by Gigi Fenster
The jacket was padded nylon, puffed beyond the woman’s body. Morris watched the woman’s face, really watched, and saw no satisfaction. She is numb to his touch, he thought. Did the man not know it? Did he know that his hand would not make its way beyond the stuffed coat?
Morris stroked the arm of his own jacket tentatively, aware that he was surrounded and that while stroking the jacket of another may be quite acceptable, caressing one’s own on a crowded bus might draw attention. The fabric was rough and warm, not unpleasant, but not so it was hard to return his hand once more to his lap. No, it was not the feel of the fabric—surely.
Morris had heard that a bereaved person might bury his face in the clothes of a loved one, trying, he supposed, to sense that which was lost. He had not done that. Even when the guests were gone, taking their pity and their sorrow with them. Even when the house was silent and ticking, he had not once thought to open Sadie’s closet and forget in the feel of her fabric. Not once.
And then the clothes were gone. Rachel saw to it. It was done in a day. Morris could have gone in and kept her company that day. He could have offered to help and then, when Rachel left the room, perhaps, lifted a dress off a hanger, a jersey off a shelf, put it to his face and breathed in the stuff of Sadie. But Morris left Rachel and the room and the clothes well alone. I’ll only get in the way, he thought, and he sat in his study, eyes to the computer, back to the door, and listened to the clacking of hangers, the closing of drawers, the sighs of clothes settling themselves in the depths of dustbin bags.
Then the dragging of the bags out of the room, down the passage to the door, his door, the study door where the bags were silenced. And in that silence stood Rachel, clenched fists holding the bags closed. Or perhaps her hands were hanging at her sides, the bags sufficiently well packed to stand alone. One on either side of her. Like stakes. Perhaps the bags were propped against each other. Balancing just so. What do we two do now? wondered Morris. What now? He could have turned from the screen. He could have faced the silence or risen from his chair. He could have walked to the door and turned the handle and held her hard and tight, and stroked her hair and murmured that she was a motherless child and he a sorry old widower. They could have sat together on those dustbin bags and cried.
On the computer the image of a window flew into a window flew into a window. Morris sat and stared at the relentless windows, stared and waited for Rachel to stand in the doorway and say that she was done, would see him tomorrow. And Morris, still gazing at the moving windows, raised his hand, ‘See you tomorrow then,’ and listened as the dustbin bags heaved their heavy way out of the house.
Some weeks later Morris stood at a traffic light and there, on the other side of the road, looking directly at him, was a young woman wearing what was once, could it be, a dress of Sadie’s? The young woman looked good in it. Morris could have told her so. He could have waited at that crossing and watched her as she approached, and then, when she was just close enough, he could have smiled and said, ‘You look good in that dress.’ Or he could have crossed her path, come close and glanced the fabric, skimmed the skirt as it breathed on the breeze of a young spring woman. But Morris did none of those things. People do not go around complimenting strangers on their dress. And a glance could become a touch, could be felt through the fabric.
The man had not kissed the woman or stroked her hair or touched her hand before she turned to the bus. He had not hugged her or patted her cheek or even, Morris suspected, muttered a goodbye. But he had reached out, when she was beyond his compass, and stroked the back of her departing jacket. People do that, Morris had thought. People do that.
Sadie had loved the Australian shawl. She said it was exactly the right colours for her. She wrapped it around herself, around him, playful, happy to have him home. Glowing with the softness of her gift. She didn’t want it to end up with the Sallies.
He could have gone in when Rachel was packing up the clothes and taken the shawl. He could have made up some excuse about using it to keep his legs warm while he was working at the computer. But Sadie had already given the shawl to Wendy.
Take it now, Wends. It’ll end up with the Sallies if I leave it up to Morris.
Morris wonders whether merino requires particular attention, whether Wendy knows how to look after it.
He could ask her to let him feel it. Instead, he says he wouldn’t mind a cigarette.
Wendy doesn’t raise her eyebrows. She just warns him that they’re menthol and hands one over.
He lights the cigarette and braces himself for a sore chest, but there’s no pain. Only a thin, watery mist which leaves him faintly nauseous.
Wendy takes a deep drag on her cigarette. ‘It’s the catapult feeling that’s making you want to smoke.’
‘Catapult feeling?’
‘It’s like I’ve had catapult elastic round my waist ever since David phoned. Every minute it’s being stretched further and further and if Rachel doesn’t turn up by four …’
‘Panic time.’
‘Panic time. Who thought up that term? At four o’clock the bugger who thought up the term panic time is going to let go of the elastic and I’ll be shot out of the catapult. All hell will break loose and I’ll … I’ll … I’ll fucking panic.’
‘Wendy, I—’
‘Thank goodness you’re a calm force. We need at least one non-panicker in the house. You’re our man. Morris Goldberg, the man-who-never-panics. And you’re right. You’re right. There’s no need to panic. She’s not even missing yet and here I am with the catapult feeling. It’s ridiculous of me, I know.’
Morris had forgotten how much he dislikes menthol cigarettes. He inhales again. Deeper this time.
Wendy says, ‘Poor David. This is just awful for him. He feels so responsible for Rachel.’
