Other People’s Diaries (2 page)

I can still remember the first time I read
Her Life, My Life.
It was a week before Peter's graduation ceremony and I borrowed it from the library for the commute to the dental surgery where I worked. Back then, we lived a forty-five minute bus ride from the middle of Hobart. Without something to read, I'd spend the whole journey thinking about teeth, which always made the day seem so much longer
.

The book was one of those that seemed to absorb you as soon as you opened the cover. It was so deliciously old-fashioned and made me want to be a magnificent matriarch just like Alice Day's grandmother. Maybe nine children in this day and age would be a shade too many, but I knew I'd have at least four
.

So when Peter came home after his first day as a qualified physio, I met him naked at the door with a glass of champagne and the news. Effective immediately, I was no longer a dental nurse but a stay-at-home-mother-in-waiting. Obviously I tempted fate
.

‘N
o, another couple won't make any difference. Just check that they eat seafood, will you? … Yes, I know seafood is expensive, but it's a risotto so I didn't have to buy much.'

Claire listened for a moment, rolling her eyes in irritation.
She looked critically at the pyramid of lemons on the kitchen table, repositioning the two on top.

‘Well, I've already bought it, so it's too late. I just need to be sure no one is allergic – or that they just don't like it. You'll have to call them back. Please, I don't have any more time to talk about it – I still have pastry to make for the lemon tart and then the ice cream to get into the ice-cream maker. I have to be gone just after seven, so there will be instructions for the entrees on the table. I'll be home in time for the main course.'

She paused again, listening.

‘We've had this discussion already, Peter. I'll be gone for an hour and a half. It's really important to me. Okay, bye. Oh, Peter … make sure you use the good plates. I'll leave them out on the bench and set the table.'

Claire pressed the off button on the cordless phone and placed it carefully back on the base. Was it terrible to skip out on her own dinner party? She and Peter had moved back to Brisbane four months earlier. They'd planned this dinner party over a month ago in an attempt to get to know some people. Now Peter had invited two more people. What would they all think of her?

Claire picked the telephone up again. This was ridiculous. She should just forget about the drinks. She didn't even know why it felt so important that she go. Sure she'd loved Alice Day's book, but she'd loved lots of other books too. It was just that it sounded fun – and exciting.

The clouds that had blanketed the sky all morning released the sun for a moment. The small windows only let a fraction of the sunlight into the living room and Claire looked around disapprovingly. That whole wall had to go – a huge bank of concertina doors opening onto a large deck was what it needed.

With the sun, though, came a surge of optimism. It would be fine. She'd have everything set up for Peter and would be back in plenty of time to manage the main course.

Claire pulled her long brown hair off her neck, twisting it into a loose knot and securing it with a few pins.

Glancing at the glossy recipe book in the stainless steel holder, she took a perfectly ironed apron out of a drawer, dropped it over her head and set about making pastry.

It was all kind of weird. The entry form had said that a number of lucky people would win an evening with Alice Day. That was weird because although she used to be really well known, I hadn't heard of Alice Day in years. It was also weird that the drinks were in a bar just down the road from where I live. Even weirder was the fact that I received an invite, given that I never win anything. Ever. Even when I cheat
.

Still it did solve my most pressing dilemma, which was what to get my mother for her seventieth birthday which was looming like a train smash. I figured that during the course of the ‘evening' I could convince Alice Day to sign a copy of
Her Life, My Life
for Mum
.

In all honesty I can't remember whether or not Mum liked
Her Life, My Life.
I do remember her reading it, though – I guess when it was all the rage. At one time it seemed like just about everyone owned a copy of it
.

It was certainly better than my other idea which was a day spa voucher. I had suggested it to my sister, who delighted in telling me that Mum hates having her head and feet touched
.

Dear Mum

Megan cursed as her pen smudged. She wiped the ink blob onto one of the many pieces of paper that littered her kitchen table. Her dark hair was short, but in need of a cut, and she pushed her fringe irritably out of her eyes, leaving a smear of ink across her forehead.

Megan flicked the card back to look at the front, suddenly doubting the wisdom of her choice. Out of the sepia photo stared maybe twenty women, clearly sixties housewives complete with scarves and aprons. They were each armed with a cleaning implement, some a broom, some a mop, some wicked-looking dusters. They looked as though they were at a battleline, bracing for a fight. The writing at the bottom said:
Maybe housework never killed anybody, but why take the chance?

It had seemed funny to Megan in the shop but maybe it was completely inappropriate. After all, her mum had been a sixties housewife and to Megan's knowledge had never fought against anything.

She searched the table for a cleanish piece of paper. Maybe a heartfelt letter would do the job better than a card anyway.

Dear Mum
, she wrote.
Thank you
.

There, that wasn't so hard.

Thank you for being there when I needed you
.

