Page 20 of Thursdays at Orange Blossom House
‘I am.’
‘Then … lead on, Macduff.’ Patricia gestures for Grace Maud to go ahead of her.
‘Macbethis my favourite,’ Grace Maud says as they walk back to the studio.
‘Mine too,’ Patricia says, beaming. ‘Perhaps we should compare notes one day.’
‘Perhaps,’ Grace Maud concedes as she steps inside first, leaving her helpers to trail in after her.
She meets the eyes of Sandrine, who looks more worried than Grace Maud would have anticipated. Grace Maud gives her a nod then returns to her mat, pleased to see the class has moved on to sitting poses. She can handle those. If she can get down there.
‘Dorothy,’ she whispers, ‘would you give me a hand?’
‘Of course!’ Dorothy says, looking like it’s the thing she most wants to do in the world.
It’s quite a gift, Grace Maud thinks, to make other people feel like they’re not bothering you in the slightest. It’s not a gift Grace Maud has ever had.
She rejoins the group, and is thankful that the rest of the class doesn’t involve any dropping of heads. Instead there is plenty of inhaling and exhaling, and as Grace Maud considers the younger women on either side of her she realises that while this class may not give her back the body she used to have, it is presenting her with enough of interest that she is prepared to keep coming.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
‘You didn’t go to the class on Saturday,’ Marjorie says, a note of remonstration in her voice.
She and Patricia are both rostered on playground duty, which tends to involve making sure the Year Nine boys don’t antagonise the Year Tens, and that the Year Eight girls don’t hike up their uniforms in an attempt to impress any boy within eyesight.
In Patricia’s experience, boys tend to be impressed by that sort of thing momentarily, then they’ll move on to the next impressive sight. She’s tried to tell the girls they’re wasting their time, but they all readDollymagazine and are convinced that short skirts are what boys like. Patricia knows it’s useless telling them that they should be more focused on whattheylike. She might have read Naomi Wolf’sThe Beauty Mythbut she’s sure none of the girls – or Marjorie, for that matter – has. Patricia doesn’t count herself as a feminist but that book opened her eyes to a few things. That’s when she stopped going to the hairdresser to have her hair coloured. Grey is fine. And less expensive.
‘No, I went to the Thursday evening class instead,’ she says, keeping an eye on a Year Nine boy the size of a fully grown man who’s standing over a Year Seven who is telling him to ‘rack off’ repeatedly. ‘I needed to unwind after work.’
‘I could have gone with you!’ Marjorie says quickly and Patricia sees her mistake: she shouldn’t have given her reason for going. Of course Marjorie would think that she too needs to unwind after work and why couldn’t they share the experience.
Patricia likes Marjorie but isn’t sure they’d make good friends, despite Marjorie’s fevered attempts to befriend her.
Maybe it’s because Marjorie’s life seems easy – she goes to movies with friends, plays netball in winter, and cheerfully admits that she buys lots of clothes she never wears because shopping is fun – and Patricia’s life feels hard a lot of the time. Plus Marjorie thinks that Alex Dimitriades, playing a high school student in love with his teacher inThe Heartbreak Kid, is ‘hot’ – a somewhat worrying opinion given where they work. No doubt she thinks that way because she’s still young herself.
Age is another difference between them: Marjorie is at full speed and Patricia sometimes feels like she’s grinding to a halt. But the idea of trying to explain that to someone as breezy as Marjorie is exhausting. So it’s easier to politely refuse her invitations to movies, netball and shopping, always with a smile and a thank-you-for-asking-it’s-so-kind-of-you.
‘Sorry,’ Patricia says to her colleague’s disappointed face now. ‘I wasn’t thinking.’
It’s not the truth – shehadthought about telling Marjorie she wouldn’t be at the Saturday class – but it’s a story that saves Marjorie’s feelings.
She has spent quite a bit of her life protecting other people’s feelings. Sometimes it can feel disingenuous – but what’s the alternative? She can’t say, ‘I just didn’t want to go with you, Marjorie.’ That would be hurtful.
‘You’re liking it then – the yoga?’ Marjorie asks, sounding hopeful.
Patricia hesitates. ‘Like’ isn’t the right verb, but she’s not sure she wants to get into that. The classes have challenged her ego, for one thing. There are poses she was sure she’d do in a cinch, thanks to childhood years spent in ballet classes, but which have left her feeling weak and foolish. Not that anyone else there cares. Patricia likes to do things properly, though, and she can’t believe that it’s so hard to hold still in a shape for ten breaths without feeling like you’re failing a test you didn’t even know you’d been set. Then, at the end of it all, to lie down on the floor with such relief that you want to cry, and instead surrender to the low incantations of an eccentric Frenchwoman who will inflict it all on you again next week.
‘It’s interesting,’ she says instead. ‘I’d like to keep going, to see what happens.’
Marjorie looks delighted.
‘I’m just not sure I can commit to one class time or the other,’ Patricia adds quickly.
Although that’s not true either. She likes being there in the evening, to decompress before she goes home. She also likes Dorothy, who is a mixture of front and vulnerability that makes her intriguing. And she doesn’t know if she’ll see Grace Maud again but there was a spark about her that Patricia found appealing.
‘G’day, ladies,’ says Dennis as he approaches. He’s clad in his PE teacher’s uniform of loose shorts and a T-shirt that’s tight enough to show he’s suitably fit for his job.
Marjorie greets him with her usual enthusiasm. ‘Hi, Dennis!’
