Madame Bovary's Haberdashery

by Maurilia Meehan

  Making yet another effort to show his good humour, he tried to cheer her up by telling her about his current client, but she kept her eyes on the screen.

  ‘The tax department is cracking down on musicians. Layabouts, mainly. My current client makes about one thousand dollars a year composing. And with that income, he expects to be called a professional and get the tax breaks. He could teach piano in a school, to get real money. So I said to him …’

  Actually it was a long story and it might have made him miss the train he had to catch to the city so he had to rush the denouement. She always listened to his stories, though her eyes were faraway and she was humming a little song to the baby. He cut it short.

  ‘So I said to him, if you’re really serious about composing, why don’t you write stuff that sells? Like commercials, for example? Well, that stumped him for a while. I really caught him out, didn’t I? It proves he’s not serious about his career if he won’t write for the market.’

  She nodded at his entertaining tale, patting the baby’s back. Desperate for some kind of reaction, he determined that he would try sex that night.

  He dimmed the lights, put some bordello jazz track on the system, put extra gel on his hair and musk spray over his body, then, as soon as the baby was asleep, called Odette into the bedroom.

  He offered to massage her shoulders, so she lay on the bed. He had discreetly put the fishnets and knickers on her pillow, but when he asked her to put them on, she did not move. He realised that she had fallen asleep, not waiting for his talented masseur hands. He nudged her awake and she sat up, startled.

  When she was suitably attired, he started their old erotic game by showing her five nice new twenty-dollar notes. But she just snatched them from him and zipped them up in her purse. She had forgotten the rules.

  Next morning, the same mournful face at breakfast. Unbelievable. Tired of making all the effort in the relationship, he pointedly turned off the kitchen TV before sitting down to eat his egg, giving all his usual attention to neatly placing the eggshell in the little hat.

  ‘I’ve got a new client, a writer, so-called. Income of three thousand this year from writing. The rest from you and me. I happen to know that you can get thirty thousand from writing for Flame Romance. I’ve done their books. But she’s too arty for that. Prefers life in a garret I suppose. She could write advertising copy or computer manuals. Plenty of work. Brilliant money. They should be more realistic, these artists, like you are (see how positive I am with her, Dad?). I mean we’ve agreed your pots are not a valid economic activity. Anyway, this writer got the three thousand from writing a novel. Couldn’t have been very good, at that rate. I’m going to finish my novel one day. Not that I’d ever read one. Too superficial. Mine will change all that. It will have everything in it. Not just a novel. I’ve already written the blurb for the back cover, that’s the main part.

  ‘The problem with the world – this is what I’ll say in the novel – is that people only think of the short-term profit. But they should consider the long-term profit, which means global issues. Don’t shit in what may some day be your own backyard. That’s long-term, see?

  ‘Now the main character, he’s bigger than Ben Hur. I don’t want to tell you too much about it in case it gets around and someone pinches my idea …’

  But then he reflected that it was fairly safe with her, seeing he’s blocked her email and she was too phobic to leave the house. He was excited anyway, wanted to share.

  ‘OK the main character is The Celestial Auditor.’

  He took another mouthful of egg, waiting for her appreciative look. Nothing.

  ‘Get it? The Celestial Auditor gets jack of the inefficient way the world is run and comes down to audit his creation.’

  It was a novel of infinite scope, beyond her comprehension.

  ‘Just wait till I word it in.’

  Officially out of control now.

  Scourers in drawers, under the bed, and in her favourite room – she liked it even more than the kitchen, she was always in there – the laundry. He didn’t know what she could possibly be doing all that time. He’d tried a surprise visit, but the door was jammed shut. Hoped it was not nappies piling up again.

  Anyway, he now had another means of accessing that thing that passed for her brain. She had at last started entering some meandering notes in a file called Time and Motion Audit which he had set up for her.

  But even an experienced auditor could make little of it. How was he supposed to know what Napisan was, for example? It sounded like a Japanese geisha. He attached a memo, telling her to explain all items purchased to avoid the budget being revised downward.

  It was more difficult to audit a mother than a musician, or even a writer, he realised. The report barely qualified for that name. It was an attempt to record her activities for one day, but it only covered breakfast.

  Time and Motion Audit.

  The day starts at one AM when baby wakes for feed. Then again at four AM and at six. I feed her. Wakes for the day at seven. Get her up at seven-thirty. Change nappy and clothes. Bring out yesterday’s nappies and dirty clothes and put wash on. Do a general clean-up of kitchen before breakfast. Keep baby amused. Put the dishes and cutlery away from last night and wash up left over plates etc. Put kettle on. Make tea. Put your egg on to boil. Get milk out of fridge. Notice rotten smell in fridge. Waste ten minutes searching out the culprit – old carton of cream – put in bin – decide too smelly and will have to go out in garbage – means going outside which I hate – put another bin-liner in bin.

  Your egg is now hard-boiled. Throw it in bin. Put on another. I know how you like them – just a bit runny in the middle so that you can stick you toast fingers right down into the yoke.

