There Should Be More Dancing (14 page)

On Tuesday Margery's shin felt less tight and looked a little less red, which made her feel generally better, so she settled down to a spot of polishing. She screwed the lid firmly on the bottle of Silvo and positioned Walter's championship silver trophies in the crystal cabinet, then she aligned the little cardboard squares – the year and the title written in her best hand – in front of each trophy, and then she heard shouting next door. The builders stopped nailing and stood on the roof trusses of the second storey to watch Tony argue with the architect. The architect stormed off, Tony followed, and so did Miriana, so Margery went to her bedroom, smiling at her polished doorknobs as she passed. In the front street, the architect spread his drawings on the roof of Tony's low red car, and that's when the shouting really started. Tony scraped the sheet of paper onto the ground. ‘Get your fucking bullshit off my Ferrari!' The shouting intensified. It sounded to Margery as if the architect objected to a fence, so she went out to check the letterbox. The red stilettos were still there, and there was a pamphlet from the local pizza place and another advertising nasal spray for stronger, longer erections.

Tony was poking his finger at the architect, ‘Youse don't know what you're talking about. I know people who could disarm that alarm in five seconds, mate. The security bars are staying – to hell with your schematic fucking minimal fucking horizontal lines.'

As he yelled yet another truck arrived and stood idling while the builders unloaded the wrought-iron gates and spiked lacework fence. Margery watched the heartbroken architect roll up his plans and went back inside, taking the red shoes with her. She tried to get her feet into them once more but finally put them in the wardrobe in the second bedroom.

That afternoon, when Margery did Mrs Parsons' laces, she said again, ‘I'm sorry my children were such a bother on Sunday,' and Mrs Parsons repeated what she'd said on Monday morning and afternoon, and again that morning – ‘All children are a blessing' – though Margery decided Mrs Parsons only said that because she'd endured the pain of having none of her own. She spent the rest of the day wave-stitching the trim on Anita's basket cover.

On Wednesday Margery settled down to her tea and toast, then Judith's little van pulled up out the front. The special was Airbrush Nail Art – ten fingers or toes for the price of five.

Margery's stomach lurched, but Judith just hurried down the passage, calling, ‘I'm not staying,' dumped a bag from Spotlight on the couch and kept on towards the lavatory. ‘I'm on new tablets, Marge, so I might call in from time to time to use your toilet.'

Margery was pouring a cup of tea when she came back in. ‘Would you like a cuppa, Judith?'

Judith squinted at the tiny hands on her mother's tiny, antique watch and sat down at the table. ‘That'd be lovely. Black, no milk.'

‘You should drink milk for the calcium.'

‘How are you keeping, Marge?'

‘Good thanks, get yourself a cup then.' Margery eased her frail body, still tender from the fall two weeks ago, down onto a chair while Judith heaved herself up to get a cup. As she poured, Margery spread jam evenly on her toast. ‘Would you like a slice?'

‘Can't,' Judith said. ‘Diet.'

They sipped their tea.

‘I've lost eight kilos.'

‘That may be so, but no amount of foundation make-up will hide the rash that's creeping up your face from your throat.'

‘As ever, thanks for the nurturing, caring support,
mother dear
,' said Judith. She had a few sips of tea then got up and moved through the kitchen, lounge room and hall, kicking all the floor mats into a lump by the front door. She came back scattering new mats from the Spotlight bag throughout the house. ‘They're rubber-backed,' she said and held one in front of her mother. ‘See? They won't slip.' They were bath mats – olive green, with looped pile.

Margery said, ‘Thank you, Judith.'

‘You owe me twenty-five dollars.'

It was when Margery was counting out the sum in five-dollar bills that Judith spotted the dosette in her mother's bag. ‘You're sick, aren't you?'

Margery shook her head. ‘Vitamins.'

‘Don't underestimate me, Marge. I'm smarter than I look. I've got a Certificate Four in Skin Biology, Anatomy and Physiology of Beauty Therapy Treatments, not to mention Human Development and Helping Skills, so I know these are not vitamin tablets.'

‘Then you should know what to do about that rash.'

‘I do. If I'd had an attentive and nurturing upbringing, and if you were in the retirement home, Marge, I wouldn't be covered in a stress rash. You could fall and lie dying for days like Mrs Bist. You should be grateful that I care.'

‘Mrs Bist knew every person in Brunswick, good and bad,
and
she had her invisible friend,
God
. Fat lot of good any of them did her.'

Judith studied the dosette. ‘Who put these tablets in?'

‘Anita.'

‘The cleaner?' At this, Judith pulled the lid of one of the cells open, but she pulled the wrong catch, the entire lid came off and tablets ran all over the kitchen table and onto the floor.

