Free On Brunswick Ground by Catherine de Saint Phalle

doesn’t seem very present in her life. I mean, the little I’ve seen of her, she hasn’t mentioned it once. You’d think …’
    Sarah pounces on that.
    â€˜You’re right. The cultural statement blurs the issue too. It’s such a hollow argument, because she doesn’t exactly seem to be reciting the Koran, does she? There is no sign of the arsehole either. I thought she did it because of him. We’re all in the Boy Scouts together kind of thing.’
    She kicks a can, sending it flying down the path.
    â€˜Did you know that Mary’s husband wasn’t born a Muslim?’
    â€˜Really?’
    â€˜Yes, really . He’s from Queensland. He got involved with this imam, long after he got involved with Mary. Her decision to wear the burqa is only recent – maybe a year.’
    I turn the thing over in my mind.
    â€˜Did she take it off in front of you when you were last in Adelaide?’
    Sarah shakes her head with a kind of raw solemnity.
    â€˜I’ve not seen her once without it since she started.’
    Her voice stumbles.
    â€˜Not once.’
    The problem is so simple and so impregnable.
    Sarah bends down and picks up the can she has kicked to put it in a plastic waste bin, clamped in a metal circle on a stand. Thanatos, Eros. The two gestures describe her so well. She loosens her leg for another go at a can but there are none on the path.
    â€˜I can’t help thinking I am the one she is shutting out intentionally – as if she were waging a jihad against me . I even imagine her wriggling out of her outfit as soon as I’m out of the room. I’m completely narcissistic about it. All I can feel is the blue door slamming in my face – never mind the rest of the world. It’s all about me, I know.’
    The way she says I know runs so counter to how it is usually said that it sounds almost foreign. Her foot has found a stone now and she boots it into the water.
    â€˜Why do I tiptoe around her so much? Didn’t I change her nappies, for fuck’s sake?’
    She stares doggedly ahead:
    â€˜â€¦ Though not as often as Helen did, of course. My mother was the anointed nappy changer.’
    Heedless, sleek and slinky, the creek quivers within its own reflections. Sarah trudges on with a sigh.
    â€˜I just don’t understand the statement Mary is trying to make.’
    She stops and grimaces.
    â€˜This is fast becoming my one and only topic, isn’t it?’
    Mary’s burqa is a mix of The Thousand and One Nights and Bluebeard – a fairy tale thrust on Brunswick with no happy ending in sight. I am filled with what I can’t say to Sarah, as if silence were the sound of our connection. I turn my head to look at her.
    â€˜Maybe Mary’s use of the burqa is making it into something else altogether.’
    â€˜That’s an idea. The burqa’s international statement could be starting to attract other constellations of meaning: women hiding, or lambasting themselves, or making themselves sacred – there is no end to it. Mary the trailblazer …’
    Bluntly, Sarah changes the subject.
    â€˜Any news from Jack?’
    That’s when I tell her about his letter folded in my pocket.
    â€˜He still writes.’
    But she must see something in my face.
    â€˜I knooooowww … ’ she says. This assuages things a little, even though she has no solution for me, just as I have none for her.
    A dog bursts out of some bushes and comes rushing up, a Kelpie, his redhead owner running behind him. They don’t notice us; they are in the flow and flash past us. On the other bank, within that red flash, I notice the lycra man walking his bike towards the bridge over us and then tying it up. The way he does it reminds me of a shepherd tying up a sheep for branding. Soon it will be too dark to hear the birds and we head back instinctively. Everything is more beautiful at dusk, even the few hoots and squawks. As