On Brunswick Ground (6 page)

Her words are so different from what Sarah says of her mother's cancer, which feels more of a shared hex, a common sadness their two hearts can no longer contain. But before I can think any more about them, Mitali stops and looks up at me. Like an animal, she knows instantly when someone's real presence is no longer there.

‘Like death. Death travels through us, doesn't it? It's not supposed to stay. But sometimes – it just does.'

Her face closes down and I know she is thinking of her brother as if she had cried it out in anger and pain. Sometimes I have a sense she is asking me silently for help. A feeling of ineffectual urgency overpowers me. But all I can do is to carry on clipping my shrub. A fine mist of rain is in the air. A palace of drops has formed around us. An hour goes by. Dedication creeps into our movements again. We could be kneeling in a Zen monastery. But when Mitali brushes her hair aside with her muddy glove, it bares the permanent question on her brow:
Why am I alive when my brother is dust in the ground?
Then she bends down once more – a gardening devotee. I speak to her angry cloud of hair.

‘I've just met someone from Adelaide who knows your stepdaughter.'

She jerks her head back with a cackle.

‘What makes you think I like corny coincidences?'

I stifle a laugh, and give an extra snip before answering:

‘Well, whether you like it or not, here's one. Your stepdaughter's called Billie, isn't she?'

A car roars behind the hedge, blanking out the garden's green silence.

‘Are you talking about Mary?'

I nod. The rain seems to have been blown off far over the bay. I picture it blowing over Werribee. Mitali frowns at her working hands.

‘I think Mary and Billie said they'd pop round this afternoon. I'd forgotten. It's a bit late now though. Mary's eerily beautiful, no kidding.'

I say nothing. I just wonder if the blue robe will come round too, or if it's just some incredible disguise from Sarah. It feels crazy but something in me can't help imagining it's all a hoax. Would a daughter find it hard to have such a cool mother? What happened between them? Surely something must have. I turn to Mitali.

‘Mary's mother, Sarah, is a friend of mine. Have you met her?'

Her answer is slow.

‘Sure, I know Sarah.'

This fits with Sarah's personality. You don't
chat
about Sarah. We concentrate on the earth again. Mitali grabs her trowel.

‘Do you remember me mentioning my obsession with Jill Meagher?'

I nod.

‘I still dream of her, you know. She sits at the foot of my bed, looking at me. She's wearing the dress and platform shoes of the wedding shop security video. She talks to me earnestly. I can't hear her words. She bends closer, but I still can't hear her.'

Mitali chucks in her trowel, as if the whole idea of gardening was a bad joke.

‘Do you ever dream of her?'

When I shake my head, she insists.

‘Never?'

When I shake my head again, it seems to infuriate her. Dusk gathers around us. We can hardly see our tools, but she picks the trowel up again with a vengeance.

When you work near someone every day, near the gestures they choose, the silences they keep and the comments that pop out of them, patterns emerge, eddies form under your eyes and a moving, changing portrait surfaces – a living blueprint of that person. You are never surprised by your workmates' quirks. You are not surprised if they read Dostoyevsky, get blind drunk, are transvestites, or sing in a choir. I am not surprised at Mitali, hacking away, in a mood she can't shake off. I don't need any explanations.

It's strange to mourn a stranger, with tears that aren't our own – like a sound you can't quite catch. A bit like trying to write my grandmother's story. But whatever it is, we are doing something. Maybe dealing with the dead is another sort of gardening. We are digging again. I listen to Mitali wield her shovel and fight with the earth, intent on disinterring, exhuming – a reversal of the putting to rest of seeds and bulbs. The clods of clay fly behind her back as I mix in the gypsum. A large bat, flying low, swoops into the tree on our left. The branches seem to sigh and sway on receiving him, a signal for night coming on. We should have stopped half an hour ago. But it doesn't matter.

Mitali slows down a bit.

