Pursuing Love and Death, page 12
‘It is normal, Kate. We love each other. What’s stupid about that?’
‘Everything,’ she said, giving up on the volcanic eruption. It wasn’t really her thing. Kate lay on the pillow next to him and ran her fingers through his bed-hair. ‘Ginsberg, don’t do this to me. Not now.’
He brushed her hand away, eyes still on the telly, and told her in the most practical way, ‘I’m sorry, Kate,’ but he wasn’t sorry. He was a spoiled teenaged child who knew he didn’t have to budge because his mother (Kate) would always love him and always accept him, even during one of his moods.
Kate knew that she wouldn’t win today. Would she ever win? She jumped up, not willing to be like Velma, unwilling to accept him and let the lava flow. ‘Don’t say sorry, just get out of the fucking bed and take me to the tram so we can go to the fucking beach and still get back in time to go to the fucking dinner tonight!’
Don’t worry, son, Ginsberg communicated to his unborn baby, your mother is just tired, she doesn’t mean to say all those bad words. He knew, from years of his mother blaming her menstrual cycle for raging blow-ups, that anger and hormones didn’t mix well and, right now, it was obvious Kate had a gutful of both. In his mind, that’s what the trigger was; not his gloomy mood.
‘Kate –’ he said, exasperated.
‘Don’t!’
A woman on the telly was cooking up a lovely quiche for the hosts and one lucky member of the audience. Ginsberg’s eyes momentarily moved to his wife but then settled back on the woman. ‘Just let me skip the dinner and I’ll be right for the wedding. I promise. I’ll make you proud.’ He lacked emotion. He wasn’t even whingeing. He was monotone.
‘Ginsberg!’ She was incredulous. His commitment to her had to be questioned each time he backed out of introducing her to important people. It was bad enough when an old friend from his uni days had planned to catch up with him after being away in China for eight years and Ginsberg rang him the night before he was due at their flat to explain that an emergency had happened: ‘My dog’s been hit by a car.’ They didn’t even have a dog.
‘Am I so awful you have to lie?’ she had asked, sheepishly making her presence known after Ginsberg had hung up the phone. But she did not cry. It was the sort of thing she had always prepared herself for.
Ginsberg had looked down at his feet, ashamed of feeling ashamed, and afraid of feeling afraid. How to explain this one?
‘It’s not you, Kate. It’s me.’ Ridiculous. That one never worked. ‘Look, you’re beautiful. Everyone would love you. I just can’t be bothered explaining it all. All those questions and answers. All those words. I don’t want to go there. Not yet.’ He walked over to where she stood in the entrance to the living room and hugged her, reassuring them both. ‘How would anybody understand us?’ he asked.
‘I don’t even understand us,’ she said, body limp, unable to resist his comfort.
‘Don’t say that,’ and he caressed her hair, so soft and addictive; he found he could not stop. The effect was soothing and Kate pulled away to look at him.
‘You do still love me?’
‘More than I can comprehend.’
That time she’d put her arms around his neck and hugged back, whispering into his shoulder, ‘Good, ’cause we’re married.’ But this time was different. Could Ginsberg muster up the energy to soothe her fears yet again? Indeed, could he even raise himself to a sitting position to give it a go? Kate waited. It didn’t appear so.
‘Well I’m not staying here and holding your hand while you mope and smoke a pack of cigarettes and feel all confused.’ She was a heady mix of sulk and serious antagonism.
‘You’re going to the beach?’
‘And the fucking dinner! I’ve got an awesome dress and I’m going to wear it!’ She got off the bed. She wanted to walk defiantly from the room just then but there was nowhere to go, except the bathroom, and that didn’t seem right. She could have walked out the hotel door in extraordinary dramatic style, but she didn’t have her shoes or her purse.
‘You’re going to have to pass on some messages,’ Ginsberg said, returning to his spaced-out monotone and TV stare. ‘From my dad and Uncle Smitty. They’re not going tonight either.’
‘Messages,’ she scoffed. ‘You’re all cowards.’
