Indelible Ink (7 page)

‘I don’t know. I like the old one.’

Susan sat stiffly with her hands either side of her thighs, like the man in the shop. ‘You have to get rid of it. Put this in front of the view, Marie.’

Marie took the herbs into the kitchen and put on the kettle. She could see Susan move to the old couch, then descend into a recumbent posture, her sandals snaking over the armrest. Her swathed
hair hung neatly off the other end. There was something comforting in the sight of feet and hair not biologically related parenthesising the furniture. Marie hadn’t had a dinner party since
her divorce.

‘Oh,’ said Susan to the view. ‘It’s so beautiful here. How can you sell?’

‘With great difficulty.’

Susan sat up to face her. She made a pained face.

‘I have to, Susan. I can’t afford it.’

‘Well, you can get something near here, something a bit smaller.’

‘The real-estate agents are going to start traipsing through next week.’

‘Hugh will handle the sale, won’t he?’

‘I’m seeing a few others anyway. Just to be sure. God, I’m dreading it.’

A loud groan issued from the couch. ‘God. I’m
dying
for a cigarette. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I gave up fifteen years ago and all of a sudden I’m
getting these
cravings
. I couldn’t sleep last night so I watched the late movie. You could hardly see the people for the cigarette smoke.’ Susan sat up and looked in outrage
towards the kitchen. ‘It’s a crime to smoke these days. It’s a crime to hose your garden.’

‘It’s all a bit phallic.’ Marie sniggered.

‘It was a Julie Christie movie. Wasn’t she just style incarnate?’

‘She’s not dead yet.’

‘I always wanted to be Julie Christie, cool as a cucumber. The young one, I mean. Have you been watching
Desperate Housewives
?’

‘Yes. Out of desperation,’ Marie said.

‘I think it’s funny.’

‘But do you think they’re really desperate? They’re all so perfect.’

‘Oh, that’s just America. They’re all on drugs or plastic surgery. What about the one that was on
Melrose Place
? Do you think she’s gay?’

‘The one with the long face? Oh yes, she’s so
cold
.’

‘Oh dear,’ Susan was saying as Marie came out of the kitchen. ‘Oh my Lord.’

Mopoke was making her way across the floor, back leg dragging. She stopped and miaowed loudly. Marie put down the tray and carried the cat out to her spot beneath the Weber on the deck.
‘She’s got arthritis,’ she explained to Susan, who watched the whole procedure warily.

Susan settled into a recliner. The tide was rising, waves thudding against the sea wall. ‘What are those trees?’

‘Brushbox.’

‘It’s a shame they’ve grown so much. It’ll cost you on the sale.’ Susan pushed her glasses down her nose and looked over. ‘Have you thought about poisoning
them?’

‘I’ve thought about poisoning their owners, the Hendersons.’ Marie bent to remove her shoes and stretched her feet towards the breeze. ‘Their bloody wandering jew is
spilling into the bush. I’m constantly pulling it out.’

‘You’re not allowed to call it that anymore, Marie. And your blackboy is a grass tree, you know.
Xan-thor-rhea
,’ she intoned. ‘One of the Tottis’ neighbours
in Clontarf is being prosecuted for poisoning a tree.’

‘I read about that. The Norfolk Island pine? Lovely trees! What a creep.’

‘He doesn’t care. He says the fine is less than what tree removalists charge. There’s a logic there, you have to admit ... I’ve asked myself a couple of times if it
isn’t the Tottis, actually.’

‘Really?’

‘They know every detail of the story, let me tell you. They even know the type of poison.’ Susan picked up an almond biscuit with her thumb and forefinger. ‘You’re
looking very chipper, Marie. Better than the last time I saw you. What have you been doing?’

‘I’ve been getting myself tattooed.’ Marie twirled her feet. She had painted her nails too, to extend the celebration. ‘I got the first one just after our trip to the
homewares shop.’

Susan’s face went blank. Marie felt like she had just whipped out a plate of strawberries for dessert, only to find they’d gone off. She had always associated Susan with her new
self, the big-spending, freewheeling advertising executive’s wife, who had supplanted her old self, the prudish Catholic schoolgirl. She thought that Susan must be joking, that any minute she
would laugh.

‘Look,’ she said. ‘You can see the designs properly now the swelling’s gone down.’

The corners of Susan’s mouth began to turn down, her eyes widening. ‘Just like that? You just walked into one of those places and got
tattooed
?’

