The Best Australian Stories (43 page)

*

Now that my husband's a psychoanalyst in formation we have to go to dinner parties with psychoanalysts. To pass the time at these parties I play spot-the-defining-feature-of-an-analyst's-house, and I notice the following interesting facts: all the analysts have one Egyptian painting with lots of side-on eyes; they all have one room with Persian rugs on the wall and a mantelpiece cluttered with artefacts. The older ones have short-haired, orange dogs. Their music is minimalist and atonal. By the dining table, there is always a gigantic painting that looks like an explosion of blood. No one ever serves chicken or cauliflower. After dinner there is always a box of fat, brown cigars.

There are other things about analysts: the women have black and white hair and never wear lipstick. The men wear black suits. The conversations have many pauses. And they all nod an awful lot; none harder than the analysts in formation.

I start to see our house with new eyes and I make the following observations: I made all of the art in our lounge room between form one and the end of university. We do not have any dogs or rugs or mantelpieces or blood explosions. I own four different-coloured feather boas and six felt hats and twenty-five lipsticks. None of my clothes are black. None of them are Issey Miyake. My husband has secretly bought an Egyptian eye painting and hung it in his study over the couch.

That night, I watch the Freud action-figure from the corner of my eye and wonder what he would think about me. His mouth is closed, his face is completely blank and his shadow, cast by the moonlight, is massive against the wall. And I wonder what he would think about my husband's elegant analyst.

*

At the dinner parties, the analysts either tell true, third-hand anecdotes about Lacan or they talk about books. But they only ever talk about three books:
The Purloined Letter
,
Ulysses
and
Finnegan's Wake
. I figure they are caught in a rut, so at one dinner party I go, ‘What about that Raymond Carver story where he visits his ex-wife and then, when he leaves, he walks away from her through the street and the pavement is covered with fallen leaves. All these leaves, he thinks, so many leaves; leaves and leaves and leaves; someone ought to do something about all of these leaves.' My arms and palms are outstretched; I pause and look around the table.

Everyone is staring at me, frozen, like two rows of plastic dolls.

I hear a cricket chirp.

‘It's really great,' I peep.

My husband clears his throat. ‘So,' he says to the table of immobile analysts, ‘That character Dupin from
The Purloined Letter
is pretty clever, yes?' Everyone nods and starts chewing and drinking and moving their fork up and down again.

I look to the right and the left and then pick up my napkin and slowly deposit my cherry-red lipstick there, the way I was taught to do with gristle. Then I stare down at my plate.

At home, in bed, wearing a tiny golden silk slip, I flick through their pale Lacanian journal. I get through one full title:
A Graphic
Representation of One's Original Autre, or, Imaginary Axes Along a Really
Long Signifying Chain
. Then, my head suddenly hurts, and my husband's eyes are closed, so I turn out my lamp and lie awake, staring at Freud in the moonlight. I imagine he is standing guard over that mountain of books, like Moses on a hill.

Why did I have to say anything?
I ask Freud in my mind.
Why did I open
my goddamned mouth?

Freud stands regal. My husband snores.

*

I go with my husband to a psychoanalytic conference in Adelaide. At the airport he buys me a bottle of Issey Miyake perfume. I stand there and smile like Doris fucking Day.

On the first day of lectures, he waits for me by the hotel door. I approach him wearing my gorgeous, beaded 1920s dress and my olive-green pointy shoes. My husband does not look pleased. He stares at me with his mouth half-open and can't take his eyes off my favourite boots. I look down too, then I look up at his face, and on the way there my eyes notice he is totally and completely covered in solid-black wool clothes. I look down at me again: the points on my shoes grow pointier, the green greener, the dress louder, the beads swishier.

My shoulders slump. I go, ‘Oh … I'll be back in a minute.'

*

At home I remember nothing about the conference except for the following:

1. Someone used the word identificofetishisationism seven times, in a twenty-minute lecture.
2. My husband still went wobbly in front of his analyst.
3. I didn't get to wear my favourite boots.

I look at the stupid Freud doll and narrow my eyes.

