‘I’m scared,’ said Marjorie.
‘I know,’ said Ruby, not looking at her sister. She wanted to say, So am I. But she couldn’t say that. She had Marjorie to look after. ‘We just have to take it one day at a time,’ she said instead. ‘Lamb chops day then cold meat day then shepherd’s pie day then lamb stew day then roast lamb day – one day at a time.’ Ruby pushed open the car door and clambered out. ‘Come on,’ she said, shouldering her schoolbag. ‘Let’s see what lamb chops day has for us.’
The two girls walked down the path and up the steps to the front verandah, down the hallway and into the kitchen. Where they found Elise peeling the vegetables. Unlike Pa, the sight of it scared the wits out of them. Probably because they were weak women and scared more easily than men. They stood crowded together just inside the kitchen doorway – Marjorie with her arms dangling by her sides, and Ruby with her arm around Marjorie. ‘You’re peeling the vegies. That’s my job,’ blurted Marjorie.
Elise looked up from her peelings. She blinked at the girls. ‘For Pete’s sake, Marjorie. How many times do I have to tell you? It is vegetables.’
‘For Pete’s sake yourself, Mother. You’re peeling my vegies,’ repeated Marjorie, raising her voice. Her legs had frozen. She couldn’t move her arms. She didn’t know what to do.
Ruby moved forward. ‘It’s chops tonight, isn’t it?’ she said, putting her schoolbag down on the kitchen floor as slowly and quietly as possible. All the while not taking her eyes off Elise. ‘Is there anything we can do to help?’
‘That would be lovely,’ said Elise brightly. ‘Why don’t you go and feed the chickens and collect the eggs? Marjorie can set the table.’
Marjorie’s eyes tried to jump out of their sockets in an effort to grab Ruby and keep her in the kitchen. Ruby’s eyes told Marjorie how very quick the chook feeding and egg collecting would be.
Ruby tore out the back door so fast it clacked a multitude of clacks in disapproval. She raced down the dirt path, out the back gate and headed for the chook shed. No time today to check for snakes in the feed bin. Ruby slashed the bucket into the seconds wheat and headed out the shed door in the same movement. She slammed through the saggy wire gate of the chook yard and sprayed the startled chooks with wheat before charging into the chook house to ratchet the eggs as quickly as possible into the bottom of her skirt. A quick spew of water into the forty-four-gallon-drum water trough, lock the gate and stumble home – fully egg-laden – as fast as she could stumble.
Marjorie loved setting the table. A properly set table was a sign of steadfastness. Of dependability. It was a measure of the health of a household. A person who could set a table properly day after day was a person of self-discipline. A person who could set a table properly day after day was a person in control of their own life – despite who might have been peeling the vegies.
Marjorie snapped the tablecloth high above the bare wooden table and let it drift downwards to clothe the undressed. She walked around the table and smoothed the corners before moving to the cutlery drawer.
Five square-shaped bone-handled knives, yellowed and weary from use. Five forks. Marjorie placed these precisely, as she always did. Knife and fork for Bill at one end. Knife and fork for Pa at the other. Knife and fork for Elise on the left side of Bill. Knife and fork each for Ruby and Marjorie. With the knife edges facing into the middle and the fork tines facing upwards. Back to the cutlery drawer. Five dessert spoons and dessert forks. And the walk around the table was repeated. With the bowl of the spoons and the tines of the forks facing upwards. Marjorie scrutinised the placement to make sure the edges of the cutlery were in exact alignment.
Over to the pantry cupboard for the cut-glass salt and pepper shakers – to be placed in front of Bill. In line. Touching. Then over to the fridge – quietly burping its kerosene into the hallway – for the butter. She collected the butter knife and the butter dish. Marjorie sliced a slab of butter from the square and placed it in the butter dish. And placed the butter dish, with the butter knife, in front of Pa.
She collected five serviette rings with their serviettes rolled up inside. And walked around the table carefully placing serviette rings and serviettes squarely across the top of the table settings for each person.
Marjorie was adrift from the Mallee. Floating tranquil in a place where order and pattern and place mattered. She had just stepped back to survey the completed table when Ruby and the eggs burst back through the kitchen door.
