The Sparkle Pages

by Meg Bignell

  SATURDAY 25th MARCH

  Two bad things happened today:

  1) Jimmy scratched his name into the side of my car.

  It’s not huge, just a playing card–sized ‘Jim’ on the front passenger door. That’s the door all three older children argue over every time we drive anywhere, no matter how many times I try enforcing a front-seat roster. Sometimes there are tears over a drive to the milk bar, for goodness sake. Etching his claim over the front seat was Jimmy’s instant demotion to the back seat for the foreseeable future.

  ‘What did you do?’ I heard Hugh roar from the garage while Mary-Lou and I were making breakfast yesterday morning. ‘Why would you do that? Are you brain dead?’

  I’ve never heard him shout like that, not ever. I dropped the butter knife and ran. I found Hugh, red-faced and sort of increased in size, looming over Jimmy. Mary-Lou came in behind me and leaned in, peeking around my bottom.

  ‘It wasn’t my fault,’ Jimmy said in a whine. ‘Eloise said she’d give me the front seat yesterday if I —’

  ‘It is your fault, it is!’ Hugh shouted. ‘Look at it. You think we can wash that off? That’ll cost hundreds and hundreds to fix.’ He was pointing at the car. I looked. Jimmy’s carved letters twinkled silver at me. I gasped.

  ‘It’s not my fault.’ Jimmy’s voice was a whisper. I realised, despite his capable nature and his bravado, that Jimmy is very small for his age. I looked at his knobbly, slightly grubby knees, his tousled curls, and tried not to intervene. ‘It was my turn in the front,’ Jimmy said feebly.

  ‘Stop saying that,’ Hugh yelled, his face now close to Jimmy’s. The smaller face crumpled.

  ‘You come with me.’ Hugh grabbed Jimmy by the arm and took him inside. I followed. ‘I’m sick of you kids wrecking things, I’m sick of you fighting and I’m sick of you blaming everyone but yourselves. DON’T DO IT!’ He tossed Jimmy into his room and pulled the door shut with a bang. With a wild glance my way that I didn’t recognise, he stomped off down the hallway to the study. Jimmy wailed. The whole scene even brought Raffy and Eloise out of bed. And no one looked pleased to be the one not in trouble.

  Jimmy was hysterical for ages. ‘I’m so stupid, Dad hates me, take all my money from the bank,’ etc. etc. It took me an hour to calm him down to just sniffs. But still he refused pancakes and lay on his bed facing the wall, tears on his pillow.

  Eventually I went to the study. ‘Hugh?’ I asked.

  He didn’t turn to look at me. ‘Sorry, I just lost it, just – lost it.’

  ‘It’s okay. I do it all the time,’ I said. It’s true. I just don’t have the same kind of earthquake impact.

  ‘Yeah, but I don’t,’ he said. ‘That’s not me.’ I couldn’t help feeling stung: so I’m the loony shouty one? ‘I’m tired. Work’s full on,’ he said, sighing. ‘I’m a bit … I’ll go and talk to him.’

  ‘Can I help?’ I said. ‘With work? I could file and make coffees and things.’

  ‘No,’ he said. (Too quickly?) ‘Thanks.’

  They’ve sorted it out. Jimmy will work for extra pocket money until he can pay for at least some of the repair. He’s stopped crying. But I can tell he’s shaken. He won’t forget that in a hurry. I hate the thought of our children being afraid of us.

  Eloise, on the other hand, who did indeed renege on her promise to Jimmy that the front seat was his if he took the rubbish out for her, doesn’t appear to have the slightest bit of remorse regarding her role in the affair. ‘What a dumb thing to do, but, jeez, Dad didn’t have to bust a valve over it.’ I wish I had her oaken hide.

  Could I ease Hugh’s workload by working in the office, alongside scary Katrina? (Which reminds me, I need to set a date for the work dinner party.) I know so little about the inner workings of Parks Forensic Engineering. It’s probably time I learnt. I could turn into one of those ‘what did we ever do without you’ indispensables. I like that idea. But Jimmy’s general woe should be addressed first.

  2) We got attacked by wasps.

