Well-behaved Women

by Emily Paull

  As they rattled by terracotta houses, Grace found herself touching the sides of her nose. She’d had to dress in a hurry that morning, and hadn’t had time to wash her face or put makeup on. Marc giggled and copied her. Each of his nubbly teeth was the size of a piece of corn.

  ‘Don’t pick your nose,’ snapped Joana, slapping his hand.

  Marc scowled at her and shoved his hand into the pocket of his corduroys. Feeling guilty, Grace sat on her hands.

  They got off at the platform in La Floresta. Sofia was waiting for them, wearing a skirt that looked like an aerial picture of farmland. She pushed herself up off the low wall she’d been sitting on and held her arms open for Joana.

  ‘Sweetheart,’ she said, kissing Joana on her left cheek and then her right. ‘I said I would come get you.’

  Joana shrugged. ‘It’s just easier if we take the train, Ma.’

  Sofia shook her head. ‘Impossible girl!’ She turned to Grace, cupping her niece’s cheek in a freezing hand. ‘You look tired, Gracie.’

  On the ground, standing between the adults, Marc looked up, his neck on a near ninety-degree angle.

  ‘Avia!’ he said, offering his grandmother a shoelace in one fat, dirty fist. ‘Mira!’

  Sofia smiled and took the shoelace from him, cooing to him in rapid Catalan. He grinned and held onto a handful of her skirt. Watching them walk on together, Grace pressed both her hands over the cold hollow portion of her chest, over her heart.

  At Sofia’s house, on the side of a hill in a sort of permanent shanty town, they made tea in a ceramic pot and sat outside at a table made from an old door. While Marc played in the woodchips in the garden, the women sat talking.

  ‘So, Gracie. Your mother never say exactly what it is you do.’

  Grace wrinkled her nose. Of course, Laura hadn’t said. ‘I’m a student, Tia. I go to university.’

  Next to her, one leg arched neatly across the other, Joana tossed her hair over her shoulder. ‘She knows that. She means, what do you study?’

  Grace’s cheeks warmed. Something in Joana’s tone always made her feel as if she should apologise. She swallowed.

  ‘Media studies,’ she said, filling her mouth with tea.

  ‘Eh? What is media studies?’ Sofia looked from Grace to Joana.

  Putting her cup on the table, Grace leaned towards her aunt to explain. ‘Well, it’s like … I study some journalism, you know, and sometimes we study movies, things like that. It’s really very fascinating.’ Sofia smiled, her cheeks obscuring her eyes. ‘Oh, so Gracie, one day we see you on the news, reading the headlines, yes?’

  A stabbing pain gripped Grace’s heart, and she pretended to laugh to cover the shock. She glanced over at Joana, who was sitting with her arms folded.

  Joana looked up. ‘What?’ she asked. ‘What are you looking at, Grace?’

  Sofia’s jaw tensed. ‘Joana, that’s not called for …’

  ‘Don’t act like she’s a guest, Ma! God, I am so sick of this. As if I don’t have enough to do already, between work and Marc and finding five minutes to make sure we eat.’

  The corners of Grace’s eyes warmed with tears. ‘I’m sorry, Joana, if I’ve put you out in any way …’

  ‘Do you have to talk like that all the time? Anyone can tell it’s not your voice! You talk like you’re above everyone and everything here, but it just makes you sound frigid! Is that why you fuck old men, Grace? Is it because he’s a professor, or because he can’t get it up, so you don’t have to put out?’

  Sofia stood up, knocking her cup over. Tea spread all over the table, a black flood.

  ‘Joana Torres, you apologise!’

  ‘You apologise, Ma! You never think about what I want! I can’t stand it.’

  Their raised voices echoed around the valley. Grace wanted to thrust her palms over her ears and press until the words were gone. She looked to where Marc had been playing, but there was no sign of him. The back door of the house wavered in the wind.

  Sofia shook with rage. Her arm was tensed in the air, as if she were going to strike her daughter. ‘You should leave, Joana.’

  ‘Are you throwing me out? Again?’

  ‘You don’t speak like that in my house.’

  ‘You never take my side!’

  Sofia opened her palm. ‘Walk away now, Joana.’

