Eloquent Silence

by Weise, Margaret

  Mork, from the bath : ‘Ma, I’m hungry.’

  ‘Just bathe your knee with the face washer and then give yourself a good bath and I’ll be with you shortly. I’ll start the hot dogs going.’

  I wheel around and spin off towards the kitchen, lips set in a line as straight as a piece of string.

  ‘Ma, I hate hot dogs,’ Mindy informed my retreating back mournfully.

  ‘I don’t like that sort of bread rolls, Ma,’ Mork called from the bathroom. ‘I like the square ones.’

  ‘They’re all bread, Mork. All made from the same sort of bread, just shaped differently.’

  I throw the saveloys into the saucepan, the rolls into the oven and fly back to the bathroom. Investigation of the knee showed only a small amount of grazing, thanks to the thickness of his jeans.

  Mindy from the couch: ‘Ma, my finger’s still hurting. Can I have Supergirl now?’ This almost finishes on a wail.

  Ma: ‘Not yet, love. Your brother’s still in the bath. Can you wait until we’re ready and we’ll all sit down together?’

  Finally dried and pajama-clad, Mork sat on the couch and waited for his knee to be bandaged. I went to locate a bandage.

  Mindy: ‘Ma, can I have my bath now?’

  Ma: ‘Shortly, dear. Coming. I just have to bandage Mork’s knee and have a look what’s happening to our dinner.’

  Once the injured knee was bandaged and Mindy was having her antiseptic bath to recover from the duck bite, I ran to get the rolls out of the oven.

  As I flew by, Mork said, ‘Ma, can I watch Supergirl now?’

  Ma: ‘Not yet, Mork. I’m afraid you have to wait for your sister and your tea.’

  Mindy, from the bath: ‘Ma, can we have sausage rolls? I hate hot dogs.’

  Finally, with Mindy out of the bath, dressed and the maimed finger band-aided, the hot dogs were ready to go.

  Mindy sat at one end of the couch with her other hand supporting her wounded arm as she propped it up to ease the pain.

  Mork sat at the other end, injured leg propped up on the coffee table.

  I produced the hot dogs. Supergirl, unimpaired by her previous disastrous flight and fall, began to do whatever it is she does best.

  We settled back. The evening was being rounded off nicely. We were quite cheered up with the proceedings.

  Both children agreed that they were yummy hot dogs and that we’d had a lovely afternoon out. My spirit flickered high like a flame dancing in the breeze—I had succeeded in being an adequate grandmother and had not lost my granddaughter to an attacking duck or my grandson to a fatal fall.

  ‘We’ll have to do this every weekend or at least every second weekend, Ma,’ said Mork.

  ‘Good grief, yes,’ replied Ma, blowing through her nostrils like a nervous horse. ‘The end of a perfect day.’

  6. Domestic Bliss

  One a.m: I am suddenly awake and spring out of bed in a state of panic. Something has bitten me on the middle of the back, thrusting me into consciousness and wide-eyed fright. Searching the bed, I cannot find the culprit. My back is stinging painfully and I recall the red back spider sitting on the arm of my recliner chair the previous day. I prepare to die, afraid to go back to sleep in case I miss the moment of my passing. That would be a shame.

  6a.m: Eating cornflakes and reading the mail, I find myself the victim of an excruciating bite under the foot. On looking down I discover a green ant rolling around the floor, obviously in its death throes. After helping it on its way I recall that I have lived through the night and not expired after the 1 a.m. bite. The pain in my foot feels exactly the same as the 1a.m. pain in my back and I remind myself to ring the pest exterminator during his working hours.

  7a.m: I spread the washing on the laundry room floor, setting aside my white bowls clothes to be washed separately by hand as I have no other whites to go in the machine. The phone rings and while I’m talking, my affable, good-natured husband, with his heart in the right place, puts the white clothes in with the second load of washing that contains many colored clothes. Thus my bowls clothes proceed to turn red from the color running out of my new maroon shorts and top.

