Dr Posthlewaite had been dead exactly a week. While his wife thought of this, she picked up her needle, bent her head and began to stitch buttons onto silk. A tingle of delight ran up her bony spine while she imagined sewing the eyes of his corpse shut tight. Prick of cool needle, thread running, tugging, through cold skin.
He had been the ‘good doctor’—a much admired surgeon. A pillar of the community. And, for the past forty years, she had been the doctor’s wife.
Life with the doctor made her feel like an empty handbag. It was a strange way to feel, but Mrs Posthlewaite would often sip her chamomile tea at her sewing table in a patch of afternoon sunlight and consider her handbag theory carefully. From the exterior she looked like a neat, functional and socially acceptable handbag. She knew she was a touch on the old-fashioned side. But she was certain she had more style than the other bum-bag-wearing, gym-going grannies like Mrs Smithers, who lived in the flat next door.
The very personal and private space inside ‘Mrs Posthlewaite-the-handbag’ had been emptied over years of living with the puffed-up, self-important doctor. Now, at the sewing table, she felt the anger simmer inside her empty space again as the doctor’s little white dog clawed runs in her stockings and whimpered to be fed.
With cool, polite distance Dr Posthlewaite had come home to her each evening. She, the neat wife in the neat home with no children…just an annoying little dog. Mrs Posthlewaite would hear the doctor’s pompous booming laughter coming from the stairwell as he flirted relentlessly with Mrs Smithers. The smile on his red round face evaporated when he crossed the threshold into the plush flat and placed his wooden box of personally engraved surgical instruments on the bedroom chair. The little dog, so delighted to see him, danced in circles at his feet and piddled with excitement. Steaming dinners were placed before him while he sighed and frowned.
Mrs Posthlewaite’s garments, meticulously stitched, hung in the dark space in the sewing-room cupboard. She no longer proudly showed her husband her sewing. He used to glance at the neat navy pleated skirt or the finely embroidered blouse with his eyebrows raised. Then his eyes lifted to her face and he mocked her with silence. His surgical stitches saved lives. His needles pierced living flesh. His skills and status attracted gushing buxom nurses, who fussed and danced in circles around him.
Sometimes, when the doctor attended conferences interstate, Mrs Posthlewaite dragged the heavy surgical books from the shelf to stare at the diagrams long into the night. The human form was put together like a complex garment. Diagrams of flesh transposed themselves into sewing patterns in Mrs Posthlewaite’s mind. As she gently fell into the pages, she dozed off, mouth open, bedside light shadowing her wrinkled skin. She dreamt of her childhood, when she had helped her father skin rabbits, possums and wallabies. Young girl’s fingers wrapped around the smooth wood of a well-worked hammer. Girl’s hands tapping tacks into skin. Stretching moist pink hides on boards to dry. The dream would shift to her tidy kitchen where she pounded meat with the hammer. Dinner for the doctor.
Occasionally, they ate out at social occasions. Chest puffed out, the doctor took her on his arm. She was introduced as ‘the doctor’s wife’. Her empty space was momentarily filled with this important fact. Other women patted her husband’s arms and squeezed his important hands with delight. They cast amused glances at Mrs Posthlewaite’s neat grey bun, ankle-length tweed skirts and stick-like limbs. In the crook of her arm hung a very safe navy handbag, which matched her shoes. Handing her a twenty-dollar note, the doctor would send her home early in a taxi.
After one such occasion, Mrs Posthlewaite discovered a handbag under the Volvo’s passenger seat. The bag was of a curious pale-blue silk in which purple roamed when she moved it in the light. Light also danced through little opaque cornflower-blue beads, which were sewn over the silk giving it a curious texture. Irresistible to stroke. Her fingertips, seduced, couldn’t help but travel over cool silk then bump up and over smooth pert beads. Although the bag was small it was stuffed full. There were dazzling red, racy lipsticks, glittering nail polishes and golden tubes of jet-black mascara. Light danced in diamantes as Mrs Posthlewaite pulled from the bag a silver comb. Entwined between the grinning teeth were wisps of blonde hair. Black silk lined the private space inside the bag. Her fingertips slid to the silky corners of the bag’s dark little universe and met with smooth glass. Golden French perfume was held in a bottle shaped like the torso of a curvaceous woman. Mrs Posthlewaite clasped the torso around its waist. She reached for the gold star gift tag that swung from its neck. Looped handwriting read, From the good doctor.