  Joana snatched up her bag without breaking eye contact with her mother. Their anger was like the pull between magnets, sticking to Grace’s skin and making her hair stand up.

  As Joana disappeared into the house, the energy keeping Sofia up dissipated, and she dropped into her chair with shoulders rounded.

  ‘She’s been like that the whole time?’

  Grace wiped her nose on her sleeve. ‘There have been some words.’

  Taking a deep breath, Sofia nodded. ‘Words. I see.’

  The older woman got up from her chair and started to mop at the table with a napkin. She gathered up the tea-cups as she went, hanging them over her fingers. She went to pick up the teapot, then hesitated. Crockery still in hand, she wrapped Grace in a warm hug and kissed her hair.

  ‘Joana’s not a bad person, Gracie. I thought you two would be good for each other. You both need a friend.’ Grace felt tears running down the sides of her nose before she even knew she’d begun to cry. If Joana’s not the bad person, am I? she wondered. She breathed in deeply the scent of her aunt’s talc perfume, but it didn’t help.

  ‘I need to go home,’ she said.

  Grace’s fingers froze as she inserted coins into the slot. She’d found a payphone across the road from the McDonald’s around the corner from the station. As the call connected, she watched the people walking past. A couple stopped to kiss beside the fountain in the Plaça, as it lit up against the night.

  Then, he picked up.

  His voice was rigid, awake and businesslike, even though it was midnight there. She’d expected to feel instantly comforted just hearing his voice again. Instead, it was like a door had slammed in her face.

  ‘It’s me,’ she said.

  ‘I’m sorry, who’s calling please?’

  She cupped her hand around the receiver to catch her voice—as if any of the passers-by cared what she was talking about, or with whom.

  ‘It’s Grace, Stephen.’

  He coughed. ‘Now’s not a good time.’

  There was a popping sound. The echo on the line widened. ‘Stephen, sweetheart. You said you were marking. No distractions.’

  ‘Ten minutes, Marina.’

  There was a click, and the other person was gone again.

  Grace let out the breath she’d been holding. Why had she been so ashamed? Why had hearing that voice made her feel like a six-year-old?

  ‘Who was that?’ she asked.

  There was a pause.

  ‘Is that your new girlfriend?’ she continued.

  Stephen cleared his throat. ‘No, actually. Marina’s my wife.’

  Grace stumbled, hitting her head on the Perspex divider.

  ‘Your wife,’ she said, a bubble forming around the words. Her cries came without sound at first, and then turned to painful gasps.

  Stephen waited for her to finish. ‘Grace, I hope you’re not making a scene.’

  ‘Were you ever going to tell me?’

  ‘We can talk about this later. Are you coming home?’

  The operator cut in. ‘To continue your call, please insert one euro,’ she said in Catalan, then in Spanish, and then in English.

  Grace fumbled with her purse and forced a coin into the slot.

  ‘Hello?’ Stephen was saying. ‘Hello? Are you still there?’

  ‘I’m here.’

  ‘Come and see me at the beach house when you get home, my darling. Marina never mattered to you there.’

  ‘Did she matter to you?’

  ‘You both matter to me. I love you both for different reasons. I don’t believe that there is just one soulmate for any one person.’

  ‘So, you need h
er for companionship, and me for what, Stephen? For sex?’

  She was shouting and punctuating her words by hitting the sides of the phone booth, imagining they were having this discussion face-to-face. If not for the distance, she knew that he would have taken her by the wrists as she went to hurt him, to try to calm her down. And she knew that they would have ended up in his bed. And she knew that in the morning, she would have hated herself.

  ‘You’re acting childish,’ he said.

  A few stunned locals had stopped to stare. It was more than she could take. She threw the phone at its cradle and ran from the booth.

  Grace ran all the way back to Joana’s. At the apartment, she shut herself in the bathroom, ran the bathwater hot and sat in it until she was cold again. Then she got out and wrapped herself in a towel. Sitting on the closed toilet lid, she cried.

  She’d been there a while before Joana pushed the door open gently, Marc nestled on one hip with his head against her shoulder and thumb in his mouth.

  ‘Are you sick?’ Joana whispered.

