Leo was silent.
I was worked up. ‘I know we got her room done, but the rest of the house? She can cook all the healthy meals she likes, but there’s nowhere to eat. The table’s piled high with years of junk. And to cook anything, she’d need to clear and clean the stovetop, and the oven, not to mention finding and scrubbing pots, pans, plates, and cutlery. It’s a big job.’
Leo sipped his wine while I served the pasta, and then said, ‘Yes, I know all of that. But not every kid lives in an ideal family. I can’t change the situation she lives in, but I can have faith in her, and encourage her to try to change it in little ways. Let her know that we’re there for her. Incidentally, have you seen how Harry will do anything she asks. She needs to get him more on side.’
Harry has a lot to answer for, I thought. At certain times during the long afternoon, I’d wanted to shake him until his teeth rattled in his head.
Leo ate his pasta, apparently forgetting he wasn’t hungry. ‘Fantastic pasta, Trent. I just want to get her through to leaving school and going to uni. Then she can move out.’
‘She could stay here with us.’
‘She’d never agree. Bernie would see it as rejection, a judgment on her. Alison wouldn’t hurt her that much.’
‘What is it with Bernie? How did she get like this?’
‘My understanding’s patchy. She had some kind of nervous breakdown when she was twenty-one, stayed in bed for weeks. It was at the time when I was having a lot of problems myself, trying to be a model son for the Judge. Then as she seemed to be recovering, I went to the clinic and then to India. When I came home she was virtually a prisoner in the house, wouldn’t go out anywhere unless Mum dragged her. Then she’d be likely to have a panic attack.’
‘Has she had help?’
‘Yes. When Mum was alive she had regular appointments with a psychiatrist, but she fell apart when Mum died. She didn’t even visit Mum in hospital. Couldn’t go out the front door.’ He shook his head.
‘After your mother’s death, I can imagine what it must have been like for her in that house with the Judge.’
Leo looked baffled by these memories. ‘She just got worse and worse. The Judge more or less ignored her.’
‘I don’t get it, Leo. I mean, you came through your own breakdown and you’re one of the most mentally healthy people I’ve ever met. What happened to her?’
‘Bernie was always very vulnerable, I don’t really know why.’
‘She’s like a frightened animal.’
We took a glass of wine each into the living room, and Chester settled on the couch with me. I suggested that we might watch Sixty Minutes, but neither of us could be bothered.
‘What’s Harry’s story?’ I asked.
‘I honestly don’t know. He never talks about himself. Never talks full stop.’
‘He seems sort of, I don’t know the word, a bit slow,’ I remarked. ‘I can’t fathom how he can let his daughter live in that place.’
Leo nodded before taking a big sip of his wine. ‘Yes, I know what you mean. When he worked for Dad at the house in Toorak, there wasn’t anything he couldn’t do with his hands, and he was a whiz in the garden. But I always thought there was a bit of brain damage. He couldn’t hold a conversation, and couldn’t look you in the eye.’
‘How on earth did he end up with Bernie?’
‘Well, think about it.’ Leo stood and opened the door to let Chester out for his nightly sniff around the garden. ‘Mum’s gone. Bernie’s terrified of the Judge. She wants to get out of that house but can’t because her phobia keeps her trapped inside. Harry’s kind to her, gradually convinces her to come out to the garden, stays beside her, supports her. Now she has someone else to cling to. He’s older than her, and she can lean on him. She wouldn’t have needed much convincing to go away with him, and then let the Judge know after the fact.’
‘But the Judge rescued them, didn’t he?’
‘In a way. He had to come in and take over as usual. He bought that house for them, and he gives her an allowance. Harry still gets a little bit of work every now and then, but most of the time he just looks after Bernie.’
‘What about Alison?’ I was on a roll and needed to learn as much as I could about this perplexing family.
‘She was born in their second year together. You know, Trent, the place was always messy, although not as bad as it is now. But the two of them genuinely love Alison. In their own way they did everything they could for her. Harry would play with her for hours. They took her to playgroups, and to kinder and later to school. But things deteriorated when she was at primary school. It was so bad at one stage that one of the neighbours got the Department to check on Alison’s safety.’
‘What happened?’
‘They were given two weeks to fix the place up or Alison was going into care. Bernie was hysterical. I went and helped them clear it out; it really did take two weeks. So they avoided losing her then, but it’s always on their minds. Any day they know the Department could turn up. They must be terrified that she’s talking to this counsellor at school.’
‘Thank God she’s talking to someone.’
Chapter 10
Colin Brennan
Friday, 25 March
She arrived on the 3.15pm train from Melbourne, and stepped onto the platform looking for me.
A smile of recognition broke across her face, and she came towards me through the crowd of people alighting and boarding. For a breath-taking moment it was 1955, and I was watching Mary come to me across the library quadrangle at Melbourne University. I couldn’t speak. She had the same startling blue eyes, the same luxuriant, dark brown hair, the poised bearing of someone moving through the world untouched by its ugliness.
It was Alison, grown into a young woman, and dressed in jeans, light blue checked shirt and sandals for the warm day. I felt tears, and struggled to disguise them. I wouldn’t be a maudlin old fool.
