by Joy Dettman
‘What pension stuff!’ Martin asked.
‘Basic rubbish,’ Lori said, dismissing him and turning again on Eddy.
Martin wasn’t about to be dismissed. ‘What basic rubbish?’
‘Everything, but not since he turned eighteen,’ Lori said. ‘Show him, Vinnie.’
Vinnie did a perfect Mso squiggle on the shopping list, beneath Worcestershire sauce.
‘You bloody little fools,’ Martin moaned.
‘It’s fixed,’ Alan said. He’d sent off a fast email denying culpability.
‘Send him another one and tell him to get Eddy back to his old school, that we don’t need a second mental case in this bloody house,’ Lori said.
‘I should have got the lot of you out of here the day Henry died,’ Martin lamented.
‘You tried hard enough. If we hadn’t taken over, the lot of us would have ended up raped or worse in some nice state-run home. Whatever we’ve had to do is your fault for dobbing Mavis into Child Welfare, so you can keep your nose out of our business in future.’
‘I thought I was doing the right thing –’
‘You stopped using your brain the day you got into bed with Blondie-pig-snout,’ Lori said, and she would have said more had Miss Blondie-pig-snout not chosen that moment to phone.
He didn’t take her call. He pitched his mobile at the stove and its glass and plastic didn’t have a hope when it came into contact with metal. The boys swept up its pieces while Lori measured his battery against her own and wondered why mobile phone companies couldn’t get their heads together and make one size fits all.
*
So Saturday. Matty bawling about childcare, Mavis screeching about his bawling about childcare, the twins killing each other and the wind blowing up hard from the South Pole keeping everyone inside, everyone except Vinnie, who was playing an away game, again with the seniors.
Willama won by five goals, Vinnie’s five.
Sunday was worse than Saturday and when Lori went out to her bike to escape, its back tyre was flat so she took off on foot, Matty behind her. She turned and yelled at him to get home, but he didn’t like home if she wasn’t in it, so he stepped up his pace and his wail.
Timmy and Neil were coming behind him. She could have outpaced them but walked on to the corner, where she turned and waited for them.
‘I don’t like childcare, Lori.’
‘If you don’t shut up right now, I’m going to run again and keep on running.’
He didn’t want her to run. He wanted to hold her hand. She walked on then, holding his hand, Timmy and Neil still loitering behind.
She was the old woman who lived in a shoe. She was Mavis with her never-ending trail of kids, and she wanted to be Leonie, who had only one older brother, or Cathy who had two married sisters, or Shana, an only child. She wanted to be anyone other than Lori Smyth-Owen, but she was Lori Smyth-Owen and she led her trail of kids over the railway lines and down a back road that led to Coles, where she bought three lollipops, bought milk and bread, and where else but home can you go with a trail of kids and two supermarket bags?
Neil reached for the bag of bread. ‘Don’t crush it,’ she said, giving it up so she had a free hand for Matty.
They didn’t go home. She walked her trail of lollipop-sucking kids down Nelly’s driveway, where she knocked and then opened the back door.
‘Can we come in, Nelly?’
‘What’s going on over there?’ Nelly asked.
‘Hell.’
One thing you could say about her little house was that it was easy to keep warm; even her sleep-out was warm once the door was closed, safe and warm and quiet until Matty started again.
‘I don’t want childcare, Nelly.’
‘I don’t want a bawler in my house either,’ Nelly said. ‘Go and find a video.’
‘Martin booked him into that new place that’s just opened out on the highway,’ Lori said. ‘Sean’s sister works there.’
‘Best thing for him,’ Nelly said, and set about boiling the jug for tea.
They came in clutching videos, Matty pushing for Ice Age, Timmy holding a Harry Potter. Neil’s hands were empty. Nelly chose Harry Potter and got it playing while Lori made two mugs of tea.
‘I don’t like Harry Potter.’
‘You can go home if you don’t want to watch it,’ Nelly said. She could handle him. She’d spent a lot of time handling him, and when the door was closed between her kitchen and lounge room, she started talking about school.
