The Idea of Perfection (10 page)

But from the way it was looking at her through the window with its head cocked on one side and its tail going backwards and forwards, it looked as if it might not understand about
just this once.

She turned away from the window without acknowledging the dog. As far as she was concerned, the dog was as irrelevant to her as the tilting white plastic Garden Setting. Quickly she pulled on some clothes. Instead of leaving by the back door, she went through the house, finding herself tiptoeing past the Master Bedroom, and opened the somewhat majestic panelled front door. From the way it creaked and squeaked it was obvious that no one had used it for a long time.

She pulled it closed behind her as quietly as she could, but as she went down the front steps, the dog appeared around the side of the house. There was no fuss. It was as if they had been meeting like this at the foot of the steps for years.

She turned out of the gate. It was nothing to do with her if the dog was trotting along behind. It was none of her business, and she was not going to give it a glance.

She began to stride out, shoulders back, chest pushing forward through the air, her eyes on the silvery paddocks up beyond the last roofs of the town, where long stripes of pale early sunlight and soft mauve shadow folded themselves around the slopes.

A few doors further up the street, a very large woman was sweeping her front path with a tufty little dog beside her. Harley was carefully not looking at her, but she heard the sweeping stop. Out of the corner of her eye she could see the fat woman leaning on the broom, watching. She was not even pretending not to watch, and the tufty dog was watching too.

She put a pleasant sort of expression on her mouth, and readied herself for a quick bluff
Morning!
as she hurried past. But before she had time for that carefully-judged
Morning!
- not so cool as to be rude, but not so warm as to have to stop — the woman leaned the broom up against the fence and spoke.

Having a bit of a look-round? Your first morning?

It was impossible not to look, impossible not to slow down. Harley smiled in a way that felt sickly.

Hmm, she said. Yes.

The young woman was tremendously large and so fair she had no eyebrows, her big pale bland face like something beautifully washed. She had pressed herself up against her wire gate, to talk to Harley, and cushions of cloth-covered flesh bulged between the strands. Behind her on the lawn were various-sized balls, a wading pool, a tricycle with a wheel missing, a red plastic cape, a small pink gum-boot.

She was smiling and waiting. It seemed that she had really meant it as a question and was waiting for an answer. She did not seem to be playing by the city rules:
How are you good thanks and you
and then you went on. This woman actually seemed to be expecting a
conversation.

The dog had stopped too, and was sniffing the nose of the tufty little dog.

Can’t get up there, you know, the woman said. If it was a walk you were after.

Harley felt her face lengthening, her upper lip growing haughty. She reminded herself that this was the bush and they did things differently here, but she did not like being given answers to questions she had not asked.

Hmmm, she said again.

The young woman was still smiling calmly. She was not in any kind of hurry. She was just waiting for the next part of the
conversation.

You want a walk, the woman said, you’d be better off going along Jupiter Street.

She smiled warmly and nodded several times. As far as she was concerned, it was self-evident where Jupiter Street was.

Jupiter Street, she said again. That’s your best bet.

Still she did not point.

Lorraine’s got her place done out nicely, she went on after a short wait. You’d be comfortable enough there.

Harley felt herself shrivelling up, curling away from this thing — this
relationship —
with this stranger. In the city there was a kind of politeness in pretending you were equally unknown to each other.

She felt her face stiffening.

Yes, she said, in a quelling end-of-conversation way.

But this rosy beaming woman might never have heard of
end-of-conversation,
or the tone of voice that told a person they had gone on long enough.

Yes, she went on serenely. Beverley’s just had the twins, of course. Plus they’ve got the toddler, that’s Kylie, and there’s Brad, he’s seven.

She smiled and nodded encouragingly at Harley.

You need your mother, times like that, don’t you?

Her big solid body was like something inanimate, only the head nodding and smiling away on top of the solid pile of neck.

Harley heard herself producing words.

Yes, well thanks so very much.

It did not sound as if she was actually grateful for anything.

The face of the fat woman registered something. It was not a frown and it was not offence. It was like the look on the face of an actor registering that his partner had forgotten his lines.

There was a short pungent silence.

Round down along past there, the woman said, and finally pointed. Jupiter Street.

The bulk of her began to get itself turned around, like a liner, to point up the path towards her house.

Can’t miss it, she said over her shoulder.

Harley felt her lips draw back across her teeth. It could not really be called a smile, but she was trying.

Thanks, she called after her. Thanks very much indeed.

 

 

Jupiter Street ran out of houses fairly soon, and on the edge of town it lost its confidence, the asphalt trailing away. Then it was just a dirt road, hardly more than a two-rutted track, traversing the side of the valley. You could see it slanting gradually down towards a ribbon of trees that showed where the river was.

She strode out, taking deep deliberate breaths.
Forty-five minutes to an hour,
the doctor had said.
Every day if possible.
At home in the city it was a matter of round and round the park, or through the congested streets trying not to step in the dog poo. An hour could seem a long time. Here, she could see that
forty-five minutes to an hour
was a much more elastic kind of thing.

It was obviously going to be another hot day. The flies had not found her so far, but where the sun slanted in across the ground the paddocks were already humming and ticking with insects. Lizards rustled under the dusty bushes beside the road and small solid-looking birds like fat china ornaments hopped in and out of the yellow flowers.

Ahead of her, long stripes of sunlight split by trees lay along the paddocks. A single long-dead pale gumtree stood in its necklace of ringbarking, casting a long intricate shadow out in front of it. Along the crests of the ridges there was a lacy effect where the pale sky showed through the canopies of the gumtrees. The bush on the ridges was not green so much as a dark and dusty khaki that went to black where the hills folded secretively into little creases. A bald shaved stripe where powerlines ran was the only straight line in a landscape that was all soft swellings and bulgings.

