Authors: Fiona McGregor
Then there was the drinking. Year after year, hangover after hangover booming a warning she hadn’t heeded. She couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t had indigestion. She felt ashamed at how much she had abused herself, as she lay with her hand on the sleeping cat, looking through the bay window at the night sky.
And yet, even then, why should she at the age of fifty-nine and a half have absorbed more toxins than Susan, for instance, who was five years older? More pertinently, Ross and Jonesy, intermittent alcoholic and chronic workaholic, the entire thirty years that she had known them. Compared to those men, her own drinking was surely insignificant.
No. She had never lived next to an industrial area, she didn’t drive in traffic every day, she didn’t go near her mobile phone for days at a time, her diet was better than the diet of most. No.
For hours Marie lay there performing autopsies on every aspect of her life, searching for a clue. Why me? she thought as hands locked tighter around her throat. Why
me
?
‘So what’s happening with your mother?’ Terry asked Blanche.
‘She’s going to die.’
Terry rolled his eyes. ‘Well, we’re all going to die, sweetie. What’s going on?’
Blanche’s heart began to thump in her chest. ‘She’s having chemotherapy this week.’
‘Does that mean you’re going to be leaving work early again?’
‘No. Where shall we take Sean?’
Terry pursed his lips. ‘I feel like seafood. Costa’s.’
‘Okay.’ Blanche visualised baby octopi shrivelling on a barbecue and felt revolted. ‘Sounds good.’
Terry pushed a sheaf of paper across his desk. ‘This just came in.’
Blanche picked it up. It was for sanitary napkins. ‘Great.’
‘We’ve only got a couple of weeks.’
‘That’s fine. I’ve got an idea up my sleeve.’
She walked back to her office thinking, You’re not going to die, Terry. I mean you look like shit, but you’re not going to die in a few months’ time. Sadly. And since when did I punch the clock every day in front of you? Seventy hours a week not enough, dickface? And all the hours thinking at home, the wheels constantly turning, in the bath, in the car. Sanitary napkins!
She was lying on the floor when Kate came into her office. She opened her eyes to find those excellent cowboy boots in her face and realised she wasn’t thinking those things about Terry, but muttering them out loud. She let out a little scream.
‘God, I’m sorry. The door was open, so I thought it was okay to come in.’
‘It
is
okay.’
‘Should I come back later?’
‘No. I’m going to lunch with Terry and Sean.’
‘Who’s Sean?’
‘The new guy from Konica.’
‘Oh
him.
He’s dishy.’
The word
lunch
made Blanche’s stomach lurch. ‘Come
in
, Kate!’
‘We just need you to sign off on something.’ Kate stood awkwardly looking down at her. ‘Ya righ’?’
‘Just resting my back.’ Blanche stared up at the ceiling, hoping she looked cool and louche, rather than weird and sick, lying on the floor like this. She had lain here and stared at the ceiling every day this week and still couldn’t find a single flaw in the expanse of white. She sat up slowly. Blood drained from her head. ‘Have you ever been pregnant?’
‘Ye-ah.’ Kate eyed her warily. Blanche noticed the patterns on the cowboy boots were bucking broncos. Or flowers, or cacti. Maybe all three? The designs were ingenious. Oh god, why couldn’t she look like that, why couldn’t she have clothes like that?
‘I was always so paranoid about being the kind of woman Neil French and his ilk go on about,’ she said, staring at the boots.
‘Oh stuff him, he’s a dinosaur. He writes these three-thousand-word ads that nobody cares about. He’s just a bloody Pom.’ She grinned. ‘Are you pregnant?’
‘No, no.’
‘But you’re thinking about it? Lim was telling me a story recently about this boss in the US who was ringing her team right up until she started having contractions. And two days after having the baby she was back at work.’
Wow, that’s amazing.’ Blanche thought that if she concentrated hard enough on the bucking bronco cacti flowers, she might be able to stand up without fainting. She could pass the pad ad on to Kate, call overload.
Pad ad
, a voice in her head snickered. The brittle, flippant mood that Blanche had brought to work that morning was having a field day. On the other hand, she could call Terry’s bluff and do the best ad of the year with the most despised product on the planet. ‘The reason I’m asking is that there’s a pitch due for sanitary napkins.’
Kate made a face.
‘I know. But listen. Urban scenarios, fast editing, a young female executive in a rush. At the end she reaches for her’ — Blanche picked up the papers and searched for the name — ‘
Invisible
.’