‘I’ve missed too much,’ Lori said. ‘And you know as well as me what happened the last time we tried him at childcare.’
‘Because you let him think he’s running the show.’
‘Martin thinks he is now.’
‘He’s seeing his own life replaying through you,’ Nelly said. ‘From the day your father moved in over the road, Martin was more mother to the younger kids than your mother ever was. I was standing at that window a day or two after they moved in – counting heads,’ she said. ‘Martin would have been Neil’s age, and he was on the front veranda trying to bandage Greg’s foot with toilet paper. I went over and told him to get his mother. “We’re not allowed to wake her up,” he said. It was around midday. I thought at the time that she must have been working the night shift somewhere.’
‘She’s never worked in her life,’ Lori said. ‘I could probably get a job at a childcare place, or Woolworths.’
‘Over my dead body,’ Nelly said. ‘You’re a smart cookie, Smithy. Don’t waste it.’
‘I’ve got three overdue assignments and I’ve missed so many maths classes I’ll never catch up. And I need new shoes and my skirt’s too short.’
‘You’ve got a maths genius living with you,’ Nelly said. Eddy was doing year twelve maths and biology – just for fun.
‘He does stuff too fast to follow,’ Lori said.
And Matty was out. ‘I’m scared of Harry Potter.’
‘You just want your own way,’ Nelly said.
‘You can watch Ice Age next,’ Lori said.
‘Only if you behave yourself,’ Nelly added, and she closed the door again. ‘If you keep giving in to him you’ll turn him into a second Greg, Smithy.’
‘He’s nothing like Greg!’
‘He’s got you wrapped around his little finger like your brother had your mother wrapped around his. Young Vinnie was probably punch-drunk before he hit the school room. Every time Greg bawled, she’d go for Vinnie.’
‘I’ve never hit anyone,’ Lori defended, which was no longer true. She’d swung the blow heater cord at Mavis.
‘What do you want to do with your life?’ Nelly asked.
‘I haven’t got one, have I?’
‘You’re alive, you’re fifteen years old and your life will be whatever you make it.’
‘Like Henry’s was? He was educated and he ended up hanging himself.’
Nelly didn’t reply to that. They drank tea and sat listening to Harry Potter until Lori asked, ‘How could anyone cut themselves a length of clothesline wire, find a crate, carry it over to the chook pen and not change their mind on the way there?’
‘I never could work that out. He came over here that Christmas morning with a dozen eggs, a bag of tomatoes and a blue African violet in a pot and he wished me Merry Christmas. He stood at my back door telling me all about your new bike and how you wouldn’t stay off it.’
Her new secondhand bike, built by Mick with Lori painted on its bar, like a brand name. They’d blindfolded her, Mick and Alan, then they’d led her out to the veranda where they’d shrouded that bike with an old sheet. She’d never forget their faces when she’d unveiled her Christmas gift. Its brand name had almost worn away now. Its carry seat that Mick had sat on for months had lost its paint, but it was a good old bike – apart from its punctured tyre, which Mick had probably fixed by now.
She stood then and walked to the window, remembering that last day of Henry, the chooks he’d roasted for Christmas dinner, Mav
is’s crispy roast potatoes, her gravy. It had been the best meal and the best day of Lori’s life until Alan had said, ‘Pass the salt, Dad.’
Henry had never been Dad. It was that word that did it, as if it had made Henry see what he’d done. Or it might have been number Thirteen. Mavis had been six days into curing her menstruation again when he’d cut that length of clothesline wire.
Nelly had spoken. Lori’s mind, back with the length of silver tinsel stuck with chook dung to the sole of Henry’s black shoe, might have been attempting to shake that image away, but Nelly must have thought that shake was disagreement with whatever she’d said.
‘Whether you believe it now or not, it’s a fact, Smithy, and one day, sooner than you think, you’ll realise it.’
Had no idea what she’d said. ‘Maybe.’ It was usually a safe reply.
That window offered an unrestricted view of Henry’s house. Its roof still looked good. She and the mobile boys had spent two days crawling all over it, painting it green, Mick down below, filling jam tins with paint, Jamesy and Neil on the ladder, collecting the empty tins and passing up the full. Every one of the redheads had been burnt to crisps before they’d been done, but look what they’d achieved.
