Authors: Fiona McGregor
‘So how did you get yours done?’
‘Oh, the king’ll have my head and hands chucked into a ditch,
big
time,’ Rhys said obliquely. ‘Seriously though, I cop a bit for these. I wouldn’t wish it on
you.’
‘Why did you get them?’
‘Because while the English king is chucking me into a ditch, a Dayak goddess will be admitting me to heaven.’
‘I didn’t know the Dayaks had a heaven.’
‘Kind of. They had to encounter all sorts of obstacles and cross the River of Death to reach it. Only the souls of the tattooed could cross because tattoos provided light for them in the
afterlife. The men would have their headhunting tattoos, and the women their gauntlets which described their talents like weaving or whatever.’
‘You see why I want them? I’ll need somewhere to go when St Peter refuses me.’
‘Oh, you don’t need gauntlets.’ Rhys laughed. ‘The goddess’ll love you as you are. You’ll be fucken
blazing.
Anyway, bugger the law, that’s not
what stops me. It’s just too full-on, all the judgement. You can choose to show the ones you have so far. They’re on nonpublic skin. With tattooed hands you don’t have a choice
unless you’re wearing gloves, which happens once a year in Sydney. I get searched every time I go through customs, like squeezing out my toothpaste searched. You can’t rent a house. You
can’t get a job.’
‘I don’t need a job.’
A look of scorn flashed across Rhys’s face, then she said evenly, ‘Fair enough.’
Marie wondered for the first time what she would do with this psychology degree. She couldn’t imagine a workplace. She pushed the issue out of her mind. ‘Do you regret the
gauntlets?’
‘I’ve grown into them. But I got them just before I fell pregnant and I did for a while, like taking Travis to child care was hard in the beginning. I was totally gung-ho and I had
no idea what being a mother meant in the eyes of the world.’
‘It means purity. It means service.’
‘It means Nice. But there is a power in motherhood. It’s just proscribed. You operate within those parameters, and you can access it. You can even reinvent it a bit.’
‘My son-in-law, the real-estate agent, saw my moth tattoo. His face.’
‘You’re the mother. You’ve got the power.’
‘I don’t have the power,’ Marie said in surprise. ‘I never did.’
‘Of course you do. You’re the
mother.
’
‘They ran rings around me. Still do.’
‘I can imagine. Just having one.’
A pigeon with a deformed foot was hobbling on the footpath, pecking at crumbs. The deformed foot was like a clump of melted plastic, Marie thought, watching it pitilessly.
‘You gotta take the power,’ Rhys said with quiet insistence.
Marie looked at her.
‘When does the house go on the market?’
‘This weekend.’
‘Scary.’
‘I’m ready.’
‘Okay. Let’s start today.’ Rhys formed a beak with her thumb and first two fingers and drew an undulating line to her forearm. When she finished she put her hands behind her
head. Marie was again startled by the new ouroboros. A tattoo that size would take barely an hour. It seemed incredible how quickly and permanently things could change.
Susan stayed on the street tooting the horn of her new car, a fawn Peugeot convertible with leather seats and a GPS. Marie brought up a plastic bag containing the last pot of
banksias, and Susan popped the boot. Then she noticed it. ‘My god. The sign!’
The
For Sale
sign was around two metres tall and featured a photograph of the view taken from the living room. Beyond the sign was the real thing, rich with subtle movement.
‘It’s enormous, isn’t it?’ said Marie, building a nest for the pot in the boot of Susan’s car. She slid into the passenger seat inhaling the cocktail of diesel,
leather and brine.
‘There’s a little house in Awaba Street that’s come onto the market, you know. I saved the ad for you. It’s in the glove box.’
‘I’m not staying in Mosman, Susan.’
‘Why not? What’s wrong with us?’
‘I can’t afford it.’
‘Well, I think you can. You just need to be more positive. Aren’t you even going to look at the ad?’
‘I don’t like it here anymore.’
Susan didn’t reply. They drove up to Avenue Road. ‘At the top of the hill,’ said the GPS in an English accent, ‘turn left.’
Susan obeyed, turning beneath a small sandstone bluff. The street was split, the corner guarded by wooden railings before the drop. Back from the road, buried beneath a cloud of crimson
bougainvillea, stood an old Spanish mission house. Further along, an ancient Alexander palm towered over the suburb. After thirty years here, Marie still greeted her favourite things like a child
rereading a fairy tale. These rare sites, whose decades hadn’t been erased, soothed her.
