Dying for Cake, page 13
After a while, Vivianne led Joanna over to the sink and sat her down. Joanna closed her eyes as the chair sighed under her weight. Was that baby really Amy? She’d never acted so rashly before. Perhaps she was going mad. She leant back towards the sound of warm water hissing as it hit the cold porcelain sink. Steam kissed the back of her neck and she allowed herself to be comforted. Vivianne gathered up her hair and ran warm water through it. Her fingers massaged Joanna’s scalp in circular motions, numbing her mind to everything but the sensation of being touched. She breathed in deeply and exhaled.
When the dye was washed out Joanna sat, with Sam asleep on her knee, gazing at the mirror but not seeing her reflection. Her wrist still ached, especially under Sam’s weight. She was beginning to feel that she had acted foolishly. No wonder the girl had run away. She must have looked like a crazy woman hurtling through the mall, her red stroller thrusting through the crowd, her black smock swooping behind her. Suddenly Joanna felt desperately hungry. She looked at her watch. It had been three hours since she had walked through the door. Vivianne’s cheek brushed against hers.
‘Well, what do you think?’
Joanna looked at the floor where her hair was cast across the linoleum like shucks of corn. Then she looked at her reflection and her own grey eyes met the grey eyes in the mirror. An attractive young woman with a modern cropped cut and luminous golden hair stared back and then smashed through the mirror into her consciousness. Joanna gasped. The woman was her and she was … beautiful.
SUSAN
Tell me the time
A preoccupation
With analogue and digital
Measurements
Metal pins striking moments
Cataloguing days,
Months and years …
Has been mine
Since 6.15 a.m.
February 6th
1963
Mother said
I was over
Two weeks late
She was driven to
Distraction
Of course
Her first experience
Of life being
Beyond control
I have spent
My life making up
The difference in time
Tell me the time
I can dissect minutes
I can slice moments
So there are fractions
Available
I have always been
Acutely aware
Of time
I am
What the sharp edge
Slices
Time is
Paper I write
My life on
A valuable commodity
Not to be wasted
Squandered
Lost
Imagine my surprise
My horror
When I found
I had
Lost
Time
Numerals marking
The clock
Had melted
In the desert
Salvador Dali
Has always haunted
Amy had
Fallen …
Out
Of time
I searched
Scooped mercury beads
Once held behind glass
Felt liquid metal
Run poisonously
Through my hands
Unable to reconstruct
The numerals
They dribbled away
In pools
Around my feet
A little sock
A little pink sock
Floating in
Silver grey
I picked it up
Saw other things
Floating past
A book
A graduation cap
A career
All these things
Fallen
From my clock
I’d never noticed
How much time
I’d lost
Tell me the time
How much is available?
How much time do I have
Left to write on?
Shall I tell you the time?
The sharp edge
Slices though
The remainder
At the third stroke
It will be 9.15
Precisely
I do not know why she is always late, but today I will forgive her for losing track of time. I will not order her a flat white. I will let her order for herself. She prefers tea, I think. Still, I am on to my second espresso and it is already 9.25. I will have to have lattes after this.
(Already my
Thoughts are racing ahead
Of my real place
In time)
Joanna was on the phone last night. Sobbing about a baby she’d seen in Westfield Shoppingtown. She must have made a real spectacle of herself, poor thing. I can see her now, thundering through Shoppingtown, her black smock scooping the wind and her head in a plastic cap.
(Joanna, mad mother
My hero
Maternal instincts
Raging
In your
Swollen belly
You pursue offspring
With udders distended
Bursting to suckle
Away the pains
Of your engorgement
But
The milk runs
Into dust)
She would have looked like such a mad cow. It would almost be comic if it weren’t such a tragedy.
I was incredulous at first. I mean, Amy in the local shopping mall. It’s stretching probability a bit, isn’t it? And if Joanna was running after me with a surge of maternal aggression, I think I’d take off pretty fast too.
She kept going on about the strange behaviour this girl was exhibiting and how she didn’t like it when Joanna started to ask a few questions. ‘Well, maybe she had some secrets of her own,’ I said. ‘Have you considered that? From what you’ve been saying, the girl sounded pretty young. Perhaps she’s some poor teenager who ran away when she got pregnant. Perhaps she thought you somehow knew her parents and was ready to provide them with some information that she might not have been ready to share.’ She had to concede that I might have a point.
‘But Susan,’ she said, ‘what about the toy dog?’ I had to admit to her then that my own heart had missed a beat when she’d mentioned the child’s toy. But you know, there are probably hundreds of kids in Brisbane that have little dogs like that. They were on sale when that new Disney movie was released. They were everywhere. I picked one up for Amy because I thought it looked cute. ‘Besides,’ I told Joanna, ‘I’ve been on that desperate search for the imagined before.’
(There’s a blackness
A dark tunnel
A silent scream
A rope around your waist
Pulling forwards
There’s no time
No bearing
Nothing to
Cling to
Break the rope
Break the rope, Joanna …)
‘Look,’ I said, ‘I know where you’re coming from. I ran straight to the police with one pink sock in my pocket and a story about some clothes and a toy that was missing. I thought I was on to something and that my information would get the police searching again.
