by Pat Rosier
She thought of it as the diary, the diary of Isobel. Just because it was in a diary, last year’s dairy, a kind of metaphor for all her past. Not the events of her past, even if she did keep slipping into writing about events from outside of herself, but the past of her, the inside of Isobel. ER, their favourite television programme, would be on soon, and she wanted to finish writing about leaving home before it started, she reminded herself, and focused back on the page.
It was nearly time to go to the bus stop and I didn’t know what to do. I picked up my suitcase and stood in the middle of the room I shared with my sister and thought she would be pleased to have a room to herself. Except for when I came home for the weekends. I put the suitcase down again and went to look for my parents. My mother was in the living room, sitting in her usual chair in the corner by the window. I don’t remember whether she was reading or knitting or sewing, or crocheting, but I do remember, in a clear picture like a photograph or a painting, when she looked up at me standing in the doorway. In the picture she is further away than the other side of a room, and when she looks up she is very still.
‘You’ll be going to the bus, then,’ she said.
I suppose I nodded or said yes or something. I remember the feeling standing there in the doorway and realizing I was to go to the bus by myself. No one would come with me and wave when the bus pulled out. I would walk down the road by myself, hoping no one would notice and feel sorry for me.
Isobel poised her pen above the page. Now I use words like lonely and desolate for those feelings, she thought. Then I didn’t have words for it, just that on-my-own-ness and terrible yearning for something else.
‘You’d better say goodbye to your father then. He’s out in the shed.' And my mother looked back at what she was doing so there wasn’t anything else for me to do except go and find my father. He was sanding a piece of wood on his workbench. He looked up and got still when he noticed me in the doorway, too. I don’t remember what he said, but his voice was hearty, as though he was trying to be nice. I heard him start sanding again as soon as I turned around to go.
The next bit I remember is sitting on the bus, looking out the window and at my reflection in the window at the same time, thinking about how I was going to have a new life and be a new person and soon I would not be coming home every weekend because I was having such a good life in the city. I remember checking in my purse a few times to make sure the money for the taxi from the bus stop to the hostel was there, and the paper with the address, and practising in my head what I would say when someone opened the hostel door.
When she heard the theme music for ER Isobel closed the diary and put it and her pen in her briefcase.
Later, she lay in bed alongside a sleeping Iris, thinking about how much more of her childhood she was remembering, especially during these random insomniac nights. She slowly and carefully eased herself out of the bed so as not to disturb her partner, crept out of the bedroom and down the hall, then sat at the kitchen table. She had been writing chronologically. She was up to going away from her family and there were things she had not written. Or had she, earlier, and forgotten? She tore a page off the shopping list pad, found a pen and made a list of things she remembered but didn’t remember writing in the diary.
sitting in the bus and thinking about life
the red suede shoes (about age 12)
Miss Ackland and the library (college)
Grandma (mother)
Go and change your underpants
icing the afghans
Then she wanted to check what she had written, but her briefcase was in the bedroom. So she sat there for a while, remembering the feeling, the not-knowing, not being anyone, empty hole feeling and the vague unspecificness of it, the familiar dull, generalized yearning and anxiety that she’d not had any words to describe. She sat there at the kitchen table with that feeling as a memory in her whole being, but a memory, she wasn’t six or nine or fourteen again, she was grown-up Isobel, who knew how to be and what to do – mostly – and had words for feelings that differentiated them one from another. She could tell loneliness from anxiety, yearning from sadness, and she knew joy.
Sitting in the bus
I was going to the library in town after school but I’d been home first so I must have still been at primary school, probably in Standard 6. The bus was red and had rounded corners and the engine out the front like a snout and was often late, except this day it had been on time and I nearly missed it. The bus stop was outside the house of the man who was supposed to have been a hangman in England before he and his wife came to New Zealand. He never talked to anyone. I wanted to ask him how many people he had hanged and what it was like but I never said anything to him let alone that.
The bus went around its usual way. There weren’t many people on it. I was sitting near the front on the footpath side. The bus stopped for a long time at one stop and I remember sitting there looking into the leaves of one of the trees that went along the edges of the footpaths and thinking that I would always remember this moment. And I can still feel myself sitting there looking into the tree. I think that was when I worked out that in the year 2000 I would be 58 and maybe then I would know what it – life – all meant and what really mattered and what didn’t, though I couldn’t really imagine being that old.
The Red Suede Shoes
I was given some money to go into the main shops by myself and buy a pair of shoes. I went on the bus on Friday night. The woman in the shoe shop was bossy and I didn’t know how to say I didn’t want the shoes she wanted me to buy so I came away with these murky red suede sandals with a wedge heel. I was really anxious all the way home on the bus about showing my parents and couldn’t think of a way not to. I didn’t even like them and I knew I would be stuck with them. And I knew this was supposed to be the beginning of being independent about things like clothes but I didn’t know how to do it and I wished my sister had come with me.
