Paint Your Wife (27 page)

Later she watched her father's mumbling lips move down the clauses and sub-clauses
on the form. To hurry him up she pointed to where his signature was required and
he snatched the form away.

‘Damn it, Violet, you don't just sign any old thing. I have to read it first.'

He went back to reading—but in a little while she saw him sneak a look at her and
she knew he wasn't reading. He was putting her in her place. All the sharp angles
in his face and his narrow eye-slot spoke of denying her, because to deny her would
mean she was back in the same sinking ship. She had to learn she wasn't anything
special. She might as well get used to reining in false hopes, otherwise it would
lead nowhere but to disappointment.

Later, she sat on the edge of her mother's bed. Her mother was nursing and in that
musky half-light she sat fondling a fifty-cent coin. On one side was a young-looking
queen with a tiara, on the other the raised edges of the wind-filled sails of the
Endeavour.
It was a funny way to bring up the subject with her mother. She only wanted
to know if she had signed the form that would allow her portrait to go forward into
the competition.

The Queen caught her mother's eye and she began to reminisce: there were two occasions
she had seen the Queen; once riding in the back of an open car looking floral and
waving a gloved hand, and more recently when she had opened parliament and the disgrace
of our prime minister choosing a smart trouser suit over a dress. Her mother had
opinions on such matters. As Violet's youngest brothers suckled on her teats she
talked about the Queen's problems with her own children,
their marital difficulties,
which just went to show no matter who you were, even the Queen, trouble could sneak
up and touch you on the shoulder, though more often than not, sighed her mother,
it was trouble in the shape and form of offspring.

‘Now about that coin nonsense, Violet, if you fall for a clunker of a line like that,
the first man who pretends to speak just half the truth will have your pants off in
a flash.' A half-stifled laugh rose in her chest, creating a rolling wave that made
the two babies bob their heads. One became detached and its little red face looked
up angrily. It opened its mouth to cry but had no time to. Her mother, unsighted,
shoved her large nipple back in to the complaining mouth and the tiny package grunted
obscenely and went on sucking. Here was rude life unminted, breathing, preoccupied.
Her mother hadn't brushed her hair that day. A stale odour of old bed sweat stuck
in Violet's throat when her mother shifted the duvet. She continued in her tired
dreamy voice, ‘I don't know why Charles doesn't marry that horsy-looking woman. Why
do people make things so difficult for themselves?' She drew in the silence and thought
deeply. ‘I don't want you going to that photographer by yourself. I'll speak to your
father.'

Her mother was suddenly aware that she had slid too far down in the bed because now
there were two suction noises as she detached herself without ceremony and dragged
herself back up the sheets, a movement like a heavy seal dragging itself up the beach.
The angles of the room changed and now that she could see the window a softer, more
considerate voice came from her.

‘At least you have your good looks, Violet. That's no secret. You have a head on
you. And just by the way, between me and
you, whole cities make room for a pretty
girl. It's not supposed to be so, it's not the way you probably hear it at school,
but it's the bloody truth, Violet. There's other things a mother should say so I'll
say them now. I have always found it better to allow other people to tie themselves
up with their foolish tongues. You might also want to think about using Optrex to
make your eyes nice and bright, and one last thing. A thin smile will serve you better
than a generous smile. Don't ask me why. And don't laugh too loud otherwise men in
snakeskin shoes will take you for all tits and teeth and an easy lay.'

Violet listened politely and when her mother had finished saying her piece she was
able to counter with an interesting opinion of her own. She asked her mother, ‘Which
side of your face do you prefer to show? Sunny side or the other?'

The question that had seemed to just blow in from nowhere lodged in her mother's
face and pulled her away from the dark boozy countryside of memory. Gobsmacked, she
asked, ‘What do you mean, sunny side?' And Violet was able to repeat the photographer's
sentiments, pretty much word for word what he had said, and watch with delight the
effect these had on her mother. Something like a shift of light from the window to
a distant corner of the room; a shift in worldly know-how, the unthinkable possibility
that Violet might know something about the world out there that had escaped her mum
and passed her by.

Two nights later her mother intercepted her in the hall, took her by the hand, led
her into her bedroom and said, ‘Just come and talk with me.'

Violet could smell the booze on her mother and after she shook free she went out
to the kitchen where she found her
father sitting at the kitchen table next to his
drink. His face was covered in mischief. Delight showed even in his molars. In one
hand he held the form from the photographer and in the other a lighter.

After she had been paid, after she heard the car go, she sat by the window looking
at the listless sea and the grey sky and wondered where Dean was. ‘Where are you
Dean? Have you gone out to the world or have you disappeared inside of that painted
one? Where are you, Dean?' she said back to the day. ‘Where are you?' And she turned
her thoughts back to where she had first found him.

She had left home and was on a bus on her way to one of those cities where her mother
promised buildings would jump out of the way to make space for a pretty young woman.
Her face was lost in its own window reflection. Bits of countryside tangled in her
hair gave way to motorway, housing development, traffic, street lights and finally
the city itself. When she got off the bus not knowing where to go she followed the
national flags of two foreign girl backpackers. She didn't want to lose them. She
didn't want to turn up someplace as a lost dog.

The buildings, she noticed, were stubbornly anchored in place. They seemed not to
know what her mother had said about them, their windswept foyers unwelcoming with
that shooing noise. Two more turns and the backpackers led her into a busy street
with cafés and lights and people entering and leaving a supermarket.

