From Under the Overcoat (24 page)

‘So it’s a ghost story,’ said Lotte.

‘That’s the point. It’s not. The ghost bit tacked on the end just ruins things. It detracts from what is otherwise an incredibly powerful, simple story … muddies it totally. Such a distraction … no literary scholar has ever been able to figure out why the ghost appears. What it all
means
… including me. Which is why I can’t get started on this confounded piece of work.’

‘Just ignore it then.’

‘Ignore what?’

‘The ghost bit. Pretend it’s not there.’

‘That’s impossible. It
is
there. You can’t just start ignoring the bits of classic literature that you don’t understand.’

‘Maybe,’ said Lotte, ‘he was …. what’s the guy’s name again?’

‘The one who loses the coat? Akaky Akakyevitch.’

‘No, the guy who wrote the story.’

‘Gogol.’

‘Maybe Gogol was just having fun. Maybe he liked ghosts, and wanted one in this story. Makes sense to me. Man has coat nicked. Man gets cold. Man dies. Comes back as ghost for revenge. You know, like Freddy Krueger.’

‘Gogol
would not
have been having fun. Serious writers don’t have fun, Lotte. Whatever the reason for the ghost, it’s not fun.’

‘If you say so.’ Lotte had no idea, really, why a writer would not choose to have fun. If there was the slightest opportunity to create joy, would one not seize it?

‘It’s quiet, isn’t it. Must be the fog,’ she said, changing the subject.

‘More likely the festival.’

‘What festival?’ Lotte hoped it might be another Cuba Street Festival. Last year, late one night when her father was out, she had taken her mother up on the festival’s small Ferris wheel. They sat together at the very top, in a yellow seat, and looked at the city sparkle and buzz beneath them. They listened to laughter and shouting. Not a word passed between them.

‘The writers festival,’ said Jackson. ‘It happens every second year, always in March. Famous writers come for a week, to talk about their books. People fly in from all over to hear what they have to say. Today’s the last day.’

‘So you think that’s why no one’s drinking coffee today? They’re all at this festival?’

‘I think so,’ said Jackson. ‘I imagine that anyone who is able to get the time off work, and who can afford the tickets, will be there. Anyone, that is, involved in serious literature. I’m heading there shortly myself.’

Lotte had nearly finished cleaning the coffee machine; all that remained was the milk steamer. She held a stainless steel jug filled with cold water under the spout. She turned the black knob on the side of the machine and the spout began to hiss.

‘Hmm,’ she said. ‘I’m not so sure about this festival. I think it’s the fog keeping people at home.’

She dropped the jug. Boiling water splashed across the tender, pale skin on the inside of her arm, between her wrist and elbow. The water kept coming — she had filled the jug to the very top — and as she watched her skin went bright red and formed tiny bubbles beneath the surface. It felt as though she had brushed up against an iceberg. She watched as other older scars on her arm shrivelled and merged into the new ugly red welt.

The empty jug clattered to the floor. Jackson rushed to Lotte.

‘Oh no, oh my goodness!’ he cried. He ran to his table for no obvious reason, then dashed back to her. ‘We need an ambulance. Where’s my phone? Where’s the phone, Lotte?’

‘It’s okay,’ said Lotte. She stood quite still, staring at her arm, as though it belonged to someone else. ‘Don’t ring an ambulance. Cold water. That’s what we need.’

Jackson looked at the girl for a moment, then turned on the cold tap at the sink. He held Lotte around the shoulders as the water ran over her burned arm. ‘How did you manage that?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know … I bumped the jug and it just slipped out of my hands.’

‘We’d better get you to the hospital.’

‘No, I’ll be fine.’

‘You’re in shock. You have to get it seen to.’

‘It’s not that bad.’

‘Lotte …’

‘No. I said no. You end up there for hours, waiting, then they just dress it. I’ve been before, with burns. They just dress it with burn cream. I’ve got some at home. I’ll do it myself.’

‘But the pain …’ Jackson looked at Lotte. Her face was calm.

‘There’s no pain. Not really. No real pain,’ she said. ‘Go on, get off to your festival.’

Jackson shuffled his feet, looked out the window. He ran his hands through his hair. Lotte’s arm was bright pink, blisters forming, that was bad enough. But he’d seen what was underneath the new wounds. Old scars. Not just on her forearm, but on her thin shoulders, across the back of her neck. A deep black bruise which started just under her collarbone, and disappeared down the front of her T-shirt.

He thought that the words were going to form all by themselves, in the space between them.
Who did that to you?
 
The very thought of saying them shocked him back into the moment. Jackson wasn’t the type to get involved in real life drama. Surely that was the essence of good writing — to remain aloof, detached from the pleasures and pain of life? To see it from
all
angles, to explore
all
perspectives? Impossible, if one became involved. And there was no arguing with Lotte, when she’d made up her mind about something. Certainly not!

Besides, he needed to get along to the festival. It was the last day — his last opportunity to mix with other writers. His last opportunity to resolve his writer’s block by discussing Gogol’s ghost with people who might understand the masterpiece.

So, flustered, inexplicably irritated (which in turn irritated him more), he left.

Lotte locked the door, turned the lights out and sat at one of the big round tables.

LOTTE HAD BEEN SHOCKED
by the feeling of her father’s hand, the first time he hit her. She was eight years old. That was the thing she remembered most clearly afterwards — the feeling of the rough skin.

