SPLITTING

The minute she heard it, it blew her away, literally exploded her life with logic and of course it was the answer. She was half asleep at the time, lapsed into a feeling of being a dumbcluck and glazing over, when the young man with the wide white brow, an expert in the philosophy of mathematics, leaned forward to the microphone.

"There is of course the theory of the parallel universe where I think to myself, I can't be bothered with this lecture today and I'm here, but at the same time I'm wandering around the city somewhere too...."

From a slump of torpid indifference Bridget felt her mind (that fraction of it not intimidated even by professors of mathematics) soar like a skyrocket from a bottle. Up up over the tops of the plane trees, over the lawns strewn with auburn-haired women eating fruit salad and talking books books books, ripping through blue sky and puffs of cloud with Bridget herself streaming behind on a vapour trail of comprehension and desire. With one ferocious mind leap she was over the fence of her universe, the one she'd been stuck with since day one, gliding soundlessly into a whole new world.

UNIVERSE I.
Bridget Tucker unfolded plump limbs from the plastic chair, gathered her hat and basket as the discussion ended to rousing applause. A last minute program change had plunged her into a debate on The Lure of Mathematics, when she'd expected a book reading followed by the launch of a poetry collection. She had no time for the afternoon session though; she had to get back. As she deserted the crowd of earnest well-groomed women gathered under the plane trees, a sinking dowdiness descended; Bridget wondered if she looked like the haggard hard-up woman with no time or money of her own that she felt herself to be. The festival glittered with shows, but tickets were expensive and the car needed fixing.

The car, oh the car! Only this morning it had let her down. Thinking of it brought on a hot flush. The indicators lit up but they no longer flashed. She'd spotted a police car approaching as she waited to make a right hand turn, thought he'd notice, maybe pull her over. So she'd had the bright idea, God help her, of flashing them manually. Had slid her right hand below the dash and worked the little lever up and down, staring at the traffic streaming towards her with as much nonchalance as she could muster. When the police car slowed, drew alongside and wound down the window, she'd been sick with panic, even as she'd recognised the absolute inevitability of it.

"Can I help lady?"

He had a wary, aggravated look, on his way to work from the wrong side of the bed.

"I'm just turning right."

Below the dashboard her right hand still worked away at the lever but now it definitely felt as if she was up to something obscene.

"Why're you flashing your headlights at me then?"

As he mouthed the words, Bridget realised she was pushing against the lever too hard, activating its high-beam function. In trying to avoid attention she'd actually flagged down a cop.

"I must have just kicked the switch...."

His baffled stare behind the windscreen dangled in the corner of her eye as she lurched forward into a right hand turn. In a few minutes he would realise she'd been up to something, maybe turn and follow. She'd slammed into her driveway, jumped out and run inside.

***
In the lounge of their yellow brick house Evan watched TV in shorts and singlet, a jar of pickled octopus beside him. The creatures were tinted an unhealthy orange colour and tiny suction pads on the backs of their tentacles pressed pale yellow against the inside of the glass. Bridget pictured them in his stomach, suctioned to the lining, and squirmed.

"D'you look at the car for me today?"

It was more to make conversation than in any real hope he'd done it. Evan picked another clump of waving legs from the jar with his fingers.

"Nope."

He put it in his mouth, chewed, and then talked through the revolving mass of rubber. "Takin it round to Jess's later."

His mate Jess was an electrician. Perhaps between them they'd get it sorted. Evan flicked channels. Bridget shrank from the sight of his jaw working and turned with relief to unpack the groceries.

UNIVERSE II.
Brigitte Tucker leaves The Lure of Mathematics by-passing the plastic tubs of fruit salad at the food stalls. There isn't a hamburger or a bag of chips in sight and yet plenty of these women look as though they eat a good bit more than raw fruit and salad lepinja. She heads for Monty's Snack Bar, a cafe with no airs and graces, orders a hot dog with sauce, a cappuccino and sits thumbing through old magazines. When she's finished she goes looking for a hairdresser.