‘Stupid thing,' she said. Margery fetched her little broom and shovel and swept the tablets off the floor, then she tipped them onto the table, where Judith formed colour-coded little piles. She poured them all back into the bottles Margery kept in an ice-cream container on top of the fridge, and as Margery ate her toast Judith refilled the little cells with her long, diamanté-studded acrylic fingernails, frowning at the instructions on the side of the medicine bottles. When Judith unscrewed the lid on the big jar of dissolvable calcium tablets, Margery said, ‘They don't go in the dosette – they're too big!' But it was too late. Judith cupped a string of pearls in her hand.

‘Oh,' said Margery. ‘You don't want those, Judith.'

Judith smiled, an insincere smile that didn't reach her blue-tinted prescription contact lenses. ‘I'll just borrow them, alright?'

Margery nodded. ‘Well, if you want to, but you don't want those –'

‘I do. I deserve them.'

‘I'm not sure you do,' but Judith was at the front door, the old mats in her arms. She turned back to her mother and called, ‘See ya, Marge,' and was gone, leaving a faint smell of warm perfume and nail polish remover. Margery was left sitting at the kitchen table, anxiously twisting the top button on her frock.

She had just settled once more when Anita dropped in, again. Margery shoved the basket cover to the bottom of her cross-stitch bag and took up her new cross-stitch –
Only when we are no longer afraid do we begin to live.
Margery stitched while Anita dressed her wound, and after she'd popped in to see Mrs Parsons she picked up her work basket. ‘Not having a cup of tea?'

‘No. Tea makes me want to smoke.' Anita gathered all the new mats Judith had just purchased. ‘These belong in Tony's dump bin,' she said. ‘You'll catch your toe in the loops.'

‘Those mats were expensive,' Margery called as the screen door banged shut.

That night the phone rang. ‘This will be Morris,' Margery said and got out of bed as fast as she could, feeling her way along the wall, padding down the passage in her bare feet – her bunion bulbous on the cold lino, her bones not fully prepared to accept her weight – but the phone stopped ringing just as she reached for the handset. She stood in the dark looking at it. ‘Bother!' She went on out to the lavatory, stopping for a little glass of cooking sherry on her way, and in the dark she caught the corner of her face on the bedroom door as she passed. It was a nasty rebuke that sounded loudly in her head and rattled her remaining teeth. The ache in the side of her face kept her awake. ‘I'll need to get my rest,' she said. ‘It's Big Shop today.' Near dawn she got up and had another little glass of sherry.

Mrs Parsons waited at her kitchen table with her red beret perched on top of her fuzzy head and her frangipani brooch pinned to the lapel of her blue woollen coat. Finally, she heard Margery start the car. She gathered up her bags – handbag, shopping basket, spare bag – locked the back door behind her, crept through her shed to Margery's shed and hopped into the car. Margery backed out, successfully avoided the brick garage behind hers, bumped down the bluestone lane, turned right into Watson Street, her front bumper scraping the driver's side door on a silver Golf, then swung left into Brunswick Road, bringing the number fifteen bus to a dangerous halt and dislodging three passengers. At Sydney Road she turned left through a red light, and at Barkly Street she failed to notice a
motorcycle on her right. The motorbike glanced off her car with a dull thud and made a raw, scraping sound as it slid along the tram tracks before coming to rest up against the number nineteen tram, waiting for embarking passengers at stop number twenty-two. Margery looked across at Mrs Parsons, curled over in the front seat, her hands holding her beret. ‘Goodness gracious.'

The motorcycle rider simply got himself up and took a few steps over to where his motorcycle rested beneath the tram. He was still inspecting his motorcycle when his pillion passenger gathered herself from the road and limped over to him. She hit him, bellowing, ‘You look at your fucking bike before you even think about me!' The rider shoved her away, so she took a swing at his helmet but missed. The tram started dinging its bell, car horns tooted, so the rider stood his motorcycle up and wheeled it off the road. The commuters and shoppers watched him approach the little old lady sitting frozen behind the wheel of her apple-green Hillman Minx. The motorcyclist leaned in her window. Margery was staring ahead, her foot jumping on the accelerator. Though her hands gripped the steering wheel, her elbows shook. Next to her, Mrs Parsons was tugging at the doorhandle. The motorcyclist smiled. ‘Well, well, if it isn't Mrs Blandon and little Squigglehead. I live in your street, the other side of the pub.'

Margery said, ‘We don't know the people beyond Mrs Ahmed's house. Mrs Ahmed lives next to the park.'

‘You've hurt your eye, broken your glasses,' he said.

