by Joy Dettman
‘You know you’ll go back to her, so go now and save us a whole mess of pain.’
‘I’m not going back,’ he said. ‘Where is it?’
‘You know that you can’t live here.’
‘She just accused me of stealing her mobile. Since when did she own a mobile?’
‘She didn’t. She means the one you gave to Mick for emergencies. I pitched its charger into the school bin years ago, so she couldn’t order a new chequebook.’
He remembered that chequebook, and the fees Mavis had accrued when she’d written too many cheques. ‘I thought she meant recent.’
‘Twenty years is recent to her,’ Lori said. ‘Do us and yourself a favour and go home. She was good last night.’ He found his mobile and turned it on. ‘You like her phoning you and begging,’ she accused.
‘I’m expecting a call from Sean,’ he said.
‘He’ll leave a message. Turn it off. Anyway, living out there couldn’t possibly be worse than living here.’ Television now screeching commercials, Mavis’s screeching at the window, Matty’s bellowing.
‘It’s as bad. I married my mother,’ he said. ‘Last night I saw myself turning into Henry. My mother-in-law is a Henry. I got out while I still had the guts to get out, Splint – if you want the truth of it. And I’m not going back.’
‘She’ll rip out what’s left of your guts with her fingernails,’ Lori said. She, that snarling face at the window.
‘She looks better,’ he said.
‘Jamesy reckons she’ll pick up some desperate dude and get her baby factory up and running again.’
‘Every time I see that kid lately he’s an inch taller.’
‘Try keeping him in shoes and jeans,’ Lori said. ‘Those cabins over the river are empty. Move your stuff into one of them. We can lend you bedding.’
Every cabin had been full at Easter time. There was interesting stuff for tourists to spend their money on at the end of town, where Willama had begun. The council had restored a heap of buildings back to how they might have looked a hundred and fifty years ago. They had a blacksmith’s shed where an old dude who still knew how to shape red-hot metal made souvenir horseshoes, a barber’s shop where tourists who dared could sit through a cut-throat razor shave before going next door to visit the prostitutes – local women who dressed as prostitutes but sold scones and tea instead of themselves.
The rain came down harder, muffling the noise at the window.
‘Why didn’t Henry leave her when he had guts enough?’
‘Misguided loyalty, Splint, or that’s the only reason I ever came up with. Did I hear you telling the boys that you needed potatoes?’
‘We need a lot more than potatoes. I made a list a mile long.’
‘Want to run in and get it?’
‘Just go,’ she said. She’d made that list for the mobile boys, not for herself, and if she was going, she’d be buying more than what was on that list.
He started the motor and they were away.
It was eerie driving through heavy rain, as if there was no world outside of the ute. Martin drove the same roads she’d ridden that morning, turned the same corners until she told him she wanted to go to Woolworths, which was a huge store that sold clothing as well as food.
And its car park was full. On wet Sundays there wasn’t a lot to do in Willama. The open-air market would be closed, no football, no golfing celebrities to watch and the old part of town locked up for winter.
Martin cruised until he found a space beside a covered-in walkway and while he locked his ute, Lori ran for cover.
The trolleys were down the fruit and veg end of the store, so she began with the celery and the potatoes, four five-kilo bags of them, and when four raised Martin’s eyebrows, she added another bag.
‘They’re too heavy to carry on the bike,’ she explained. ‘And one bag lasts us for one meal.’ Pushed on then to the tomatoes.
Until a month ago, they’d picked their own. Woolworths wanted eight dollars for a kilo, and like hell. They’d manage with canned tomatoes for a while. Apples were cheap, and bananas, though not so cheap when you had to buy in bulk. She tossed in a bunch of ten or twelve then walked on, systematically, up one aisle and down the next, tossing in anything they’d need today or next week. Four large bags of rolled oats went in, two large packets of Home Brand Weetbix along with two bags of sugar, not that they needed two bags, but she had the use of Martin’s wheels today. Cans of baked beans are heavy when you buy in bulk. She bought a dozen cans of Home Brand. They might have been made in China but were cheap. She preferred Coles meat pies, but picked up three packets, each containing four. They were a treat and always served with frozen chips on Mick’s dinner-duty nights. He was their fix-it man but no cook.