Now it's short and straight and blonde, as bleached as hay, with half an inch of black roots showing. She stares at herself in shop windows and smiles, slips into Miss Gladys Sim Choon's Emporium and buys a dress; tiny, lurid, an animal print whose black lines hug her thin body. She wears it with purple tights and Doc Martins.

Brigitte rents a flat above the Jasmine Room, a coffee shop that also sells books, incense sticks, and dresses with droopy hemlines. Leaning out over the railings of her balcony she can look down upon the couch in the tattooist's parlour, the tables outside the Austral Hotel, and an alleyway opposite where mesmerising performances take place after dark, all for free. In the mornings she shrugs on a satin kimono, pushes a cigarette into a long holder and steps onto the balcony to take the air, read the paper, stare at the traffic and marvel at the beauty of life.

UNIVERSE I.
Not only had Evan and Jess not fixed the indicators, they'd done something to the wipers so that they only worked intermittently. It started to rain as Bridget drove to yoga and she strained to see through the blurred windscreen. A pedestrian on a zebra crossing jabbed vicious fingers in the air of her wing mirror.

"Thank God I didn't hit you, bloody idiot!" She pulled herself up for swearing, hating to think she's being dragged down.

"Look at me!" She said it out loud, drawing dry lips into a pout that exaggerated the lines radiating from her top lip. Soon she'd be shouting in the street, haranguing strangers with her rage and frustration the way some do with religion.

In class she found a place at the back. In front of her was a girl whose head was the biggest part of her body. Bridget stared at the nauseating gap between the girl's thighs. With their sitting-bones perched on the edge of army blankets they were instructed to spread their buttocks. Bridget watched the girl with no buttocks struggle to find something to lift while her own spread as easily as peanut butter. During relaxation she could not still the brain chatter, a rehash of Saturday night when Jess and his wife Anne Marie had come for a barbecue.

The men talked cars and football, prodded chops and sausages while Anne Marie, bird-like, protruding teeth, yakked on about her kids, her kids, and the politics of the school canteen. Bridget had put out potato salad and at the last minute slid croutons and shavings of fresh parmesan into the tossed salad to make it Caesar, instead of the usual slices of hard-boiled egg and tomato.

"What's this then?" said Evan.

He'd fished them out and lined them up on the rim of his plate. She'd done a cheesecake for dessert because it was no trouble and everyone likes cheesecake.

Evan and Jess grogged on and got into a friendly row over footy scores while she and Anne Marie did the washing up.

"May as well get it over with," Anne Marie said. "If there's one thing I hate it's coming out in the morning to a mess."

Good thing she doesn't live here then, thought Bridget.

When they'd finished, she made coffee. The men were mellow. Evan, still drinking, came to sit by her chair and as she listened to Anne Marie telling about her tole-painting classes, took one of her hands in his and started sucking a finger. Bridget felt the hot inside of his mouth wrapped around her little finger, thought of the pickled squid with the pale yellow suction pads and felt nauseous, but didn't move a muscle.

Jess caught his wife's eye and tipped her a wink. They left soon after, but not before Bridget had poured Evan another drink: a large one. It would save trouble later, or make more. Bridget held her breath waiting to see which.

UNIVERSE II
Brigitte Tucker takes her time in the mornings, hand washes her tights and hangs them over a plastic carousel she has fixed up over the bath. She has a horror of outside clothes lines, Hills Hoists in back yards where weeds choke old car tyres, disused sinks, and the rolls of wire somebody was going to use to keep the dog from getting out before it got run over and saved them the trouble. She doesn't drive either; cars are trouble. That's why she loves the city. She walks anywhere she wants to go and keeps a bicycle for fun, rides it round the cycle path in the parklands for the exercise and because she knows she looks good in cycling shorts.

Sometimes she eats at the cafes she sees from her balcony; pasta and pizza, Thai curry, Mexican, Indian, just about anything except seafood. She has an unreasonable aversion to eating anything capable of living under water. She went out once with a flash bloke, nice car, plenty of cash, a bit of a catch really, but he wrecked it by taking her to a seafood place down on Henley Beach and ordering pickled squid.

Brigitte Tucker will never kiss a man who's eaten pickled squid. Not in this life.