Life is a Parallel Universe Page 4

  Come along and see how our dear Sue Brown’s life is moving along, now that we have moved into 1992 and serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer has been sent to prison to die. But, first, let me ask you this: are such people born? Or, are they made?

  Yes. I know. It’s a false dilemma.

  Sue turned eighteen: still being courted by her knight, Scott Smith. She is still a maiden: of course. Sue assures her mother ‘I am saving myself for marriage’. She never stops to consider what she means. If Sue had been American, she may have taken a pledge and worn a purity ring. But here, as yet, such shabby rituals have not hit our shores.

  Sue and David go to the Tower Cinema most Saturday nights: ‘Groundhog Day’, one of their favourite movies. Afterwards, they would wander over to the Pancake Factory hand in hand, and reminisce about eating sandwiches in the booths at Big Al’s or having dinner at The Beefeater. They thought a lot about these memories in later years. Nothing else seemed to stand out.

  ‘I am content to live it all again

  And yet again…’

  Yeats

  ‘Groundhog Day’ was also one of David’s favourite movies too. He explained his reasons to Beatrice…. ‘because it demonstrates Nietzsche’s concept of eternal recurrence. And Bill Murray,’ he said, ‘is also like Sisyphus, from Greek mythology, who must roll a huge bolder up a hill, day after day, as punishment and then watch it roll down to the bottom. Only to perform the same grinding exertions yet again.

  He continued

  “Nietzsche, sees time as a circle and so the same events will recur again and again. But within our ‘loneliest loneliness’, in moments of private reflection, we may see this continual ‘succession and sequence’ as an opportunity to reflect upon the way we live our lives and the choices we make.”

  Whilst Sue and David were genteelly waiting, Lisa had moved on from Chook (Gary) long ago. Men and sex were like the coming and going of a goods train for Lisa.

  Lisa was still working inside the air-conditioned womb of Garden City, but she had managed to travel to a few places with the available perk of discounted plane fares. Recently, she had spent a week sloshed and sexed out with a big group of guys and gals on Great Keppel Island. What a time they had had! How they had partied. Hard. Lisa believed that she looked stunning in her teensy, weeny pink bikini. She did, but already she is developing fine lines around the eyes from the sun damage and carousing. Meow!

  School was suddenly behind Beatrice at the end of 1992. Now, she wasn’t sure what she would do with her life. University was an option, but she had never had any real money of her own and a growing mound of debt in her name simply filled her with intense anxiety. In the meantime, Beatrice sang with David at the various pubs around Newcastle and she had, much to her amazement, begun to gather a battalion of fans. Luckily, the paths of Beatrice and her tormentors had not crossed for some time.

  It was repeated around the traps for many years, that Mark Twain, that acerbic American writer otherwise known as Samuel L. Clemens, visited Newcastle in 1895 and supposedly said of our dear old town, ‘Newcastle consists of a long street with a graveyard at one end with no bodies in it, and a gentleman’s club at the other with no gentlemen in it’.

  Whether this anecdote is true or not remains a matter of conjecture. But, what is on the public record is Twain describing Newcastle as a ‘rushing town’. This is still true. And, yet, there are many almost secret and slow places within Newcastle, where you can step away from the fray. You can find your own secret alcove on some quiet beach and spend the day lost in dreams; you can journey deep into husky bushland to look at the birds: those modern day dinosaurs. And, sometimes, you can sit still in the midst of crowds, in the very nucleus of the town and be alone: still and quiet.

  The crowds are not there anymore.

  When Beatrice began to sing, she found that she had access to a great soup of feelings from deep within, of: sadness, pain, longing and melancholy. She found that she could draw upon this brew and infuse her singing with emotion. And, she could make others feel too. Suddenly, she could connect with ideas and thoughts greater than her paltry self.

  One Saturday evening, David and Beatrice were walking through the darkened, damp smelling town mall, when they suddenly came face to face with Lisa and a bunch of her friends who were staggering on breakneck heels over to Fanny’s night club. Beatrice felt her insides plummet and her heart begin to thrash about like a dying fish. Lisa, though, simply hardened her face and with eyes of zirconia stalked away. When Lisa had passed the couple and was about to be swallowed by the night, she half turned, lit by a slash of moonlight and yelled ‘bitch’. The lone word seemed to reverberate and take flight through the town and the night, echoing like a malevolent bird call.

  Misery engulfed Beatrice. She felt like she was looking down upon herself; seeing a thing which was hated and despised. David won’t want to be with me she thought.

  ‘What was that about then?’ David asked softly, voice drenched with concern.

  Beatrice had underestimated him.

  Haltingly, Beatrice revealed to David the whole sorry saga; David was very quiet for a long while. Then, he said slowly and with great emphasis ‘To live is to suffer; to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering’.

  ‘Let me guess - Friedrich Nietzsche?’ said Beatrice quizzically.

  In mock surprise, David replied ‘You’re catching on lass. You are indeed catching on’

  And the incident passed away.