Marjorie looked up at Ruby. Startled by her sudden reappearance. She looked down at the perfect table and smiled. And remembered her mother.
Ruby glided across the kitchen and began moving eggs from her skirt to the washing bowl. ‘How is she?’ Ruby whispered while watching Elise’s shoulders checking saucepans on the stove.
Marjorie stared at Ruby. ‘I dunno. Same?’
‘Marjorie!’ hissed Ruby. ‘Haven’t you been watching Mum?’
Marjorie stared. ‘No,’ she said.
By the time Bill came in from the back paddock, Pa was seated at his end of the table and tea was ready to be served. It was a tea like they had not had for a very long time. Elise had fried the chops black and hard, and boiled the cabbage until it sagged limp and exhausted on the bottom of the saucepan. But it was a nice bright green because she had not forgotten to add the soda. Ruby had salvaged the burnt potatoes by mashing them with a chopped raw onion. Elise was putting food on plates and handing them to Ruby and Marjorie to place on the table. ‘Hello, Bill,’ said Elise.
Marjorie and Ruby watched Bill as he studied Elise for the positioning of the tea cosy hat. He looked at Ruby and Marjorie. But they were not going to give him any of their carefully collected information. They were just kids. They went back to placing the plates of brutalised chops, exhausted cabbage and salvaged potato on the table. Bill looked at Pa and Pa was looking happy with the world. A man’s life was back on an even keel if a woman was cooking his tea again. Everyone sat down at the table.
‘Who cooked the buggery out of these chops?’ asked Pa, stabbing them with his fork. ‘You don’t need to flamin’ butcher them. They’re already dead before they hit the frying pan.’
No one answered. Everyone was looking at their plates. Everyone except Elise. Who was smiling brightly.
*
‘Maybe it’s a good thing,’ said Marjorie later that night.
‘Who knows?’ said Ruby.
‘I’m sick of having to do all the work. It’s about time our mother started acting like a normal mother.’
‘If cooking and cleaning and washing makes you a normal mother, then you and I are already normal mothers,’ said Ruby.
‘Why didn’t Dad say something?’
Ruby was tired. She had been carrying that wheat bag on her shoulders for a long time now, and she had too many people in it. ‘I don’t know. You should have done more than just set the table.’
But that comment from Ruby was silly and it scared Marjorie. So she rolled over to face the wall.
Chapter 9
The house settled and shifted on its foundations as the seasons changed and the air moved from hot to cold. And Elise settled and shifted on her foundations as she allowed the truth to seep in and get to work on cutting away the vanity from her mind.
Ruby and Marjorie shifted too, after that night. They shifted back into tuning. They listened and listened. But were not able to detect anything. They crept into the house each day after school, wary, jumpy for signs, tuning forks at the ready. But all they saw was Elise doing the things a normal mother should do. So after a while they relaxed.
But Elise was busier than they realised. She wasn’t only peeling the vegies and getting the tea and doing the washing and ironing. Each day, in the peace and quiet of her kitchen, Elise was listening to the plastic flowers – for instruction. It was some weeks before anyone noticed. And it was Marjorie who noticed first
. ‘Have you noticed Mum smiling a lot more?’ she asked one night.
‘Isn’t that a good thing?’ asked Ruby’s pillow.
‘Do you think the smile is a little bit glittery?’
Ruby raised herself on an elbow and stared across the darkness at Marjorie’s bed. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I dunno. Glittery. Like that time Mum made the rose garden,’ whispered Marjorie, so the walls wouldn’t hear.
Ruby said nothing for a long time. But Marjorie knew Ruby was still propped up on her elbow. Checking. Because that was what she would be doing if Ruby had asked her that question. ‘You’re right. It is a bit glittery,’ Ruby said.
Ruby and Marjorie watched Elise and Bill and Pa over the next few days. Elise cooked and cleaned. She burnt the potatoes and stewed the cabbage. She scorched the roast and clagged the porridge. She played the piano and sang. She didn’t draw.
