Closed for Winter

by Georgia Blain

  I used to imagine I would be an actor. Jocelyn is the only person to whom I have admitted that. Sitting in her kitchen drinking beer, I would sometimes imitate people at work, making her laugh. When she asked me if I had ever thought of performing, I started to tell her that I had once wanted to, but I stopped myself. I remembered my mother.

  I was going to be a dancer, Dorothy would say, over and over again. See, and she would lift her skirt up high, I have the legs for it.

  Frances and I would keep our faces turned towards the television.

  Your father fell in love with these legs, and she would light another cigarette, sighing as she exhaled a curl of yellowing smoke. He thought I had the grace of a ballerina.

  Frances would turn the volume up another notch.

  See, and she would kick off her sandal and point her toes. I have a perfect arch.

  We knew what would follow.

  Now see what has become of me, and that final sigh would fill the room, as thick and acrid as the smoke from her cigarette.

  Now see what has become of me, Frances would mimic, mouthing the words without a sound, and I would watch her out of the corner of my eye, not daring to move as I waited for her to run her fingers through her hair, a perfect imitation of our mother behind us.

  I usually leave the theatre as soon as the performance has finished. If I were with Jocelyn, she would stay. Sometimes she invites me to go and drink with her in the bistro. She sits up at the bar and talks to Nathan, one of the barmen, offering him quick drags on her cigarette when they are sure no one is looking.

  They talk about their work. Nathan is a dancer as well as a barman. Or their latest love affairs. Men, they both say. Can’t live with them, can’t live without them.

  Jocelyn is friends with most people who work at the theatre, but she is closer to Nathan than she is to the others.

  I like it when it is just the two of them. It is when other people come and join us that I find myself awkward and unsure. So, when she asks me, I usually tell her I am tired and I have to go home. She does not argue.

  But I like how shy you are, Martin once said to me. A long time ago.

  We had been at a party at Jocelyn’s and I had stood in the corner for most of the night. I had watched her and her friends and I had wanted to be like them.

  But I like how shy you are, he had said. It’s charming, old-fashioned.

  I had felt myself shrivel up with his words.

  I would rather you over her any day, and he had squeezed my knee affectionately. God forbid that you become loud and brash like her, he had said, referring to Jocelyn.

  I could feel his wife’s gaze, staring at us from the framed photograph opposite, and I could not help but wonder whether she, too, had been charming and old-fashioned, or whether, loud and brash, she had not been able to bear it any longer and had escaped.

  I once asked Jocelyn whether she had known her.

  Yes, she told me and I could see she felt uncomfortable. She was a costume designer.

  I had wanted to hear more. I had wanted the fact that she had loved him to make me love him.

  They weren’t together for long, Jocelyn said. They weren’t suited, and I thought then that she must have been my opposite, the person I wanted to be, and I took comfort in that.

  But this was just my imagination. To be honest, I know very little about her, despite seeing her face, there in that photograph, every day. I look at her and she looks at me. This is the way it is, and I have never asked Martin to put that picture away. I want the fact that she has loved him to make me love him more. She is a necessary part of our home.

  It is dark when I leave the theatre and I walk quickly through these wide empty streets to the number 12 bus stop. I have not told Martin that I will be late. I want him to be anxious, worried about where I am.

  This city is deserted at night. I am on alert. Listening and watching, hating that I am here alone, despite having done this many times before.

  The streets are wind tunnels. From the foothills to the sea, the wind whips and whorls as though it is sweeping across a flat empty plain, oblivious to the small cluster of buildings and miles of surrounding houses that mark the existence of this place.

  A newspaper stand clangs loudly against the pole to which it is tied and the awning on the bus shelter rattles, lifting, threatening to fly off, and then falling down again.

  I wait. The number 12 to Martin’s house, where he will be reading his book in his favourite recliner chair, one bar of the heater on, just enough to warm his feet, but leaving the rest of the house cold. Across the road, the number 12 to Dorothy’s, where she will be sitting under the flicker of the kitchen light, pasting her clippings into her book.

  One or the other. It is always one or the other.

  And I am, for a moment, tempted to turn it all upside down, to cross the road and head in the wrong direction, to where the wind throws the sea into a dark confusion and the few who dare to be out are bent low to avoid its force.

  But it is just a momentary temptation. I block it out because I cannot bear to think that my escape is not my escape, that the place from which I have tried to escape is now the place to which I am tempted to flee.

  The awning overhead lifts high in the wind but does not fall again. It snaps and is hurled down the street, clattering to the ground before flying off again. And as the bus pulls up, I think, That is me, I will snap too, this cannot last, it cannot last any longer.

  But I get onto the bus and pay my fare. The dramatics are, as usual, confined to my head, the exterior continues to do what it has always done.

  I sit near the front, and with my cheek resting against the window, I am resigned to heading the way I am expected to go. Home. To Martin.

  Who is, I imagine, waiting for my key in the lock.

  Who is, I imagine, worried that I am not home.

  Who is, I imagine, in love with me again.

  But when I reach my destination, it is not as I had anticipated. The house is empty. Dark, cold and silent.