  Grace looked up at her. ‘He has a wife.’ The colour left Joana’s cheeks. She put Marc down. He stared at Grace for a moment and then sprinted from the room. Joana wrapped a stiff arm around Grace’s shoulders and helped her up. Together, they shuffled to the bedroom.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Grace, climbing under the covers. Her eyes were swollen and half-closed. ‘You hated me a few hours ago. What’s changed?’

  The bottom of Joana’s boots scuffed as she crossed the room.

  ‘I’ve had this sickness too,’ she said, turning off the light.

  * * *

  Grace stayed in bed until the room smelled of summer houses left dormant in winter, hospital rooms and the gasp of dead air from an op-shop suit. Then she forced herself to move to the living room couch. The weight of stale air clung to her clothes, hair and skin. She wrapped herself in a tartan throw rug and flicked through the channels on TV, alternating between video clips and the Spanish Disney Channel.

  In the kitchen, Joana made coffee, and the apartment filled with the burnt toast smell of freshly roasted beans. The television babbled, water purred and spoons clinked. But no-one spoke.

  At the end of the week, Sofia arrived unannounced. Her long dress whispered against the hallway skirting board as she bustled inside. She wore an orange and yellow scarf, and her lips were painted a fresh-bruise purple. It was the only time Grace had ever seen her wear makeup.

  Sofia sat on the coffee table between Grace and the TV. She held Grace’s chin in one hand. ‘No man is worth your health, Gracie. You look like a drug addict.’

  Grace stared at her out of dry sunken eyes and licked her lips.

  ‘You must go out into the city!’ Sofia cried. Then, whispering with great difficulty, she added, ‘Even Joana, she worries.’

  Grace shook her face free and sighed. She reached past her aunt for the remote and switched the television off for the first time in days. Her ears rang in the silence. Pulling herself into a sitting position on the couch, she drew her knees up to her chest.

  ‘Not today, Tia Sofia.’

  ‘Why not today?’ Sofia got up, her bosom leading. ‘Have you look outside lately? It’s beautiful!’

  Grace just scratched her head.

  ‘You going to let this man ruin maybe the only chance you get to see Barcelona with me, Gracie?’

  ‘I—’

  ‘No, no. It’s fine. That your choice. But listen carefully to me. Your lover has a wife. He has been unfaithful. You Australians, you have no passion, so maybe it okay to do nothing. But do you know what I would do? What a true Barcelonian would do? I would scream at him until his balls climb into his chest for safety. And then I would go on to do something amazing just so he can spend his life miserable because he lost me. Because no man misses the girl who sleeps on the couch all day.’

  Grace looked at her aunt, and for a moment, she thought she was seeing Joana. There was a fullness to the lips, a squareness in the way she held her shoulders. Grace laughed, and tears spilled out of her eyes. She wiped them on the tartan rug. Her aunt opened her arms wide, and Grace fell into them, sealing herself in a talcum-scented hug.

  ‘You gonna be okay, baby,’ Sofia said, rubbing her niece’s back. ‘But you gotta get mad.’

  * * *

  As the four of them walked block by block through the city, Grace looked at the buildings. If Barcelona were a human figure, she decided, it would be a person in mismatched clothes. From the waist up, everything was Gothic—a Victorian city. From the waist down, there was commerce, gridlock and construction.

  They ate lunch in the park, on a blanket near the fountain. Marc fidgeted, torn between wanting to chase ducks and stuffing bread covered in garlic and tomato into his mouth. Sofia hooked one finger through the loop on his overalls to stop him running away, and he scowled at her. She spoke to him gently in Catalan, and he sat down again, folding his arms and throwing his food on the floor.

  Joana and Sofia argued busily, or talked animatedly— Grace could never tell when they switched languages. She picked at the food on her plate, a bread and bean salad. It was good, but she couldn’t eat. After days of not eating, her stomach seemed to have vacuum-sealed itself. She put her plate on the ground in front of her and pushed the beans into patterns with her fork. Stephen would have hated it, she thought. He hated kidney beans.

  Freed from his grandmother, Marc got up and toddled over to Grace. He stood in front of her and looked down.

  ‘Aigua,’ he said.

  Grace looked at him. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t …’ She looked at Sofia and Joana. ‘What does he want?’

  ‘Aigua is water,’ said Sofia. ‘Maybe he’s thirsty.’