‘Billie will be going back to her flat soon, but I'm still stuck with the fear of losing her. Her leukaemia opened up degrees of affection that were just fucking there, waiting. Now that she's recovered, I'm still not happy … I don't believe in this health business, because death is still there, looming. It didn't help that Jill Meagher … '

Some memory in me stirs. I think I've seen Billie walking in the street, so I finish Mitali's sentence for her:

‘ … looked like Billie? Has she got black wavy hair and …?'

Mitali's head jerks up.

‘Yes, exactly. They look so alike. Now one is alive and the other is dead, like my brother and me.'

She rests her hands on the higher garden bed in front of her and closes her eyes.

‘I'm fucking tired.'

The way she leans against the earth reminds me of all we don't know about how gulls sleep.

She speaks again, without looking at me, her eyes on the earth.

‘My friend Olga … The one who died a month ago … She was in a coma, hooked to a machine. I
still
haven't phoned her mother. I thought it was because I didn't have the
time
, the
emotional time
. But now I know the real reason. I'm fucking scared to. Because when I call her mother, Olga will be well and truly dead, won't she?'

Again I have the feeling that she's asking me for help. And again, the only thing I can help is the garden.

The wind picks up in the gathering darkness of dusk and we both stir with it. We empty a bag of clippings into the green bin. I climb on top of it to stamp it in, yet the lid barely closes. Mitali laughs up at me a broken, gasping kind of laugh and I realise I have never heard her laugh before. She doesn't give me a hand to help me down, the same way you wouldn't with a brother. The garden is raked and cleared of its weeds; it seems to be bowing in the dusk.

We pick up our tools and walk to the street. I can hardly hear the sounds we make, as if the air were made of blotting paper.

‘I've just received a letter from him,' I whisper.

I know she has heard me. Her living silence has an animal's stillness. I have never talked about his accident, but by the way Mitali turns towards me swiftly it's obvious she knows what happened. Everyone in Brunswick seems to know about Jack. We are all knitted together in a Brunswick sweater – like the knitting those women wrap around tree trunks and streetlights.

6

GLOW-WORMS

Whenever two women walk together in the streets of Brunswick, every sound they make floats freely in the air, every step they take is inscribed in the land. When I'm walking, I often catch myself following in their wake to catch swathes of their conversation. Soon enough, what I am waiting for happens: one or the other will inevitably let out two words in a slow, sensual monotone: ‘I knooooowww,' she'll say. What she knows matters little, what matters is that her companion is no longer alone in solitary flesh, but loosely moored to the floating, harmonious lament bobbing at her side.

Now I am walking along Sydney Road, within the soft perimeter of where I live and work, soft with familiar sights and signs – a cement garden where people swear easily and kindly, even mothers of two year olds. I recognise the walks, the tilts of heads, the tattoos and the piercings, the unshaved jaws and the shaved heads. I recognise the black-dressed old women with gnarled hands and bright eyes – those who are still living, in all but their bodies, in the small villages they have come from. They are trapped in an Italy that no longer exists – even if they go to ‘Colees' or ‘Safeways,' even if they say ‘no vorries,' Brunswick is a parallel universe for them. Their husbands sit in front of cafés and nod to each other, sipping hard liquor in tight espressos, peering straight through the flow of passersby. Then they walk back to their Victorian homes, where they have removed the cast-iron lacework and cemented over the front gardens, keeping their lemon trees and vegie patches for the back, to disappear into their severe, spotlessly clean interiors with their oilcloths on the tables, their crucifixes, their photographs of the current Pope and – because they know how to manage shutters, blinds and night air – their cave-like coolness in summer. Even though spring is still teetering, today's a warm, sunny day and the crowds – like just after a war – are walking aimlessly. Women of all ages and nationalities, trendy, academic, arty or businesslike, drift along the footpath with the same unspent load of love, while the trams, held between cable and rail, thunder past doggedly.

Bernice wants to have a coffee with me. It is 1 pm and I am running. Bernice is rarely late. Green's on Sydney Road is packed, but she's purloined a table. I queue for the coffees and bring them to her. She wrestles to pay me back. When I won't give in, she jumps up to buy a cake. Bernice's generosity is connected to her sciatic nerve. It's compulsive; she has to give. And the world takes. Men especially. Birthdays, Christmases, good news, an exam, a good mood, anything is an excuse for Bernice to give a present. At the moment, she is on RSVP.

