Wings
Scorpio
Dream one: October twenty-five.
Isobel leans forward in the doctor’s waiting room where patients are illuminated by light from the window. Because she’s a pessimist, she believes she must have cancer, it’s the only thing it could be. She dwells on this.
Isobel Yates?
At the sound of her name, she starts and drops the limp pages of her book into her bag.
The doctor, a man of grey hair and glasses, tells her to put on a gown, to lie on the bench and turn over. He lifts her arms and feels her ribs, presses on her back, and then with some dismissal in his voice, as if she’s failed, he says,
get dressed Mrs Yates.
She puts her clothes on and emerges from the curtain, still buttoning her shirt and sits down before the altar of the desk. The doctor leans back in his chair, glances at the silver birch fluttering behind the window and pauses.
Well, my dear the simple truth is that you have had your wings removed. Your parents did this when you were a child to make being a mother easier for you later, obviously you wouldn’t be able to fly with children anyway. The ache you have been experiencing across your back is no doubt from the stumps. Perhaps they were not entirely removed. You will never have seen the scars.
He shows a photograph he took earlier with his phone. She sees two slender white lines the length of her hand under each shoulder blade.
Wings? she asks. The doctor studies her and she sees him very clearly, sees his wan face, and his breath like a swamp. She understands everything in this moment; that she has been robbed of something private and wonderful and that he is part of a conspiracy.
I can see you might take this hard. Five days should get you over this.
He passes a script to her and goes on in a musing way, it’s rare now. Not many people have these wings anymore, some things just fade away. Evolution, I suppose. These days when they do arise, it’s fashionable to leave them but they can cause problems, as I say. Some never open fully, and they stay there, a kind of hump and when they do, you can’t know how big they’ll get, for one thing. So many unknowns with wings. Remember though, Mum and Dad were only trying to protect you.
He stands and so does she.
But why is the ache worse now? she says.
Who knows why? It could be many things. The time of your life. Your inner angel trying to speak to you.
He tries a wasted kind of smile and outside, ribbons of leaves flick at the window.
Try a hot pack or a rub on anti-inflammatory. They are quite good with this sort of pain.
He ushers her to the payment part of the transaction.
It seems her bag is heavy as a sack of dirt and those still waiting for the doctor, still glow in the whiteness of the frosted glass, their illusions still with them. Dawn, the receptionist, a cheerful round woman, has brought a bucket of lemons from her tree. On the counter, their smell pierces the surgery.
Take a few, she says and Isobel takes just one perfect lemon. Outside, in the north wind street, it feels like a hand grenade.
Libra
Dream two: Nineteenth September – He wants to move out and find a flat. Says he doesn’t love her, but they seem to be friends anyway. Thinks he’s back in her life and she goes looking for him to tell him something that he will find funny. She rushes into the flat and there he is on the floor with a woman. He sees her and her staring oval eyes seem made of cement.
Leo
Dream three, August 30, 1985: She dreamed she was standing holding a plate of watermelon and the pink of it billowed like silk and grew into a balloon.
~
The Dreamer
She must keep to her strategies. They are her friends and if she is unfaithful, it is only with her dreams. Sleep has become her obsession. Bedding websites an addiction, all those perfect beds. Jacquard and self-stripes and florals and tasteful tonal. She thinks of the sleep she’d have in them in the envelope of her bedroom. Safe with the dreams, in rooms with linen curtains. No clothes ever on display, no mess, not even the toe of a shoe would be evident in this pure room of sleep. Safe alone with dreams that reveal. And even thinking of such rooms, she believes her dreams swoop on her like a wedge of swans with their open white beauty.
To track the dreams, she jots them down in a yellow journal of Astrological signs given to her by her mother-in-law. She thinks of the dreams as puzzles. She tries not to take other portents seriously.
~
When she plays tennis, Isobel doesn’t want to win because there is no satisfaction there, though the sweet hollow sound of the ball on the racquet, gives her wings too in a way, she thinks. She plays Heather most Sunday mornings at the courts by the big park where the green trees cluster and they slug it out for a couple of hours. Heather is the better player because she cares about the outcome, but they alternate winning.
After the game they sit, legs browning in the sun. Heather slides her racquet into the cover.
How’s what’s his name? She likes to pretend she doesn’t know Isobel’s husband.