‘Does that thing tell you where to go even when you know the way already?’ she said irritably when the GPS issued another direction.
‘I can’t switch it off.’
They drove on in silence, then Marie said, ‘So how are you, Susan? Is everything alright?’
‘I’ve had a shit of a week.’
‘What’s going on?’
‘The painters are still here so Fatima can’t hang the washing and every time I go outside
reeling
with paint fumes I’m nearly beheaded by a ladder. You should see them,
sauntering around saying
fuck this fuck that
, knocking off at two every day. I took the Pajero to the mechanic because it was using up so much petrol and he said I need a new carburettor
then lo and behold the battery dies as soon as I get it back. So there I am waiting for the NRMA all morning, dodging painters and of course the car isn’t running more efficiently so
that’s another thousand dollars down the drain.’
Marie wondered if Susan had any idea what it was like to have your cheques bounce. The car glided quiet as a boat through the verdant curves of Neutral Bay. ‘Well, this is a lovely car. I
feel like a million dollars in this car. It’s intoxicating.’
‘It runs on biofuels. Or it’s supposed to. That’s why we got it. And two months later we find out we’re responsible for food riots in Bangladesh or wherever. Fabulous,
isn’t it.’ Susan’s mouth settled into a grim line.
‘We should have caught the ferry. Walked up to the gallery through the gardens.’
‘I don’t have the time. I’m doing my shopping on the way home.’
‘How’s Jonesy?’ Marie tried to sound enthusiastic.
‘He’s in Singapore. Honestly, sometimes I feel like I could
murder
someone.’
‘I know exactly what you mean. Sometimes I think life is one long act of self-control.’
‘Self-control!’ Susan barked.
After a while she said, ‘You didn’t come to
La Bohème.
’
‘I’m sorry, I got the dates mixed up.’ But Marie in fact hadn’t renewed her subscription. She had arrived home fifteen minutes before the opera began, fresh from a
session with Rhys, thinking of the Joneses in seats E15 and E16. She had picked a lettuce and watered the garden as the harbour sank into dusk. She had made herself a salad with tuna and boiled
eggs and eaten it with a book lent her by Rhys, the opera loud on the living room stereo to drown out the yapping of the Hendersons’ new shih-tzus, Ming and Tang. She had luxuriated in this
time alone with her house, knowing she would be up early to arrange things with Fatima for the Saturday inspections. She left the house for these, finding evidence of strangers when she returned: a
crumpled tissue on the bathroom floor, on the couch a long red hair. Worst of all, cigarette butts in the garden. She had learnt paranoia after the first week, and in spite of Hugh’s
vigilance acquired the habit of locking everything she could and placing paper over the contents of the most private drawers. ‘How was it?’ she asked Susan.
‘Absolutely exquisite.’
They were driving to the art gallery to see the blockbuster Renaissance exhibition. It was surprisingly cosy with the roof open, the acutely angled windscreen and windows proving excellent
buffers. An even cool emanated from the seats and floor. Susan drove with both hands gripping the wheel, bracelets clattering. Every so often she glanced over at Marie. Marie’s shirtsleeves
were covering her half-completed vines. She liked her body now, with all its changes and secrets and stories. She no longer had the sense of hiding when she dressed. The daily ritual of alteration
and censorship had given way to enjoyable enhancement and the judicious coverage of parts of herself that might need protection.
‘Bridge, left lane,’ said the GPS. ‘Tunnel right.’
‘Well,’ said Susan. ‘David rang me for your number.’
‘Yes. We went out to dinner.’
‘And?’
Marie was disconcerted by how much David’s silence still hurt. ‘It was ages ago, Susan.’
‘And what happened? Did you go home with him?’
‘Yes.’
Susan waited for more, but Marie had no desire to confess. The car swept onto the Cahill Expressway, Susan shaking her head. ‘So
David
saw your tattoos?’
Marie’s throat went hard and dry. She said nothing.
‘Doesn’t it hurt?’
‘Nothing hurts as much as giving birth, Susan. Believe me.’
‘But we don’t seek that pain. We have no choice about that.’
‘If you want the baby, you go through the pain. If you want the tattoo, ditto.’
