“Who gave you those?”
“Cliffy. Poor old bugger thought I was going to kark it and never finish his bed socks.”
Sandra couldn’t help herself. “Are you up to knitting?”
“Sure. No worries. Look here.” Martha reached over into the side cupboard for a plastic bag, but couldn’t quite reach. She hopped out of bed, sprightlier than Sandra had ever seen her, and arrayed pieces of knitting on the bed. There it was, the baby’s layette in the white shell pattern, dress, jacket, bonnet, bootees, undershirt, soakers, though some seams were not yet stitched. The last piece was still on the needles, all but finished. Beautiful work, fine and even.
“When did you start this?”
“Oh, in that last week before I got sick, but it went wrong, so I didn’t show it to you. Then I got sick. I kept trying to fix it, and it got worse and worse, and I had a mas sive headache, so I stuffed it in one of my bags. I was so hot, I thought I was going to shrivel up. Then something happened.” Martha looked so distant for a minute that Sandra felt alarmed, but she continued in an ordinary voice.
“When I woke up yesterday I was better. This lot of knitting was folded up at the foot of the bed, and there was nothing wrong with it.”
“So who fixed it?”
Martha shrugged. “Don’t know.”
Martha took another bite of egg. Sandra looked around the room. Something was missing.
“Where are your bags now?”
Martha shrugged.
“Don’t know that either.” She tore open the pepper packet on her tray.
“Aren’t you worried about them?”
“No. Good riddance.”
“Martha, you never let them out of your sight!”
Martha took another bite of toast and chewed solidly, looking at Sandra.
“Do you know what was in them? Rubbish. Things I’d been trying to fix my whole life.”
“But where are they now?”
“Don’t know. Gone, anyway. Just as well. I could never have got rid of them. All that waste, all that time and energy.”
“Do you have any idea who took them?”
“The cleaner, maybe.”
“The cleaner?”
“Yes. He can knit, I reckon.”
Sandra shook her head.
“Martha, I hate to say this, but I don’t think you’ve got things straight.”
“Sandra, look at me! I felt like I was dying. And now”—Martha gestured with both hands, trying to find words—“I’m better. Head’s clear. I can get on with things, like these baby clothes.”
“There weren’t any mistakes?” Sandra asked cautiously.
“Not when I got them back, though I’ve made one since. I lost a stitch low down in the rib, and when I got to the top it was too tight to knit all the way up. But I didn’t chuck it in this time, I just threaded a needle and sewed it so it wouldn’t come undone. It’s not perfect, but it doesn’t matter. I’m never going to be perfect.”
Sandra shook her head in disbelief.
“I know. I couldn’t say that before. I was all in a knot. But it’s only knitting, to keep people warm, so what’s the point? And I don’t have to lug those bloody bags around anymore. I’m blowed if I’m going to get new ones.” Her voice cracked a little, but she was smiling. Was she teary? Sandra couldn’t be sure. Then Martha frowned.
“It wasn’t you, Sandra? Was it? Took the bags away?”
Sandra shook her head. Martha looked relieved.
“Must have been the cleaner. Look out for him, Sandra. I reckon you’d like him if you gave him a chance.”
IT WAS nearly Easter. Sandra had taken Martha home earlier in the day and was sharing a glass of wine with Kate before dinner. Tony was working late.
“I want to ask you something,” said Sandra.
“Fire away.”
“How was I when Jack died?”
“What do you mean?”
“I can’t remember it objectively. How did I behave?”
“Like anyone would in extreme circumstances.”
“Oh, come on, Kate. Did I make an idiot of myself?”
“There’s no right or wrong way to grieve. You have to find your own way. Nobody minds, for goodness’ sake.”
“What about Jack? I mean, how was I with Jack?”
Kate took another mouthful of wine. “Just what exactly are you asking me?”
“Did I give him a hard time?”
“Oh, Sandra.”
“But did I? I was so stressed out, I don’t know what I was like.”
“You were a bit—rigid. Look, I don’t know if this is very helpful.”
