The Hope Flower

by Joy Dettman

‘Use the thing, but not in my kitchen. They send out poisonous rays.’

  Whether they did or not, her new microwave cooked three potatoes before those in the preserving pan started to cook. They ran a shuttle service then, from preserving pan to microwave and back until every potato was soft. It was a brilliant tool. It cooked pumpkin faster than it cooked potatoes and even the bull elephant on stilts came out to the sleep-out to watch the miracle of the microwave.

  ‘Will it fry sausages?’ he asked.

  The book that came with it made no mention of sausages, but Alan rode over to Coles and bought a bulk-buy tray. They tried nuking one, but ended up giving them a fast fry in Nelly’s little frying pan then transferring them to the oven to finish cooking. They weren’t as juicy as Vinnie’s, nor as bad as Henry’s, and they disappeared too fast but seemed to improve Vinnie’s frame of mind.

  Merve, his boss, collected him at ten, probably after his wife was in bed.

  henry’s replacement

  His cases moved out of the passage. Alien clothing now hung in Henry’s wardrobe. He might have been thirty or thirty-five. Mavis called him Ali. He’d been in the house for five days before Jamesy named him Ali-oomph – for the sound effects that came through the thin plaster wall – Mavis yelling Ali and her boyfriend oomphing while the bedhead rhythmically thumped that wall.

  Like Henry, he cleaned up after Mavis, or he did a basic clean-up. He knew how to use a washing machine, and after he used it, Lori wiped it out with bleach and disinfectant. He ignored Mavis’s screeching. She did a lot of it, in the main about the locked brick room door. Lori didn’t see her, didn’t hear her, nor did the other kids.

  They had to sleep in that house. They had to use the bathroom, had to use the washing machine, had to choose their times to use the kitchen.

  The calendar claimed that spring had sprung, but on the first Wednesday of spring, the temperature peaked at thirteen, and when the kids rode in from school the air conditioner was pumping out heat again.

  ‘She’s phoned an electrician,’ Mick said.

  She’d wasted her money. Two white fuses spent the night locked into the brick room.

  With Mavis, fixing one problem had always led to another. Ali-oomph lit the stove while the kids were at school. He moved the lounge-room chairs out to the kitchen, pushed the table’s extensions in, pushed their table back hard against the wall so Mavis had an unrestricted view of Martin’s television while sitting on a comfortable chair.

  Eddy broke Lori’s no speaking rule that afternoon. He went into the kitchen and offered his hand to Ali-oomph, then asked how long he was planning to stay. Those watching, listening at windows, learnt that Mavis’s new relationship wasn’t based on stimulating conversation. She’d had that with Henry. This time around she was trying something different. Ali-oomph might have had two dozen words of English.

  ‘I ’avy visa . . . for ollyday . . . for see many of family.’

  ‘You’ve got family in Willama?’ Eddy asked.

  ‘I ’ave . . . I ’ave many of family . . . in Sit-a-knee.’

  ‘What the bloody hell happened to that air conditioner?’ Mavis asked.

  A fast talker, a fast thinker, Eddy. ‘They overheat, Mave. If you leave them running for too long their cut-out switch cuts out,’ he said, and he got out.

  They gave Nelly a break that night. Lori sent Martin a text, telling him to pick up Vinnie and meet them at McDonald’s. They were heading towards the top corner on foot when Vinnie’s boss’s van turned into their street and pulled into Henry’s driveway.

  Vinnie didn’t get out easily. Lori told him not to get out, told his boss not to let him get out, but to drive him down to McDonald’s.

  Try turning a cantankerous bull elephant from his chosen pathway. ‘Bugger McDonald’s. Someone grab my garbage bag,’ Vinnie said, then on his crutches, he made his way down the drive.

  They tried to divert him from the kitchen, but he had one thing on his mind. ‘Bring my bag in,’ he said.

  Ali-oomph may not have understood two words of Vinnie’s warning, but he understood his size and he saw that the crutch Vinnie wasn’t leaning on might make a serviceable weapon. It was a long metal rod with an arm rest and handle. Ali-oomph backed off before his ‘Marrrfiz’, who didn’t go silently, or without her wine bottle and bag of potato chips.

