Marsha's Deal

by Laura Solomon

  * * *

  The remainder of Iris's high school years passed without remarkable event. She was a good student who brought home good marks. She kept Marsha and Don happy. She did not steal again. Shortly after her twentieth birthday, Iris made up her mind to find out who her real mother was. She made her way to the nearest Child, Youth and Family office and asked for information about her natural mother. She was given the name Jenny Robinson and a phone number. Iris returned home and, with trembling hands, phoned her real mother. The telephone was picked up after three rings.

  “Hello.”

  There was a hint of hardness in the voice, a rough voice, a voice that had been around the block a couple of times. Iris was unsure of what she should say – she found herself wishing that she had rehearsed her lines before calling.

  “Hello”, she said. “My name is Iris Anderson. I believe you are my mother.”

  There was a long pause and then the voice quietly said, “I did give a baby up for adoption some twenty year ago yes. I'm glad you've tracked me down. I've spent a long time wondering what had become of you.”

  And she promptly burst into tears.

  Iris hesitated. What she felt like saying was, but you didn't try and track me down, did you? but she knew that there may have been complicating factors, laws around tracking down adopted children.

  “So, do you have a partner?”

  “Yes. I live with John. A zookeeper at the Auckland zoo. How about you?”

  “No, I'm single.”

  “It's good to hear your voice after all these years.”

  “How old were you when you had me?”

  “I was only fifteen. It was just a quick fling out the back of the movie theatre where I worked as an usher. I was in no financial position to be keeping a baby. Please try and understand love. Don't take it personally. I did try to find you but…”

  “I have to go”, said Iris, suddenly overcome with emotion. “I'll see you later.”

  She hung up the phone without waiting for Jenny to say goodbye.

  Iris did not want to arrange a meeting with her adopted mother. Part of her was angry, furious even, that she had been given away. Surely Jenny could have found a way to keep her, lived at home with her mother for a while longer, possibly, or gone on some kind of benefit. She had been given up too easily, thought Iris. Jenny hadn't valued her highly enough.

  * * *

  As she grew increasingly encased in bone, Marsha did not want to be a burden to her family. She went online and filled out the forms to suicide at Dignitas. The contract was signed. She telephoned her sister to advise her of her plans and to ask her for money. She bought her plane ticket to Switzerland. She kept her date with Nembutal, she kept her date with death.

  The Second Time Around

  Marsha came screaming into the world. Aaron who was waiting outside heard the baby cry and immediately he wanted to rush in to see Isobel and the new infant. Barring his way was a large nurse in a white surgical gown. Soon the infant was being cradled, wrapped in a white blanket, by her mother. Isobel bent down and kissing the tiny nose swore to the child that no matter what the future held they would face it together. In a few days, they would all go home and take those few tentative steps into what would become their family life together.

  Like all new mothers, Isobel often wondered if she was doing the right thing whenever Marsha was threatened with some terrible childhood illnesses. The local children's services assured her that she was doing just fine and that Marsha was developing nicely by meeting those milestones that are typical of a normal child. By ten months Marsha was beginning to attempt to crawl but pretty soon after this she started to walk. It was also safe to report that Marsha was quite the chatterbox and seemed to be able to pick up new words and phrases at a reasonable pace. Getting her to stop was what was proving to be the challenge.

  Aaron and Isobel were delighted and proud that they had such a perfect child as Marsha proved to be. Isobel and Aaron ran a small grocery store just outside of the town's main thoroughfare and were very busy but they somehow managed to juggle childcare arrangements so that Marsha was well looked after. As parents, they soon realised that the good behaviour and fine manners of their daughter would reflect well on them. Marsha easily made friends and seemed such a caring person. There were the inevitable tantrums that childhood brings but thankfully these were few and far between.

  As Marsha grew she was soon ready to attend school, a daunting experience for any parent let alone the child themselves. Isobel was aware that her daughter would now come under the influence of others and could only hope that Marsha's good common sense would prevail. This proved to be the case for all through primary school Marsha thrived and soaked up the knowledge given.

  It was only when entering “big” school that Marsha's temperament began to break down because she was bullied, cajoled and told that she was useless almost every day by a group of older students. When Isobel became aware of what was going on at school she tried in vain to protect her daughter. However, the damage was done and there were days in which Marsha would visibly shrink a few inches and disappear to her room. It was during those periods of solitude and quiet contemplation that Marsha vowed that no-one would ever do that to her daughter and get away with it. She wanted to leave school as soon as she could and now did not care about the consequences of having little or no qualifications.

  On the day she turned 15, on her last day in the institution she thought of as purgatory, she saw that the local bakery wanted a trainee bread maker. Still in her school uniform she went in and saw the manager and agreed to start the next morning at 4am. She could be found at all hours of the day making her way home, stumbling, and covered in so much flour that she looked like a ghost. It wasn't much of a job and the money was rubbish but at least wasn't school. It was this that kept her going all week. In daydreams, she wished that somebody would come and sweep her off her feet to a new, better and more exciting life.