‘I hate pads. I
never
wear them.’
‘Neither do I. And then it’s,
Thank god I’m not pregnant!
And a shot of her blissed out, holding the product against her heart, sort of thing.’
‘You’re joking, aren’t you?’
‘Well, we could change
god
to something else, so we don’t alienate the Christians.’
‘I’m a Christian.’
‘
Thank heavens I’m not pregnant!
Or something.’
‘That’s not the problem.’
‘Heaven is kinda the same, isn’t it.’
‘No, I’m a Christian, and that didn’t occur to me.’
Blanche was horrified that Kate was a Christian. Maybe it was time for another Crusade. Hang on, an anti-Crusade, wouldn’t that be? She said, ‘I’d love to do an ad in the Level 41 toilets.’
Kate was tickled. ‘You’ve got balls, Ms King. To be honest with you, I know loads of women who would love it but I don’t know if it would get through.’ She eyed the drawings propped on Blanche’s whiteboard. ‘What are they?’
‘Roche,’ Blanche lied. The drawings were of tunnels done in charcoal. Huge, tortured scrawls, the most satisfying, exciting things she had done all year. Just for the hell of it, for herself and not a client.
‘Interesting. They remind me of early van Gogh. This is an avenue of trees, isn’t it? They’re so dark and, um,
European
.’
‘Yeah.’ Blanche was flattered. ‘Have you been to the van Gogh museum in Amsterdam?’
‘Oh, only about a hundred times. It’s only one of my favourite places in the whole
world
.’
‘Isn’t it the best!’
‘God, I love these drawings.’
Blanche got up slowly, a smile plastered over her throbbing nausea.
‘It’s heart medication, isn’t it? Or cholesterol. It’s blocked arteries. You could digitalise these and do something really amazing with them.’
‘Well, they’re not quite there yet,’ Blanche said modestly.
Kate looked at her watch. ‘Sorry to rush you.’
‘Okay, I’ll be in in two secs.’ Blanche popped an anti-nausea tablet out of its blister pack. As soon as Kate left the office, she rang Clark. ‘Clark, I need you to pick Mum up on Friday.’
‘I can’t. I’m getting Nell from school.’
‘Well, it’s Leon’s day at Susan’s and I can’t leave work early this week. They’re tightening the thumbscrews. Could you get her after Nell?’
Clark spoke in hushed tones. ‘Look, I think it’s a bit confronting for them to see each other when Mum’s sick. I still haven’t told Nell.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because she’s
four
? They don’t understand death at that age, Blanche. They’ve barely figured out life, you know.’
‘Sure, but can’t you tell her she’s sick? Like, Granny’s got a funny tummy?’
Clark said nothing. It occurred to Blanche that Clark might be worth asking about babies, but she resented the patronising, long-suffering tone he took with her whenever children were mentioned, as though she had no idea. She didn’t want to give him an opportunity to lord it over her. She craved comfort and a listening ear, neither of which she would get from Clark. She wanted him to tell her not to have an abortion because having a baby was so fantastic. She said, ‘Did you know she doesn’t have private health cover?’
‘I know. One of her cost-cutting measures last year. Look, I’m in the library. Can we talk about this later?’
‘Just text me when you’ve made up your mind.’
Blanche went up the corridor to sign off on the job and found Lim alone.
He smiled broadly when she entered. ‘Hey, lady, how is it?’
‘Good!’ Lim’s computer was on YouTube playing a rap song. ‘What are you watching?’
‘One of the best ads I’ve seen in years.’
‘Whose is it?’ Blanche perched on the edge of his desk and watched the song unfurl on a beach, the singer a white guy in sunglasses, white zinc and white hoodie.
‘These guys out west. It’s a guerilla ad for the Cancer Council. They’re in Parramatta.’
The ad did look sickeningly good. It featured a singing carcinoma on the main character’s back. Blanche noted the title so she could go back and watch it in her office, over and over. She could see out the door across the hallway into Terry’s office. Kate was in there. Terry had his hands behind his head and was laughing uproariously, looking Kate up and down.
‘It’s just so bold and funny. And they’ve had like five and a half thousand hits in less than two weeks, and someone’s set up a fan page on facebook.’
‘You’re from Parramatta, aren’t you?’