‘That’s right.’ Marie began to talk excitedly. ‘You can’t imagine what it’s like. You feel so elated afterwards.’

‘Don’t you feel cheapened? I’d feel cheapened. Marie, you were blind drunk.’

‘Well, I felt enriched. And I hadn’t had a drink for hours when I got this one.’

‘Really.’

‘Look at them, Susan. You haven’t even looked.’

‘No, thank you.’ Susan looked in the direction of the Hendersons’. The scrape of trowels drifted over the fence. Marie began to pour the tea. She wanted to crawl away and
hide.

‘My lime tree is dying,’ Susan said. ‘Really, I’m at my wits’ end.’

‘Piss on it,’ Marie said sullenly.

Susan swung her head around. ‘Why on earth would I want to do that?’

‘Nitrate is good for citrus.’

‘Who told you that?’

‘It’s a well-known fact.’

Marie drank her tea too quickly, scalding the roof of her mouth. Every little act, every wish was nature as well, even sitting next to her best friend in a state of alienation was the most
natural thing in the world, as natural as disease.

‘Marie.’ Susan narrowed her eyes. ‘Are you sure you’re alright?’

‘I’m fine!’

The next day Marie sat in the vet’s waiting room leafing through magazines. The comfort of animal and the scourge of disinfectant fought in her nostrils. Mopoke hissed
through the bars of her hutch at a docile Great Dane sitting between the boating shoes of a middle-aged male opposite. Every so often, Marie’s finger rose to a bristle emerging from her chin.
She hadn’t seen it in the mirror this morning but the message her nerve endings now transmitted to her brain was that it was enormous.

She went over yesterday’s scene with Susan. A shard of pain sat in her chest. Her two selves weren’t that dissimilar, she reflected now, and neither of them — along with Susan
— was in agreeance with this third new self who thought of the Surry Hills tattoo studio with impatience, who anticipated it even more than the appointments with real-estate agents. Susan
would have scoffed at the page in
New Idea
now open in Marie’s lap —

— but she would have secretly ticked things off the list just as Marie was doing now, because it was always better to be in the
In
column, even when the arbiters
were fools. Marie noted with relief and satisfaction that she was only
Out
on one count, and considering how hopeless Susan was at recycling, they were pretty much even. She flicked the
pages irritably, compulsively feeling her bristle. Witchy hairs, Blanche called them. To think that Blanche was getting them too. Marie was filled with impatience by all she still had to do.

She calmed her cat as the vet pinched the fold of skin between Mopoke’s shoulders and slid a long hypodermic into it.

‘This’ll do the trick.’ He was a small neat man who favoured pink shirts and bowties. He lifted Mopoke up in front of him, saying, ‘There you are, Moey!’ then
kissed her on the top of the head and handed her back to Marie.

‘Will she be able to walk properly now?’

‘She’ll have as much movement as we can give her. I’m going to prescribe some pills for her blood pressure as well. The senility could be caused by that.’

Senility. A fate worse than death. Marie drove home contemplating this, one hand on Mopoke stretched along the passenger seat, head drooping over the edge. Could she herself be going senile? Was
that the explanation for these bewildering compulsions? But she had never had high blood pressure, she knew where the toilet was. She felt as lucid as a pane of glass.
Well, we all gained from
the stockmarket
, said the announcer on Radio National.
Of course I use the royal We
.

Marie flicked the dial and found a station playing The Animals. She turned it up and sang along, holding the image of the flames against her belly close and warm like a secret.

Marie always tried to give Fatima a cup of tea when she had finished cleaning, but Fatima always refused. She finished exactly five hours after she began and was always
punctual, arriving at exactly nine o’clock in the morning. She was a reluctant conversationalist and of that floating age — late twenties to early forties. At midday she took her packed
lunch onto the patio with a glass of water and ate staring into the branches of the scribbly gum that Marie had planted for Clark.

She was gone when Blanche arrived. Marie was just in from the garden, with an armful of birds of paradise. She put them in a vase on the coffee table. ‘It looks good in here, doesn’t
it?’

‘Fatima is the
best
.’

‘She told me she’s a physiotherapist. She must hate cleaning.’

‘She loves Australia though. She might be able to qualify here eventually.’

‘I don’t think she can afford to study. Poor thing. It must be awful.’

Blanche stopped on her way to the kitchen. ‘Mum, it’s not awful, it’s fan
tas
tic! Her kids are in school, she’s got a house.’