  * * *

  Marsha remembered her past life (and meeting the Devil) only in dreams and nightmares. She would often dream that she was cast in stone, and she would awake from these nightmares feverish and sweating. The Devil would appear to her too, swinging his tail and flexing his pointy horns, and these horrors would leave her feeling frightened and cowed for the rest of the next day and sometimes for the remainder of the week. She had no idea that these were memories of her past life lingering in her unconscious mind; she simply knew that she dreamed and she often remembered what her dreams were about when she awoke.

  * * *

  Aunt Abbey ran Curl Up and Dye hairdressing salon on Exile Street. The salon had been running since the 70s and had not been updated since it had opened. The hair dryers looked like astronaut helmets and the décor was brown, yellow and geometric. The magazines had been there since the 70s as well. Apart from Abbey herself, the only staff member was dumpy Betty who was pushing 65 but would not retire. She wore twin sets and plaid tartan skirts and burnt the customers by leaving them under the hairdryer too long. Her specialty was old 70s hairdos that nobody liked anymore. She played bad 70s music - Minnie Ripperton, Terry Jacks and Debbie Boone.

  Across the road was the competition. A flash, souped up salon simply called Eleven, with state of the art equipment, modern décor – black and white tiled floors, red leather swivel chairs, battery run hand held silver hairdryers, and young hip staff named Floss, Heather and Jaxx. They wore black high heels, tight leather pants, sparkly gold and silver tops, and plenty of make-up. It was 1991 – they played techno beats, Mudhoney, Radiohead and Nirvana.

  Abbey was jealous of the competition. She had never met the owner, but she knew one thing – they had bags and bags of money. She gossiped about them to anyone who would listen, including the customers. She claimed that their hair dye was expired, that their salon used to be used by a bunch of Satan worshipers, and that they put 300% mark up on their products. Her claims were ridiculous but she had been driven wild with envy. />
  Her customers slowly got sick of her gossiping. She was driving them away. They began leaving her and frequenting the salon across the road. She would see her regular customers walking through the front door of Eleven and spit tacks. She was struggling to balance the books. She went to see her bank manager and borrowed some money to keep the salon afloat – using the salon as collateral.

  Abbey did not realise that it was her constant gossiping which had driven away the customers. She did not put a lid on it. She remained loose-lipped and a teller of porky pies. By the start of 1992 she was unable to keep up with her mortgage payments and the bank forced her into a mortgagee sale. Curl Up and Dye went up for sale for $42,000 and was bought by Eleven, who took over, turned it into a beauty salon and named it Twelve. They stripped it of the seventies décor and the astronaut helmets and hired a masseuse, Jonty – they also did facials, pedicures, special occasion make-up, waxing and spray tans and were a raging success. Abbey fumed with jealousy.

  The devil emerged from his steam bath and checked the playback on his cameras which beamed down footage from earth via satellite.

  “Looks like envy's been achieved. Stupid humans. This is easier than I thought,” he commented to one of his minions.

  * * *

  Marsha loved her supple body and would do stretches every morning and yoga every evening.

  Perhaps some things in life are meant to be. Free will versus fate. Who really has the answer to that one?

  In her second life, during her second time around, Marsha was walking home from work, covered lightly in flour, when she stopped into the Post Office to post a letter. As she walked towards the letterbox, she bumped into a gentleman in a long grey coat and dropped her letter. She bent down to pick it up but he beat her to it, taking the white envelope in his hand and pressing it gently into hers. Their eyes locked – freeze frame. He extended his hand.

  “Please”, he said. “Allow me to introduce myself. I'm Don. Don the picker-upper of letters.”

  Marsha laughed. She walked the few steps to the letterbox, posted the letter, then turned around and looked at Don again.

  “Fancy a cup of coffee?” asked Don, summoning his courage.

  “Sure, why not?”

  Marsha reached up and brushed some flour off her cheek.

  Marsha followed Don the short distance to Harrelson's café. Marsha ordered a cappuccino and Don ordered a flat white. They sat opposite each other at the table, sipping their coffees. For a good five minutes neither spoke, they simply sat staring at one another, mildly smitten, though each had only just made the other's acquaintance.

  Something was in the air. They were two like two trains on a single track, destined to meet at some romantic junction. Marsha was only eighteen and Don twenty-three; a huge age gap at that time in their lives. She was not so world wise as he and, she thought, that this could only benefit her. It was not long before they both felt ready to commit to a more settled existence and they married. A mere ten months later Marsha gave birth to a little girl. They named her Iris after Marsha's Great Grandmother. Don commented at the time Iris was first introduced to him, “By God she's just like you Marsha”.

  It therefore came as no surprise that with loving parents Iris not only thrived but astounded all those around her with her grasp of language and social skills. Iris's upbringing seemed to flash by in a blur. One minute Iris was a small child balancing on her mother's knee, Marsha thought when she sat watching the coals glow red in the darkened living room, and the next she is this beautiful eighteen year old with a boyfriend called Tony who seemed to have good prospects. Of course it was too early to know if anything might develop from the relationship so everybody would have to wait and see.