And Elise got more and more glittery. At least, to Ruby and Marjorie. They watched Bill and Pa, but they seemed serene. Only Ruby and Marjorie seemed to notice any glitter.
The girls started watching out for bad nerves again. The back of the ute seemed full these days. Other things besides schoolbags were catching a lift home and interrupting their conversations. ‘The railway kids are saying Mum looks happy lately,’ said Ruby.
‘How would they know?’
‘Exactly.’
Or: ‘Wheat Bag Boy cornered me today. He said, Jimmy Waghorn can’t help your mother anymore, can he?’
‘What did you say?’
‘I just looked at him.’ (I looked at his chipped front tooth, his mouth, those hazel eyes. I looked at him leaning against the lockers with his hands in his pockets – waiting to help. I wanted to tell him I was scared. I wanted to tell him I don’t know what to do; and I wish I could run away with Ruby until everything is alright. That I could turn up at the hut and find Jimmy Waghorn on the old blue bench. I wanted to tell him everything is hunky dory). Marjorie’s eyes screwed themselves up at the memory. ‘He asked if there was anything he could do.’
Ruby and Marjorie kept watch for the bad nerves. But it was too late. Elise had already moved on. The lessons with the powerful plastic preachers had finished. They had gaily passed on all necessary instructions. And Elise set about putting the instructions into practice.
With the practice consisting of cleaning. Because cleanliness is next to godliness. And God, unlike Elise, was decent and not proud and did not presume to have talent. Elise was released at last from the burden of presumptive talent, and was content. She spent her solitary days in that house – cleaning. She was a cleaning industry. Single-minded in her quest for cleanliness.
Everyone was happy. Pa was happy because the dams were full and Elise was smiling when he got back. Bill was happy because the cropping was good and Elise was smiling when he got back. Elise was happy because the beautiful plastic flowers had waved and bounced and told her to clean. Because cleaning would result in absolution: from pride and presumption. Only Ruby and Marjorie were not happy. But they were just kids as far as Bill and Pa were concerned. And what did kids really know about happiness – even if they were old enough to be in their last years of high school?
Ruby and Marjorie crept off to school each day – trying to leave no footprint on the pristine lino they crossed. And they crept about school each day – trying to leave no imprint on the pristine lives they encountered everywhere. And they crept home again – trying to contain their gathering dread at the growing glittery smile, and the expanding industry of cleanliness. While they waited for their father to do something.
But Elise didn’t have time to wait for Bill to do something. Elise discovered she had been imperfect in her cleaning industry. And contentment started to run out of her like the sullied water she was now constantly sloshing out the back door into the dirt. She knew she had to step up and do more. Late into the night, Elise sat alone in the lounge room, playing all manner of music from masters much greater than her, and singing all manner of opera from composers far superior to her.
Bill was relieved because Elise was singing and playing. The singing and playing made no difference to Pa. Ruby and Marjorie watched and waited. The piano and the singing were as wonderful and beautiful as always. But it was also clamorous and gleeful. Those girls could pick out a crescendo. They could hear it building.
And Elise was further away than ever from Marjorie on the other side of the tongue-in-groove wall. Elise was a hive of industry and Marjorie tried not to remember the other beehive and the other industry and what came after.
‘How come we don’t see your mother around town anymore?’ asked Jesse. But Marjorie was too exhausted to answer. Worn out from too much glitter and cleanliness and energy.
But Elise wasn’t worn out. And one night Marjorie’s mother entered an all-night vigil of cleaning. And cleansed pride from her soul.
*
Marjorie knew it was three o’clock in the morning. Because spotting three o’clock in the morning is the same right around the world. The Mallee outside her bedroom window was still and knowing and quiet, waiting out the remaining hours for the dawn of a new day. There were sounds but they were all of the night, familiar and carrying on the pre-dawn air. The shrill of a fox hunting through the paddocks. The answering call of the barn owl hunting through the night. The pinging of the forty-four-gallon drums, sucking themselves in and complaining in staccato about the chilly semi-desert air. And across the night – the second train. The wail of the train whistle arcing through the miles as the train headed out along the lonely Mallee distances. The rhythmic beat of the wheels on the train tracks carrying clear and perfect for miles and miles and miles in the dark of the still, Mallee, three-o’clock-in-the-morning time.
