I’d known her slightly
I’d known her slightly, the way you know a lot of people in a city you’ve lived in all your life. She wasn’t conventionally pretty but there was something about her that men found attractive. Something hungry. When she was young, I’d heard, she’d been much admired; the girl most sought after; the girl who always had her choice of lovers.
She was very slim, with high cheekbones and such a strong bony chin that she looked almost wolfish, and sometimes even haggard. She had the kind of dusky skin that brings with it a darkness under the eyes. Once I saw her in an expensive boutique in the mall, and although she was short she somehow dominated the place. There were three assistants and they were all attending on her. They seemed very familiar, in a respectful way. Her small, smartly dressed daughter hovered near her hip with the same deferential air as the salesgirls. She had just finished trying on some clothes and was sorting through what she wanted. Within seconds she had decided on four complete outfits. I got the impression she shopped there often, that she was a regular. I was in awe of the casual ease with which she bought four outfits at a time.
She had this air about her – she was arrogant and smug but at the same time she had an intense, even haunted look. Don’t ask me how someone can be smug and haunted at the same time, she just was. And there was that defiant quality, like an insolent schoolgirl. I was envious of her spending power, not of the fact that she could afford it – I suppose I could, in a way – but of the fact that she felt comfortable being able to buy so much at once, regarded it as her right. I imagined her as a woman with wardrobes full of clothes.
When first we saw the house advertised for rent I must admit that I wanted to look it over not only because we needed somewhere temporary to live but also because I was curious to see how many wardrobes she had. In fact she had only two, in the master bedroom, and when she went she left them empty. She couldn’t possibly have taken all her clothes on the trip with her; she must have packed them away, perhaps in the cellar.
But now they were devoted to their children
They had left their books on the shelves, though, and for educated people they had surprisingly few – and very predictable ones. Again, as with the furniture, there was that peculiar lack of anything idiosyncratic or out of the ordinary. And interestingly, where there was something angst-ridden, like White’s Riders in the Chariot or Camus’ The Plague, it seemed to take on the character of its situation and become complacent, just another complacent book on a complacent bookshelf. I should mention that he was the deputy director of the local TAFE college, so perhaps he kept his books at work. I knew him to be a handsome man, flirtatious. It was obvious he fancied himself with women but whether he went any further than flaunting it I’ve never heard, although a friend of mine said he goosed her once at a party. She’d known the two of them when they were engaged and she said they were intensely sexual together, narcissistic. But now they were devoted to their children, a boy and a girl, always ferrying them to drama classes, or tennis lessons, or pottery group, or something.
That sundeck
That sundeck became a seductive space in our lives. As the weather warmed we seemed to spend more and more time on it. It was where I read the papers in the morning. The children had their breakfast there. Our dog, Percy, lolled about in the sun. I moved my sewing out, set up a coffee table permanently in the corner and worked on my files. There was hardly ever any wind. At night we took the radio out and listened to Triple J. We were conducting an experiment: living without television. I’d yearned to try it for a while and living in a temporary place had seemed a good time to spring it on the kids. They were resistant at first but I managed to effect some tradeoffs, like more pizza for supper and permission to go to a friend’s to watch favourite programmes. It meant that occasionally, in the evening, they became restless and bored. Nine o’clock was a critical time, with the homework finished but one hour to go before bedtime. Sometimes they’d sit happily on the sundeck and talk to me.
But on this particular night
But on this particular night Carla was cranky. She decided suddenly that she wanted to move her room around and completely change the look of it. She persuaded Ben to help her with the furniture and they grunted and puffed their way around for half an hour. Then she was seized with the idea of using an old batik tablecloth as a wall-hanging. It was a favourite piece of mine that I’d bought in the ’70s when I was a student, backpacking in Java. Its faded reds and yellows had brightened up our sleazy flat in the city after Brian and I were married.
Carla began to search for it noisily, rummaging impatiently in the huge linen cupboard in the upstairs hallway. And then suddenly, everything went quiet. After ten minutes had passed without even a rustle of sound I rose lazily from the sundeck and called out through the sliding doors: ‘Carla?’
