by Joy Dettman
So that was that, or it was until Eddy phoned a taxi company and asked how much it would cost to take a taxi to Melbourne, and refused to hang up until given an approximate figure – an outrageous figure.
‘Give it up,’ Mick said.
Alan bought in then. He had money in the bank he was prepared to give up if it got rid of Mavis for a week. Watts paid pocket money into the twins’ joint account each month. Alan rarely spent his.
‘I’ll go you halves,’ Vinnie said, prepared to give up precious money from his car account to get rid of her.
That was their plan until Sunday morning when Doctor Jones called back. He had a patient he was transferring to a city hospital at seven o’clock on Monday morning. If Mavis’s admittance to hospital could be moved back to Monday, she could ride down in the ambulance.
‘Leave it with me, Edward,’ he said when he had all the relevant phone numbers.
It looked as if Mavis was going, one way or another. Once there, whether she was transferred to a psych ward or sliced and diced, she’d need hospital clothing.
The reject shop sold a bit of everything and what they sold was cheap. She paid thirty-two dollars for two nightgowns, a pair of plastic flip-flop scuffs, three pairs of knickers, a toothbrush, toothpaste, a can of spray deodorant and a container for soap.
Eddy owned a good-looking case but when he dragged it out from under his bunk, it was bigger than they remembered so Lori rode off again, this time to the Salvos’ op-shop. Anything she’d ever needed she’d found there. That day she found a small green case with zips that closed, wheels that worked and an adjustable handle that didn’t, or it refused to stay up. But how much can you expect for three dollars?
It was packed and on the table when Mavis came out and caught Lori folding her washed and repaired dressing gown. Of course she thought that they were sending her to Bendigo. Her behaviour from that point suggested that they ought to be.
They ran. The little kids didn’t return until after dark, until a bowl of hot Xanax custard calmed Mavis sufficiently for Lori and Eddy to explain that Doctor Jones was sending her down to a Melbourne hospital to that Richard Gere skin specialist, who was going to fix her under-sag disease.
‘Melbourne?’ Mavis asked.
‘You’ll be down there for a week.’
‘Melbourne?’
‘Melbourne, Mave.’
She slept then, slept through chips and potato cakes and battered flake.
They were still eating when Doctor Jones phoned. He’d done it, got her admittance moved forward. He told Eddy that the ambulance would be at the house at seven o’clock tomorrow morning. Lori went to bed that night worrying about the morning, about how they’d get Mavis out of bed at seven, how they’d get her medicated, and if they did, if the ambulance would get her to the hospital before the Xanax wore off.
She shouldn’t have worried. Be it out of concern for his accident victim’s spine or not, that good old dude was at their front door a few minutes after half past six, which was Mavis’s night-time.
He zapped her while she was sleeping. Vinnie and two paramedics moved her off her bed to a trolley, and at two minutes after seven, Mavis was driven away.
Eddy wasn’t. He’d expected to ride with Mavis but the paramedics refused to take him. He had to hand over Mavis’s medication, then catch the V/Line bus, which didn’t leave Willama until eight-thirty.
peace
Jamesy had Matty-duty on Monday. Lori swapped him. The last few days had exhausted her. Also she hadn’t done her homework, and she needed access to her mobile. Eddy had included her number and his on the forms he’d filled in for Clay.
The ambulance would have been at the hospital by eleven. Her mobile didn’t ring. Eddy’s bus wouldn’t get there until after midday, when he’d have to find his way to the hospital, which according to Google was east of the city.
There were hospitals everywhere in Melbourne. Henry used to drive Mick down to one of them, about his leg. He’d been operated on at a different hospital, then when he was over the operation, he’d been packed off to a rehabilitation place in the suburbs. Vinnie had been carted off to a mid-city hospital the day he was pack-attacked for the money he’d made washing used cars at a caryard – Greg one of his attackers, and probably the one with the knife. There’d been too much of Vinnie for a knife to get through to anything vital, but he’d have a scar on his back for life.
