by Joy Dettman
He wasn’t a howler but was a fast mover, and was at the passage door before turning to ask, ‘What did I do?’
Absolutely nothing. He’d asked far more embarrassing questions – and had Mavis been in a good mood, she would have laughed. Her attempt to knock his brains out of his earhole had nothing to do with condoms. It was the commercial that channel kept repeating and repeating, or maybe the memory of why she’d been in Henry’s unit the last time she’d seen that movie, or the memory of not making him use a condom.
How he had come to sleep with his seventeen-year-old sister-in-law, god only knew. To Lori, he’d been the personification of all things decent. There was no doubt that Martin was his. He had his colouring, his features and his build – which could have been why Mavis hated him, though it was more likely to be because Henry had refused to drive her to an abortion clinic, which every kid in the house knew about.
She’d never accepted blame, not for anything. She used to blame her obesity on malfunctioning glands and on Mick for messing up her glands. According to Martin, she hadn’t been grossly overweight until Henry sold their caravan and moved his family into 108.
Lori, the last of the kids to leave the lounge room, left the door open, to allow some of the cool to seep out. Mavis got up from her chair and slammed it. Lori opened it.
‘Shut that bloody door!’
Lori pointed the remote control, hit the power button, then shut the door.
‘Turn it on, you Henry bitch!’
‘Start acting like a human being and I might,’ Lori yelled.
Mavis turned it on and Lori went out to the kitchen – where Roman Holiday was playing on a small television, the three little kids sitting in a row on the floor watching it. They’d watch anything.
They didn’t look like brothers, though apart from the twins, no two of Henry’s sons looked alike. How could they when their parents had evolved from different species of ape, Henry, from the capuchin/chimp line, Mavis from the orangutan/killer gorilla line. Their eyes were blue, blue-green or brown, wide or deep-set, but all were alike today, all wary and watchful as small animals who needed to graze in killer gorilla territory but were ever ready to run.
Neil was ninety percent Mavis in appearance. He had the same big blue eyes, her hair and her long genes. Timmy was all Henry, dark headed, dark eyed and small. Matty? Who knew what he’d become? He looked more girl than boy, with his mass of sun-bleached ringlets, which Lori refused to shear. Next year she’d be forced to, as she’d been forced to shear Neil and Timmy. The primary school crawled with nits.
Alan and Eddy were blue-eyed, auburn-haired hybrids who’d end up around Henry’s height. Jamesy and Lori were reverse hybrids with Henry’s eyes and colouring but Mavis’s frizz and long genes. Mick? His hair was the darkest red, so dark that in some lights it looked brown, and he looked nothing like Henry or Mavis.
‘Anyone feel like a game of cards?’ he asked.
‘Me,’ Neil replied. He was the necessary sixth when Vinnie wasn’t around to play, which he rarely was. Vinnie played football for the Willama seconds, went to practice any chance he got, and hung around with his mates when there was no practice. Most mornings they saw him before his boss picked him up for work.
Lori walked out to the back passage, which wasn’t wide enough to be a passage and had no door. It was a rear exit, that’s all, an exit with a multicoloured plastic ribbon curtain they’d hung to keep insects out. It wasn’t long enough. Shade cloth would have been better, would have kept both sun and insects out, but would have made that passage too dark, according to Mick. The ribbons slapped as she pushed between them and she cursed them and the sun and Mavis, and the air conditioner.
She’d warned Mick what would happen, and it had – but it didn’t need to.
More familiar now with fuses, she turned the power off at the main before reclaiming the clean fuse. Then with a glance over her shoulder to see if the boys were coming, she walked down to the levee.
Animals would stampede to get to water. Once amid the trees, she stampeded. She was knee deep in cool before remembering what now lived permanently in one of her pockets. Water didn’t damage fuses, vinyl wallets or what was in hers, but didn’t do electronics a lot of good. She stepped back to the sand to slide her mobile into one of her sneakers. And it didn’t look safe.
