by Lette, Kathy
Amber and I took a moment to process this image. As we stared agog at our older sister, she changed the subject. ‘So, tell us, how was the rest of your night?’ Emerald probed, pruriently. She radiated excitement like a heater. I could have roasted chestnuts on her.
Don’t blurt every graphic, gruesome detail; they’ll only piss themselves laughing, I told myself . . . before immediately blurting every graphic, gruesome detail – because that’s what sisters do – and concluding by opening my bathrobe with a dramatic flourish. ‘And then there’s this!’
‘Oh my god. Well, that’s something a person hopes they won’t live long enough to witness!’ Amber said, shielding her eyes.
‘What on earth . . .?’ Medically minded Emerald knelt down for a closer inspection. ‘It gives “read my lips” a whole new meaning,’ she chortled.
‘That lip reader is shouting!’ Amber added, now bent double with laughter.
It wasn’t exactly the sympathetic reaction I’d been hoping for. ‘It’s not funny! I think I must have had an allergic reaction to his aftershave. I could kill that dim-witted motherfucker!’
This set my sisters off on big, gulping guffaws. Usually Amber’s idiosyncratically perfect vowels gave the impression that she’d learnt elocution from a sequestered British monarch, but not this morning.
‘Motherfucker,’ she repeated, snorting away.
‘It’s a motherfucking boat all right,’ Emerald managed to add. ‘Chock-full of mother-fucking motherfuckers.’
I stood, legs akimbo, listening to them laugh at my expense. My hot-pink, swollen labia had parted my pubes in the most comical way. It gave ‘bad hair day’ a whole new meaning.
‘Look, it’s great to see my sisters finally getting along, it really is, but what the hell am I going to do about the Mick Jagger impersonator between my legs?!’
‘Getting along?’ Emerald’s eyebrows collided for a perplexed moment. ‘Hey, I’d get on with Amber all the time if she wasn’t always saying mean things behind my back,’ she backhanded, all merriment evaporating.
‘What?’ Amber pointed an admonishing coffee spoon in Emerald’s direction. ‘I do not say mean things behind your back! Although you do. Mum says that you’re always calling me vain, before adding how lucky I am to be “photogenic” – which basically means I look crap in the flesh,’ she fired back.
‘I never said that! Mum told me that you’re always saying I’m fat, and that clearly there was a thin person inside me, but I ate her,’ Emerald retorted.
Amber turned to scrutinise our older sister. ‘I would never say that! Mum told me that you said I’m too thin. She said that you liked the skirt I wore to her birthday barbecue, but then commented how lovely it is that my spindly legs don’t seem to bother me.’
‘Too thin? Is there such a thing?! When we discussed taking the kids to Disneyland she said your response was, “Good idea! Americans are so obese; Emerald might even look slim there.” She said you reckoned that my body wasn’t so much a temple as a disused warehouse.’
‘Oh my god. You went to Disneyland years ago! You’ve been nursing that wound all this time? Especially when it’s not true. Why would I ever say that? Besides, it’s my body Mum finds unacceptable. When my teenage bra cups did not runneth over, she said, “Unlike Emerald, you’ve got no tits, so you’d better make sure you keep your teeth nice.”’
‘What?’ Emerald baulked. ‘She told me to get a breast reduction to look more like you. Ugh. I loathe my big, pendulous Celtic breasts, inherited from her of course! I don’t know how Mum actually breastfed the two of you as her boobs are in my body.’ She looked down at her breasts, which were currently attempting to escape her nightdress in different directions.
‘And then she puts me in the middle to sort it all out,’ I sighed. ‘I’m like a human ping-pong ball, bouncing between the two of you. It’s bloody exhausting. And Mum’s vile to me too, you know. Just before my birthday, I suggested we go out somewhere, just the two of us, and have a lovely time . . . And do you know what she said? “I don’t want to have a lovely time, I just want to be with you.”’
‘Ouch.’ Amber winced. ‘But you’re her favourite, Ruby. Being the youngest and all . . . Well, you were, until your infamous birthday speech.’
