by Rose Hartley
I left the car on a side street and rode the 86 tram to Northcote, hugging my bottle. Taking the tram wasn’t just to avoid drink-driving. I was also down to a quarter of a tank of petrol and couldn’t afford to refill. When the cute second-hand stores and good bars on High Street appeared, I pulled the string and the doors creaked open to let me out. It was hot, not a blade of grass to be seen anywhere. This was asphalt city, teeming with dingy mid-rise buildings painted blue and black and grey.
The street I wanted was a few blocks past the Northcote Social Club. It had an eclectic mix of done-up weatherboard houses with huge steel extensions on the back, sagging bungalows owned by old nonnas whose grandchildren were waiting to fight over their inheritance and subdivide the land, and blocks of cream-coloured 1960s brick apartment blocks with concreted front yards. I checked the number I’d scribbled on a piece of paper and stopped in front of one of the low cream brick complexes. It was reasonably well kept. Someone had tried to green the concrete yard with a raised garden-bed of vegetables.
I knocked on number three, a ground-floor flat on the side of the building, facing the driveway. A cafe table and two chairs sat outside the door, alongside a pot containing a healthy fern. After a moment came the sound of a latch turning, and a face darkened by the security screen door peered out at me.
‘Maggie?’ Rueben opened the screen door. He was wearing tracksuit pants and a Rolling Stones T-shirt with a hole in the neck, and he looked pale. ‘What are you doing here?’
I did my best not to sway. ‘Just checking on you. Agnes says you’re sick.’
Without waiting for an invitation, I pushed past him into the kitchen. The cupboards were light green and the linoleum floor was peeling at the edges. Dated but clean. I rested the nearly empty bottle of white wine on the counter and tugged my cotton dress down over my thighs to make sure I was covered, then wondered why I did it. As if my dress would fall off at the sight of Rueben. Well, maybe.
Rueben eased himself down onto a kitchen chair and passed a hand across his forehead, where a slight sheen of sweat had broken out, most likely at the effort of coming to the door. I felt relieved; he really was sick.
‘Bad prawns,’ he said. ‘It’s nice of you to come, but I really don’t think wine is going to help.’
‘The wine is for me, obviously.’
‘How thoughtful.’
I leant against the counter for balance.
He frowned. ‘Are you drunk? It’s barely midday.’
‘No,’ I replied.
‘You are drunk.’
‘I’m not drunk. My shoes have been drinking. They keep falling over.’
He raised his eyebrows.
‘Bunny stole my idea,’ I told him.
‘What idea?’
‘She wrote a fundraising letter and gave it to Agnes before I could hand mine in.’
Rueben rubbed his face. ‘Let me guess. Instead of talking to Bunny, or talking to Agnes, or thinking of an actual solution to the problem, you left work, got drunk and came here to whine? I thought you were checking up on me.’ He looked hurt.
‘Well, I mean, that too,’ I said. ‘And I kinda wanted to snoop around your apartment.’
‘Go ahead,’ he said. ‘There’s not much to see.’
I snooped. The apartment had one bedroom and was small and clean and unexpectedly filled with pot plants. The guy liked ferns. The living room was set up as a music practice room, with a couch squashed into the corner and no television. Three guitars hung on the wall, including the fancy steel slide I had seen at The Fainting Chair.
‘Nice place,’ I called. ‘How do you afford an apartment on Centrelink money?’
‘My sister owns it,’ Rueben answered. ‘She rents it to me cheaply.’ Back in the kitchen, he was still sitting pale at the table. I felt sorry for him.
‘You look bad,’ I said. ‘And kinda blotchy, like you’re dehydrated. Do you have any Hydralyte tablets?’
He shook his head. ‘I’d get some, but I don’t think I can walk that far.’
‘Lucky I’m here. Where’s the pharmacy?’
He gave me clear directions but I still got lost. Fifteen minutes later I found the pharmacy and bought Hydralyte, Gastrolyte and paracetamol for good measure. When I returned to Rueben’s apartment he was in bed, but had left the front door open for me. I mixed him up some Hydralyte and brought it to him, along with painkillers. I pulled up a chair and sat by the bed as he sipped the drink.
