Reading Madame Bovary (19 page)

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 that, 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.

Other women

Other women who know her say she was a meticulous mother. That the children were always immaculately and fashionably dressed, that they had every opportunity and dance class going, that she interrogated teachers on parent nights with an unrelenting fierceness of demand, that she was hungry, always, for whatever was the right thing, the right circumstance; hungry for opportunity.

At work she was a stickler for deadlines and protocols. For the correct format. Simple, clean, immaculate grooming. At night she cooked carefully considered, balanced meals. Her dinner parties had a clinical propriety about them: all the right linen, the right silver, the right porcelain; the candelabra just the right size and the flowers set just so; the food cooked to look like the glossy illustrations in her
Cordon Bleu
series. She herself, of course, ate little, making excuses about eating the children's leftovers beforehand (‘Can't bear waste'). Yet she was, I imagine, too fastidious a woman to eat even a lover's leftovers.

When our lease expired

When our lease expired and our time was up we wandered about the house, flat-footed, doleful. The interior of the house became repugnant to us; its bland department-store style which had once amused us and we had so comfortably patronised now provoked us.

We sneered at those complacent books in the bookshelves. We were grumpy and scornful. We were mourning in advance for the loss of the sundeck.

The morning we left we were querulous and accident-prone. Ben grazed his shins badly when he fell on the steep drive, loading his bike onto the roof-rack; in the kitchen, Carla cut her thumb on a broken glass that had smashed in the packing. As we drove off, Ben slouched down as far as he could into a corner of the back seat, staring ahead. ‘Goodbye suburbia!' exclaimed Carla theatrically, but as we drove away down the steep winding drive I could see her in the rear-vision mirror, casting a last look back at the redwood sundeck.

In just under an hour we had returned to our inner-city terrace. The mould grew in smoky green smudges on the wallpaper; the small courtyard, now more claustrophobic than ever, was cluttered with dried leaves. We hauled our suitcases, our boxes and our jumble into the dark hallway, turned the lights on in every room of the house, locked the car (no off-street parking) and then walked up the hill, exhausted, to our local Italian restaurant, Rugatini's. Ben said (too emphatically) that thank God he didn't have to eat any more frozen pizza and could get the real thing, and I drank a toast to smog, cigarettes and good coffee.