Eva and Rod hadn’t lived in Formosa Street for long when one Saturday morning there was a knock at the door and Eva opened it to find a short, stocky woman with thick glasses and stiffly sprayed bouffant hair standing on the step.

“Hello, I hope you don’t mind me calling in like this but you see, my friend who lived next door to you has moved.”

Eva nodded, waiting to hear what that had to do with the reason for her unexpected visitor. The woman looked at her earnestly through the thick lens of her glasses.

“Well you see, now that she’s moved I don’t have her to visit any more. I thought maybe you wouldn’t mind if I visited you. That I could come and have coffee with you.”

This was such a strange situation, Eva was totally bemused. Off the top of her head she couldn’t think of a reason to say no. She opened the front door wider and motioned the woman inside.

“ My name’s Marnie Petersen and I live three streets up the hill. I’m married to Keith. He’s a real estate agent and we have a beautiful house. I have two boys. Keith’s not their father though. Their father died in England . That’s why we came out here.”

Marnie didn’t seem all that interested in Eva’s responses as she chattered on and on and on. Eva was starting to worry about how she might get her to leave. Despite that she was held by a certain fascination. She rarely came across someone so ready to spill words so freely, to lay her life out to a stranger without pausing for breath. So she listened as she would watch a movie or read a book, to hear the next chapter. She sensed an almost desperate animation in Marnie, as if she couldn’t stop talking and be forced to think.

It came out that Marnie had been married to her childhood sweetheart in Bristol . They had two young boys, both had jobs and they were paying off a house. Life was pretty good until he was diagnosed with some paralysing disease, incurable. He became progressively paralysed starting from the waist down. Wasn’t long before he was in a wheelchair. She looked sad as she recounted what a great sex life they had shared until then.

“His erection was gone you see, paralysed. Only sometimes it came back for no reason. The doctor said we should make the most of every opportunity so if it came up during the day he would call me at work and I’d hop on a bus and get home fast as I could.”

Eva’s mind boggled at the thought of this little woman with the hairdo and glasses rushing off for a session of hot sex. With barely a pause for breath Marnie then launched on a tirade about Keith. She had met him through a dating service and married him because he offered a home and security for her and the boys and he had lots of money. Love didn’t come into it. In return she kept his big house spotless and was willing to perform whatever marital duties he required. That wasn’t so easy as he had a bit of a problem getting turned on, so she kept him supplied with Playboy mags and other stimulating erotica and when he was ready he would call out to her where she was either watching TV in the loungeroom or washing up in the kitchen and she would get into bed with him and they’d ‘do it’. Except for another problem. She never knew if he was inside her or not because he had a penis the size of a jellybean.

Eva could barely keep a straight face. She thought she may have seen Keith Petersen in the local real estate office, in fact she was pretty sure she had seen him riding a very small motorbike down the main street. A very big man on a tiny bike, his bulk almost hiding the body of the bike so he looked like a man on wheels. She remembered thinking it a funny sight at the time. But now, if she ever saw him again, knowing he had a jellybean in his pants, she thought she’d probably fall down in the street laughing. How humiliating for him. He would die if he knew his wife was telling strangers the size of his weenie!

“Would you like another cup?” Eva asked with face averted, frightened she was going to burst into hysterical laughter. “ I have to go out soon. It’s been very interesting to meet you.”

“Yes thanks. I have to go soon too, I have to pick up some Ajax to clean the bathroom and some magazines for Keith. I have to work tomorrow. I work part time at the deli, mainly for something to do.”

She seemed driven to reveal whatever she was thinking, every little detail. And now speaking about someone she knew, “I thought she was lovely until I went to her house and saw piles of dirty dishes.”

Barely containing herself, Eva sneaked a look at the sink. There were dishes piled up like a tottering mountain. Marnie must have seen them but maybe she was overlooking such a disgrace in her new friend.

That was the beginning of an unusual friendship of sorts. Every few weeks Marnie would call in and talk and talk. Eva came to know her life, her every thought, all the mundane details of the products she bought, the food they ate, more hilarious stories of her intimate life with her husband. Eva hardly ever contributed to the conversation. In fact she often thought if she went out and left her ears on the table Marnie would be just as happy.

Over the course of many visits it came out that Marnie had measles as a child and as a result her eyesight had been affected, hence the thick glasses. The bouffant hairdo was purpose built to hide the missing bone in her forehead, a deep recession with hair combed into a stiff curl to hide it. That was from a serious sinus problem and the piece of bone was removed to relieve the pressure. Doctors at the time thought putting a steel plate in to replace it was too dangerous.

However, if there are reasons for every contact we have with other people, the reason for her meeting Marnie became clear to Eva after a while. When Eva was overcome with severe depression as her relationship with Rod eroded, waking to think, “Oh god, I’m still alive.” Wishing her life away and thinking of ways to commit suicide so that it didn’t look like suicide, sitting still and trying to will herself to die. Then Marnie would visit and chatter about whether to serve Keith fish fingers or sausages for dinner, spill some more secrets of her sex life, never noticing Eva looked miserable. And Eva would laugh inside despite herself and feel some sort of comfort to know there were people who had never for a minute considered ending their lives, whose biggest problem was deciding which detergent worked best. As Marnie chattered on, Eva imagined scenarios where she burst out, “Marnie, I’m working out a way to kill myself.” She knew that was cruel because Marnie wasn’t equipped to deal with a statement like that. She would probably suggest changing her dinner menu or washing powder as the solution.

At times like these, after Marnie left Eva would feel better. As if Marnie were her contact with a different world where everything was accounted for and your biggest feeling of satisfaction came from sparkling clean dishes. She needed to know there was a world like that even if it wasn’t the one she was living in. In some ways she grasped at Marnie and her trivialities as straws to keep her sane.

As it turned out there was more to Marnie than Eva guessed. Passing by her street one day on her way to the library she noticed a truck parked outside Marnie’s house. On her way back an hour later she noticed it still parked there. Marnie didn’t visit for a long time and when Eva went to the deli Marnie wasn’t there. She asked the girl behind the counter.

“Oh Marnie, no, she left. She ran off with the Canada Dry soft drink man. They went to the UK to start a soft drink business together.”

Eva laughed inside. Oh you never really know anyone do you. And she didn’t even say goodbye.