*

My husband starts staying out until midnight, at seminars that are only for the Lacanian psychoanalysts in formation. He says that he has to attend them all or else he'll get kicked out of training. When he comes home his eyes are distant and dreamy, he has cigar stains between his fingers, he hums to himself atonally.

Apparently, he stops liking the feel of my soft silk slips.

One night in bed he tells me, ‘There is no such thing as
Woman
.'

I would say,
Well, that would account for it then
, but he has already turned over and started snoring.

At home, alone, for the sixth time in a week, I don't feel like singing. I don't feel like dancing. I don't feel like cooking or reading or drawing. The only things I feel comfortable in are my husband's old, black jeans.

I pass Freud in the bedroom and accidentally kick him off his books.

*

When we eat dinner together now, instead of telling jokes and stories and feeding each other mouthfuls of food, my husband gives me nonstop lectures about how the unconscious is structured like a language, about how from the moment the human subject speaks it becomes fractured and marked by a gaping, unfulfillable lack.

We go to another party and, just to see if my husband will notice, I decide that I won't utter a word. The entire night I communicate with movements of my head and my eyebrows. I only open my mouth to pour in some wine, or poke in some food. I shake my head politely when I am offered a cigar. I nod my head politely when the conversation turns to projective identification in the postmodern cinematic experience. I raise a wry eyebrow when they discuss the subject's desire for the phallus.

I drive us home, as my husband cannot focus. He looks out of the passenger-seat window and he murmurs, ‘I am where I am not.'

I would say,
No kidding, Bucko
, but I am on a language strike.

*

The analyst-forming seminars continue and my husband stops eating at home.

On Sunday, the one day when there are no seminars, my husband shuts himself up in his study and smokes dozens of cigars.

I knock on his door at lunchtime and ask if he wants some chicken soup.

He looks out bleakly, through the smoke. He says, ‘There is no relation between the sexes.'

‘Oh,' I say quietly and close the door.

In the corridor I remember how five weeks ago my husband used to hate cigars and love my chicken soup.

I leave trails of wet tissues across the lounge room and up the stairs, but he doesn't follow them.

*

I am home alone again, in my husband's old, black jeans. I am staring at the wall above Freud's little plastic head.

‘Oh, fuck this,' I say and I take off the jeans and throw them in the garbage. I put Billie Holiday on really loud, wrap my body in my four feather boas and dance around the bedroom.

I fill the bath with ice-cold water and push Freud in face down. I hold him there and curse. When I lift him out, the water flows right off his back. So I hurl him across the room. He soars through the air in a slow-motion somersault, utterly unperturbed, his cigar held aloft, his moulded beard unruffled. He lands with a plop on our bed. I jump on him and twist my boa around his neck but he doesn't choke or splutter; he stays a calm, plastic pink.

I realise that Freud is completely indestructible.

I sit him up on the white pillow next to me in bed. In admiration I lend him half of my blue boa.

Freud and I sit there in the bedroom and wait for the moon to rise. We feel really comfortable together.

At ten minutes to midnight I put Freud back on his mountain, hang up my boas and slip on my silk.

My husband comes home. Dreamy and distant, he tells me that love is simply an illusion. He says, as if concentrating on something in the distance, ‘It is simply an offering of something that you do not have.'

I remember that the last thing he offered me was his analyst's perfume. I struggle to maintain the connection, it seems to be important and my husband might even find it interesting, but finally, all I can say is ‘oh' and he shakes his head and soon starts snoring atonally.

*

The following night there's not a scrap of food in the house so, on impulse, I pick Freud up and slip him into the mobile-phone pocket in my satchel. I take him to the supermarket and I feel comforted to have him along. When I'm choosing my grapes I say, ‘Freud, what do you think about these?' and I lift the satchel's flap and hold a bunch above him. In the yoghurt section I consult him about whether I should buy strawberry or vanilla; in the meat section he advises me to choose the sirloin in preference to the fillet.

Then, Freud absolutely
insists
that I buy myself two big blocks of my favourite chocolate.

