Indelible Ink Read online

  ‘Have you looked in the kitchen?’ Blanche went on. ‘The grout coming off near the sink and that burn mark next to the stove? Those little things. It can make a real difference.’

  ‘I hadn’t even noticed.’

  ‘I wonder what her friends think. Susan, for example.’

  Beneath the deck now, they could hear Hugh and Marie singing along to the Ronettes. Blanche glanced sheepishly at her brother. She couldn’t imagine being with Hugh at her mother’s age, nor could she imagine being alone. She had always assumed these two outcomes but the future cataclysm they implied had never been so clear. She considered her mother’s solitary rudderless state, and her elder brother’s, and a feeling of dread washed over her.

  ‘God,’ Clark said. ‘That woman. Mum’s so submissive with her or something. You know, Susan buys a yellow straw hat, Mum buys a yellow straw hat.’

  ‘Mum didn’t get a mobile though. And Susan lives on hers.’

  ‘Yes, she did. She just never uses it.’

  ‘Did she? She never told me. And I’ve been hassling her to and everything. Did she give you her number?’

  ‘Yep.’ Clark stepped ahead of her as the path narrowed. Blanche fell silent.

  Clark said in a low voice, ‘Mum just wants to please everyone. Including us. You know that.’

  The next Saturday after lunch at Mario’s, Susan suggested they go to the new homewares shop on Macleay Street. They went in Susan’s car as Marie had had most of the two bottles they’d ordered at lunch. Marie rode with her hand in her bag, palming her wallet. She hummed with excitement. Who knew what she might find out there? All those things waiting for her to give them a home and bring them to life. She remembered her pile of unpaid bills, but she owned a house in Sirius Cove and it was her birthday and spending while in debt had an extra frisson. The casual signature below a sum that could have fed her for months. To be that free and reckless.

  She followed Susan into the shop. An assistant at the back noticed them immediately. Marie always liked walking into places with Susan, a tall good-looking blonde with long tanned legs and ankles so tautly defined as to have been carved from wood. Marie was the cute curvaceous side of the partnership, the entry point, and Susan the lure. They browsed with their heads together.

  ‘Why don’t you get a lounge suite?’ said Susan.

  ‘I thought I’d just get a new chair and a lamp or something.’

  ‘You should start with a lounge suite, then work your way down. If you start with the small things, it just ends up higgledy piggledy and nothing matches.’

  Marie barked her shin on a chair and stumbled against Susan, who tipped forward then righted herself on the back of a couch. They giggled tipsily. ‘Not this ugly thing,’ Marie hissed at the couch.

  ‘Out of my way!’ Susan gave the next couch a little whack.

  They forged on.

  ‘What about these?’ Marie stopped before a pair of Chinese vases.

  ‘Oh no, you don’t want those.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Ross has a pair just like them.’

  They continued towards the centre of the shop. Something sour released in Marie at the mention of Ross’s name.

  ‘Furniture traps memories like odours, Marie. It’s bad feng shui for you to hang on to that couch of yours. Isn’t this a lovely shop? You have to get something here. Gina’s managing Mosmania now, you know, and I can tell you there’s absolutely nothing in there. No-thing.’

  The svelte, bearded assistant approached. ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Susan. ‘We’re interested in lounge suites. For my friend here. Let’s have a look at those.’ She set sail across the floor towards some lumps the colour of ice. ‘I like that one, Marie. It’s timeless. Versatile.’

  ‘Excellent choice.’ The assistant nodded. ‘It also comes in navy, slate, jade and coral. The covers are washable.’

  Susan sat on one of the couches and looked over at Marie, eyes bright. ‘It’s comfortable, you know. And I’ll get you a lamp, to go with this, for your birthday.’

  Marie could feel acid rising up the back of her throat. She sat obediently next to Susan. Interesting to see the revisitation of styles in the light-filled, glass-fronted shop. Off to one side stepped the functional elegance of Scandinavian couches, with their narrow wooden arms and slim cushions. Ross had had some couches like that taken to the tip less than a decade after buying them. And now they sold for thousands of dollars.

  Marie bounced up and down, testing it out. The couch was comfortable. She could have lain down and fallen asleep.