  Joana rolled her eyes and picked up her water bottle.

  ‘Here,’ she said, holding it out.

  Grace took it and held it for Marc. He shook his head.

  ‘Aigua!’ he wailed.

  She pleaded with him with her eyes. ‘I don’t know what you want, Marc.’

  His bottom lip jutted out, and he toddled away from Grace. She looked at her plate for only a second, but when she looked up again, he was gone.

  ‘Where is Marc?’ Joana cried. As she got up off the rug, pasta salad went everywhere.

  ‘Don’t panic,’ said Sofia. ‘He can’t be far.’ Grace scanned the park with her eyes. Finally, a flash of denim, around knee-high.

  ‘There he is!’ she said, pointing. Between the legs of park-goers, his little feet were just visible.

  ‘Ah, no! He’s heading for the fountain!’ Joana took off after Marc, but the heels on her boots made it hard for her to run.

  Grace jumped up and ran after them. In sneakers, she outpaced them easily, though her chest burned with exertion.

  ‘Marc!’ she cried. ‘Stop!’

  Just as he reached the edge of the fountain, she caught him, scooping him up in both arms. He squealed with delight, thinking it was a game.

  ‘Aigua, aigua!’ he cried.

  Catching her breath, Grace bowed her head against his stomach and squeezed him tight.

  ‘You scared me, baby!’ cried Joana. She took Marc from Grace and kissed her little boy all over, but Marc was still looking at Grace. ‘The fountain is his favourite place. He must have wanted you to see it.’

  Grace looked at the fountain properly for the first time. In the centre was a trio of arches with a golden chariot and marble statues. Greenery grew on all the stones. The water fell from spouts and then trickled down some dragon-guarded stairs. It was like something out of a fairy tale. In the centre of the biggest arch, Venus stood alone in an open clam, her arms open to embrace the day.

  A warm feeling filled Grace. ‘Thank you, Marc,’ she said.

  * * *

  Laura phoned early Sunday morning—in Perth, it was the afternoon. Joana brought the cordless phone into the bedroom for Grace and handed it to her, mouthing, ‘Your mother.’ Marc had snuck in after her. He climbed onto
the bed and tucked his legs under the blanket. Then he leaned towards Grace to listen. His tongue peeked out between his lips.

  ‘Hello?’ Laura said, a note of urgency in her voice.

  ‘Hi, Mum.’

  ‘I hear you’ve broken up with that old man.’

  Grace rolled her eyes and looked at Marc. He bared his teeth. ‘Yes, Mum.’

  Marc reached for Grace’s hair. His blunt square nails caught and snagged in the overnight tangles. Grace tickled him under the chin. He squirmed and screwed up his face, issuing a sound that was half-giggle, half-gasp.

  ‘And you’ve come to your senses?’ Laura continued.

  Grace sighed and let her hand fall to the bed. ‘What does that mean, exactly?’

  Her mother was silent for a second. ‘Who’s there with you?’

  ‘Marc, Mum. Joana’s boy.’

  ‘You mean the child she had with that tourist? Have I ever told you that story, darling? It’s horrible.’

  Marc stood up, wobbling, and leaned on the headboard to reach for Grace’s ponytail. She breathed in his scent—soap and spices. There was nothing horrible about him.

  ‘He’s Joana and Sofia’s boy, Mum. You’d know if you’d met him.’

  ‘Yes … well … I just hope you never end up like that.’

  Marc pulled the elastic from Grace’s hair and held it out for a moment like a trophy. Then, he stretched his hands behind his head and tried to tie it into his own short hair.

  ‘I don’t think ending up like Joana would be so bad.’ Grace could only hear a series of crackles at the other end of the line. ‘Mum?’

  ‘You need to come home now, Grace. You’ve been there too long.’

  ‘No thanks, Mum. I’m going to stay.’

  ‘But, Grace—’

  ‘We’ll talk later, okay? Bye.’

  Grace hung up the phone and put it down on the mattress. She lifted Marc onto her lap and took the elastic from him. His hair was baby soft, like silk; she finger-combed it into a neat little ponytail. He turned to her, patting the back of his head and smiling.

  ‘Tia!’ he said. And Grace kissed him on the nose.