  I stand at the front door and let the unmistakable fact sink in. Slowly.

  And I am suddenly frightened that he has done what I have always been afraid he will do. Left me. Alone.

  10

  Dorothy puts her scissors down and closes her eyes.

  I doubt she is aware of the storm outside. I doubt she is aware of how high the tide is, right up, licking the edge of the dunes.

  There are two piles of clippings in front of her. ‘Possibilities’ and ‘Similar Stories’. Sorted and ready to be pasted.

  If I still lived there, now would be the time when I would come in and tell her I am going to sleep. Most of the time she would let me know she had heard with just a slight nod of her head. But sometimes she would draw me in close and, unaware that I am no longer a little girl, she would press me tight and ask me for a goodnight kiss.

  She could have been a dancer.

  This is what she told us. I do not know whether it is true.

  She keeps old photographs in a tin under her bed. I know, I have crawled under there and taken them out. Secretly. Laying them one by one across the worn carpet, trying to see her as she was. Small faded black and white prints, and I can only guess as to who is who and what is what. Her parents? Her friends? Distant relatives? I do not know. I make up stories.

  She is not in many of them and in the few where she features, she is blurred. She is struggling out of her parents’ hold, she is running across a neatly clipped back yard, she is swinging upside down from the highest branch of a tree, she is impossible to pin down.

  I could never keep still, she would tell us, lamenting how much of her life was now without movement, trying to let us know that she was not what she had become, tired, beer in one hand, cigarette in the other, calloused feet resting on the coffee table. She would put her glass down and brush her hair from her eyes. I would watch the ash crumble from her cigarette to the floor and move the ashtray closer to her.

 
Frances would look away in disgust.

  When your father met me, he could not believe how alive I was. Her voice would blur into the television, indistinguishable, a story we had heard over and over again, and she would rub her hands down the side of her work uniform, The Continental Deli embroidered on the breast pocket. They were all trying to catch me, all the men there, but he was the only one. From the moment I saw him, I knew. He was the only one.

  She would sigh and she would remember. She would see him again, unloading the truck at the back of the shop. She would be watching him, flirting with him, loudly, clearly, without restraint, oblivious to the disapproval of the other girls. She would be giggling at his jokes, hanging around where he was, hanging around, down under the jetty where the sand was cool and wet, her face flushed from drinking, flirting with all of them in the hope that he would notice.

  And she would be pressed against the pylon. Alone with him, just out of sight of the others. With the weight of him crushed against her, she was unable to utter a sound.

  He loved me, your father, and she would sigh, speaking those words again and again. He loved me, he loved me, he loved me.

  There is a photograph of him by Dorothy’s bed.

  The few uncertain memories I have of him cannot be relied upon. They involve him as he appears in that picture, doing things that you would expect a father to do. But sometimes I cannot help but feel I have made him up, that he was something other than what I would like him to have been. I do not know.

  Dorothy would butt out her cigarette.

  Alone, pressed against the pylon, just out of sight of the others. Sometimes I wonder whether she knew what was happening.

  You can want something but not know what it is until you have it. And then it is too late.

  She would sigh and pull herself up from the armchair. Worn out from remembering, worn out from talking, she would leave us on the floor in front of the television, and wander, with no purpose, into the kitchen, where she would look, momentarily, at the dishes piled high in the sink.

  Frances, Elise, her voice would cut through the still of the night, come and clean up. Now.

  Frances would not move.

  I would go. I did not want what was bound to follow if we did not respond. But my obedience was often not enough.

  Frances, she would shout again.

  I’ll do them, I would say, running after her, straight into her in my eagerness to stop the fury that I knew was rising.

  For God’s sake, she would say, her hand raised, hard and sharp.

  But it would not fall. It would be stilled.

  She would see her, Frances, pushing me to one side, standing there in my place, her face white and angry.

  I would watch as they looked at each other. I would watch and I would hope it would end there. I would hope it would not go any further. Frances pushing past us both, slamming the back door behind her, climbing back through the bedroom window hours later.

  Please, I would say.

  And my voice would be feeble in the silence.

  Dorothy opens her eyes slowly. She sees how late it is, and she hears the wind. There are a pile of dirty dishes in the sink. Teacups, glasses, plates that have accumulated at a rapid rate throughout the afternoon and evening. She will leave them where they are.

  She folds up what is left of the newspapers she has clipped. One by one. The Courier-Mail, The Sun, The Herald, The Mirror, The News, a day of news clipped bare.

  She turns out the light and the house is in darkness.

  In the kitchen, empty now, the tap drips.

  The pile of papers has been left on the floor.

  Skeletons of what they were.

  11

  Here now, in Martin’s mother’s kitchen, I know this is not the first time we have reached this state. It has been like this before. But each silent rift dents the whole more out of shape, until you find that you have only the pieces left in your hand.

  I fear that this is where we are headed. And I know, without a doubt, that I have guided us here.

