The Lives of Women

by Christine Dwyer Hickey

  ‘I have to go.’

  ‘Lamb chops. They cost money, you know. And now what am I supposed to do with them?’

  ‘Eat them yourself,’ she says and runs out the door.

  On the way home from the drive Serena begins to draw Agatha out and suddenly she is telling a story. Elaine is sitting up front next to Serena. Agatha is right behind her; Rachel is at the far window. Patty, in the middle.

  The story is about her mother’s actor friends and a fat woman who wanted to play Ophelia. They were rehearsing a play in an English country town. It wasn’t Hamlet as such. It was sort of a take on Hamlet. Or maybe a take on Ophelia. Agatha says, no matter how many times she heard it, she’d never been able to work out which.

  While Agatha tells her story, a stillness comes over the car; there is only her voice and the ticking of the engine.

  The story frightens Elaine. It makes her feel, not only as if she is there with Agatha, backstage in this country theatre, but almost as if she is Agatha. The musty smell; the taste of dust on the air; the ropes on the ground like snakes underfoot. And all these peculiar people moving around so that she is always in the way; a constant obstacle to the passage of others, never knowing which way to turn, until in the end she sneaks off to sit on her own in the dressing room.

  Her mother gone off somewhere, getting her hair done – or so she had said. Elaine could imagine her standing by the door beforehand, waiting on her chance to slip out. Agatha could hear the lunch break being called then she heard the cast and crew go out. She kept expecting the door of the dressing room to open, to hear a voice asking if she’d like to come with them. She could hear their footsteps thudding down the backstage stairs. She could hear them bitching about each other. (He keeps missing his cue! What do you expect, she never gave me the line!) The iron slam of the backstage door then.

  The dressing room was large but Agatha knew her way around it. On two walls there were rows of costumes on rails, a smell of sweat, old perfume, mothballs. A feel of velvet, fur, satin. There was a long shelf with a kettle and biscuits and cups. The mirrors and dressing tables were positioned in the centre of the room so you could walk either side of them. The mirrors were trimmed with bulbs. Agatha knew the dressing room was dark because whenever one of the cast came in they always made a comment like, ‘It’s pitch black in here.’ Or, ‘Oh my God, I can’t see a thing.’

  When the lights were on, there was a buzzing sound overhead, and the bulbs on the mirror were hot to the touch when she trailed her hand along them. That day, there was no buzzing overhead, and the bulbs on the mirror were cold. Yet she felt there was somebody else in the dressing room. She said, more than once, ‘Who’s there? Is there somebody there?’

  ‘And was there – was there somebody there?’ Serena says.

  ‘Oh yes,’ Agatha says.

  ‘And they didn’t reply? They didn’t say a word?’

  ‘Not a word.’

  ‘Oh, how cruel,’ Serena says, ‘to pretend like that, how—’

  ‘Shhhh Mom,’ Patty says, ‘will you let her just tell it?’

  ‘I could smell her.’

  ‘Smell her?’ Serena asks.

  ‘Oh, I do that. Elaine always says I’m like a little animal, the way I smell people.’

  ‘Oh, Elaine… you do not?’ Serena says, throwing a look at Elaine for a second.

  ‘Oh, but I don’t mean—’ Elaine begins to explain, but Agatha has taken everyone away again, back with her into the dark.

  She could sense something blocking the space on the far side of the room.

  ‘You can do that?’ Serena asks.

  She could hear her breathing. Yes, it was a woman, definitely a woman.

  ‘Well, thank goodness for that much, anyhow,’ Serena says.

  ‘Mom, will you just keep quiet!’

  ‘The breathing was odd,’ Agatha says, ‘gasping and grunting.’

  ‘But what was she doing?’ Rachel asks.

  ‘At first, it sounded as if she was doing exercises, push ups or something. But then… the grunting, you see.’

  ‘What? What?’ Patty says. ‘Was it, like, something disgusting?’

  ‘There was another sound then, like a long fart maybe.’

  ‘She was going to the bathroom!’ Patty decides.

  ‘In the corner of the dressing room?’ Rachel says. ‘Why would she do that?’