I liked sick Rueben, I decided. He was less sexy, more helpless, more cute.
‘So tell me what Bunny did,’ he said.
‘I told you pretty much everything.’
‘And what are you going to do about it?’
‘What can I do? She’s worked there longer than I have. I’ve got no cred. I just have to suck it up.’
‘Okay, first things first. You can’t copyright an idea, you know that. You spent a long time on that letter – too long, what with taking out all the commas and putting them back in – and I’m sorry that you won’t get the glory for it. But remember, you haven’t just come up with the letter idea. You’ve also spent hours and hours finding potential new donors, and together we’ve sorted out the email address problem.’
‘You sorted it.’
‘We both did. The letter is going to bring in a lot of money for the Angels, and you were mostly responsible for it.’
‘I’m depressed,’ I said. ‘The bitch outsmarted me, and it burns. I know I’m smarter than her.’ I banged my fist on his bedside table.
‘You are. And that’s why you live in a caravan.’
‘Because I’m eschewing materialism.’
‘Exactly.’
‘Because I don’t judge people by the size of their mortgage,’ I went on. He grinned. I grabbed the bottle of wine from the kitchen and sat down again. ‘You know, I could be just like Sarah Stoll. I could tan myself tandoori orange, bleach my hair until it fell out, date a few tennis players and talk about my massive mortgage and how many pairs of shoes I owned and the whole world would consider me a completely acceptable human being. “Daaahling, I heard you fucked Roger Federer,”’ I mimicked. ‘“Well done. I know he’s won more grand slams, but personally I find the curve of Rafael Nadal’s cock more elegant.” But me, I live in a caravan in Collingwood for five minutes and I’m a pariah.’ I took a swig.
‘Slow down, Maggie. You’ll be passed out by dinner time.’
‘Well, stop driving me to drink.’
‘Who’s driving you to drink?’
‘Bunny. Sarah. My mother. You, with your sexy eyes.’ The bottle slipped out of my hands and landed on the floor with a clunk, but didn’t break. I picked it up before it could spill and wiped my mouth with a wet hand.
‘Maggie, go home. Watch some television. Take a Valium.’
‘Don’t try to drug me into submission.’ I could feel my body gently rocking, like waves lapping at the seashore. Or like a large, slow pendulum. ‘I will not numb my mind with television. The revolution will not be televised!’
‘Okay.’
‘Also, I don’t have a television. Or electricity, unless I steal it.’
‘I need to sleep,’ he said.
‘Oh.’
I waved goodbye and left his apartment, even remembering to lock the front door from the inside before I shut it.
The tram took me back to Collingwood and my car, which was still parked off Smith Street. I climbed into the back, flopped down like a dead fish onto my old jacket, and passed out. When I woke up, it was just past six in the evening and the car was roasting. Angry red lines on my skin from where the jacket lay crumpled under me told me that I was dehydrated. The world spun slightly when I sat up. I staggered outside and locked the car, feeling aimless, only wanting to get into the fresh air. I walked along Wellington Street and turned onto Keele Street, imagining what I’d plant in the front garden if I owned any of the houses. The sun was easing down along the horizon and the squeals of children playi
ng in the last light of day on a corner playground followed me down the street. A jacaranda flower dropped into my hair as I passed a showstopper garden. The blossoms had coated a section of the footpath in a purple bowl.
I was at Jen’s front door before I remembered I wasn’t allowed in there. Her absence the past week and a half had hit me like a sledgehammer. It was becoming clear that I had never appreciated her as much as I should have, or considered that she might be the only person who could decide what was best for her future. I couldn’t quite stop my fist from knocking on her door, and when I heard Jen’s footsteps in the hall, anxiety and relief rose in me at the same time. I needed to tell her I was falling apart, and that she was the only one with the right kind of glue.
Her face when she saw me was sad, and tired.
‘Can I come in?’ I asked.
She looked down the hall as if there was someone there who might tell her what to decide, but I knew that Jono had already left to go back to the mines. When she looked back at me, I knew what she was going to say.
