Greta nods. ‘Of course you do, you’re mad as a box of frogs.’ She winks. ‘That’s why I like you. Nuts like you and me should always mix together.’
Molly beams a smile. ‘I talk to the sky sometimes,’ she confesses.
Greta smiles immediately: ‘Who doesn’t?’
‘You talk to the sky, Greta?’
‘Sure.’
‘Does it ever talk back to you?’
‘Sure.’ Greta shrugs.
‘What’s it sound like when it talks back to you?’
‘My sky sounds like Humphrey Bogart.’
Molly laughs.
‘What’s it sound like to you?’ Greta says.
Molly looks up to the sky as she ponders this. Turns back to Greta.
‘I can’t make it out,’ Molly says. ‘It sounds a bit like me. But me if I was a lot older.’
Greta nods.
‘You think it’s really the sky talkin’ to me?’ Molly asks.
‘If you’re hearin’ it, then I guess it’s talkin’ to ya,’ Greta says.
‘I sometimes see things out bush that aren’t really there,’ Molly says, proudly now.
‘How wonderful!’ Greta says. ‘Like what?’
‘Like the other week we were way up Rapid Creek and I thought I saw Medusa.’
‘Medusa?’ Greta echoes. ‘Like, scary Greek monster Medusa?’
‘Like in Mum’s bookshelf up there,’ Molly says.
Greta knows the shelf. She’s run her fingers along the spines of the dusty old black and brown and olive-green and blue hardbacks that Violet Hook bought mostly from the Collins Bookshop on Knuckey Street, using spare grocery money collected over many weeks. Greta’s run her eyes over those titles and admired the woman’s taste, wished she had more time to read as much as Violet must have read. Collections of poetry, mostly. Irish poets and English and American poets. The Song of Brotherhood by the Australian poet John Le Gay Brereton. She’s fond of Victor Daley and his Sydney poems. She’s opened his book Wine and Roses, and she’s smiled at ‘The Woman at the Washtub’, pictured that poem as her own sad life summary and even her epitaph should her greatest fear come true: to live the rest of her days with Aubrey Hook, trapped forevermore inside the small hot kitchen of the small hot two-bedroom corrugated iron shell of a house he rents in Darwin town and on one sorry, inevitable day be buried in the hard dirt of this godforsaken cemetery.
HERE LIES GRETA MAZE
SHE WAS BORN FOR THE STAGE.
SHE DIED DOING THE DISHES.
‘THE WOMAN AT THE WASHTUB, SHE WORKS TILL FALL OF NIGHT; WITH SOAP AND SUDS AND SODA HER HANDS ARE WRINKLED WHITE. HER DIAMONDS ARE THE SPARKLES THE COPPER-FIRE SUPPLIES; HER OPALS ARE THE BUBBLES THAT FROM THE SUDS ARISE . . .’
‘Mum had a book on Greek mythology there,’ Molly continues. ‘And I’d been reading about Medusa and how she turned all them blokes to stone just because they looked at her, and then I’m walking through the mangroves of Rapid Creek and I swear I see Medusa standing in the middle of the scrub up ahead. And she’s got all her snakes wriggling from her head and I shoot my head down straightaway because I don’t want to be turned to stone but eventually I look up because I can’t resist, you know . . .’
‘Well, of course, you can’t,’ Greta says.
‘And I look up at her and . . .’ Molly says, excited by the telling.
‘And did you turn to stone?’ Greta asks.
Molly shakes her head, almost disappointed. ‘No, because it wasn’t Medusa. It was half a trunk from a dead ironwood tree with a shabby hawk’s nest sticking out the top.’
Greta drags on her smoke, shakes her head. ‘And here I was thinking it was gonna be a Greek monster out in that Darwin scrub.’
Molly shrugs, moves quickly on because she can move quickly on from anything. Beltings. Burns. Bereavement. Burials. Blood.
‘What’s the spot on the lady’s hands?’ Molly asks.
‘It’s blood,’ Greta says. ‘But it’s not really blood. It’s guilt. Her and her feller, Macbeth, have done terrible things to get where they’ve got to, and they’re cursed by the past.’
‘Cursed?’ Molly echoes.
‘Yeah, cursed, kid,’ Greta says. ‘The stains of the past. Ol’ Lady Macbeth, she can’t wash those stains away.’
Greta drags on her smoke, exhales. ‘You ever had any stains you couldn’t wash away, Molly?’
‘Just cut the neck off a brown snake in the laundry,’ she says. ‘A bit of blood got on the concrete, but I’ll just wash that away with some water, maybe some metho if it don’t come out.’
Greta smiles. ‘Guess Lady Macbeth could have used a splash of methylated spirits.’
Another drag on her cigarette. Greta studying her script.
‘How do you cry like that?’ Molly asks.
‘What do you mean?’
‘How does an actress just cry any time she wants to?’
‘That doesn’t just happen any time I want it to happen,’ Greta says. ‘I’ve got to build up to it. I’ve got to earn it. I’ve got to bleed for it, Molly Hook.’ Greta points a finger to her temple. ‘I’m saying those lines up here,’ she says. Then she places a hand on her chest. ‘But I’m feeling those lines in here, and all the time I’m feeling those lines I’m also feeling things I’ve felt before in my life. That’s what you gotta do to be true, Molly. You gotta go down deep inside your heart and soul and you gotta find that dark and scary and fragile place you’ve been to before. You know what I mean. We all have a place like that.’
Molly smiles. ‘I wish I could do what you can do.’
Greta shifts the way she’s sitting, slides her backside along the tray, leans over the tray edge, taking another puff on her smoke.
‘Close your eyes,’ she says.
Molly closes her eyes.
‘Now keep those peepers shut and go to your place, Molly,’ Greta says.
‘What if I don’t like my place?’ Molly askes. ‘Why would anyone want to go to the place that makes them sad?’
‘Because sadness is the truest emotion,’ Greta says. ‘Happiness isn’t to be trusted. It’s a bald-faced liar. But the truth of your sadness enriches every other thing inside you, especially your joy. You shouldn’t be afraid to go to the place that makes you