  I return from the phone call and rescue my bowls clothes from the murky water, washing them in clean water, with blue, soap and bleach. They look fine as I hang them out to dry.

  I take two panamax as a restorative measure, gritting my teeth and grinning kindly at my well-meaning but puzzled husband who has figured out that he has done the wrong thing. I give a polite, artificial laugh which is not at all the way I’m feeling.

  8 a.m. When exposed to the sunlight, the bowls clothes have splotches of maroon every which way. I begin to cry softly, but change my mind and repeat the former procedure while mouthing a stream of consciousness. This time I am certain the clothes are rescued.

  Things go rapidly downhill from here.

  After hanging the clothes on the line with a resolute jaw, I return to the laundry. Water is seeping out from under the washing machine at a rate of knots. There seems no way we can find the source of the trouble until the machine has been bled dry. It continues to ooze on regardless while I frantically switch the controls to ‘Pump.’

  Beetle-browed, I finish the laundry by hand, wringing items out while the water continues to flow around my feet and then drizzle to a stop at last, thankfully. The laundry room does not have a drainage hole that the two bathrooms have so I have to keep placing towels across the doorway into the house until the stream ceases.

  10 a.m: My husband, (a study in charm following the T-shirt incident), and I participate in much discussion regarding the need, cost and brand of a new machine. With the thing finally having given up dribbling, we drag it outside, lift it and turn it upside down. The small overflow hose has come loose and is replaced in a twinkle.

  After washing the floor I slip on the still wet tiles, my nether regions colliding painfully with the slippery surface, my hair hanging in my tear-filled eyes. I massage my nether regions, wondering why I got out of bed that morning.

  My girlfriend rings, saying she has discovered she has a major heart problem. The nerves in her heart are not functioning properly. This is bad news indeed. After commiserating with her I continue with my day, which looks very unpromising indeed, to put it mildly. I am beginning to suffer from a sense of displacement and feel my expression must be trancelike. For a time, I manage to regain my composure but this is not destined to last long.

  The sight of another red back spider on the kitchen bench reminds me that we need an appointment with the exterminator. On phoning, his wife tells me he is not available for several weeks. I must remain un-exterminated and put up with the consequences.

  I search for the source of the spiders but am unable to track them down.

  11 a.m: I have purchased two attractive wine decanters to take alternately to my mother in the nursing home. I pour wine into one through a funnel, paying little attention to the wine and more to my girlfriend’s sad and sorry phone call, my ruined bowls T-shirt and my headache.

  Suddenly at my feet there is a huge and widening pool of red wine that has flowed down the cupboard and spread over it like a veil of blood, staining it a beautiful sunset red. Red is the color of the day.

  The decanter has a hole the size of pinhead amongst its attractive folds of blown glass. I quickly transfer the funnel to the other decanter and hope for the best. It doesn’t leak. Gratitude doesn’t describe it.

  My husband enters the kitchen, notes the ocean of red wine and asks what the devil’s going on. I look at him with hundred-year-old eyes and do not reply to his cavalier question, carrying on about my business in my own fatalistic way, finally able to use my calm voice and be reasonable as I tell him what has happened. My lips are stiff as if I have had a dose of Novocain and I feel as if I am looking at myself from a high corner of the room. Out of my body as well as out of my head.

  While rushing to the laundry for cleaning cloths to mop the mess up, I collide with the kitchen bar,
the corner of which is just below shoulder height, removing two inches of skin from above my breast. I jump around making a few comments and in passing the bookcase, hit my shin, causing my comments to grow even more acerbic. Hobbling pathetically, I find a cloth and limp back to finish mopping up the kitchen.

  After recovering, another fifteen minutes of cleaning up has to be endured, but the cupboard door still carries a faint tinge of red. A pale, dribbly red. This is a new house. That is a new cupboard which will remain forever faintly red as opposed to the original white.

  I rush off to do Meals on Wheels, a study in momentum, trying to keep my hobbling to a minimum and not cause concern to any of the precious old darlings we will take meals to.

