Innocents (12 page)

Uncontrived details, that is.
I
could never vacate a space and leave a tiny natural shrine to myself, an unconscious work of art, the way you have here in your study. No detail of my life—my body, my face, the way I left objects—ever went unplanned.

I know you loved me because you thought me naive.

I cultivated this. I have never been anything other than an old woman. I've always known more than is good for me.

I invented myself anew. I made myself impetuous, eager, open-mouthed with delight at the simplest things.

Tipsily, I'd take your hand and we'd run down the street to the grocery shop.

You were fitter than me, but I was
young
, and young people are agile and energetic, so I forced myself to run and skip and jump until my heart fluttered and my lungs were like scissors in my chest.

You laughed at my childish exuberance; you in your suit and your tie and your glossy black buckled shoes; your badges of adulthood. I grew drunk on your laughter, on the softness in your eyes.

Taking a gamble, I judged that you'd find scruffiness charming. I was right.

Before I moved in, you were a neat bachelor. You weren't the empty-soup-cans and unwashed-socks kind; not at all. Your books stood in even-backed rows, grouped by subject. Your CDs were stacked in alphabetical order. There was an oft-vacuumed threadbareness to the carpets and a Toilet Duck in the loo.

I left my boots toe-to-toe in doorways for you to stumble over.

I dropped my wet towels on the floor for you to pick up.

My schoolbag lay in the centre of the lounge room, spewing books and chewed pencils and bubble-gum wrappers. I wasn't even going to school—I'd just root through it, pretending to look for pencils, and leave the mess where it was.

I plied you with irregular apologies.

I saw you carrying a stack of my dirty breakfast crockery out to the kitchen. In the evening.

‘I'm sorry!’ I said at your elbow, as you lowered it into the sink.

‘Hmmmm?’

‘I keep messing up the house.’

‘Oh, don't worry about that.’ You squirted washing-up liquid at the submerged plates.

‘No—you've been at work till six, and I've been here all day … I feel like I should have been here vacuuming and arranging flowers and all I've done is play Solitaire and pat next-door's cat.’ With a finger dipped in water, I wrote
Sorry
on the bench.

‘Oh …’ You melted. ‘I'd rather have you here, playing cards and patting cats, than have a silly tidy house.’

‘But I leave my shit
everywhere
. You always have to clean up after me …’ Swiftly, I bent my head and kissed your wet soapy wrist.

‘And you skip around the place singing, and I go to sleep every night thinking: I am a lucky, lucky man. And I wake up every morning with this little beady eye looking at me, and I think: I'm about to be a lucky, lucky man again.’ You laughed through your nose, and tears of sentiment welled up in your eyes. ‘I wouldn't change it for the world.’

You did all the housework.

You thought my incompetence was cute.

‘I'll do it!’ I'd say, wrestling the duster away from you. I'd wipe laconically at the bookshelf. You'd cluck and shake your head and take it from me.

‘Here. Leave it to the expert, my darling.’ And you'd pat my head, grinning with affection.

*

You bought tins of paint. You bought brushes in bunches. You bought expensive rollers and trays to dip them in.

You stood for hours every day, covering the walls with undercoats and overcoats and final touch-ups. You'd bought new bedlinen, too. Your ancient sheets and duvet cover lay draped over the furniture and covering the floor.

At first, I helped you. I wore an old shirt of yours, rolled up over my wrists. I liked the billowing enormity of it and the way it came down to my knees. I belted it at the waist, like a little dress.

I didn't like the actual work very much. It smelt horrible; suffocatingly chemical. And it absorbed you totally. You responded to my carefully constructed chatter only with token grunts. You watched the brush with fascination and delight. You grinned to yourself, blissful, as the spreading white paint covered the stains and blemishes of age.

‘It stinks!’ I complained.

Face flecked with white, your old shirt covered in splashes, you grinned at me from the top of the ladder. ‘I'm making it pretty for you.’

So you were unmoved by girlish irritability, were you? I changed tack. ‘I feel a bit …’ I leant against the unpainted portion of the wall, my hand to my forehead ‘… I think I might faint. The smell's just
really
strong.’

