*****
Elbows on the table, she nursed the large bowl of a cup, wondering when she had last seen just a generous commercial cup of coffee. If ever. She glanced up at him then back into the cup. Why now? Why after all these years, all those denials, why was he here? The two of them again. Together. At last? For how long? How long ago? Back then she would not be leaning forward with her elbows on the table. Wherever she went her grandmother's words of correction went with her. There were many things of which Grandma would not approve. The coffee was still too hot to drink and almost too hot to hold. Why was he here?
He had been about to walk across the bridge and, for some reason, had looked along the path to his right and seen the open-air café. Someone, something familiar. An atmosphere he felt even before he saw her. As if she was always there and had only now come into view. Where had she been all this time? Not that he had been looking. Not since he knew that he could never escape her. Not that he tried. He watched her support her weight on her elbows. The cup was an excuse. There had been a time when the sight of her flesh had excited him. Then there was all that extra flesh making him aware that the excitement went deeper than the flesh. Even though she was grossly overweight he felt glad to be in her company, sitting at the outdoors table, watching her drink a black syrup she was pleased to call coffee.
It had all been a lie. Grandma had not been a virgin when she married. Mother had had an abortion before marrying Dad and producing me, she thought. Hypocritical lies. Instead of telling her that all she need do was to say "No", why had they not taught her that it was sometimes alright to say "yes" and how to recognise when to say yes instead of no? Or failing that, why had they not taught her how to say "no" to anything or anybody? Why? Because the women in her family were women who had to be obeyed, raising children to comply with authority. Children willing to please, placating the gods of anger by anticipating what was wanted before the words were ever spoken. She smiled at the thought of the child she had been. Like a submissive hen, squatting low to all the other chooks. Had that really been her? She almost laughed aloud, but laughing aloud at one's own thoughts was not a wise move.
"Would it have made a difference?" she asked.
"Would what have made a difference?"
"If I had said 'no' that night?"
"What kind of difference do you mean?" He felt a heart-stopping minute, a pause in breathing and remembers how afraid he had been that she would not return to his bed that night.
"If I had been the kind of girl who said "no", would we have married instead of …" tarried, she thought, harried, carried, parried, why do I rhyme all the time, stressing my consonants or is it continents under stress? Is it my knees or is the earth quaking?
"Would you have married me, had I asked you then?"
Would she? There are men, she thought. The ones you could have married, the one you should have married and those you married. Was he a could've or the should've? If I were the person, I am now then? The person I was thought him too good, herself not worthy. He seemed so confident, so sure of himself and his place in the world. So confident it was daunting. He knew who he was and where he was going. And she? Whichever way the wind blew.
He had envied her freedom. His family had him hemmed with the loving web of expectations. His father was a Collins Street specialist. He did not like to think he was going into medicine because he was his father's son. He cast his father as a farmer, his parents as living on a farm raising their children for the professions. So he had lied. From within the safety of his cocoon he would spin tales that gave him what he thought was the sense of freedom. Yet, the lie was based in truth. He was going into medicine to please his parents, to fulfil their hopes for him. And why would they have such hopes? Because they believed he would be a good doctor.
And the person I am now, she asked herself?
"And how are things with you?" she asked him.
"I'm about to lose everything. "
"Everything?" She raised an eyebrow and took another sip of coffee.
"I'm heading into bankruptcy."
It is indeed ironic he thought. All those years ago, the reason he did not ask her to marry him was that their first and only sexual encounter was so good, so ecstatic that he could only think she had had a lot of practice. And she was so easy. This their first real night together; a night leaving them with each a piece of the other's soul. How could he keep his mind on his patients were he having to be worried about his wife and her willingness to love? So he selected and wooed another. He climbed over her mountain of feigned reluctance and he thinking that she not liking sex had thought himself safe from betrayal.
I thought you surgeons were protected from things like bankruptcy," she said, thinking 'unless you mean bankruptcy of the spirit, perhaps and when did I become so cynical?'
He considered the other irony. Trust was a thing that people used to give their doctor and the doctor used to place in his wife. Now the patients no longer trusted their doctor and were ever ready to sue. Now the doctor's trust in his wife extended not only to his welfare but also to his finances. Yes, his assets were all held in the name of his wife. If he wanted even half he would have to fight for that in the Family Court. There would be no regard for the fact that she had not only stripped him of his financial security, but had stripped him of his pride as she tore the sheets from their bed. The children were grown. She felt no need to hide her feelings. She had a lover. She had had a lover for years. Somehow, she thought he ought to be punished for the fact that she had been many times adulterous while putting his money even further from his reach.
"It's not just the money kind of bankruptcy. I feel emotionally destitute." He leaned forward and twirled a spoon as if his hands still missed the occupational effect of a cigarette.
"Destitute," she repeated, and I was the prostitute and you married the substitute. Watch it, she told herself, catch it, matching it, dispatching it. Just as well he was a surgeon and not a psychiatrist. Would he suspect that just seeing him was enough to send her off on a little manic episode? How her knees had trembled then. The morning after their lovemaking. The time when her heart was put in a safe place beyond the reach of any as there was nothing on earth worthy of or could match that joy. We were young. It happened too soon. Were we older we would have just called it an orgasm. When physical ecstasy broke through and was consumed in a spiritual celebration of Life then such a union is an impossible act to follow. Better the once and perfect.
"What," she said bitterly, "would you know about destitution?" She knew little of his life since then, but would put the chances of his being destitute at zero.
His ears pricked at the bitterness of her tone. Thoughtless, thoughtless, thoughtless. For years she poured her troubles out on paper and sent it to him, never expecting an answer but needing to reach out. She never asked but spread herself across the words: words that were underlined in hope. Had his doing nothing caused so much pain?
"Destitution." she said "means without friends, money or prospects. So what are your prospects?" She gave him a cheeky grin that wrapped round his heart like a tropical vine. "After all, you are on a journey? That's your vehicle?"
He turned his head toward his car. In an instant and for an instant, as if superimposed by a transparency, he thought he saw his car to be an old-fashioned dray. Delusion? Is this an hallucination?
"That's some hay-cart." she remarked.
He was stunned into stillness. Co-incidence. Mind-reading?
"Where were you going when you saw?" she asked.
"Across the bridge. Have a look at the river from both sides then carry on."
She shook her head. "Did you not notice the bridge is for one-way traffic? There's no turning back straight away. There's a return bridge lower down."
"Just as well I saw you and stopped when I did," he said.
"Do you know where you are going?" she asked.
"I didn't, but I do now."
"And where would that be?"
<
br /> "Seems as if it is to hell in a hay-cart," he jested.
Oh, he is quick, she thought.
"Are you coming with me?" he asked.
"Afraid to go on your own?"
He paused; body and breath still for the moment. "I am going to be very serious for a minute. I have never felt on my own. In all these years, I have felt you there beside me. When I talk to myself I am talking to you inside my head."
It occurred to him. No wonder his wife had been adulterous over the years. His secretary had occupied his external waking hours, appointing every minute. Then in the quiet place inside his head was a memory bright and as colourful as a fresco; a drawing of a time free of care; a time refreshed by letters. Letters dropped as coins in a wishing well, but a well too deep for sound. He looked up and across the table to see her eyes fill but not overflow.
"I'd like to," she said, "but I've still got work to do. As soon as you have forgiven her, you can go. Don't wait for me. I may be ages yet."
He paused, body and breath still then stilled.
She pulled her hand over her face as if drawing down a curtain. Her arm flung out and knocked the dreg free coffee cup to the ground.
And for the first time, they held hands as they walked the bridge over the river.
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From the Land of Nearly Perfect People