He knew a bit about Melbourne, as did Mick. Eddy claimed to know the city like the back of his hand. Lori had seen it once, or seen bits of it as she’d been dragged off a bus and onto a tram, then off the tram to walk. She’d seen water that stretched so far it touched the sky, or that’s how it had seemed to a seven-year-old. She’d seen Eva’s tall red-brick house and her castle wall of green hedge, but a seven-year-old’s memories become scattered and she wasn’t sure if they were memories or hearsay.
No phone call by midday. She fed Matty a sandwich, then got rid of him into the lounge room. He’d watch videos all day if they’d let him, which was why he loved Tuesdays. Nelly allowed him to watch her home-recorded videos back to back.
One o’clock and still no call from the hospital or from Eddy, Lori started cleaning the brick room which she hadn’t touched in months. She started at the loo end. Porcelain is funny stuff, a shake of detergent, a dash of bleach, a bit of brushing and it came up like new. She bucketed and broomed the cement floor. It was too rough to mop.
One-thirty and still no call. Two-thirty and Matty’s video ended. When he came out to tell her, he discovered that Mavis’s television was of the same vintage as Nelly’s. He knew how to turn it on, and did – then installed himself on Mavis’s recliner.
Lori sent a text to Eddy. He didn’t reply, or not until the boys were home from school.
A crazy day. Currently on route to Watts’s office, via train. Had to take a taxi out to the hospital. It cost most of what I brought with me. Will phone you from hotel.
What’s happening with her?
No insurmountable problems. I spoke to a sister about her pills, how she ‘sometimes’ refused to take them. They’ve got her in a two-bed ward, with a television. While I was there, they interrupted Judge Judy to take her somewhere for tests.
She’s not killing anyone.
Not yet.
They heard no more from him that day.
On Tuesday, Nelly’s Matty-duty day, four Smyth-Owens met at lunchtime to check Lori’s mobile, expecting to hear that Mavis was running amok, or that some test they’d done had proved her inoperable. No messages from the hospital, no text from Eddy. They texted him.
Will you keep in touch! We’re out of our heads up here.
Her mobile was charging on the kitchen bench when it beeped his reply.
Plug my laptop in. There’s too much to text. I sent an email to Al from a library computer.
Alan plugged it in. Three emails came through, one from Eddy and two from Watts. They read Eddy’s first, which was lucky.
Watts not a happy chappie. If he emails you wanting Mavis’s doctor’s phone number, don’t reply. I told him that her new doctor, name unknown, had arranged her slice and dice. I’m supposed to be on the bus home but will stay until after the operation.
Watts refused to pay for a hotel room so I’m staying at his house. It belonged to his uncle and it’s ramshackle. Most of his neighbours have renovated or rebuilt but his looks as if nothing has been done to it since his uncle bought it. If you had a decent mobile I’d send you a photograph. He’s got one semi-viable bedroom, his, and one with plaster falling off the ceiling. Mine.
His bathroom explains why he took so long to agree to pay for ours. He’s got enough black mould growing on his ceiling to start a plague of legionnaire’s disease.
I found out last night why he hates Mavis’s guts. He and his uncle became our grandfather’s solicitors back when he moved his business down to Melbourne. Henry used to work for them when he was married to Eva so Watts knows the ins and outs
of what happened when Mavis ran off with Henry.
There were pages of it. He must have spent hours at that library. They plugged the laptop into the printer later and printed off six pages of family history, Mavis’s family history, which wasn’t all news to Lori. Kids with big ears hear many things they’re not supposed to, such as Mavis telling Henry that Eva had only married him because he’d been too green to believe that a woman could be in love with another woman. According to Mavis, their father had sent Eva to some cousin in England to break up her relationship with old Alice, which was where she’d met Henry. Her father dropped dead six months after their wedding so he’d never found out that Eva’s love affair had continued under Henry’s nose – like for five years, until he caught them red handed, or red faced one night, in old Alice’s unit over the garage, which was the night Martin happened, which forever more, Lori would wonder how he’d happened.