‘Poor darling,’ you sympathised, without coming down from the ladder. I only had half your attention. The roller in your hand twitched slightly, in eagerness. ‘You should go outside and get some air.’ Your head bent back over your work, and you painted on with resolute care.

Silently, I went out through the back door. Standing on the steps, facing back in through the doorway, my breathing was ragged with fury.

In the evening, after your work was complete, you strode around the house, shoving open windows and doors. ‘We'll suffocate, otherwise,’ you said.

‘Which one?’ You held out two new doorknobs, one in each hand.

‘Don't care,’ I shrugged. ‘They're both okay.’

‘I want to make it nice for you.’

Breezes swept through from the back door to the front, rustling the newspaper on the kitchen table, and flipping the pages of my half-read novels.

Passing a toyshop one morning, I saw varicoloured crayons in the window. On impulse, I bought them with the excessive pocket money you'd given me the day before.

When you came home from work, I was sprawled in the centre of the living room, intently colouring in.

‘Hello, my darling.’ Shedding your briefcase, you dropped to your knees on the floor beside me. Speaking with the slowness and enthusiasm of a kindergarten teacher, you asked me, ‘What are you drawing?’

‘I'm drawing us.’

It was a picture of a house and a garden path. The two of us, stick-figures whose legs stuck straight out of our round bellies, stood proudly under an orange tree, our stick arms about each other's shoulders. It was drawn in bold babyish strokes. The colours were garish. The leaves of the tree were wide lazy squiggles.

It took me hours.

Dozens of discarded efforts lay shredded in the kitchen bin. The effect had to be of utter casual sloppiness. It had to look infantile but seem sophisticated, in context.

I had composed myself as carefully as the picture. After aeons of posturing I'd decided that the toddler's bum-in-air position was most suitable. It gave me a slight crampy ache in my hips, but this was as nothing beside the overwhelming cuteness of the way it looked.

‘It's modern, so you probably don't understand it,’ I said. ‘It's about the two-dimensional nature of canvas. And the decline of the feminist polemic.’

‘It's lovely, darling. Look, here's the cat from next door.’ Shuffling across on your suited knees, you draped yourself over me, planting your hands on either side of my elbows. ‘Aren't you clever?’ you murmured into my hair, and then, ‘Why do you always smell so yummy?’

‘Shampoo,’ I said, slashing a red, unnatural grin across the face of the cat.

I liked huddling there, in the cubbyhouse of your body.

‘The problem with this arrangement,’ I pointed out after a while, ‘is that I can't kiss you, but you can kiss me. Which isn't fair.’

Answering, you swept my hair aside and kissed me heavily on the back of the neck.

‘It's gender inequality!’ I protested.

‘Bloody feminists.’ You knelt up so that I could turn around. I lay down on my back, my face next to the picture. You were fiddling with your belt. ‘Look what you've done.’

I grinned. Everything had gone perfectly. Your trousers were round your knees. You'd hobbled yourself. I wriggled my skirt off completely. My legs stretched towards you, smooth and unrestrained. I could run away at any moment.

You took me with relief. Your big body arched and buckled over me. Turning my head as you nuzzled my neck, whispering urgently, ‘My baby. I love you. My baby.’ I regarded the bright splashes of crayons, retreating like an exploded rainbow across the carpet.

‘What are we going to do about your education?’ you wanted to know.

The thought hadn't even crossed my mind.

‘You need an education,’ you insisted. ‘You'll never get anywhere without an education.’

I'd forgotten about the future. I was living too deeply in the present; in you.

I shrugged. ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I don't mind.’ At least school would give me something to do during the nine and a half hours a day that you were away, at work.

You enrolled me in an experimental high school a few streets away.

‘It's run by an old college friend of mine,’ you said. ‘We have the same ideas about education.’

Mr Harrison was a big energetic man who wore a cockney barrowman's hat, and illustrated all his words with gestures.

He met us at the front office. His shirt was brightly coloured, stamped with ridiculous patterns. He looked vaguely Jewish. He had a fatter neck than you—sort of a double chin, when he looked down.

He greeted you enthusiastically, wringing your hand, patting you on the back. He smelled of hygienic deodorant lathered over body odour.