And Ginsberg had never thought himself at all similar to either his father or his uncle. Am I like them? His father’s distance and his uncle’s hermit-like existence; more than he cared to analyse.
With her hand on the doorknob, Kate turned to her husband. ‘Just remember, I’ve already left a family. You’re what I’ve got. You’re my family. Don’t make me leave another one.’
Ginsberg was too engulfed in his own ethereal disposition to fully comprehend what Kate was implying. He stared at her, trying to work it out. Much in the same way a person who had taken some serious drugs might try to work out what an alien was saying.
‘And I’m telling them you’re not coming because you’ve got diarrhoea.’
With the slam of the door, Ginsberg snuck in a smile: That’s my Kate.
EARTHBOUND HALOES
The city to Glenelg tram had been extended since she’d last been in Adelaide and Velma felt it an affront that Adelaide would change without her knowing it. She used to ride the tram weekly, for a quiet swim at the beach. On this day Tessa sat next to her, swimsuited beneath a wraparound dress and happy to have won their earlier minor debate about where to catch the tram.
Early that morning her friend had entered her guestroom with a cuppa for Velma. ‘We’ll have a splash then go to the Grand for a glass of white wine. Just us girls,’ she’d told her, determined to spend some one-onone time with her outside of the house before she headed back to Melbourne.
‘That sounds lovely, Tessa, really, but I just feel a bit … heavy. In the soul.’ Velma was in her baby-blue satin bathrobe, fanning herself with an IKEA brochure, and though she loved Tessa more than most people she knew, her mind was on family. She anticipated retrospection and introspection and knew that had to mean solitude.
Tessa looked doubtfully at her friend. ‘Then we’re definitely going.’
The two friends sat side by side on the tram, which had been modernised significantly over the years. Velma missed the traditional feel of the old version, decided she wasn’t one for change.
‘So is there anyone special at the moment?’
‘You mean am I sleeping with anyone?’
The teenaged girl next to them glanced up at the two women who were old enough to be her grandmothers, and quickly returned her eyes to her gossip magazine. Velma winked at Tessa and Tessa snickered, squeezing her friend’s hand with an old and comfortable intimacy.
Velma continued, pleased with the volume of her voice and her claim to this route – if not the tram – because it was her old territory passing smoothly behind the window. She was unashamed and cheeky. ‘His name is Stef and he’s a forty-two-year-old painter.’
The two women nearly doubled over in hysterics.
‘I think I might have weed my pants,’ Tessa whispered, wiping tears of laughter from her eyes, and this made the women laugh even more.
‘He plays the didgeridoo and he has dreadlocks.’
‘Velma!’ Tessa still whispered and laughed. ‘Can you believe it?’
‘No,’ Velma said, smile fading as she looked out the window of the tram and identified with certain houses that had always been her favourites: quaint cottages that reminded her of the first place she and Graham had shared. ‘And he will leave me very soon.’
‘Well, you can’t expect that to be anything more than a fling? A wondrous affair?’
‘Yes, I know.’ In Velma’s peripheral vision was her own reflection in the window of the tram and she hardly recognised it. ‘He’ll probably be gone when I get back.’
‘Why do you think that? Shall we get off here and walk a bit?’ Tessa was keenly aware of the glorious day and intuitive to her friend’s needs.
‘That sounds lovely.’
The day was perfect, early autumn in Adelaide. The sea breeze stimulated their nostrils and strengthened their lungs. The small sweat on Velma’s brow and below her breasts was invigorating, when usually it was vexing.
‘It’s ridiculous, I know, but I’ve fallen in love with him and he says he loves me too and just because of that, I know he’ll leave me and I’ll be devastated.’
‘That’s an awful way to look at it.’ On Jetty Road, the footpath was busy with bodies, bicycles chained to poles, chairs and tables, dogs on leads. ‘Oh, I love this boutique. Let’s go in.’
The shop was crammed with one-offs, from feminine frills to flared linen pants with embroidery down the side. It had Velma written all over it.
‘But he’s a boy!’ Tessa was still hysterically aghast.
