And then the phone rang.
It was just the office but somehow – the way you just know sometimes – she just knew. As if the timbre of the ring was somehow different; ominous, like a tolling bell. She didn’t believe people could be psychic but there was something about that ring, like the ring she’d got when her grandfather had died, when things were about to go badly wrong.
Nazreen’s voice was so kind.
‘Marisa, I have to give you the heads up.’
Marisa didn’t say anything. Her insides froze.
‘I’m having to make changes to the office – savings. And, we love you, you know that. But for an administrator, you’re really expensive.’
Marisa nodded, unable to speak.
Of course she knew it was true. A registrar who couldn’t go out and perform weddings and deal face to face with the public was absolutely no use at all to anyone. She had always known this. It was just now it was coming home to roost.
Marisa had a huge lump in her throat suddenly and couldn’t swallow or speak.
As if hearing what she was thinking, Nazreen continued, ‘Obviously we can speak to HR if you feel you need signed off?’
‘No,’ Marisa managed to choke out finally. ‘No. it’s fine . . .’
‘I have to drop you down two grades and put you part time,’ said Nazreen. ‘Unless . . .’
‘I know.’
For a second, Nazreen couldn’t hold the professional facade together.
‘Oh, Reesie. You used to love this job.’
Marisa couldn’t speak again.
‘Remember the babies? How good you were with all those old ladies?’
Marisa nodded.
‘Remember we had two Pocahontases on the same day?’
Marisa smiled. ‘Oh, that was a great day.’
‘It was a great day. I still think you should have told the second one about the first one.’
‘Absolutely not,’ said Marisa, whose ability to sincerely intone, ‘Wow, that’s a beautiful name’ had become second nature over the years.
‘Don’t you miss it?’
Did she miss it? What was Nazreen thinking? Did she think she didn’t miss the nervous young couples giggling and poking at each other and coming in to register their banns – or, sometimes, the stiff awkward pairs who were possibly just like that or possibly getting married for other reasons or both. Marisa could not bring herself to get dismayed at people getting married to stay in a country where they generally brought but good. Nazreen, who was older, told her about the old days when gay people would marry the opposite – to get their parents off their backs, or for their visa or for a baby or for their cultures or a multitude of different reasons, and how the weddings could be hysterical – if their friends showed up – but so sad at the same time. Marisa had been an assistant on Equal Marriage Day, and for three weeks she had witnessed the opening of the floodgates – never been so busy; never known such an overspilling of joy and happiness from couples, some of decades standing, finally legally married in front of their families and friends. It remained an absolute high point of all their professional lives.
And the joy of being the registrar of the baby for people you’d married, a year or two years – or, in one heartbreaking and joyous day, ten years – later, or of every nervous father, stumbling over middle names, awkwardly spelling things out, occasionally followed two days later by a leaking furious mother demanding that that was not in fact what the baby was to be called at all and having it gently explained to them that it was a historical record and they would need to go and speak to a priest about getting the baby baptised something else and then they could fix it, which often saw the luckless chap end up in a very bad way.
She missed it all. She missed the momentarily relief she could give to the solitary widows, whose harassed-looking children would bring them in, with all the dull miserable work of deathmin on their hands, each member of the family shipwrecked on their own island of solitary grief – or, often, something more complicated than that – trying to help each other, and how grateful they were when she took them into the comfortably furnished room, made tea, listened sympathetically to the story of Frank or Albert’s last days, let them take their time; filled in the big book with her careful calligraphy, honed in additional classes she’d taken. There was something reassuring about the scratch of the pen, she’d found. She didn’t know what it was. As if by writing something beautifully it gave it more heft, gave it more reality, these huge milestones in people’s lives: birth, marriage, death. Recorded and made real. Whenever she handed over the completed and printed certificates, with the red seal, people would stroke them, stare at them, as if they hadn’t believed what had just happened to their lives until she had written it in the book, like some recording angel.
That had been the person she was. And look at her now.
‘I miss it so much,’ she whispered, her voice cracking.
‘You have to find a way back to us,’ said Nazreen. ‘You have to.’
And her voice rang out, clear and loud; almost as loud as the little gremlin in her brain who kept telling her she had failed, her job was gone; she was a failure, she was wasting her life, she was ruining everything; she was a disaster and everything was terrible and nothing would ever come good again, and the world around went black and closed in on her, even as she put down the phone and all thoughts of a walk were completely forgotten.
Chapter Twenty-eight
Being right, reflected Anita, was in no way satisfactory. She had so hoped Marisa might prove the exception. The forty-five minutes of sobbing that was currently taking place indicated that this was not the case.
She didn’t want to be directive, but maybe – just maybe – this setback could be a breakthrough. Remind her of what she wanted back in her life; what she truly loved: being with people, out, and part of the world.
‘This is making you so sad,’ she pointed out unnecessarily, as Marisa wrung out yet another lemon-yellow cloth napkin.
‘Yes.’
‘But it’s not about your grandfather, is it?’
Anita’s tone was gentle, but deadly serious.
‘But I miss him.’
‘Yes, but he didn’t raise you . . . He lived far away. He loved you and you loved him. I realise you miss him. But I don’t think he’s the reason you’ve found things so difficult, do you?’
Soberly, Marisa shook her head.
‘This is you, Marisa. It’s you who has made yourself so scared, who has tied yourself in knots. It’s been – and I don’t mean you didn’t love your grandfather – of course you did – but I think your grief has become more than this, don’t you? You’ve let it engulf you. It’s nothing to be ashamed of, lots of people find life gets on top of them at points.’
‘But everyone else seems fine.’
‘Pff,’ said Anita. ‘Yeah, whatevs. You would think you were totally fine, if you could see yourself in your beautiful house, cooking away.’
Marisa shook her head. ‘I feel sometimes like I’m the only one left grieving.’
‘And I have to show you that that is not true and that there are ways to live and grieve at the same time.’