‘Yeh, I’m a westie,’ Lim said proudly. ‘I went to school with one of these guys. They’ve just asked me to join them actually.’
Blanche widened her eyes. ‘You’d go and work in
Parramatta
?’
‘It’s alright. It’s the real centre of Sydney, when you look at a map. It’s forty minutes on the RiverCat, which is quicker than most public transport in this city. Someone like me can afford to buy a house. It’s really multicultural. My mum and dad are out there, you know.’
‘You’re abandoning me!’ Blanche was only half joking.
‘Look, I’m just thinking about it. I get to buy in as a partner and be creative director, which means I get to schedule my own hours, which means I’ll have time to write my novel. Blanche, I
love
working with you but it’s just too
corporate
here. I can’t spread my wings.’
Everything that Lim said made perfect sense: it was a golden opportunity. ‘I’m taking you for a drink after work, boy. I’m not letting you go as easily as that.’
‘Sure.’ Lim whispered as Kate came back in, ‘Nobody knows!’
‘Oh, while you’re here,’ said Kate to Blanche, ‘these are just in from casting.’
Blanche went through the photos. ‘No, too thin. No, he’s just done Westpac.’ She stopped at a photo of a handsome square-jawed man with perfect teeth. ‘Who’s this again?’
‘He was in that cop show a few years back,’ said Kate. ‘He was really good.’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘I don’t know why they sent his picture over,’ Lim said. ‘I mean, an Aboriginal in a car ad?’
‘Yeah.’ Blanche continued through the pile. She stopped at the last photo. ‘He looks a bit like Beck, doesn’t he.’
‘He was our pick too.’ Kate smiled.
‘Okay, team, we’re on the same page.’ Blanche held up her index fingers, like a rap singer.
‘See you at lunch,’ Kate said.
‘I can’t, sorry, date with Tez.’
‘I know. He’s asked me to come along.’
‘Oh. Oh great!’
Blanche went back to her office. Well, who would have thought. Kate and Terry. So it might be those cowboy boots rather than Lim’s Merrells that would tramp right over the top of her the second she dropped the ball. She had fluked it from the art department herself; who said it couldn’t happen again? This thought cleared Blanche’s head and a flinty determination took hold. She might just have this baby, and keep her job at the same time. She might do the best ad for sanitary napkins that anyone had ever seen. And why not hope like her brothers that Marie’s cancer would go into remission? Why not leave all options open? She might be dropping her baby off to her grandmother to be babysat in a year’s time. For the next hour Blanche cut a swathe through her backlog of emails and phone calls. She spent ten minutes in the bathroom fixing her hair and make-up. She lowered her head, smiled up at herself through her vampish brows, then strode out to collect her colleagues for their lunch date.
Almost every chair in the chemotherapy ward was occupied. The first woman was young, reading the
Herald
, her enormous eyes saintly in her bald head. The next was slightly older than Marie, chatty and curious, like a beauty parlour client in her pink scarf tied turban-style. A couple of the alcoves had their curtains drawn. A woman with wavy auburn hair sat white-faced as the line went into her arm, a man who looked like her husband reading to her loudly as though addressing a classroom. Both of them stared at Marie’s tattoos, then her face. There was a man adjacent with lush, pitted Islander features and volcanic eyes. He was reading a book called
Stalingrad.
A scorpion clung to the side of his scalp, a teardrop to his cheek.
The chatty woman on Marie’s other side said, ‘You’ve got the lime juice cordial. That’s what I call it.’
‘That’s a nice way of putting it.’ Marie had been thinking it resembled uranium juice, if there was such a thing. Liquid yellowcake.
‘Well, we have to look on the bright side. I had it for my first bout. It didn’t work for me.’ She nodded after each sentence, preempting disagreement, her nose denting the air. ‘But I’m sure it will for you.’
The woman with auburn hair glared at the chatty woman. Her husband read, ‘
Robert had a job teaching
...’
A passing nurse said, ‘You’ve all got your own special mixture.’
Marie was surprised to find herself content in here with the companionship of the ill. She considered this a brief stop-off. She watched the antivenom infuse, imagining it course through her blood straight to the tumour like weed-killer. She knew it would actually poison everything, but hopefully the right cells would regrow. She shifted to relieve the skin itching on her flank.
The chatty woman said, ‘Is it breast?’
Marie panicked for a moment, thinking her bra must be showing. ‘No. Stomach.’
‘Most of us are breast, of course.’