Malcolm, if asked, wouldn’t be able to recall the event, nor the reason for it. Over time, though, he saw that the discipline he inflicted on his daughter for her insolence was having less than the desired impact. The blows appeared to glance off the hard shell forming around the child. Some time — the exact date is neither here nor there — Malcolm, gripped by an especially drunken rage, forgot which of the two females
he was punishing: his wife or his daughter. Somehow his vicious revenge for Lotte’s perceived deceit and effrontery turned into an assault of an entirely different nature.

For Malcolm, this moment marked the transformation of punishment into unfettered, enraged possession. For Lotte, the moment hardly registered. There were, after all, few places left on her body for her father to make his mark.

YOU MURMUR YOUR DISBELIEF
at this reader; I’m sorry, but it’s true. Not only is it true, it’s hardly unusual. You need only pick up a newspaper to find proof of that.

Gloria smacked Lotte across the face when she told her what had happened. Lotte hated her mother then — hated her for years, until the day Malcolm had broken her mother’s arm. After that, Lotte stopped hating. There was no point, no point at all.

IN THE LITTLE CAFÉ,
on the day of the strange sea fog, Lotte Jones nursed her throbbing arm and felt elation. It started as a tiny pulse in her heart and grew quickly to a thumping beat.

There was so much in her life she couldn’t control, but something could be done about her eyesight. She needed glasses — not plain-glass glasses like Jackson’s, but her very own ones, suited to her eyes.

The old Agee jar sat by the till. Someone had written
Tips
on it with the black indelible marker. It wasn’t Lotte — the jar had been there long before her.

Some weeks were slower than others — it seemed to her that when things were okay at home, it took a long time for
the jar to fill up. But other times — the days when her skin was blue with bruises under layers of cheap orange make-up — the jar filled quickly. She never looked at the customers who put money in it. That was a good luck thing. But when the coins reached the top, she emptied the jar into her bag, and took the money to the dairy down the road to change into notes.

This was Lotte’s cache: a fund set aside for the worst emergency. The fund built up slowly, over months. Until the day she burned her arm.

Lotte marched to the stack of magazines on the corner of the benchtop. She switched the lights back on and took the top three magazines back to the table. She slowly turned the pages of the first with her free hand.

The words were fuzzy, but it was a photo she was looking for — a particular photo of a certain woman. The woman was wearing a pair of black-rimmed spectacles with rectangular lenses. The woman’s hands touched at the arms of the spectacles — she had evidently just placed them on her nose — and she was smiling into the distance as though witnessing a miracle.

Lotte found the page. She took a pen and paper from her bag, and ran her finger down it until she found a telephone number. Squinting, double-checking every digit, Lotte wrote the number. Then she picked up the telephone and pushed the buttons. She took a deep breath as a woman with a friendly voice answered the phone.

‘Bryant and Rogers Optometrist.’

‘I’m ringing about my eyes,’ Lotte said. Her heart was beating so loudly she was sure the sound could be heard
down the telephone.

‘Yes?’

‘I’m having trouble with … judging the distance of things.’

‘Well, you’ve rung the right number, dear!’

Lotte liked the sound of this woman. She liked the singsongingness of her voice. She rushed on.

‘Sometimes, you see, I think that things are close when they are far away. And sometimes a thing, for example a person, appears to be on the other side of the room. But I’m wrong, and they’re right next to me … almost on top of me!’

Lotte stopped. The pleasurable feeling was gone, in its place panic.

‘Hello? Are you still there?’

‘Yes … yes, I’m sorry.’ Lotte felt her face going red. She was shocked to feel the prickle of tears in her eyes. She wiped them away.

‘So … would you like to make an appointment?’

‘Yes please. An appointment.’

‘When would you like to come in?’

‘Oh, soon, please. As soon as possible. Could you tell me though — how much is it?’

‘Forty dollars, dear.’

Lotte couldn’t believe her good fortune. Forty dollars. The amount, more or less, from the tip jar.

‘Thank you. That will be fine. Yes, an appointment would be wonderful. Will I be able to take the glasses away with me?’

‘The glasses? Oh, I’m sorry … I haven’t made myself clear at all, have I? The forty dollars is just for the appointment. From there, the optometrist will diagnose your problem, and
look at your options by way of …’

‘So the glasses are extra.’ Lotte interrupted the woman.

‘Yes, they are.’

‘How much, you know, on average?’

‘Well, I suppose, an average pair — nothing fancy by way of frames — an average pair might be two hundred dollars. Somewhere in that vicinity.’

Lotte said nothing. She looked at her arm, and tried to remember where the old scars and burns had been. The fresh injury had obliterated them, like a duster wiping a blackboard clean.

‘That’s fine,’ she said after a time. ‘Yes, let’s make an appointment.’

‘When would you like to come in?’

‘Today, please. I would like to come in today.’

Lotte sat for a moment, looking out at the fog. Then she left the cafe, her bag under her arm, locking the door behind her.

READER, WHAT ARE WE
to make of this? Lotte Jones, with a grand total of forty dollars, making appointments for expensive consultations with optometrists?

We can tut-tut, we can challenge her to think outside the picture — shop around at some of those new bargain places for a pair of glasses. Seek help, not just for her eyes, but for the other terrible things in her life. We can shout out loud, like children at a pantomime, about social agencies and helplines. But Lotte copes with life a moment at a time. That’s as much as she can manage.