  Vinnie emptied his garbage bag then. He had more than his shaving gear and clothing in it. He’d come home with two bulk-buy trays of sausages and a two-litre bottle of tomato sauce.

  He fried bulk sausages that night while his crutches leant against the brick chimney, his weight supported by one hand on the mantelpiece. He fried them to perfection in their own oversized frying pan while his assistants adjusted their table back to its rightful size, while they dragged and carried the green chairs back into the lounge room, while they rounded up their kitchen chairs from verandas, bathroom and backyard.

  The smell of sausages, the sight of butter and two loaves of sliced bread raised their BFG from the place where he’d been. He talked that night. He was a broken pipe, spewing words. He spoke of Gok that was worse than Alan’s.

  ‘She pours this bloody great can of tuna into hers. Last night I phoned Paddy to pick me up a pizza and she got insulted and took off.’ He spoke of the ‘horseshit’ television shows she watched, spoke of her ‘cats-piss’ tea when he had a mug of Mick’s decent brew in his hand.

  They couldn’t turn him off, but having him home allowed them to move the big computer and printer out of the lounge room. They didn’t allow him to lift a thing but having him standing guard gave them the confidence to storm the lounge room. There was insufficient space in the brick room for the desk and office chair. Something had to give way.

  Mavis’s old television was the first casualty, then her worn-out recliner. They moved the chest of drawers into the en suite, its back to the wall beneath the window, then with Lori’s bed turned lengthwise, its head against the west wall, they moved the computer desk in beside it, which meant there was space where the old television used to live. Martin’s television filled that space. Its flat screen might have been twice the size of Mavis’s old bulbous model but it used up less space and it played its own DVDs.

  It was late when they tested it with Martin’s copy of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. And why not? They lived in a madhouse. That movie wasn’t G rated; the little kids shouldn’t have watched it, and they should have been in bed, but Vinnie was on their bed, resting his knee – and the way the light was glowing on his dome moved Lori from her seat on the desk. She looked close before running her palm over his not so glowing dome.

  ‘You’ve got spikes,’ she accused, spikes that were adding a blush of red moss to his bumps.

  He didn’t deny it. He didn’t protest her touch. He was home, home and full of sausages and bread, and for the first time since Mavis and her Taliban – according to Neil – had moved in, life almost seemed possible – and Ali-oomph would eventually go. As Mick said too often, holiday visas were issued for a limited time. He’d have to leave when his visa ran out, and when he did, one way or another, they’d handle Mavis – even if it meant boarding up that big window.

  *

  Nelly donated her microwave. They offered to pay for it, but she said she’d pay them to get the thing out of her house. She’d tried to bake a potato in foil.

  They set it up in the en suite, on the chest of drawers, and spent most of Saturday testing what it would and wouldn’t do. It would heat a frozen pie in three minutes but would have nothing to do with eggs – other than to make an anaemic omelette. They made an anaemic stew in it that night. It looked weird but tasted okay. It boiled rice to perfection, or it did once Martin bought a container with a tight-fitting lid, though one boil wasn’t enough to feed ten and two boils took almost thirty minutes. Dinner was served late that Saturday night.

  They removed Mick’s name from the dinner-duty roster, due to pies taking three minutes multiplied by eleven, plus enough
nuked potatoes meant an even later dinner; however, it was an excellent tool for heating baked beans.

  They sealed the toilet, duct-taped its lid down, so Matty couldn’t use it while their beans were being nuked, then later that night, Mick knocked the back out of the old kitchen desk, and with a few adjustments turned it into a workbench he fitted over the loo, and they had a workbench with three small drawers that gave them a place to keep cutlery and tea towels, kitchen scissors, the carving knife and a few other necessities. It was a make-do kitchen but they made do.

  Vinnie’s football coach gave him hope. He’d told him that he’d seen worse scans. He’d told him too that if he followed his doctor’s instructions to the letter, he’d play in the premiership team next year.

  Ali-oomph didn’t leave. Neil, the family spy, found out why. He’d seen Mavis hand him two fifty-dollar notes of their pension money.

