I looked up. “You wrote this? What is it?” I was perturbed by the look in Jason’s eyes. I’d seen that gleam in the eye of many an author, hell-bent on selling me their book. Authors of all shapes and sizes had made appointments with my assistant to meet with me, under the guise of having a proposal for a magazine story, but then they’d try to persuade me to do a book review. Most of their offerings had been amateurish and filled with implausible speculations about the financial industry.
Jason forced me out of my trip down memory lane and back into the moment.
“Yeah, I wrote it,” he said, and he rushed over to the bookcase. “But wait. Before you read that, you need some background information. You can’t just go in, blind.”
He pulled a book off the shelf and handed it to me.
“The Dispossessed, by Ursula K. Le Guin,” I said out loud and then studied the blurb on the back. “‘Shevek, a brilliant physicist, decides to take action. He will seek answers, question the unquestionable, and attempt to tear down the walls of hatred that have isolated his planet of anarchists from the rest of the civilized universe. To do this dangerous task will mean giving up his family and possibly his life. Shevek must make the unprecedented journey to the mother planet, Anarres, to challenge the complex structure of life and living, and ignite the fires of change.’”
I looked at Jason. “Seriously? You want me to read science fiction about anarchy?”
“I do,” he replied, and he took his own book back from me. “You can have this one after you’ve read that one. You’ll be ready then. I can’t throw you in the deep end without giving you a few swimming lessons first.”
“I hate science fiction,” I told him. “In fact, I hate fiction in general. It’s a waste of time.”
“You poor fellow. How your soul has not shrivelled up and died is beyond me. Listen, sunshine, you need to read that book. More than you need to read books about tattooing. Please trust me. Have I let you down yet?”
No, but it always happens in the end, I thought. “Sure,” I said with obvious reluctance. “I’ll start right now. This must-read trade paperback that was published in 1974. It looks like a book you could pick up on one of those revolving metal stands at the checkout counter of a drugstore.”
“And your point would be?”
I returned to the living room and Queenie jumped onto my lap. I held the book over her head so as not to disturb her and began to read. Jason interrupted me, handing me a pen, a highlighter, and a notepad. “Make notes about questions you might have. And feel free to write in the book. It’s your copy now. Mark things that resonate with you or things you don’t understand but want to talk about. I’m going to make us more tea.”
I consoled myself with the thought that I was a speedy reader. I turned the book over in my hands. I’d be done in a couple of hours easily.
But once again, I was wrong, and once again, Jason was correct. Page six stopped me in my tracks: “He had always feared this would happen, more than he had ever feared death. To die is to lose the self and rejoin the rest. He had kept himself, and lost the rest.”
That was me. That was who I was and what I had done. I stared out into space. I needed to read this book properly. I settled back and concentrated.
I couldn’t stop reading. I devoured the book with the hunger of a rabid animal and when I finished it, I stroked Queenie and thought about many things. Yes, I actually thought.
I fell asleep on the sofa. Jason woke me with breakfast on a tray. I could tell it was much later than our usual sparrow’s fart sunrise hour, as Jason liked to call it.
“I let you sleep in,” he said. “I came in and turned the light off around three a.m.”
“Why were you awake at three?” I asked, sitting up and yawning and rubbing my face.
He shrugged. “So you liked it, did you?”
“Liked it? Understatement. Wow, it blew me away. Shevek and his observations? I felt like he was talking about my life. But Jason, that was science fiction. I loved things like names having no gender and being generated by a computer, so they are all unique, and I loved the idea of sharing and doing away with excess. But things like countries not having their own flags and there being no vertical hierarchy in organizations—no captains, bosses, chiefs-of-state—well, that’s just not practical. And the whole ethos of people’s natural incentive to work coming from spontaneous energy, well, that wouldn’t work at all either. People work for money; people want their own things. People like to own stuff.”
“People think they want to own things,” Jason said, handing me a bowl of oatmeal off the tray. “Look at you. You owned a house, I presume, a car, maybe two. Now you don’t own anything.”
“And I’m living off the proceeds of a stolen car. It was fortunate that I ran into you.”
“Were it not for me, the universe would have provided. You would have provided. You are more resourceful than you might think.”
“Without you, I would have been arrested. And the book says this…” I flipped to a passage I had marked: “‘We have nothing but our freedom. We have nothing to give you but your own freedom. We have no law but the single principle of mutual aid between individuals. We have no government but the single principle of free association. We have no states, no nations, no presidents, no premiers, no chiefs, no generals, no bosses, no bankers, no landlords, no wages, no charity, no police, no soldiers, no wars.’ That simply won’t work!”
“You’re overthinking the specifics,” Jason told me. “Finish your breakfast. And have some more tea. Then go and watch Sean and chat to him about your sketch. And go for a walk. Get some air. Let your brain process what you’ve read and for once I’m going to tell you not to think about things. Your mind will sort things out if you keep your hands busy. Sweep the floor, help out where you can, and the rest will take care of itself.”
