Here’s how Marjorie went about that: she would walk past all the concert halls to see what was playing. She would stand in foyers or sneak up to doors – to listen to the familiar beauteous sounds on the other side – to graft the singing of the city onto the singing of the Mallee. But it was always such hard work. So Marjorie would stop when those sounds began to make her eyes water. She would spend hours in art galleries – wandering and staring. At drawings and paintings – her fickle, watery eyes searching for signs of balance. For evidence of blame. Or hints of love without madness.
Until Marjorie was discovered. ‘This can’t be where you do your charity work.’ It was one of the boys from work, standing over her as she drank coffee at the cafe outside a theatre one Friday night.
‘No, it isn’t,’ was all Marjorie could manage.
‘I’m going to this show. Come with me. I have a spare ticket.’
How could Marjorie refuse? She badly wanted to, but a real lady wouldn’t refuse – that would be bad manners. And bad manners on top of her never-ending lies was starting to add up to a very long purgatory. It was My Fair Lady, though, and she didn’t really want to be stuck in any theatre with all those songs. Not being able to run off if it all got too much. But Marjorie went anyway. And she tried hard not to let those songs – and one particular song – wear her away.
She didn’t get worn away, though. Marjorie seemed almost the same at the end of the show as she was at the beginning. So she started going to more shows. And more theatre. And more galleries. And the opera. And the ballet. And Marjorie really did believe she was getting away with it. Because they were very crafty those songs, those art galleries, those plays, those operas, all those beautiful costumes. Because they were not a downpour that rushes down the dry creek beds and rips and gouges at a person’s insides and their outsides as it tears past. They were like the best of spring rains that make your face lift to the skies. That soaked you right through before you even knew it. Until your eyes were transparent and you could at last start to truly look at a young girl that would become your mother and whose very life had prevailed on such things as these in the city. You could actually start to see how this young girl who would become your mother might have been if the Mallee hadn’t interfered.
Even so, it was spring before Marjorie went back to the mental hospital to set the table again. And it was Jesse who made her do it. Not that he knew anything about it.
‘There’s another letter for you, love,’ Aunty Agnes had called as Marjorie closed the front door. ‘It came in the mail today,’ she said.
Marjorie stopped halfway through pulling off her gloves. There it was. A much-travelled thing, Marjorie thought. It must be bushed. It is a long way from there to here. How many post offices? How many miles on a postie’s bike? How many hours on Aunty Agnes’s hallstand? She gazed at it. It was lying delicate and mysterious – just like all its predecessors – on the polished wood, patiently waiting for her to get home from work. It looked fragile and beautiful – like the spring’s first fallen rose petals. But the delicate beauty of roses can be a trap for the unwise. Because roses are thick and fast with thorns. They always come together. It is a package deal, and when you love the rose you have to face the probable consequences.
Marjorie was tender as she picked up the letter. Somehow, this time, she had run right out of being brutal and merciless at its innocent arrival. She didn’t screw this one up, crushing the words within to smithereens. She didn’t shove it in her handbag then march to her bedroom and take it out again to grind the screwed-up ball of a rejected letter into the surface of her dressing table. Marjorie walked slowly to her room this time and laid the letter carefully on top of the pile of all those other screwed-up, straightened-out, unopened, unacknowledged letters.
Because Marjorie was no lady. Because a person of good manners would have responded to mail by writing some sort of a letter in reply. But Marjorie had not done that for any of the other ones. And she wasn’t going to do the right thing for this one either.
Marjorie did respond, though. She responded by visiting her mother.
*
‘I keep getting these damn letters from Jesse,’ Marjorie muttered at her mother. She had finished setting all the tables and was now standing beside Elise at the empty fireplace. So she said it to the chimney bricks, really.
‘I’ve got a whole bloody suitcase full of them now. Bloody hundreds of the things!’
Elise might have nodded.
‘Bloody hell, Mother! Why does he keep on writing them? What does he want? Do you even remember Jesse?’