  He stole their bikes too – or borrowed them. Mick kept his locked but they’d seen Ali-oomph attempting to get the lock off. He burnt their firewood.

  Having lost Martin’s television Mavis was forced to make her base in the lounge room where every night Ali-oomph lit the open fire. She’d lost her house full of slaves but was training her new ‘Henry’.

  She’d learnt nothing about the management of her pension. Way back, after the government first opened up their coffers to poor widowed Mrs Smyth-Owen, she’d always had one rich week when her kids had eaten a bit of take-away. They’d starved during her poor week, or they would have, if not for Nelly and Martin. Ali-oomph didn’t feel the pinch of her poor week. He raided the chook pen for eggs then lit the stove to fry them, and he fried two for Mavis. If not for his raping eyes, Lori might have felt sorry for him.

  School was an escape. It was six hours of freedom and an extra hour on the days they stayed back to work on the play. Being Eliza Doolittle for that hour was escape. For most of her life, Lori had wanted to be someone other than Lorraine Smyth-Owen, and for that hour she became Eliza.

  Janey Collins was playing Mrs Higgins. Lori had never spoken to her until that play, but when they did the afternoon-tea scene, like acted it out instead of reading it, the kids who’d stayed back to watch the rehearsal applauded. Being a part of something worth applauding was . . . was . . . was good.

  Weekends weren’t. She was loading the washing machine on Saturday morning when he came in with a bundle of shirts and Mavis’s stuff, probably expecting to toss them into the machine with her load. He smiled at Lori, or showed her his oversized teeth, but stopped smiling when she slammed the lid of the machine down and hit Heavy Load, then pushed by him to get out. In her haste, she almost tripped over Martin’s toolbox, and he touched her, caught her arm, and she felt him crawling all over her. She’d hosed him, and deep in her bones she knew he hadn’t come out to the laundry to use the washing machine but because he’d seen her go out there alone.

  She wouldn’t be going in there again, or not alone. For the remainder of that weekend, she clung close to the boys.

  Then on Monday when they came home from school, the brick room door was open and the slide bolts and padlock were gone – as was the microwave, and Martin’s television – as was a ton of their stockpiled supplies. As was their desk-cum-workbench and the duct tape from the loo. And they’d used it. You can smell where dogs have been.

  Like Hansel and Gretel, their workbench had left a trail behind it. The mobile boys retrieved the bench from the junk heap while Lori and the little ones collected their cutlery and sundry. There was nothing they could do about the rest of what was missing or not until Vinnie came home, though Mick did something. He rode up to Bunnings to buy new slide bolts, padlock and bolts long enough to reach from one side of the door to the other.

  The interlopers were drinking wine, smoking and watching Mavis’s quiz show on Martin’s television when Vinnie came home. He was using only one of his crutches now and he threatened them with it. Ali-oomph moved. Mavis stayed on to screech but Martin and the boys retrieved the microwave and television while Mick’s new birthday drill ate fast holes through the brick room door, then worked harder to drill matching holes through a piece of metal from a discarded bed frame.

  He got the new locks fixed on with the bolts that went through the lock, the door and that piece of metal reinforcing. Lori watched him strain to tighten the nuts to breaking point. That wasn’t secure enough for Mick. He burred the ends of each bolt with his hammer so those nuts would never come off.

  From inside, the job didn’t look aesthetically pleasing, but Mick had gone beyond aesthetics. There was a new expression in his eyes when he packed away his tools. Given a few more weeks of cohabitation with Mavis and her vulture-nosed thief he might turn as nasty as the rest of them.

  holidays

  It was during the school holidays that Alan started agreeing with Eddy about moving to St Kilda. This altered the vote to four for the move and three to stay, and had Neil been given a vote, it would have been five to three. Vinnie, Mick and Lori still voted No.

  ‘Her dining table would seat fourteen,’ Alan said as he spread a large sheet of plastic over the little kids’ bed, to turn it into a table.

  ‘I thought you couldn’t remember anything about that place,’ Lori said, annoyed that he’d swapped sides.