  Chapter 7.

  O, I am fortune's fool! -Romeo and Juliet

  There are some, like Lisa, who will say that ‘everything happens for a reason’: a New Age interpretation of, ‘It’s God’s will’. Of course, Lisa hasn’t thought much about her beliefs; she merely cites such phrases glibly. After all, she is comfortable and she is privileged and what does she know about the lives of others?

  But humour me for a minute and think for a moment about that scene which just passed between David and Beatrice. And of course Lisa. What if David had responded by rejecting Beatrice? Or, by telling her, that she better stay with him because no one else would want her? Such scenes as this play out every day, all around the globe.

  Then, there are those relationships where insidious violence and subtle strategies of warfare are engaged. It is easy for some to say ‘leave’ and ‘get out of there girl!’ But what if you have no one else? And what if you exist as an unshaped being, with only a vague sense of yourself? What if?

  And so, the years pass by. Lisa marries the new owner of the travel agency when she is twenty five; an extravaganza of vanity and vulgarity.

  The wedding takes place at the Sacred Heart Cathedral on Hunter Street. And, then, everyone moves on to celebrate and eat mountains of seafood, at the yacht club on the lake; with its views over the busy water and boats. The day perfect.

  Lisa dazzles in one of those strapless dresses: virginal white, with breasts thrust into all eyes. It costs a bomb and clashes with an almost orange, fake tan and peroxided up do (her hair darkened when she became a teenager). But no matter, it’s a look that has become a meme. Daddy pays.

  The bride, Lisa, glories in her ‘fairy tale’ day. She delights in the attention and grows and ripens, in the gaze others. Scores of photos are taken; lounging on luxury cars, sitting on thrones, walking slowly by million dollar views, and lovers looking into each other’s eyes without seeing.

  The following day Pope John Paul II apologises for 2000 years of wrong doing and violence.

  Vince Borelli was the groom’s name and he was almost forty at the time; with a kind of dyed pompadour and very white teeth. He was handsome in a slick and obvious way, but also loaded. Supposedly, his father had made lots of money from a record back in the seventies called ‘Al fine’ – meaning ‘to the end’. This record is still played at many an Italian wedding: even now. And the manna is still falling from heaven.

  The newly wed Borelli’s buy a Victorian Italianate house of great significance and beauty o
n The Hill and promptly set about gutting the interior; installing black marble floors, stainless steel, vast quantities of glass, and a giant spa bath. To do this, money has travelled under various tables. And perhaps featured on birthday cakes.

  As the years travel by, Lisa has two children: a boy and a girl named Johnny and Angela. These children, who are mostly cared for by their Nonna, become ordinary, work- a -day people with the usual beige morals. They regard their mother with benign tolerance.

  Lisa, never knew that her own maternal grandmother, Lilith, was a Russian Jew who had fled Europe with her parents in 1922 during the last wave of pogroms. As the wheel of time turned, this became just another story, covered in the sands of life; like the two convicts in the family tree.

  As you may have guessed, Sue Brown and Scott Smith ‘tie the knot’ in a white wedding at the local Presbyterian Church. The couple, who saved their wages for years, buy a three bedroom house straight away and move out to Wallsend.

  After a suitable time, our merry couple produce three children named: Peter, Dianna (after Princess Dianna) and Carolyn (after Princess Caroline). Peter, named after his paternal grandfather, plays soccer and gets excited only about cars. Dianna and Carolyn are twins and compete for class stars, for the best handwriting, and who can skip the most jumps on the skipping rope at lunchtime.

  Sue works part time in the school office, serves on canteen duty and fulfils her Saturday night obligations. Eyes to the wall. All goes along swimmingly, until a minor tsunami arrives in the children’s high school years.

  The university never did get to claim Beatrice. She continued with her singing and guitar playing and attained some success around the pubs and clubs of Australia. But her relationship with David splinters when she turned twenty. David wanted to get married, but Beatrice, suddenly felt desperate to escape the cage of her past life and to know if she existed as a person apart from David. And, so, she left the limits of our land, to live in London for a year. She stayed for five.

  Being further away from the scenes of her misery, humiliation and loneliness, allowed Beatrice to forget them somewhat. But the sadness and emptiness she carried were always part of her.

  David became a teacher. He didn’t sing anymore, because times had changed and younger people with new voices carrying the spirit of the times had moved into his old haunts. He had to move on: every dog has its day.

  Later, David married another teacher that he met at the high school where he worked. An easy and happy marriage. They have one daughter.

  David is one of those good teachers who inspire and awaken small fires of curiosity and confidence within their students. He is a rarity.

  Sometimes, David thinks about Beatrice: late at night, alone, when he sits in his office with a finger of good scotch swirling a slow whirlpool in his glass. He sighs, a long drawn out exhalation and shakes his head as if the clear it of thought. Outside a night bird cries its mournful dirge and the moon looks down like an old eye watching the stricken world.

