The Idea of Perfection (15 page)

Lying on the bed while they examined her, she saw a great brown smear of old blood on the metal shade of the big ceiling lamp. She wished she had not seen it. Some other woman had lain here with baby and blood pouring out of her, something going wrong, urgent voices calling
Bring that lamp down!
and a bloodied gloved hand reaching out for it, pulling it down, leaving behind this nasty brown secret.

With nightfall, the wolves came into the room and tore at her by lamplight. They snarled and barked, long rough sounds, or was it she who was snarling with the ripping and gripping of it? There was the start of outrage, and behind that was panic.

Each pain, or
contraction,
came on her again and again, starting as something faint, like a most distant rumble of a train far away in a tunnel, but it came on and on. She heard a high silly little-girl’s voice call out, oh, it’s
coming again,
it’s
coming,
and it roared, gnashing, flailing its way over her, staying for longer each time, and even as it receded it was coming again. All she needed was one moment, just a moment to take control of things again, but it would not give her that moment.

There was nothing to put between herself and the pain now. The belly-dancing was pathetic, and she had lost track of the panting. All those things were absurd, ridiculous, a child’s games. She was not person plus belly now, making the belly go in and out, left and right. She was nothing but belly now, that great bully of a belly taking her over completely. She was flattened, betrayed, a husk on all fours on the floor like an animal, her face contorted, and the belly mocked her.

 

 

The baby they gave her to hold at last was that belly, the face in the wrappings staring blindly with dark-lashed eyes. There was no love or joy in that stare. It did not care who you were, or how good you were at belly-dancing and remembering words like
perineum.

She held it, the way you were supposed to, but there was no warm gush of love for it, only the feeling that she would rather put it away in its little perspex hospital box, because a parcel in a perspex box was something she could look after perfectly. She had done her homework, and read the books, and knew, for example, that cabbage leaves would relieve the tight swollen feeling in the breasts before the milk
came in.
It was good to know a thing like that. She laughed with the other mothers in the ward, pushing the clammy leaves down under their dainty nighties. One refused, asked the nurse for pain-killers instead, but that was not the right thing to do. At this stage you had complete control over everything that went into the baby. It was irresponsible to take pain-killers when a cabbage leaf, properly applied, would do the job.

She got the feeding right, too, and even when she went home with the baby she stuck precisely to the system they showed her at the hospital. She had written it all down to make sure she got it right. Nine minutes on the left side, then burp for thirty seconds. Nine minutes on the right side, then burp for one minute. She even got a little timer so she could be sure.

She did not like to say anything, but she watched other mothers drag out their weary-looking breasts from bras that you could see were not quite
fresh,
stuff the nipple into the baby’s mouth and go on talking, go on even drinking a cup of tea, not paying attention, not timing the feed, going on talking or drinking tea until the baby simply fell asleep with the nipple sliding out of its mouth in a little puddle of drool.

She got the nappies perfect, too. She found a way of doing the nappies that was as neat as an envelope around a letter. What a pleasure to flick out a clean nappy, fold it left over right, right over left, up through the middle and pin — with your hand underneath, naturally, so as not to stab the baby — and there it was, a trim white parcel of bandaged bottom, all your own work.

 

 

William was a rather blank kind of boy now. Sometimes she noticed a furtive anxious expression on his face that made him look like one of his own guinea-pigs. But she could not complain. He was a good boy and did his homework and kept his room tidy and brushed his hair without being asked, and never gave any trouble.

She could not understand mothers with children who were naughty. She heard them, answering back cheekily, refusing to eat their carrots, leaving the house with their shoe-laces undone. She saw the mothers shrugging, giving in. She did not tolerate any of that. You made it clear to children what was expected, and then you made sure that they did it. It was as simple as that.