‘Favourite? No, I’m just the most easily manipulated. I have no doubt I was a mistake – mostly because she’s often told me so. I honestly think she only had children in case she ever needed an organ donor.’
Emerald snorted. ‘It’s true. The woman makes Medea look like good mother material. Forget Child Disability Assistance, we need Mother Disability Assistance.’
‘Do you think it’s too late to put ourselves up for adoption?’ I suggested.
‘Yes, it’s not as though we don’t have good grounds. Remember when I gave up smoking?’ Amber inquired. ‘I thought Mum would be so terribly proud of my achievement, but do you know what she said? “Just have one more and see if it sticks.”’
‘She did exactly the same thing to me when I tried to go on a diet,’ griped Emerald. ‘She put a plate of chocolates and a sponge cake on the table and said, “Dieters invariably put on weight, so it’s best to just carry on as normal. Go on, you know you want to.”’
‘Mum’s manipulated us all. It’s a classic divide-and-conquer tactic. At least we know to buy her some worming tablets and flea powder for Christmas, as she’s such a bitch. So now we’ve cleared that up, can we call a truce?’ I suggested.
Amber’s smooth cheek twitched. Emerald thumped a sofa cushion – Bam! Bam! Bam! – then said, ‘Yes, okay. A truce.’ She placed her nail polish bottle on the table and extended her unpainted hand to Amber.
‘A truce,’ Amber chorused, closing her laptop and taking her older sister’s hand warmly in her own.
‘Great. Then can you please pay some lip service to my problems? I’m on fire here!’
‘Okay, calm down. Just take some deep breaths,’ Emerald advised, trying to suppress her laughter.
‘I need a doctor, not a Lamaze class – despite these childbearing lips.’
Emerald’s laugh exploded, like a sneeze. As Emerald fanned my fanny with a magazine, Amber got on the cabin phone and, struggling to talk without tittering, made a medical appointment on my behalf.
‘How was your night?’ I asked Emerald, to take my mind off my discomfort.
She grinned up at me. ‘I think my cub gave positive reports . . . if I understand “lol” and “grt” correctly.’
I snatched the magazine out of her hand and hit her over the head with it, then very gingerly dragged on the baggiest sweatpants I could find. Swathed in Emerald’s voluminous trackie daks, I waddled off to see the ship’s doctor, my siblings’ laughter ringing in my ears all along the passageway. En route I chided myself for following Emerald over to the dark side. I wondered if the captain could make an announcement – ‘We apologise for this temporary loss of service. Normal middle-aged mum activity will resume at the end of this routine midlife crisis.’
Our boat was due to dock at New Caledonia the very next day. With a sprained groin and swollen labia, how the hell was I going to get around the island? On my personal vulva-powered hovercraft, obviously. Wincing and mincing my way into the elevator, I promised my nether regions that I’d learnt my lesson. I was officially off men as a genre. Husbands were bad enough, but lovers were insufferable. In fact, celibacy had never looked so attractive.
With each painful step along the corridor, I contemplated exactly what men had ever done for me. Now that women are economically independent and can impregnate ourselves, if vibrators could change car tyres and clean gutters, would we need blokes at all? I wondered. Harry always argued that men are better at some things – parallel parking, insect-wrangling, jar-opening, elk-stalking and map reading, for example – but if a bloke can determine the exact kilometre-per-litre ratio of a five-hour trip through the Tasmanian wilderness, where he then effortlessly locates a remote fishing haven that’s not even on a map
, then why can’t he find a G spot?
I pussyfooted down the hall on E deck and into the doctor’s waiting room, which resembled an upmarket day spa. A distinct lavender aroma hung in the air. Crossing to the reception desk, I ruminated that if more evidence was required of male inferiority we could just examine what excites the average male – food, footy and lingerie models. The trouble is, I’d clearly got all excited about nothing . . . and then married him.