  ‘How do you like it?’ said the assistant.

  ‘It’s very comfortable but I’m not sure about the colour.’

  A man in beige chinos sat on the other icy lump, hands flat either side. He moved around, smiling at the woman standing over him, urging her to join him. She had a fringe that dipped in a melancholy curve below her brow. ‘I still prefer the one on eBay,’ she said, pouting.

  ‘But you can’t sit on your eBay couch, sweetheart.’ He patted the cushion beside him. ‘It could be Sag City and you won’t know till you get it. Come on. Try this out.’

  She sat next to him, expressionless, staring straight ahead.

  ‘You might change your mind, but the best things will go,’ Susan said into Marie’s ear. ‘Everybody thinks there’s an endless supply just because it’s furniture. But you wait, they will go!’

  Marie looked at the colour chart. Navy and slate would be too dark. Coral reminded her of the 1970s. ‘Is there any jade in stock?’ she asked the assistant.

  ‘I’ll go and check.’

  ‘Don’t you think jade looks drab?’ said Susan. ‘It always ends up looking grey.’

  Jade. Chinese. Marie’s mind wandered as Susan answered her mobile. She couldn’t remember Ross’s Chinese vases. What shocked her after he had left with his things wasn’t so much the loss as how quickly her mind papered it over. Where is this? What happened to that? her children would say. Marie would have no idea what they were talking about. Oh, Dad, they would answer themselves. She worried about the holes beneath this paper, the day it would give way and she would fall through into the dark abyss of reality. No such thing as a free lunch, Marie thought, in her fug, on the glacial lounge suite. Around her wheeled the endless cycle of acquisition and rejection, the costly stink of yesterday’s garbage. She slid through it like a stain.

  Susan was braying into her phone, ‘Hal-lo! No, I’m out. Yes, you must!’

  Marie straightened her spine, thought of her wallet and felt a power enter her. It seemed to come from her posture and her credit. These things emanated into the room, alchemised, then returned as this strange and thrilling power. Susan was snapping her phone shut with a clatter of bracelets, filing it into her jacket pocket. Marie turned to her, shoulders thrust back. ‘What’s his new house like?’

  ‘You can imagine.’ Susan rolled her eyes. ‘Full of clutter. He’s gone completely Chinese, which is why I warned you off those vases. He doesn’t have very good taste, you know.’ She drew in her chin and looked Marie in the eye.

  ‘Do you and Jonesy go there very often?’

  ‘No.’

  The man in beige chinos and his partner moved over to the dining section.

  Marie looked straight ahead, confused. So the vases were new. So much for her amnesia. Or were they there already? She pulled the tag around to look at the price of the lounge suite. Nine thousand dollars. She could have got a rainwater tank for that.

  ‘Why do you have to torture yourself, Marie? You should be treating yourself.’

  ‘What’s she like? She’s young, isn’t she?’ Marie could hear the belligerence in her tone. She didn’t like the sound of herself after a few glasses of wine. Her voice emerged louder than she intended, with the exaggerated enunciation of a person for whom clear speech was difficult: a stroke victim, a deaf mute. A drunk.

  Susan’s irritation was evident. She stood and straightened her skir
t. ‘Okay, she’s plump and plain. An interior designer. Not that you’d know it, looking at all that clutter. She fusses over him.’

  A little bark of amusement from Marie. ‘Short and blonde? Big tits?’

  ‘There’s nothing I can say when you’re like this. Listen, why don’t I buy you a lamp. Let’s go and get a lamp to go with the lounge suite.’

  ‘He’s got himself another me. I suppose I should be flattered!’

  ‘I didn’t mean it like that.’

  Susan moved away; Marie followed her. They ebbed towards an uninhabited corner of the shop, bright with scores of lights. They had entered during the last hour of daylight and the street outside was growing dark. Again Marie recognised items from her past — a mushroom-shaped lamp with orange head and white stalk; others on stands sprouting lights at intervals, like lilies. One of those would come in handy. She was again confused by similarities with furniture from the history of her home, as though her home had only ever been a retail outlet. The air became progressively still and muggy. Susan began to fan herself with a catalogue. The catalogue whirred louder and louder, inside Marie’s ears a giddy thrumming, then she was tripping over an electrical cord, grabbing on to a lamp, on her hands and knees, skirt up her thighs and Susan was saying, ‘Oh god, Marie, oh god,’ and the assistant was rushing towards them as Marie vomited her lunch of Pinot Grigio and scampi linguine across the floor.

