I knew what I had to do, Tony had lectured me endlessly on the subject. ‘If you are ever caught in a rip, don’t swim against the current—you will just exhaust yourself. Swim to the side of it, at a 45-degree angle. The rip won’t be wide, they never are. And never overestimate your strength. Conserve it.’ I was tempted, for a minute or so, to float out gently, to go with it, but Tony’s words came to me and I began to swim at an angle to the shore.
When I got home I knocked on his bedroom door, not sure if he’d be there, but he was.
‘You’ve woken me up. Go away.’
‘It’s seven o’clock already. You always get up around now, and besides, you haven’t seen me for weeks. I need to thank you for the fact that you just saved my life, not fifteen minutes ago. I almost drowned.’
‘My pleasure,’ he said, as he rolled out of bed, looking bemused.
‘So?’ Tony asked, after I had told him about my road trip, ‘Now you are both in town at the same time do you plan to see him?’
‘I can’t promise I won’t. I’ve broken too many promises over the years. It seems safer not to make them.’
Tony nodded and sighed. ‘I might have saved you this morning, Cath, in a virtual fashion. But I can’t keep doing it. You’re going to have to learn to save yourself. You do know that?’
‘I know it,’ I said. ‘I just don’t seem to be very good at it.’
Michael called. ‘I came for a sabbatical. Can we have dinner? Please?’ he asked. ‘I need to talk to you.’ So I betrayed myself, and my friends, and time, by letting all I had learnt slip away from me yet again. By walking down the same old street and leaping in that hole.
‘Why did you fly out of Los Angeles the day I arrived?’
‘Did I? I never knew when you planned on being in town.’
‘I emailed,’ I said. ‘I left messages on your answering machine.’
‘I never got the messages.’
‘Right.’
‘Believe what you want. Why would I lie about a thing like that?’
We met that evening at the Icebergs. Michael went to hug me but I pushed him away. While we sat and had a beer he stroked my arm, touched my face. If you’d been watching us from a distance you’d have thought we were happily reunited lovers. Once we’d finished a drink, before we’d ordered our second, he said this to me: ‘I’m seeing someone else. I wanted to tell you in person. It isn’t because she means more to me than you; it is because she’s closer. It’s the distance. It was impossible for us to keep going.’ He talked to me slowly, with catch-up pauses, as if we were speaking on an international phone line.
‘It was not impossible,’ I said, after too long. ‘It was only impossible because you made it so.’
All the while Michael kept telling me I looked beautiful. Kept touching me on the back of my hand, my cheek. Put his arm around me as we walked down the street to a restaurant. I didn’t stop him, and I was frightened by my own passivity. After we ate—me all smiles and conversation—he walked me home and kissed me goodnight on the mouth in a way that suggested that nothing was over at all, not if I wanted to keep pushing, not if I was prepared to accept his terms. But instead I said goodnight and went up to the flat, alone.
When I got in the door I began to weep. I got into the bath still sobbing. My toes and fingers went white and wrinkly and I rocked back and forth in the water, moaning loudly. I didn’t sound human. I was trying to melt away into the water, down the plughole, to disappear.
Through the haze, I became afraid of what I might do to myself. Tony was out. I was running out of people who could be bothered with this thing. Finally, I rang Marion in Melbourne, but I couldn’t speak properly, made no sense.
‘What is it, darling?’ she asked, kept asking, but I just held onto the phone, not speaking.
‘I am nothing,’ I managed to say. ‘I am falling in on myself.’
Tony came home. He knocked on the bathroom door but I was unable to answer, just kept on crying. He came in and stood by the bathtub, stared at me rocking.
‘Get out, baby.’
‘I thought you were staying out tonight,’ I sobbed.
‘I was. Marion rang me. She was worried about what you might do to yourself. This has to stop. Catherine, how do we make you stop?’
‘I’m sorry,’ I sobbed. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Stop apologising.’ He leant over me and pulled me up by the armpits as if I was a child. ‘Put this towel around you.’ He tucked me into bed and then made me a cup of tea. ‘There is lots of sugar in this,’ he said. Then, ‘Can I snuggle in with you?’
