Hard Word (4 page)

This episode had really rattled Miriam. ‘Don't you understand?' she'd said to me, as if
I
was the one who had brought Mother here, and was now imprisoning her somehow against her will. ‘She could kill us all,' Miriam said – and I might have pressed the issue then. And maybe I should have. But I didn't.

Miriam tossed and turned for the rest of that night, listening, rigid with worry, and at dawn she went and slept in Laura's bed, carrying Katie in there with her. I have no idea what made her do that, but I knew if I asked, I'd simply be demonstrating the fact that I didn't understand her at all. So I didn't. Ask, that is.

But I did get an electrician in the next morning – to strip most of the electrical gear out of the flat, and install the alarm. So now, if Mother moves at night – if she comes into the main house where all the equipment is – at least we know. If the alarm goes off – and it's nothing loud, it's only a soft
beep
to wake Miriam and myself but not the girls upstairs – we don't necessarily do anything about it. We don't get up and rush about. We just lie there for a while and listen. We can usually tell, just by listening, exactly where she is and what she's doing, and if another
beep
comes soon after, which tells us she's gone back to the flat, we just roll over and go back to sleep. It's only if the second
beep
doesn't come within a few minutes that we get up. Or at least Miriam does. I've offered from time to time, but she won't let me. ‘A naked Greek coming on Mother in the middle of the night,' she said once, ‘we'd never hear the end of it.' ‘Don't be silly,' I said back, ‘by morning she'd never remember it'd happened.' ‘Oh, something like that she'd remember all right,' Miriam said. ‘It'd confirm everything she ever suspected.' ‘But she knows I'm not Greek,' I told her, ‘you know that. It's a bloody-minded game she plays, just to annoy me.' And are you?' Miriam said. Am I what?' I said. ‘Annoyed?' she said.

For the first week, the laser beam worked like a charm. The two nights she wandered, we woke, listened, rejoiced, slept.

‘She hasn't worked it out,' I said to Miriam. ‘She hasn't made any connection.'

And she hadn't, I'm sure. For that first week. But then, in the second week:
Beep
went the alarm, and we woke.
Beep
went the response, and we relaxed. Then:
Beep-beep. Beep-beep. Beep-beep. Beep-beep …

‘It's broken,' Miriam said.

‘It can't be.'

Beep-beep. Beep-beep. Beep-beep …

‘It is.'

‘I'll switch it off, then,' I said, heaving myself out of bed. ‘I'll have to get the electrician back in the morning.'

I found Mother standing in the open doorway between the family room and her flat, hands pressed against the sides of the doorway, swinging one leg back and forwards across the light beam.
Beep-beep. Beep-beep. Beep-beep …

‘Mother –'

‘Oh,' she snorted, looking up. ‘Plato,' she said. And kept swinging.

The alarm, we found, couldn't be switched off, or not by us without the risk of fusing everything else in the house. We lay, at first trying to read, and then in waking darkness, listening to this manic clockwork parrot that had apparently come to settle in the family room.
Beep-beep. Beep-beep. Beep-beep …

‘She'll get sick of it,' Miriam promised. Just as dawn was breaking.

And so this is the way we go on, compromising, adjusting, skirting around problems, around dangers. Miriam won't really face any of this. She won't even talk about a home, about institutional care. She says she'll give up teaching altogether and stay home herself before that happens. But if she's right, and her teaching
is
the only thing keeping her sane, what the fuck happens then? That's what I'd like to know.

Miriam

‘You didn't mind leaving early?' I say.

‘No,' Philip says. ‘No.'

He's driving carefully, worrying about breathalysers and speed traps.

‘It's just that Laura's got exams next week, and I didn't want her up all night. Besides, it wasn't such a great party anyway,' I say. Philip doesn't answer, just stares straight ahead through the windscreen. ‘Did you think? …'

There was nothing wrong with the party. Chic and sleaze, reasonably mixed, I enjoy just as much as the next person. It wasn't the party that was the problem, it was me. It has been me, I realize, for some months now. Longer. Two hours ago I'd stood in the upstairs bathroom of this ritzy house where the party was held – the bathroom was vast, tiled, glass-walled, spa'd – and looked into the mirror, into its green lights. I'm thirty-nine, I thought, haggard, bagged, past it. Old. I've got old – and boring. In a year I'll be forty. I'd knocked on the bathroom door before going in. I'd heard giggling from inside, and turned away. But –

‘Come in, honey,' a girl says to me from the half-open door, ‘come in.' There's another girl in there with her, cutting lines on the glass top of the cupboard below one of the mirrors. Her back is to me and, as I go in, she bends until her face is almost flat on the glass, and snorts. ‘Ahh –' she says then, and straightens quickly, both hands spread on the glass top, her head stretched back until her spine is a sprung bow.