  Valda had taken Raffy to her garage to show him Neville’s car (immaculate old Valiant, pale blue, gorgeous) and they popped open the bonnet to release a huge swarm of outraged wasps. They billowed out around Raffy, he instinctively ran and then, realising Valda couldn’t, went back. He yelled, ‘Mum! Dad! MUUUUUUUUUUM,’ and by the time I got to them, he’d got her outside but was yelling and swatting and swiping so madly that I thought all of them – Raff, Valda, walking frame and sundry wasps – were going to end up in a writhing heap on the floor. I went in to help but Hugh dodged past me with, ‘Not you, Zannnah. You’re allergic to stings’, collected Valda up into his arms and moved swiftly into the house with her, Raff and I, and the wasps, on their heels.

  Raffy has nineteen wasp bites, mostly on his head because they’d got caught up in his waves of hair. Valda has eleven, Hugh four and me one. Actually none, but I turned a day-old garden prickle into a wasp bite because I felt a bit left out. So stupid. I have given everyone (except me – I didn’t take the idiot sham any further) antihistamines and have them on close anaphylaxis watch. They have Vicks on their bites. No one would let me call an ambulance or take them to a doctor, so I had to monitor their airways regularly. Valda got very impatient with me about my frequent observation visits to her house. (She wouldn’t hear of staying in our spare room.) For the evening check I crept in in case she was asleep in front of the telly. She wasn’t. She was sitting bolt upright with her phone in her hand, her wasp spots glowing in the telly light – an alarming red with a menthol blue sheen.

  ‘You keep sneaking around and I’ll call the police. And I’ll close your airway up if you don’t stop fussing. Never seen such a fusser. I’m perfectly fine.’

  ‘Right.’ I turned to go. ‘I’ll call a pest man tomorrow, to sort out the car.’

  ‘Don’t bother, I’ve called a detailer. He said he’d deal with the nest and clean the car up for sale.’

  ‘For sale?’ I couldn’t believe it. Neville’s Valiant. It was his pride and joy, more so than his roses.

  ‘Yes. It’s high time.’ Her words were forced into a firm shape, but still a little rickety. ‘High time,’ she said again, this time to the ceiling, with resolve.

  So everyone’s a bit rattled and tender. (Well, most of us. Eloise is never rattled.) How can I and my inner glow un-rattle them? Will think (and try not to think about how bad things are supposed to happen in threes).

  MONDAY 27th MARCH

  OH MY GOOOOOOOOOD!!!! Many Hands Pictures in England are going to pay me £37 000 for ‘Starlit Sonata’. POUNDS! I just looked it up. That’s $66 492!! They’re going to pay Ria in the next few days and she’ll transfer it to me. She says I should open my own account. (Should I?) This is an incredible feeling. That would have covered my uni fees well and truly, never mind one physics unit.

  I could surprise Hugh with a trip away. It’s our anniversary next week! We could go somewhere lovely, just the two of us. What a boost for the Sparkle Project! Could we go to that beautiful manor house up near Stanley? It’s exorbitant, apparently. High-functioning marriages all over the place seem to have regular weekends away with no children. Alison has been offering to have the children to stay for ages and I’ve not taken her up on it.

  Or I could take the whole family away for a properly bonding, cheer-up experience. That expensive guided walk at Cradle Mountain? I’ve always wanted to do that.

  On a slightly more superficial note, I could buy myself some outer glow and confidence in the form of hairdressing and beauty therapy things without worrying about expense. I could get some new clothes – if I could just figure out my particular style. I’d ride my bike again if I had a flowered dress and some espadrilles. Also if my hair was thicker and shinier. (*Give Barky an egg; his coat is looking dull.)

  I won’t tell Hugh about the money yet. Must order thoughts.

  The manor house is called Brynkirra and it has a river, a bathing house and a butler. I just looked it up. I could take the whole
family. Kate Winslet stayed there once … Oh, sod it. Why not. Everyone needs a good cheer-up. They’re worth it, my family. (And I’m worth $66 492 …)

  Just booked it for two nights the weekend after Easter! $6100 for two nights and three days, oh my Goddy God. It’ll be an unforgettable family holiday. AND I booked it for the weekend of Raffy’s tenth birthday, which is perfect because I was very stuck for birthday party ideas. Raffy says he doesn’t mind what he does, which is good of him but unhelpful, and usually leads to me organising nothing, then feeling guilty and saying yes to dinner at an all-you-can-eat place with unlimited soft serve and fizzy beetroot.

  Gosh, how lovely to be able to throw some money at self-improvement and familial happiness. Brynkirra wouldn’t dream of a fizzy beetroot.