Then, instead of going home, Freud suggests that I take him to my favourite restaurant and afterwards to the movies.

Freud, let me tell you, turns out to be an absolute barrel of laughs.

We play an incredibly violent Japanese video game, then we walk along the deserted beach. Freud lies on my palm with his legs sticking out over my fingers.

On the beach, I hold my palm up high and twirl around slowly so he can see the ocean of black ink and the far-off sparkling horizon. Very softly, very smoothly, just like Chet Baker, Freud hums me a song.

When we get home my husband is sitting on the edge of the bed looking nervous.

‘Where on earth have you been?' he asks me like a housewife. ‘And, do you have any idea where my Freud has gone?'

I smile at him really sweetly and flutter my eyelashes as if they are butterflies, ‘Why, Freud's been out with me.'

My husband looks really confused when I pull Freud out of my satchel, kiss him on the forehead and put him back on top of his mountain.

I yawn and say, ‘I'm totally exhausted now and I'm going straight to sleep.'

*

The next night I put on my favourite green pointy boots and take Freud to jazz at the gallery. I can tell that Freud
really
likes my style. I put him in my top pocket and we look at all the paintings, then we sit by the musicians and talk and talk about everything you could imagine and more.

I discover that Freud is a
very
intelligent man.

And Freud, for that matter, thinks that I'm clever too.

I can't explain why, but after we drink a bottle of red wine he develops a heavy South American accent, stands up on the tablecloth and starts to talk about Juan Davila. But he knows I don't mind, that I'm really rather flexible.

We get home late and I nod at my husband's worried face and say ‘
Yes?
' with an upward inflection.

I make a feather-boa nest on top of the pile of books and lay Freud gently in the middle, so he's sure not to slip. I say, in a singsong voice, ‘Sometimes a feather boa is just a feather boa. And sometimes it's something else.'

My husband's mouth is gaping.

I fall straight to sleep.

I wake up fresh as a goddamned daisy, tuck Freud's legs under my belt and take him to the library.

He recommends I read the book of letters between him and his friend Fleiss.

I tell him that I feel guilty, as if I'm prying, but Freud tells me not to worry, it's OK for
me
to read them.

Late that night I lie next to my husband and open the book of letters. He looks over and asks what I'm reading. I tell him it's the correspondence between Freud and Fleiss.

‘Oh!' he says excitedly. ‘Can I have a look?'

‘No,' I tell him, and turn over. ‘Freud said only I could see.'

*

The next night my husband's at home and there's osso buco on the stovetop.

My husband says, ‘It's not a monastery, they can't force me to go
every
day.'

Then he hands me a big bottle of Joy by Jean Patou.
My
perfume.

‘Oh. Thanks,' I say casually, and take the perfume to our bedroom.

In the bedroom I go, ‘Freud! Check this out!' and hold the crystal bottle right in front of his eyes. I pirouette twice, then give him a little wink.

Then the next night my husband looks at me in and out of focus and says, ‘How I've missed your pink, sparkly cardigans.'

Then he kisses me like a boa and carries me to the bedroom.

I tear off my clothes in the moonlight and just before I jump into bed with my husband, Freud and I make eye contact. I bend over and whisper, ‘Thanks, Freud.' Then I blow him a kiss, turn to my husband and put my hand on my bare hip.

Lorraine Bracco

Frank Moorhouse

While in the supermarket last Saturday I took a phone call from my mother on my mobile. As it happened I was pushing a trolley and wondering if the bunch of bananas – the only thing I had in the trolley so far – was supermarket pick-up code and if so, for what? I could read the code of, say, one banana alone in a trolley, yes, but a bunch, well, maybe I could see a code winking there, but I'm not sure that it might not be conjuring up a personal fantasy rather than being a code, and if it were a code how widely understood would my hesitant hunch about
that
code be, and, if any encounter along those lines did develop how long would it take to iron out any misunderstanding without very acute embarrassment involving ‘security,' that is, if my hesitant understanding, or that of the other person, was
very wrong
.