He left and I ate my oatmeal, still thinking about Shevek and the book. Jason returned and handed me a copy of The Occult Persuasion and the Anarchist’s Solution. “Whenever you feel ready. No pressure and I mean that. I’ve got some errands to run. I’ll see you later, in the shop. Enjoy the day, Lyndon. It’s a good day to be alive!”
15. MARGAUX
WHEN I CAME TO, Anita’s face was inches away from mine. Her breath was minty and not unpleasant. I realized I was still lying on the floor of the washroom. “How long was I out for?”
“Not long. Twenty seconds or so.”
“I need some water,” I said thickly, and I got to my feet, shrugging off Anita’s outstretched hand.
“Yes, darling, we’ll get you some. And something stronger,” she said, as she turned back to the mirror and checked her makeup. “Now, what were you saying about the Virgin Mary being black?”
“I’ll explain later. Give me a minute, Anita, for God’s sake.”
“You’re out of sorts, darling. I think you may have had too much sun. Happens to lots of tourists. They underestimate the sheer force of the Australian summer.”
By now, I had washed my face and adjusted my clothing. I wanted to leave that horrible little washroom where I was trapped with the predatory Anita.
I turned to leave but Anita was right behind me, her hand on my waist, guiding me to a table of women who were all chattering like starlings. Even from a distance, the noise made me want to turn and run, but Anita had a firm grip on me.
“Darlings,” she said, “this is Margaux from Toronto. The one who saved my life when Eddie was being a bastard. Let’s get Margaux a drink. She fainted in the loo.”
The waiter spotted me and brought my drink over, and I took a large gulp before I even sat down. It was delicious although the ice had melted a bit.
“Are you all right?” the woman nearest me looked close to normal with short cropped grey hair and a no-nonsense expression. “Here, sit down.”
She pulled out a chair next to her. “You should
drink some water too.” She poured me a glass, and I drank it in one go. She was right. Rehydrating with a rum cocktail was hardly sensible. “I’m Graham. I know,” she said to me, “boy’s name. Still, that’s me.”
I looked at the menu Graham was holding.
“I’m going to have prime rib on the bone,” I said to her. “Rare. I think I need some protein to pep me up.”
“So, darlings,” Anita shouted from across the table, “let’s order our food pronto and then Margaux can tell us her story about the Virgin Mary at Coogee. Apparently, she had an encounter.”
A loud series of ooohs and ahhhs rose at this, and they all turned to me with wide-eyed expectation.
“Well,” I began, but the waiter came and took orders around the table. It seemed there was a lot of indecision and he was stalled with one woman for quite some time.
“How do you know Anita?” I asked Graham while we waited for the server to reach us.
“Writer’s group,” she said. “We’ve been together for nearly ten years. We all write different things and are at different stages in the writing process. I’ve had a work of non-fiction published, while some of the women have had short stories in a few anthologies. There are a couple of novelists here too.”
“I can’t see Anita as a writer,” I said. “I never knew that about her.”
“She’s a poet. Won a few awards, actually. And another woman, Nora,” Graham gestured across the table, “also writes poetry, but Anita’s been published a few times.”
“She has?” I was surprised. “She’s never said.”
“She’s really very good. Mostly rants about love and men and how it all goes horribly wrong, but she’s very funny.”
“And what’s your book about?”
“The Idiot History of Australia. I know, the title sounds the opposite of any kind of politically correctness, doesn’t it? But that’s what people with mental health issues were called back then. ‘Idiots.’ It’s about insane asylums and how badly women were treated in them, back when being called an ‘idiot’ was actually considered a medical term.”
“Sounds fascinating,” I said and I meant it.
“It’s more of an academic publication than anything. I’m a psychologist at the University of Sydney, and they like their professors to be published. I thought the field sounded interesting and I enjoyed researching the asylums. But now, I’m trying to write fiction, which is much harder. For me, anyway.”
The waiter has reached us and after we had placed our orders, Anita raised her hands as if she was about to start a mass. The table fell silent.
“So, darling, the Coogee Virgin Mary. Tell all.”
I froze. I didn’t have my story ready. I couldn’t exactly say that I had been sitting at the shrine praying to hear from my husband who had left me weeks ago, and that I needed a miracle, which had then unexpectedly fallen into my lap.
The whole table was looking at me, in silence, waiting.
“I thought it was a quaint tourist attraction,” I finally said. “And so I took a picture, and where Virgin was supposed to be, there was just a black cardboard cut-out. Now, bear in mind I fainted in the washroom, so maybe I imagined the whole thing.”
I dug into my purse for my phone.
“Nice purse,” one of the women commented. “Coach?”
I nodded.
“I’ve always wanted one,” the woman continued, “but I’ve never been able to spend that kind of money on something like that. That’s a five-hundred-dollar purse,” she told the table, and I flushed beet red.
“It was an anniversary present,” I said, wishing I hadn’t just tossed my phone into my bag where it had clearly sunk to the bottom of the disarray inside.
“Margaux’s husband is such a lovely man,” Anita commented. “So handsome, so successful. I’m not surprised he’s generous too. You ladies should meet him. He’s such a dish.”