Elise sighed a short, sharp sigh. She might have nodded.
Marjorie snapped open her handbag and pulled out her nice new gold-plated cigarette case and proceeded to light a filter-tip cigarette.
‘Hey! You can’t smoke in here,’ said a white-coated one.
‘This is a chimney right here. I can so,’ said Marjorie. She didn’t bother to offer her mother a cigarette. Marjorie knew that her mother’s views on the value of a beautiful voice would not have disappeared along with that voice. Instead, she placed a cigarette centre stage between her perfectly red-lipsticked lips and beamed at the white-coated objector as she flicked the lid on her matching cigarette lighter.
‘Yes,’ whispered Elise to the chimney bricks when Marjorie left. ‘I do.’
*
Marjorie might have spoken to her mother about Jesse’s letters but that didn’t stop Jesse. His letters kept on turning up – quietly, carefully, gentlemanly, stubbornly. And so did he. The letters made a good job of panicking Marjorie every time their delicate, papery selves arrived. But it was his face that terrified her the most. It was so ephemeral, so intransient, this face. A face that flickered at the edges of her mind. Flickering far longer than any decent flicker should. Every time.
It would happen outside her work. The work that Marjorie loved. This job that gave her organisation and logic and trustworthiness. A job that was about reparation, restoration: finding a right and proper place for broken and fragile things. Making them better for all the world. Marjorie rescued the discarded. There was nothing unsteady about this place.
Except for those times Jesse caught her out. She would be about to ascend those marvellous front steps and pass into the comfort of the building’s purpose and design. But her elegant, confident walk would be tripped up when her eyes caught a glimpse of a face in the nearby hustle. A shock of recognition across a rolling sea of faces. A fleeting meeting of eyes across the crowd. Undecided eyes that could never make up their mind whether they were green or brown, thick dark lashes under warm brown hair curling recklessly down a forehead. Before the face was gone.
It was always a momentary thing. But a moment can be a very long time. And that moment was all it took – every time it was all it took – for the traitorous memories to burst out of their hiding places, dragging a whole lot of things with them. It would be Wheat Bag Boy. Staring right at her.
‘It’s Jesse. It’s not just his letters. Now he’s started turning up as well. I get just a glimpse of a face in the crowd, then he’s gone. And weeks and months might go by.’ Marjorie was sitting on a chair. Elise was sitting beside her. They were at a window. Elise had abandoned the fireplace some months ago and her real estate of choice these days was this particular window.
‘It is a many splendid thing.’ Elise nodded at the window. She didn’t look at Marjorie. She might have been talking about the perfect lawn outside. And it was so perfect it didn’t need any more words. So Elise didn’t say any more words.
‘He was there again. I keep seeing him.’ Marjorie was staring out at the lawn now too. It was early summer and the grass was ripe, expectant. Marjorie studied it with her mother – those perfect lines of mowing. It could have been a proud English lawn out there, it was so perfect in its lines.
‘It is good to see them,’ said Elise.
‘It is very good to see you, Marjorie,’ Elise then said. Also to the window.
Marjorie’s mouth fell open. Her head turned. Marjorie thought then that she might as well have been a clock because it seemed like it took one whole hour and a thousand thoughts for her head to turn towards her mother.
Why is that? Marjorie would think in that long head-turning hour. Why is it good to see me? I have burnt your beautiful firstborn daughter. It seems like only yesterday I did that. She didn’t deserve to be burnt. She is grotesque now. Shoved under that pile of dirt and stones. Out there in the blazing sun. Smothered by plants that dutifully lie down on top of her and die, each time, with her. And Marjorie had to blink very, very hard. Maybe the blinks were the second hands.
‘And don’t sit there with your mouth open like that. Do you want to catch flies?’ said her mother. Marjorie stopped blinking and just sat there and let the water in her eyes do its business. Elise reached out and took her daughter’s hand and they stared out at the perfect lawn.