She drove the Volvo and the silken handbag to the supermarket and there she emptied her soul some more as she filled up her shopping trolley. The day after she calmly passed the handbag back to the gaping doctor, he came home with a squirming, whimpering ball of white fluff in his clean pink surgeon’s hands.
‘For you, dear,’ he said, handing it to her awkwardly. ‘It’s a Maltese terrier…with a pedigree, of course. Name it what you like.’ Then he took his place in his leather upright chair to watch the TV news. The puppy, she supposed, was meant to keep her there. To show her that he cared. As she mopped up its puddles on the plush coffee-coloured carpet and pulled on pink rubber gloves to pick up its little brown cigar-shaped messes, she cursed it, but like her husband, she endured it. She named the dog Gigi, after the French perfume she had found in the bag. Every day, when the dog demanded food, or brushing, or playing or walking, Mrs Posthlewaite obeyed, but quietly seethed inside her empty space. Since the doctor had died the dog had taken to sleeping on the bed where Dr Posthlewaite once had lain snoring. When Mrs Posthlewaite tried to move her, Gigi would curl up her lip and growl. In the mornings, when Mrs Posthlewaite stepped from the door to take Gigi for a walk, the dreadful Mrs Smithers was there cooing and clucking over the dog. The dog snuffled, wuffled and piddled in excitement—often on Mrs Posthlewaite’s neat navy shoes.
One day, instead of walking the dog to the city park, Mrs Posthlewaite marched to the nearest haberdashery store. She tied Gigi to a pole outside the shop, left her there yapping and went in. She bought elegant pearl buttons, exclusive white silk, strong white cotton and a length of lace. Returning home she placed the goods by the sewing machine and turned her attention to Gigi. She ran a tepid bath for the dog and lay the dog’s brushes out on a towel.
‘Good dog, Gigi! Bath time,’ she called.
That night, while Gigi slept in her basket, Mrs Posthlewaite went to her husband’s cupboard and pulled out a solid wooden box. Laying it on the kitchen bench she undid its brass clasp and took from it the cold steel surgical instruments that had once been held in the doctor’s smooth hands. She spread the perfect, gleaming scalpels and scissors onto the bench. From the kitchen cupboard she took a large bag of salt.
‘Gigi! Come here,’ she called.
For several weeks Mrs Posthlewaite barely left the flat. But tonight she knew it was time. In her sewing room, stooped over, her bony foot pressed down on the pedal, her sewing machine whirred into the night. She wore a faint smile as scissors glided through silk and the needle pierced the willing hole of pearl buttons. She hoped Mrs Smithers wouldn’t hear the grinding sound of the sewing machine in the dead of night, but she knew the Valium would not allow the cloud in Mrs Smithers’ head to lift.
After a grey morning shower of rain the sun burst through the kitchen window.
‘Time to go shopping!’ announced Mrs Posthlewaite airily. ‘Some new clothes, some less sensible shoes…even, perhaps, some French perfume.’ She made sure she timed her departure with Mrs Smithers’ morning journey to the mailbox, solely for the purpose of showing off her brand-new home-crafted handbag. She grabbed her keys and enjoyed trying the new clasp on the bag. Rather than toss the keys in she let her fingertips slide in and out so she could feel the lining of cool white silk. Instead of placing the handbag on the crook of her arm she hung the long, lace-trimmed straps from her shoulder. Her hand ran down the straps to touch the bag’s most striking feature, the exterior. It was white and fluffy and her fingertips delighted in the feel of it. Her strokes paused when her fingers met with perfect pearl beads, stitched on with precision.
As she caressed the furry handbag Mrs Posthlewaite smiled and said, ‘Come on, Gigi—we may even call into the pet shop and buy a kitten. After all, I’ve always liked cats.’