  I used to move furniture when I was little. Left in the house on my own, I would push the table and the chairs to the place where I thought they should be. I would drag the lounge with a herculean strength that did not belong to a girl. I would move the armchair and the rug. I would shift and rearrange until, exhausted, I felt satisfied.

  When Dorothy came home she did not notice. Details such as the position of the kitchen table were unimportant to her.

  Frances would notice but she misunderstood. She would look at me with silent approval, perhaps a quick wink and a smile, sure that it was an attempt to trick Dorothy, and I did not correct her.

  I no longer move furniture when I am alone. Now I clean. I clean Martin’s mother’s already immaculate house with a fury verging on the crazed. I take everything out of the fridge and wipe the shelves down. I empty the pantry. Neatly stacked jars of herbs, rice, beans, caffeine-free tea and coffee.

  You have to invest time and energy in your body now, Martin tells me. Over and over again. Despite the fact that he drinks far more than he should. It’s like opening a bank account for old age.

  I wipe each jar, one by one, and then the shelves. There is no dust. Housework is one of the few things Martin and I agree on.

  Outside, the wind is furious. I can hear it, but I am trying not to listen. I am standing, sponge in hand, wondering what to clean next. I am wanting to obliterate my anxiety in a storm of Ajax and warm water.

  I am not asleep when Martin comes home. I am sitting up in bed, arms clasped around my legs, waiting and listening.

  He stumbles, unable to find the light switch, and hits his shin on the side table. I do not call out, Is that you? I stay still.

  He is in the bathroom, brushing his teeth slowly, methodically. The plumbing groans, high-pitched and grating, as he turns the tap on, off, on again, off again. He does not waste water. The driest state in the driest continent, he tells me. Over and over again.

  The door clicks shut behind him and he is padding, softly, down to the kitchen. A glass of water with a squeeze of lemon. To flush out the system. A gargle, and then swallow. Kitchen light off, back up the hall and to the bedroom.

  Are you awake? he whispers.

  I do not answer.

  I watch as he undresses. Clothes neatly folded over the chair and then softly, softly into bed, until he is there, right next to me, his skin cold and clammy, his breath stale. He has been drinking again. I can smell it.

  Where were you? I ask him, pretending I have been asleep and he has woken me.

  He tells me he has been at a friend’s. I do not doubt him. As he speaks, I shift further away from him until I find I am lying right on the edge of the bed.

  You should have told me, I say, knowing the accusation in my voice. Knowing where I am leading us.

  He says he is sorry. He tries to put his arm around me but I move further away. So far now that I have one foot on the floor. And it is cold.

  Don’t, I say, knowing what I will say before I say it because this is not the first time we have reached this state. But tonight, with the wind tossing the highest branches of the gums so they scrape against the roof, I want to take this one step further. I am pushing us to a new place.

  He turns away from me. He is doing no more than what I am asking him to do.

  The clock in the corner of the room clicks over. It is 12.27. I can see it, numbers illuminated by a sickly green light, and I am watching it and waiting.

  He is, as I expected, asleep. 12.31 and he snores.

  I kick him. Not hard. But hard enough. And he wakes.

  I can’t sleep, I tell him.

  Again, he tries to put his arm around me, and for one moment I am tempted to sink. To let myself be folded up in the circle of some comfort.

  I am aching for it.

  But I pull away.

  And my words are small and mean. I do not want to repeat them. They are small and they are mean and they are meant
to hurt, the branches of the trees scratching and scraping overhead as I speak each one out loud.

  You don’t love me anymore, I say.

  And he rubs his eyes, tired and drunk and confused and wanting to sleep. That is all he wants, just to sleep.

  But not tonight. Tonight I am dragging us further.

  Why, I ask, are you staying with me?

  He looks at me and I can see he does not know who I am. He has not known who I am for some time now, and the gap between what he once saw in me and what he now has is becoming impossible to traverse.

  For God’s sake, he says, and he tries to bury himself under the pillow.

  I wait in the silence for what will follow.

  I don’t know why I stay with you. I wish I didn’t.

  And I have it. There in the dark, in the palm of my hands, I have it.

  He does not love me.

  He could not love me.

  He has said it.

  And as we look at each other in silence, I remember when we stood near the beginning of that jetty and he circled me in his arms. I had thought that it would be enough. A small circle of comfort and I had thought that it would be enough.

  12

  When I try to explain, I find I have no words.

  I know I cannot give them what they want. I cannot say, I saw this, or, I saw that, just as Dorothy cannot say, I do not leave the house for this reason, or, I locked myself away when that happened.

  When they ask me what I saw, I tell them I saw nothing.

  When they ask me what I heard, I tell them I heard nothing.

  They lean forward and they are disappointed.

  Are you sure?

  I take two steps, three steps along the jetty towards the boys at the end. Holding the rail and watching them, rehearsing my sentence, over and over in my head.

  Have any of you seen my sister Frances?

  Someone races past, running, boards pounding, everyone making way, through the group standing at the edge to the break in the barrier, and then he dives, high and clean into the water below.

  Onya, Johnno! And they all shout, wild and loud, Way to go, as the older people taking leisurely strolls along the jetty shake their heads in disgust.