by Joy Dettman
Her mobile told her the time and it was far too early to get up, and too cold, but she dressed, then looked at Henry’s old tartan dressing gown, still hanging where he’d left it, on a hook behind the bedroom door. It was woollen and prickly, but it smelt of him and this morning she needed him, so she put it on and tied its tasselled cord tight.
She was sitting close to the stove, reading, when she heard Mick moving about. It took time for him to dress and buckle himself into his brace and boot and it was never a silent time. He woke Vinnie, who was out before Mick.
‘Shit, ah,’ he greeted her.
‘I woke everyone up. Sorry.’
‘Didn’t bloody sleep, did I? She had her television going all night. I reached down to turn the bloody thing off and it didn’t go off, did it?’
‘Pull the fuse out next time,’ Lori directed. ‘It’s the new one on the far right.’
He wanted tea. He made one for Mick, which left them with three teabags. ‘Someone will need to hit a supermarket,’ he said.
‘Not me,’ Lori said.
‘I’ll go,’ Mick said. Since owning his battery-powered wheels, he had been doing a little emergency supermarket shopping.
‘We need too much.’ Or too much for him to haul home. He had enough trouble balancing his brace on that bike without balancing a load.
Coles would be empty at this time of day. They never closed their doors, except on Good Friday, Christmas Day and Cup Day, which, when you came to think about it, was ridiculous, like Jesus and the Melbourne Cup were related.
She ate two slices of toast, emptied her mug, then went out to the back passage where everyone hung their parkas on two rows of hooks Mick had screwed into the weatherboards. Her parka felt cold, even damp, when she slid her arms into the sleeves. They needed a door to keep the outside out, though Mick would need to build one to fit. She coiled her hair then, pulled on a St Kilda football beanie to keep it coiled, then stepped out through the slapping plastic ribbon curtain and into the wind.
There was no traffic about and the Coles car park was almost empty. She leant her bike against a brick wall and thought of Mick, who locked his bike every time he left it. Her own didn’t look worth stealing and it had her name on it anyway.
The wind blew her inside that store, and she was pleased to get in. On days like today you knew that winter was coming to get you. She preferred ten-day heatwaves to the frosts and fogs of winter.
Teabags weren’t on special. She picked up a large packet then continued down that aisle to the milk. She needed to replace that tin of condensed milk and to look at packets of dried milk. Henry used to buy it, used to mix it half and half with fresh. You could taste the difference but it had been drinkable in an emergency. She tossed the cheapest packet into her trolley then pushed on to the fresh milk refrigerators. One big bottle lasted no time at all in their house but was enough to carry home. They were out of bread too. They went through a ton of it, and a ton of butter. They went through umpteen tons of potatoes, but the middle-sized boys could shop for them later. Enough potatoes for one meal was a heavy load.
Only one checkout light showing, she transferred what she’d picked up to the conveyer belt while looking around to see whoever was supposed to be staffing the register. When she saw him emerge from the fruit and veg area, she wished she’d stayed at home. She knew him from school. He was a year-twelve dude, and he knew her too. They’d been amongst the winners at the last intersports meeting. She sprinted. He pole-vaulted.
‘After yesterday’s fiasco, I’d be hiding that,’ he greeted her.
She’d added a Sunday Herald to her shopping, and she thought he must have seen Greg’s photograph inside it. He hadn’t made the front page. Being murdered in prison couldn’t push the new royal baby from that page. Could feel herself blushing, feel the red creeping up, and she wanted to crawl under a rock until he tapped his head. He’d been commenting on her St Kilda beanie. St Kilda had lost badly yesterday.
‘I’m loyal,’ she said, then head down, swiped the yellow bankcard.
‘Any money out?’ he asked.
‘A hundred bucks, thanks,’ she said. The mobile boys always paid cash. Only she and Mick used the card. These days she rarely hit an ATM. Used to, used to hit them hard to pay the bills, but since they’d had home access to the internet, they’d been paying their bills online instead of queuing at the post office with cash.
‘Have a good day,’ he said.
‘Have a look outside and say that again,’ she said. Rain was now being blown in waves by that wind.