In the end my parents were quite nice about it, and not at all cross. A bit disappointed maybe, but not cross. My brother didn’t take any notice as usual and my sister said she was surprised I got anything so classy, so maybe it was just as well she didn’t come with me. I wanted black patent leather with flat heels. I had to wear those shoes for ‘best’ for more than a year and I hated them.
Miss Ackland and the library
I was a sitter to be a librarian as soon as I realised it could be a way of getting out of sports afternoons. I was a pretty sloppy librarian but no one noticed. Sometimes I tore up a card if I couldn’t find the book for it anywhere, and sometimes I made a new card when I couldn’t find the old one. I was always careful to do it in neat writing that didn’t look like mine in case the old one turned up. I liked issuing books at lunchtime, it was something to do. I must have stopped going home. Once some of us were doing some library job after school when most people had gone and a couple of boys and a girl were riding down a corridor on the book trolley. I was too scared to. And Miss Ackland came along and told them off, so then I was glad I wasn’t doing it.
I think Miss Ackland liked me. I think she thought I was smart or clever or something and tried to be encouraging. Sometimes I nearly knew who I was around her, I think, though I don’t remember a single thing she said to me or I said to her. Maybe she noticed me and expected something of me and took notice of what I said – which was probably only an answer to a question in class or something – and then I felt a little bit like a real person in the world, instead of just taking up space.
Grandma
I liked my Scottish grandmother, my mother’s mother. She was dour and abrupt and kind all at once. She looked at me when she talked. We went and stayed with her on holidays. The toilet was outside and there was always a smell of mint as you brushed against it walking down the path to pee or poo. She had a huge table and a coal range and a front room that was never used except when the minister came. The table had this big green velvety cloth that hung right down the side with a fringe. A
t mealtimes another cloth, a white one, was put over the top of it.
Her neighbour had a tame magpie that was supposed to peck children’s toes so I was scared of it. I was scared of the neighbour too, he talked and laughed loudly and I never knew what he was talking about but everyone else laughed.
Go and change your underpants.
We were at Grandma’s so it must have been a holiday. This day was the third morning I had got up and not been able to find any clean underpants so I had to put on the ones I had already been wearing. I was sitting on the window-seat. My mother was talking to my grandmother and she stopped and turned to me and said in this tight voice, “Go and change your underpants.” I wanted to cry but I didn’t. I managed to say I couldn’t find any. I don’t remember what happened next, but I guess some were found.
I remember when Grandma died. I was 14. My mother had gone away to see her because she was sick and was going to have to come and stay with us soon which meant my parents would have to sleep on a sofa-bed in the living room. Us kids were supposed to look after my father, and I think we made a bad job of it. I remember cooking his tea and putting an egg in the pan before he got home and it got really hard, so I threw it away and put in another one when I saw his car coming.
When Grandma died he came into the living room, I was lying on the floor reading something, or maybe learning a poem for school, and he stood in the doorway and said, ‘Grandma’s died.' And we carried on and my mother came home in a few days and it was like nothing had happened except we didn’t go there for holidays any more.
Icing the afghans
My sister was wanting to help our mother with the baking. My sister always wanted to help, I didn’t understand why because it mostly didn’t work out very well. Anyway, this time our mother had made afghans and said to my sister if she wanted to help she could ice them.
‘How do you make icing?’ asked my sister.
'Oh, for heaven’s sake, everyone knows how to make icing,' said my mother and did it herself.
My sister told me this story one day when I complained to her about no one showing me how to do anything. She told me to watch and listen and stop asking questions, that was how she managed.
I remember having a conversation with my brother one weekend when I was home from the city and he was home too, from somewhere, and my mother had managed to organize us all to a picnic at the river because there were two cars, with my brother having his own and enough seats with his wife Sally and the baby only taking one seat between them.
‘What did you think about me when I was a kid?” I asked him when we ended up walking together beside the river after lunch.
‘I didn’t very often. Think about you, that is. You were my nuisance kid sister, lippy and smart and know-it-all, always asking bloody questions.’
‘But I didn’t know ANYTHING! Not anything that mattered anyhow. And my questions never got answered. And how could I have been a know-it-all if I was always asking questions?’
’I rest my case re asking questions.’
‘Well, damn you I want to know stuff. Tell me what it was like for you growing up in our family.’
‘Jesus, you don’t give up, do you. It was all right I suppose. A bit arid. When Dad realised I hated making things as much as I hated gardening and didn’t ever want to potter in that damn shed with him he kind of gave up on me in a benign sort of way. Mum wanted me to be good at sport and I wasn’t so I guess I was a bit of a disappointment to them both. Not that they said so. Mum encouraged me to get a good job. I think she influenced me more than I realised at the time. I had a fantasy about sailing around the world, but hell, that was never a go-er. If I’d told Dad about it he’d have started figuring out how to make a boat out of old plumbing pipes and off-cut ply.’ He stopped walking and turned to face her. ‘Christ, Izzy, give it a break, I haven’t thought about this stuff for years and I don’t want to now. Family man, career, house, all that, that’s your big bro, what more could I want? Come on, they’ll be wondering where we are.’
