Window Gods

by Sally Morrison

  Vance and Suzanne have finally tamed the road up from their patch, Vance in the lead. He comes over to the table and pulls out two chairs. ‘We should take a photo of that, Bel. Wombat cuddling on Australia Day.’

  ‘Or even make it an annual Australia Day event,’ says Lexie.

  ‘Hi.’ Vance leans down and kisses my cheek. I introduce him and Suzanne, who’s just behind him, tiny, plump and puffed from the climb, to Mick, who’s in the middle of asking Lexie how long the grapes have been in. While Lexie explains that the vines have been in for twenty years, it begins to seem an indecently long time since all this was virgin bush and I was a young woman in it, ten or more years younger than Lexie is now, kneeling down over my drawing pad alongside Reg Sorby, drawing orchids and fending off his lecherous advances. Allegra, certain that Reg would succeed in his attempts at seduction, used to quiz me mercilessly after these expeditions, but Reg had plenty of women to keep him occupied; he didn’t need me. He was fubsy, couldn’t keep his hands to himself and didn’t even try; it used to make me wonder how he saw the world – maybe as a great sex act with him as principal rooter. There’d be cries of ‘rape!’ from the puritans these days. Indeed half the painters of the sixties and seventies would be in jail for unrestrained lust.

  ‘Watch it doesn’t pee on you,’ laughs Vance and I hand Gordon to Lexie’s girl, who’s ten, tall and blonde like her mother. There’s definitely a new breed being born. ‘Gosh, Suzanne,’ I lean across the table to her, nodding towards her granddaughter, ‘do you have the same difficulty I do? Coming up to people’s kneecaps in the trams?’

  Suzanne laughs. She’s even shorter than I am. ‘I can’t even reach the passenger straps in the new trams,’ she says.

  ‘I think they’ve overlooked something. My niece Nin was downed by a flying pensioner a while ago when a trammie slammed on the brakes. It was right outside the Eye and Ear Hospital, which was just as well because she burst a blood vessel behind her eye, poor thing. Had to get off the tram there and then and seek medical attention.’

  ‘Beware flying pensioners,’ says Mick.

  ‘Baby Boomers morph into Baby Bombers.’ Vance takes up the wine list. ‘What are we going to have to drink here, Lex?’

  ‘I’ve got some of your favourite Sav Blanc on ice, Dad,’ says Lexie, turning towards the shady, low-slung restaurant, her arm around her daughter. ‘I’ll send some out. I’d eat with you but we’re flat tack today with all the visitors. Have a look at the menu. Anyway, here comes Alicia to take your order.’

  Alicia is Lexie’s sixteen-year-old – another tall blonde. She’s wearing a long black apron over black pants and a white shirt. They all have waists, these women – long, slender and beautiful. It’s hard to imagine how intestines fit in under them and how Lexie regained shape after giving birth three times – maybe human flesh is taking on a new property, kind of melding with elastane so that it snaps back. And vertebrae have to have been lengthening and strengthening: my rib cage isn’t all that far above my hips. Maybe something’s happening to bodies; the plot’s getting better – more like Mozart’s Grand Solo, where each note creates the next one as if you could pull a magic tassel in the universe and bring forth flowingly, any small, natural gestation you might care to and that natural gestation would go forth, eat fabulous food and flourish. What, I wonder, were Lexie’s mother’s circumstances that she had to give away such a sane and sturdy creature? Was she a sane and sturdy creature herself and if so, how did she end up giving away her baby?

  I so envy Vance with his mind full of the minutiae of the genes – the foldings and unfoldings of the magic ladder of life, the comings and goings of shapely little molecules through thin and slippery and secret places to make the Gordons and the Lexies. And then there are the attack strategies of life’s freeloaders and the defence strategies of cells that are just out for themselves. It’s so poetic it should be in the grammar and experience of all of us; we should all be sitting at the edge of the exciting dark, dangling our increasingly gorgeous legs over the edge, ready to fish up another brilliant ruse of the universe – instead? What a jigsaw we live in – Vance in his vinyl-scented tower, me in my nonexistent studio and only the most happenstance of links between us.