‘Mum spoke to me tonight.’ Marjorie was speaking softly into the telephone mouthpiece, forgetting that the words might need a boost as they had quite a long way to go. She heard her father heave in a chest full of breath.
‘What did she say?’ he asked, his words wobbly and flattened from the weight of the heaved in breath.
‘She said, It is very good to see you, Marjorie . . . And don’t sit there with your mouth open like that. Do you want to catch flies?’ And Marjorie was still as she listened to that heaved-in breath sigh itself out in a long thin line, down all those miles from there to here. Marjorie didn’t feel any need to convey other words that had been spoken that day. Because everybody knows a mother is doing alright if she could remind her daughter once more of the perils of swallowing flies.
And Marjorie almost forgot about Wheat Bag Boy for a while. Because after more than a year Elise was now starting to look around. She was starting to find her way out of the labyrinth. And so was Marjorie. But, as with any labyrinth, finding the way out on your own is not an easy undertaking. Because a labyrinth is an intricate and cryptic thing. So, without even discussing it, they joined up and walked the labyrinth together.
*
‘Do you think Ruby is alright?’ was Elise’s next question to the window. The city was turning its thoughts to Christmas and the sprinklers were spraying the sunlight outside. ‘We don’t see very much of Ruby here anymore, do we?’ Elise said. Then she turned from her habitual contemplation of the immaculate lawn and looked directly at Marjorie – before turning to look around the room for Ruby.
I don’t suppose we do. There’s not very much of her left to see anymore, was Marjorie’s first thought. Which was followed quickly by: And no. I don’t think she is alright at all. ‘No. We don’t see much of Ruby anymore, do we?’ Marjorie said softly to her mother.
But Marjorie was lying to her mother. Because Marjorie did see Ruby. She saw more than a bit of Ruby – even if there wasn’t much of her left to see anymore. She didn’t see her every day. And she never knew where she would see her. But suddenly there Ruby would be. Sitting at a reading table, engrossed in a book at Marjorie’s work, her lovely red hair falling all about her, one side of her face perfect and peeping through, shining and serene. Or leaning against a lamppost waiting for a tram. Or smiling at her from a passing car.
And of course there were those dreams, too. Marjorie saw a lot of her there.
‘I am not running off and leaving you, Ruby,’ Marjorie said. ‘I can never leave you. Because there is nowhere I can run from you. I take you with me every single day,’ her dream cried.
*
‘How is your father, Marjorie?’ Elise asked at the next visit. She started looking around for Bill. ‘I want to go home with Bill. When is your father going to take me home?’
‘Dad’s not coming tonight. He has just been down, don’t you remember? He won’t be down this weekend, Mum,’ Marjorie said.
‘Could I go home with you then, Marjorie?’ Elise asked, her soft grey eyes pleading.
‘No,’ Marjorie said.
Elise reached over and took both of Marjorie’s hands. ‘I’m sorry, Marjorie,’ Elise said.
Marjorie was uncertain these days about the return of her mother and she jumped a bit at Elise’s apology. She didn’t take her hands away and she didn’t take her eyes away. But Marjorie was wary. Because she was not yet sure what her mother might be sorry for. Or whether she should be more sorry than her mother. So Marjorie never said anything to that.
*
Despite the cloying grasp of the mental institution, Marjorie could see now that Elise was trying hard. And it was working. Marjorie watched as her mother slowly crept about the place, collecting as much of those shattered, scattered, scorched bits of herself as she could find. And Marjorie watched as her mother did her very best to mould all those bits back together into some sort of recognisable thing. And did the best she could to look out for her visiting daughter and to speak to her the lucid truths of the insane:
‘Ruby is dead, isn’t she? We will never see her again.’ It was Elise, wading in a sea of Friday tears who said this to Marjorie on one of those visits, more than a year and a half after that cleansing fire that burnt Ruby away.
