The Best Australian Stories (42 page)

She was naked in the empty tub. Her limbs felt so heavy, she couldn't unstick herself from the porcelain. How could one minute she feel so free and the next simply sucked to the floor, so that each finger would have to be pried up like a starfish from a rock?

Dan sat down on the toilet seat, offered her some wine. She wasn't going to tell him about fainting at work. She'd already put it all down to stress, but something about it still niggled her. She was sure that the telling of it would give away something about her present state of mind, something she didn't understand herself and therefore wouldn't be able to explain properly. And Dan would push it, use it as an opportunity to tell her something about herself, something entirely wrong, which would become a new problem she had, when really, the real problem had to do with another thing entirely. She could correct him if only she could say the words, but she couldn't if she didn't know the words, and so the wrong problem would stand between them, a log over which neither would budge. Ella would either admit to what he believed (and therefore undermine what it was that she was really starting to believe) or refuse to believe anything he said in which case Dan would change the subject while being cross with her for never trusting what it was he had to offer her: a unique, personalised knowledge of her most intimate self. And really what he believed and what she believed, but neither would say, was that he didn't know her one bit.

She told him a story instead.

‘There's this film, I was just thinking about, by Chantal Akerman. It's about this mother who lives with her son. It's about three hours long … I think it's actually longer than that, but anyway, every day they have breakfast and then she washes the dishes in her housecoat, and everything she does she does perfectly, she polishes the spoons and she lines them up and her son goes off to work and she does whatever she does and, oh, the thing about this film is it's all told in real time, so when she polishes the spoons it really takes about three minutes and when she takes a bath it's like fifteen minutes of the film, maybe longer, and when she makes meatloaf, she's really cutting …'

‘If it was all real time, wouldn't the film be about twenty-four hours long?'

‘You know what I mean, sections are in real time.'

‘Sounds agonising.'

‘Just listen. So you know, every day it starts like this and each day is told according to what they eat for dinner, like meatloaf, that's one day. And as you go, you find out that what she does during the day is take clients, like, well, she's a prostitute, but at home, in her own bed, which is strange enough because this woman's rather … she's extremely precise and you don't imagine somebody precise taking strangers into their bed. Anyway, I think it's the day after you discover what she does, that her son points out that she's buttoned up her housecoat wrong, so that there's this gap. And because the film is so slow and precise it's unsettling that there's this gap in her buttons. Then as she's polishing the spoons she fumbles one spoon and it drops, it crashes to the floor. And it's so fucking tense when it happens, when that spoon falls, because nothing else has happened and you know that everything will come undone.'

‘Absolutely riveting.'

‘You wait. So something else happens that day, I can't remember what it is, oh, that's right, she goes to buy a present and she wraps it in her bedroom and the doorbell rings, so she sets the tape and ribbon and scissors and present on the dresser and takes in her client. And you've never really seen her with the men and now you are watching as he finishes and she's lying there, just looking out. And then she gets up, maybe he has a cigarette or something, it's European, so probably he has a cigarette and she goes to the dresser and without saying anything, picks up the scissors and stabs him with them, while he's smoking in bed, and she kills him. And that's the end of the film. She just sits there looking at you, into the camera, and you suddenly know it was coming all along.'

She looked at Dan. He was staring at her strangely.

‘You look disturbed,' she says.

‘Should I be?'

‘No, I don't know, but you do.'

Something in it, in her telling, had been lost. It's so matter of fact when her son points out the gap in her housecoat, her missed button, that although it is nothing, you know immediately that everything will go wrong from this point forward.

‘It's not a nice story, is it?' he said.

‘No.'

But she understood Jeanne Dielman, the woman in the film. The name of the film was the name of the woman and her address. Somehow that had touched Ella: a woman, a mother and her address. Like it could happen anywhere.

It wasn't the gifts she missed that night, it wasn't the attention she craved – she was frankly relieved she didn't have to do her hair – but the distraction. Was this restlessness of spirit common to all people, she wondered? Maybe others knew some trick to numb it. Maybe they kept a special stash of something in the freezer so they could just stick their head into its cool, foggy breath whenever they felt the urge to run.