Large tubs of ice-cream were on special. When she added a tub to her load she caught Martin totalling what was in the trolley. Back in the old days when Henry used to send him to the shops with limited money, Martin used to keep a running total in his head. It might have been where Lori learnt that trick.
‘It’s only a hundred and forty-odd dollars’ worth,’ she said.
‘Are you done?’
‘Bread,’ she said. She always loaded the bread last. If there was one thing she hated more than making multiple school lunches, it was making them out of bread slices crushed into figure eights. ‘And a pair of trousers for her.’ For Mavis.
She’d always flopped onto chairs, her thighs spread, a habit forced on her during her obesity days when each thigh had been thicker than Vinnie’s waist. Most of her fat had melted away but her thighs had sagged, as had the rest of her, and Mister Terrence Clay must have run out of time or staples before reaching them. They needed covering up.
She found a rack of trousers down the clothing end of the store. Most stretched. With no idea what size Mavis might now require, she needed stretchy fabric. She searched through the black ones until finding a pair of eighteens. The fabric was thin but the price tag was good so she added them to her load and walked off in search of stretch tops with long sleeves. Two tops landed in the trolley, one all black and one with a pattern on its front. She picked up a size twenty bra, then swapped it for an eighteen double D. Its cups might have been big enough to hold Mavis’s new melons, which were in the right place but jiggled when she moved.
Martin checked the price of the bra when it landed in the trolley. It wasn’t cheap, only necessary. ‘You’ve got over two hundred bucks’ worth in there now,’ he said.
‘A pair of sneakers for her and I’m done,’ Lori said. Eddy had asked her to buy sneakers. He was determined that Mavis was going to follow her doctor’s instructions, which included walking. She tossed in a pair of white and blue size ten, then Martin pushed the overloaded trolley up to the checkouts.
He knew that Lori used Mavis’s bankcard, and when the load was on the conveyer belt, he walked out to his ute and left her to it, not that he needed to worry. She was tall enough now to look old enough, and even when she had looked like a kid, no one had questioned her use of that card. She had a licence to use it anyway, or an old signed withdrawal form from the bank, and a note Mavis had written once for cigarettes. They’d been sealed into plastic but still lived in her wallet, with Martin’s birthday fifty. She’d spent Donny’s gift card on a black sweater. He wouldn’t have approved of the black. Every time he saw her, he told her that she ought to wear colour. She liked black, which probably said a lot about her character.
Martin was on his mobile when she pushed her trolley out, but he hung up, unclipped a corner of his canvas cover and helped unload multiple bags. His phone rang before the last bag of potatoes was in, and Lori could tell by his phone voice that Miss Piggy was on the other end of that call.
He never would have married her if Henry hadn’t hung himself. Karen Kelly had been his weekend habit, which he would have outgrown if not for those mad, bad, sad weeks after the funeral. It was like a terrorist bomb had gone off and blown their family apart. Donny had app
lied for a transfer and when it came through, he’d left Martin to pay the rent on their unit, plus pay Mavis’s bills, plus feed the kids. It was a blur of time without a signpost marking the way. Greg and Vinnie gone, Mick gone, Alan posted back to St Kilda, Martin engaged, then Child Welfare, which had probably been Miss Piggy’s idea.
Being a married man had conditioned him to handling women’s underwear. Had Mick or Alan been with her when she’d started looking at bras, they would have headed for the exit. Eddy probably would have offered to model one.
They were about to turn into Henry’s driveway when his mobile rang again. It was still ringing when he parked. He picked it up and Miss Piggy must have been howling.
‘Words spoken in anger have consequences, Kaz,’ he said, kindly. He helped unload with one hand, the other holding the phone to his ear. Lori, who didn’t want to hear him being kind, gathered a load of bags and took them inside.