‘Yes, Mum.’ Marjorie nodded. ‘That is correct. Ruby is dead.’ She nodded and nodded at Ruby, who was there for Marjorie, at the back of this tidy room – one side of her caught by the shadows, the perfect, lovely, unscathed right side of her face looking at Marjorie. Her hair catching and glinting in the soft afternoon light as she smiled. But Marjorie knew what was on the other side. Marjorie kept right on nodding. She had seen that other side again just last night.
‘I didn’t mean it,’ Elise whispered.
Who ever really means it? thought Marjorie. She stared at her weeping mother.
*
‘Condemnation is of the devil, Marjorie. I have learnt that,’ Elise whispered to Marjorie one Friday as autumn leaves drifted down. ‘And self-condemnation is a haughty thing. It is not helpful. It does not participate in healing. It has done me no good, Lord knows, and it will do you no good, Marjorie. We will never be able to get out of this place with that self-condemnation you insist on carrying around all day.’
‘I am not the one stuck here, Mother. I can leave anytime I like,’ said Marjorie.
‘You don’t leave here, Marjorie,’ said Elise.
Marjorie looked away from her mother and watched the ward orderly scratching the sunburn peel on his arms.
‘But you could leave here if you were willing to climb down off your high horse, Marjorie,’ Elise pleaded. ‘You will not find solace from up there and it is far too high up for you to ever find your own forgiveness, let alone your mother’s.’ Elise started wringing her lovely hands. ‘It is too cloudy at those heights for you to see the world as you should; you won’t make sense of anything from up there. A person’s restitution does not often abide in the heights. The air is too thin.’
Marjorie reached out and stilled her mother’s hands. ‘It doesn’t hurt up here on my high horse, Mother,’ she answered as dead burnt skin fell in a shower at the feet of the orderly.
‘I beg to differ. You are not right,’ said Elise. She pulled out one of her hands and patted Marjorie’s hand as it detained hers.
*
‘Why do you do it, Marjorie?’ Elise asked as the windows stood firm against the early winter rain.
‘Do what?’
‘Work to revive all that beautiful broken paper. Resuscitate all those lovely damaged items from their certain death.’
Marjorie shrugged. ‘Because it is inappropriate for them to die. They are considered by many to be as good as dead. Useless and worthless, not good for anything. But I am very good a
t putting them back together again. They are much more than good for something when I have finished with them.’
‘What about books? Do you save them too?’
Marjorie smiled. ‘Yes. I love fixing books. I don’t care how damaged they are.’
‘Are you good at your work?’
Marjorie shrugged. ‘I keep being asked to do it, so I must be,’ she said. ‘I am being properly trained as a conservator,’ Marjorie added.
‘That is a good thing to do, Marjorie,’ said her mother. ‘Fixing broken things. Ruby would be proud of you, I think.’
*
‘I don’t have to worry here, Marjorie,’ said Elise on another wintry Friday. ‘I may never be good enough, but this place harbours humanity enough for me.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Marjorie.
‘The people in this place are all shocking in their private mental illnesses. They have enormous secrets and burdens to shoulder, day and night. It is a sad place. Lord knows they are suffering here.’ Elise shook her head. ‘There is clemency in this place for me because the people here are much too busy to care that I am not good enough.’
Marjorie could think of nothing to say. So once again, as she had done so many times now on these visits, she took her mother’s hand. Because what words can ever be said that will wash away somebody’s not being good enough?
‘I am so sorry for what happened, Marjorie,’ whispered Elise. ‘I am so sorry.’
‘I know,’ said Marjorie.
‘I am so sorry, Marjorie,’ Elise said again.
Marjorie could see herself in the window. Her reflection was staring at her. ‘I, too, am so sorry, Marjorie,’ Marjorie whispered to herself.
*
‘I would like to start drawing again,’ said Elise as she watched the early blossom on the almond trees outside.
‘Why?’ asked Marjorie. ‘It’s a bit dangerous, isn’t it? Aren’t you worried your friends here might suddenly grab your things and stab each other up the nose with the hard end of the paintbrushes? Or drive the pencils through their own eyeballs?’
Wearing Paper Dresses Page 26
