She always tried to deal with their things as quickly as possible, piling them into the washer, then dragging them out again, trying not to look too closely at anything. But every now and then something fell on the floor and she would have to pick it up. And once you looked at whatever it was—perhaps a pair of panties decorated with blue butterflies, a pink flower-patterned T-shirt that almost seemed small enough to belong to a child, or that yellow silk bra with wire poking out through the ragged lace trimming—then a picture got stuck in your head, and you couldn’t help wondering about the person it belonged to.
Even if you did manage to get it all done without really looking at anything, it was impossible to ignore the smells; sometimes they made her feel quite sick. And that would start her thinking about other things, such as how they went to the bathroom and washed themselves. She seemed to remember there being a sink in the cellar and a drain near the steps at the back. One supposed foreign people, especially if they were poor, might be more accepting of such primitive “facilities,” yet conditions must be unpleasant, inhuman almost. What if one of them decided they would no longer put up with the situation and wanted to leave, would John allow it? How could he stop them? She heard that voice again: “Help us, help us!” “I can’t help you!” Marion wanted to shout. “Please leave me alone.” Then she rapped her knuckles against her temples to chase the cries away.
? ? ?
BY LATE AFTERNOON when the laundry was all clean and dried, Marion decided to reward herself with some Choc Mint Chip Cookie Melts, a kind of biscuit with soft centers, while she watched her afternoon TV programs. She opened the packet, put several on a plate, and then took them along with a cup of sweet tea into the living room.
The film she watched was about a single mother who had cancer. The woman’s teenage daughter kept getting in trouble for taking drugs and going out with the wrong sorts of boys. Despite the girl’s terrible behavior, the mother, who had lost most of her hair to chemotherapy, stayed calm and serene and wrote a letter to the girl that was only to be opened after her death. At the end of the film the girl read it and then scattered the mother’s ashes over a cliff. She made a beautiful speech asking for her mother’s forgiveness and declaring that she was going to college to study medicine and hoped one day to be able to help cancer patients like her mother.
By the end of the film, Marion had eaten the entire packet of biscuits. Feeling drowsy from an excess of sugar, she went upstairs to her room to lie on her bed. Surrounded by her teddy bears, she closed her eyes and began to daydream.
She imagined that she lived in America in a little white house with a beautiful green lawn. Neil was her husband, and together they had a family of three children. One of these children suffered some misfortune, a rare debilitating illness, perhaps. She saw them receiving bad news from a kindly doctor who was bald and wore spectacles. To tell them the news, he took off the spectacles and rubbed his furrowed brow.
Then she looked into Neil’s eyes and saw fear that exactly mirrored her own, and they grasped each other by the hand. After months or perhaps even years, the doctor with the furrowed brow would tell them that thanks to their devotion as parents and the hard work of the fine doctors and nurses in the hospital, the child was showing signs of improvement. One perfect summer day the child would be allowed to return home from the hospital. Marion and the other children would make Welcome Home banners, then there would be a barbecue in the garden. While the healthier children leapt into the pool, the recovering child, possibly still in a wheelchair and wearing clothes that were rather too warm for the time of year, would smile bravely at his loving parents.
“As long as we all have each other,” Neil would say, “that is the important thing. Of course there will always be troubles along the way, but together we can survive anything.”
In the same way a starving man might swallow rags to stuff his belly, Marion found it was possible to fill the emptiness inside her with daydreams, and for a brief moment before dozing off to sleep, she experienced something similar to the warm, sated feeling of being part of a family, of loving and being loved.
? ? ?
ONE STICKY, OVERCAST day in the middle of August, Marion was dragging her shopping trolley across the car park of the SmartMart when she saw him. It felt like being shot with an arrow. Of course she recognized him immediately; hadn’t she thought about him every single day for the last thirty-odd years? The strange thing was, real Neil didn’t look at all like her Neil. If anything, he was more handsome. She had given imaginary Neil a potbelly and a balding head. This version had got better with age.
He had to be in his late fifties, but he looked ten years younger, suave like the lead actor in a TV show, someone who might play an ambitious politician who is cheating on his wife. His hair was gingery gray, and he wore neat beige slacks and a polo shirt. With him were a pretty teenage girl and a lanky boy of about twelve. Both the boy and the girl were tall, loose limbed, and had their father’s red hair and freckles that looked like chocolate chips in vanilla ice cream. The children were smartly dressed in shorts and pastel T-shirts. Marion thought they were the cleanest-looking people she had ever seen in her life.
The boy said in a lispy-posh accent, “Dad, you are so embarrassing—I can’t believe you told that guy you used to be in the Olympic rowing team.”
Neil replied in a voice only slightly scratched by the years: “Well, it was worth it to get a discount on that case of Shiraz, don’t you think, matey?”
“And when you actually signed your autograph for him,” the girl squealed, “I thought I was going to pee myself laughing.”
As the three of them were piling groceries into a shiny, plum-colored car, Marion walked past with her head down. Imagine if he saw her in those stretchy black trousers and old jumper with stains on the cuff? She would die on the spot. Just as she was passing, Neil let the trunk slam shut. As he stepped backwards, his warm, strong back collided with Marion’s hunched shoulder.
“Oops, gosh, sorry,” he said, then turning round to face her, “are you okay?”
Marion made an odd moaning sound, then immediately lifted her hands to her face. As she hurried away, she heard the young girl say:
“For God’s sake, Dad, you’re such a clumsy oaf, you nearly knocked that poor old lady over.”