  Oh dear, Lexie has a bloke cooking dampers on a barbie by the cellar-room door. Australia – beer and singlets or imitation beer and singlets. Reg Sorby used to go way out to the sweat-soaked inland draggle towns to paint the real ones – flakes of men with the sunken eyes of lost Europe, the lees of failure. People who were born for something other than life handed out, who were chased, harried and worn away to the dryness of deciduous leaves in the desert. ‘Look at me,’ his paintings of them said. And you’d look and maybe you’d feel like a pervert and think ‘poor brutes’, but then again you might see it differently – you might take the view of the indifferent rationalist and think that there isn’t room for everyone and that’s life. In return for their portraits, Reg would paint for these benighted souls fat-bottomed nudes and rooting Bacchantes on the walls of their pubs – news of his exploits would filter out to the cities, the press would go out to have a look and the forgetful and forgotten and the never-thought-about would be exposed. And Reg would have a sell-out exhibition back in town.

  ‘Penny for your thoughts, Isobel?’ Vance says.

  ‘Meandering as usual,’ I laugh.

  ‘Eli?’

  ‘Well actually no – not immediately in my thoughts, but then again, yes, because he’s always there. I haven’t heard from him and he’s left a mess behind. I don’t know what to do – in fact, there isn’t anything much I can do…’

  And Mick explains how Eli’s abandoned unit had a bloody patch on the floor which had been washed with bleach and how bleach destroys DNA and how the police haven’t come up with any leads and how there isn’t even any evidence that Eli left Australia after my exhibition.

  Vance pats my shoulder. ‘Sounds as if your plate is overfull, Bel.’

  ‘A permanent condition with me, it seems.’

  ‘Ours was, too, for a long while,’ Suzanne commiserates. ‘We’ve virtually had to give up on Timothy.’ And she explains to Mick how they adopted another child besides Lexie, a boy. ‘Things have just gone from bad to worse with him. The door’s open if he wants to come back but there’s a limit to what we can do. He came to me through my practice. I’m a GP. There was a homeless girl who came to see me. She’d already had to give up two children through drugs and alcohol. When Tim was born he wasn’t noticeably on the foetal alcohol spectrum but she was using and she wanted me to take care of him while she detoxed. It wasn’t a question of adoption at first and I persuaded Vance to take him under our wing until she was out of detox and could look after him. Lexie was already ten and doing really well. She was a great baby right from the start. She always wanted a smaller sibling and so we took on Tim. It was only a temporary arrangement at first and then it became permanent. I anticipated a number of problems with him, but you can’t anticipate everything and I guess you learn that as you go.

  ‘He was slow to grow, he cried a lot, he was slow in being able to focus his eyes…well, that’s how it started. I took six months off to try and establish a routine but he was really a full-time child. His mother left detox and went onto benefit and the DSS found her a place to live – a flat in a high-rise, which wasn’t ideal, because Tim screamed day and night when he first went back to her. And then, of course, she got back onto the drugs, started peddling them herself, was arrested and Tim came back to us after the DSS exhausted what they thought of as better alternatives. They said he was malnourished, but that could have been the foetal alcohol syndrome – he had some other markers, like the eye folds and a really low philtrum…’

  ‘Philtrum?’ I ask.

  ‘You know, the two tracks between your nose and your top lip.’

  ‘Oh, so that’s what it’s called. I never knew it had a name. But it’s a funny thing, isn’t it? You kind of wonder why it’s there.’<
br />
  ‘The snot gutter,’ says Mick.

  ‘Yeah,’ Suzanne laughs. ‘Well, Tim hasn’t got much of a snot gutter. But he’s actually very nice-looking, don’t you think, Vance?’

  ‘Sure. If you overlook the piercings.’

  ‘Oh yes, the bloody piercings. Vance put his foot down when he came home with a tongue job…’

  ‘Well, I couldn’t bear him clacking the stud against his teeth the whole time. And then I couldn’t bear the thought of him breaking his front teeth on it, either – it cost a fortune for us to have his teeth fixed. Part of his problem was a high palate and not enough room for his top teeth to come down. And getting him to the dentist was a chore in itself. He’s so impulsive, if you managed to get beyond the waiting room without him doing a runner, you then had to stand guard on the tray of dental stuff to stop him grabbing it, just like a baby grabs everything. I’d have to bark at him all through the whole procedure.’