I wanted to tell Anita that, in fact, I had bought the purse for myself as an anniversary present for Lyndon’s and my thirtieth because he had told me that Coach purses were obscene examples of successful marketing campaigns that tapped into the ever-growing trends of consumer-driven greed, and that he would rather take us out for dinner. What, so he could lecture me the entire night about something that had caught his eye in the newspaper that day? I preferred the purse.
“If we must spend, let’s buy experiences, not things,” he had said, sounding so pompous that I went ahead and bought the gift for myself on the credit card we shared. Lyndon and Adam had been going through a particularly tough patch, and I had been frustrated with Lyndon for no reason I could clearly define. And though it was fine to say that about experiences, when it came down it, what experiences had he been referring to? There had been no further suggestions about our anniversary dinner, which morphed into the Chinese takeout that he liked. My anger at his hypocrisy—or, at the very least, his self-blindness—had contributed in a big way to the booking of this trip. He had said he wanted experiences? Well, here was an experience. And hadn’t that just worked out well for me? He should have been more specific. He should have said, “I want experiences without my family and without you, Margaux.”
I found my phone. “I bet I was just imagining it,” I said as I flipped to my photos. But no, I hadn’t imagined it. There was the Virgin, a black cardboard cut-out, in all the pictures.
“Pass the phone around,” Anita barked, and I couldn’t exactly refuse. I hoped she wouldn’t start scrolling through my emails and text messages when it got to her, but she behaved herself, limiting her curiosity to the various images of Mary that I had taken.
“My God,” she marvelled. “Well, group, here’s a writing prompt if ever there was one. What do you make of it? Trish, you’re our local psychic, what do you think?”
We all turned to Trish, a tiny, seventy-year-old woman with purple hair and large dangling silver earrings. “It’s definitely a message,” she mused. “I believe there is a soul in trouble, and she’s asking for your help.”
Could she be talking about Lyndon? Was he in trouble? I leaned forward. “Are you sure it’s a woman, not a man?” I asked.
She nodded. “Definitely. Otherwise, the effigy would have found another way to manifest itself to you.”
“What am I supposed to do with it?” I asked. “Even if it is a message, it’s highly improbable that it’s meant for me in particular, and it’s even more improbable that I am supposed to do something about it.”
“The thin line between the improbable and the probable is known in magic as ‘the sphere of availability,’” Trish told me. “You need to widen your sphere of availability, so there is more of the probable within your grasp. And then you will find your answers.”
“I’ve got no idea what you are talking about,” I replied bluntly, finishing my cocktail and waving for another.
“White magic, religion, it’s all the same thing,” Trish said, and the others around the table nodded. Even Graham nodded and I was surprised. I would have thought her feet would be more firmly on the ground than that.
“Oh, come on!” I objected. “You’re not being serious?”
“Absolutely serious. Magic goes way back in history.”
I wondered if, instead of a writers group, I had fallen into a coven of witches. It wouldn’t surprise me if Anita was a witch. I looked across at her. She was listening to Trish with the kind of rapt attention I didn’t think was possible of her.
“As I was saying, I do think there is a soul in trouble, and I do think you should be careful. You will need to keep yourself earthed and grounded during your search. For example, all acts of white and positive magic must be conducted facing east.”
“Acts of magic? What exactly am I supposed to be doing while I face the east?” This woman was infuriating. She was talking in riddles. “I think my picture is just a trick of the light. S
ome odd coincidence or something for which there is a scientific, logical explanation.”
“Magicians know there are no coincidences in the physical or spiritual worlds and that so-called fortuitous happenings are simply predesigns of the cosmic forces that can see everything. Even Jung thought that what he called synchronicity, in other words, coincidence, is the result of our unconscious blending of the past, the present, and the future.”
“My unconscious made my iPhone see a blacked-out Mary?”
“Believe it or not, yes. And now you have a choice. You can try to find and help this soul in distress or you can turn away. But remember the rules of magic: to see, to know, to will, to dare, and most importantly, keep silent. Some people cannot keep silent and that is their downfall.”
“Should I have kept quiet about the Virgin and my pictures?” I was suddenly terrified that I had unloosed the demons of chaos and destruction and that my children would be harmed. I told myself that I was overreacting and that perhaps I shouldn’t have finished my cocktail so quickly on an empty stomach, which didn’t stop me from reaching for the replacement that had appeared in front of me.
“Not at all. That’s not what I mean. I mean that on your path to find this soul, you will encounter magical forces, and you will need to be grounded and respectful in your handling of that.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. Fortunately our food arrived and I hoped that it would be the end of the discussion but Trish, her fork poised over her lobster with garlic butter sauce, had one more thing to say. “Just remember, there are no limits to the powers of the human mind. All angels, demons, and gods of nature slumber deep within the human unconscious.” She nodded sagely at me and attacked her food with delight.
I was exhausted. I wondered how I was going to get away from the group without letting Anita know about Lyndon. I was trapped at a lunch I didn’t want to be at, and I didn’t care about some lost soul. I was lost, Lyndon was lost, we were all lost. I just wanted my normal life back. I wasn’t interested in the spiritual or mystical side of things.
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