‘I won’t see much of it,’ he said. He was one of the decent dudes. There were a few at school who didn’t qualify.
Outside, she shouldered her backpack while waiting for the shower to pass, loaded her bike basket, buckled the milk into Matty’s carry seat, and when the rain eased, she got on her bike and pedalled. She’d done a lot of riding in the rain.
‘I should have told you to get porridge,’ Vinnie greeted her when she came in. He’d cooked the last of their rolled oats. As with sausages, he’d learnt to cook porridge in self-defence. Most of the kids, Lori included, used to groan when they’d smelt Henry’s porridge. He’d never added enough salt and, as with sausages, had served it burnt or half cooked.
She changed out of her wet jeans and was at the table, flipping through the newspaper, searching for ‘Smyth-Owen’, and it took two flips through that paper to find a short piece on page five.
‘They barely mention him,’ she said.
‘What do they say?’ Vinnie asked.
‘Put your glasses on and read it,’ Lori said.
‘I’m cooking. They steam up.’
‘Henry cooked in his,’ she said, but read aloud what they already knew, that both prisoners had weapons, that Smyth-Owen had been stabbed in the neck and was dead on arrival at the hospital.
Mick was more interested in yesterday’s Gazette. On Saturdays the back pages of that paper were full of car advertisements. ‘There’s a Falcon for eight hundred and fifty,’ he said. ‘It’s got a roadworthy.’
‘It’s Jacko Martin’s and it wasn’t roadworthy when he bought it,’ Vinnie said.
Roadworthy or not, Lori would have sold her soul for anything with four wheels and a motor. They needed celery too, and it was long and awkward to manage on a bike. They needed everything today.
‘It’s only done a hundred and sixty K’s,’ Mick said, also wanting a car, one that would pull a trailer. He’d found out that Bunnings had trailers for hire. Like Henry, he had dreams of getting rid of the junk heap, except Mick would do it – if he ever had access to a car and trailer.
‘I want a ute,’ Vinnie said.
‘We need something with a back seat so a few of us can fit in,’ Lori said.
‘There’s a Cortina that’s only done eighty-five thousand,’ Mick said.
‘Too bloody small,’ Vinnie said. He spoke then about test-driving a Commodore with his boss. ‘He offered to lend me the extra.’ Vinnie had fifteen hundred and seventy dollars saved in his car account.
They were discussing a ute, a six-thousand-dollar Holden ute, when the ute Vinnie craved reversed fast down their driveway, a very red, very long and sleek ute that had come off Ford’s production line in the mid-seventies.
‘What’s he doing here?’ The porridge moved off the hob, its lid on. Vinnie went out the back to see what Martin was doing there and why he’d driven his ute in. Since Mavis had attacked its headlight with the wood axe he’d never driven that ute into the yard. This morning, he continued reversing until the back tray was level with their ribboned curtain.
‘You can’t park it there,’ Lori greeted him.
‘And good morning to you, Splint,’ he said. No one could remember a time when he and Donny hadn’t called her Splint, as in ‘chip off the old block’.
He owned a black vinyl cover that clipped flat over the ute’s tray, but he’d replaced it this morning with a blue tarp, roped over a bulky load – whic
h meant that whatever he’d brought into town he’d needed to keep dry, so it wasn’t wood.
The boys helped untie the ropes, helped remove and fold the tarp, while Lori stared at what that tarp’s removal had exposed, cartons, cases, a big red toolbox and a huge flat-screened television.
‘What’s going on?’ she asked.
‘Grab the end of the TV for me, Vin,’ Martin said. ‘It’s heavier than it looks.’
They already had three televisions and had no space for a fourth, but Martin and Vinnie carried it into the kitchen and placed it flat against the louvered wall, alongside the old desk that held their small television.
‘What’s going on?’ she asked again.
‘I’m unloading my ute, Splint. Help, or clear that passage.’
She helped. Vinnie hauled in two classy suitcases. She carried in a carton of bits and pieces. Martin had brought his bricklaying tools home in the same old vinyl bag they’d left home in. They went into the laundry where they made space for his toolbox beside Mick’s smaller toolbox.