  When she looked up, she saw Susan scarlet-faced, tearing tissues from a small packet. Marie struggled to her feet and wiped her face, clouded with shame. But in the distance glimmered a feeling of levity, even exultation. The man in beige chinos looked at her in horror then left the shop, steering his woman in front of him. The assistant was frozen, hand over mouth. Desire for the lounge suite slaked Marie: she couldn’t imagine leaving the shop without it. Her house would be empty, bereft, and she would have nowhere to rest.

  Susan fluttered some tissues over the winey vomit. ‘Don’t worry about the lamp,’ she was saying to the assistant. ‘I’ll pay for the lamp.’

  Marie got out her Visa card and walked towards him determinedly. ‘I’ll sign for that lounge suite now.’

  ‘And then,’ Susan whispered, ‘I’m putting you straight into a taxi.’

  It was Saturday night out there. She was fifty-nine, divorced, with money in her wallet, and she had never been out alone on a Saturday night. She told the taxi driver to head back up to the Cross instead of over the bridge. She had gone to a bar there years ago, on top of a building, with a view across the city and harbour. She was angry, bored, and her mouth was dry. Marie needed a drink.

  Halfway up William Street, the traffic slowed to a crawl and Marie looked out the window, fascinated by the gaudy scene. A woman as big as a man stood near a building’s entrance like a fruit vendor, offering her enormous breasts to the passing cars. A prostitute half her age and size teetered past in spike heels to a companion propped against a pylon, head lolling. They leant against one another, slivers of cardboard with fluff for hair, trying not to blow over in the wind. Part of the road had been torn up and construction barriers lined each block. A group of English boys lurched down the footpath, shouting drunken songs. All of this had to be endured like a thicket of lantana grown across the path. The taxi struggled onwards. The rawness of the street, not two blocks from that sumptuous bar with deep chocolate lounges and tinkling piano, amazed Marie. As the taxi paused at a red light, some Aborigines sauntered up from Woolloomooloo screaming with laughter, then stopped to stare directly through the window at her.

  Inside the bar, safely seated before the million-dollar view, Marie ordered a glass of Cape Mentelle. It was hours since her last drink. She swallowed the wine quickly and ordered another, then noticed a man at the bar staring at her. Tall and slim with thick grey hair, he was picking peanuts out of a dish and tossing them into his mouth with languid precision. Marie sat facing the window, watching his reflection in the glass. She turned to catch the waiter’s eye, meeting those of the man at the bar in the elegant suit.

  He turned away to exchange a word with the barman. She hoped he was ordering another drink; he could have been paying for hers. She was the only single woman over here; a party of loud shiny Americans and Australians spread across the couches beside her. She uncrossed and recrossed her legs around the cut she had sustained in the homewares shop. Checked the angle of her face in the glass, sucking in her cheeks for more bone structure as she ordered her wine.

  Oh, we love coming here, said one of the Americans. It’s so beautiful, and the people are so friendly.

  Marie moved into their meeting, the first touch of his hand, the shape of him seated in the chair opposite, as the waiter gave her order to the barman. She went into the first months, the initial electric offering of bodies, discovery, compromise. They argued and reconciled, settling into companionable silence by the time her wine arrived, thinking so far into their life together that she only noticed at the last minute the man paying his bill then leaving, shattering an ancient intimacy. She sat there humiliated, sipping her wine, staring at the city lights.

  Have you been to Bondi? said one of the Australians. Oh yeah, came the reply. It’s beautiful.

  Why would he have been looking at her anyway? The homage of glances she had once known had been withdrawn. Menopause seemed to have hit overnight, dragging down her comely jowls. Marie couldn’t avoid the sight of herself in the lift mirrors, repeated in nightmare triptych. Her navy skirt and linen jacket, lipstick cracking off dry lips. She wasn’t exactly dressed for a night on the town. How much could she have improved this body anyway? These sagging breasts, this broadened arse, hands cracked with fish emulsion and years of confinement inside the hardened pigskin of gardening gloves. She exited onto Darlinghurst Road.