No reply.
‘Carla!
’ She came into the wide, spacious living room holding up a small book. ‘Look what I found, Mum. I think it’s her diary.’ And before I could make any sanctimonious adult protestations she began to read aloud. ‘Listen to this. Tuesday, July 16. Left work early to make sure I wasn’t held up in the traffic. Got to the gym at 4. Worked out for two hours. Really starting to push myself. Steve is away, kids ate at Mum’s. Skipped dinner. Wednesday, July 17. Scott has worked out a new set of bridging exercises on the 5 kg weights for me. Said I’ll be ready to go on to the advanced programme soon. Can’t wait. Cooked steamed spinach and new potatoes and lean steak with pureed apple sauce and rosemary for dinner. Stewed apricots with ricotta and brandy for dessert.The kids didn’t like the ricotta and wanted ice-cream. I ate just spinach because I’d had a large salad sandwich for lunch (a mistake). Ran 2 Ks after dinner. Feel very tired.
’ Carla looked up at me, her eyes glinting. Ben hovered in the doorway. He seemed as bemused by this recitation as I was. ‘July 18. Started work on the bench press. Wonderful feeling of stretching. Up to 20 leg extensions. Broccoli and cheese pie for dinner. High in calcium.Low-chol cheese. So tired. July 19. Couldn’t get to gym until 5.30. So frustrating. Had to get takeaway. Tired again. Why do I always feel so tired?
’ There was something mesmeric about Carla’s reading. I ought to have stopped her then but I hesitated and she read on. ‘July 20. Used flex-time to work out from 8.00 to 9.30 this morning. This evening swam 12 laps of the Superlife pool. Felt drained, probably because of period, though flow has been light. Ran 3 Ks after dinner. Promised myself a 10 K run on Saturday afternoon when children at tennis. A treat. Steve said he thought I might be overdoing it. I am tired, but I think it was just the fact that Juliet was up last night with a stomach ache.’
At last Carla paused, looking at me as if to say: The woman’s a lunatic! ‘It just goes on and on and on,’ she said, and then she began to jog up and down on the spot, in a satiric mincing action, chanting. ‘Ran City to Surf, climbed Mt. Kosciusko, played six sets at Wimbledon, sooooooo tired!’
Then she tossed the diary into the air and Ben caught it, gawping at it like the clumsy schoolboy he is. ‘No way!’ he exclaimed. ‘She ran three Ks up and down these hills after a workout in the gym! No wonder she’s tired. The woman’s crazy!’ And the two of them fell about in an exaggerated shrieking. Carla went backwards over the beige leather couch, flinging her legs in the air and squealing. Then, as if she’d had a sudden thought, she straightened up, retrieved the book and opened it, ready to declaim the next fraught entry.
Give it to me
‘Give it to me,’ I said, hearing my self-righteous mother’s tone, a little too loud. ‘Give it here, Carla.’ And taking the book from her limp, reluctant hand: ‘This is her private diary. I’m going to put it away. We’ve no right to read it.’
‘Why not? She was silly enough to leave it where we’d find it!’
‘Why argue?’ This from Ben to Carla. ‘It’s boring anyway.’
And he staggered around the room, legs giving way at the knees, clutching at his
throat in mock exhaustion and gurgling hoarsely, ‘So tired, so tired …’
Later that night
Later that night, when they were in bed, I sat out on the sundeck with the floodlights on and, of course, read the diary. I’d hoped, I confess, for some account of her sexual exploits, but after a while I realised that the diary was a relentless if cryptic account of her exercise and diet regimen.
Tuesday, July 22. Worked out for an hour at Superlife. Ran into Suzy in the sauna. Cooked steamed vegetables and ocean perch with flambé bananas. Ran 2 Ks after dinner. Feel very fatigued. Wednesday, July 23. Moved up a notch on the bench press and the pec dec. Up to 30 on the leg extensions. Swam 10 lengths of the Superlife pool. Ran 2½ Ks after dinner. So tired.