  The parachute jump was a gift from her boyfriend. After a day of training, Iris booked in for the jump on Wednesday the 9th of March 2015. The day dawned fine and clear and Iris set out from home with a spring in her step. She had no real worries, no real cares. She was eighteen; she was full of the joys of life. She loved her parents and her boyfriend. She was about to fall from the sky.

  She walked into the reception area and handed across her ticket, then made her way to the aircraft hangar where she greeted several men.

  “Hello,” she said. “I'm here for a solo jump. Without a static line please.”

  “Right you are.”

  One of the men handed Iris her parachute and showed her how to put it on. Butterflies danced in her stomach. She took a deep breath. She boarded the plane.

  The plane flew high into the clear blue sky. When they reached 12,000 feet the plane levelled off. Iris did as her training had taught her to do and walked to the door of the plane, looking out rather than down to combat vertigo. She tucked her feet beneath the plane and launched herself out into empty space. As instructed, she allowed herself to fall for the requisite sixty seconds, before reaching for the cord of the parachute. The parachute had not been packed correctly and the chute failed to open. Iris fell and kept falling. She hit the ground, her neck snapped and she was killed instantly. The Devil had come to collect.

  Iris's death hit Marsha hard, hit her in the solar plexus. She spent a long time grieving, stayed in bed for six weeks after the death, curled up, clutching a fluffy purple cushion, with Don bringing her meals, echoing the way he had cared for her when her disease had begun to progress in her earlier life. He was a good man; a jewel. Marsha was lucky to have found him – in both lives. She knew that other men were not so well behaved. They cheated and they lied, spun sticky webs of deception around themselves. Webs in which you could become entrapped, a helpless fly caught by a treacherous spider. Marsha knew that relationships were complicated and she was careful to always give thanks to God that her own husband was kind and treated her properly, treated her, in fact, like a Queen. She knew of women who were beaten or beaten down by their husbands, their self-esteem reduced to zero so that they cowered and did not look the world in the eye. So that they moved through life with no self-confidence, empty husks. Marsha did not want to become one of these women. She wanted to keep herself strong. Lying in bed, grieving the loss of her daughter, she found some deep inner strength, like a well, and she drew on its water to see her through. She drank deeply and emerged refreshed, came forth and faced the world again, renewed. She had been inside the abyss, into the darkness and was now emerging into the light.

  Marsha built a small shrine to Iris in one corner of the house, in the living room, and then did her best to move on and embrace life fully, in all its glorious possibilities. She kept herself fit with swimming and walking and went back to work at the bakery. She did not, at this stage, put two and two together and blame the devil for her great misfortune.

  With time, Marsha began to look around for somebody to blame for the parachuting accident. Who had been responsible for packing the parachute? She wanted to know. The company would not tell her – they claimed that they kept no such record; it could have been any one of a number of people, they said. They would not point the finger. Eventually, Marsha came around to blaming the devil. Surely this was his handiwork; it bore his mark - the mark of Satan. Wasn't he responsible for all grisly deaths? The slipped chainsaw, the snowboard that flies from the edge of the cliff, the perilous rotten axe. Marsha was right. One of the devil's minions had found a job at the parachuting company and was responsible for the poorly packed parachute.

  * * *

  Cousin Andrew was on the dole smoking pot. He sat around all day with his hand down his pants playing Playstation. He'd had jobs before but he always got laid off because he was essentially lazy. His sloth-like attitude had been apparent since birth. He hadn't walked until he was two, preferring to be carried around. His mother had been a helicopter parent, always doing everything for him, never making him tidy up or clean up after himself. He still lived at home although he was twenty-six – it was a wonder his parents hadn't kicked him out, but they were too soft. He had done nothing with his life; he had dropped out of school at f
ifteen and had no achievements to his name. One of life's tragic cases.

  Andrew had a big stack of porn next to the bed. His parents had a meeting with him and gave him the ultimatum of a month to find a place to live, saying that he could not stay with them anymore. Andrew did not take them seriously. He did nothing to help himself; did not look online for a place to live, or in the newspaper, nor did he ask around amongst his few friends. At the end of the month he came home from a friend's house stoned to find all his gear on the footpath, and the locks changed. There was a note on top of his gear from his Mum.

  Sorry this is tough love. Good luck.

  At a loss, Andrew went back to his friend's house and asked to crash for the night. His friend was hard hearted.

  “Bugger off, you're way too lazy. I don't want you hanging around.”

  So much for friends, thought Andrew. He went to the local men's shelter but could only stay there one night before the owner, a scary looking man with a patch over one eye, kicked him out. After that he took to sleeping in the doorway of Farmers, sometimes being abused by passersby.

  Sloth was checked by the devil beside Andrew's name.