‘Yes, he really is. When did this shop open?’ Velma felt affronted again. Had she been away from Glenelg for so very long?
‘Look at this scarf, Velma,’ Tessa said, distracted, fingering the silk material, baby-blue and rose–coloured, with tiny beaded tassels.
‘Oh my,’ Velma said, her hand to her heart. ‘This is Luna’s,’ she declared breathlessly. ‘She must have this for her wedding day.’
The water was cold and they raised their shoulders higher the deeper they got, until finally they dove under and instinctively raced one another, freestyle. This wasn’t an unusual occurrence for the two friends. In fact it had happened regularly for the past twenty-nine years.
Velma and Tessa had met as swimming instructors at Henley Beach. Velma was thirty-one and a single mother of two, in it for the ease of the summertime hours, the excuse to get away from her own children, to do something for herself. She didn’t need the money, but the extra exercise was something she obsessed over, never having come to terms with a post-baby body. And before she signed up to help children learn how not to drown in ocean waves, she had convinced herself this had nothing to do with either the drowning of her Papa Frankson or with her father’s love of the sea.
Tessa was twenty-seven. She had recently married Tim and found she was infertile. She was surrounding herself with children in most aspects of her life, for example by becoming a swimming instructor. The two became the best of friends and now they were the oldest of friends.
The women bobbed and gulped for air with streamlined steadiness. They were out-of-touch professionals, yet swimming was like riding a bike. Tessa was approximately three strokes ahead of Velma when she dropped in the shallows and rested like a seal, her wrists and the buoyancy of salt water supporting her weight. Velma pulled up next to her and did the same. They breathed heavily and sighed multiple that-was-good sighs. Or were they more that-was-crazy? Velma decided it was both and allowed a fine mixture of pleasure and pain to take hold of her face. ‘Whoa!’ she cried out. ‘Remind me not to do that again.’
‘I’ll remind you after the next time we do it.’
‘Then we’d better make it soon because I’m not so sure how long it will be before I drown in this ocean.’ Inside she winced.
‘Rubbish.’
‘I know.’
The beach was relatively quiet for Glenelg. A Thursday, after all. Velma and Tessa lazed in the water, the sun sparkling with life and vim. Matter-of-factly, Velma said to her dear old friend, ‘I’m scared, Tessa.’
The two women awkwardly plopped onto their blankets and let the sun dry their skin and hair.
‘Luna left you ages ago; what are you talking about?’
How was Velma to explain this to Tessa, who talked on the phone to her twenty-eight-year-old adopted daughter almost daily and was in the habit of babysitting George, her three-year-old grandson, every Wednesday and Thursday?
‘But that was only physically. Now she’ll leave me emotionally, even more than she did when she refused to come to Melbourne with us.’ Velma was in a panic. ‘What if Mark doesn’t like me? Will she cut me out of her life completely for once and for all?’
‘Velma, I think you’re losing perspective. You are that girl’s mother. That doesn’t change.’
‘But what is a mother? Once they can wipe their own bottoms and get their own cereal and begin to make decisions for themselves, is a mother so important?’
‘What is a mother? That’s like asking, what is a woman? It’s impossible to answer in generic terms. You know what a mother is. Don’t be so melodramatic, darling. What’s this really about?’
‘I knew this day would come,’ and now the tears began to flow, stinging her eyes in the corners, where salt and suncream had collected. ‘It’s like she’s fourteen all over again.’ Velma wiped her face and remained looking towards the horizon. ‘Everybody leaves eventually.’
She allowed herself a momentary flashback of packing up Ginsberg all those years ago and leaving Luna behind. She’d been only fourteen, too tall for her age, nearly as tall as the father who stood next to her with his arm around her shoulders. She was too young to make the decision to stay behind while Velma re-prioritised her life. But Velma thought allowing Luna to stay would somehow bring them closer. As if treating her as the adult she had so longed to be would force her daughter to rethink Velma and come to the decision that her mother was, after all, her one true best friend.