He’s okay. He’s always okay. But you know, I wish he were dead.
What’s he done now my dear Issie?
Just more of the same. She wipes her face with the old towel she keeps in her tennis bag.
Heather watches.
Thinks I don’t know.
Heather hugs Isobel quietly, thoughtfully looking at all that perfect green past her shoulder and beyond the court.
We’ll have to do something. I could murder him quite easily for you. Take a hit. She puts her racquet away.
A train rumbles through the cutting, and she sees small braces of people reading or watching the trees in the long carriages.
Most weeks something like this happens. A hit of tennis, a bit of confession. They decide to get a more secluded court, but neither of them does anything about it and before long they haven’t spoken for a while, both blaming the other for the truth that women friends rank low in their lives, even though they provide the most comfort.
Isobel sees survival as revenge. She’d say she preferred it this way anyway, that being strong suited her, but Heather thinks she was always just hiding.
She’d never been shy as a child but now people mention her peculiarities in nudging ways as if she’d just landed from another place. Isobel had ways to get her through the day and was proud that she did.
When she came home from the bank there were things to do, fold the washing, clean the sink, sweep and mop the floor. Water the herbs in their little tubs. In the endless dance with daily chores, she was Cinderella.
Before work she walked in the park to keep her fit, not something she did out of joy. One winter morning, three pink balloons hung above her under a curved moon. This might have been a painting or the dream. The sky so barely blue. This was the last dream, the dream of watermelon and balloons, she was amazed. She heard the breath of gas jets hissing in the air and saw admiring heads looking down onto the park. Then the basket of the balloon was too low and soon it was bouncing along the grass. People were crying. She ran to help. She held hands with the strangers in the basket. People were scared but not hurt.
The ambulance came and the paramedics put silver blankets around the passengers’ shoulders. The pilot ran away, and the police brought him back looking ashamed. But even in her anxiety and wonder at the gorgeous morning, and the strange accident, she saw that the tennis ball the neighbour’s dog was chasing was the same colour as the grass. But then quarry is always hard to see. How could she have missed what her husband was? Been so drawn to him? She knew the dark pull he exerted. She knew he was risky, but she thought she could manage it. And when she couldn’t, she would not admit it.
When the children were young, they filled her with their stories, their friends, their fears, and their jokes. Making them their favourite food, (each had a different favourite) and doing their washing took all her time. Listening to them took almost more. Simon Yates, her husband was her dearest friend and leaning against him in bed was the comfort of her life. She believed she was a reasonable wife but conceded (only to herself) that maybe she hadn’t been providing enough sex, as if it was a type of cake you might offer someone.
Her mother said men had dark urges that we can’t imagine. She said this after she told her about Simon’s first discovered infidelity. She said if he had never complained, then he was truly a good person. Tears were still drying on Isobel’s face. She felt falsely accused of not keeping up with some ancient pact. So, this really is my fault?’ and her mother ignored her and poured brandies in squat glasses. The children wrestled and cried. She might have been shot. Her mother cleared her throat. People make too much of fidelity. There’s more to a marriage than that I can tell you.
Isobel desperately did not want her to hear her say another thing.
She now works at a bank on a corner next to a garish pink and orange striped Mexican restaurant. The bank is directly across from the public toilets.
The People’s Bank has been an institution since the crash of 1911 and although it’s seen as a decent bank, whatever, thinks Isobel, that may be, a recent scandal involving misused superannuation fund had dented confidence.
Jobs will soon go, and tellers’ jobs will probably go first. She likes it at the bank, the passing parade of people, most sweet and decent, some clowns. The hours are good, she’s never late home and picks the kids up on the way. People bring in jars of coins and confusing documents and ancient cheques and she sorts them out. She used to teach legal aid at schools but that got taxing. The student’s problems absorbed her, and the students were inclined to love Isobel which made her late home.
Simon’s addiction for other women rises now and then and is excused because his mother’s family was French speaking though, Isobel believes this must be considered a thin excuse. Since the first time, Isobel had come to believe every woman must expect some kind of betrayal and that includes those he seeks out. Whether it’s that her husband is gay and trawling around or more likely violent or mean. Simon was sexually abused by the reviled scout leader, Colin Craven, a small hairy man with a way of making boys feel loved. Simon was twelve then and thought there was no wrong in such fun. In retrospect, he sees the harm. His parents believe Mr Craven was quite proper and the best thing that ever happened to their son, improved his behaviour no end.