‘But the truth is, the police already believe that Amy is dead. They can’t charge Evelyn because there’s no evidence. Anyway, she’s clearly mentally unstable. Postnatal psychosis is a pretty extreme illness. People who are less unstable have committed infanticide before. The police aren’t expecting to find a live baby. They’ve always been looking for a body. And now they’ve even given up looking for that. They think it’ll just turn up, like bodies usually do.’
I know the way I put things to Joanna sounded cold and unfeeling but I don’t want her to torture herself over this. This endless quest for Amy that’s consumed us all … It’s time to end it. We’ve all got to get on with our own lives …
(Got to wind up the clock
Start time moving again
Let the sharp edge
Slice through
And move on)
Don’t think that I’m convinced Amy is dead. I know Evelyn. At least I think I do. She didn’t kill her baby. She’d kill herself first. And there’s a family history of that! But her baby wasn’t stolen either, as Joanna would have it. And it’s obvious, isn’t it? Why Joanna would rather believe that Evelyn’s baby was stolen. Because that absolves Evelyn of all maternal guilt and makes Joanna feel more comfortable with the whole wretched business.
(Joanna
Poor cow
Udders bursting
Milk running into
Dust)
Do you want to know what I really think? My theory is that somehow Evelyn adopted her baby out on the black market. Maybe she even did it over the Internet. God knows, it’s been done before! Why else would all Amy’s everyday clothes and nappies be missing? I bet she bundled them all up and gave them, along with Amy, to some nice childless couple from the US … At least, that’s the story I tell myself to help me sleep at night.
(Let the sharp edge
Slice through
I am not afraid)
Tell me the time!
Really! A quarter to ten and Clare’s just arriving now!
And Joanna too. She must have dropped Sam off with her mother this morning.
Are you alright, Wendy? You look deathly pale. Would you like a glass of water? You should be well and truly over your nausea by now. You must be about five months along — it’s due some time in November, isn’t it?
THE CAUSE OF SUFFERING
‘Clare!’ said Susan, standing behind Wendy and gripping her shoulders. ‘Run inside and get Wendy a glass of cold water. She’s feeling dizzy!’
Clare threw her handbag on the table and ran up to the counter in the cafe. In any crisis, Susan always took the lead. The force of her personality demanded complete obedience. Clare grabbed a carafe of iced water and some glasses and hurried back outside.
As Joanna poured a glass of water for Wendy, she tried to remember if she’d ever felt that nauseous during either of her pregnancies. Wendy’s health worried her. Perhaps there was something wrong. ‘Are you okay now?’ she asked, after Wendy had drunk some water. ‘Shall I drive you home?’
‘No … no,’ said Wendy as the colour came back into her face. ‘I’ll be alright if I sit a while. I think my blood pressure might be a bit low or something.’
‘When are you going back to see your obstetrician?’ Susan loosened her grip on Wendy’s shoulders and returned to her seat.
‘On Monday.’
‘Well, don’t forget to tell him about this. You can never be too careful.’
‘No. I think I’m just a bit stressed at the moment.’
‘Well, no wonder! The way you work. Night shifts in your second trimester? You must be crazy. What does Harry think about that?’
Wendy put her elbows on the table and cupped her chin in her hands. Her normally clear blue eyes looked bloodshot and sore. ‘Oh, he’d like me to stop work altogether, but I only work a couple of night shifts a week.’
Clare poured herself a glass of water from the carafe. ‘Can’t you find something in the daytime?’
‘No and I wouldn’t want to. I like night shift. I sleep much better during the day at the moment. Anyway, it’s not work that’s stressing me. It’s this whole business about Evelyn’s baby. Every time we talk about it I … I … just can’t handle it.’
‘That’s fair enough,’ said Joanna, relieved that there was a plausible explanation for Wendy’s symptoms. ‘The whole thing makes me miserable too and I’m not even pregnant!’ Joanna looked at the specials board leaning against the wall — apricot and almond torte, that sounded delicious …
‘Yes,’ agreed Clare, ‘those pregnancy hormones must make things even worse for you. I can remember crying a lot before Sophie was born, over all sorts of things.’
Joanna dragged her eyes away from the list of cakes. The light skipped over her hair and surrounded her face with a luminous glow. ‘I used to cry over loo paper ads when I was pregnant with Jake,’ she reflected.
‘Loo paper ads?’ Susan raised her perfectly plucked black eyebrows.
‘Yes. You know the one! That cute little Labrador runs around the house with the toilet paper and gets locked outside with that last little piece of loo paper dangling pathetically in his mouth …’ Joanna put her head on one side and stuck her tongue out in an attitude of doggy dejection. ‘It brought me to tears every time!’
Clare laughed. ‘Me too! I’m still sentimental about that brand of toilet paper, you know.’
‘I can’t say that ad ever did it for me,’ Susan said with a bemused look on her face. ‘I do remember sobbing over some starving Ethiopians once!’
