Living On The Corner
“I don’t think you’re anyone to talk,” Mabel said.
As I hadn’t said much since breakfast, I wondered what she could have in mind. I retraced in my own mind what had passed through my lips since re-establishing contact following the long night … trying to identify anything to which she could have taken exception. This thought process lasted a mere second, so Mabel would have found it difficult to notice any pause between her statement and my reply which was: “If I’m not anyone to talk, what actually am I then and, furthermore, what am I currently doing, if not talking?”
It was my little attempt at humour, to lighten the gloom that had long settled upon our heavy-duty marriage. Neither of us were spring chickens, after all - and, Mabel, if a trifle batty, was not as senile as some women of her age.I
“When was the last time you forgot something, Arthur? Only yesterday. So, a little forgetfulness seems to be something we both share.” Mabel appeared triumphant. I likened her to a ghost with wrinkled skin wrapped round it who had realized that one-upmanship was the only thing that pumped the juices around without using the corroded veins. It was as if she had discovered the way to by-pass death.
But her talk of us sharing forgetfulness stirred my own hackles. She had not fully understood the wisdom of her own thoughts, but what she had said caused me to turn some corner of reality. Not that I fully negotiated the bend: I hovered at the edge: seeing simultaneously whence I came and whereto I went.
I recalled a dream from the night before. There were creatures with skin far wrinklier than Mabel’s, worn like togas, or long turbans, or undulating saris, with rips and tears for normal orifices. Nothing frightful about them. The whole tone was one of sensuality - but with not a single sign of those embarrassing effects of childhood dreams when one wondered if, in the morning, mother would notice the tell-tale stains on the sheets. I don’t want to be uncouth. So, I’ll leave enough rope for others to hang themselves.
“What are you moithering about, Arthur?” Mabel had just emerged from one of her own brown studies, to notice mine.
“Oh, nothing, really.” I had become an accomplished liar, since entering realms of mutual weakmindedness that ancient marriages often engender without, the participants noticing.
“Nothing?”
We were out window-shopping at the time. The bus was late and we had decided to wait for a second one, rather than be annoyed by the first one. But this entailed loitering outside shops, dithering over this and that. Where to have a coffee. Or if.
I abandoned her interrogative word, left it banging in the air like a hook waiting to hang me. Nothing question mark. She would have to be the next one to say something or neither of us would talk again, I vowed. I had often vowed this, and one of us had always surrendered and spoken, sometimes even me. But now, things were different. Her lips were pursed tighter than I’d ever seen them, stretching her scrawny neck almost smooth, yet with residues of foxing and echoes of frown divots. The eyes squinted at me. I was at the well-head of her soul, but I needed to drop a bucket to test its drinkability. And, as the old song went, there was a hole in mine, dear Liza, dear Liza.
That evening, we sat silently before the flickering shrine, imbibing the coarse cultures upon which most others seem to thrive. It kept us quiet, I suppose. Not that we needed much gagging now, after the self-imposed synchronicity of our not-talking vow. The second bus, too, had not turned up till late. Yet neither of us had groused. We showed our mug-shot passes to the bunched-up driver with the minimum of fuss, merely a micro-second of photo-flash. Strange - the driver looked a bit like a wrinkly from my erstwhile dream. And his girl-groupie, too, with tight jeans, but remarkably flabby flesh up top - one of those flighty flirt-merchants who seemed to enjoy swaying on their feet with the rhythm of the bus, holding indecipherable talk-ins with someone who should have otherwise concentrated more on grappling with the large wheel.
Despite our age, Mabel and I rode on the upper deck. The stairs were growing crueller, it was true, and today I was determined that I would pretend to drive the bus with the safety-bar at the front top, something I bad not done since I was a wet-behind-the-ears kid. Better than a wet-after-the-dreams kid, no doubt. I had laughed inside at my own silent joke. Mabel had frowned as if she had read my childish mind. I had hoped the rest of the passenger were thankful for my selfless wrestling with the unwieldy vehicle, for the joy-rider down below who should have been steering was probably enjoying the girl-groupie nibbling on his ear-lobes. Better than a burger-in-a-bun, which Mabel and I were often forced to cram down our throats, because of out indecisiveness not to do so. I had laughed again.
Suddenly, Mabel rose from her armchair, with the merest swish of her bodily curtains. She obviously intended to switch off the damn screen, so that we could ritualize our preparations for yet another long incommunicado night. However, I was determined to be obstreperous. After all, men of my age are meant to be tetchy. Before she could reach the wide-eyed creature in the corner, I had, with my oilier bone-system, darted in front of her and fended off her programmes of instilled habit. Please believe me, but I would never, innormal circumstances, have raised a hand to a woman, nor had I ever done so vis-a-visMabel, despite the various provocations that would have excused me. But, tonight, I grabbedhold of the hem of her flesh - a neatly stitched scar which had marked her neck ever since I could remember - and tugged it viciously down, rupturing her blouse in the process and scattering breastfuls of plum-pudding to every corner of the living room.
She wept bitterly as, on hands and knees, she desperately tried to gather together the missing parts of her body. I could have claimed that crying was tantamount to breaking her spiteful vows of silence - but I retained at least a smidgen of residual affection for the one who had once been my sweetheart all those years ago.
It does not take much for a living room to become a dying one. Nor a vow to become a curse.
“I didn’t mean to make you sad.” There, I had said it. I was man enough: proud not to have too much pride. At least, she would die on speaking terms. But then she found what she was seeking on the floor - the locket she had always worn around her neck. Inside it, a bus ticket - a souvenir of earlier days when she was the groupie and me the hunky bus driver.
“I don’t think you’re anyone to talk,” she said. And yes, it was true, I hadn’t been able to talk (or even breathe) since that day my bus failed to take a tight bend. She had spent the rest of eternity simply dreaming us alive in a dead-end marriage.
I shrugged and followed her to bed.
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