‘Anything had been possible when we had her locked up,’ Lori said. School had been possible. Making friends had been possible. Nothing was possible now.
Mick could put a new lock on the brick room door, except Martin and Vinnie would need to move out or they’d end up in jail. Didn’t want them to move out again, so there was nothing to be done and it was that ‘nothing’ that was eating Lori from the inside out.
‘Send the kids home when their show ends, Nelly,’ she said.
‘You get your homework done,’ Nelly said.
‘I might,’ Lori said.
Might ride out to the cemetery and stamp on Henry’s metal nameplate – if Mick had fixed her puncture. And what would that achieve? There was nothing of Henry beneath that nameplate, or nothing of who he’d been. She left as she’d arrived, no parka, her hair hanging, and the wind whipping it, she walked towards the levee.
There was less wind on its far side but every tree was groaning about the load it had to carry, and she groaned when she heard dirt-bike riders coming up the track. Stepped back fast to hide behind a large tree until they went by, three of them, throwing dust and leaves and choking exhaust fumes in her face. She knew one of the riders. He used to hang around Wendy Johnson before Cody Lewis became the flavour of the month. None of Wendy’s boyfriends had a long shelf life. Cody had lasted a week or two longer than most – and he’d left her a lasting reminder of their time together.
The river looked cold and deserted, as did the caravan park. All so different at Easter time. There’d been speedboats roaring by, towing skiers. There’d been 4WDs queuing to back their boats down the ramp, and every one of those boats washed away more sand from their swimming bend.
Those dirt-bike riders were coming back. She moved fast into the trees downstream from the bend, not wanting to be bailed up by that trio. A couple of years ago she would have shown them her middle finger. A couple of years ago she hadn’t known as much as she knew today. She was afraid of three against one.
Afraid of the bridge today, or of walking beneath it. Six months ago, a dude had been murdered down there, then burnt. If he’d screamed for help, no one would have heard him. The traffic overhead rattled on the elderly timber and iron that held the bridge together. Like Bridge Street, that bridge had been designed to carry horses and carts, not a constant stream of overloaded trucks and cars.
She placed her hand on one of the supports as she walked by. It had been a tree trunk once upon a time. Dead for a long time now and as grey as the river, as grey as the clay bank, as grey as the world today. The only colour under the bridge came from the empty bottles, cans and yellow syringes. She studied one from a distance and wondered if there’d been syringes about when she’d been eleven, when she’d dragged Alan out to the bank, certain he’d drowned.
Mavis had conned Eva into bringing the twins up to meet their brothers before they were signed away forever. She’d had no intention of signing anything. She’d grabbed Alan. He’d screamed louder than Matty for two days. He’d danced and screamed when Mavis had attempted to shut him up with her whip.
Every kid in the house had known it was time to run when she’d reached for that old toaster cord. Alan hadn’t. He’d stood in the kitchen, in the last place he’d seen his twin. Someone had to teach him the rules of survival, and self-elected, Lori had run into the battlefield, grabbed his hand, and his already dancing feet had followed where she’d led, towards the river. Mavis, still semi-mobile at the time, had followed them. Alan was her bargaining chip, and like Oliver, she’d wanted more – more than the fifty thousand Eva had been offering.
He might have preferred to drown than to be recaptured. He’d dragged Lori into the water. To this day she didn’t know how she’d hung on to him. Had done it for Henry maybe, had done it for that Love from Daddy he’d written on his Sunday letters to his other family.
And why the hell couldn’t he have written Love from Daddy on just one of the books he’d given her for her birthdays?
Maybe because Alan had been lovable. After the night of the almost drowning, he’d been on Lori’s heels every time she’d turned around. He’d followed her into the potting shed to steal half of her alone time with Henry. He’d been on her heels when she’d escaped over to Nelly’s. He’d been on her heels the night she’d seen Henry swinging from the rafters of the old chook pen.