“Kate, I haven’t got Jack to front me anymore. Now help me sort this out. What do you mean, rigid?”
“Pour me another glass.” Sandra poured.
“Keep me company,” said Kate, gesturing toward Sandra’s glass.
“No. I’ll fall asleep. Talk.”
Kate sighed. “You’re just intense. You’ve always been intense. It’s just how you are. You’re passionate about things. And when the pressure’s on, you get anxious and try to control things. And of course, when you had a husband dying, you got very anxious indeed. Of course you did.”
“Did Jack say anything?”
“No.”
“Did Jack ever complain about me to you?”
“No, he never did. He was so loyal to you it drove me mad.”
“So I did give him a hard time?”
“Yes, you did. You give everybody a hard time when you’re like that. Look, we all do it, it’s just the expression that’s different. You turn into a control freak; I get moody and sullen and spiteful. We all do it, it just comes out in different ways.”
“Was I bossy with Jack?”
“Probably. It’s your pattern. But he’d had it for twenty-eight years, it would hardly have been a new experience. He had his own way of resisting. And maybe he just wanted to be by himself at the end.”
They finished their wine and carried the pilaf outside to eat in the fading light. Kate was talking now, about Tony and Jeremy, about menopause, about the movie she’d seen last week. Sandra smiled and answered at appropriate intervals.
Bossy with Jack. She hadn’t even let him die in peace.
Kate saw her to her car, her face anxious. Now that Sandra had decided to go, she was in a hurry to leave. She slammed the car door just as Kate leaned toward her to say something. Kate made a face, but it took a few seconds before Sandra realized that she had slammed the car door on Kate’s thumb.
“Oh, Kate! I’m so sorry!”
Kate was white, her face strained. Sandra took her inside.
“Is there anything I can do?”
“No, no. Don’t worry, Sandra. Just an accident. Go on, go home. I’m all right.” Kate was rocking a little, holding her thumb up to her cheek.
“Go on! Tony will be home soon. You can’t do anything.”
Sandra drove home with her eyes smarting.
SANDRA felt worse as Martha’s health improved. Every night she lay in bed wide-eyed, staring at the rectangle of faint light that was the window. She could feel herself in the vortex, circling inward toward facts she didn’t want to face.
She got out of bed, pulled a woolen sweater over her pajamas, forced her feet into socks and Ugg boots, went out to where the cold moon shone in the pool. A magpie sang out, and a possum scrambled up the fence and thudded on the shed roof.
The moonlit garden was thick with past conversations. The house, too, the whole place seething with memories: loving, fighting, jeering, weeping, silences, jolts of tenderness. She and Jack had lived here ever since they married, determined to stay based in Adelaide, renting the house out while they lived overseas.
Around the pool stood Jack’s fruit trees, silent sentinels planted for special occasions: the plum, apricot, and peach for each of Jack’s three scholarly works, various citrus trees for wedding anniversaries. Jack had been a fruit fanatic, gradually replacing nonfruitin
g trees and shrubs with an edible garden. The house was built on a double lot. Bit by bit Jack had claimed the backyard for his garden; the front he had dedicated to indigenous plants for the birds. He experimented with exotic fruits, nurtured wild edibles, erected trellises for berries and vines to cover sheds and tanks. Spring was pink and white with apple and nut blossom, in autumn pomegranates hung red and heavy by the gate, and after leaf fall a solar system of persimmons swung around the bare black trunk. Jack was never happier than when his hands were deep in compost or bringing her platters of home-grown fruit.
When she was younger, Sandra had been too impa tient for gardening. There were too many variables—soil, insects, rootstock, weather. In its first year the almond tree had been covered in little green nuts. Then Jack had gone to a conference and Sandra had forgotten to water it, around the corner as it was, out of the daily line of sight. Most of the baby almonds had withered and dropped, and birds had decimated the rest. But Jack, though disappointed, had proudly brought her the small handful of surviving almonds the following autumn.
Sandra, less knowing then, had looked at them and burst into tears, accused him wildly of heaping coals on her head, and slammed into her study.