‘Rubbish,’ Susan snapped. ‘I had epidurals.’
‘I didn’t. And my relationship to pain was altered forever.’
‘I’m sure your children would love to hear you compare them to tattoos.’
Laughter flew from Marie’s mouth.
Susan took the corner hard at the end of the expressway, pitching Marie against the door. She kept glancing over. ‘Are you covered in them now, are you? How many are there?’
‘I’m not going to undress for you here, Susan.’
‘I don’t want you to undress for me at all, thanks.’
‘Jesus Christ, when did we become such prudes?’
‘I’m not a prude! This isn’t about sex!’
‘I didn’t say it was!’
‘I-don’t-like-tattoos!’ Susan’s hand struck the wheel with each word. ‘You can never get rid of them, and people change.’
‘Exactly.’
‘They last forever, Marie.’
‘Not as long as oil paintings.’
‘How can you compare them with
art?
’ Susan scoffed.
‘Just shut up about it will you!’
‘I’m just stating my opinion! Why do you take it so personally?’
‘Because it
is
personal! That’s the whole point! The tattoos are
me
.’
‘Oh no, they’re not. I’ve known you for thirty years, Marie. You can’t just change overnight.’
‘You just said that people change!’
‘All your talk about water tanks and sweatshops, is that what this is all about? You never cared about that sort of thing before. Getting tattoos isn’t going to change
that.
’
Marie was going to say,
Better late than never
, when a ream of burps emerged from her mouth, harsh and bitter like sulphuric gas, and she began to laugh again. First at her body’s
anarchy, then at the world she was a part of, the stupid, narrow world that promised you freedom then punished you for taking it. Helplessly, she laughed and burped as they shouted their way into
the Domain.
‘I can’t believe you’re so upset over a silly tattoo!’
‘No, Susan,
you
are. And if it’s so silly, why is it so reprehensible?’
‘I’m
worried
about you, Marie.’
‘I don’t need your fucking pity!’
‘I can’t talk about this anymore! I want to go and look at the art!’
The people waiting on the art gallery steps watched them arrive, Susan smiling in a queenly fashion as she slowed down and turned triumphantly into the one free parking space. Out of the
air-conditioning, the heat wrapped around Marie like a blanket. She began to sweat. Susan was looking up and down the street, one hand on the parking meter as though steadying herself against a
wind. With a long red fingernail she poked the bay number into the keypad. ‘Fabulous. There’s an hour still paid for. That should do us.’
Marie took off without a word, straight into the gallery bistro where she downed a scotch in two gulps.
She moved alone through the crowded rooms, leaning closer to the paintings for the spill of seeds from cut fruit, the luxurious sweep of fabric, the blood spurting scarlet from
Holofernes’s neck as Judith plunged her sword in. The exhibition was packed, Marie often forced to stand behind people and crane her neck to see the pictures; yet even from here she could
make out the detail of lizard’s scales disappearing into darkness, the grimy toenails of Caravaggio’s boy. All that rich, creamy white skin: how real was it in the end? Not a mark on
the prostitute modelling as Magdalene, yet while Caravaggio was casting from the streets, the local vagabonds were scorching insignia into their flesh with gunpowder. What would his brush have made
of their Angel Raphaels and Virgin Marys? Did he delete them for the Church’s continuing favour? As she turned the corner into the last room, Marie caught sight of Susan. Susan looked away.
Marie left the gallery.
These beautiful flaws. The tiny black mazes, ruined homes of parasites, that scarred the ironbark pews in St Mary’s, a reassuring complication greeting Marie’s fingertips as she sat
down in the hallowed cool. The continuous fundamental meal of nature gave her sustenance. Strange how she was only ten minutes’ walk from Susan in the gallery. Susan would never think of
coming in here. Sanctuary, Marie thought. She knew their fight wasn’t about the petty detail. It was a deeper schism, and she didn’t know how to heal it. She looked down the nave at the
altar, holy water drying on her forehead, and tried to empty her mind.
She was struck by the automatic gesture of dipping her fingers into the font and anointing herself on entering. The grandeur and solemnity of the cathedral was so tempting, and her own
importance as a member of this ancient, godly club. Visitors whispered up the back. Praying people dotted the pews, others walked up the aisles to light candles. She noticed that half the people
were Asian. A new congregation, but hardly a new church.