Hunter’s Dry to steady her nerves for the day ahead. The rest she pours down the sink, watching it fizz like acid. I’m past the first trimester, she tells herself, as she begins with a buzz of activity. A small drink is fine. She opens drawers, chucking clothes into black bags. First goes underwear: panties and bras, almost unbearable to touch. Outside, Chicken and Egg, Claudia’s two black Labradors, are lolling in the sun. Chicken is on her back, her legs parted to expose a tender belly to the weak light; Egg lies panting on his side. Her mother rescued them from the SPCA, naming them on their day of arrival. (Maria: “You can’t name a dog Egg!” Claudia: “Oh, Maria, show some spark – Chicken and Egg, a perfect unit, just like the world and the afterworld.”)
She’s doing the clean-up too quickly, grabbing huge handfuls of fabric (she doesn’t bother to pick up a flowing green skirt that falls to the floor), filling bags halfway, knotting the tops with a twist and a pull, lining them up like schoolchildren all in a row in the passage. She flings open a narrow cupboard: shoes, and behind a row of empty shoe boxes, hidden from her initial view, is Claudia’s laptop. Her machine! Maria searched for it previously, but without success. Finally she decided that Claudia must have given it away.
How sceptical her mother had been when she bought the laptop – how would she ever learn to use it? – but when Claudia found out that she could do complex birth charts using software, she became determined to master it. She would sit too close to the screen, now and then giving it sharp slaps as though to force the electronic circuits to release their secrets.
Maria powers up the machine before she can stop and think about what she’s doing. Perhaps here she’ll find the communication she’s seeking, the final note, lovingly crafted. A cursor appears; the computer is demanding a password. Who would have thought Claudia could get it together to protect her documents? And what word would she choose? Maria types Claudia – a good first guess, she thinks – but without success. Then, after a moment’s hesitation, she types her own name. Incorrect. Please enter the password. Perhaps she should try some esoteric astrological term, or the name of one of her mother’s lovers. She hits the machine in frustration, and then, embarrassed by her impetuous gesture, finishes the job of cleaning out the bedroom.
That afternoon, she takes Chicken and Egg for a walk. There is a dead bird outside her bedroom window – she remembers the slam from last night. Even though she scoops up the poor creature in a plastic bag, denying the dogs a chance to pull it apart, the sight of the carcass has enlivened them. Their energy is suddenly boundless for their Sunday outing.
Six
The next day, Monday, there is no time to deal with Claudia’s computer. Bar half an hour for lunch, her patients came one after the other, back to back, from nine-thirty in the morning until five. Usually, six patients is her maximum; anything more strains her capacity for empathy – but Sharon, who has been in therapy for almost five years now, phoned unexpectedly between sessions. Maria could barely hear what she was saying through the sobbing, twice asking her to speak a bit louder. They scheduled an emergency session for two that afternoon, typically the time Maria uses to write up her morning notes.
On arrival, Sharon slips off her boots and leaves them at the door. In the short walk from door to chair Maria senses the young woman’s despair, and braces herself physically, her spine becoming erect, her body still; patients get easily distracted. Sharon sits cross-legged on the chair, knees climbing the armrests, head bowed, silky brown hair draping her face; already she is regressing.
“What does it feel like? Give me an image,” Maria says.
“Like a vase that’s been pushed to the floor and shattered into a million pieces.” Maria leans forward to hear better through the crying; Sharon’s hand, beneath the curtain of hair, shields her eyes. A crude barrier, and unnecessary, as weeping is Maria’s currency. She thinks sometimes that if laughter produces an expansion of gesture, sorrow mostly brings contraction; the sad are like soft-bellied creatures who have lost their shells.
Maria feels for her patient’s loss. Sharon’s first great love affair, three years in total, has ended badly: a cheating boyfriend, a fight ending with two sharp smacks across the face. “Red handprints like this,” she holds up her palm, fingers spread, “on his cheek. I’ve never hit anyone in my life – I’m not a violent person.” Maria nods, not in agreement, but as an invitation for Sharon to continue. Physical violence, she believes, comes more easily than we care to admit.
Sharon has with her a photograph of her boyfriend, Marcus. It’s not unusual for patients to bring something along: a poem, extracts from diaries. One man, a bodybuilder, even had Maria admire his body. In shorts and a vest, he turned poses in her office, having propped the photographs taken during competitions on the table next to him. Strangely, she remembers the veins running like earthworms beneath the bronzed skin more clearly than the inflated muscles.
Sharon offers her photograph shyly to Maria. She and Marcus are at the beach, his arm draped around her shoulders, hers around his waist. She is in a yellow bikini, and he wears blue board shorts, the shade of the summer sky. Wherever possible – hips, thighs, chests, the sides of their feet – the two press into each other, forming a single unit. Maria hears the instruction as clearly as if Sharon had spoken it: make it possible for me to endure the loss of this image. It will take time, but the girl is young, only twenty-three, and she has time in abundance. Maria feels confident. A photograph’s power can lessen; a broken vase can be glued back together. There’ll be cracks, she thinks, but we can live with those.
Fortunately the next day is quieter, with fewer patients and no emergency sessions. She has time to phone Zac and arrange to see him about Claudia’s laptop.
That morning she drives slowly up Kloof Street, her mother’s machine on the passenger seat. The loading zone in front of the Ocean Basket is the only space available. A car guard in a luminous orange vest plants himself in the narrow space, twirling a hand towards himself while she tries to reverse. “Come, mama,” he says, as she avoids him but hits the pavement. He tells her he’ll watch the car in her absence; she mustn’t worry.
She walks towards CATS – Cape Town Shoots, a film school where Zac maintains computers, stop-motion cameras and editing machines. She knows the school from giving therapy there a few years back, a couple of hours a week. Late adolescence is a speciality of hers. There were many problems, mostly substance abuse. She pushes through the students clustering around the double front doors. Right outside the entrance, partially blocking the way, is a pair of skinny white legs. They belong to a girl dressed in black, wearing the shortest mini Maria has ever seen. She’s covered in piercings: nose, lower lip, a thin thread of studs up her ear . . . where else? Maria steps over the legs carefully while the girl flashes a surprisingly warm smile at her.
“Have you come to audition as an extra?” she asks. “For our movie.”
“What’s the role?”
“A witch, you know, like a magician. A sort of Wicca thing,” the girl snakes her hands through the air as though casting a spell herself. Is she kidding? Maria looks closely – part of her training, to look for the meaning behind the words – but the girl’s face appears guileless, innocent.
Maria smiles: “No, sorry. I don’t do witches. I do a good psychologist, though.”
“Awesome,” the girl says to her departing back. “But witches are more fun.”
The Bio Café is packed with students banking a mid-morning shot of caffeine. She looks around for Zac – late, as usual – while watching three young men play pool. One of them is clearly much better than the other two, and his aptitude has seeped through into his swagger. He sinks one ball after another, somehow making her think of Lionel. They haven’t spoken since the incident at Kalk Bay two days ago. Maria checks her phone often, holding back on the desire to call him. In fact, she has hardly spoken to anyone these past few days, but for her patients. Maria tends to be skittish, shying away from friendships, especially female companionship; perhaps her difficulties with Claudia have made her suspicious of intimacy with her own gender.