Phyllis Grant
MYRTLE AND THE MEANING OF LIFE
Myrtle, an energetic eighty year old, lives alone in one of those big old unfashionable wooden houses that the little mining town is noted for, surrounded by garden beds of gerberas, the common variety, and sulky, long- legged geraniums.
For company, Myrtle hijacks customers on their way to the corner store directly opposite her side verandah, and two doors down from the Funeral Parlour.
"D'you like grapefruit?" she calls out from the casement window. "There's plenty out the back. Come and have a look."
Sparrow-like she hops down from her perch by the window to unfasten the front gate and let you in. A bag of grapefruit for a bit of gossip. Fair exchange if you are partial to fruit. But it is too bitter for me.
The trick is not to set foot inside her yard. The gate clanks shut behind you and she has you in her grip, her wiry little body between you and the only possible exit.
Myrtle disdains all offers of money.
"What do I want money for at my age?" she scoffs, twisting the corners of the brown paper bag threatening to burst with the pale yellow fruit.
The challenge takes me by surprise. I cannot imagine life without it. Nor can I imagine Myrtle's longings, unless, like Cleopatras, they are immortal. Having crossed her Rubicon, is Myrtle then beyond desire? I try to tempt: jewellery, clothes, a fast car? Never. Myrtle in a Maserati? Not Nirvana-bound. Travel, then - abroad? Hardly. Myrtle's boundaries were self-defined long ago.
Besides, for all that I can know of it, she is already in a foreign country for which there is no guide.
The first time I met Myrtle, she turned her back and raised her dress high above her waist, heedless of the passing traffic headed for the morning papers - or the mortuary.
"Take a look at that. What do you think of it, eh? Bet you've never seen anything like that before."
She's right. I hadn't. The skin on her bony back above her waist and bared for view is badged with brown spots like the bad mangoes you see rothng at the base of the tree.
"It's the only thing wrong with me, you know. Doctor Gilmore said I'm going to get a telegram from the Queen. He said I could have heart disease or cancer, but instead I got this. A bad skin. Ain't nothing he can do about it."
And she rocks back on her heels, cackling at her good fortune.
"Come and have a cup of tea. I'll read you tea leaves for you."
She bustles about in her kitchen, boiling up the water, clattering the tea cups, opening the Arnott's. Everything about Myrtle is busy, busy, busy. Even her dentures lead an active independent life and her face is fully occupied in keeping them under control. Though tart of tongue, it is those truant teeth that give her words a bite that she does not necessarily intend.
More amazing than her derelict dentures, though, is Myrtle's underwear: faded pink Bombay bloomers, elasticised at waist and legs, astride a pair of pins that would shame the socks off Olive Oil. Thick, lisle stockings bag about the ankles, as spindly as spaghetti.
She turns my cup this way and that, a frown of concentration on her face. Long journeys, letters, lost loves - they're all there in the leaves. I wonder what she sees in hers. And always the initial M"; my future, Myrtle says, is all tied up with "M." But I know more than Myrtle, know with sickening certainty that Max will never come back. Max is lost to me forever. There is no future for "M"
and me. I sigh and take another shortbread before preparing to leave.
Myrtle has lived in this ugly house with its mangy garden and morbid outlook all her life. It is her home, all that she has known, and all she wants to know;
she loves it as any Queen her castle.
To my shame, I began to avoid Myrtle, taking another route when I went walking. At the time I was caring for my own bed-ridden mother and suffering from the terrible tyranny that only the frail aged are able to impose.
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Six months later, unmindful of Myrtle, I revisit her street and see a planning notice erected outside the old house. I read the sign with interest. Myrtle's home, so close to the city, is to be demolished for town houses.
I search for the dandelion head and find her sitting in the sun despondently cuthng her toenails on the front steps. She sends the offcuts flying, and I am surprised to see how brittle, tubular and yellow they are. Like penne pasta.
"What's happening here, then Myrtle? Have you sold out for a big price? Off to the Gold Coast now, I'll bet. Going to play the Casino, are you?"