‘She kicked you out?’ Lori guessed. ‘Because of Greg.’
‘Have you got any coffee?’ he asked.
‘It’s a year or so past its use-by.’
‘So am I, so make it strong,’ he said. ‘Black, two heaped teaspoons and the same of sugar.’
He didn’t tell them what was going on, or not until his ute was empty, not until its custom-made cover had been clipped on, until the ute was back in the driveway, its nose pointed towards the street, ready for a quick get-away. He didn’t tell them what was going on until the porridge had been served, full bowls of it, plus a near full mixing bowl.
‘We’re finished,’ he said. ‘We’re getting a divorce.’
Breaking up with him had been Miss Piggy’s favourite pastime before he’d married her, which was probably why he’d married her, which apparently hadn’t worked.
The rest of the kids either heard Martin or smelt porridge. They came out dressed for the day, other than Matty, who could dress himself but was too lazy to do it. This morning Lori had better things to do, so he ate in his pyjamas, his eyes never leaving that almost stranger eating porridge in their kitchen. Martin ate a slice of toast with a liberal spreading of Nelly’s apricot jam. She made the best jams. She made chutney and green tomato pickles and marmalade, though since Henry’s death, she’d kept her marmalade on her own side of the street.
‘How was she last night?’ Martin asked.
‘Normal,’ Eddy said.
‘She’s going to throw a screamer when she sees you,’ Lori said, and turned to Matty, who was studying Martin’s television with jammy fingers. ‘Get away from that!’
‘Why isn’t there something behind it?’ he asked.
‘It’s all inside,’ Martin said.
‘What’s behind Miss Piggy kicking you out?’ Lori asked.
‘Drop it, Splint.’
She never dropped anything, or not until she had the guts of the story. ‘It’s a bit late for her to use Greg as an excuse, isn’t it? I would have imagined she’d be celebrating the fact that she no longer had a jail-bird brother-in-law. Was it because you got her car home late?’
‘Did anyone ever tell you that you’re like an annoying gnat in the earhole? Buzz off.’
‘You’d better buzz off before she wakes up,’ she said, gesturing with her thumb towards the brick room.
‘I won’t be around for long,’ he said.
‘Meaning that Miss Piggy will change her mind about getting a divorce when she cools down?’
‘She might. I won’t, now shut up about it.’
‘I’ll shut up if you say car or Greg. I promise.’
‘She didn’t know about Greg and her car was clean before I took it home.’ He ate the last of his toast, eyed her, then came clean. ‘They want a kid. I don’t. I want to buy a unit in town. They don’t. She started last night; her father bought in; I’d had a bastard of a day, so I did my block.’
Most of the kids had seen him do his block, with Mavis.
‘And . . .?’
Martin shrugged. ‘I told him to consider himself a lucky man that I hadn’t got his daughter pregnant, that given her mental health, his bull-headed genes and my murky roots, any grandkid we might have produced would have ended up a home-grown terrorist.’
Martin didn’t do his block often, but when he did it was a joy to watch. His tongue became a cutting tool, and a bantam or not, he’d stand toe to toe with Mavis and counter her every insult with one better.
‘Did you mention Lily?’
He eyed her but didn’t reply.
They were a United Nations of a family, German and English on Mavis’s side but according to a document Mavis had received from some adoption authority, Henry’s grandfather had been an Afghan-Indian.
‘Who is Lily?’ Neil asked. Nothing got by that kid.
‘A lily is a flower,’ Lori said. She was also Henry’s birth mother. He’d been born in a blacks’ camp to a Lily someone, and for the first time since she’d burnt those adoption papers, Lori wished she hadn’t. She could remember bits of what had been written, like the Male child (Henry) bit, and the deserted by his mother Lily (fourteen/fifteen) bit. His birth father, a European, had taken off before Henry’s birth.
