Melting Moments

by Anna Goldsworthy

  ‘You don’t look happy, Mum. What’s the matter?’

  ‘I miss my eyebrows,’ Ruby confesses. ‘Don’t want to die without my eyebrows.’

  ‘No one’s going to die,’ says Eva. ‘At least not without my permission.’

  But on the way to the hospital, she stops at a pharmacy, and returns to the car with a make-up pencil. She leans towards Ruby in the passenger street, and painstakingly draws on her brows.

  ‘Not too thick, darling. And don’t forget to feather them a little.’

  ‘Don’t worry. I think I know what you look like by now.’

  As she draws, Eva holds her breath and releases it in small puffs, as she did when she was a child, doing her colouring-in.

  ‘On the subject of Ned,’ Ruby offers. ‘You’re better off without him.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Ruby glances out at the gaudy sign, Midnight Pharmacy, with its purple letters set against an orange circle.

  ‘Just that I love you and I’m proud of you,’ she says hurriedly.

  Eva stops drawing for a moment, leans in and kisses her.

  ‘Thank you, Mum. And I love you.’

  At the hospital, Eva leaves her in the waiting room, promising to return after work.

  ‘Remember, there’s to be no dying. Even with such fine-looking eyebrows.’

  And then Ruby is on a bed, being wheeled into theatre. She recognises the anaesthetist from last time, that same pale stare behind his mask. He holds the tube over her mouth. Go to sleep now. It may be the last thing she ever hears, which does not especially perturb her.

  Ich habe genug.

  But she emerges soon enough and finds Father in the room. He is piled up with gifts for her: chocolates and pastilles and the most beautiful set of jade beads.

  A photo finish it was. The last race, and everybody at Victoria Park wanted to buy that ticket from me, even the bookmakers. But I stuck to my guns, I did. Made a killing.

  She closes her eyes, knowing Mother will confiscate the beads; they are lovely, but not suitable for a child.

  When she opens her eyes for a second time, it is not Father but Bill. His hands are empty. There are no beads, but it is a great comfort to see him.

  Will you forgive me?

  Of course, she says, or thinks she says. He climbs into bed with her, so that she can feel his body warm against her own. The faintest light creeps through the venetian blinds, and it takes her a moment to get her bearings. Then she realises they are back in the retirement home on their first night together in bed. She remembers every moment, as she knew she would at the time, for as long as she would live. Next door, a chair is scraped across the floor, and a television abruptly switched off. Then the outside world falls away completely. There is no longer any audience; it is only the two of them.

  She is not sure what Bill sees when he looks at her, what form she takes. Nor is she entirely sure who she sees, who is this silhouette in her bed. He wraps his arms around her and kisses her, and she is a girl again, but also an octogenarian woman with her octogenarian love, his bristly whiskers pressed against her upper lip.

  What’s it like then, being kissed by an old man?

  She is surprised by the girlishness of her laughter. Not so different from being kissed by a young man.

  His lips are soft, but when she rests her forehead against his, she senses the bony proximity of their skulls and feels a compassion for them both – and for Arthur and Mavis too, whose imprints remain in the way they touch each other – and an astonishment at how far they have moved through time. She reaches downward, but he takes her hand in his own and gently moves it away. Might we just embrace? So she turns and he spoons her, crossing his arms around her chest and taking a breast in each of his hands. She feels her body change beneath his touch. Its tremor is stilled. Its melancholy gives way to something else. How glad he makes her. As if an ending could also be a beginning. As if a former body could be returned to her. Not the body of that woman in the photograph, but an earlier, more fundamental body. The first known body. The still and steady thing.

  Acknowledgements

  I would like to thank the storytelling women of my family for decades of anecdote, wit and embellishment: Helen Goldsworthy, Virginia Beagley, Janet Sherban and the late Molly Wharldall. Thank you to my long-term collaborator Chris Feik at Black Inc.; to Jo Rosenberg and Kirstie Innes-Will, also at Black Inc., for their delicate editorial touches; and to my friend and agent Clare Forster. I am indebted to Jade Maitre, Peter Goldsworthy, Nicholas Purcell and particularly Chloe Hooper for their close, forensic reads. Donata Carrazza, Michael Shmith, Helen Ayres, Richard Wharldall, Mary Maitland, Jennifer Rutherford, Andrew Haveron, Melanie Stephenson, Nick Mathew, Sophie Dunstone, Tom Robinson, Daniel Goldsworthy, Alex Goldsworthy and Reuben and Otto Purcell generously provided clarifications and suggestions. Excerpts of the text have previously appeared in The Monthly and Griffith Review. I am grateful to the Ukaria Cultural Centre, the J.M. Coetzee Centre for Creative Practice, Griffith Review, Varuna, Janet Clarke Hall, Arts SA and the Australia Council for residencies and support.

  Anna Goldsworthy is the author of Piano Lessons, Welcome to Your New Life and the Quarterly Essay Unfinished Business: Sex, Freedom and Misogyny. Her writing has appeared in The Monthly, The Age, The Australian, the Adelaide Review and The Best Australian Essays. She is also a concert pianist, with several recordings to her name, and a lecturer at the Elder Conservatorium of Music.