When Ella stepped from the tub, she glanced at the mirror. Compulsory. Lips full and red with wine and heat. Look, Ella, it's just internal temperature skyrocketing, blood mingling at the sur face in order to try to cool itself down. Circulations. Eruptions of the body's juices. When she looked closer she saw the tiny veins under her eyes pumping; she saw stains of Shiraz in the cracks of her lips. And her eyes gave out cold waves of collapse.

She came into the bedroom, dizzy with heat, fell onto the mattress. It had been removed from its base, the sagging bed base was gone, and the mattress had been shoved into one corner of the room, away from where it usually sprawled in the centre of the wall, facing the windows. Dan lay on it in the flickering light, reading a nature magazine. He said he'd bought her a new bed for her birthday, but because of the storm it didn't arrive in time. He'd given the old one to the Argentineans in the flat across the hall.

‘Nobody writes letters anymore,' she said.

‘I know.'

‘This is serious.'

‘I know.'

‘What's the point of even having a mailbox?'

‘To get bills.'

She sighed.

‘Did you know there's such a thing as fainting goats?' he asked. ‘They're called Tennessee fainting goats. Look at this.' He pointed to the picture. ‘They just fall over.'

Of course tonight he'd read something about fainting. ‘You'd fall over too if you had to live in Tennessee,' she said, trying to be casual, refusing to look.

‘When they're frightened or excited, their legs lock up and they fall over, like fits. Nobody knows where they come from.'

‘The fits or the goats?'

‘The fits … Even a kid was born and had a fit after like three hours of life—' ‘A kid?'

‘A kid goat. They're called kids.'

‘Right.' She was opening her book. He didn't care if she wanted to read. He was going to keep talking.

‘Anyway, they're born with it.'

‘Maybe they're just unhappy.'

‘How could a goat be born unhappy?'

‘Fainting's a loss of consciousness. Maybe it's a sign of not coping … you know, not being conscious enough. Like a lack of consciousness.'

‘I thought we were talking about goats.'

‘Well what kind of life is a goat going to have? I'm telling you, these goats are onto it.'

‘We could get one, make it happy.'

‘My friend Sarah had a goat, she said it was all very cute until it got big and started clomping around the house, over the floor boards at all hours, clomp clomp clomp. Can you imagine us with our fainting goat in the lift?'

‘Yes. It would be cute.'

‘It would not be cute.'

‘Ella Bird … goat owner!'

But she was not smiling.

‘It would be something,' he said very seriously.

Ella put down her book. ‘They say the Victorian women fainted because of their clothes. I say, sure, but they were expected to faint. It was part of the job description. Their doctors gave them time prescriptions. Like a schedule for the day, broken down into tiny increments: when to knit, when to brush their hair, when to shit, well, you know, when to take tea. Now they have to give out drugs because we already have time prescriptions. We give ourselves our own time prescriptions, so doctors had to get inventive to keep up the power base and stay ahead. They had to go chemical. The Victorian women were like some kind of porcelain doll and there was a lot, I imagine, that couldn't be assimilated. So you pass over it, let that moment slip away unregistered. It's a coping mechanism. Like sleeping. Snooze buttons are society's modern, acceptable answer to fainting.'

Dan looked at her, his eyes widened a little, like they did when he was going to kiss her, only he backed away ever so slightly.

‘You're not going to stab me, are you?'

Ella looked out the windows to the dark bricked wall of the neighbouring building. The rain blew hard against the glass.

‘OK,' he said. ‘All right then.' He flopped back against the pillow and his chest lifted, like he was waiting for it.

In Formation

Karen Hitchcock

For Oscar

My husband told me he'd become a Lacanian psychoanalyst in formation. For a moment I thought he'd joined a team of marching psychoanalysts. But ‘in formation' only meant he'd started the training.