Until the twins were two years old, Martin hadn’t known he’d had an Aunty Eva. He’d found out about her one night when Henry came home from Melbourne and told Mavis that Eva had offered to take care of the twins when they were released from hospital. Lori couldn’t remember the fireworks. Martin and Donny could.
She’d been six or so when the phone calls about operations began. She could remember Henry fighting Mavis for the telephone, could remember the week he’d been in Melbourne while a team of doctors had repaired two faulty hearts. That was when the war of the worlds had really begun. Mavis hadn’t wanted any more kids, just hadn’t wanted Eva to have any, and when Henry refused to drive her down to Melbourne to get the repaired twins, she’d booked tickets on the bus.
It was the first time Lori had seen Henry’s other family, had seen them briefly from a distance. While Mavis was attempting to kick her way through a locked security door, old Alice had escaped with two auburn-headed boys buckled into the back seat of a posh car.
Lori was eleven before Mavis agreed to sign the adoption papers, in exchange for another fifty thousand dollars. Eva hadn’t posted the second cheque or the adoption documents. She’d driven up to Willama with them, with Mr Watts, old Alice, and the twins.
Their visit started well. It ended with Mavis grabbing Alan, dragging him into the bathroom and locking the door. Eva and her entourage got away with Eddy, which meant that he spent three extra years wrapped safe in hundred-dollar notes while Alan learnt how to dodge and run.
*
Eddy came home on Thursday night with a cold that sounded like legionnaire’s disease. They put him to bed with two Panadol tablets plus an overdose of Matty’s chesty cough medicine. He was still alive come morning, so they repeated the dose. By Saturday he seemed to be improving so it probably wasn’t legionnaire’s.
Mavis wasn’t improving. Nothing had ever gone to plan with her and never would. The hospital phoned Eddy on Saturday night. Mavis had been back in the operating theatre having dead skin cut away.
‘It’s my fault,’ he said, then coughed until he vomited.
It was his fault. He’d conned and connived, had bulldozed through every argument they’d put forward. He’d phoned Doctor Jones. It was Eva and Alice’s fault too. He’d been allowed to grow up thinking that, like Jesus, he could turn water into wine – or turn Mavis into a mother.
He couldn’t return to Melbourne, was in no fit state to and had no money to buy a bus ticket. It was Tuesday before Lori loaned him the fare, because no one could stand living with him.
She was in Woolworths when her mobile beeped. She tossed two apple pies into her trolley before reading his text.
I’ve killed her.
How?
I was sitting with her when her machines went into overdrive and doctors came running from everywhere.
She’s actually dead?
I think so. They made me leave.
Where are you now?
Walking.
Are you still coughing?
Who cares. I just wanted to belong to somebody.
Lori knew how sick he had to be to admit to that. She pushed on down to the milk aisle before replying.
She won’t be dead. You couldn’t kill her with a brick.
Her machines went mad.
They are supposed to. It’s a warning. They flatline when people die. Go back and find out what happened.
What do I do if she flatlined?
You come home where you should be, you idiot.
I’ve never belonged there. I don’t belong anywhere.
He was sick, though to a degree what he’d texted was true. When he’d first come home, he’d only belonged because of Alan and he’d never belonged at school. No one liked a smart-arse and Eddy was too super smart for his own good, like what year nine student does year twelve maths for the fun of it?
Alan had always been school smart but he had brains enough not to force it down people’s throats. Also, he’d lived with Henry for twelve months, which meant he’d had time enough to connect sketchy infant memories of ‘Daddy’ to the reality of Henry. Eddy had retained no such infant memories, due maybe to the trauma of losing his twin, and while suffering from that, was whisked away from his school and everything else that was familiar and flown half a world away.
