Do as if nothing is wrong

A flash of memory at the sight of a new dress my daughter had been sewing.

A crimson red in cotton, A-line with puffed sleeves. It rested on the ironing board like someone’s lost treasure, and I realised it was the dress my daughter had put together with her sewing machine ahead of a friend’s wedding where she planned to wear it.

Back through the decades, I’m sixteen years old and have received an invitation from a friend to be one of her two companions at the twenty first birthday party of her elder brother.

The party is to be held in reception rooms somewhere in St Kilda close by the sea and the rooming house where my friend lives with her mother, the owner.

My elder sister not yet twenty-one offers to sew me a dress for the occasion. A red dress in a slick cotton that shines when it’s under light or in the sun. It is a special dress made with love and care and I am proud to wear it till I reach my friend’s house and see her dress and the frock our other friend is wearing. 

No one says a word but looking back I recognise my dress as neat casual when this birthday was to be a formal affair with people in glamour gowns and stilettos. Some might have mistaken me for one of the wait staff.

My first such formal occasion and already I am undone. I have no choice.

In that same year I go with another group of friends to see the Sound of Music at a picture theatre in the city. I do not want this film to end beyond the first half where Captain von Trapp and Maria marry in the cathedral to the rousing strains of an orchestra.

I am in love with Christopher Plummer and Julie Andrews simultaneously. When the Nazis enter the film after intermission and the situation goes dark, I’m lynched to the same disappointment washing over me, standing at the front door in my once glorious red dress, shabby against the glitter of the evening. 

I am lost in a welter of discomfort. Unable to find words beyond a feeling in my veins of poison. Whether from allergies creeping up on me in springtime pollen, the bees and the smell of jasmine or some sinister underlying malady I cannot yet identify, I do not know. But it gets into my mind and tosses thoughts around like confetti. I cannot find a way to make a story or get sentences to fit in any order rather than ramshackle.

My tea is cold and my head hollow.

The day you are born is the most dangerous day of your life a doctor once told me. It’s the day on which living is first decided. I think of this in the context of a book launch I attended recently for Lloyd Jones’s new book of poetry The Empty Grandstand. It puts me in mind of other book launches, including my own. 

The way the new book enters the world like a newborn and this first flush of daylight and air in your lungs can make or break you. Then in a strange way it’s all over. Not quite there.

All these years left to live, in ignominy, deprived of the spotlight, refused centre stage only to hover in the wings or somewhere between.

The sense of pleasure at first arriving rarely lasts beyond the first freshness of new clothes. Like me and my red dress. 

Outside the front door of my friend’s house, before I pressed the doorbell and she opened the door to greet me. When I saw her in her green taffeta gown, full length to the floor and behind her our other friend in blue evening satin, both resplendent, my heart sank to my knees.

Then all of it was gone in a heartbeat.

I pretended it did not matter. Skilled in the art of denial throughout my mother’s care.

‘Do as of nothing is wrong’, she said whenever out father threatened to trash the house or raise the TV volume beyond comfort. ‘Do as if nothing is wrong.’

Maybe this is one reason as an adult I have gone in the other direction and cannot abide when things go wrong, and no one addresses it. I cannot hide as I once did behind my mother’s pleas to denial. Better to acknowledge than to hide. 

One thought on “Do as if nothing is wrong”

  1. You’ve probably seen the old sitcom ‘Keeping Up Appearances’ and enjoyed immensely when the world gets to see Hyacinthe’s life for what it truly is. Cruel, but so many sitcoms are. There is the way things are and the way they appear. I spent my entire life putting on a front. It was worse as a kid but I still do it. I edit my life online and although I reveal a bit more to you, I still avoid talking about a great deal. Mostly I prefer people to think of me as Jim-the-Writer and keep it at that. Childhood was worse because my family was so religious and people expected me to behave a certain way. I recall at work once our boss saying, “We’ll just ask Jim because he doesn’t lie.” Which actually is true. Except by omission. My childhood was spent going through the motions. As I said a few comments ago, I had a deep academic knowledge of the Bible and it was easy to present a pious version of myself to the world; I knew what they expected and performed accordingly. Until, in my thirties, after giving it my best shot—I’d hoped by going through the motions I would soak up the necessary by osmosis—I called it a day. Which made my mother sad and I regretted not hanging on another couple of years but there you go. Who the hell is the real me anyway? I have roles and edit myself accordingly: this is how a dad behaves, this is how a husband behaves, this is how a good neighbour behaves.

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