‘These men just flick through the photographs and choose a different woman each night,' she complains as we wait to be served.

It does not occur to her to do the same thing, even though, from what I sense, she's a highly organised romantic.

‘If someone contacts me, I sail into the date dressed to the nines, teetering in my tight skirt and my high heels …'

I can imagine her warpath make-up and her heart beating too fast – a bright Victorian butterfly sailing into the Net.

‘They never call me back,' she says. ‘They only go for the pretty girls.'

‘But you
are
pretty, Bernice. That would be the exact word to describe you.'

I look at her. Her fluffy dress, her warm breasts, her camellia skin are a soft lolly waiting to be unwrapped.

‘There must be an explanation. It doesn't make sense.'

She exhales a violent sigh.

‘You have to play hard to get,' grumbles Bernice.

Her face puckers.

‘The problem is I often say “I love you” after the first date. I can't help it. You are not supposed to do that, are you?' she whispers guiltily.

‘We're in the same boat, Bernice. The man I love prefers the company of giraffes.'

‘If I were you I would go and raid the Werribee Zoo.'

I stare at her in horror.

‘The very idea of it makes me feel seasick.'

My reticence is a mystery to her.

‘But why? You should shake him up or he'll forget you all the more.'

She also knows my story. I stay mum. Werribee Zoo looms so large it churns up the gigantic disproportion of the world you first experience as a toddler. I remember the first time I was fished out of my life. I must have been two or three. It was in the middle of a heartbeat high on a swing: when all I knew of the earth was a few rooms, the enormous wave of the earth swept up at me. Soon after that, I climbed towards a loft, heaving myself up each gigantic step. Completely alone in the dark, creaky, spidery silence, I stared through the tiny attic window. But I did not catch sight of Bluebeard or of the witch, as I expected – no, to my utter stupefaction there was a whole world out there and in a flash I understood the earth was round, just like my father said. But there are no swings, no attic steps from which I can fathom Werribee Zoo.

Bernice smiles at me.

‘Ah, don't worry. We'll be right.'

At another table I catch a glimpse of a blue burqa. Could it be Mary? Green's is a Brunswick hub. The blue burqa is talking earnestly to a blonde in jeans with a prim smile and a sexy blouse. She has to be a symbol too; it doesn't seem fair otherwise. I turn and pretend to look at a picture on the wall so it's possible for the possible Mary to have a chance of recognising me. Nothing happens – they are deep in conversation.

Bernice is talking about IVF again.

‘IVM is better,‘ she says, ‘more natural. They don't mess with your hormones so much.'

Bernice has beautiful hands. They lie near her cup and saucer like the hands of Virgins painted by Memling. They hardly seem capable of clasping the smiling child with the halo. They are hands to be kissed and adored, not nappy hands. I've seen Bernice's hands do the dishes. They dive in and out of the water like tentative mermaids. The plates and glasses escape, tumble and slide within an inch of their lives. Still, Bernice gets things done. She pours herself into action with a kind of crazed devotion. It's beautiful to watch because it all seems to happen by utter chance. And yet things land, safe – breathless.

‘I haven't bought a pram yet,' Bernice sighs. ‘It would be a bit premature,' she adds with her quaint dignity. ‘But I
have
looked for schools.'

It reminds me of Bob Marley's ‘I shot the sheriff, but I didn't shoot no deputy.' I ask her if she has a preference for a girl or a boy.

‘A boy!' her face falls. ‘I never thought of that. With my track record with men, I'd be in trouble,' she sighs and then shrugs: ‘Oh, well.'

I glance again at the possible Mary, and Bernice leans towards me and whispers:

‘Isn't it nice, that they can be exactly how they wish to be, here in Brunswick? Nobody cares, everybody wishes them well.'

Just then, the blue face turns round and calls out something I don't catch. I smile tentatively. She gets up. Now it's Mary for sure. She moves towards me rather quickly considering all the blue in the way. In a second, her clear voice and common-sense tone are familiar to me again.