetty and she watches as one casts off. The plummet of the sinker down to the depths. She wonders whether she actually heard it or just imagined it.

  She turns the engine off and notices that her knuckles are white. White from gripping the steering wheel, and she shakes each of her hands and breathes deeply. It will be all right.

  The beginning of the path is lit, but the rest is in darkness and she stumbles in the sand that piles high between the wooden slats. The heel of her sandal gets caught, and she takes them off. The bare boards are rough and the grass slaps her calves. She knows this path. Escaping down here in the hope of meeting him, running out of breath to the jetty. She remembers and it does not seem so long ago.

  On the beach the sand is soft and cool and she can smell the salt and seaweed. She walks quickly, blind in the dark, and before her the ocean swells in its enormity, black sea, black sky merge in an infinity. It is like this at night. Vast emptiness and she remembers, back against the pylon, his head buried in her neck, the force of his weight, but then stops herself. That is not what she is meant to be talking about. Not that, not then. They do not want to know about that night. They are concerned with another night. Another day. Another time.

  She butts out her cigarette and continues.

  She tells them that she did not know whether to call out Frances’s name. I know how it would have felt, futile in the darkness around her, but she tries once, and her voice is clear and strange. Disembodied. There is no answer.

  Under the jetty, the water laps over her toes. There is no one there. She calls out once and hears nothing but the sea. The slow lazy slap. In and then out again. She feels helpless as she looks
around her, searching for something that she knows she will not find.

  On the jetty there is no one but the fishermen fishing for sharks, and as she nears them, she sees one of them reel in a catch, slippery tail flicking under the light, slip slapping as the man takes the hook out of its mouth before tossing it into the bucket at his feet. As she asks them, each of them, any of them, whether they have seen her – Frances, she is only twelve – she sees the fish out of the corner of her eye, jerking spasmodically in the shallow pool of water, and she does not want to watch but she cannot help herself. It is gasping for air, gills flapping, and she wishes they would put some more water in, or kill it, a quick blow on the head, rather than this.

  Haven’t seen her, one man says, and a few others shake their heads.

  Been no one here but us, says another, and he casts his line out again, far out, singing as it flies through the ink-black, and then down, plop, into the sea below.

  Are you sure?

  He turns to look at her, no doubt seeing her not as she sees herself, but seeing her hair, thick and wild about her face, seeing the black smudges around her eyes, seeing the bare feet, and he shakes his head again before turning his back on her.

  Because she looks like some crazy woman. Some crazy woman who does not warrant more than a cursory shake of the head, and realising it is useless, she turns back towards the beach and walks down the jetty alone.

  They listen, waiting for her to continue.

  That was it, she tells them, lighting another cigarette.

  You didn’t look on the beach? they ask. Just one more time?

  She shakes her head. I went home.

  They wait for her to expand, to tell them more.

  I went home, she says again. I went home, and she is confused by the hardness in their eyes, the accusation in their words.

  I am at home and I am waiting for her. I do not want to be reminded that this is what I am doing, so I keep my back to the clock and I concentrate on my drawing.

  But this is not all I am doing.

  As the clock ticks over towards eight, my thoughts drift, fragile tendrils reaching out and curling around images, faint at first because I do not dare to let them crystallise, and then more solid, more real.

  They are disjointed images of how life would be without Frances. Frances’s bed moved out, Frances’s mess cleared up, and I am opening the wardrobe to see just my clothes, my things, spread out, space between each of the hangers, shoes in a neat row at the bottom.

  You are my only one, Dorothy says.

  What shall we do today? Dorothy asks. Just you and me, and she pulls me close. I don’t know what I would do without you, she says and I am held tight in her arms, the only one left to hear her words, over and over again.

  My mother drives home alone.

  I can hear the car pull up in the street.

  I can hear the door slam shut behind her.

  I look up from my drawing.

  She is back.

  Dorothy alone in the doorway, sandals in one hand, and a trail of sand behind her.

  So that is all, they repeat. It is not really a question. It is more like a statement.

  I can tell how difficult it has been for her to speak in the way she has spoken.

  She nods her head but she knows it is not all. I know that and she knows that.

  It is all wrong. I want to tell them that it is all wrong. You can’t do what they are doing. You can’t just take bits. You have to take everything. All of it. Dorothy, Franco, Frances and me. Everyone we know and everyone they know. Every day of our lives and every day of their lives.

  There is no end to it.

  It goes on and on and on.

  But how can I begin to explain this to them?

  26

  While I am at work, Dorothy is at home.

  While I talk to Jocelyn, Dorothy talks to John Mills. He is to her what Jocelyn is to me, the closest either of us have to a friend.

  I did not have girlfriends, Dorothy would say, and she would curl her lip at that word. They were jealous, she would say, petty, and I was not interested.

  At the deli where my mother worked, Mrs Hansen, once Jillie Green, would select slices of ham for a lunch she was having on the weekend, or cream cheese for a cheesecake she was making, perhaps olives, it did not matter; she would order in a loud and confident voice, and we would listen while we waited for our mother to finish for the day.