Neither twin had seen enough of Mavis to make infant memories of her. It had taken six months for Alan to start believing that the whip-cracking monster might have been his birth mother, whereas, three years later, when Eddy came home specifically to meet his birth mother, Henry had been dead, Mavis’s whip had gone from behind the kitchen door and she’d become a powerless, cigarette-smoking profusion of flesh, permanently eating, permanently slumped on a metal-framed couch in the kitchen, a profusion that had struggled for minutes to get her feet beneath her and when she had, she’d clung to walls, to chairs, to doors, because if she lost her balance for one second, down she’d crash – and it had taken six strong men to get her back onto her feet.
Eddy had seen a lot during his first ‘holiday’ in Dawson Street. When he’d run out of money and returned to St Kilda, Lori and the brothers hadn’t expected to see him again, but he’d crept in one night and woken Lori by playing the beam of his penlight torch in her eyes, then by torchlight, he’d led her out to the brick room.
For an instant she’d thought Mavis dead. She’d seen her sitting on the loo, her head and shoulders slumped against the brick wall.
He hadn’t been worried. ‘It’s under my control,’ he’d said. ‘I’ve got a plan.’
Had adults decided to sentence their mother to twelve months’ solitary confinement for the good of her health, they would have ended up in jail. When you’re a kid, desperation doesn’t leave a lot of brain space for the consideration of legalities or consequences. They’d done it. They’d locked her in and fed her on greens, or mainly on greens.
Her mobile battery out of power, Lori was unable to reply to Eddy’s last text. She picked up what was necessary, paid for her load at the checkout, withdrew a fifty, then rode home to plug the phone into its charger. Three more of his texts came through. She glanced at them, then while the boys packed the food away she sat down to reply.
The hospital has got your number and mine. If she was dead, they would have phoned one or both of us. Go back and find out what happened.
He must have taken her advice because her battery was fully charged, her mobile back in her pocket before it beeped again.
Her heart stopped. They had to shock her back to life with their paddles.
Then you saved her life by getting her into that hospital. If she’d had a heart attack that time when she locked herself in her room, she would have died.
If they hadn’t operated on her she wouldn’t have had a heart attack. They had her anesthetised for hours.
That’s one way to shut her up.
She looks dead. One of the doctors said she’s not healing. They’ve got a pipe down her throat now and they’re dripping antibiotics into her.
An induced coma. They’ll fix her. Come home.
That
‘come home’ actually meant what it said. Home was home and even Vinnie felt it. He came home even if Alan was on dinner duty. He still refused to eat Gok, and that night he arrived home from work with two trays of bulk-buy sausages, two loaves of bread and a two-litre bottle of tomato sauce. Vinnie could fry sausages to perfection. The chook bucket got the Gok.
Even the weather was perfect, not hot, not cold but cold enough at night to snuggle beneath quilts and dream perfect dreams.
Perfection to Vinnie was paint. He’d painted the new door white and because it brightened that black hole back passage, he’d continued with his paint. He painted its walls white, then the kitchen door white, which meant that everyone had to use the front door to get in and out for two days. When he was done with the back passage, he started eyeing off the brick room, now the little kids’ television and play room.
‘No more, Vinnie,’ Lori said.
‘Righto,’ he said, but continued stepping over Lego blocks while pacing off its length.
The kitchen extension had used up less than half of the back veranda. Martin had bricked in what remained, bricked up to the east-side end of the veranda then turned north until his bricks were level with the corner of Mick and Vinnie’s room, where he’d turned his bricks again and bricked back to join up with the weatherboards, which had created more railway tunnel than room.
‘It’s the length of that bloody eyesore that makes it look so narrow,’ Vinnie said when he stopped his size thirteen toe-to-heel measuring. Mick got his tape measure and a scrap of paper. That room was barely two and a half metres wide but close to five and a half metres in length.
‘We could get rid of a metre of it if we put up a partition wall to block off the loo,’ he said. ‘Grab the drill for me, Vin.’
It was Henry’s old drill and it didn’t appreciate being asked to drill concrete, so Vinnie walked up to talk to Bert, who owned every tool ever invented.