She looks blankly at me.
"Ain't my house. Never was. I'm going to a Home. Doc booked me in for Christmas." She sighs. "What'll happen to the garden now, I wonder." And she plucks listlessly at a dead gerbera head, as downy as her own.
"I always thought you owned the place. What Home are you in at?" I ask curiously.
"Golden Years it's called. For Golden Oldies. Mouldy Oldies, more like it. But it won't be the same as here, with all my friends you know. There'll be no garden to look after. They'll have their own, I know. Gardeners, I mean. And rules and regulations, you know what it's like."
But I didn't know at all. Exiled to the Land of Nod, Myrtle must travel alone.
All I knew was at the time, Myrtle's independence was at stake. Like mine.
The grapefruit season ended and I wondered idly how Myrtle would cope without her golden offerings to lure the gossips in. Not that it mattered much any more. Her time was up in the old house, anyway. Out by Christmas, Myrtle said.
The year yawned on and the usual small town events came and went. The Show, the Cup, the Jacaranda Festival. The circus in the park at the bottom of Myrtle's street.
"Where's Myrtle, then?" I asked the shopkeeper one sunny Saturday. "Has she gone into the Home already? I don't see her hanging out the side verandah window."
"Haven't you heard? Myrtle's gone missing. AWOL. Bolted. Done a flit. No one knows where she is. Vanished into thin air. The police have been informed but they've got no leads."
He lowered his voice and winked conspiratorially at me.
"But between you and me, love, some of'em couldn't track an elephant through snow."
I blushed in the way of the overweight who find offence where none was intended. Any reference to size, no matter how oblique, always had that effect on me. I resolved to buy my Tim Tams elsewhere.
"Well, she can't have done anything silly," I replied. "I know she's expecting a telegram."
"Telegram? What telegram?"
"From the Queen. She was planning on a hundred."
"It's only a bit of paper, love. Wouldn't have meant much to her anyway, by the time she reachedthe ton."
"And I never paid her for the fruit," I said.
"Ah, it's bitter fruit, grapefruit, you can't give it away. Leaves a bad taste in your mouth, it does. Have a good weekend."
Heavily, I trudged back home, full of thought, Myrtle had escaped. And not before time. But before me, nevertheless. I was still doing time in a small town.
The ritual of each day was relentless, and I chafed at my confinement. Like Dumbo in the circus, tethered by a chain to a post. Only my bonds were invisible. But no less binding all the same.
Dreary days. Interminable days. Indistinguishable days whose similarity had the suffocating sameness of death. Passively enduring. Stoically suffering.
Doing what women do best. My mother and I united again in the last painful struggle. At birth, now death.
I took to hanging out the window. Like Myrtle. Watching. Waiting. For a sign.
For something. For anything. Mid morning. Time to play the game. Stand at the window. Look out at the sky. Scan the street. Nothing's changed. Butter
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boxes, peeling paint, straggly fences. Now, over to the bougainvillea that acts as a border between the neighbouring houses. Thorny barricade and keeper of the distance. See the frangipanni. In bud but not in bloom. Look down at the front steps where the maidenhair and busy lizzies in the shade already wilt with the rising heat of day. Finally, in front of me, the poincianas. Hot. Still. No sign of life.
The game is up. There's nowhere else to look, nothing else to see. Ah, surprise, the Postie's been. There's the tyre tread of his two-stroke in the dust. I cannot put off looking at the letter box any longer, deferring hope, postponing pain.
Will no one write? Why doesn't he? Where are you Max?
Surprise, surprise. Season's Greetings. A Christmas card from Cairns. Myrtle's joined the circus. Fortune teller, tealeaves, tarot cards. I read it out aloud, hoping that to articulate will authenticate.
The old woman rallies, raises her head, gasps "Merry Christmas, Myrtle."
Mother's last words. Her head falls back. Oh, sweet release. She earned her manumission. As Myrtle did. Now I had mine. I packed my bag and headed for Cairns. They still have fat ladies in the circus, don't they?