Except, she added silently, for all the times my sisters treated me like crap and you were too busy to notice.

Megan scribbled angrily over the page.

She pushed herself away from the table and moved to her real desk in the study, where her sleek computer sat, looking incongruous on top of an old formica-topped table.

At some stage the house's small verandah had been enclosed and this narrow room was where she worked. The positive side of the room's transformation was that it was light and airy. The downside was that the window sat at eye level, right in front of the footpath. It was quite disconcerting when a passer-by looked straight in at her. Usually, though, she felt like an invisible voyeur, watching the busy goings-on in the street outside.

Now, without conscious thought, she clicked on the internet icon on her screen.

Her eyes caught the exercise books, perched on the edge of the desk. In an attempt to hide them from view, she grabbed a towel from the floor and threw it – too hard – over the stack. The books tumbled onto the lino floor, taking a glass of water with them.

‘Damn it!' Megan yelled. ‘Bloody students with their stupid bloody homework, which I only set to make pushy bloody parents happy!'

She sat and watched the liquid seep into the thin pages, picturing it being sucked up over the fine red and blue lines. Those HB pencil marks, put there under sufferance.

Maybe she'd like teaching without the parents? Each morning she braced herself for the inevitable welcoming committee at the classroom door. Someone always had an issue. The problems varied, but the parents unfailingly believed their children to be faultless. Perhaps the parents' defensiveness wore off a little as the school years wore on, but in Year 3 it was still holding strong.

She reflected for a moment. Nope – removing the parents wouldn't be enough. They'd have to remove the children too for her to enjoy her job.

There were a few kids she genuinely liked. But since the day they were born, most had been led to believe their views were brilliant and deserving of full attention. Maybe it worked in a home where a mother or a father could listen to little Johnny's every utterance. But in a classroom with twenty-five other equally self-centred children, it was a nightmare.

Megan's mother had always wanted Megan to be a teacher. Her older brother Ben was a doctor, one of her sisters was a lawyer and the other had been born to be a wife and mother. But Megan's mother had insisted teaching was the career for her youngest child.

Megan had drifted through high school, never really knowing what she wanted. So without much thought, she'd taken the line of least resistance and applied to do teaching at university. Four years later she had found herself in front of a horde of eight year olds wondering what the hell she'd done.

Her mother …

Megan glanced at the clock at the bottom of her screen:
18:45
. She had to make a decision. She could stay here and finish her marking and have nothing but a bunch of flowers to give her mother at her birthday lunch next weekend. Or she could go out to these drinks, get a book autographed for her mother and face school tomorrow with no marking done.

One glance at the exercise books and the decision was made. The kids would have to live without their marks for another day. Megan picked up the brown paper bag which contained a copy of
Her Life, My Life
and stuffed it in her knapsack.

In a rare moment of forward planning, Megan had dropped into a bookshop several weeks ago, looking for a present for her mother. Nothing had seemed right, but she had picked up the latest issue of
Byte
, a computer magazine she bought each month.

As Megan was paying, the shopkeeper had taken a form off a stack next to the cash register and slipped it into Megan's magazine. Another customer had asked the shopkeeper a question and she'd turned away for a moment, Megan's change still in her hand.

Megan had picked up one of the forms, wondering what it was about. Seeing Alice Day's name, an idea had struck her and she'd grabbed a handful of the forms and pushed them inside her bag. Later that day she'd filled out all ten entry forms and posted them, in the vague hope that if she met Alice Day she could get her to sign a book for her mother.

Now, Megan walked past the galley kitchen and out to the bathroom, which opened off the back landing. Fifteen minutes in the tub would improve her mood, and she turned the taps on to full.

It was the bathroom that had convinced her to rent this place. The rest of it was distinctly tired. The floor was covered in two versions of seventies patterned lino, triangular-shaped tears showing where previous tenants' furniture had sat. The walls were desperately in need of paint, and the bedroom windows were hung with drooping venetian blinds, their cords irretrievably tangled.

But the bathroom was divine. Dark red walls framed a deep, glowing white bath and the floor was covered in heavy slate tiles. It was as though the house owners had decided they could bear anything if the bathroom was beautiful.

As the bath filled, Megan wandered back into the living room. She pulled off her T-shirt and dropped it on the floor. A lack of flatmates was an expensive luxury, but one she thought she deserved after ten years of sharing houses and apartments.

After a brief glance across at the study, Megan left the exercise books sitting in their pool of water and headed back to her bath.

They were a problem for tomorrow.

Apparently Buddhists regularly contemplate their own death – in a good way. Not in a ghoulish way. In a way that makes them appreciate today
.

Clearly I am not a Buddhist. I am contemplating my own death, but not in a good way. In a there-is-an-envelope-in-my-purse-that-has-a-referral-for-an-MRI-scan kind of way
.