A group of cows was gathered around licking a rough brown block of salt. One looked up with a long straw of grass hanging from its mouth, staring at her like a yokel.

The dog trotted alongside her as if she belonged to it, as if it was being taken for a walk. It slowed when she slowed, broke into a run when she strode out quickly, looked where she looked. It was like a mirror trotting along beside her. But it was not because of the dog that she was walking. It was for herself, for her
dicky ticker.

She took deep breaths, swinging her arms, striding out along the road. She could feel her heart pumping away in her chest. It sounded strong.

But it had sounded strong before, and then it had suddenly stopped. You could not really trust a heart.

Dicky ticker.
She had lain on the narrow hospital bed watching the doctor’s young full-lipped mouth saying it:
dicky ticker.
He said it a lot, as if he enjoyed it, as if he was quoting, with amusement, some earlier, quaint, generation of doctors. She was confused from having nearly died, but she had wished he would stop saying it.

The nurses had talked about
infarction.

None of them ever said
heart attack.
It had taken her a while to realise that was what had happened to her.

The gigantic pain had spread from her chest into her shoulder and down her arm and up into her jaw. The tremendous gripe of it had squeezed her almost to death.

She had barely been able to breathe, feeling the knots pulled tight around her heart. If she moved or thought the wrong kind of thought they would tighten further, and strangle her. She lay, not even blinking, watching the light and shadow on the white ceiling of the emergency room.

The doctor had all his long words about
arterio-
this, that and the other, and she listened and nodded. He had been kind, with his joky way of talking. But there on the white bed, under the cotton hospital blanket that kept you from being cold without exactly being warm, she had seen that all the
arterio
business was only an excuse. The truth was that her heart had finally decided to punish her. It had taken all these years, had let her go on with her
dangerous streak,
had watched to see if she could mend her ways, if Philip’s death would make a difference. But she had not mended her ways: instead she had shrivelled inside, and clenched tight, growing wizened and stunted from so much unhappy history.

It seemed only right that her heart was finally turning on her.

Nurses came and went, tiny and far away beside the bed. Doctors held her wrist, leaned in at her. Friends came and made mouth-shapes at her, pressed her limp hand. They had all talked about her second chance. She could turn over a new leaf. It was not too late.

They had all agreed how important it was to
unwind.
They made it sound easy, a simple choice you could make,
wind
or
unwind.
They made it sound no more difficult than choosing to
sit down
or
stand up.

I want you to clench your right hand. Tight, tight, tighter,
the soothing voice on the tape coaxed.
Now relax.
She had lain on the bed, clenching her fist,
tight, tight, tighter.
Then
relaxed.

She was prepared to go through the motions, but she did not really believe in
second chances.
It was too late.

Somehow, it had always been too late. Even as a child she had known about being
wound,
like the swings she had played on with her sister. She would twist them up on their chains, forcing the seat around and around so it was coiled tight and ugly against itself. That was
wound.
It made you scream with the danger of it, the power screwed up in the chain, waiting to strike.

And in the end it got you.

 

 

The sun was lighting up every grass-head along the roadside with its own little glowing halo. A tall black horse galloped over to the fence and stood staring at her, a big spherical eyeball on each side of its head like a cubist painting. A muscle in its shoulder twitched under the hair. She hesitated, feeling an urge to go over, stroke its glossy neck, feel the big breathing warmth of it next to her. But when the dog sat down to watch her hesitate, she changed her mind. She did not want to be watched or waited for. The dog was quick, but not quite quick enough, and before it had time to get up again she stepped on the end of its tail.

It was not that she did it on purpose. It was more that she did not try very hard to avoid it.

It gave a sharp involuntary yelp, then quickly turned and licked her hand as if to forgive her. She snatched her hand away from the warm wet tongue and strode on, ignoring it.

A thick gumtree screwed its way up out of the ground, silvers and pinks roped like sinews along the length of the trunk. You could see that when the seed had sent up its shoot, something had blocked it, a stone perhaps, and made it come out twisted like a piece of string. Once twisted, it stayed that way, no matter how long it lived. The sapling would have been born twisted, and here was the mature tree, thick with years, still twisted. When it fell over, dead, the fibres of the dead wood would still show where, all its long life, it had been
wound.

The dog was running on ahead of her, nosing at bushes and rocks, glancing back at her, panting, but when she caught its eye she looked away.

She tugged off her jumper and tied its sleeves around her waist.
Moderate to vigorous exercise,
the rosy-lipped doctor had said.
More than a stroll.

She strode out hard, feeling the cuffs of the jumper wagging at her waist at each step. There was a certain cruel pleasure in forcing herself hard towards the crest of the hill. There was something of righteous punishment in it. The sun was in her eyes and she kept her head down. The muscles in the backs of her legs were starting to ache. She lengthened her stride to feel them stretch at each step with a small shooting pain. Take
that,
she thought. And
that.
And
that.

They had told her that your heart had to be made to work.

The breath was coming hard now, her lungs burning, each breath like an angry little grunt.
That.
And
that.
And
that.

If you made it work so hard it broke, that would serve you right.

The road corkscrewed around the corner and her arms skewed away strongly to get her up the last steep pinch. At the top she stood panting, feeling the heart thudding strenuously in her chest.

She stood listening to her chest pull the air in and expel it again.
In, out. In, out.
If she was having another heart attack, it would be hours, far too long, before anyone found her on this back road. It would be a long way to Livingstone Base Hospital, too, lying along the back seat of someone’s car.