  ‘Yes. He’d only do what Vance told him.’

  ‘Not always…’ Vance puts his hands up in surrender.

  ‘Ah, the old baritone syndrome,’ I say. ‘I know that one. What is it about boys that they can’t take anything seriously if it isn’t said at several octaves below soprano? My grand-nephew started noticing that people’s voices were pitched differently even before he could talk. He used to practise his baritone when he was still in his nappy.’

  ‘Well, Tim was hell for female teachers in school – absolute hell,’ says Suzanne. ‘We tried everything we could think of – classroom assistance at an ordinary school, special schooling, private schooling. But I would have had to give up work to take care of all his needs. I wasn’t willing to do that and he ran wild, went on sprees, started drinking himself. Meanwhile his mother died of an overdose.

  ‘We were in and out of court with him. He’d get drunk, steal a car with a mate, drive like a maniac, get arrested, it just went on and on and on and on. Once he moved out of home, we started finding things missing. He was stealing from us. To add insult to injury, he’d trash the joint to make it look as if it was someone else. Then he took up with a homeless girl called Olive and next thing is Olive’s pregnant and Tim’s doing a stretch for dealing.

  ‘Well, we saw to it that Olive got the proper medical care, but when we were offered up the baby by way of payment, we just had to say no.

  ‘I mean, Isobel, we were well meaning. We did everything we could think of, but there are times when you just have to throw in the towel or wreck yourself. Thinking about Tim exhausts me and I can understand how thinking about Eli must exhaust you. I’d sooner cuddle Gordon. Come and sit beside me, Isobel, let’s cuddle her together.’ She hoists Gordon up onto her lap, ‘She makes you feel good.’

  So the okay, uncomplicated, flourishing life of Lexie is offset by Tim, and, like me, Suzanne has to divide up her time into unrelated chunks. The world looks around, sees someone capable and dumps its problem there, not for a moment considering that the dumped-upon are trying to create their lives, too.

  ‘You know,’ says Suzanne, ‘I see all kinds of things in that surgery – drugs and drink are only the start of it. I see poor women coming in wanting genital reconstruction after being mutilated because it’s their custom – and then, I see long-time Australian residents coming to me wanting cosmetic surgery on their genitalia! Honestly! Aren’t they aware that vaginas come in several variations? What’s happened to the Women’s Movement? They’re frightened that if their labia minora show, men will reject them. Almost all the young women I see have hairless pubic areas and when I ask why, they try to tell me it’s more hygienic! Imagine having your pubes ripped off! I marvel at the ongoing stupidity. One of these days women will come to me wanting to have zippers put in to avoid vaginal birth.’

  She hands me little Gordon and I hold her to my breast, where she feels warm and sacred. ‘You have to wonder at people, don’t you, Isobel? What could be more beautiful than an infant and more hideous than a brutalised adult? I hope your Eli turns up safe and sound. I’m sure he will. From what I hear, you’ve been a very supportive mum.’

  ‘But I’ve been an easy mark for predators and that’s been hard for him. People pose as one thing and all the time they’re someone else. Some make a lifelong practice of posing, you fool yourself with others and yet another category crawls out from under an image that you thought belonged to them only to find it wasn’t them at all. I feel as if I’ve been abandoned by myself. Half the time I’m kind of…AWOL. I have a damned hard time feeling authentic.’

  ‘You have to come back into yourself, Isobel. I know it’s hard, but you need to.’

  ‘I make so many mistakes.’

  ‘No, you’re tempted to believe that you’re the cause of other people’s mistakes, and you’re not…’

  ‘But I do make mistakes, Suzanne. I make so many mistakes…’

  ‘It’s your confidence that’s gone. Tempt it back; it’ll come.’

  ‘How I wish I was as centred as you are.’

  ‘I’ve got Vance. He has his great works and I have my medicine. We’ve never had to envy each other – or not for long, anyway. There’ve been some very hard times. It was hard not to be able to have children. We lost three; one at term and two inside two weeks. It was hard. I felt incompetent. Lexie redeemed my motherhood instincts – we’re very lucky to have her. Tim, however – Tim’s had time in jail for GBH, for God’s sake! I’m damned sure Vance never taught him to be violent. Vance is a pacifist, a gent. These days I can’t even like Tim, and yet he was a little boy in my arms once. I can only put it down to brain damage.’