‘You’re not bringing that bantam bastard back in here,’ Mavis greeted her.
‘I’m bringing no one nowhere and he’s got trouble enough without you attacking him. Have a shower and wash your hair,’ she said, dumping her load carelessly. The bag containing the baked beans fell over and as cans thumped to the floor like gunshots, Timmy almost jumped out of his skin. Neil didn’t. He picked them up and stacked them in the cupboard. Lori went out for another load, thinking that Mavis should have been celebrating. If there was a subject she and Mavis agreed on, it was Miss Piggy.
She took the bag of clothing in and tossed it on the table where Mavis could reach it. ‘There’s new stuff in it. Have a shower and put that dress in the wash.’
‘It’s my bloody house and I’ll say who lives in it,’ Mavis yelled. She had to yell to be heard above a gunfight on the television. The cowboy movie was still playing, or another one of its ilk, and the volume was high enough to damage a deaf man’s hearing.
‘Where’s the remote?’ Lori asked.
‘Somewhere,’ Neil replied.
‘Get it and turn that thing down!’
‘Alan hid it,’ Timmy said.
‘Then find Alan,’ she said, and escaped the noise to get another load.
Martin was still on the phone – and his face was hurting – and she wanted to snatch his phone and pitch it and his pig of a wife over the fence. Instead, she picked up four more bags.
‘It’s not working for either of us,’ he said. ‘We were too young, Kaz. We made a mistake and we need to admit it and move on with our lives.’
Did anyone ever move on with their lives, or did they just keep moving in circles from one birthday to the next while life went on around them? Summer had been nearing its end the day Lori turned fifteen. Now winter was almost here, and when summer returned, she’d still be moving in those same circles.
They’d had one glorious month of moving on. They’d achieved so much in so little time, but the road ahead had been detoured again and she was back to circling. She’d bought too much milk and there was no space for it in the fridge, or not until she removed four cartons of eggs.
They had too many chooks. If Bert Matthews or the vacant block’s back neighbours had been difficult, they might have complained to the council. There was some by-law about how many chooks one family was allowed to keep, but those chooks had been keeping Bert and his wife in eggs for a year or more and the family who lived behind them had their own chook pen, plus a crowing rooster. Mick’s cockerels learnt not to crow – if they wanted to keep their heads.
She squeezed the extra bottle of milk in and turned the television off at the wall before heading out for a final load, Matty bawling behind her.
‘It was a stupid movie, and not one you should have been watching,’ she said, and she had a head-on with Martin, who was attempting to come through the plastic ribbons as she was going out.
‘Laundry,’ she said. He had two bags of potatoes. She forced him back, then led him into the laundry and to an old wooden barrel that used to hold Henry’s home-grown potatoes. Matty, still at her side, still complaining about his stolen television, was distracted when she let him remove the tie-wires from the bags while she and Martin got the rest of the potato bags.
‘You’re a better mother than her, Splint,’ Martin said.
‘So are Spud Murphy’s dogs,’ Lori replied.
nipples
She was at the sink, cutting the bunch of celery down to a size that would fit into the crisper and using Henry’s carving knife to do it when Martin came again to the back door, the phone again at his ear. No Mavis. She hadn’t complained about the loss of her cowboy show. She’d gone out to her room to watch it.
‘Tell him he’s a lifesaver,’ Martin said to the phone. ‘Yep . . . Yep. Righto. I’ll be there in ten,’ he said, and came inside. ‘Sean’s father is lending me their van,’ he explained.
‘Out there?’ Lori asked.
‘I’ll tow it in here. They’re pumping up its tyres for me now.’
Mavis must have heard that.
‘You’re not bringing a bloody caravan in here –’
Lori washed two carrots. She never bothered to peel them, just top and tailed them and thought about Sean Dobson’s mother who always wanted to talk when Lori ran into her at the supermarket. Given a choice, any sane person would leave that van where it was.
‘You’ll cut your finger off with that thing one day,’ he said, totally ignoring Mavis.