William was too old now to be an
interest,
but recently she had discovered the best
interest
she had ever had: herself. She had the Creme Jeunesse, and the Defoliant Masque. She had the row of dear little ice-coloured bottles: the Oxidizing Humectant, and the Rose-Hip Astringent, and the Guava Enzyme Scrub, and the Day Creme and the Night Creme and the special Eye Cream that cost so much, but you only needed a little bit. She had the Bruised Oatmeal Face-Pack Programme in the cupboard, and always had plenty of cucumbers in the fridge. It was part of getting it all absolutely right, knowing about the old-fashioned things as well as the scientific ones.

She knew that other people put the radio on, or watched television, while they lay with the Oatmeal Pack on their face and the cucumber slices on their eyes, but she did not need television or the radio. It was enough to think about the way each cell of her cheeks, her chin, her neck, was being
replenished.

The trouble was that you could forget about everything else. You went on picturing the little cells, one by one, swelling juicily, and one thought would lead to another, and time could get away on you.

One awful day she had simply forgotten to pick William up from school. Fiona had come home with him in the end, and had stood knocking at the back door. She had been so deeply absorbed in thinking about the
replenishment,
it had taken her a while to realise what the noise was. When she came to the door with the Oatmeal Pack still thick on her face and a cucumber slice stuck to her nose, Fiona had given her a bit of a funny look, and William had rushed straight into his room and slammed the door.

After that she had got herself a dear little alarm clock with an unusual striped face. There was a solution to every problem, if you had the will to solve it.

You still had to be vigilant. Even lying down, thinking about replenishment, you had to be careful not to let your eyebrows draw together, concentrating. Under the Oatmeal Pack the concentrating would show on your face in the form of a line which might at some later time harden into a
wrinkle.

She tried hard not to think about anything at all now when she lay down. The trouble was, trying not to think about anything was in itself something you had to concentrate on. Even concentrating on not concentrating could be enough to make your eyebrows draw in towards each other. So, as well as remembering not to concentrate on
replenishment,
you also had to remember not to concentrate on not
concentrating.

There was a lot to remember.

It was a full time job, really, remembering everything.

LORRAINE SMART’S BASKET was too dainty for big Harley Savage. She felt it dangling from the end of her arm like a silly little decoration as she set off down Delphi Street towards the shops. She felt as if she was pretending to be someone else with this little dainty basket, someone not dangerous.
Lah le lah,
the basket seemed to say.
Happy days. Nice smiles. Happily ever after.

Above such a basket, she felt that her face was more forbidding than ever.
Look out,
her face said.
I bite.

The dog was not too dainty for her. Like her, it was a big coarse thing. It could probably turn dangerous, too.

After the walk in the morning she had given it a dish of water.
Just this once,
she reminded it, although not aloud, and shoved quite hard at its shoulder with the side of her foot when it got too close.

She would get rid of it this morning. Somewhere between the Mini-Mart where she would pick up a few groceries, and Alfred Chang Superior Meats where she would get something lean for dinner, and the Cobwebbe Crafte Shoppe, where Coralie was expecting her, the dog would disappear. It would just go, the same way it had just come.

In the meantime it trotted along beside her, keeping pace when she stopped, out of a city person’s habit, at Jupiter Street, to
look to the right and look to the left and look to the right again
before she crossed. The only traffic was two mag- ‘ pies pecking at something squashed on the bitumen.

When she stopped, the dog stopped too. It looked where she was looking, then up into her face. It was right beside her when she got to the shops.

They seemed to crouch under their wide awnings, the windows heavily shadowed. She imagined shopkeepers peering out at her. The
woman down from Sydney.
The
Museum woman.

The awnings had her confused for a moment. There was ALFRED CHANG, SUPERIOR MEATS, on one in elaborate italics, and there was ALFRED CHANEY, VALUER AND AUCTIONEER, on the next one. The windows were different. Alfred Chaney’s was gold lettering arching across the glass, some kind of coat-of-arms thing and letters after his name like a brain surgeon. But behind the gold lettering the shop was dark, nothing there except an empty cardboard box and an old milk carton.