Poor Jack. He’d never had an easy time of it.
Now, with the cold slats of the garden seat pressing into her warm flesh, all she could remember was how she had pushed and pulled at him. Even in the garden she had been imperious, insisting that he shift the hole for a tree over a few feet, wanting lettuces sown in straight rows, pulling out a tomato he was nurturing because it had sprung up next to a rose bush. And at the end, opening curtains and windows for fresh air when he preferred darkness, insisting that he rest when he was wakeful, plumping his pillows, rubbing his pressure spots when he would rather have lain quietly. Loving him too hard and all wrong.
What she had done with Martha was more of the same, though less intense perhaps. Driving and pushing, organizing, creating projects with a purpose, achieving her own ends. And for what? To keep the fear at bay.
Fear. The word had come spontaneously. What did she fear? Nothing, really. Except being alone with her own ugliness.
April
FOR SANDRA the week before Easter had been packed. When the supermarket closed the evening before the Friday holiday, she was last in line at the checkout.
Martha had been home for three days; surely now it would be all right to ring.
Martha, sounding chirpy, preempted Sandra’s big question. “Look, Sandra, I just can’t do it by the date we set. It will have to be later in the year. I’m really sorry, but I just about drove myself crazy with the pressure.”
Although Sandra had been expecting this, she was still unprepared for the wave of disappointment and self-pity that swept over her.
“Oh, we would have been all right if you hadn’t got sick.” The edge of bitterness in her voice dismayed her, but she didn’t seem able to stop. “It was just bad luck. We were organized enough up until then.” A subtle shifting of blame. She despised herself for it, but Martha’s response was mild.
“No, we were both too pressured. It wasn’t fun anymore. And it was spoiling our friendship. I was starting to hate you for making me work so hard. But it was my fault, too—I said yes. I don’t hate you now. I just feel sorry for you. You’re like a sheepdog with a mob of sheep and no pen to put them in.”
Sandra hung up as soon as she decently could. She found a few withered veggies in the fridge and tried to make them edible. She hadn’t finished her shopping; she’d have to go to a seven-day supermarket tomorrow. She couldn’t find anything good on TV either, only old reruns of bad biblical movies. Nothing to distract her from herself.
On Good Friday Sandra woke cold as ice. She had clenched her teeth in the night; her jaw ached, her neck was stiff, her knees would not bend properly. Perhaps she was getting the flu. She stayed under the shower a long time, but the marrow was frozen in her bones. It was going to be a wet and windy weekend.
Last Easter she had spent on her own, wandering and sad. On Saturday, the six-month anniversary of Jack’s death, she had tackled a backlog of paperwork to keep herself busy. Kate and Tony had asked her to dinner, but the food tasted like sawdust. She had excused herself early and gone home to lie on her bed and stare blankly at the ceiling. The Easter before that she had taken Jack to the sea, where they had walked among the old chipped rocks. Jack was wrapped in an overcoat and hunched against the wind, but they both enjoyed the crash and boom of the breakers, the spray tickling their faces, the timeless salty tang in the air. They had spent the long evenings by an open fire playing chess and reading. And had spoken for the first time of the reality of his dying.
But this Easter she had no plans. The four days looked long and bleak.
Good Friday. Kate had invited her to attend the Easter services, but she had declined. Had she ever been to a Good Friday service? Not as an adult. Well, perhaps she would go after all; she’d surprise Kate. She must not succumb to self-pity. She sat stiffly at the cold breakfast table drinking coffee, with toast and marmalade that was sickly sweet. The morning paper was a mass of advertising.
As she backed her car out of the driveway, a middle-aged couple stopped on the sidewalk to let her pass. They were talking animatedly and laughing under their big umbrella. The weather was not bothering them.
It was too early for the service, much too early. She should have stayed longer at home, turned on the heater, warmed the house. But she had inherited a family frugality; she didn’t believe in wasting resources. She rarely turned on the heat before work.