‘She drives all the way here from Macquarie Fields, Blanche. She cleans six days a week. She’s been trying to get her husband into Australia for more than two years.’

‘Half of Sydney drives two hours a day to work, and works six days, even
seven
. And Fatima’s not alone, she’s got an aunt here or something.’

‘I’m just saying it’s hard.’

‘Could be harder,’ Blanche said, striding into the kitchen.

Blanche was busy in the kitchen, moving the kettle over the burn mark, and the bread basket in front of the corroding grout. She had come straight from work and, in her pointy boots and jacket
with asymmetrical seams, looked incongruous undertaking domestic tasks. Her thick brown hair was pulled back in a tortoiseshell clip that sat on the nape of her neck. She looked more like agent
than occupier, Marie thought. She tried to imagine Blanche pregnant, and a satisfyingly frumpy and exhausted image surfaced. Not the sort of thing they’d go for in Huston Alwick, oh no.

‘How do you like the new furniture?’

‘Yeah, it’s alright. I think you should get rid of the old couch, but that’s just me. Which agent is coming today?’

‘The one with all the aftershave. The nice woman is coming as well.’

‘Both at once?’

‘Yes.’ Marie smiled slyly. ‘I thought I’d let them at each other. Aftershave is coming with a prospective buyer. It should be quite an interesting mix.’

‘Buyers already? Are you that deep into negotiations with him?’

‘Blanche, it’s an experiment.’

Blanche looked around the living room forlornly. ‘It feels weird. Where’s Mopoke?’

‘I don’t know. She’s got a sixth sense. She disappeared for hours when the Nice Woman came.’

‘I’m not the Nice Woman.’

‘Aren’t you?’

‘Let’s have a Campari and soda.’

‘It’s three o’clock in the afternoon.’

‘You always have a Campari after working in the garden.’

‘Not before sunset,’ Marie lied. ‘Anyway’ — she motioned to the liquor cabinet — ‘I haven’t got any, I haven’t been restocking.’

‘Wow.’ Blanche’s face creased. ‘I can’t believe I didn’t notice that.’

What she did notice was a fresh bottle of Campari in the pantry, and she was dying for a drink. She rarely drank during the day, but this house or her mother had a parching effect, just as she
craved a cat fix when she was here but at home barely thought about them. Blanche didn’t know if she needed to be here in order to drink or if she needed to drink in order to be here. Two
months ago she would have assumed the pantry bottle was deliberately hidden but now she wasn’t so sure. Her mother looked sharpened, knowing, fragile. There was the usual mint waft but
without its fumey undertone. She was definitely sober. Blanche realised that she couldn’t imagine Marie in any other environment but this, and that she didn’t in fact want her to sell.
She wanted the house to be here always. Just in case.

She was dying for a drink. ‘You know you’ve got a bottle of Campari in the pantry.’

‘Where?’

‘With the lime juice and all that stuff.’

‘God. No flies on you.’

‘So. One last toast for the house?’

Marie walked into the pantry. ‘I suppose I’d better steel myself.’

‘You have to act from a position of strength, Mum. You have to name a price. I think you should start at six and a half million.’

‘Hugh suggested six.’

Blanche was stunned.

The phone rang and Marie picked it up, said a few words, then returned to her task at the bench. ‘That was the Nice Woman cancelling. So there will be just one agent after all.’

‘Why not try higher? You can always come down.’

‘We’ll see.’

In a deft and elegant trio of motions, Marie jabbed the ice pick into the bucket, dislodged cubes and sledged them into two tall glasses. Blanche had always loved watching her mother mix drinks.
As a child she had been fascinated by the sleight of hand, the fabulously shaped and coloured bottles like so many potions wielded with shamanistic familiarity. She loved seeing her mother in
charge of so potent a ritual, this gateway to adulthood with all its dangers and privileges. Later, when Marie became so undone, the ritual remained as the last moment of governance, the keys
turned in the ignition before the crash. But beneath Blanche’s desire for her mother to re-occupy this authoritative position were contempt and scepticism. Blanche knew that in suggesting a
drink she was throwing down a gauntlet. Could Marie handle it? She couldn’t bear the thought of her mother humiliating herself in front of a real-estate agent, especially if she was present.
Then again, such a scenario would reinforce her mother’s intrinsic inability to take control, giving Blanche an excuse to. And to think that Marie and Hugh had started talking without her
knowing.