  Midday: While drinking my banana smoothie I experience an excruciating pain in right upper molar, not for the first time. I think the tooth is abscessed. The dentist’s receptionist informs me on the phone that the first available appointment is in three month’s time. I find myself strangely devoid of emotion, considering the fact that none of the other dentists in town are taking new patients and I will be long dead from blood poisoning in three months time. I conclude hollowly that there must be other dentists in some nearby town that will take a new patient within a month or so.

  Hypothetically speaking, how long does it take to succumb to blood poisoning? Just a rough estimate will do.

  1 p.m. My husband brought the washing in while I was away at Meals on Wheels. He delivers to me my bowls shirt that has dried with red bands around the neck and sleeves where they’re not supposed to be.

  Apparently this is the result of all the free radical dye collected from the bottom points of the shirt as it hung upside down on the line.

  Again I go through the routine of bleach, blue and soap while trying to remain civil to the perpetrator of this miserable deed. I have to face the unpalatable truth that I will be wearing a technicolor T-shirt where it is not meant to be technicolor for the balance of my bowling life.

  I tell a passing neighbor about the saga of my husband putting the mixed load of washing in the machine and the trouble that it has caused to my predominantly white shirt.

  ‘I always wash my whites and coloreds separately,’ she informs me, looking at me as though I am some kind of dim-witted cretin who does not know how to sort her whites from her colors.

  Well, duh, I think to myself. Did you get the point of my story, lady? Obviously not.

  She plunges into a description of what has gone wrong with her own day, but I cannot summon the interest to listen and tell her I have to go as I am wanted on the phone.

  I nod coldly in response to my husband’s cheer-up efforts, experiencing a kind of wariness, knowing he has read my mind and must realize what his fate will be. There is no point harping on his future or lack of it. Thinking very contradictory things about him, I collect my thoughts and err on the side of bringing something positive into our day.

  I mix up the batter for our favorite lemon poppy seed muffins. They have been in the oven for three minutes when the power goes out. Holding up my hands in an appeal to Heaven, one thought transcends everything—Botheration!

  On Monday the electrician was supposed to send his underling to measure the house for air-conditioning but rumor has it he has absconded with his paramour, a cute little dumpling from the local service station. The electrician, that is, not the underling, and chaos reigns at the shop. It is Thursday. I cannot say Yea or Nay to the rumor of his escape but I remain un-airconditioned.

  3 p.m. My house is half as clean as I would like it to be but house cleaning is not my favorite activity. Deciding to sweep through, I begin at the front door. While making a swipe with the broom to get under the Baker’s Stand, I knock pot plant, pedestal and all to the floor. Dirt, plant, broken pot and pedestal go hither and yon. I am dismayed and say so, feeling I would like nothing more than to burst into a wild paroxysm of inconsolable weeping. I don’t seem to be capable of carrying out even the simplest motor task.

  My husband tries to stem his snorting laughter. His days are numbered, I warn him crisply as I try to salvage anything from the mess.

  4 p.m. The dog’s nails need clipping and I persuade her to put up with it by rewarding, translation—blackmailing) her with doggie choc bits. While struggling with her I drop the tin of choc bits and she’s on them in a flash, devouring the lot, then walks away with a patronizing grin.

  Ten minutes later she throws up in the laundry in several repulsive deposits. My husband is drawn to the site by the sound of muffled moans and someone gagging. He reminds me wistfully that I am the dog’s mother and that cleaning up vomit is what mothers do best.

  I am rendered incapable of speech by a surge of emotion, but feel I should be alert for unusual goings on as I am beginning to feel the house is demonized or at least haunted.

  What, I ask myself, is the point of living at all if it has to be conducted like this?

  5 p.m. Time for our afternoon walk around the block and across the undeveloped stretch of grassy territory where someone was recently bitten by a king brown snake. I go to the garage to fetch my lace-up shoes, place my right foot into the shoe and feel something wriggling. Further investigation reveals a medium-sized scorpion. I do not wonder for one second if scorpions are a protected or endangered species but send it to an untimely end with the shoe.