‘Mmm.’
‘He’s blaming himself.’
‘David blaming himself? For what?’
‘I don’t know. For letting her go on her own, for not double-checking where she was going or what time she’d be out. For phoning the police before panic time. I don’t know.’
‘But he hasn’t … nobody has … It’s no one’s fault. She’s not even missing yet. He knows that.’
‘Yes, but knowing something in your head and believing it to be true are, of course, two different things.’
Morris nods. There’s nothing to be gained by challenging Wendy. She speaks with such conviction, such certainty that she’s correct.
Just like Sadie: Every child must have a pet. David Lynch is an appalling film maker. Rachel must carry the lollies in her own school bag. You absolutely cannot substitute parmesan for feta cheese. That teacher of Rachel’s is thick as a brick. David blames himself. Knowing something in your head and believing it to be true are incompatible. These are truths. Indisputable.
Like Sadie, Wendy would be able to give examples, cite research. She would have read about it in a book or seen a documentary on exactly this topic.
Morris taps his cigarette on the ashtray, though he hasn’t smoked enough for the ash to build up.
‘It’s especially hard for David,’ Wendy continues. ‘He’s always been so protective of Rachel.’ She takes a sharp pull on her cigarette. ‘It’s a good thing none of his friends ever tried dating her. He would not have taken that kindly.’
She rests her cigarette in the ashtray, strokes the shawl.
She’ll make it smell of cigarette smoke.
‘Mind you,’ she says, ‘one or two of them could at least have tried their luck with her. Sadie and I used to wonder why none of them ever did.’
She was too young for them, thinks Morris. She wasn’t interested in them. They were too loud, too rough.
‘She would have been the same age as some of their girlfriends,’ says Wendy. ‘And pretty. I guess they never looked at her in that way—her being David’s sister and all.’
That was how Rachel wanted it. That was what she chose.
‘Sadie used to worry abou
t her,’ says Wendy.
Once, when the children were teenagers, Morris drove them to a social event at the school.
Some time before they were due to leave, David started banging on Rachel’s door, calling, ‘Get a move on. My friends are waiting for me.’
When Rachel finally came out she had her arms folded tightly across her chest and a thick stripe of blue eye shadow on each of her eyelids.
It was a good thing Sadie wasn’t there. She would have made a fuss of Rachel and gone on and on about how pretty she looked. Rachel wouldn’t have wanted that. She also wouldn’t have wanted Morris telling her that her blue eyelids made him want to cry.
Sadie would’ve phoned Wendy the minute they were out of the door. They would have laughed about the blue eye shadow.
David didn’t notice the eye shadow. Or didn’t care. ‘About time too,’ was all he said.
He sat in front and fiddled with the car radio. Morris looked at Rachel in his rear-view mirror. She stared out of her window.
The car filled with teenage music, loud and heavy, and David started drumming his hands on the dashboard. Rachel kept looking outside and Morris found himself wondering what would happen if he swerved suddenly, or started weaving the car across the road, dancing this way and that in time to the music. The road before him was empty and open. The music was loud. He could turn the wheel sharply to one side, then spin it back. What would the children think if he did that? David might like it. Rachel would not.
He turned the music off. He didn’t need the distraction while driving.
When they got close to the school they passed groups of teenagers. David opened his window and shouted at some of them, waved, grinned. Rachel kept her window closed. Morris wondered whether she wanted to go to the dance. Was it compulsory? Had Sadie insisted she go? Couldn’t he write her a note of excuse and take her somewhere—to a movie maybe, or the beach. They could buy ice cream. They could sit in the car and watch the people walking past.
David said, ‘Rache, I’ll keep an eye out for you and you can always come and find me. If you want money for a cold drink or you can’t find your friends.’
Rachel swore at him.
The next day Sadie said, ‘I hear Rachel and David had an argument on the way to the dance. Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘Tell you?’
‘Yes, tell me. Tell me that the kids went mental at each other on the way to the dance.’
Why hadn’t Morris told Sadie? Because it wasn’t much more than the usual arguing and he knew she’d hear about it soon enough from David?
Or maybe because it wasn’t the argument itself which stayed with him but rather what happened after. David bursting from the car—‘I was just trying to be nice but if that’s the way you want it, fine!’—to be swallowed up by a group of laughing, punching boys. Rachel, small and alone, with all those people swirling around her. Teenagers crashing and colliding, grouping and re-forming. No one she could latch on to. David searching his sister out, peeling himself off from the crowd to go to her, and she, seeing him approach, lifting her chin high and walking away from him. Putting one foot in front of the other.
‘Sadie used to worry about her,’ Wendy says again, and Morris feels a wave of dislike for his sister-in-law. It was vulgar of her and Sadie to have talked about Rachel in that way. It did a disservice to the blue eye shadow, the brave chin, those feet moving forwards.
He puts out the cigarette and excuses himself to go inside.
Wendy and David are talking about strobe lights. Wendy can’t believe that Rachel managed to work with strobes, to see strobes every day.
David says the strobes didn’t seem to bother her at the gym. She seemed to turn them off.
‘Well,’ says Wendy, ‘not so turned off that she didn’t keep turning them on again, off and on again, off and on.’ Her tone is tart.