  Baby’s desperate to be picked up. Grab half a cup of tea on the run. Hang out the washing. Put on the next load. Pick up towels left all over the house from last night’s baths. Take your egg off the flame. Call out to you that breakfast is ready. Sweep and pick up. Change nappy and put her in the pram, from where she smiles at you as you arrive for breakfast, all ready for you on the table. Put another load of washing on while you eat it.

  But the thing was, it actually wasn’t all ready for him on the table, was it? She just thought it was. In fact, he had to cook his own toast and pour his own tea.

  In all, poor Ricky found a total of sixteen Non-Compliances in that report alone. To begin with, the washing up should have been done the night before, and three attempts at boiling an egg – how hard was it? – was a squandering of economic and human resources.

  Where to begin with his Continuous Improvement Request Form?

  He started with a few suggested solutions, such as getting the previous day’s work done before retiring at night, and setting the table the night before so that she didn’t have to waste time searching for his favourite cup. It crossed his mind sometimes that she might deliberately hide it. After all, she always had her own favourite with the little shamrocks, didn’t she, even if she did always let the tea go cold in it as she fussed around.

  Perhaps, he suggested, if she could write out her objectives and procedures for obtaining them each morning, and then analyse the outcomes at night with him, this child-rearing thing wouldn’t have to be so annoying for other people in the house.

  But the errors continued. There was the problem with Quality regarding Goods and Services. On request, a particular invoice for baby pilchers, whatever they were, could not be produced. Neither could receipts always be found to support petty cash claims of amounts over ten dollars. And so much tea going cold and undrunk in her cup—Lady Grey in particular. He hadn’t seen her drain one full cup of tea since the baby was born. Strange, as she used to really enjoy it.

  There was also no evidence that the procedure for missing items was being adhered to. Where were his birthday socks anyway? And so, to avoid total chaos, he was driven to making his last and final offer.

  If it failed, he would have to admit that he had failed
the marriage, failed his old dad’s ideals of making a marriage work, no matter what. The old Odette, that wild honeylicks, would be lost to him forever, down the dark canyon of motherhood, taking with her the only proof of his potency that he was ever likely to have.

  So much rested on it that he would steady himself with a shot of whisky, though he was not ordinarily a drinking man.

  The next Saturday night, after dinner, he stood up, cleared his throat and indeed made the offer to end all offers.

  ‘Every evening, after dinner, I will give you an hour in my office, alone, to get the documentation in order. I undertake to do this on a daily basis. I will take care of the baby during that time unless she needs her nappy changed.’

  Odette boylan

  An hour totally to herself, every night.

  The first night, she just dozed in the big padded desk chair, luxuriating in the peace. Wondering how the cards could have got it all so disastrously wrong.

  Back at Golden Tower, she had returned from the clinic to find Zac screaming obscenities into the phone. He had slammed it down, then started frantically packing.

  Blaming her next, saying all the stuff he had brought back from the studio was in his way. She hadn’t wanted him to bring it back – he had been jealous of the manager there, an ex from art school.

  Then he started raving about something that sounded like feed … what could have upset him so much? She hadn’t seen him so crazy since those last days with Cicely.

  Had he found out that she was pregnant?

  Was he running away from her?

  Didn’t he know that there was no way she was keeping this thing growing inside her? She was going to have it removed, the same as having a bad tooth out.

  Then he had picked up a book with a red leatherette cover and thrown it at her. She could always dodge him easily enough.

  It lay at her feet.

  The New Testament—Good News for Modern Man.

  It turned out that his elderly mother had just left the flat after a completely unexpected visit.

  She had been astonished to find that her son had been setting up house in the apartment she had just inherited, and had expected to find empty.

  The ailing great-aunt had changed her will at the last moment, but, as the mother had reassured her sulky son, he still had Nigeria, didn’t he? Out of Christian charity, she had delayed her own relocation, had given him a year to find somewhere else.

  And had left the little red book as a parting gift.

  It had been his mother’s lawyer on the receiving end of Zac’s tirade on the phone.

  Calling in the debt.

  Causing Zac to rant on to Odette about how it was not safe for him to stay in the country even another day.

  They would have to catch a flight to Nigeria that night, make his getaway before all his creditors closed in on him … and she realised that the word he had been screaming was not feed at all, but bleed. How women constantly bleed him dry …

  ‘You have to come with me,’ he had insisted, pressing her against the wall, caressing her desperately. His blue eyes had stared into hers, those blue eyes that she used to find so hypnotic.

  Once, she would have followed him.

  But ever since she had finished that terracotta bust, with the glazed blue eyes which had captured, after so much effort, the exact colour of his eyes, it had been as if she had drained his living eyes of their old power.

  She no longer understood the spell that they had once cast over her.

  In fact, she was relieved that he was catching the flight so soon, regretting not the loss of the free ticket he was offering her, but just that it meant they were going to miss the opening of the cabaret next weekend. The knife-throwing, the disappearing woman. How could he just abandon the act after so many rehearsals? She had grown to love it even more than he did. Every eye in the hall focussed on her.