Had Luna ever forgiven her mother for sticking to her guns and moving with Ginsberg to Melbourne? But it had to be done. Velma had to be nearer her lover, though he ended up leaving her only seven months later. She’d thought he would be the one to rid her heart of Graham for once and for all. And she needed the distance from Graham in order to make him be the one. The children didn’t like him, thought him ‘wanky’ and ‘pretentious’. She should have heeded their instincts.
‘You know, Tessa, for the past thirty years I have been fighting to get back to the woman I thought I was before I married Graham, while still remaining a devoted mother. I wanted to be such a role model for that child. For both of my children. But I failed as a mother. And as a woman.’
‘Nonsense. You are a role model, Velma. You raised two beautiful, intelligent children. Your strength under the circumstances is enviable.’
Velma smiled at her friend as if to say, ‘Aren’t you gorgeous and such a brilliant liar?’
‘Look, Luna’s getting married. Ginsberg is married. They’ve grown up. If you ask me, it’s pointing out that you’re getting older, and that’s your problem.’ Tessa sat up straight and wiped the sand from her hands in a very no-nonsense way. ‘That’s it! I know you too well.’
‘Don’t say that to my face.’
‘So you’re turning sixty next month. Nothing to be ashamed of. In fact you should be celebrating.’
‘Says you. You’re still in your mid-fifties; you have no right. Besides, this isn’t about me. It’s about Luna. And Ginsberg.’
Tessa let her go with this stream, even though she knew it to be dry. She also wondered how much of it had to do with the inevitability of seeing Graham again. She knew her friend extremely well.
‘I loved them more than they will ever know and now they don’t need me.’
‘Velma, they haven’t needed you for a long time. They’re adults.’
‘I protected them and showered them with adoration and enfolded them into my breasts and absorbed them! I did! I absorbed them!’
Tessa rubbed her friend’s back. ‘There there, kitten. Look, you’re emotional and probably feeling nervous about the whole occasion and you need to get a wine in you before it’s time to go back to the house and prepare yourself for Luna’s dinner party. Come.’ She patted her friend’s knee unwaveringly. ‘To the Grand.’
Velma sniffled her way to a standing position. ‘I just want to wear the halo for them, Tessa. I want to be their Everything.’
‘I know, love.’
The two women trudged through the sand, past the pregnant woman who wrote in her journal, whispering ‘asshole’ with a North American assurance on the a. Velma’s brightly coloured sarong blew against her body, so womanly and curvy, so motherly and sixty.
There was a lightning storm outside and the flashes lit the Moreton Bay Fig outside her window. A thirteen-year-old Velma lay, foetal, sure she was going to die from the fire that would burn down her house when the next lightning bolt scared the sky. The thunder nearly shook her in her bed and her mother came to check on her, the hallway light cracking in on her room so comforting.
‘You OK, blossom?’
‘It’s scary.’
Her mother moved from the doorway and sat on Velma’s bed. Velma knew she was going to do that. She had hoped.
When next the lightning struck and lit up the room, Velma noticed a halo around her mother’s head. Is that real?
‘I hate these storms too,’ her mother said, looking out the window to the dark of the night, seeing beyond blackness and into the past and imagining her father-inlaw’s body being tossed from the boat, imagining him yelling for help in between mouthfuls of water bitter with salt, his best and longest ally now his worst enemy. Velma knew this too. She always knew when her mother was thinking about Papa Frankson.
‘Do you think it hurt?’
‘What hurt?’
‘Drowning.’
Her mother’s eyes moved quickly into the present and rested on Velma’s face. At times, Velma still looked like a baby.
‘Can I sleep with you tonight?’ Her mother was playing the role of the child and she did it very well. Velma’s father was out selling abalone in some European country and her mother didn’t want to be alone. Like his father, her father started off diving for abalone. Then Papa Frankson died from it. It was Velma’s mother who’d taken the call, Velma’s mother who’d phoned her husband overseas, Velma’s mother who’d made the arrangements for the funeral and Velma’s mother who’d been most hurt by Papa Frankson’s death. He didn’t have to be blood.
Velma pulled down the bedcovers and made room for her mother in the single bed.
‘Thank you, Velma.’ And her mother held her all night long.