I hesitated. ‘For old time’s sake,’ he said after a few moments of silence.
‘Yes, please.’ He pulled off his trousers, crawled in and put his arms around me.
‘He is finally treating me like a girlfriend now it’s over,’ I told him. ‘It makes no sense.’
‘It makes sense,’ Tony said. ‘Sex and emotional connection together overwhelm him. He can only do one at a time. But frankly I don’t care if it makes sense or not. I just want him to stop contacting you. Or you to get the strength to stop seeing him. You have to learn to care enough about yourself. And your friends.’
Tony held me for a while.
‘I’ve broken my own rule,’ I said finally.
‘What rule is that?’
‘The five-year rule. If you are obsessing about a situation after five years it’s crossed the line.’
‘A five-month rule would be better,’ said Tony.
Still I kept seeing him, convincing myself that not sleeping with him counted as looking after myself. If my friends expressed concern, I simply lied to them about what I was up to.
I believed I was keeping it together. My life might sometimes look like it was unravelling but I was managing, I thought, to hold on to most of the threads. One night I drove us to dinner in Darlinghurst and turned the wrong way down a one-way street, then almost crashed the car when I parked it.
‘Good park,’ Michael laughed. ‘You seem a bit wired tonight.’ Then, when we were sitting in the restaurant, ‘You look incredible.’
I was wearing a tight shirt that showed lots of cleavage. I had hoped that might make me feel powerful, but it didn’t, it filled me with contempt. For both of us. I look back on things and I realise that I spent years not wanting to admit how shallow men can be. That people can declare true love, that churches can be formed, that fathers can leave their flesh and blood, for nothing more than this—a good pair of tits.
‘Are you trying to make things hard for me?’ Michael asked, ‘By dressing like that?’
I look at him and imagine smashing my glass of wine in his face, cutting him up, blinding him, making him bleed. I imagine slashing myself. I look at my arms and imagine the glass going in.
‘I miss you,’ Michael is saying. ‘I always miss you, that’s what I can’t bear about this.’
I am trapped in a bad play, the lines not convincing even to me, who wants desperately to be convinced. I drop Michael off where he is staying and he gets out of the car. He hesitates, stands by the car, drums his fingers on the roof, then leans back in and kisses me all over my face, on the mouth. I think he will leave it at that but he doesn’t, begins to bite my lips hard, my neck.
He drops to his knees on the pavement beside the car. He put his head in my lap. He is shaking.
‘You have to let go of me,’ he says.
‘You say, on your knees, kneeling before me.’
He doesn’t answer, but puts his hands on my breasts, buries his face into my lap, breathes me in.
‘I love your smell,’ he says, as he has said many times over the years. ‘We are right for each other.’
I get out of the car and push him against it, keep kissing him while he puts one hand under my shirt, undoes my jeans with the other. He turns us around so now I’m against the car, he puts two fingers in my cunt, one in my arse, my hand reaches back for his cock. He bites me so hard he draws blood. We strain a
nd push against each other, like we are wrestling.
He pulls back, ‘It is important to me that you understand,’ he says, ‘why we can’t see each other any more.’ I don’t understand, refuse to even now and we end up clawing at each other, half-hitting, half-embracing.
I want you to kill me, I think. I want to die.
As if he hears me, Michael reaches out and puts both hands around my throat so tight it hurts. He shakes me slowly. He shakes me with force.
‘We. Must. Stop. This.’ He lets go of my throat, pushes me hard away from him. ‘We are driving each other crazy.’
He walks off, breathing sharply, retching air. I’m left alone in the driveway, and even though there is no one to see me now I slide down the side of the car to the ground. That is the role I have chosen. I am the victim. I will always be hurt and left. I don’t know any other way. I pull myself onto all fours and bang my forehead over and over onto the asphalt until finally, to my relief, I gash myself. I sit quietly there on the concrete and bleed tears down my face.