Her old yowie cave would be safe. Way back, way, way back, when she’d been in second or third grade, she’d found that gap between the tall clay bank of the river and the roots of a fallen tree. It was upstream from their swimming bend. Her sneakers pulled over wet and sandy feet she walked up to see if her cave had caved in.
It hadn’t. The saplings beside it had grown, as had the reed bed below it, but her cave, well above the waterline, was as she’d last seen it. In certain places, the banks of that river were high enough to hold back Noah’s flood.
She got down to her knees to look for snakes or other intruders. She’d found two ginger kittens in it one winter morning, one stiff and cold but the other one still floppy. She’d taken it home to Donny. He’d rubbed life back into it, then fed it warm milk from an eyedropper. Ginger Meggs, they’d named him, Meggsie. He’d hung around for a year or so.
She placed her phone, wallet and fuse on a shelf of root and clay and was in the water before she heard the boys coming. She didn’t turn back but struck out for the far side and was sitting on her log when she saw Mick removing his brace. He’d stripped off his shirt but wouldn’t remove his jeans. These days, only he and Vinnie saw his crippled leg. Lori had when he’d been younger. She’d likened it to a jelly snake.
She watched him hop to the water’s edge, sit, then with his hands push himself out to deep enough water where his jelly-snake leg didn’t hold him back. He’d been a skinny eight-year-old before Martin introduced him to the miracle of water. He’d developed powerful shoulders since and was the only other one who swam the river, or the only other one living at home. He’d need to hop upstream to the boat ramp to start back to his brace, which he’d done many times at night and without an audience. Today there were half a dozen swimmers upstream from the ramp.
Had he been born with two strong legs, he would have become a builder like Bert Matthews, who used to build houses. He, Mick and Vinnie had built an excellent two-roomed chook pen before they’d pulled down the old pen, which had been a relief to every one of the kids, or to those old enough to remember. A place of nightmares, that old chook pen.
Mick heaved himself easily up to the log, which if the level of that river continued to fall would be high and dry, and he said so. Lori nodded. She hadn’t swum over there to talk and wasn’t in the mood to discuss rain or lack of it.
‘Those caravans must be as hot as hell today,’ he said.
Lori nodded. They’d have air conditioners, she thought. A huge van that appeared to have been built around a truck probably had its own toilet and shower.
‘That’s the type I’ll buy when I’m rich,’ she said, pointing.
‘Going to rob a bank?’
‘I might.’
‘You’ll end up in jail.’
‘Anything would be better than living with her.’
‘She knew that you’d done something to the air conditioner. She came to the kitchen out of her brain.’
‘What’s new?’
They sat in silence then, three strong legs rippling the water while watching the swimmers near the boat ramp. One grey-headed couple who had to be sixty were laughing and playing in the shallows like a pair of kids – like some kids. Laughter was rare at 108. Kids there learnt to listen, to watch for signs while walking on eggshells.
‘I’m sick of it, Mick,’ she said.
‘Of what?’
‘Of her. Of us pussy-footing around her. And sick of her thinking that she’s got the right to damn near knock Neil’s head off his shoulders for no reason.’
‘She’s been pretty okay mostly.’
‘I’m sick of saying that too. Sick of us cra
wling around her when she’s being pretty okay, sick of forever waiting for her to blow. I’m not doing it anymore.’
She left him then and walked up to the park’s amenities block. Mavis had given her nervous diarrhoea.
That park had ten loos in two rows and half as many shower cubicles. She used to envy their showers and still envied their multiple loos. They had two at home but only Mavis used the brick room loo.
She was pumping liquid soap from a dispenser when a woman who might have been seventy came in. Tourists loved Willama, because of its river, because of its history, though mainly because it was only a few hours’ drive from Melbourne. Half of that city’s population drove up here at Christmas and Easter time.
‘Unbelievable weather,’ the woman said. ‘My daughter was just saying that it’s forty-two degrees in Melbourne.’
‘You’re from Melbourne?’ Lori asked.
‘Used to be, love. Where are you from?’