  TUESDAY 28th MARCH

  So I went and got my hair done at this swanky new hair salon, the sort where they pop your feet into a foot spa and get you a glass of champagne and you think eeek, how much is this all going to cost?

  It took hours. And they didn’t chat much – waaaay too sophisticated for that. It was all elegant silence and fringed chandeliers and uber-cool ripped tees. It made me miss my usual hairdresser, Paul in Lenah Valley, with his shameless, snippy gossip and his raggedy magazines. I felt guilty too. Paul would be sad if he saw me in the new place. I wonder whether beauticians these days can laser away guilt. Probably not. They’d be run off their feet. Mine would be the stubborn kind anyway, the sort that keeps coming back. My guilt is an everlasting gobstopper.

  I did leave feeling expensive and swishy, though, with my new layered-bob-with-long-fringe look. AND I had some colour! Just a few streaks of blonde and a lightening rinse. They said the colours are all natural and won’t make my fine hair break off into fluffy wisps, like when I was seventeen and tried straight peroxide. So I’m a tiny bit more strawberry blonde than red. A very tiny bit apparently, as no one in the family has yet noticed the change. Anyway I was so excited to get out of the salon and have a good look at my new self. Until I peeked in the car mirror and saw that my face didn’t match my glossy new, tiny-bit-blonde hairdo. It’s like when you snazzy up the garden and it makes the pavers look tired.

  So I made a spur of the moment booking at the only beauty parlour that could fit me in. It’s called Beauty Madgic – a dubious name that rang small alarm bells. They went erroneously unheeded. Madge, the beautician herself, immediately scrutinised my eyebrows with an expression of alarm, said I looked weary under the weight of my ‘heavy pelmets’, proclaimed herself Queen of Brows and led me into the depths of her parlour.

  On the upside, Madge was right about the brows. After peering at mine through a magnifying glass for ages while she ‘diagnosed’ the problems and noted them down on a card (such attention to detail!), she whipped them into the shape of their lives. Madgic was weaved. To think the remedy to my wearied face has been right above my eyes all this time.

  Then it was time for Madge to attend to Lower Forestville. For the sake of the Sparkle Project, I’d booked my first ever Brazilian. Madge made a small dismay noise when she lifted the sheet. I prayed she wouldn’t get out the magnifying glass. She didn’t. I suppose we were working on more of a macro level.

  ‘Have you taken paracetamol?’ she asked. At this point I should have put my knickers back on and galloped off into the day.

  Instead I made some daft comment about being toughened by four rounds of labour and ignored the tugging in my abdomen. Gut feelings, Susannah Parks, should never be ignored; have you not learnt your lesson?

  It was agony. I mean, there were hairs removed that have been there since puberty. AND I had no idea that a Brazilian means having your bottomhole waxed. What? Why do we need hair-free bumholes to feel sexy? It’s another example of world gone mad. I was beginning to wonder whether Madge wasn’t some ageing dominatrix. I sucked in my tummy, now swollen with urgent instinct. But that wasn’t the worst of it.

  Once I was flipped over again to get at the bulk of the hair, something happened to the wax. It stopped coming away in one merciful piece and instead broke up, so that each fingertip-sized piece had to be ripped out, one searing bit at a time. I sweated and gasped and flinched; tears came to my eyes and finally I said, ‘Madge, this is not right, is it? We’re going to have to stop.’

  ‘Hmm,’ she said. ‘You should probably have trimmed before you arrived. It’s always much more painful when it’s so long.’ I mean, she made it sound like I had a mons pubis full of dreadlocks. And that the wax malfunction was my fault. Halfway through the torturous job is not the time to suggest I trim, either. So unreasonable, but of course I’m a cravenly moron when it comes to standing up for my rights and I tried to get all humorous from beneath my temper. ‘I can’t possibly go on without an epidural,’ I said, getting up off the trolley and fishing my knickers from my bag. She protested, citing my asymmetrical, sticky nethers, and I mumbled something about trimming and coming back to finish off. That was a lie. I am NEVER going back into that evil Madgician’s lair. She only let me pay for the brows, which is a bald (!) admission of wax guilt if ever I’ve seen one.

  I had to rush into a chemist for a home waxing kit before school pick-up, and then we had to get to gymnastics, and in the hall loos I weed in my knickers because they were stuck to my wax clumps and I couldn’t get them down in time.