She was woken by Elise in the kitchen. Bill was always first in the kitchen. Way before sunrise, summer or winter, Bill would be up. He would light the fire, fix the percolator for Elise and put on the kettle to make a cup of tea for himself and Pa. But it was Elise who Marjorie could hear in the kitchen. Moving and singing. Marjorie’s ears tried to burrow into the pillow. But it was too late. They had already heard it. And ears know you can’t take back a hearing once it has been heard.
‘Ruby,’ Marjorie whispered across the post-midnight darkness in the bedroom. ‘Ruby. Wake up. I think I heard Mum singing. To those plastic bloody flowers.’
But Ruby didn’t wake up. So Marjorie had to go and have a look all by herself. She crept up to the kitchen door and listened to that marvellous voice singing softly to the receiving plastic. She pushed on the door to find Elise ecstatic and full of glitter in her transcendence.
‘Hello, dear,’ said smiling, glittery Elise, glancing up from her cleansing washing and her redemptive singing. ‘Be careful of the clean floor. You will have to sit on the table. Don’t touch anything.’
Marjorie stood and stared at her mother. And Elise smiled happily back. ‘Well, don’t just stand there, young lady. You’ll leave marks on the floor. Get up on the table.’ So Marjorie climbed up on the table and sat there with all the kitchen chairs – which had already been ordered onto the table – and watched as Elise briskly cleaned and softly sang.
Marjorie tucked her feet into the bottom of her nightie and hugged her knees. She was cold and scared. Elise had cleaned everything. Saucepans were scrubbed and shiny. Cutlery had been washed – again – and was laid out in perfect rows under one of the chairs on the table. Cooking pots and pudding bowls and mixing bowls and baking pans were washed and sparkling and stacked everywhere. Crockery was clean and stacked on the bench. Glassware was sparkling and glinting. The walls were dripping soapy tears down their tongue-in-groove surfaces. Even the old stove had been given a baptism, and it gleamed obsidian and malice at its treatment.
But Elise hadn’t finished. She was administering to a huge preserving pan on the stove and a bucket on the hearth. ‘Wait there,’ she
ordered. ‘I have the copper going in the washhouse so I can have more boiling water – the kettle isn’t up to it all.’ Elise shook her head at the kettle. She knew what it was to be deemed not up to something. ‘I won’t be long,’ she said as she disappeared out the back door and into the distant gathering dawn.
Marjorie sat, perched on the table in among the chairs. She didn’t know if she was imprisoned by them or shielded by them. And she waited and watched for Elise to come back in, tottering under the weightiness of a full bucket of restorative boiling water.
‘Don’t you think you’ve done enough for one night?’ ventured Marjorie as she watched Elise pour the boiling water into the pan. ‘Don’t you think it’s time to go to bed?’
Elise was outraged in an instant. ‘Don’t you tell me I have done enough, young lady!’ Her lovely grey eyes glared furiously at Marjorie. ‘What would you know about enough? You are nothing but an ingrate.’ The startled bucket sprang from her hand and clattered and splattered onto the kitchen lino.
Marjorie cowered into the meagre protection of the kitchen chairs and hugged her knees. She felt scared and she felt cold, so she shivered for the both of them. Elise went back to her cleaning. Leaving Marjorie there to watch for an eternity. And beg for an eternity. Elise scrubbed and boiled and disdained Marjorie’s fleshly beggings, and reminded Marjorie of her shortcomings: ‘You are a bold, brazen little article, Marjorie,’ Elise said as she threw more items of sacrifice into the pot.
‘I’m sorry,’ Marjorie whispered, looking out at Elise from the bottom of a lake of tears.
Marjorie must have dozed, sagged against the legs of the chairs, because suddenly Bill and Ruby were in the kitchen, and the kitchen was full of early-morning sunlight. And even more clean things. Elise was sitting quietly by the fire, drinking a cup of coffee. No singing to be heard. No righteous anger to be seen.
‘How long have you been here?’ Bill was asking as he put a blanket around Marjorie.
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