It started to rain again. Gutters clogged with autumn leaves became little rivers. She didn’t want to go into the church too soon, into that strange community Kate talked about so often, into the bustle of baskets and bosoms, the cheerful setting out of milk jugs and sugar bowls and trays of buns ready for the oven. Although she hated driving in the rain, she went out of her way, around the perimeter of the city, and got to the church a couple of minutes late, though the service hadn’t started. She took a program and sat near the back, tucked into the aisle end of a pew. There was a draft under the old swinging door. She wished she had her Ugg boots on instead of shoes.
Well toward the front, on the far side of the church, she saw Martha’s red head bobbing about. Newly back from hospital, she was enjoying enthusiastic greetings from friends. She had been missed.
The service began. Sandra stood, sat, stood, sat, mouthed words. Behind her a husband and wife sang in practiced unison, the wife a natural alto. Sandra could hear her own voice, fluttery as paper, insubstantial. Her hand ached; she was holding the program in a pincer grip. Her whole body was tightened, shut and protective, somehow far away. She wanted to leave, slip out the back and go home, but she didn’t have the energy for that, didn’t want to be noticed and perhaps pitied.
At the front of the church was a rough wooden cross, eight feet high, draped with purple. Close by, on the communion table between the bread and the wine, was a large round bowl of dark red roses in full flush. It was well done, simple and dramatic. Meaningful, probably, if you had feelings.
The pastor was speaking now, saying those hard rude Christian words, sin, guilt, shame, sickness, death, blood. It was a hard God they worshipped. The God who gave and took away. Sandra had read the Bible once but had not been convinced. She was not like Job, who had suffered loss and grief and could still bless God. When Sandra got to heaven she would pick a bone with God, have it out, tell him off for giving so much joy and snatching it back.
Kate was leading communion. She took her place, saying words that were vaguely familiar, breaking the loaf. A tall, plain woman with big hands tearing a loaf of bread. The crust was thick. It was an effort, she had to pull hard; Sandra saw the crust crack and crumble, the thickened underbelly pull apart.
This is my body, broken for you, said Kate. Fragile bodies, prone to fatigue, vulnerable to bacteria, succumbing to the civil war of cancer. Dead bodies. Two more
suicide bombs had gone off this week. Soft fleshy bodies ripped apart, embedded with fragments of metal, bits of cars and buses, the irony of carpenter’s nails. It wasn’t fair. Death was everywhere. When Sandra got her scrap of bread she had trouble swallowing.
Kate was holding the cup. This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.
There was a disturbance at the front. Martha was standing, edging past the other people in the row. Her jacket caught on something, she had to stop and unhook herself. People who had been praying looked up, then looked down again as though caught out. Martha was wearing her clumpy shoes, and her footsteps were not hushed by the red carpet.
Martha walked steadily toward Kate and stood directly in front of the communion table. She nodded to Kate, put her hands under the heads of the roses, and pulled the whole arrangement out of the bowl. She tugged off the green florist’s block still sticking to the stems and dumped it back in the vase. She turned, faced the congregation, and began to walk up the left aisle. As she went, she tore off a handful of rose petals and scattered them over the heads of the people. Then another handful. In the great and astonished silence Sandra could hear the roses being torn from their stems.
Sandra looked back at Kate, seated again, and saw her nod to the organist, who began to play. She was allowing it. Kate was going to let Martha do this bizarre thing.
After initial awkwardness Martha developed a kind of grace. She was moving quietly now, tearing and scattering. Petals were falling everywhere, on heads and pews and laps, into baby carriages, onto the floor. A couple of petals fell on the organ keys. Kate stood again and began to follow Martha, offering the cup to the congregation as she went.
Martha was coming closer. Sandra stared down at hands clenched in her lap. The skin was white, blue veins clear on the back, like fissures in marble. She didn’t want to make eye contact with Martha, didn’t want to see, didn’t want to participate. But she had only two alternatives: to submit or to rush headlong out of the place, which would be even more difficult. Sandra stayed where she was. She was afraid that Martha would speak to her in front of all these people.
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