I bent to kiss her and took her heavy school bag.
‘You look well, Grandpa,’ she said, slipping her arm through mine as if it hadn’t been four years since we’d seen each other.
I was overcome and foolishly full of pride to have this lovely young woman, my granddaughter, walking arm in arm with me. In my vanity, I hoped we’d see someone I knew. I wanted to show her off.
‘You’ve brought school work,’ I commented as we loaded her heavy school bag, laptop and backpack into the car.
‘Yes, lots of assignments, but there’ll still be time for the beach.’
On the drive back to Golden Beach, I filled the air with small talk like a nervous adolescent, but she seemed not to notice that I was chattering. She had the same self-containment I had recognised in her when she was small. She had made her own world, of necessity I suppose, and she would relate to everyone from her firm ground within it. There were secrets she would not give away. I found it both admirable and sad that she had needed to build this carapace.
At the house, without bothering about her bags, she was up the stairs and across the room to look out at the sea. She opened the window and the wash of brine and seaweed, the thunder of breakers, the squawking of seagulls flooded in.
‘Oh, there are lots of people on the beach.’
It was Good Friday, the beginning of the school holidays, and perhaps the last stretch of sunshine before winter. There were beach umbrellas, little ones in those melanoma-proof bathers they wore these days, dogs, a few hopefuls waiting for an early evening bite, and kites sailing high in a gusty wind. I wished I could keep forever the image of her slim figure and strong back framed against the sunlit window.
Chapter 11
Alison Brennan
Friday, 25 March
Grandpa looked good. His hair was still thick and whiter than ever. He had a high forehead, which made him look distinguished. He was more slumped in the shoulders though. Well, I should have expected that, as he was about eighty years old.
As soon as I’d dumped my bags, I went ac
ross to the beach. I sat and wriggled my toes in the sand, watching the waves come in. A big, muscular dog ran up to me, but it only wanted to sniff and play. I patted its head and scratched its ears until its owner called it away. I watched a seagull soaring up high. It seemed to be sailing on the wind. Along the beach two boys flew kites. Higher and higher they climbed as the boys ran and called to each other.
It must be awesome to fly, to feel the wind hold you up, to slide and dip on it like on a rollercoaster. I imagined just leaving everything and climbing into the air.
When I talked to Mrs Goodall yesterday, she gave me a sheet of paper and a texta and asked me to draw two concentric circles. Then she asked me to draw a symbol of myself right at the centre of the circles. I was thinking about coming here to the beach the next day, so I drew a seagull. She asked me why I chose a seagull, and I said because it could go anywhere, it was free; it could climb high in the clean air. Mrs Goodall said it was a good symbol for me. I was like a bird that needed to get free of a cage.
Then she asked me to put around the inner circle all the people I could rely on for support and help. So I put her, then Grandpa, and Leo and Trent, and finally Dad. I didn’t put Mum, although I would have if I were doing this even a few months ago. Mum was still on my side then. Mrs Goodall asked me why there were no friends of my own age in the circle. I had to explain that it was too hard for me to have friends. I couldn’t bring them to my house — they’d die of disgust.
‘But do you have to bring them to your house?’ she asked. ‘Couldn’t you go out at the weekends, be together at lunchtime, study together in the library? You might find there are girls and boys who also have problems at home, maybe even problems like yours. No one has a perfect family.’
Then she asked me to put in the outer circle all the other things that helped me, not people this time, but hobbies, and other things that I enjoyed. So I put my sport, of course, my gym workouts and being on the swimming team. I put books, because I loved reading.
She asked me if I would consider looking for support online. She gave me the address of a blog run by children of hoarders. She said that she’d been following it for a while and she thought it would help me. ‘Another forum of support, maybe,’ she said.
As the day began to cool, I retraced those circles on the sand, and thought about that seagull, and opening the door of my cage little by little.
Only a month or so ago it seemed impossible that I would ever be able to get out of that house. But there were little rays of light. I was opening the cage bit by bit. Clearing out my room was the first, then getting Grandma’s desk. Then coming here to spend the holidays with Grandpa.
I told Dad first that I was going to Grandpa’s, and he was cool, but I knew what Mum’s reaction would be, so I had left it until the day before.
‘Oh, by the way, Mum, I’m going to Grandpa’s house for the holidays,’ I had announced her to.
She stared at me with a horrified expression, as if she was the child and I was the adult abandoning her. After the weekend when we cleared out my room, she didn’t get out of bed for a week. I brought her tea and food, but she wouldn’t look at me. She’d be in bed now, burrowing in, nursing her hurt feelings, telling herself that she was a failure, that I didn’t love her, that she didn’t deserve me.
I do love Mum, I always have. But she thinks love means being like her, giving in to her. She thinks that if I love her, I won’t try to break out, to have a life. Everything I do to change my life and build a future for myself upsets her, but I have to try, otherwise my life will be just as horrible as hers.
I was tracing the circles on the sand, thinking about all of that when Grandpa found me. Quickly, I brushed the circles away.
‘Ready to eat?’
I was starving.