  So here she was, on the street, an object of scrutiny just like those she had scrutinised an hour before. She stood on the corner waiting for the lights to change, a snake of cars sliding past. A finned red Pontiac paused before her, engine throbbing. Inside were four swarthy youths, a screen hanging over the front seat. None of them was paying much attention to the movie. They were looking out at her, smirking. One of them wound down the window, just as Marie realised the movie was a close-up of frantic copulation. The car took off and a yell hung in the air. Faggot!

  Next to Marie, waiting to cross, was a man in a leather waistcoat, staring at the sky. The lights went red and Marie stomped across the road. At the entrance to the train station a busker was playing ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’. A couple unnervingly similar to her, in age and dress, smiled as they walked past. Marie had thought that a walk through the Cross would be a testing odyssey, but the street was surprisingly bright and short. She slowed down to make it last. There was a 7-Eleven from which spilt travellers garbling in a Nordic language. Cars cruised in both directions, bumper to bumper. She passed a disco with a luridly lit façade, manned by a huge Islander who looked at her blankly. A woman in track pants staggered across the footpath, nearly crashing into Marie. Everywhere was the blare of music, car horns, sirens, spruikers.

  ‘Hey sis!’ someone was shouting in the plaza to the left. ‘Sista girl!’

  Marie turned to see a large black woman in a black t-shirt with Treaty! emblazoned across it in red.

  Catching her eye, the woman started enthusiastically towards her. ‘Got a smoke, sis?’

  ‘Sorry, I don’t smoke,’ said Marie, hurrying away, handbag clutched tight to her side.

  She rounded the corner past a Deco apartment building, brass nameplates gleaming. You would have to be quite wealthy to own something there, thought Marie. So much for the seedy Cross, the people here aren’t exactly poor. She marched over to the fountain, a floating ball of liquid light. A boy and girl were sitting on its edge and, as Marie passed, the girl turned to throw up in the water. A parmesan smell of vomit arose, reminding her of the shopping trip, and she wondered if it was on her clothes. Rock’n’roll charged out of a bar. Suburban teenagers stood outside, the
girls in stilettos nervously smoking and flicking their hair. Aren’t they too young? But wasn’t I their age when I met Ross? Nothing returns, thought Marie, walking on. Nothing twice.

  There was a lump of rags in a doorway, slumped forward at an acute angle as though trying to lick his shoe. My god, is he alive? Is he a he? A group of bikies stood around their Harleys, fat oozing between waistcoat and jeans. One with white hair, slurping on a can of Solo, looked like their leader. Outside Stripperama stood a girl in tight jeans, sports bag slung over her shoulder. Nooo, she was saying into a mobile. You’re joking. Marie stopped at a fast-food place and bought a piece of pizza that tasted like melted plastic on cardboard. She ate it walking, realising soon that she had left the Cross, and nothing had happened. She tripped on the kerb. She turned down William Street.

  She walked looking over her shoulder for a taxi, but all the vacant ones were streaming up the other side of the hill into the Cross. She continued down, gnawed by disappointment, pawing with aggression. Why should she have to go home anyway, when the rest of the world was just warming up? She felt like she had been sloughed off and washed away. And isn’t it just like you, Marie, to give up and go home? Ahead was the serpentine signage of a tattoo parlour. Marie paused to look through the window. The room was empty. And why shouldn’t she be allowed into places like this? she thought, checking over her shoulder with furious resentment. But nobody had looked at her the entire night.

  She pushed the door open and walked in. Surrounded by walls of designs, she felt for a minute like she was inside a giant comic book. A tall man with small eyes and long grey-brown hair emerged. A drooping moustache covered his mouth, and stubble the rest of his face. He had a tentative, distracted air. It was him in the photograph on the corkboard behind the counter, straddling a motorbike, two toddlers perched on the chrome body between his thighs, his inked arms stretched around them to the handlebars. He stood in front of her expectantly.