The doctor’s receptionist, one of those radiantly healthy, flashing-white-teeth types, handed me a clipboard with a registration form to be filled in. I leant on the high counter and dutifully ticked the box for F not M, and then one for my religion. Oh, how I wished I could tick a box for a female god. For starters, a female deity wouldn’t have done such a rushed job. Forget seven days. She’d have planned for seven months, so that more thought could be given to bull ants, flies, crocodiles, wasps, sharks, megalomaniacal world leaders with orange hair, cold-callers, earthquakes, tidal waves, bushfires, famines, pain during childbirth, appendicitis and religious extremism. Cancer and serial killers would also have been deleted at first draft stage. A born multitasker, a female god would also have done something about the annoying lost-sock mystery that tormented me on a weekly basis – although, maybe they’d just seen married couples in action and no longer wanted to be paired?
Besides the wisdom of Sock-rates, a female god would ensure women would never again be condescended to by car mechanics, exploited by tradesmen, paid less than male colleagues, overlooked for promotion, groped on crowded buses or trains, or told in a court of law that they were ‘asking for it’. Eve would no longer be shouldered with the blame for the whole eviction from Eden, either. That duplicitous snake would be put on trial for entrapment.
When I reached the relationship status question on the form, I paused. What was I now – married or single? A female god would also ensure plagues of locusts and rats were visited upon all misogynists, from bearded types who don’t allow women to show their faces, divorce their husbands, drive or play sport, to unfaithful husbands, oh, and himbos who lost their erections at the first sight of female pubic hair.
A female god would also reprogram women’s brains to stop obsessing about unfaithful husbands and himbos who lost their erections at the first sight of pubic hair. The obsession with waxing would also wane.
The medical form had now progressed to questions about age and weight. Hmm. With a female god, cake would have no calories and cocktails would be a detoxing health drink. Botox, collagen and face lifts would also become totally passé, because a feminine deity would make sure that men found older women irresistibly attractive. Men would just learn to read between our lines. And there’d be news for Newton, too – a new law of gravity would ensure that women’s bits only sagged upwards.
Tracksuit pants with elasticated waistbands would be the height of fashion. Female footwear would be flat all day and then turn into a fetching yet comfortable stiletto at night. Men would go to training schools to learn to put down the toilet seat and feign interest when women are shopping or gossiping. Cooking classes for blokes would also be compulsory – a true recipe for success. After all, the way to a woman’s heart is through her stomach. That is not aiming too high.
Men would also be able to stop and ask directions without feeling they were being castrated. It dawned on me that it was more than likely that Superman is only constantly flying about in his pants because he’s lost, but too embarrassed to ask anyone where the bloody hell he is.
A female god would also insist on not just sex education but also relationship education in schools so that toy boys like Wayve, raised on porn, understood that a woman is not just something to lie down on while having sex. Nor would they reject a sexual partner just because of a couple of incy, wincy baby stretch marks.
I then filled out the section listing the number of children I had and whether the births had been C-section or vaginal. Now, if god were female, either blokes would give birth or the womb would become an attractive handbag arrangement, like a kangaroo pouch but designed by Prada or Pucci – the Kangarucci.
The next category on my form was profession – which was another tricky question of late. ‘Working mother’, I wrote, thinking that another top priority for a female god would be to help underappreciated, exhausted working mums who are always running late. I thought back to when my kids were small. I was often so tired I’d put the kids under the sink and the lethal household substances within reach. To ease stress, a female god would install pink lanes next to bus lanes, reserved for mothers, to ensure they got to the school gate on time. Oh, and maternity leave would extend to a decade.
I handed back my patient questionnaire to the receptionist, then tentatively lowered my buttocks onto the edge of a plastic bucket chair. Out of habit, I checked my phone for any correspondence from my spouse. How long had I been waiting for a message from my husband to turn up? Harry was making Godot look punctual. There were lots of fun emojis from my kids and the daily chastising email from my mother (the woman could whinge for Australia), but when I discovered that all of my Harry-shaped inboxes were still empty, I concluded that, best of all, a female god would make sure that marriages don’t break up for religious reasons – that is, because he thinks he’s a god and she doesn’t.
I tossed my phone back into my bag and sighed deeply. Yep. I was over men, altogether. Forever. Once the boat docked in Sydney I planned to retreat to a convent to knit my own yoghurt and do a little light whittling. Apart from my son – okay, and my nephews – oh, and the cute guy who serves coffee in the surf shack on the promenade – I pledged there and then that, from this day forward, I would never spend time in the company of the male of the species. Not ever again, never, ever.