‘Someplace where I’d rather not be,’ Lori said. She rinsed her hands, then returned to Mick, envying that woman’s daughter, and wondering what life might have been like if she’d been born into a normal family, or been adopted early, like Henry.
Over the river, Matty was bellowing about something. Timmy never howled and never had. He worried Lori. Matty didn’t worry her, nor did Neil. They were survivors.
‘We’ll have to go back,’ she said as the bellow rose in intensity.
The swimmers near the boat ramp were looking at the scene over the river, which suggested that a mob of big boys were murdering a four-year-old. All they were doing was attempting not to let him get swept away by the current.
The strangers’ eyes turned from the murder scene to stare at Mick when he hopped down to the ramp, one hand on Lori’s shoulder. A long time ago he’d grown accustomed to people staring, and today he did what Henry used to tell him to do. He smiled and spoke to those staring strangers.
‘It’s the only place to be today,’ he said.
‘You can say that again,’ one of the males replied.
Lori supported him until it was safe to shallow-dive. They knew their river. Side by side, they powered back to their home bank, showing off a little, or making a statement like, This is our river and in this place we’re free.
‘Just because I forgot to bring a rope today doesn’t mean I won’t bring it next time,’ Lori said to that foot-stamping bellowing little tyrant.
‘They won’t let me swim!’
‘See those people over there? Well, one of them works at a place where they lock up screaming kids who don’t do as they’re told and feed them on bug stew and crusts, and if you don’t shut up that noise, he’ll be over here in his boat to get you.’
Her threats may not have been motherly. He might grow to adulthood with a million hang-ups, but if he did grow to adulthood, she and the other kids would be the reason why.
They swam or sat in the shallows until the sun disappeared behind the caravan park’s trees, until the sky that had been white hot all day turned red hot, until Matty started whingeing about being hungry.
It had been hunger that drove them home on that last day of Henry. Matty a non-swimming, non-walking baby, had ridden home on Lori’s back. She’d seen the cluster of neighbours out the front of Henry’s vacant block, had seen the police cars parked at the kerb and the ambulance and a fire truck. What kid alive wouldn’t have run down to see what the fuss had been about.
You don’t know what it is that you’re seeing, not at first, or maybe your brain doesn’t want to know, not at first. From a distance, she’d seen Henry’s clothing dangling behind the chicken-wire walls of the old chook pen. Then she’d recognised his polished black shoe, a length of silver tinsel dangling from its sole, like Merry Christmas, everyone.
love from daddy
Little kids eventually drop from exhaustion. By eleven three little boys were sleeping, spreadeagled over the queen bed, not one finger or toe touching a brother. Every window in the house was open, as was the front door, but outside there wasn’t a breath of a breeze to blow through – and the utter torment of knowing that the entire house, or the original part of it, could have been closed up and refrigerated only made that night-time thirty-degree heat that much worse – as did the replay of Lori’s first major war with Mavis, which she couldn’t stop replaying.
They’d got home from the river at around eight, found her stuffing ice-cream and apricot jam down her throat, and she’d almost choked on a mouthful when she’d screeched at them to turn on her air conditioner.
That war had been brewing since September, when Eddy almost lost his front teeth. Lori hadn’t come out of it unscathed. For a week afterwards she’d gone to school with fingernail gouges in her cheek. Mavis had cast-iron fingernails, and as she never did anything to wear them down, they were lethal weapons.
She hadn’t marked anyone tonight. She’d come at Lori, ready to kill with her fingernails, and had got two litres of semi-hot water thrown in her face, water Lori had been about to pour into the kettle – because the old electric jug had been in two pieces on the hearth.
Parts of that replay were beautiful to watch. Anyone with half a brain knew that wet vinyl was slippery when your feet were bare. Not Mavis. Still determined to kill for that air conditioner, she’d kept coming and gone for a skate. Her claws still reaching, down she’d crashed. They’d left her on her back, on the kitchen floor, as helpless as a slug in mud, and walked over to the Bridge Street take-away. They hadn’t gone home until after ten.