‘I hurt my eye last night, it's perfectly alright, and I can get another pair of glasses.'

Behind them, the tram dinged and the cars horns blared. The angry pillion passenger kicked the motorcycle and it fell over again.

The motorcyclist asked, ‘Would you like me to drive your car home for you?'

Mrs Parsons turned her rheumy eyes hopefully towards him and said, ‘I need to buy a card and a stamp first,' but Margery replied in a thin voice, ‘It's really my son's car, and we're perfectly alright. I can drive Mrs Parsons home. I always do.'

‘I see.' His girlfriend was kicking his motorbike behind him, but he persuaded Margery to let him drive them to the car park behind the mall. ‘My name's Russell. I knew your husband from the pub. In fact, I was there the day it blew up.'

Margery said, ‘I don't remember you from the funeral.'

‘No,' he said. ‘I was still in the hospital.'

‘Oh, dear,' Margery said.

‘No worries,' Russell said. ‘Lance was always a bit of a hard case, and I liked that, and there was the payout I got, bought the house at number 223. Bloody brilliant. It's worth five times as much now.' He parked and helped the ladies out of the car. ‘You have a good, strong cup of tea now, alright?'

‘Yes, thank you.'

‘You're very kind.'

As he handed Margery the keys, he said, ‘You ever want to get rid of this little car, I'll be happy take it off your hands.'

‘Morris will want it,' Margery said, but Russell said he didn't think he would.

They did their shopping, clogging the aisles with their carts. Margery chose carefully, shaking the tins and inspecting them for dents, comparing the contents of one jar against another. Mrs Parsons bought a small packet of cheese slices, the smallest jar of Vegemite and a birthday card, a picture of a small boy running across the front of it, smiling up at a kite. Margery bought an engagement card for her hairdresser at the same time. Then they took advantage of the five-dollar special cappuccino – Mrs Parsons had tea – and a muffin, though Mrs Parsons couldn't finish her muffin so she popped it in
her handbag for later. Margery had a yoyo, which she bit into then left on the saucer because it was made from margarine, not butter. ‘They say butter kills you these days,' she sniffed.

Judith wanted to get home. Nests of damp, itchy welts burned in her creases and she felt she was stewing in her sticky nylon pantyhose and slacks. She longed to strip off, sink into a long, cold bath and scratch herself all over with a brand-new loofah. Tears brimmed at the thought of it, and at her general discomfort: her life. She felt on the verge of tears a lot lately, sensed that she was getting to the end of something, that a great inertia was pushing her to some sort of conclusion, and she was pretty sure she could blame it all on her mother. But soon she'd be happier, surely. Barry said he'd be home for tea tonight and so she'd wanted to be there, bathed and smiling, with the pearls complementing the azure blouse that accentuated her contacts. She wanted to be poised, warm and welcoming in her linen sailor pants that held her tummy flat, backlit by the lighted exhaust canopy while she stirred the
coq au vin
, the house infused with the cosy smell of simmering seasoned chicken. The Interpersonal Skills module said to ‘be there, giving', but an accident further up Sydney Road meant the Thursday afternoon traffic was gridlocked, and now she couldn't ‘be there', providing that special something the marriage was missing, the special something that was lost when Walter lost. If she could provide some of the wealth her brother's last fight was meant to provide, Barry would realise how important she was to him.

Why didn't her mother just move to the home and live in comfort, or why didn't she just die in her sleep? She was miserable anyway, always had been, and it would be so much simpler for everyone, and it would certainly ease their financial constraints. Barry would get his business. There was money in aged care, surely, if it was handled
right, just as there was money in counselling. Needy people were everywhere. The tears started to well again, so she checked her eyes in the rear-vision mirror. Her ‘Exotic Lady' false eyelashes looked just like the picture on the packet.

She imagined herself sitting opposite Barry at the Tropic Hotel, a candle burning on the table between them. ‘Barry,' she said. ‘Darling, we need to progress to the next phase of our life together.' Then they were there celebrating the end of the financial year with their new partners, Amanda and Theodore, and Judith was much, much thinner, the discussion focussing on real estate trends, then moved to the latest government guidelines in aged care, then it was her turn to speak and she held them with her blue eyes and her views on psychology theory. Once they knew how informed she was, Barry would support her when she unburdened to him the tragic stories she carried from counselling. He would protect her, take her travelling, and she saw herself standing at Tullamarine like Sophia Loren, knee-deep in Louis Vuitton luggage, but then the driver in the car behind her held his hand on the car horn, the beep long and loud, and her dreams were replaced by pictures of long queues on cobblestones outside ruined churches, European heat and bad water, swollen feet and dirty public toilets, and foreign food.