She followed the girls into a backpackers' hostel where she paid for a first-floor
room overlooking the busy street and that
night she sat on the edge of her bed looking
down at the street, at the people going in and out of the laundromat, the carousel
lights of the picture theatre. She was there several days when she noticed the foreign
girls had left. There were new faces. And around this time the manager, Dale, a large
man who sat in a low leather armchair so that his head and shoulders never rose higher
than the desk top, asked her if she'd like a job setting up the buffet, filling the
dishwasher, mopping down the halls. It meant she got her room for nothing, and that
was a saving while she looked for a job. She had to find something because there would
be no going back. If she went back her world would close up like a clam.

She got a job as a trainee stock controller at a paint warehouse. The hardest part
was boredom. The next-hardest part was walking on the concrete aisles. For hours
she and two Chinese girls who didn't have much English between them, but who nonetheless
were quick to pick up the various codes of paint pots, walked up and down aisles
under a vast roof of white plastic light.

The movies were her treat. She went there as often as she could afford to, deliberately
seating herself next to someone else, but no one ever spoke to her. Sometimes there
was brief eye contact before both parties retreated into the bashful dark.

The traveller who made her pregnant arrived in her life at 2 a.m. She woke to hammering
downstairs, pulled on a coat over her undies and tiptoed down the stairs to open
the door to a backpacker like any other, the practised heave of the pack through
the door, the accented English, the apology for the lateness of the hour. As he straightened
up from lowering his pack he said, ‘You were asleep. I am sorry.'

It didn't matter. There was a room left, one room, and he breathed a sigh of relief
to hear that, but then came the catch; the key was in Dale's office and he wouldn't
be in until 8 a.m. However, if he liked he could sleep on her floor.

He answered by picking up his pack. And as they climbed the stairs she was amazed
by her offer—it had just flowed out of her without any pause between thought and speech.

She lay awake the rest of the night listening to the heavy sleep of the traveller.
When she got up to go downstairs to set out the buffet he raised his forearm and
laid it discreetly across his eyes. Then as she was letting herself out she heard
him say, ‘Thank you. My name is Hans.'

As it was a Sunday she accepted his offer to accompany her around town. They visited
the museum. Walked in the park. Talked with increasing ease and intimacy, especially
after he told her a joke about a crow that she didn't really get but recognised
when to laugh, which she did a bit generously, she worried about this, but needn't
have because he slipped his arm around her after that. They hired paddleboats and
afterwards sat in a courtyard café. They laughed. This time he touched her hair.
He said what nice hair she had, and she closed her eyes and drifted on praise. When
they reached the steps of the hostel she glanced up at her window and felt a surge
of joy. For once she was where she wanted to be, on the threshold of something exciting
and new. And as they arrived on the landing, their sides touching, he held up her
room key and asked, ‘Yes? No?'

‘Yes,' she said.

He was gone a few days later. He left while she was at work. He had South America
to do, then North America. Within a week she was back sitting next to strangers in
picture theatres.

Three weeks later, feeling queasy, she bought a pregnancy test kit from a pharmacy
and spent the best part of a Saturday sitting on the edge of her bed daring herself
to find out. She thought it might be worth a day of not knowing. How would she spend
that day of not knowing? The pictures? A walk? Whatever she did it would be with
the knowledge it might never be the same after that. In the end she didn't do any
of these things. It was enough to experience the thought. It was enough to hold the
options in her hand and see the world gently tilt this way and that. In the end she
lay down on the bed and fell asleep. When she woke it was dark and instantly she
knew what to do. It took less than ten minutes and she sat on the bed dazzled with
the sequence of events. This was one of those times her mother meant her to ring
home. She couldn't bring herself to do that.

But she had to tell someone so she decided to tell the skinny boy who kept coming
in from the loading bay to sneak looks at her. She found Dean in the canteen and
sat herself next to him. He was hopelessly shy. He would turn his head away to take
a bite of his ham roll. She introduced herself and because she actually had to ask
for Dean's name she thought he probably wasn't the right person, then two days later
he'd seen her rubbing her stomach and asked if she was all right.

One afternoon a large number of paint samples fell out the end of a loose carton.
The cans wheeled and sprawled. She stood disabled by the task before her. She didn't
even hear Dean sneak up behind her. He gathered up the cans in half the time it would
have taken her.

He was more talkative these days. Warming to her, she supposed. In the canteen she
heard about his travel plans. As soon
as he had saved for a van he would roam in
whichever direction the road took him. He'd just drive anywhere and everywhere until
he found a place he liked and he would pull over and see what that part of the world
had to offer. As he talked she felt an envy, envied him his plans and his going places.
Her mother had got stuck, and now she would be like her.

The gentlest questions seemed to come out of his white chattering frame. Sometimes
he would look away at the moment of asking, as if to distance himself from a question
such as what names she liked best. Which one did she think would be right for her
baby? It was baby. Not babies. The shock that she was carrying twins would come much
later.

Dean had made up his mind it was a boy. She had liked that, liked it that Dean involved
himself in this way; it made it feel like a joint project.

Away from Dean though she worried about supporting herself and her baby. She would
have to give up work. She would have to find somewhere else to live. At night she
sat on the edge of her bed staring down into the glistening road streaked with neon
and reflections; it reminded her of a school trip to the rock pools, they were searching
out different niches. She would have to find one of her own; knowing this and at the
same time not being able to do anything about it drove her to doing something she
never thought she'd do. Because she had to do something, make preparations of some
sort and feel that she was progressing towards the new life arrangement, she began
to take paint from the warehouse. She had never stolen anything in her life. But
now she filled her coat pockets with paint samples, taking some home every day. At
night she got them out from under her bed and out of her wardrobe and
spread the
small sample cans over the floor, arranging them in pyramids, proof that she was building
for her future. And because it was the only thing available she couldn't stop stealing.