  ‘She was…’ Agatha pauses. ‘She was trying on Ophelia’s dress. And she…’

  ‘She ripped it!’ Rachel says.

  ‘Yes. She was fat, you see, and knew she would never get to play Ophelia.’

  ‘But if it was dark,’ Rachel says, ‘she wouldn’t even be able to see herself in the mirror.’

  ‘But that was it,’ Agatha says, ‘she didn’t want to see herself. She just wanted the feel of the dress.’

  ‘And she definitely knew you were there?’ Patty asks. ‘Yes, but she didn’t care about that. She just presumed, if she stayed very quiet, that I wouldn’t hear her, and even if I did, how could I say for certain it was her. Later when Ophelia – the real Ophelia – discovered the ripped dress, everyone thought it was me. Even my mother, who ended up paying for it to be fixed.’

  ‘But didn’t you say something?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Because. Well, because I don’t know really.’

  ‘Oh, how cruel,’ Serena says again.

  After Agatha’s story, they drive on in silence and then Serena swings the light into Elaine’s corner of the car. She says, ‘You’ve studied Hamlet in school, Elaine – right? So what do you think, maybe Ophelia was already a little crazy to start or did, I don’t know, life – men – whatever – make her that way? What do you say?’

  Elaine feels her mouth dry up and her hands dampen. She turns her red face to the window with a mumble.

  Serena says, ‘Well that’s okay, honey, you don’t have to talk if you don’t want. Another time maybe?’

  They are almost home when Patty asks, ‘How fat was she anyhow? The Ophelia woman. Was she fat like Elaine’s mom? Sorry, Elaine, but your mom is, like, the fattest person in the neighbourhood.’

  ‘Patty!’ Serena says. ‘That’s extremely rude.’

  Elaine keeps her face to the window. Through the side-view mirror she sees Agatha and Patty, silently shaking with laughter.

  ‘I see how she does it,’ Agatha says, later on, as Elaine walks her back to her house.

  ‘Do you really?’ Elaine mutters.

  ‘She coaxes a few words out of one of us, sprinkles them like crumbs on the ground and then the rest of us follow.’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ Elaine snaps.

  ‘What? For God’s sake – what?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Always saying things, just to be clever.’

  ‘No, I’m not.’

  ‘Yes, you are. To make yourself sound more interesting. I bet you made up that whole Ophelia story.’

  ‘I did not.’

  ‘I bet you did.’

  ‘You’re just needled because I had something to say for myself for a change, instead of always sitting there like a big stuffed toy. Is that it? Because now you’re the only one who hasn’t contributed to Serena’s bloody conversation sessions?’

  ‘I am not needled. I just find it so false sometimes the way you go on.’

  ‘What? What are you talking about?’

  ‘All that crap about conversations. First it was bubbles, then slamming doors, now crumbs… Why can’t a conversation just be a conversation?’

  ‘Because that’s how I see them,’ Agatha says.

  ‘No it isn’t. How can you see something that isn’t visible? They’re just sounds. How can you see them? And anyway you couldn’t see them – you’re blind.’

  ‘How do you know?’ Agatha says, her bottom lip beginning to give. ‘How do you know what does and doesn’t go on behind my eyes?’

  Agath
a starts crying.

  ‘I’m… I’m sorry, Agatha,’ Elaine says. ‘I didn’t mean… I shouldn’t have…’

  Elaine reaches out to take her arm but Agatha shrugs it away.

  ‘Why don’t you just fuck off,’ she says through her teeth, ‘fuck off and leave me alone.’

  Elaine reaches out again. ‘Agatha, listen…’

  Agatha grabs a lump of Elaine’s upper arm and twists it.

  Elaine pushes Agatha’s shoulder with the heel of her hand.

  Agatha’s hand sweeps back then flies down, slapping Elaine right across the face. Elaine feels the slap shudder right through her head. She lifts her own hand then and smacks her right back.

  Her mother says, ‘Fighting like fish-wives out on the street. Anyone could have seen you.’

  ‘But she hit me first. She hit me!’

  Elaine covers her face with her hands and rocks on the kitchen chair.