Almost every entry was this impersonal chronicle of weights lifted, laps swum, time in the sauna or kilometres run. And always a description of what she cooked for dinner and her anxiety that the children were not eating enough. I had visions of her in her immaculate over-endowed kitchen, whipping up blueberry mousse or cheese soufflé or salmon pie, and eating cottage cheese and lettuce herself, pleading a large business lunch that day when in fact she’d had a small fruit salad with the excuse that there would be a huge evening meal with the family that night. I could see her sitting at her desk at work, all the while daydreaming about her pulleys and her weights and her treadmill and of the time, promised soon, when Scott would put her on to the advanced programme, the badge of the initiate. Was her sweaty wolfish concentration broken for even a second by the sight of Scott’s oiled and muscular thighs, his skimpy silk gym shorts, his obvious endowment around the groin? Did she sit in the sauna and stretch out her brown legs and feel a narcissistic glow at her own fineness, an impulse to lie on her stomach and writhe against the towel? Or was she saving it up for him, Steve? What happened after dinner? Did he put the kids to bed while she, in natty headband and fluorescent aerobic gear, pounded her small feet against the bitumen paths of those punishing hills? Did her stomach rise up with nausea as, poised on the brow, she contemplated the steep gradient of the descent, or was her mind an endorphin white-out, nothing but the steady thump of her heartbeat, the pumping of blood, the panting of breath …
Then, late at night, in a last methodical attention to self, the entry in the red, leather-bound diary. So tired. And often, in the margin, a small, elegant doodle, the drawing of a dolphin. She was, of course, a compulsive weigher. I’d noted the smart new state-of-the-art bathroom scales when we first looked around the house. ‘What are these?’ I asked.
‘You can’t buy them here,’ she said. ‘Steve brought them back from the US after a conference. They’re incredibly precise.’ It was the way she said ‘precise’ with that bony chin jutting forward and the mouth widening and the teeth coming together like a vice. It seemed from the diary that she weighed herself every Thursday evening at the same time, after her shower. At the right-hand side of each diary entry there’d be a neatly written figure, underlined in red. 44 kg.
Forty-four kilograms was a magical figure. Anything over this would be rebuked by a red exclamation mark.
44.341 kg!
I couldn’t resist
When my friend Chris came to dinner I couldn’t resist telling her about the diary. We sat out on the sundeck (of course) while the children took Percy for his evening constitutional, and I told her of our find.
‘Fear of death,’ she said, flatly.
‘You think so?’ It seemed plausible, for a moment anyway. But no, there had to be more to it. ‘I’m afraid of death,’ I said, ‘but I don’t put myself through all that.’
‘Her mother died young, you know, of a heart attack. I’m not sure how old she was but I gather she was only in her early forties. Somewhere around there. You’d have to wonder whether it was hereditary, wouldn’t you?’
Perhaps. Perhaps that was it. Though something told me there was still more to it, that in some way it was more subtle, more complex, though quite how I couldn’t explain.
Chris was gazing out at the purple trees and the dusky red sky. ‘It really is beautiful here,’ she said. ‘You could almost be at peace with yourself.’ And laughed her dry, mocking laugh. ‘However will you stand going back to the city?’
Just then, Carla came out onto the deck. Although it was after nine it was still hot, and she wore, I remember, a pair of pale-pink shorts and a white halter-neck top.
Chris gave me a knowing look. ‘Lovely girl,’ she murmured.
‘Isn’t she?’
Carla was standing in the corner of the deck furthest away from us, far enough away for me to be able to stare at her unselfconsciously. She was leaning on her hands, pressed up against the timber rail and gazing out at the dusky purple scrub with that dreamy, expectant look in her eye that only a fifteen-year-old can hold, in good faith, for any length of time. She seemed to me that night, even more than usual, to be a figure of exquisite loveliness; the silky hair, the swan-like neck, the delicate wrists and ankles, all enfolded in an ineffable grace. My dearest girl! It was as if she wore an invisible cloak of promise that would protect her, now and forever, from all harm. It was as if nothing could touch her, and yet of course, everything could, and it was the fragility of this promise, of this moment, that made some passionate, protective breath catch in my chest so that when Chris turned to me with a question, I could barely speak.