Summer is often the worse time of year for suspicions and after this last dream of balloons, Isobel goes snooping. He has a lot of papers, so this takes time. There are many places to look. She starts with his mail accounts and the history on his server and it’s all there: many, many women. There are cute emails and web sites hooking him up to dates. None seem special. They are as seeds on the wind. In his study, the cat sits on Isobel’s knee and the emptiness of her own pretending engulfs her. How will she keep surviving? Some kind of fluttering begins. The cat jumps down.
~
Even by his family Simon wouldn’t be called a loyal man. When he and Isobel met at university, he said he never saw his parents, that they might as well have been dead which was so surprising, she was caught without words. She loved her parents, Pam and Dougie Perry without reserve and could not imagine life without them. Their love was the river flowing past her life, she only had to bend to drink from it.
As a child, Pam had taught Isobel to sew, and she could soon cut out and make any dress. Liberty prints mainly. Dougie gave Isobel sailing which became the other consolation of her life. She took the bright glistening lakes into her heart. The years in the Junior Cadet Class competitions, when she felt part of the surface of the water, part of the air, were stored in her and warmed her.
Pam and Dougie no longer rented the house at the lakes and Snapdragon, the boat was long sold. Snapdragon had such a shallow draught they could come in close, speeding and working fast together. She took Simon sailing at the lakes not long after they met. Passing by the trees and tannin sand where foam, like beery froth lapped. She had always loved the feeling of teams and remembers the spray on her face that day as the yacht flew across the water.
Hey, marry me, Simon! she yelled. Joy tastes like cold white wine and that day it filled her, and her voice echoed on the water. He seemed not to hear and when she repeated it, he seemed puzzled though willing but then, he was always willing. Holding his hand as they walked back, she thought that hand might have been a contract, and it passed through her mind that contract was a strange word to choose. She ruled out qualms. They would buy a yacht and live near the lake and teach their children to sail and the blue skies would bind them to each other. And she knew more than she admits to herself, but she wanted him anyway.
Though they married, they never did get the boat. They rented a small house on a main road and coming home she fought the grime from the road that settled over everything. Even their cat was grey. Simon taught at university and was waiting for tenure, and she worked at a café on Saturdays. He was an extra at the local theatre. He’d always liked acting. Money was short and days were long, and the years passed both fast and slow.
They both became lawyers although she hated the city law firm with its zealous pursuit of money, so she did a Dip Ed. and got a job teaching legal studies to children as puzzled by life as she was. When Simon told her he needed more privacy, she was confused.
Had she ever sought to curb his privacy? She believed she was amiable.
They sailed no more. She thought about Snapdragon almost as a hobby, the skidding boat cutting through the day. They bought a house in an up-and-coming inner suburb they could not afford with a blowsy red camellia in the middle of the garden. She had two children, and each one contained her more than the last. She became used to being Mrs Yates.
Simon was always busy because work consumed him. The tan Italian brief case she gave him bulged by his study door. And anyway, their children had a lot on each weekend, which meant she had to ferry them because their father had commitments. He was still doing theatre working as an extra when there were no parts.
She bore up, tried not to make too much fuss. There were STDs but they passed and went away eventually. Herpes stayed though and remembered to visit in times of stress. She made an appointment for Dr Claire Almond, said to be full of understanding and solutions and told her about the marriage. About liking rather than loving. Dr Almond was curiously quiet until she leant forward, legs crossed tightly and said: ‘Let me understand you, Isobel. Your problem is that you have no self-respect because your husband cheats on you.’ She sat back in her comfortable chair upholstered with russet dahlias and after a solid moment, Isobel gathered herself in silence, rose and left. She paid the fee. In the car park, under a warty old gum, people passed and glanced at her. She grabbed a fistful of its sturdy leaves, smelled them, and wiped her eyes with her hands. The car, parked in the sun, was baking hot and the air inside, fan-forced as it made its way out. Inside the car, her skin stuck to the seat, and she picked up a plastic bottle and drank the hot water as if it was cool.