  ‘But to raise your hand to a blind girl, Elaine. A blind girl. God knows what the Hanleys will say. Do you think she’ll tell? Do you think they saw? Mary sits in the back room of an evening, doesn’t she? Or does she still sit out in that shed reading? Was Ted’s car there?’

  ‘No,’ Elaine says into her hands. ‘No, no, no.’

  ‘Oh well, that’s something, I suppose.’

  Her mother begins rummaging in the kitchen drawers. ‘Look, we’ll put ice on your face, in the morning we can cover it with make-up.’

  She lifts a corkscrew out and lays it on the draining board.

  ‘A cup of sugary tea is what’s needed now. A piece of apple tart. You’re shocked more than anything else. Deep breaths now. Deep breaths,’ she says and pulls a bottle of wine from the fridge before putting on the kettle.

  And a few minutes later: ‘If you ask me, you’re better off without her. It’s worse she’s getting. Do you know she’s been sleeping in that shed? Yes, Mrs Hanley only just found out. Sneaking out in the middle of the night, sleeping on her own, down the back of the garden like a cat. Her mother is not right in the head either, you know. She cares nothing for Agatha, never did. I’m not sure I believe that story about Agatha’s father being dead either. Oh, there’s things I could tell you about that woman, and I will when you’re older…’

  And another few minutes again: ‘Oh, do stop that crying, it’s ridiculous carry on. Agatha is Agatha – just because she’s blind doesn’t mean that she can’t be a little bitch.’

  Elaine stands up and looks at her mother.

  ‘You shut up about Agatha. What do you know about Agatha? You never liked her anyway. I see the way you look at her, as if you’re afraid of her or she makes you sick or something just because she’s blind. Well, you should take a look at your own big, fat disgusting self in the mirror sometime, see how sick you make other people feel!’

  Her mother says, ‘Really! To speak to me like that. To speak to your own mother like… Well, there’s a pair of you in it, if you ask me.’

  Elaine waits for her mother to go upstairs, slam the bedroom door and lock herself in. Then she goes into her father’s study and picks up the phone. But Mrs Hanley says Agatha has a headache and is too tired to come to the phone.

  She watches Agatha from her bedroom window. She watches her as she leaves the house first thing every morning with Mrs Hanley – except for the two ‘Sadie days’ when their cleaner, Sadie, comes in. When Mrs Hanley is with her, they walk into the cul-de-sac, Mrs Hanley carrying a small bag of Agatha’s things for the day. A short while later, Mrs Hanley returns, goes back into the house for a few minutes then comes out again with her handbag, gets into her car and drives off to take care of Ted’s mother.

  On a Sadie day, Agatha doesn’t leave the house until lunch time, when Sadie walks her around to the Donegans’ before returning alone and going down to the village to catch the bus home.

  On three of these mornings, Ted Hanley is the one to take Agatha into the cul-de-sac. He brings her in his car and it only seems to take a few seconds before he’s whizzing back past Elaine’s window and has turned the corner out of the estate. It’s as if he just opened the car door and booted Agatha out at the side of the road outside Karl Donegan’s gate.

  In the afternoons, she has sometimes looked across the road and thought she saw movement behind a window. She has stood for a while, watching and waiting, wondering if she should go over and see if Agatha has come back to the house and is in there, alone. But in the end, she has put it down to her imagination or maybe to simple wishful thinking.

  She sees other things: Patty brushing her hair in the garden to the stroke of one hundred; Mr Slater coming home from town with a package under his arm; Serena speaking to him as she gets out of her car and him lifting his hat slightly to her then crossing the road with a dirty big grin on his face. She sees Rachel give Jonathan money to buy drink because she’s the only one who always has money and he’s the only one who always gets served. Rachel steals the money from her mother’s purse when she’s drunk. She steals it out of spite, she says. Steals it and then immediately gives it away or spends it on everyone else.

  She sees Jonathan coming back up the road with Karl walking beside him, carrying his haversack full of drink like a bag of loot on one shoulder.

  She thinks about Jonathan more and more. She thinks about his tired eyes and his curly hair and the book he always carries in his pocket. For a long time he was the new boy, a slow shadow coming around the corner. Now he’s Paul Townsend’s best friend, leaving Karl Donegan dawdling in the background.