‘I haven’t yet.’ She split the carrots down their centres so she could lay their halves flat. ‘You’re making a statement –’
‘You’re not making your bloody statement by staying here!’ Mavis yelled.
‘You’re committing yourself,’ Lori continued. ‘Except it’s you who needs committing.’
‘We used to own smaller knives,’ Martin said.
‘We’ve got plenty but this one is always sharp,’ Lori said, then proceeded to dice the carrots while thinking that never before had Martin actually committed to breaking up with Miss Piggy. Nor had he ever admitted before that he’d been too young to get married, which of course he had been, as had anyone who did it before they were forty.
‘I’m off then,’ he said.
‘Don’t you bring that bloody van back here –’
‘I’ll be back,’ he said, like Arnie.
He was back sooner than expected. He must have found Vinnie out the front because they came in together through the front door. Vinnie went to his bedroom.
‘Have you seen a pair of P plates around?’ Martin asked.
‘He keeps them in his boss’s work van,’ Lori said.
‘He said he’d seen my old ones hanging around somewhere. You haven’t seen them about have you, Mavis?’ he called through two open doors, which was pure stirring. Mavis never opened a drawer, and if she did, its contents ended up on the floor.
‘Get out of my bloody house, you bantam bastard –’
‘I thought it was Lori’s. She’s the one doing the work,’ he replied as he continued rifling through drawers.
Her movie must have been over or was too bad to watch, because out she came to dominate with her height, which didn’t work as well as it used to. Lori was close to her height if not to her weight.
‘Got ’em,’ Vinnie called from the passage.
‘Glasses,’ Martin called.
‘I can see distance good enough to drive.’
‘Not in my ute, you can’t,’ Martin said. ‘Glasses, or the deal is off, Vin.’
‘Heil bloody Hitler,’ Vinnie said, but being a licensed driver with no car was painful. He came to the passage door wearing his glasses.
They had thin bronze metal frames which changed his face, or at least offered something more than an unshaven face and a shaven bumpy dome to look at.
‘They suit you,’ Lori said. ‘And they’d look better if you’d let your hair grow.’
‘Bullshit to that,’ he said, and they left, Lori behind them, with the knife.
Mick was out the front. He an
d Lori stood watching the seat of the ute being moved back far enough for Vinnie to sit comfortably. They watched him start up the ute and turn it around as if he drove it every day. They stood watching him to the corner. He didn’t look like their Vinnie but like a stranger who wore glasses he’d chosen to match his few weeks’ growth of beard.
Mick had no beard or glasses to hide his envy. He’d never drive Old Red. It had three pedals on the floor. As an eight-year-old, hobbled by his brace, his eyes had worn that same expression each time he’d watched Vinnie pedal away on his bike. Fourteen before he’d constructed a bike he could ride, a kid’s bike with an extended seat, one pedal, a metal stand for his bad leg and pneumatic trainer wheels. A few kids had laughed at it when he’d started riding to school, but he’d continued riding it until the old bike shop dude gave him that battery-operated bike, and perhaps to prove to himself that he had his own wheels, he walked down the back to get his bike. Then without a word, he was gone.
When Lori returned to the kitchen to peel onions, Mavis was having a shower, the bag of new clothing missing – and Matty had the remote.
‘Where did you find that?’
‘With Eddy’s laptop.’
‘Then put it back where you got it.’
‘I’m allowed to move the channel-changing thing,’ he said and showed her how he could move it.
He’d changed the channel half a dozen times before Mavis came out, when the remote went to his mouth. He’d suck on anything if Mavis was about. Had Lori been holding other than the carving knife and a stick of celery, she might have sucked. Those black pants clung like a second skin, as did the patterned sweat top, which not only moulded her melon boobs but their nipples. They stuck out like twin pistol barrels, aimed and ready to fire.
‘Give me that,’ she said, her hand out for the remote. Matty scrabbled yabby fashion to Lori’s feet, the remote in his hand, which changed the channel to a football talk show. If not exhausted by her shower, then the drying and clothing of herself, Mavis may have fought him for control.