  We give each other a reassuring hug, put Gordon down and watch her trundle off.

  Vance pours wine for us all and I ask him how his patch is going.

  ‘Hot and bothered. Ants principally.’

  ‘Well, at least they’ll be farming some fungus for the orchids,’ I say. ‘You have to marvel at life, don’t you? How ingenious is that? Ants farming fungus and orchids seeding themselves in fungus to take a joy ride on an extended root system.’

  ‘It’s a while since we’ve seen any orchids there,’ says Vance. ‘There weren’t any this spring. In the past I’ve had four or five little clumps that I’ve kept going with hand fertilisation, but it’s a losing battle…’ Vance gives me a wink and pats my wrist. ‘If he’s in trouble, Bel, I’m sure there’ll be an explanation.’

  ‘You must think I’m a fraud or a fool or something. It’s just raining separate patches of shit all over my brain at the moment.’

  ‘I’d never think you were a fool. It’s the last thing that would cross my mind.’

  So I feel my lips smile between mooning cheeks, warm tears sliding under lower lids. ‘Thanks,’ and once again I’m hesitating above a meal I ought to be enjoying.

  It was a good meal and the wine was pleasant and the conversation had shifted onto cheerier ground with Lexie’s successes and Daniel’s sweet young ponderings, his curiosity, imagination and sense of fun. I was feeling restored when Lexie came out to share a drink with us, bringing a prospective client with her…Right in the middle of my good feelings–Elspeth Roach – never did a pair of nostrils hitch and shudder with such an unexpected bonus.

  ‘Ew,’ she said. ‘Isobel. Yes, I know Isobel.’ And she let out a breathy little laugh. ‘So you keep Where the Wild Things Are out here, do you?’ And of course, she meant Dadda’s pictures, Where the Nice Girls Live.

  Fuck!

  Her head snaked around on top of her long neck as she took in the people at the table. Her breathy laugh came out sounding like Weet-Bix being shaken in a tin. ‘Look,’ she said, turning to Lexie, ‘I don’t think I’ll be storing with you after all. It’s all too out in the bush to be safe, really.’ And away she went, on long, thin feet, like an emu’s, towards the car park.

  ‘God, who’s she?’ Lexie gawked.

  ‘How rude!’ went Suzanne.

  ‘Never mind, Lex,’ went Vance. ‘You don’t need clients like th
at…’

  ‘She’s a close chum of David and my stepsister, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry Isobel, she introduced herself to me just then. If I’d known…’

  ‘Never mind. Never mind.’

  And Mick says, ‘She didn’t look all that lethal to me, lovey…’

  ‘I’m sorry, but that’s just what she is. She will have rung them by now and told them where the pictures are. I was hoping for a little more time to prepare my case.’

  ‘Aren’t you exaggerating just a bit?’

  ‘No.’

  Oh dear, I feel so beaten, so mournful and peculiar I can hardly move. It is as if my authenticity is shut up in that shed, rendered in 2D by my darling bastard of a father and I am just a flake of paint, masquerading.

  We drove home in silence, my reassurance smashed and Mick unable to believe that there are people in the world whose greatest happiness is dudding others.

  We were barely home when the insults began to fly. David Silver was off his head with exaltation. ‘We’ve got you, Isobel! We’ve got you!’ he trumpeted down the phone.

  ‘No you haven’t,’ I tried to say, feeling the wheel rims of my soul juddering over a bed of rocks.

  He hooted. ‘We’ve got you, we’ve got you!’

  ‘You’ll have to fight me.’

  ‘We’ll win.’

  ‘You won’t.’

  ‘Hoo, hoo! We’ll win! We’ll win!’

  I wouldn’t have told Mick about such a stupid call, but the phone kept ringing every twenty or so minutes with the same taunting, vicious pleasure until at last Mick thought David might come and do me damage. He took the phone from me and roared, ‘If you don’t piss off, I’ll set the police on you!’