‘Well,’ considered Clare, ‘You don’t have to be pregnant to weep for people starving in the third world.’
Susan tapped her fingers on the tabletop. ‘Just to change the subject,’ she said. ‘I’ve been thinking that, next year, I might go back to university and do my masters. All the kids will be at school and I’ll finally have some time to study.’
‘You’re serious about going back to university, aren’t you?’ There was a small note of anxiety in Joanna’s voice. The academic world was foreign to her and so far removed from her life, it was as if her friend was saying she was going overseas.
‘I’ve been mulling it over these last few weeks,’ Susan continued. ‘I really enjoy research. It was something I was good at when I was at uni. I worked as a research assistant in the English department for three years before I had Maxine. I think it’s time I did something again. If I don’t do it now, I probably never will.’
‘Would you do it full time?’ asked Wendy, wondering how Susan was going to reorganise her life.
‘Oh no. How would I manage the children? How would I manage Richard? I’ll take it slowly. Part-time study while the kids are in primary school. Then, once they’re in high school, I can find a job. Maybe I can even become a literary critic. That’s what I always wanted to do — read novels for a living and tell authors what they should have done!’ She laughed.
Joanna looked sadly into her glass. She was going to lose her friend. It was beyond Susan’s capacity to do anything part-time. She had made a career out of mothering and now she would make a career out of study. And where did that leave her? The only thing she had in common with Susan was motherhood.
‘Well, I admire you,’ said Clare. ‘Going back to study after all this time. That takes a bit of courage.’
‘No. Staying home with the kids takes courage!’ Susan’s hazel eyes froze for a minute on Joanna’s face and then lifted and darted back and forth from Clare to Wendy. She threw her arms wide. ‘I’m actually giving in. I’m giving in to my longing for some kind of adult life beyond my family. I’m being selfish.’ Susan squinted one eye and said, fiendishly, ‘I’m giving in to desire!’
‘But desire isn’t selfish,’ said Wendy. ‘It’s normal to want things. We can’t blame ourselves for being human, can we?’ Wendy felt her face grow warm and she sipped some more water.
‘I don’t know,’ said Clare. ‘Sometimes I wish that I could rise above my own longings and just be …’ Clare shifted in her chair.
‘Be? Be what?’ asked Wendy.
Clare shrugged. ‘Be a good mother, I suppose. Like my mother was. I was listening to Radio National the other day. There was a program on ‘The Spirit of Things’ about Buddhism. Buddhists say that desire is the cause of all suffering.’
‘I think I’d have to agree with that,’ said Susan. ‘Do you know, we’ve all been sitting here rabbiting on for ages and we haven’t even ordered yet. How about I go and order the coffees. Let’s see … Joanna — a skinny-chino. Wendy — a chamomile tea. Clare, what will you have? A flat white?’
‘Yes … umm … no. No!’ Why not? She didn’t have to go along with what Susan usually ordered her. ‘I’ll have a pot of tea. Please!’
THE WORST PART
The worst part is sliding back to the place where I do not want to be. In this room, where the light is sharp, I am emerging red and raw, a foetus with capillaries branching out underneath a meniscus of skin. Everything ordinary: sight, sound, taste, touch is overwhelming, excruciating in intensity. I squint my eyes because the light is too bright and it encapsulates me in a hard white dome. It blinds me.
Blind people don’t see black. They see white. Shapes of objects and people in my room appear as shadows hovering in the light, devoid of colour, existing only in relation to the white light that surrounds me. Sound too is hard and white, and silence exists as a ringing behind my ears, filling intervals between crashes and bangs made by teaspoons and cups and venetian blinds blowing in the wind.
When they bring in my food on the tray I can smell the aroma of each ingredient I am served but subtle flavours are overwhelmed by sensations of saltiness, sweetness and bitterness. I don’t eat much. Not because I am not hungry. I pick at my food because the cutlery feels so cold in my hand that I’m afraid the skin on my fingers will freeze and stick.
Now that I have begun the shock therapy, the staff are pleased with me. They say that the shock treatment and the new medication are making a difference — that I’m about to turn the corner. And so I no longer hear the spider amid the clamour of other sounds. I still listen for her, through the ringing, but I know now that I can no longer live out my life in the guise of a beetle or a moth, or some other inconsequential insect wrapped up in the spider’s shroud. I am sliding slowly, painfully, into myself and my other reality. My thread has unravelled and I am suspended above the ground, rocking like a pendulum in the wind. I cannot take refuge in my mother’s web any more but the web still sticks to the soles of my feet. Dirty grey strands still hold me, binding my feet, stifling my growth into someone who is separate from the vision of the mother that I cling to.
My doctor says that, for a while, the new medication will make me slow and sluggish. Amid the roar and dazzle of white light and screaming sound I sense there are things happening around me. I see the shadows move, I hear the doors close, but my mind takes a moment to catch up. Everything is on a delayed telecast so that I lose my power in time, my power to make moments meaningful, because by the time I realise the moment, it has gone and my ability to seize it, to act in it, is diminished.