  Let us return now to Sue Smith, formerly Brown, that plain, reliable and sober woman of the suburbs. Well, she also met a teacher at the school where she worked and she too fell in love. And she knew, just knew that with Sally Stavros she had found the real thing.

  Strangely, Sue’s kids took their father moving out and another ‘mother’ moving in quite well, because, in many ways, their father was a foreigner to them. A laconic man of few words who favoured the company of his shed over his family. A shed, you see, has no eyes, which look with expectation or hope or disappointment. He felt safe there as in a womb.

  The coming of Sally into the teenagers’ lives animated their mother; she became real to them for the first time: happy in her truth.

  In 2012, Beatrice was thirty seven years old and she had a child of her own, a precious daughter whom she named Charisma. This name, which can mean ‘possessing charm that can inspire devotion in others’, was a name which would hopefully operate, as a charm of another kind. Beatrice did not believe in magic, but still….

  Then, in 2013, Beatrice tentatively joined Facebook and skulked and prowled about in cyberspace. For some odd reason, perhaps because they had featured so much in the shaping of her life, Beatrice felt compelled to cyber-stalk her old nemesis Lisa and her various old cronies like Sue. Strangely, Sue and Lisa were not Facebook friends.

  Lisa’s profile could easily be summed up as ‘look at me!’ But, then, she also displayed her complexity of character with various hate based posts about asylum seekers ‘breaking the rules by coming here illegally’. And, interestingly, she appeared to have a preoccupation with the psychic domain, which she loftily called ‘a higher dimension of existence’.

  A plethora of photos featuring Lisa swanning about various resorts, restaurants and luxury, pools wearing assorted slutty bikinis and slinky dresses; surrounded by vapid types eager to breathe her air appeared to be the main subject matter of her Timeline. Some of these photos were designed to exhibit her skeletal frame and surgically enhanced cleavage; others showed her pouting and flirtatious. But, it was the bountiful comments by her bosom buddies and associates which really put Beatrice in danger of losing her dinner.

  ‘Oh! You are so beautiful!!!!’ and

  ‘OMG I luv luv luv your hair & u r so beautiful!’

  And on and on in this vein. But, anyone reading such shallow tripe knew that these gushing essayists were really high on schadenfreuder; thinking, ‘look at that fake, aging bitch.’ You just knew.

  But Beatrice could not help wondering if Lisa had a rich inner life, in the same way that she did. And if so, what were her deeper thoughts in moments of introspection and reflection?

  Beatrice was befuddled when she perused the profile of Sue Brown (she had reclaimed her maiden name) and another woman. The plain pair with cropped hair were hugging and smiling surrounded by rainbow flags. Like a smack to the head it hit Beatrice that Sue, was in a relationship with another woman!

  Some of Beatrice’s former tormentors had obviously experienced the hard hand of life. One was battling cancer and another was boated and almost bald with some atrocious malady. Nola wrote multiple posts about being unable to find a job or pay her rent. Beatrice felt sad.

  One day, when Beatrice was obsessing and hovering over Lisa’s Facebook page, her boyfriend, Marco, walked into the kitchen where Beatrice sat hunched over her laptop. He caught sight of a dazzling photo of Lisa and her husband Vince. ‘Holy hell! That’s my second cousin Vincenzo’ he cried. ‘I haven’t seen him for years!’

  How strange life is. But, Beatrice was thinking: this town is too small.

  And though Beatrice searched for Terry: it seemed she was not there.

  Did Sue, part of a minority that has fought hard for equality and against being elbowed to the margins have empathy for poor sidelined and mistreated Beatrice when she came online? She did not. When Beatrice joined her former school group, she received no friend requests; it was as though an iron curtain separated her from others. Even after all these years.

  Clans and tribes of disembodied voices existing in the land of virtual reality.

  David was someone that Beatrice often thought about. He had been such a generous, intelligent and very kind man, who had given her so much in so many ways. She had felt sick-at-heart when she left him, but she had also felt so many confused, contradictory emotions: incarcerated by her past. A past made up of memories that science tells are so very unreliable.

  How much of our past is actually manufactured and untrustworthy?

  Life is so confusing thought Beatrice, like a maze we must muddle through, whilst at the same time attempting to decipher code.

  But a simple rule guided Beatrice in her dealings with others: the golden rule. The idea that one should treat others as one would like others to treat oneself. This concept goes way back in antiquity and can be found in many traditions of thought. However, certain happenings and revelations in that year made Beatrice think about how people act and how they
are treated from a very different angle.

  When Charisma, Beatrice’s daughter was a plump baby of eighteen months, her development appeared to suddenly stall. Then, she slowly lost her rudimentary language and then an abrupt acceleration into hyperactivity took place. Febrile fear possessed Beatrice; she knew that something was very wrong with her daughter. It was obvious that the child’s mind and body were in chaos, but Beatrice too was disoriented herself and frozen with fear, wondering what to do.