13
I despaired as I heard a male voice call me in from the waiting room with a gruff ‘Next’. Clearly my late-onset allergy to the male species had not been made clear to the onboard medical staff. If only there’d been a tickable box on my form. Allergies to penicillin – no. Allergies to male doctors – yes.
‘So, what ails thee?’ the medic asked without looking up from the paperwork in front of him. He was sitting behind a steel desk shaped like a kidney. His voice was brusque and he chewed his words. The crumpled trousers of his scrubs were mint green. His matching shirt wasn’t wrinkled, but he wore it as if it were. Somehow simultaneously youthful and grizzled, he was in his late forties and showing every minute of it.
‘I think I’ve pulled a muscle,’ I said, to the top of his tousled head. ‘In my groin.’
The doctor glanced at me sideways in a brooding, half-amused way.
‘No. Not like that,’ I hastened to add. ‘I think it’s an ABBA-related dance injury. It’s so easy on a cruise to forget that you’re no longer twenty-six, you know?’
I examined the doctor more closely as he scribbled on his notepad. His thick wave of dark hair, flecked with grey, was swept back from his broad forehead in a somewhat theatrical pompadour. Haggard and world-weary, he had a touch of the dissolute Irish poet about him despite his broad Aussie accent. The doctor definitely gave the impression of being a tall, dark and handsome type. He then stood up – and up, and up – and confirmed this.
‘With no responsibilities, well, it’s like being a kid again.’ Disarmed and annoyed in equal measure by his silver foxiness, I found myself prattling. ‘The hardest decision I’ve had to make since coming aboard is how many umbrellas to put in my cocktail. Anyway, my first time at the disco last night, a bit of impromptu choreography to “Waterloo” – and, well, here I am.’
‘At our age, it’s safest to do those manoeuvres horizontally,’ the doctor growled, stretching his back. ‘That’s my advice. Though, why any woman with half a brain would waste time fraternising with these macho hottie-hottie-dumb-dumbs is completely beyond me. Hop up onto the couch.’
‘I think “hop” may be too optimistic a word.’ I flinched, adding indignantly, ‘And I didn’t come on boa
rd for those “macho hottie-hottie-dumb-dumbs”, as you so eloquently call them. I just wanted to go on a cruise with my two sisters, and booked the first available one.’
The doctor peered at me over his reading glasses once more. ‘You booked a cruise of your own free will? Well, there’s no need for a urine sample, as you’re clearly not taking any mind-expanding drugs.’
If my tentative climb up onto the gurney hadn’t left me wincing from pain, I would have lobbed a zinger back in this objectionable doctor’s direction. Once in the supine position, however, the barbed retort I was planning came out sounding a bit like a strangled moose, because the doctor had started probing my upper thighs through my borrowed tracksuit pants. Biting my lip, I just stared at his scuffed shoes – shoes that had gone out of fashion wars ago.
‘Dear god, the conversations I’ve had to endure,’ the doctor went on, acerbically. ‘I had one young bloke in here who actually said, “Doc, my ears have been popping and I was wondering if it’s due to our change in latitude?” Okay, bend your right knee . . . This Einstein also wanted to know if he advanced his clock ahead one hour, would breakfast still be at the same time in the morning? Okay, now push back against my hand . . . Another brainiac wanted to know if the water in the toilet was fresh or salt. I had to say, “I dunno, kid, I’ve never tasted it.” Only this morning I heard another gormless gorilla asking a member of the crew, “Hey, mate, do these stairs go up and down?” . . . So, does it hurt more here or there?’
‘Ouch! There. Definitely there!’ Once I’d caught my breath, I added, conversationally. ‘Yes, these “cubs” are not exactly Mensa material, are they?’
‘Densa, more like it . . . Now lift your other leg.’
‘I overheard one young guy ask the entertainment officer about arrangements for the last night on board. He wanted to know if he should put his bags outside the cabin before or after he went to sleep,’ I conversed, hoping to distract myself from the strain pain.