‘Ah, Jesus,' she says, shaking her blonde head slowly. ‘Jesus, that's wild.'

‘We're just finished,' the first girl says. Looking at me. ‘You're gorgeous, honey,' she says. ‘You must know that?'

The two of them burst into giggles again, and I try to smile back. And know my face has frozen. And that's when I feel it. Old. These girls are nineteen, half my age. And only five years older than Laura. Or fifteen years older, I hope, as the first girl, still giggling, but unfocused, way out of it, bends forward and kisses me on the lips. I kiss back, briefly, out of friendship, to show I understand. To show I know where she is, that I've been there myself. Once upon a time. Before all this ugliness and age and haggardness set in. This endless stretching just to hold things together. I kiss back, just in fun. To show her that. And find her tongue, fat and grainy, and tasting of whisky, and something else, filling my mouth.

‘Ohh –' I say, and gently take her hand from my breast.

She looks at me, head cocked, still smiling but seriously now, as if appraising. Me, or maybe herself.

In the centre of her palm, right where she'd cupped my breast, the crude naked figure of a woman is tattooed in blue. When the girl stretches the skin of her palm, the legs on the figure part. My own nipples, I find, are already hard.

‘I – uh – need to go,' I say then, indicating the toilet bowl. And stand, old and ugly.

‘Honey,' she says, ‘you don't know what you've got.'

They go out, hand in hand, giggling together. And that's when I stand and look into the green lights of the mirror. Till someone else knocks, and I let them in and go out in the end without going at all.

‘I thought it was okay,' Philip says on the drive home. As parties go.'

‘I guess I just wasn't in the mood,' I say. Again he is silent, just letting the words
not in the mood
create their own echo between us. ‘I could have got a taxi,' I say. ‘Or you could.'

‘I suppose.'

‘If you'd wanted to stay.'

‘Yes,' he says, driving on.

‘Did you?' I say.

‘Did I what?'

‘Want to?'

We'd got to the party late. There'd been a … misunderstanding between Mother and Katie about whose turn it was to have Yogi on their bed for the night.

‘Well, where is the blessed cat now?' I'd said.

‘Grandma Vera's hidden him,' Katie said. ‘She's mean. She knows it's my turn. She just pretends she's forgotten, she never forgets when it's her turn. I hate her.'

‘Katie, please.'

‘Well, I do.'

‘I know you're upset.'

‘She never takes it in turns.'

‘You've got to learn to make allowances. We've talked about this –'

‘Why do I? Why do we have to all the time?'

I hadn't seen Katie as upset as this for a long time. ‘It's just not fair,' she kept saying. ‘She's mean and she's horrid, and she smells –'

‘Katie, that's quite enough,' I said.

‘But –'

‘Enough!' I said again. ‘Do you hear me?' And found myself shouting. And Katie looking at me, cheeks wet, but cowed now. I hated seeing her like that. ‘Look, darling,' I said, ‘we'll see if we can't get Grandma Vera to share. You have Yogi till you go to sleep, and then she can have him later on. Would that be okay?'

She nodded. No, her face said, it wouldn't be okay. It wasn't fair. But for me she'd do it, her face said.

‘Thank you, sweetheart,' I said, aware of Philip pacing in the next room. This party was mostly for him. Philip and one of the partners in his firm had won a huge defamation case in the Supreme Court. This was his night. ‘I'll make it up to you tomorrow,' I told Katie.

‘Can I have Yogi for two nights?'

‘We'll see. Where is he now?'

‘In Grandma's room.'

‘Come on, darling,' Philip said from the doorway behind me. ‘Come on.'

‘Just give me a minute, will you?'

‘A minute?' he said, looking at his watch.

Katie led me down the corridor to Mother's rooms. She'd rubbed the tears from her face, and was marching now, her tiny body swollen with righteousness.

‘Mother?' I said, looking into the small sitting room where she sat, in a deep chair, arms folded over her stomach, watching TV. ‘Have you got Yogi in here?'

‘Yogi,' she said.

She didn't look away from the screen, merely pursed her lips in that way I knew so well and moved her head, slowly, stubbornly, from side to side.

‘Are you sure?'

Then up and down.

‘Well, where is he?' I said.

Her shoulders shot up, and it must have been this which produced the soft yowl of protest from beneath her cardigan.

‘Can we please go now?' said Philip who'd followed us.

I hate being the last to arrive at a party, getting there when everyone else is already liquored up, or stoned, and flying. You have this feeling you'll never catch up, and you rarely do.

‘He'll take silk, that young man of yours,' Justice Fletcher said as soon as we got in the door. ‘In two years,' he said, ‘three at most.' And, to show that I was grown-up, and willing to enter into the spirit of things, to let everything else go for a while and not be a spoil-sport, a party-pooper for once for Christ's sake, I left the claim of Justice Fletcher's hand linger for a moment where it had fallen, on my bare shoulder. He was standing just inside the hallway, greeting everyone as they arrived, as though he was the host and not just another guest, like us. As though it was his night, not Philip's or anyone else's. Giving all the wives and girlfriends a welcoming, presumptive feel – just in case. ‘Three years,' he said again to me, as though he was dispensing the prizes personally.