Eddy hadn’t. He’d been safe in England, living on the best that money could buy, and that was what was wrong with him. Alan had come home early enough to grow into the way life was. Eddy had spent three extra years cushioned in a money bubble.
They’d get control of Eva’s money when they turned twenty-one, if Watts didn’t embezzle it. If he didn’t, Alan’s mountain would grow taller while Eddy’s would turn into a quarry.
the lucky dip
As with most inland towns, Willama had begun life beside a river. At the library, one wall had been given over to photographs of the past, of ladies in long skirts and teams of bullocks pulling drays, and old buildings, which for half of Nelly’s lifetime, she’d told Lori, ratepayer money had been restoring. Today, the original part of Willama may have looked much as it used to in the eighteen hundreds.
The town businesses would have considered that rate money well spent. Every motel and every caravan park was booked solid during long weekends and school holidays when Willama swarmed with tourists.
Lori looked at the blacksmith’s shed as she walked by. No blacksmith turning his charcoal red with his huge bellows today. That shed looked old and cold, as did the brothel and the barber shop. No team of horses dressed in their finery and harnessed into a coach so tourists could tour the town in style. No paddle steamer, waiting to paddle down to the bridge, turn around and paddle back. Not one of the tourist attractions was open until she was around the corner, and the only reason the souvenir shop’s windows were lit was because it doubled as a craft shop. The woman who lived above it ran classes for bored people – so she could sell them art supplies and wool and interesting fabrics to cut into pieces then stitch back together.
There were two patchwork quilts displayed in her window. One looked interesting enough to have Lori cupping her hands to the glass so she might read the price tag. She couldn’t, but it would have been big enough to choke an elephant. There were so many beautiful things that the rich could buy.
The bike shop, where Mick worked during the high tourist seasons, was a transitional shop but locked up tight today. The old dude who owned it sold classy bikes to rich locals and he hired out all manner of bikes to energetic tourists. He had an ancient penny-farthing in his window, just to prove that his shop was a part of the old town.
Wind growing colder by the minute and Lori not dressed for outdoors, she walked faster to the reject shop, wh
ich marked the end of Old Willama and the beginning of the new. It was open every weekend. She bought shampoo and deodorant there. They went through a ton of both at home and the reject shop’s prices were cheaper than the supermarkets’.
She bought three new mugs for a dollar fifty apiece. Had Eddy been with her he would have attempted to talk her into their four-dollar mugs, but in Mavis’s hands they’d last no longer.
The bottle of shampoo heavy, the mugs rattling, she walked on, the wind cutting through her sweater to her bones. She’d find something warm at the op-shop, which was usually open on Sundays. She might find something warm for Mavis, who hadn’t taken off Henry’s dressing gown since she’d put it on.
An old building in a back street, and its door was closed, probably because of the wind. She tried it, and the wind flung it wide and one of the elderly ladies who volunteered there ran to close it. Lori closed it.
‘A nasty old day, love,’ the woman said.
‘Your shop is warm,’ Lori replied, and thank god it was.
It was a memory place too. She used to come here with Henry, who had always started his searches at the bookshelves – as if he’d only come into this place for their books, and if he’d just happened to find some plates or a sweater for one of the kids, he’d looked embarrassed about buying them. Lori had never shared his embarrassment. To her, this shop had always been a giant-sized lucky dip.
It was today. The first thing that caught her eye was a black sweater that looked big enough to fit Mavis and was of a heavy enough knit to camouflage her nipples. She tossed it over her arm and moved on down to a rack of women’s trousers where she found a pair of grey, fleece-lined tracksuit pants. She found a pair of stretchy jeans that looked big enough. They were well worn. Their size had been washed away, but the price sticker ticket said two dollars and size eighteen, so she claimed them, and the tracksuit pants.
They sold everything, even bras, and maybe fate had driven her out of the house today because on the top of their basket of bras was a black padded cup that could have been around the size of Mavis’s new melons – not that they required padding but her nipples did, and it was an eighteen double D, and one dollar. She’d paid twelve for the bra she’d bought at Woolworths, which Mavis hadn’t looked at, which Lori had returned for a refund.