  I’m still now too frightened to inspect myself closely for fear that part of my vulva has been ripped off and left behind in Madge’s rubbish bin. But I’ve got to go and finish the waxing as best I can while everyone’s asleep, and on the slim chance that Hugh gets amorous (and stuck to my bits). Tra-la-la.

  SATURDAY 1st APRIL

  This morning I woke up to screaming and thought immediately that we’d been hit by the Third Bad Thing. But it was just that Eloise had drawn a very realistic-looking spider on the loo roll for April Fools’ Day. Mary-Lou was her unfortunate victim. It took me ages to calm her down and there’s every chance she won’t trust toilet rolls ever again. As an apology, Eloise gave her a hug and all the apricot delights from her lunch box.

  So I’m thinking that the Madge Debacle must have been the other bad thing.

  MONDAY 3rd APRIL

  Today I brought in a ‘Wardrobe Editor’, which is a person you pay to sort out your style. (I was hoping she’d just assign me one but it doesn’t work that way, apparently.) Her name is Ellie and she’s responsible for Isobel’s style, which is quite mesmerising. So I was hoping for striking at the very least.

  When she arrived (looking amazing in animal-print pants, no less), Ellie told me, ‘The essence of my business is to help people pull together complete outfits from their existing pieces (clothes) with only the addition of a few key items.’

  But as it turned out I think I might have tainted her essence, because she didn’t seem to be able to find much in the way of outfit-forming pieces. She did a lot of culling at first but then had to go back to the cull pile because there was hardly anything left. Then she said, tellingly, ‘We may need to buy a bit more than those key pieces. It’ll be more like a style shop. Next level. How does that sit with you?’

  ‘Fine,’ I said, thinking of my Starlit money. ‘Great.’ Gosh, it felt good not to have to worry. Or suggest Target women’s department.

  ‘Good,’ she said, peering at the housecoat I made when Eloise turned two. (Useful, with a doily sewn onto the pocket. I wear it when the children are sick in bed and I’m squeezing lemons and boiling a chicken carcass and being altogether nurturing and lovely.)

  Other casualties of Cyclone Ellie included six pairs of jeans (apparently 501s will not be making a comeback unless they’re ‘reconditioned’ to ease their tummy-cutting propensity), my Japanese silk pyjamas, my black orchestra skirts and a fringed suede jacket. She let me keep a few of the shirts, jeans and jumpers that are my current uniform. She said they are very ‘shabby chic’ but I’m pretty sure she was hard-pressed for compliments. Shabby chic peaked a decade ago. And I’m not an overstuffed white
couch.

  ‘Okay, how about Thursday for the style shop?’ she asked. ‘Can you manage until then?’

  ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘I usually wear the same thing all week anyway.’

  She looked worried so I added, ‘I do a wash on Wednesdays.’

  ‘Well, just pop on some activewear for Thursday if you like. Easy for the change rooms.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said, making a mental note to buy some activewear before Thursday.

  Then as a thank you for being her ‘guinea pig’ (but probably more as a ‘sorry I couldn’t help you’) she gave me a cosmetic gift voucher, along with the advice, ‘Go for full-coverage natural, with plumpers.’ (WTF?) ‘And make sure they don’t give you a pink lip. Browns are your tones.’

  Since when did lipstick become ‘lip’ and pants ‘a pant’? I have funny visions of me with a brown lip and a missing trouser leg.

  It’s no wonder style-y people like Ellie think I’m odd. (They say cute and quirky, but they mean odd.)

  And now I’m sitting in the much-emptier wardrobe wondering what will fill the space vacated by Susannah the Violist’s clothes. This is a scary VERY EXCITING thought. Blank canvases, uncolonised lands, etc. Surely it’s the perfect opportunity for exciting and passionate reinventions, the start of something new.

  I do feel a bit sort of empty, though. Beige. Hurry up, Thursday. Ooh, but I hope the money drops into my account before then. Might have to use the credit card.

  WEDNESDAY 5th APRIL

  It was our wedding anniversary yesterday. I was trying not to make too big a thing about it in case it detracted from the Brynkirra surprise. Also it’s sixteen years, so not a particularly significant number. And because poor old Tuesday is probably the most unromantic day of the week. I was just going to do a slightly posher version of my roast chicken to honour the occasion but Hugh sailed triumphantly into breakfast and said, ‘Happy anniversary, my dear wife. I don’t have a present but I’m taking us all out to dinner tonight.’