She’d got herself up, gone on a second smashing spree, smashed plates, mugs and three of the louvers, which wasn’t a major problem. The last time they’d had to phone the glass man, they’d asked him to cut them a dozen spares. The dinner plates were a greater problem. But there was a bright side to that too. Mavis had left a trail of bloody footprints out to the brick room.
When you can’t sleep, your mind becomes one of those multilevel American freeways you see in movies, every road jam-packed with racing traffic until they crash into a roadblock. At every intersection when Lori attempted to divert her mind, she ended up crashing into the roadblock of Mavis.
Somewhere, buried deep down inside, she’d always felt a squirm of something for her mother, not a daughterly love squirm, but a form of pity squirm. It was dead tonight, killed by the heat, like a worm caught on concrete when the sun is burning down. It shrivels away to dirt.
She was thinking of shrivelled worms when Vinnie attempted to creep down the central passage to his bed, which was impossible for him to do when every second floorboard protested his weight.
He’d always been huge. His size got him through primary school in the usual number of years due to the teachers pushing him through. He’d been at high school before Crank Tank noticed that he couldn’t read or write to save his life. The main reason why he’d left home had been because the high school had been trying to make him repeat year seven.
He was the best adjusted Smyth-Owen, due maybe to not being able to read and write. He had a whole bunch of friends who called him Vino. He had a boss who called him ‘mate’, a boss who hadn’t known that he couldn’t read when he gave him the job. He’d found out the day he drove him down to sit for his learner’s permit. Of course his boss blamed poor eyesight. He’d made the appointment for an eye test.
Glasses, ultra-strong glasses, hadn’t improved Vinnie’s reading and writing but had allowed him to see a computer screen. He’d wanted that driving permit badly enough to tolerate Lori and Mick’s bullying. They’d stood over him for weeks, making him work his way through Timmy’s Learning to Read computer game. Vinnie had worked through to level four before he tried again to get his permit, and got it, probably because of his phenomenal memory, not the Learning to Read game.
He remembered family stuff no one else remembered. A while ago, he’d told the twins that he could remember the day they were born. They were fourteen months younger than Lori. She was sixteen months younger than Mick, w
ho was fourteen months younger than Vinnie, which would have made Vinnie not quite four years old the night Mavis had slipped two instead of one, both with holes in their hearts.
Doctor Jones, who had delivered them, told Henry they might not live long enough for an ambulance to get them to Melbourne, so Henry had driven all of the kids up to see their faulty baby brothers before they died.
‘You were in a glass case like Snow White and you had price tags around your ankles. I thought I was seeing double,’ Vinnie said the other night.
Those babies spent too little time at home for Lori to remember more than the moles on their scrawny backsides, due to not being able to take Mavis without antibiotics, which Henry used to spoon into them by the bottle full.
Lori would have been four years old the first time she’d heard about Evanalice, a Melbourne woman Henry knew who’d owned a germ-free house and had enough money to pay a nurse to keep the twins alive between hospital visits, which, to a four-year-old, had put an end to the long, drawn-out saga of the faulty twins.
She’d turned six before learning that Evanalice had been two women, Eva and Alice. That same year she’d also learnt that city doctors could slice a pair of faulty twins wide open and repair holes in hearts – also that the Eva half of those two women had been Aunty Eva, Mavis’s sister, who having put so much effort and money into keeping the twins alive, had expected to adopt them.
If anyone other than her own sister had offered fifty thousand for a couple of Mso squiggles on adoption papers, Mavis would have signed faster than the speed of light. She’d had Neil in the pram by then. She’d accepted Eva’s cheque, had paid it into the bank before Henry made the appointment at a solicitor’s office where they’d been supposed to sign the adoption papers. She’d burnt those, but Eva’s fifty thousand still paid for the kitchen’s extension.
They’d had a landline telephone in those days which Mavis had spent a lot of her life screeching into. When Henry had it disconnected, letters started arriving from a Mrs E. J. Smyth-Owen.