‘This is my niece,’ you told him, looking at the wall behind his head.

Mr Harrison didn't notice your sheepishness. His dark eyes were on me. ‘Great! Hi!’ He shook my hand firmly, leaving a filmy residue on my palm. I wiped it on my skirt, discreetly. ‘I've heard about you.’ He watched me keenly, without blinking.

‘Hi,’ I said, growing uncomfortable. What did he mean, he'd heard about me? What had you admitted to him? Surely he didn't
know
?

‘D'you wanna look around?’ he asked me, then said, before I could reply, ‘I'll show you guys around, okay?’

I must have hesitated, watching you watch him. I must have forgotten to start walking when I noticed how your eyes followed his face, how alert you were to his actions.

Mr Harrison guided me forwards with a heavy hand across my shoulders. ‘C'mon,’ he said. His breath was toothpasty but also somehow rotten. I couldn't smell anything unpleasant but I held my breath against the stench, just the same. ‘Don't want to get left behind.’

His shirt sleeves were heavily ironed. His armpits rustled when he walked.

He showed us around the school grounds, pointing with his olive arm at the oval, the hall, the classrooms. Then we saw the theatre, the sculpture room, the art building.

The two of you nattered on about university, swapping did-you-hear-what-happened-to-
him
stories.

The school seemed interesting. Intriguing people swarmed the corridors, each dressed differently. It was like a tropical aquarium, full of carefully proportioned populations of exotic fish. There was an example of every youth subculture I could think of. There were even some that seemed unclassifiable, like the girl dressed all in pink who roller-skated through the corridor, humming tunelessly to herself.

‘No uniforms. They restrict individuality,’ Mr Harrison told me, pretending to be serious. ‘However, I'm afraid I must insist that you wear shoes.’

‘Fine,’ I said. ‘I've got shoes.’

The two of you laughed indulgently.

You patted me on the head. ‘Funny little thing,’ you said.

Mr Harrison pulled a Kinder Surprise aeroplane out of his pocket and gave it to me.

As we trotted home, past the parade of funny poky shops that led back to our street, you chattered enthusiastically about Mr Harrison and his experimental school.

‘He's great, isn't he? Very energetic. Most enthusiastic man I've ever met. He's very highly educated, too. He speaks Latin.’

My raver shoes were giving me blisters. I was jealous of Harrison and his Latin and the bright smile they brought to your face. ‘I'm hungry,’ I said.

We were passing a dim and trendy cafe. ‘C'mon, then,’ you said, and we went inside.

Inside, everything was brown, including the light. Angular artwork hung on the walls.

You bumped your elbow on the doorframe as we entered. The bird-thin waitress fixed her eyes on us. She crossed her arms, impassive.

We sat down.

I fixed my eyes straight on the menu, pouting. I wanted to elicit an apology for your interest in that man, your esteem for him.

You fiddled wretchedly with the forks. That's better, I thought.

You said, ‘I'm embarrassing you.’

You
never
embarrassed me, my darling.

Any other man of your age could have had a prosaicness to him—slippers with holes in them, tartan socks, Y-fronts—that might have made me uncomfortable before the blank eyes of a waitress.

Not you.

‘What?’

You nodded at the waitress, whispering, ‘She looks about your age…’

If only you understood how deeply I lived through you! My mind was always wrapped around your actions, thoughts, responses. You had replaced my peer group as the standard by which I judged myself. All my dealings with them were conducted on the basis of what
you
would think. I couldn't give a damn what the waitress thought.

‘It's okay,’ I said. ‘It's really fine.’

I no longer ignored my body. Before you, knowing myself bad and believing myself ugly as a matter of course, I'd endured the demeaning, ungainly fact of legs and arms and torso as just another of my private humiliations. But now, I pivoted and pirouetted in front of the mirror whenever I had occasion to go into the bathroom. I took a sweet delight in my twin two-dimensional images: side-on and front-on. I like the swelling of my breasts, and the flat expanse of the belly below, the long smooth hips and buttocks.

The movies often show villains looking themselves coolly in the eye, but even the mirror never saw what I was thinking. I was just as cute for my reflection as I was for you. I wore my skin at all times like an expensive suit of clothes.