I look back at this and I can see it is not that exciting. A long night in the bath and waterlogged skin. Bored friends. A fantasy of drowning, of crashing my car, ripping my own flesh open with metal, slicing up Michael’s flesh with glass. I’d like to make it seem like there was more drama. But the point of my story is how quietly you can lose years. How gently they can slip away from you. You can spend so much time waiting for something to happen, and then…well, it simply doesn’t.
When I was reading all those classics at university, about heroines like Jane Eyre and Anna Karenina, I’d rail against the times that reduced women to such dependence, though for all my travelling, my working, my friendships, I too had spent years hanging around waiting for someone, some man, to fix everything up. From the outside it didn’t look like that, not that you’d know it from the story I’m telling. From the outside I had a good job, I was a success, I looked sexy. I was smart and funny. Etcetera. All the positive things we tell ourselves and each other to make it all seem okay. I call myself a feminist. But this is my secret, many women’s secret: there is a darkness in me that isn’t about how kinky I can get in bed, or the rage I often feel. In fact ‘darkness’ is the wrong word. ‘Beige’ is more the word to describe the passivity that eats away at me, away at us, but seems like nothing at all.
The books I read were full of warnings it took me too long to heed. I read them for romance but now I see they were written to save women like me from ourselves. Don’t wait, that is what I say to people now. Never wait. I am a born-again on this subject. What do the Nike ads say? Just Do It. I offer up my childlessness as my scar.
Twelve
We stand on the Indira Gandhi Bridge, which is some two kilometres long and connects Rameshwaram to India’s mainland. We are both subdued. I’m exhausted by the intensity of our recent discussions. Ever since our argument after the temple I’ve remembered more of what happened to me with Laura’s dad and more of the shit I took from Michael. More of the terrible distress I felt when my first father, then my dad, left me. The low-level grief I’ve felt for years has been washed away by the rage that is swamping me. I’m feeling things the way everyone has always said I should, and I do not like it. I don’t like it at all.
I wonder if it would be best if Ruby and I part. I don’t want to fight with her, and I don’t want to dump this on her either. But I’m shying away from the thought of not being with her. I am starting to understand what this might mean and am becoming frightened.
Ruby is pointing at Adam’s Bridge, the scattering of tiny islands and boulders that stretch from here to Sri Lanka, twenty-two kilometres away. It is very beautiful where blue sea meets a blue sky striped with streaky white clouds, the sand and green of Rameshwaram directly below.
‘The Tamil Tigers want to build a real bridge across Adam’s Bridge between Jaffna and here,’ I say. ‘There are lots of Tamil refugees living on this island and back on the mainland—they want to hook up.’
‘It shouldn’t be called Adam’s Bridge,’ Ruby says. ‘That’s Christian colonisation talking. It’s Hanuman’s Bridge if it’s anyone’s. In the Ramayana Hanuman, Rama’s faithful helper, ran over these stones searching for Rama’s wife, Sita. She had been kidnapped by Ravana, demon-king of Ceylon. It was a battle of two of life’s great forces: Ravana is a devotee of Siva the Destroyer and Rama is an incarnation of Vishnu, the Preserver.
‘And you may laugh, Catherine,’ Ruby goes on, school-marmish. If she wore spectacles she’d be looking at me over the top of them. ‘But I think you have lived in the thrall of Siva, with your fixation on catastrophe, sex and disasters. I’d recommend a stint of Brahma worship—even Vishnu is too in-the-head for you, with all that emphasis on dreams.’
I smile at her, but, as happens so often with Ruby at the moment, I don’t know what to say. It is hot, she is sweating and I run a hand over her head, where there is now enough hair to show a hint of curl.
We get back in the hire car and drive to the main village, about ten kilometres further along. When we arrive we find a strange and sandy place. People come here to worship Vishnu but the Ramalingeshwara Temple is closed when we get there, leaving us with only the famous colonnades to walk through. Their length—205 metres—is impressive but the columns themselves are concrete copies of what was once there. It is only when we walk past the ruins of the original columns, looking like so many fallen giants, that we understand what this place must once have been.