  Returning from the walk I again collect my bowls T-shirt from the line, only to find a very large bird has done a very large whoopsie down the front of it. I feel quite beaten and ready to submit to The Fates.

  I am disproportionately distraught because another club T-shirt cannot be obtained. The manufacturer did a special job for our orders and there are none left in my size or any other size, for that matter. My husband holds to the unwarranted assumption that I’ll be able to buy another. A chance would be a fine thing!

  6 p.m. Happy hour. We open the refrigerator to find a suitable beverage and find that the fridge and freezer have not come back on after the morning blackout. Investigation reveals that no other appliances have, either. I have rescued the raw poppy seed muffins from the oven hours ago and dispatched them to the compost bin. Our neighbors have power but we don’t. Furthermore, we hardly seem to care after the day we’ve put in.

  My hero checks the meter-box and find that the safety switch has tripped when the power went out. He reverses it and we are in business again, hopefully. We drink our beverages at slightly below room temperature, thankful that they have remained a little cool due to the fact we haven’t been opening the fridge door.

  7 p.m. Suffering from a sensation of being caged, we are finding our lives are beyond our control and we need to get out of the house which is threatening to destroy us. In desperation we go with our friends to night bowls as an escapist exercise. Bowls has been advertised in two newspapers as being ‘on.’ I am grateful that we don’t have to wear our club T-shirts to night bowls.

  No one turns up to let us into the clubhouse. We lollygag around for an hour and a half until someone of high rank arrives and gets the greenkeeper to open up the clubhouse and switch the bowling green lights on. Bowls is not ‘on’ but we play amongst ourselves anyway. We need it. It’s been a long and trying day!

  Now if someone would just come and open the bar, we might survive.

  7. Some Enchanted Evening

  Julia thought the experience was somewhat like the scene in ‘South Pacific’ when the hero and heroine belted out:

  ‘Some Enchanted Evening, you may see a stranger...’

  And so forth as each smiled charmingly at the other. A lovely little piece of frippery and music to the ears of many a damsel in the dating stakes who wished for themselves a life of living happily ever after to a degree, if such a thing were still possible in the twentieth century.

  Only the scene wasn’t a crowded room but a crowded dance floor where Ronnie and the Rebels were playing at a country dance. Their eyes met across the room, he asked her for the next dance, a Pride of Erin, and their fat
e was sealed, or so it seemed at the time.

  She had met Ralph Prosser at a time of exceptional vulnerability. Utterly furious at the treatment received at the hands of her longtime companion, a little twerp who fancied himself as a ladies’ man supreme who had flitted around behind her back like a little butterfly, sipping from other honeycombs, she had gone along blissfully unaware until being informed by an anonymous letter-writer about what was going on without her knowledge.

  Disillusioned from the encounter, she was grateful for Ralph’s company and attention. He was a jolly kind of man who sang and whistled constantly while seeming to fill a room with his pleasant presence. As the weeks went by Julia supposed him to be enough for her for the rest of her days, as she had decided he had lit her life up sufficiently for her to weather any emotional storms that may arise.

  She had learned to live in a world of comprises after being so badly let down by her husband of ten years and to add further insult to injury, her companion of two years, Felix Fox. Foxy Felix. Felix the Fox. Thinking about him, she often remembered what a spiteful-looking little man he was, although she had not recognized this trait at the time as he had carefully hidden his spite behind a veil of loveableness, a thin veneer only, so it turned out in the long run.

  Ralph had a rather loud, hearty voice, bright green eyes and pale brown hair with just a touch of gray peeking through. Occasionally she thought she glimpsed something steely in his face but she assured herself she was only being fanciful. What was showing was merely his strong character. Ralph had the best of intentions as he had told her time and again and she could do nothing less than believe him. But he would never make the slightest attempt to answer any questions he did not wish to, leaving the subjects that were taboo to him hanging in the air, wearing a look of condescension as he gazed at her over the top of his half-spectacles.