  ‘You don’t forget. You just push away what you don’t want to remember.’ He smoothed the plastic. ‘And I saw it all, the day after the funeral.’

  ‘Did Watts sell her furniture?’

  ‘It’s in storage,’ Eddy said. ‘Beds, fridge, washing machine, clothes dryer . . .’

  ‘We have to do it, Lori,’ Alan said. ‘This isn’t living.’

  He was right about that. It was surviving. It was eating a lot of baked beans. It was craving stews and mashed potatoes.

  ‘He’ll go,’ Mick said. ‘She’s old enough to be his mother.’

  She looked it. Too much wine, probably pregnant, every day she looked older and more bloated.

  ‘And what if he doesn’t, Mick?’ Alan asked. ‘And what do we do with her if he does?’

  Mick had no back-up plan, only misplaced faith in the Australian government. ‘He’ll have to go when his visa runs out.’

  ‘The government can’t keep track of every tourist. He’s probably hiding out here from the Immigration Department,’ Eddy said.

  ‘He might die,’ Neil said hopefully. He sounded as if he had consumption. They hadn’t seen a lot of him since the night they’d reclaimed their stolen goods. They heard him hawking and spitting, and anyone reliant on Mavis to nurse them back to health had a good chance of dying.

  Bert’s wife, given every care, was dying, but Vinnie’s knee continued to improve, his hair continued to grow, and something else was happening to him, and not only forgetting to remove his glasses.

  According to those who made a study of the subject, the tribes of Europe had been nomadic hunter-gatherers until they’d wandered into some place where they could find food all year round which had allowed a few of them to sit on their backsides and do something other than kill and eat their neighbours. Since delivering him and his garbage bag home, Vinnie’s boss had been picking him up each weekday morning at eight, even if Vinnie had to sit down on the job. It was his habits after work that altered. He used to come home, shower, shave his head and then, depending on who had been rostered on for dinner duty, he’d hang around to eat or hit the streets before dinner was served.

  The bathroom now alien territory, the kitchen out of bounds, and given strict instructions by his coach, like the rest of the kids, he spent a lot of time in the brick room looking out, or in his case, eating while he looked out.

  It was Timmy who got him interested in the old computer. It had a built-in Learn to Touch-Type program, which Timmy’s little hands could play like a piano. He’d got his word count up to twenty-two the night Vinnie decided to test his skill – with one hand. He had a jam sandwich in the other. Had there been a minus score, he would have got it; however, having
him seated gave the rest of them space to move, so Lori found their old Learning to Read program disk and got it playing.

  He’d played it before, or played a little of it before gaining his learner driver permit, and as he never forgot anything, he told her what she could do with it.

  ‘See if you can get to level four again,’ she said, and set it playing on level one.

  It took a while for his huge paw to relearn how to direct the mouse and how to click, but when it did, he breezed through levels one and two. He swore at level three and was working his way through level four when Lori hit Quit. She wanted to go to bed.

  It took Vinnie three nights to work his way to the end of that game, and when he did, Lori made him backtrack and improve his score before she opened a new file. She named it Vinnie and told him to write something about what he’d learnt.

  ‘Bloody Hitler,’ he said, but he wrote I want bludy sossages, and when Eddy corrected his spelling, he wrote bloody smartarce. He picked out disseezed pimp when they heard Ali-oomph hawking and spitting his way out to the loo. He got pimp right.

  *

  Given different circumstances, Matty would have had a holiday from childcare during the two weeks of the school holidays, but circumstances being what they were, he was better off there. He didn’t go to Mrs Matthews’s funeral. The rest of them went. Merve, who had called her aunt, was there. He drove Vinnie to the church. For Bert’s sake, Martin went to the funeral. He drove Mick but the rest of them walked there with Nelly.

  It was on their walk home that Nelly came up with a plan that might save their next load of firewood. She hadn’t owned a woodheap since her electric stove and gas heater had been installed but she still had her woodman’s number. She phoned him that afternoon and ordered two loads to be delivered to her backyard.

  Mick lit the stove the next morning and, working as a team, potatoes, a stew and a pile of sausages was cooked. The microwave was faster at heating meals than it was at cooking them.