We walk through the heat to the water, past the shops that sell objects made of shells, strings of shells, macramé and shells.
‘What will you do when you get back to Melbourne?’ I ask.
‘I’m still interested in aid organisations,’ she says. ‘I’d like to make a career of it but I’m not sure if that means going back to uni to do development studies or applying for every job going. Probably both. You?’
‘Well, I think I’m back in Melbourne for good now. I figured I couldn’t base a whole life on good weather patterns and surf. I’ve gone back to writing, do a bit of consulting for extra cash. So I guess I’ll just keep going along the same—new—track.’ you are back among your old—emphasis on old—friends?’
‘You will keep in touch, won’t you?’ Ruby asks, anxious. ‘I know we’ve been fighting. I know it has been a bit difficult. You won’t suddenly decide I’m too young once
I put my arm around her shoulder, pulling her close. ‘We won’t lose touch,’ I say. ‘You are my new and most favourite friend.’
We walk past the sadhus; wild dreadlocked men with orange cloths round their waists. One of them looks at us lustfully, pointedly. Then we see a naked sadhu, covered from head to foot in white ash, supposedly from funeral pyres, Ruby tells me.
This place is lighter than Land’s End and Kanniya-kumari. The atmosphere is less commercial, more fun. We sit and watch the women in their colourful saris, the businessmen who strip down to their underpants before wading in, the priests picnicking on the ghats that lead down to the water. Cows wander, down there by the sea, sniffing gently at people’s food. Everyone is hanging out, killing time until the temple reopens at five p.m. and they can go and get their blessing.
‘Have you read All’s Well that Ends Well?’ Ruby asks me as we sit on the ghats and watch the sun go down. I am bemused.
‘No,’ I say.
‘There is this quote from it,’ she says. ‘I am undone: there is no living, none, / If Bertram be away. ’Twere all one / That I should love a bright particular star / And think to wed it, he is so above me: / In his bright radiance and collateral light / Must I be comforted, not in his sphere. / The ambition in my love thus plagues itself.
‘That’s you,’ she goes on. ‘It was the ambition in your love that plagued you.’
I look at her, surprised. ‘That’s it exactly,’ I say. ‘When I was at my lowest I felt undone.’
Tony was home for a Sunday of domestic duties. I missed him now that he was hardly here and
it was good to see him, despite the fact that on this particular day he was so scratchy and irritable.
‘It’s the full moon,’ I laughed. ‘My period’s due. Perhaps we’re cycling.’
‘Well, how come you’re in such a good mood?’
‘I’m through the monthly suicidal days. The happy hormones have started.’ And it was true. I was full of joy, light-headed with it. As madly up as I had been down.
That night I woke up nauseous, back aching, and tried to walk to the bathroom. Dizziness hit me halfway so I dropped to my knees and crawled. By the time I got to the bathroom I was sweating and all I wanted to do was lie on the cold, smooth tiles, feel the cool of them against my cheek. I lay like that for two hours, half conscious, until Tony found me at six a.m.
‘Jesus,’ he said, helping me up. A few minutes later he was sitting by me in bed, wiping my brow with a washer. ‘Go to the doctor, all right? Today.’
‘Lots of women have bad periods.’
‘This is beyond bad. That’s the problem with you women, you’re natural masochists. You lose all sense of what is reasonable pain.’
I went to my GP. She booked me in for an ultrasound and the next thing I knew I was in stirrups while a woman in a twin set and pearls inserted a large camera-tipped phallus into me. This was not how I’d imagined being here, in this place that pregnant women come to see their unborn babies for the first time, in this place where the receptionist asked, ‘How many months?’ before she realised I was ill, not with child. Fairly quickly the ultrasound found a growth the size of a grapefruit. Then a second one.
My stomach bloats. My bladder feels full, I piss all the time. I am nauseous, I am in pain, I am mad—a hormonal punching bag, out of control. The object in my stomach grows larger by the week. I cannot roll on my stomach because it hurts. I am giving birth to a deformity, a growth, a shadow: a shadow child to my shadow lover.
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