I ducked my head in appreciation, and smiled past him at Philip. Who was pleased, and smiled back. But nervously, I thought. Like a prospective son-in-law.
Taking silk
was part of a private, joking bedroom language between Philip and myself. Justice Fletcher saw the look that passed between us, and squeezed my shoulder once, lightly – just to make it seem he was in on the joke. I took my chance, then, and moved away. Later, in the kitchen, I saw him propositioning Amanda, the Aboriginal wife of one of Philip's colleagues.
Taking velvet,
I thought – that's what he must have meant. My own mind, I realized as I found myself thinking this, was no better than Justice Fletcher's. Amanda caught my eye. She winked at me over Fletcher's shoulder, and I was able to grin back. Just.

Ease up, I kept saying to myself, let go. Greeting, but barely able to take in what people were saying to me. What's wrong with you?

I went outside to get some air. People were stretched out on the lawn at the back of the house, or lounging about the pool, drinks in their hands. Tony Ryle, a work friend of Philip's, offered to roll me a joint.

‘Oh,' I said. And my face must have showed.

‘What,' he laughed, ‘you disapprove, or something?'

‘No, of course not, Tony,' I said. Nor did I. And the setting was perfect, the early summer air soft and already filled with jasmine and frangipani. A couple – the girl in white – were lying upright, kissing and fondling one another, between the legs of a giant fig at the bottom of the yard. The leaves over their heads were black and shiny in the lights gleaming off the pool. Behind us, the house glowed in subdued light, like a luxury ocean liner, John Lee Hooker bluesing away softly from an upper deck. ‘Of course I don't disapprove,' I said again. ‘It's just –'

‘Just what?'

‘Well, you know,' I said. Hearing myself age, even as I said it. ‘The kids are at home, and they're babysitting.'

‘They're at home and
they're
babysitting?'

‘Yes,' I said. Not intending to explain. ‘But if something happened,' I said, ‘and I needed to go quickly –'

‘Oh,' he said, already bored, and looking around. ‘I see.'

‘Philip,' I say, as we drive across the bridge, ‘I'm sorry. I know you wanted to stay.'

‘That's okay,' he says, and looks at me for the first time since we got in the car. ‘Miriam, it's okay.'

‘Let's go parking,' I say then.

‘What –?' he says.

‘How long is it,' I say, looking at Philip, the neatness of his head, the boyishness of his body in the car beside me, ‘since we last went parking?'

‘I thought you were the one who was keen to get home,' he says, barely slowing.

‘Yes,' I say. And, listening to him, the impulse is already gone. In the fog lights of the bridge I see myself, just for one second, reflected greenishly in the windscreen. I remember the mirror in that bathroom, my nipples hardening against the cloth of my dress. It is the only young thing about me.

At home, everything is quiet. Laura and Katie are in their rooms, both asleep. I kiss them, take the books from their hands, switch off their lamps, Laura's radio, and go to check on Mother. She too is sleeping or pretending to. Later she'll rise, wander through these rooms, ours. Hopefully no further. She can no longer manage the double deadlocks on the front and back doors. For the moment, though, her face is a blank. There is no intention, no motion or expression on it at all. It is as though all the years of her life have somehow been wiped clean. Even her skin has become smooth, has unwrinkled itself. In the nightlight, which does not quite reach her hair, she might be a child. My third. Another girl. As I watch, she stirs – or something does beneath the sheets. Then settles again, with a soft sigh or purr. Yogi, I remember. ‘Goodnight, Mother,' I say from the doorway. Just in case.

In our own room, Philip, already in bed, is still closed, resistant. Hurt.

‘Darling?' I say, touching him, then – as he pretends not to respond – swinging one leg across him, straddling him. But listening, too, as I've become used to doing. I'm seventeen again, with a boy in my room for the first time, listening for my mother. Who steps quietly about the house. At all hours. Who doesn't knock. What if she were to wander in here now, my arse in the air? Let go, I tell myself yet again, let go. You're thirty-nine. You're married, this is Philip, your husband, you're not seventeen. This is your own house for Christ's sake, not hers. Let go, let go.

‘Darling?' I say again, rolling over and pulling him on top of me. Pulling the sheet up to cover his naked back at the same time.

Honey,
the girl in the bathroom had said,
you don't know what you've lost.

‘Miriam –' Philip says, at some point, in
that
voice, and – since it's his night – I shut my eyes. To him, and to myself. And fake it.

‘Ahh –'

He is pleased. The night changes. Tomorrow, I remember thinking, will be better.