‘Nah,’ she said.
‘We still on a break?’
‘Yeah.’
I said, ‘Okay,’ and turned to walk away, half expecting she would call me back, but as I reached the top step I heard the door close behind me.
Biyu called as I was walking back to my car.
‘Jen asked me to take over the rehearsal dinner logistics,’ she explained awkwardly. ‘I’m so sorry about you guys.’ She was sympathetic, apologetic.
‘It’s okay,’ I said dully. It really wasn’t.
I sent her the plans so far. There wasn’t much left to organise, anyway.
At this point, I either needed to get laid or listen to Leonard Cohen and mourn. A post-post-modern art exhibition in an old motorcycle garage on Keele Street blared neon lights into the dusky afternoon, leaving pink worms in my vision when I closed my eyes. A small group of hipsters sipped beers on the footpath, no doubt discussing whether the gold slippery dip and fluoro children’s carousel had a deep, sexual meaning. Everything came back to sex. If I couldn’t get sex tonight, or at least a full-sized bed to sleep in, or at least a bed that wasn’t made of vinyl, it would be some kind of tragedy. I tried to catch one of the hipster’s eyes. He had a bushy beard and his jeans were a size too small but I could forgive that. The look he shot me out of the corner of his eye said that he didn’t feel the same way about me.
‘What the hell is wrong with you people?’ I shouted, electing to take the silent rejection poorly. ‘You!’ I pointed at the group and they stared back, wide-eyed. ‘Do you know how stupid you look? With your haircuts?’
They exchanged smirks. ‘Uh, what’s your problem?’ The guy who spoke had a cultured, lilting voice and a thick, luscious moustache. The requisite bare ankles peeked out from his beautiful brown leather brogues. He held out a forearm as if to fend me off, even though I was at least three metres away.
‘My problem is that you’re all overdressed little boys who don’t know how to root.’
Luscious Moustache laughed. ‘I don’t think we’re the problem you’re not getting any, lady.’
Ouch. They turned in towards each other, closing ranks against me to chuckle behind their hands, and I staggered backwards as if I’d been pushed.
‘Yeah, well, you probably admire Ayn Rand!’ I shouted.
All right, things were desperate. I was too drunk to drive, so I abandoned my car and took two trams to Camberwell, one eye open for ticket inspectors. It was dark and cold as I made my way down Bradley Street. I was looking forward to putting on a jacket when I got to the caravan. The street’s fences were festooned with cats, including Dot, who was perched on top of the brick fence belonging to a palatial modern house next to the one I usually parked in front of. She swung her tail like a pendulum, watching me.
Something was wrong. I turned my head left, right, centre. Cats, cars, fences. An oil slick on the asphalt in an empty car space.
No caravan.
It’s the things you don’t see coming that hit you hardest. The carpet had been ripped out from beneath my feet and I stood in the street shivering from the cold and something worse. I grabbed Dot. I had to keep hold of her, and not just because she was warm. But I held her too tightly and she squirmed under my arm, clawing my bicep in protest as I walked to my mother’s house, squeezing back tears. At least Dot hadn’t been in the caravan when they stole it, or I would have lost everything. My beautiful caravan. All my complaints about its tininess, lack of bathroom, its wobbliness disappeared. It was the perfect home, and it was gone.
As soon as I walked through the broken gate, Dot shot out of my arms and straight to Mum’s front door, scratching to get in. She was familiar with the house; she knew that high-grade tuna and kangaroo meat were on the cards here.
The surprise on Mum’s face when she opened the door was mixed with annoyance and just a little resignation: Oh, it’s you. With the greatest effort of my life, I smiled: everything was fine.
‘We’ve come over for dinner,’ I said, and pushed past her into the hall. Dot sprinted ahead of me to the kitchen, where she would paw at the spot on the floor where her dish usually went until Mum fed her.
‘Lucky me,’ Mum said. ‘I have some leftover pasta.’
‘You’ve already eaten?’