I remember my sister and the boyfriend that finally was not disapproved of at that picnic, too. I don’t think my brother liked him and he wasn’t who my sister eventually married and moved to Melbourne with. He and I didn’t like each other ever, but he started talking to me about his younger brother, who worked at the dairy factory and was going to be an engineer. ‘Smart,’ the boyfriend said, ‘like you.’ And a year older than me and he wasn’t going out with anyone. My horror when I realised what he was suggesting must have shown on my face, because then I remember my sister shrugging and looking fed up and her boyfriend making a joke that she laughed at a lot and nothing more was ever said about that brother. Occasionally in bed at night I would wonder what he was like and what it would have been like to go out with him and perhaps he was not at all like my sister’s boyfriend and maybe I had lost a wonderful opportunity. But mostly I didn’t care because I was not going to get mixed up with someone from this town, I was going to live in the city, where people had lives full of important events and excitement and I would be part of it all.
Iris was standing beside her, exaggeratedly not looking where Isobel had been writing. ‘Don’t forget to ring your brother,’ she said, ‘you asked me this morning to remind you.' No wonder she had remembered that conversation with him just now.
‘Oh. Shit. Yes. Thanks, love.’ It was his birthday and this year she didn’t want to be apologizing after the event yet again. The last time she had seen him and his wife, Sally, had been a few weeks ago, at one of their annual summer dinners out, she and Iris, Daniel and Sally. They were usually all right, those dinners, with enough to talk about for one evening.
She should have guessed that Sally would answer the phone. She asked to speak to her brother, to wish him happy birthday and heard Sally call out, ‘It’s Isobel, to wish you happy birthday.’ I would like to have said that first myself thought Isobel, then heard, ‘Hello, Isobel, thanks for the birthday wishes.’
‘I would sing it, but I guess it’s more of a present to spare you that.’ There was a pause, then, ‘Thank you, thanks Isobel, nice of you to ring.’
‘I was wondering if you’d like to have a birthday lunch with me this week. Or next,’ she added as a silence stretched out.
He laughed. ‘We did this last year didn’t we? If we’re not careful we’ll start another tradition, like the annual dinner out.' He didn’t mention that last year she had rung two weeks after his birthday.
’That seems like a good idea.’ She felt like she was trying too hard and went on to make arrangements, for Tuesday in the coming week. When the day came around she arrived first and secured a table away from the door and the counter. He was exactly on time.
‘Hello Daniel.’ She stood up to hug him, then didn’t. ‘What will you have, you save the table and I’ll go and order. This is on me, remember, birthday treat.’
‘Uh, whatever you’re having. Not rice, I can’t bear rice.’ he said. She hadn’t known that. She came back with a number 23 to put on the table and couldn’t think of anything to say.
‘Pretend he’s one of your friends,’ Iris had reminded her when she’d said she hadn’t ever had a whole lunch, in a café without anyone else in the party, with her brother before. If he had been one of her friends she would have hugged him.
‘How was your birthday, did you do anything special?’
‘No, not really, a couple of friends, well, Sally’s friends really, she invited them, over for a drink, nothing much.’ He wasn’t looking at her when he spoke and his voice was so quiet she had to really concentrate to hear what he was saying over the voices and clatter around them.
‘Daniel.’ He looked directly at her for a moment then back at the table. ‘What’s the matter? Something’s wrong, it’s obvious, why don’t you tell me?’ That’s what she would have said to a friend who looked as miserable as Daniel.
‘My sister, queen of questions,’ he said, drawing on the table top with his finger, circl
es that got smaller and smaller. ‘What did you order?’
‘Bacon and mushroom pasta.’ ‘I took Mum to a place almost similar to this in Auckland a couple of times.’ He said. ‘All those years ago. But she wouldn’t have had pasta. She never got over thinking of it as a kind of flossied up tinned spaghetti. I miss her, you know.’
Isobel was startled. She had never managed to get her mother to go out to anything more than the local tearooms, and it had never occurred to her to miss her.
‘She’s the one person who listened to me, even when she didn’t agree with me,’ Daniel said, ‘she would always listen and say what she thought and then say, “It’s your life, you have to live it your way, that’s just my opinion.”
Isobel was fascinated by this glimpse of Daniel’s relationship with their mother, but they only had forty minutes. ‘Daniel, what’s going on now? There’s something wrong, what is it?’
Their food arrived.
‘Depression,’ Daniel said when the plates had been put in front of them and Isobel had nodded thanks. ‘I’ve been taking anti-depressants for months. Like half the people in this city, apparently, but they don’t help me much.’ His face was wet; he wiped it with a paper napkin. ‘Sorry, this happens every time I talk about it. I kind of leak, can’t help it’
‘Oh Daniel, I don’t care if you cry. Why didn’t you ……’
‘Tell you? I dunno, never seemed the right time, didn’t want to cry, not your problem, we don’t talk about this stuff in our family, older brother, got to keep my end up, a bit ashamed of it, to tell you the truth. Take your pick.’ He started eating. Isobel stared at his fast-moving fork, thinking, ‘depressed people don’t eat’.