Behind the house there’s a storm coming. Still, she waters the new seedlings with seaweed mix. Yellow dots released from the yellow tree cling to her hands. The storm makes her feel alive and the air is better. She breathes in full lungs of it. She might be in training for some challenge or other. She knows she is.
Next morning, in her rounds before she leaves for the bank, she takes a cup and plate out of the study and knocks the keyboard accidentally and a porn web site springs up on the big screen. A grid of pictures of naked genitals. Her heart sags.
~
She drives to the lakes by herself. The kids have left home, and Simon is busy as ever this weekend. She’s thinking about something that hasn’t revealed itself. It’s like a note heard once. The small darting boats pass by as she sits near the old house.
On the long road back to the city, random trees and wire fence are strung with white flags, the rags of plastic bags. Later, as the night comes on and she’s driving past the tower of the concrete factory all lit up she thinks about meeting her birth mother.
The dream of wings it seems was in part true. On dying, her mother Pam had got her to find the old tin box from the linen press. The box with the crinoline lady.
Take it with you when you go and find a quiet place away from everyone and have a look, though Is, wait till I die love. Wait a little, won’t be long now. I’m sorry love, I couldn’t tell you what’s in the box. You wouldn’t have loved me the same.
In the box were pictures of baby Isobel with a young woman. Isobel filled in the forms for her birth certificate.
Pam died two weeks later, and the funeral was done and by now people no longer had stopped saying they were sorry and bringing trays of lasagne. These things just slip our minds. The kids were living in at university. Pam’s death was such a loss of goodness, it was irretrievable, and she was instantly forgiven.
Isobel has become famous for her dreams which seems a comfortable thing to her. People know her as the dreamer, you take your dreams to her, and she helps you to understand. She will want a dream diary kept for at least a week though before she can begin.
When her son Billy asked her why she understands dreams, she said you must listen to them. He laughed.
Come off it mum, what does that mean anyway?
I can’t say it any better. The dreams are ourselves speaking. To listen to them, you need to be open.
They’re sitting on the step. Billy’s back from the city, shaken free from the place that takes the young and he’s thinking of coming back.
You’re just an old hippie mum, he says, and she thinks of the seventies, the long hair, the music, the love and dreams, hard work and paisley.
In a small hotel in Queenscliff, in a dusty room with the patchwork sea in the distance, Isobel Perry learned that her name was once Claudia Pickles, that her mother Jenna died when Isobel was not yet one in 1946 from the complications of a weak heart and that her father Robert Smith was a soldier, married to someone else. Pam Perry knew a nurse at the hospital. Pam couldn’t have children, so it was arranged.
In the dream, her fingers are so cold, and they shake as she rips into the envelope and there it is in the steel of words: Wings removed.
She was sixty-four last month. Not long before that, she gave up the bank and the garden in the family home and she went to live by the sea. She got the local bank to help her take half of the joint bank account. Simon agreed and even seemed relieved. The assets were split. He soon married again, to Janette, a fellow lawyer 26 years younger. She calls him ‘Sigh’. They live in Fitzroy in a renewed worker’s cottage with a kitchen lined with German appliances and appropriately placed skylights. She wants to have children.
Simon mentioned this to his daughter Miranda but she was not able to hear this. She left the restaurant and phoned her mother.
Mum, she wept, I never want to speak to him again. She made the phone call in Collins Street in her grey winter coat with the wind swimming around her. Isobel listens until the anger is washed out.
Darling, Mim, it will pass. He’s just a person like every other person.
By the sea, there are two lighthouses, one black and one white, they mean something to Isobel about herself, but she can’t remember what. Further along the coast she likes to see the pilot boats, as they guide the tankers through the narrow channel of the bay. She sits on a seat watching. People don’t notice her but that feels right. She’s in the wind and the ocean is big before her. It feels like the relief at the end of a war.
Her house is a small brick cottage and sits on a wide street with a deep emerald nature strip in winter and she sleeps well surrounded by her low maintenance garden. Heather, her friend from long ago lives not far. They walk now instead of playing tennis. They talk about dreams and stories, and she wonders what the next dream will bring.
It isn’t long before she decides it would be sensible to get out more and applies for a job in the local hotel kitchen, nothing fancy, just helping the English chef with his penetrating quietness. She helps with the baking. One day, washing cake tins it comes to her that there are many ways to love, but to take away wings is not one of them.