To become a Lacanian analyst in formation is a complicated process. The analysts have a meeting to decide who can start formation, then they decide, and then there's a ceremony.

I go to the ceremony. It is held in a small French bistro in the city. Five nervous men, two nervous women and my husband are all made analysts in formation. There are complicated speeches, then drinks. Everyone says ‘
Yes?
' at the end of their sentences with an upward inflection, and a sort of French accent, although most of them grew up in Melbourne.

Everyone wears black, nothing but black. I wear a green dress and a red feather boa. I wear the boa because it matches my red lipstick, but halfway through the speeches I look out of the corner of my eye and see endlessly stony faces and a field of matt black, and I am suddenly unsure why I have worn such a non-black accessory. I slowly unwind my boa and push it deep inside my satchel. I hope nobody will notice. I hope nobody will assume, extrapolate or draw conclusions about my character. I hope nobody will read me based only on my red feather boa.

After the speeches, my husband introduces me to the fully formed analysts one by one.

He says, ‘This is my wife.' And each of the analysts looks at me from their half-open eyes, smiles a half-smile and then doesn't want any more information.

If they had asked, I could have told them that I illustrate children's books. But maybe they could tell just by looking? Maybe they could see the ink stains on my fingers? Maybe they were so good at analysing they no longer needed to ask for information?

I smile and smile and smile. I smile until my face feels like an earthquake.

*

My husband tells me that Lacanian psychoanalysts still love Sigmund Freud, that He's still the great granddaddy. He says Lacanian psychoanalysts are exactly like Freudian psychoanalysts, but with minor renovations: they are French instead of German; they use terminology from linguistics and structuralism instead of biology; and instead of fifty minutes they offer an excruciating consultation time that can vary from one minute to five hours.

Lacanians, he says, are Freudians with extensions.

They are Freud with a glittering new games room.

*

My husband's sister sends him a plastic Freud action-figure from America, to congratulate him on becoming a Lacanian psychoanalyst in formation. She writes in her letter:
I was so glad to hear! I've told all
my friends! My brother, the Freudian-Lacanian psycho in formation! (Whatever
that means, bro!
)

The Freud action-doll is made of moulded plastic and stands six inches tall. He holds a cigar in his fist and wears a black suit. The only movable part is his jaw. You can grab hold of the plastic moulded beard and make the mouth open and shut. I do that a few times and say ‘
Yes?
' over and over in a falsetto French accent. My husband plucks Freud from my fingers and carefully stands him up on a pile of books by our bed.

*

Apparently, to become an analyst you need to undergo a complete psychoanalysis.

My husband's analyst is a bombshell who wears Issey Miyake and no lipstick. I see her give a lecture; she is short and fierce and plays intricate games with language.

She makes my husband tremble visibly and when I ask him what is wrong, he says that watching her is like falling from a mountain. I look at him as if he has asked for a divorce, and he pats my knee and says, ‘Don't worry, it's only my transference.'

He holds up his finger and says, ‘Resistance would be useless.'

*

I brush my teeth that night and I glance over at Freud. He is lying face down on top of the pile of books.

I snigger and say to my husband, ‘Hey, did you notice? Freud has fallen.'

My husband turns and sees. He gets out of bed and says primly, ‘No, he's only been knocked over by the cleaner.' And he picks Freud up gingerly and puts him back on his feet.

‘Thank you, son,' I say in a high-pitched Viennese accent.

My husband doesn't find that funny.

*

In the morning I turn Billie Holiday on loud in the kitchen and, while I wait for my bread to toast, I squint my eyes and sing into my fist. I scream, ‘Lady sings the blues, and she's got it bad.' I play the trumpet solo on my knife. I use my breasts as drums.

For the vocal finale, I turn around and swoop down with my mouth close to my fist and see that my husband is standing quietly by the kitchen door, with his palm on his chin and his eyes staring at me with their lids halfway closed. Usually he would laugh and kiss me, but he doesn't smile or move or blink, so I quickly close my mouth, stand up straight and brush down the front of my orange skirt.