So we walked back to the house. Grandpa was going to cook fish; of course, it was Good Friday.
Grandpa’s very religious; I must remember that.
I didn’t know much about religion, although I was baptised and I made my First Communion and Confirmation in primary school. Mum and Dad didn’t go to church — another failure of their parenting, Grandpa probably thought.
I made a salad to go with the fish, using tomatoes and lettuce from Grandpa’s garden, with avocado and lemon juice. Grandpa steamed new potatoes and fried the fish in butter. It was delicious. We didn’t talk much, there was no need — we were both introverts.
After dinner, he sat in front of the TV, and then I wandered down to the store for an ice-cream. There were people everywhere, eating fish and chips, and kids playing in the park next to the beach. There was a lot of activity around a caravan parked outside the store. There was a fishing competition and this was where the fish were weighed and judged. I ate my ice-cream and felt very relaxed, almost happy.
Back at the house I set up my laptop and found the blog Mrs Goodall had told me about. There were hundreds of pages, written by kids in the same situation as me. I was reading my life. I began to copy pieces and saved them in a new document. I wanted to build up a picture, to get a wider perspective on my situation, as Mrs Goodall would have said.
This was the first thing I saved.
While hoarding appears most dramatically to be about ‘stuff’, to a child of a hoarder, it’s really about relationships, family dynamics, shame, and self-worth. Many children of hoarders have been conditioned — consciously or otherwise — to believe that they are less important than things.
The words underlined themselves in my head: shame, self-worth, stuff more important. Yes, that was the feeling — that Mum cared more about her stuff than about me. She should have cared that I couldn’t bring people to the house. She should have cared that we couldn’t eat a meal at the table or cook in the kitchen because of the cockroaches. She should have cared that I couldn’t shower at home, that the house stunk, and that I had to lock my bedroom to keep a private space for myself.
I was resentful, and it was a different feeling from what I had before. Then I was just filled with sadness for her. I didn’t want to hurt her. I wanted to protect her and help her keep her secret. But now I was beginning to see that my life was important too, and that her stuff shouldn’t be more important than me.
Things were beginning to change for me. Before now, I forgave Mum for everything. I loved her in that helpless kind of way you had when you were a little kid. You didn’t know what to do — you were stuck.
Now I could see that there were other people and things that mattered. I didn’t know if I could go on forgiving her for the rest of her life.
I’d bought a copy of Sonya Hartnett’s Golden Boys the day before, and I was longing to read it. I took a shower, called goodnight to Grandpa and went to bed with the book. Tomorrow I’d make a timeline for completing the assignments. The sound and smell of the ocean blew in the open window.
Chapter 12
Alison Brennan
Sunday, 10 April
The two weeks were like a late summer. I spent hours reading and walking on the beach, and watching the waves barrelling in from Bass Strait. When Uncle Leo came to visit, I played with Chester on the beach. I threw a ball and he raced furiously to pick it up, and then he stood covered in sand, wagging his tail, refusing to give up the ball until I prised it from his mouth. Chester made me laugh. We had a barbecue lunch in the garden that day and there was no sign of old ‘Mr Grumble Bum’, as Uncle Leo called Grandpa behind his back. Perhaps it helped that Trent was working that day and couldn’t be there.
Grandpa was kind to me, but not in a pushy or smothering way. He showed me photos of my grandmother, and she was just as lovely as Uncle Leo had said. Grandpa also told me I was like her, and I looked for signs of myself in her straight figure, in her hair and her smile. There were photos of their wedding, old, faded, black and whites, and lots of photos of Grandma with the children.
Mum was a shy, blonde girl clinging to her mother, and Leo was a sturdy boy, looking straight into the camera. There was a beautifu
l photo of their first car, a Dodge Wayfarer Grandpa said, which they bought in 1958, just after they were married. It was a big, shiny, black car, sleek and handsome. Grandpa sat proudly in the driver’s seat and Grandma, wearing a navy blue suit, with a navy hat and white gloves, stood beside the car waving at the camera. Grandpa couldn’t stop looking at the photo.
‘She was lovely,’ I said.
‘Yes, she was a lovely car,’ he said.
‘I meant Grandma,’ I said, and we both laughed.
I didn’t think about Mum and Dad much over those two weeks. I worked through my assignments and followed the blog Mrs Goodall had told me about. Sometimes very early in the morning I sat on the sand while Grandpa fished, and in the evenings we walked together to the store for ice-creams, eating them as we watched the children in the park.
On the last day of the holidays, when Grandpa drove me to the station in Sale, I held my tears back.
‘Come again soon, dear girl,’ he said as he kissed me.
Then I was on the train, with a nervous ache in my stomach, and three hours to prepare myself for what I would find at home.
I felt sick as I drew nearer to the house. The front yard was worse than ever; the junk that Trent had thrown into the skip seemed to have come back and multiplied ten times. The front door wasn’t locked, but there were piles of papers and boxes wedged behind it. I sent them skittering as I forced my bags and myself through. I climbed over the rubbish in the front room, slipping and sliding, trying to get a footing. The path I had tried to clear through it all before I left had disappeared.
The Blooming Of Alison Brennan Page 5