David says it didn’t do either of them any good, all that turning off and on.
‘No good at all,’ says Wendy.
Morris has no idea what they’re talking about.
‘Strobelight Stewart. He’s off and he’s on. He’s off and he’s on.’
‘Mum had another nickname for him—The Wagon—’cause—’
‘Rachel was off him then on him. I prefer Strobelight.’
‘Well, the lights are off for good now. Finito completo.’
‘I’ve heard that before.’
‘This time it’s for real. He’s got a new girlfriend, and—’
‘Since when did one of them dating someone else stop them from getting back together again?’
‘Since the girlfriend got pregnant.’
That Bible Studies teacher with the black beard said there was a time when everyone in the world understood everyone else. A time when there was only one language and few words. There were no misunderstandings.
But the people got proud. They thought themselves very important. So important that they could build a tower to heaven. A tower to God! Who did they think they were?
Black Beard got his students to imagine the highest building they could—higher than the Empire State Building, much higher. He made them close their eyes. Tight enough that you can hear it in your ears. He told them to imagine the building getting higher and higher. Breaking through the clouds.
‘Right, you can open your eyes again. Now tell me, will that building ever get to heaven? Will it ever get high enough to reach God?’
Morris glanced around the classroom. What was the correct answer?
‘Say there was a special machine that allowed you to keep on building higher and higher and higher. Layer after layer. Storey after storey. Where would you get?’
‘To the moon?’ hazarded someone.
‘To the stars?’
‘The sun?’
‘The atmosphere!’
The black beard shook from side to side. ‘Say you went past all of those things. Would you ever … ever, ever get to God?’
A girl near the front said, ‘You would get to infinity.’
‘Which is the same,’ said Black Beard, ‘as getting nowhere. You would just keep on going because no matter how high you go, you can never get to God.’ He paused to glare down at the class. ‘Now, I want you to close your eyes again and think. Think. Why could you never reach God?’
Morris closed his eyes and thought about infinity, about going further and further and getting nowhere.
‘I will tell you why you wouldn’t reach God—because God is not sitting in a seat somewhere in the sky. God is everywhere. And nowhere.’
Everywhere and nowhere.
‘But those tower-builders thought themselves so important. They thought themselves equal to God.’ He glared down at his class as if every child there had thought to himself, I am equal to God. ‘And that,’ he finally boomed, ‘was their great sin.’
Morris thought, I am not equal to God. I don’t think myself equal to God.
Black Beard perched on the teacher’s desk. ‘Well, you can imagine what God thought when He saw this tower. He thought, Who do they think they are? And He punished them.’ He looked around the room. ‘Does anyone know how God punished them? Can anyone think?’
A hand shot up. ‘He made it so they couldn’t understand each other.’
‘Yes. Yes. They couldn’t understand each other. He gave them different languages. He gave them misunderstandings.’ A sudden smile broke through the beard. ‘Isn’t that a clever punishment for people who think they can reach the heavens? You take away their ability to talk to each other. You take them one step closer to animals. Blathering turkeys. That tower was called the Tower of Babel. And now I will tell you what Babel means and you will understand what we have those tower-builders to thank for.’
Black Beard waited. The class was silent.
‘Babel means … confusion. Man tried to reach God and in return we got misunderstanding. Mistakes and mix-ups. Ambiguity. Confusion. We will always struggle to understand each other. For ever more.’
> It wasn’t fair. Morris had never tried to build a tower to God.
‘Gabbling away at each other like turkeys.’
Gabbling away at each other like David and Wendy.
‘Pregnant. Does Rachel know? She must know.’
‘Debbie doesn’t know if Rachel knows. I don’t know if Rachel knows.’
‘Debbie knows and you know. How could Rachel not know? D’you think she knows?’
‘I have no way of knowing if she knows. It’s not like she would have discussed it with me. Or Debbie. She certainly didn’t mention it when she came for dinner on Wednesday.’
‘Did Debbie raise it with her?’
‘No, Debbie didn’t raise it with her, but then Debbie didn’t know at the time. She only found out on Saturday. Someone at the gym told her.’
‘D’you think Rachel would’ve known before everyone else?’
‘I bet Strobelight would have told her. He owed her that. At least.’
‘At least. And he’s a nice guy. He would have done the right thing.’
‘Yes, but it wasn’t only his news to tell, was it? There’s the girlfriend to think of. She probably feels threatened by Rachel. She might not have wanted Rachel to know.’
‘You can’t keep a thing like that secret. Wellington’s a small town. Debbie knew. You knew. Rachel must have known.’
‘She must have known.’
‘Or maybe she didn’t know. Maybe the news only broke after she left to go tramping.’
‘Maybe that’s right. Debbie only found out on Saturday.’
‘And Debbie’s on to things.’
On and on, blathering away. Morris can’t get a hold on their conversation. He knows it’s important but he can’t find his way in. His path is blocked by gabbling turkeys.
Morris knows exactly what those misguided tower-builders sounded like. They sounded like David wondering whether they should call Stewart and tell him what’s going on, and Wendy saying that it’s none of his business and, anyway, nothing’s going on.