  It’s eight people, she would say to the woman behind the counter. Are you sure that will be enough?

  We had heard my mother say hello to her, and we had seen her nod in response. Brief, embarrassed, so quick it may never have happened.

  I think that’s the lot, Mrs Hansen would say and she would count out her money from a gold Glomesh purse, her pink fingernails clicking on the hard surface as she placed each coin in a pile.

  Our mother would hang up her apron and we would follow her round to the front of the shop. Mrs Hansen would nod again, but Dorothy would pretend she had not seen.

  I was never interested in any of them, Dorothy would say as we walked, quickly, through the shopping mall.

  Frances would look at me and roll her eyes.

  They disapproved, but it was simply envy. They wished they could do what I was doing, and Dorothy would pull at the hem of her dress, so high it barely covered the tops of her thighs.

  Three steps behind, Frances would follow. An imaginary handbag over her shoulder, she, too, would pull at the hem of her dress and toss her hair. She, too, would tell me, silently mouthing the words, of the envy of the other girls.

  Don’t, I would say.

  But there was no stopping her.

  Later, in the quiet of our room, Frances would whisper to me, They didn’t like her.

  I would not want to hear what was bound to follow but I could not stop her.

  They thought she was a slut, and I would block my ears. She probably did it with all of them. Not just him, and I knew she was referring to Franco, but all of them. Down there, under the jetty. One by one. One after the other, and I would bury my head in the pillow, anything to stop the sound of her voice. But it was not possible.

  No wonder they all look at her in the way they do, no wonder they all think they’re better than her, and I would see my sister’s face, hard and sharp against the light of the moon through the window. Pinched and tight. Her words like the slick on the sea after a storm.

  Mrs Hansen, Mrs Rowley, Mrs Donovan. Jillie Green, Sally Wildey, Carol Jenkins.

  How is your poor mother?

  They are not her friends. They never have been and they never will be.

  Apart from John Mills, there has never really been anyone. Brief friendships with neighbours that burnt out as quickly as they began.

  This is Mrs Jacobs, Dorothy would say to us, her voice proud as she introduced her new friend. We would smile politely and escape to the television, but even with the volume turned up high, we could still hear her. Dorothy talking endlessly about her marriage, her dreams of dancing, her beauty. We would listen and we would know.

  Thank you, Mrs Jacobs would say, trying to break into the first pause, no matter how slim, in an attempt to extricate herself. I must get going.

  Occasionally they would be back, maybe once, twice at the most, caught by Dorothy on the street and unable to escape, but usually that first visit was the last.

  My mother did not have friends.

  In fact, I think John Mills may have been the first person to visit her on a regular basis.

  He is a godsend, Martin tells me.

  I can always hear the reprimand in his words. Faint. But there. Because Martin does not understand why I do not appear as grateful as I should. He believes John Mills is doing Dorothy and me a good service and we should not forget it. This is the way he sees the situation.

  While I am at work talking to Jocelyn, John Mills is at home with my mother.

  Normally they would sit in the kitchen. Years ago, on hot days, h
e could sometimes persuade Dorothy to eat on the front verandah, but as this became more difficult, he stopped trying.

  There is no point, he told me once, in pushing her. But I am not sure whether he actually believes that, or whether he simply knows he is not the person to force her.

  Today, if he sits with her, he will have to sit in her bedroom. A chair pulled up beside her bed, with only the bedside light on to break the darkness. Or perhaps he has convinced her to open her curtains, letting in the cool blue of this late-winter day.

  I do not know.

  If she is quiet, he will talk to her. I know, I have heard him. He will tell her how the storms have passed and the high tides have slowly receded.

  There is a beach again, he will say, and she will close her eyes and remember what it looked like.

  The sea is calm and there were kids on the jetty this morning. Not swimming, but it shouldn’t be long.

  She will tell him that she loved to swim. She will tell him that she was the only girl who could swim from one jetty to the next.

  It may be true or it may not. It does not matter. He will listen anyway.

  It helps me too, he said to me once.

  I did not understand.

  I like to have places to go each day.

  He saw that I did not know what he meant. I have Will and I have friends, but I need to have places to go where I may be of some use. More so than I ever was as a doctor.

  He is, I believe, a friend to my mother.

  Just as he is to the others he visits on his daily rounds.

  I try to understand this strange sense of duty that brings him to our house. Sometimes I can. And I do know how much he means to Dorothy. But I can never imagine that there could also be a friendship in it for him. I have never been able to imagine anyone calling my mother a friend. Just as I find it difficult to see myself talking and confiding in the way that friends do.

  But I try. I try to tell Jocelyn about Martin. I stumble for words and it is not easy.

  27

  When I return to Dorothy’s after work, I feel that I am going the wrong way.

  I am not used to travelling in this direction, not at this hour, and when I see the sea in front of me, I am disoriented. I want to turn and head back to the place where I would normally be. The place where I feel I should be.