‘I eat at six-thirty when you’re not here,’ she said. In the kitchen, she plonked a bowl of spaghetti in front of me, gave Dot some roo meat and went back to doing the dishes. She watched as Dot inhaled her food and then sat back, waiting for more. ‘You’re not feeding her Whiskas, are you? Dot needs fresh food.’
‘You think I’m made of money? Dot’s lucky to get the homebrand stuff.’ Almost everything I owned had been in the caravan, and I had no money to buy cat food. I swallowed a brief surge of panic.
‘Hmph. So what’s the occasion?’
‘Nothing, I just wanted to visit my dear mother. And Dot has been hanging out for some roo meat.’
‘Uh-huh. Your caravan is messy. You can’t be bothered cooking. Jen is out somewhere and can’t entertain you. Am I getting warmer?’
I almost told her about the fight with Jen. She wouldn’t have been able to help, but perhaps she would have sympathised. No, who was I kidding? She wouldn’t sympathise with me, only with Jen. And no way would I tell her about the caravan. Mum would probably laugh, and I couldn’t bear ridicule just now.
‘A girl at work stole a great idea I had for a fundraising letter and got all the credit for it,’ I said.
Mum stopped scrubbing. A wet hand emerged from the bubbles in the sink and rested on her hip.
‘And you’re letting her get away with it?’
I shrugged. ‘Rueben says I just have to bide my time or something. Because I’m smarter than her and I’ll win in the end.’
‘Not like you to roll over so easily.’
My spirit is broken, Mum, I wanted to say, but I just sucked up a piece of spaghetti and wiped the sauce from my lips.
After dinner, we watched The Bachelorette and rated our favourite contestants from one to five. Mum, predictably, liked the magician with big muscles who didn’t seem to have an actual job, while I preferred the finance guy who was kind of short but had a sweet way of talking with his mouth to one side.
At ten o’clock she stretched and yawned. ‘Time for you to go back to the Shangri-La. Can’t have you breaking our agreement.’
‘No worries,’ I said, ‘I’ll just go to the bathroom first.’
I snuck into my bedroom to check that the window was unlatched, and found it had a big new fancy lock attached to it. There was a key resting on the windowsill. Rueben’s work from Saturday. I unlocked the window and eased it up slightly, pocketing the key for good measure, then went back into the kitchen and gave Mum a pat on the shoulder, the closest to a hug we ever got. Some families cuddle and say I love you and give each other birthday presents, we pat.
I was hoping Mum would forget that I’d brought Dot with me, bu
t of course she didn’t.
‘I think Dot’s in the garden,’ Mum told me.
‘Okay, I’ll grab her.’ I didn’t know what I was going to do with her, and hesitated. Dot was used to being moved and had never run away yet, but if I deposited her back on the fence on Bradley Street instead of into a warm bed she might be confused enough to try wandering back to Collingwood.
‘See you next time you’re hungry,’ Mum said, as I went out the back to look for Dot. I found the cat in a tree and carried her around to the front yard, where I set her on the doorstep. She sat, looking up at me in irritation.
‘Wait here for me,’ I whispered.
I went for a walk around the block to pass the time, waiting for the lights in Mum’s house to go out. It didn’t take long. The yellow glows in the windows ticked out and I checked the time on my phone and walked around the block again. Mum usually had no trouble sleeping but, in case this happened to be the night she decided to lie awake worrying about her dreadful daughter, I made an effort to wait at least twenty minutes before I slipped by the front gate and snuck through the grass to the side of the house.
As I slid the window up all the way, I had to stifle a giggle. Cat Burglar Maggie. Breaking into her mother’s home for a warm bed and cold pasta in the middle of the night. This time I’d remember to hang the shower mat up in exactly the right location to dry before she got home from work. I swung my legs over the windowsill, still thinking about the cosy bed I was about to climb into, when something hard slammed into the side of my head and I went down like a sack of beans.
‘I knew it,’ my mother shouted. In the moonlight, I could see her silhouette hopping furiously. ‘You lazy scumbag son of a bitch!’ Whack, whack, whack, she hit me across the shoulders with what felt like a small cricket bat.