He’d been one of the ‘stolen’ kids, or as he used to say, the ‘saved’. The Smyth-Owens, an English couple, had adopted him. They must have been living in Perth at the time. Lori remembered reading Perth on those papers. He hadn’t been raised there. His new parents had taken him back to England and never bothered to tell him that he hadn’t been their natural son, which might have explained why he’d been like he’d been, sort of lost, which might have been why he’d had twelve kids, so he wouldn’t feel so lost.
The conversation had swung back to cars. Martin knew a dude who worked at Davis’s garage who wanted to sell his Toyota.
‘It’s old but it’s been well cared for,’ he said.
‘Bert’s old Toyota keeps on going. What’s he want for it?’ Vinnie asked.
‘They offered him a thousand as a trade-in. It’s worth a lot more.’
‘How many K’s?’
‘I’ll give him a call if you’re interested.’
‘Why is he selling?’ Vinnie asked.
‘He’s got a job in the mines, in Western Australia. I might end up over there.’
‘I’m going over there one day to look for our roots,’ Lori said. ‘Lily was only fourteen when Henry was born, which would make her around her mid-seventies now. And she would have had other kids.’
‘Lily who?’ Neil asked.
‘We don’t know,’ Martin said. ‘Henry was adopted – and looking for his natural mother would be like looking for a needle in a haystack.’
Lori eyed him. He’d changed, or he’d grown up. A few years ago he’d threatened to murder her if she’d breathed one word about Henry’s adoption, or Lily.
‘Why?’ Neil asked.
‘Because his mother was fourteen and he was dying of pneumonia so the Child Welfare people took him to a hospital,’ Lori said.
‘I did too . . . have monia,’ Matty said.
‘Pneumonia,’ Lori corrected.
‘Why is it new?’ Matty asked.
‘Is that new television for us?’ Neil asked.
‘On loan,’ Martin said.
‘Can we watch it?’ Matty asked.
‘If you get dressed,’ Martin said.
‘After, I will.’
‘Now, or the television stays off,’ Lori said.
They’d need to move that television to a safer place and there was only one relatively safe place for it, on an angle in the south-eastern corner of the kitchen, which meant moving the old desk and the small television.
They did it fast, carried the desk out to the laundry, the television and DVD player into the lounge room. The desk was junk, but the television was less than three years old. They moved Martin’s newer model into the corner. It had it
s own stand, which made it lower than they’d become accustomed to, but before it was plugged in Matty, dressed, shoes on, was squatting in front of it.
Nine pairs of eyes watched that screen awake to a remote control. Martin tormented those eyes for a time with a god show before flicking to a football talk show and then to an Attenborough nature show when Timmy and Neil joined Matty on their knees before that metre-plus screen where the animals were life-sized and their colours were real, and to look at those kids’ faces you’d think they’d been in heaven.
eleven
Mavis interrupted a cowboy movie, though not until one-fifteen. ‘Get out of my house,’ she greeted her firstborn.
She flopped down to her chair and the ultra-crumpled black dress rode up to her thighs. Of course she swung her chair around so she could see the television, which meant that the trio on the floor could see up past her knobbly white thighs to her knickers.
‘Breakfast or lunch?’ Lori asked. They’d made a pile of sandwiches and were currently mass-producing mugs of tea.
‘Toast,’ Mavis ordered before turning to continue her attack on Martin. ‘Don’t think you can buy your way back into my house with my own bloody money.’
Lori made toast, buttered and spread jam over two slices while Mavis ranted and Martin, seated down the far end of the table with his remote control, kept upping the television’s volume but otherwise ignoring her. They’d warned him to ignore her. Lori had threatened to murder him if he said one word to upset Mavis.
His mobile upset her. It had started ringing before midday and hadn’t stopped since. He looked at it each time it rang but didn’t accept the call.
Lori snatched it from his hand the next time it rang and ran outside with it, Matty behind her until he hit the rain. He stood bellowing at the ribboned curtain. She ran around to the ute.
It was unlocked. She got into its passenger seat, worked out how to turn off the mobile, then put it in the glove box and wondered why Martin had to leave his wife today, wondered why Greg had to die yesterday, wondered why the hell one single thing could never turn out the way she’d imagined it would.
Martin followed his mobile. ‘Where is it?’ he asked as he got in beside her.