The entry form to win an evening with Alice Day was inside a book a friend gave me for my birthday
.

I don't even know why I filled it out and posted it back. Maybe it was because
Her Life, My Life
still stuck in my memory. I read it when the children were teenagers. It was at the same time my daughter Kyla decided she needed a tattoo. Predictably, I was horrified and we had several heated discussions about it, with much door slamming and many unkind words
.

The day after I finished
Her Life, My Life
I drove Kyla to a tattoo parlour. Suddenly something as minor as a tattoo didn't seem important enough to cause damage to our relationship
.

The funny thing was, she backed out while we were waiting
.

Still, when the letter saying that I was invited to drinks with Alice Day arrived, I threw it on the pile of junk mail next to the door. I had no intention of going. What would I have in common with a bunch of strangers and a well-known author?

I'd deliberately not mentioned it to Kyla when she called on
the weekend, knowing she'd tell me I should go and meet some different people. That's the thing about my children, they believe nothing is too hard or daunting and that life is there for the taking. How I produced offspring with such a well of confidence I will never know. I wish I had some of it now. It might make it possible to contemplate my own death in a good way
.

T
he church wasn't as big as she remembered. Or as daunting. Probably, she reflected, because when she was last here she'd been twelve years old.

Keeping her head bowed she looked around. Except for a five year old boy and his mother several pews away, she was at least twenty years younger than the average age of the room.

Lillian wasn't sure exactly why she was here. She'd been driving past the church on the way home from the neurologist's rooms. The doors were open, a few cars scattered around the carpark. She could think of no reason why there'd be a service on Friday evening, but something made her pull into the driveway.

Lillian had grown up in a little workers' cottage less than a kilometre away.

Although they weren't religious, her mother had insisted the family attend the local church when it counted. So every Christmas and Easter, Lillian and her four brothers had been cleaned up and marched down the road.

Just about everything in the area had changed, but not the little church on the corner.

The couple in front were at least eighty-five and whenever they stood up to sing, Lillian was terrified the woman would fall over. Each time, the man took his wife's elbow and she leaned on him heavily, slowly coming to her feet. Her burgundy hat, bag and gloves matched perfectly. These were high-fashion items, but from another era.

Despite the elderly lady's frailty, her voice soared out above the rest, as if defying the march of time.

Lillian hadn't been too bothered by her sixtieth birthday the year before, assuming that she would be fit and strong for
years to come. And deep down, she still believed that. Regardless of the long examination involving hammers, pins and tuning forks, followed by the neurologist's diagnosis of ‘possible' multiple sclerosis.

Over a year earlier, Lillian had been struck by bouts of dizziness. These had stopped within a few days, though, and the doctor hadn't been too concerned. But recently the dizziness had returned. This time the episodes had also affected her coordination and the sight in one eye and made it almost impossible to walk in a straight line. Lillian's doctor had referred her straight to the neurologist.

She still needed a battery of tests to exclude other diseases – some relatively minor, some even worse than multiple sclerosis. The MRI scan would give more information, apparently, but would not be conclusive. The symptoms had disappeared again by the time she saw the neurologist, and he had told her they might recur tomorrow or never again. He'd also explained that if it was multiple sclerosis, the disease's symptoms could be mild and slowly progressing. Or, as he'd calmly finished, very serious and quickly advancing.

The small amount Lillian knew about multiple sclerosis was that it typically affected women between twenty and forty. Somehow it seemed like a bad joke, having a young persons' disease when you were no longer young. But it happened, apparently.

She knew she should be devastated. But all she felt was numb, as if her emotions had been suspended.

Lillian glanced at her watch. Despite the fact her children had been overseas for years – Kyla in Paris, Daniel in New York – she still found it difficult to figure out the time differences. Was it the middle of the night there? The time calculation was nothing more than a reflex though; she knew she wouldn't tell them yet.

The service finished. Lillian followed the old couple slowly down the aisle, wondering if they, like her, were thinking how different things were when they first made that walk as husband and wife.

She caught herself, angry at how maudlin she was being.
Another empty weekend looming in front of her didn't help. A glance at the calendar before leaving home had confirmed that she had no social engagements for the next week. So there was little else to think about other than the impending MRI scan.

The gravel crunched under Lillian's feet as she walked slowly to the car.

With one hand on the car door, she paused and looked down at the gold watch her mother had left her. The fine hands showed fifteen minutes after seven.

She didn't have the invitation, but remembered the details clearly.
7:30pm – Bocca Bar – for Champagne and Conversation
. Without consciously looking for it, she had spotted the bar the week before.

Dated beige trousers, white linen shirt and flat brown shoes were almost certainly inappropriate for evening drinks. But right now that seemed totally irrelevant. With sudden decision, Lillian got in, put the car into gear and drove out of the carpark.