Next door there were no layers of gilt lettering, but the lights were on, illuminating a sloping display counter of shiny metal with cardboard containers of dripping in a tidy triangle like ninepins, and a neat stack of tins of tongue. There was no meat on display, only a glossy, deeply coloured picture of a carcase drawn over with dotted lines showing where it could be cut into joints.

As she watched, a large hand reached into the window and arranged two sprays of bright green plastic fern beside the containers of dripping. The dog’s tail was beating against her leg. It was looking eagerly in the direction of the fly-door.

She turned her back on Superior Meats.

Across the road was the schoolyard, with a picket fence painted Department of Education cream and several well-worn pepper-trees. The flag drooped from its flagpole in the sun and a little glaze of heat lay over the bitumen playground.

Next to the school there was a shop with DRY & PIECE GOODS in raised plaster on the facade, but the flaking paint along the awning said BAKERY, and in any case it was closed. Someone had taped newspaper up over the windows, but so long ago the sticky-tape had dried out and the newspaper was curling down off the glass.

Two men turned into the bar of the Caledonian and above them on the verandah that reached out over the footpath a woman shook out a rug. Harley could see little flecks of dust floating down on to the cars nosed up to the gutter underneath.

The window of the Mini-Mart displayed an arrangement of plastic fly-swats that had been there so long that they were furred with red dust, a tin of Solagard, a tea-pot in the shape of a thatched cottage, three faded boxes of Uncle Toby’s Oats, a blister pack of screwdrivers and a packet of sewing-needles. Right at the top there were buckets in six colours.

Thick plastic strips hung in the doorway to keep the flies out, one bandaged at hand-height with masking tape. When she pushed the fly-door behind the plastic strips, the hinge squealed and the bell jangled above her head. Out of the corner of her eye she saw that the dog was making itself comfortable on a piece of footpath, as if the two of them had been coming to the Mini-Mart for years.

Inside, the shop was dimly lit with fluorescents that were missing a few tubes, so it seemed very dark after the brilliance outside. There was something about it more like an institution than a shop: the pale green paint, the expanses of shiny lino floor. She felt too large between the shelves, nearly knocking over a pyramid of tinned peaches, brushing against a bouquet of tea-towels.

She stood in the dim shop holding the basket in front of her. Through the doorway she could see the flaring brightness of Parnassus Road baking under the sun. And just there, paws crossed in front of it, patiently watching the door, was the dog.

She was sure it would just go, but it had not just gone yet.

At the Pet Food section, she walked quickly past. It was nothing to do with her. At the next aisle she reconsidered, turned back. She had used Lorraine Smart’s tin of Pal, so she would have to replace it. As her hand went out to take the tin off the shelf, she reminded herself that she was not in any sense buying it for the dog. She was buying it for
Lorraine
Smart. She dropped it in the basket without looking, moving on quickly.

 

 

Harley had gone into the laundry at Lorraine Smart’s once or twice, but the message on the brown-paper bag over the taps was always the same: DO NOT USE. Under the bag, the taps looked normal, but it seemed better to be on the safe side and just do her washing in the kitchen, in a bucket. However, although Lorraine Smart’s house contained many useful items, there were no buckets.

But apart from the ones in the window, she could not see any in the shop, either.

Beyond the long bare wooden counter, a still shape that had seemed part of the shelves moved sideways.

May I help you? it said, spreading its hands on the counter, revealing itself to be a shrivelled old man with crooked glasses and a big hairy mole on his ear.

I’m after a bucket, she said, trying to be friendly,
unwound.

A plain old bucket. For some washing.

The man took his hands off the counter and began to pick at the skin of his palm.

A bucket, he repeated. A plain old bucket.

Yes, she said.

He looked at her through his crooked glasses. They made his face look peculiar, and she saw that one of the lenses was cracked clean across and glued together with yellow glue, beaded along the mend.