‘Have you ever thought of going to a gym?’ she asked.
‘What?’
‘I said, have you ever thought of going to a gym?’
‘Never. I did yoga once. More my speed.’
‘I hear you don’t lose weight with yoga.’
‘Not really. You become more flexible. You don’t lose weight at the gym, either, you just turn it into muscle.’
‘If God had wanted women to have muscles he’d have …’ She seemed unable to complete the sentence.
‘He’d have what?’
‘Nothing. I was just looking at Carla. No matter what we do for ourselves, none of us is ever going to be that lovely again.’
Superlife
I knew something about the gym she visited. It was a plush and expensive one on the bay, ‘beautifully appointed’ as they say. In the early days of the fitness craze it had been started up with great fanfare by some of the smart young businessmen about town, one of whom was a fashionable hair stylist I’d once patronised. The annual membership fee was high and it boasted of its celebrity patrons. It was a beautiful white building near the yacht club, with blue glass and a wide, white sundeck. It had a striking blue dolphin logo painted on one side, and blue and yellow stripes under the eaves. But then, after three years, there had been rumours of financial mismanagement, talk that it might have to close down. She seemed so fond of this place, insofar as these impersonal diary entries conveyed any feeling, so positively to yearn for it, that I wondered how she had reacted to the threat of closure. I got out the diary, looked up the approximate date of the bad publicity and skimmed a few pages. My eye stopped at this.
Had a dream last night. Made me feel sick. Woke in a panic and sweaty. Dreamed that Superlife had closed down. That I drove there in the daylight and everything looked normal, but when I walked through the door the place was stripped bare. Empty. I looked for the mirrors and they were gone. Just white walls. Felt nausea, panic. I ran out of the place screaming. Woke up in a sweat with my heart pounding. Felt as if I’d just run 50 Ks. What will I do if they close? What will I do?
This last question was heavily underlined. It must have been preying on her mind all day. It was a Thursday night and she had forgotten to weigh herself.
In the entries that documented the next three weeks there were constant references to the financial state of the club and the uncertainty about its future. She was obsessed with it. She ceased to note what she cooked, what the children ate or what she ate. The question What will I do if they close? was repeated again and again. At this time, as I recall, there was a sudden election, but no mention was made of t
hat, even though she and her husband were party members. But then why should there be? It would be out of character. This was (only) a diary of her body, nothing more.
Finally the traces of anxiety disappeared
Finally the traces of anxiety disappeared. The entries return to their cool methodical formula. This, I recall, is about the time that a wealthy businessman and his socialite wife stepped in and backed the losses of the gym, staging a new publicity campaign and launching a membership drive with a huge subscription party. I assume she was invited. I can imagine her, in that boutique in the mall, trying on several dresses, finding it hard to make up her mind, posing her skeletal body with its lean muscle in front of the asymmetric mirrors, holding her shoulders back, tilting her chin up, gazing into the silver space of reflection: a dolphin in rehearsal.
One night, after dinner
One night, after dinner, I excused the children from walking the dog.
It wasn’t so difficult, the climb up the first hill, but the ascent of the second was punishing. My calf muscles ached, my hamstrings strained, my breathing was rapid and short. Percy tugged unmercifully on the short lead, tripping me forward. In new jogging shoes my feet were hot and rubbed at the heel. I thought of her diminutive body pounding the asphalt.
Back home the dog slurped at the water bowl while I collapsed on the sundeck, gazing out in a haze of exhaustion at the red sky above the purple brush, the far-off hills, enigmatic. After a while I plucked a cone from the yellow banksia that crowded my corner of the sundeck and brushed it against my hot cheek. My face was livid, my hair limp with sweat. I was a fool.
Reading Madame Bovary Page 14