  He has greenish eyes and bony fingers and a crooked front tooth. He has no mother. His father comes and goes at odd hours. He has one sister who is married and lives somewhere else. If she ever comes to visit him, Elaine has never noticed.

  She thinks she must be in love with him. She feels it in every inch of her skin whenever he’s around. She finds it more and more difficult to speak to him. She would like to be able to ask someone – is love not a pointless thing if you can’t even bear to look the one you love in the face or can’t imagine ever being able to relax on your own with him long enough to even kiss him? She would like to ask – how do you kiss anyway? And if it’s true that French kissing means using your tongue – just how exactly do you go about it?

  She can’t ask Rachel because she would think it was funny and then the whole neighbourhood would have to hear about it. She can’t ask Patty because she would only make her feel like a fool. She can’t ask Brenda Caudwell because she probably doesn’t know.

  And she can’t ask Agatha because Agatha is still not speaking to her.

  One evening when her mother is out and her father is away on circuit, she walks into Serena’s kitchen and sees his long skinny legs through the window dangling on the wall in the back garden. Paul’s shorter rounded ones swinging beside him. Patty is lying on the grass on her stomach, one hand shielding her eyes against the last glare of the sun.

  Serena, at the kitchen counter, face through a magnified mirror, is colouring in her mouth. She turns to her, fluffing up her long wavy hair with a flat, long-toothed comb – ‘Tell me I look cute,’ she says.

  Elaine finds the word ‘cute’ an odd choice for a grown woman but tells her anyway.

  ‘So…’ Serena says, ‘I hear you’re coming to the tennis camp after all?’

  ‘Yes,’ Elaine says.

  ‘It will be such fun. Won’t it be such fun?’

  ‘Yes, it’ll be fun.’

  ‘No Agatha again?’

  ‘No Agatha.’

  ‘You should go talk to her.’

  ‘I’ve tried.’

  ‘Try harder. It’s more difficult for her, you know, and she needs to hold onto her pride. She’s probably very lonely. I’m sure, once she hears your voice…’

  Serena gives her a big happy smile, then gestures to the window, stiff-headed, as if afraid her hair will unfluff. ‘Why don’t you go join them?’

  ‘I will now,’ Elaine says, ‘in a minute.’

&nb
sp; She lifts the dirty dishes from the counter and carries them over to the sink then, leaning into it, looks out the window. Now Karl Donegan’s head has appeared over the wall; he hauls himself up and sits on the ledge, beaming. The boys are doing all the talking. Patty gives so little in return: an occasional toss of her hair, a word or two, a cocked half-smile. Sometimes she appears not to be listening at all. But the boys keep talking. It’s as if they are trying to sell her something.

  She hears Serena running up the stairs. The toilet flushes, the bathroom window opens and her voice calls down to the garden that she’s going now and that Elaine is in the kitchen.

  Elaine closes her eyes and backs away from the sink. She doesn’t want to see the boys’ bored reaction or Patty’s indifferent shrug.

  She waits for the clip of the door behind Serena, the small growl of her car as it pulls out of the drive. Then Elaine leaves the house, goes into the Hanleys’ and knocks on their front door.

  *

  Ted Hanley opens it, a newspaper in one hand, a chunky glass of whiskey in the other.

  ‘Oh, hello,’ he says, as if he’s trying to remember her name or where he might have seen her before.

  ‘Is Agatha in?’

  ‘No. She’s not here, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Not in?’

  ‘No. She’s gone around to Karl’s about twenty minutes since.’

  He begins moving away from the door. ‘They’re probably around in his house. I’m sure they won’t mind if…’

  She wants to say – you’re a big fat liar. I know she’s not with Karl. I know she just told you to say that.

  But she nods and says, ‘Thank you, Mr Hanley,’ then crosses the road and lets herself into her empty house.

  Rachel says: ‘If it’s any consolation, she’s dodging me too. Won’t even come to the phone. When I bump into her at the stables her face goes all funny and she’ll hardly speak to me. I wouldn’t worry about it. Let her stew in it for a while, Elaine.’

  ‘I shouldn’t have slapped her,’ Elaine says.

  ‘No. But she’ll come round – you’ll see. She was always a bit moody – we know that.’