  Their stunning costumes were ready – hers, a silver, sparkly swimsuit and his, red tights and a Japanese mask.

  ‘Don’t betray me like all the others,’ he had whispered, kissing her neck in that way she had once found irresistible. But his moustache had made her itch, and he was pulling at the chain around her neck so tightly that she felt she was choking … she pulled away from him, afraid of him for the first time, seeing him as, perhaps, Cicely had.

  And at that moment, the chain had broken.

  The little silver dagger had fallen to the floor.

  As for Odette, left behind in the flat to which she had no claim, she’d had to find a new place. All her adult life, her technique of dealing with problems had been to just move on to the next ceramic project, the next lover.

  But the torpor of early pregnancy had invaded her. Like a visit to the dentist, she had kept putting off going back to the clinic.

  She couldn’t concentrate on her work, nor on finding a flat. Wanted to sleep all day. Couldn’t even organise all her stuff from the studio that Zac had brought home. She missed that sweet manager, his gorgeous shock of dark hair, but he was far too young. She missed her studio – how had she ever let Zac persuade her to work from home?

  She had started looking for a way out of her current life, a way into other people’s lives, via toweroflove. So many sets of men, so many fish, so many toys … a blur of sleepy, deliriously sexy days.

  But Ricky had been the only one who still wanted her when she had told him that she was pregnant. He had even insisted on going with her to the clinic, though, not having really listened to what she had tried to tell him, he was assuming she was keeping the baby.

  By the time Ricky, with his sweet talk, had overcome her procrastination, Odette was already five months pregnant. Both Ricky and the doctor had told her that some babies were born alive and survived at that age. She still did not want this thing growing inside her. Nor could she kill it.

  She just wanted to crawl off into a cave.

  Ricky had been there.

  Had promised her that he would support her, that it would work out. He had proposed to her, even getting down on his knees. He was her knight in shining armour, even before she had drawn the Knight of Cups. He had promised her that he would be her whole world.

  If she moved interstate with him.

  If she forgot her old friends, her old life.

  She had never thought that he had really meant it. Literally. It was just a romantic thing that men said in the heat of passion. Getting on the plane to fly off with him, first-class, champagne all the way, the dream house he had told her about … it had not fallen apart until after she had had the baby.

  Now she was a prisoner in a tower. She was not even sure of her new address. He refused to have visitors to the house. There was a password block on email and a long-distance code-block on the phone. She did not know anyone in the local area. Anyone in the state, in fact.

  Now she was stuck. And exactly as she had always feared, if she stood still too long, the earthen walls closed in on her.

  Every night before she fell asleep, she mentally whispered Cicely’s name, praying desperately to the Virgin Mary, as she had not for years.

  After a few more nights of this delicious hour alone, she felt a little more energetic, but still had the old craving for hot tea. Uninterrupted. She couldn’t bring tea in there, as Ricky worried about food and drink near the computer keys. Cicely had told her about Russian samovars, always hot, and she wished she had one.

  She knew that she was supposed to be working on her Continuous Improvement sheets, but she had started wandering about the internet instead. She tried to get her email up, but it was still blocked. She tried toweroflove – so much had happened since those days – but the site no longer existed.

  She searched out sites like newmothers.com, teatime.com and murdertrial.com. Transcripts, court room observations, trial gossip from amateurs, all essential to enjoying this spectator sport.

  I look at the victims and the jury, I see his facial expressions and I know. He is guilty. I was three feet from h
im today and he was smiling proudly. He gave me the finger …

  No pretence here of unbiased reporting. They called the murderer Butch, short for butcher. Why was she fascinated by this account of the trial of a man accused of murdering his wife?

  There were a lot of sexier places she could go to, of course, but she didn’t follow the little pop-up screens that would take her there. She was no longer mad for sex in all its forms. One tiny human crawling all over her breasts was enough thank you. She had been spared a poke night since the baby had arrived, a welcome side effect. Would she ever feel like it again?

  Back at teatime.com, those ladies would have understood her giant striped tea cosy of bright pot scourers. It was so big she could hardly open the laundry door. She would like to show it to Cicely.

  Would they ever have tea together again?

  That day, Odette had actually almost finished a cup, but then the blowfly had brushed his wings against it. That big, slow blowfly really frazzled her.

  It had appeared on the first warm day after Toots had been born. Odette had been racing through another load of nappies and had managed half a cup before the baby woke up. This fly must have been born that day, and it had been with her ever since.

  It was silent, never buzzed, which should have been a point in its favour. But even this she held against it because it meant she forgot about it between its daily appearances and this gave rise to the false hope that it had grown old, at last, and passed on into a higher incarnation.

  She’d tried the slow hand technique. The theory was that flies saw everything in slow motion, so if you moved your hand with the flyswat really slowly, they couldn’t see you coming. Didn’t work. Neither did the normal quick swat. Weren’t flies supposed to live for only forty-eight hours? Didn’t they have this speeded up life cycle where they died after a million eggs? Odette grimaced. That many babies would speed up anyone’s life cycle. Her blowfly would be eternal by fly standards.