The Unexpected Life of Carnegie Lane

by Virginia Higgins

  THE UNEXPECTED LIFE OF CARNEGIE LANE

  Virginia Higgins

  Published in 2012 by

  Mirror Muse Publishing

  26 Gallipoli Road

  Coffs Harbour NSW 2450

  AUSTRALIA

  www.carnegielanebook.com

  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to any persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  The Author asserts her moral rights.

  Author: Virginia Higgins – Copyright © 2011, 2012

  Title: The Unexpected Life of Carnegie Lane

  ISBN: 978-1475029079

  All Rights Reserved

  Cover art: Posters from a collection owned by the Author. No credit is taken for the artwork as it is not her own.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  • Chapter 1

  • Chapter 2

  • Chapter 3

  • Chapter 4

  • Chapter 5

  • Chapter 6

  • Chapter 7

  • Chapter 8

  • Chapter 9

  • Chapter 10

  • Chapter 11

  • Chapter 12

  • Chapter 13

  • Chapter 14

  • Chapter 15

  • Chapter 16

  • Chapter 17

  • Chapter 18

  • Chapter 19

  • Chapter 20

  • Chapter 21

  • So…where are they now?

  • Author’s Note

  For my Dad

  Jonathan Higgins

  18th June 1928 – 19th September 2006

  You would have loved this one!

  “It was the sweetness of your skin, it was the hope of all we might have been that filled me with the hope to wish, impossible things.”

  “To wish impossible things”

  Written by Robert James Smith

  The Cure – Wish Album 1992

  1

  Carnegie Lane arrived at 27 Willow Street in the town of Bundaberg a little out of place and very disorientated, after suffering a mental concussion from the divorce she never saw coming. Whatever it was that brought her there had to come from cataclysmic shock. You could tell just by looking at that entire family, minus the husband, it was not a happy move. They pulled up out the front of their new suburban house and walked around it twice with their backs arched, like male cats meeting for the first time. Their clothes were different to what the locals were used to, yet most obvious was their eerie silence.

  They had nothing much to say to each other and barely gave a smile as the neighbors approached them offering the mandatory welcome. They seemed embarrassed and less than happy to receive it. In fact, if they had been pressured anymore to smile, they had the potential to burst into inconsolable tears or throw up.

  Before that shocking move, Carnegie Lane lived in the suburb of Paddington, deep in the heart of Sydney. She’d left her oppressive life in a small country town when she was only seventeen, and went on a journey to find somewhere she truly belonged.

  Paddington was a funky little corner of the world that forever held her heart. It was the first place she found when she moved away and the only place on earth that held an offbeat significance to her life. In that small corner of the universe the music and soulful opportunity allowed her to express the complexity of who she was. She fit in there like a glove and made many great friends who were the same… Different.

  Choosing to remain there was a constant reminder of her rebellious phase in the late 80’s. Back when her partly pink hair, savagely dark eyeliner and those black boots with pewter skulls ruled supreme. It was through her endless nights of blind abandonment and partying at the Exchange Hotel on Oxford Street (and various other seedy venues) that she met the love of her life, her future husband, the father of her children.

  Live bands were everything to her. Musicians, who were at the time no one - but almost good - were the same people she would share a joint with at a party and a drink with at the pubs around Sydney between sets. Her life was simple. She wasn’t a groupie, because she knew them by name. She was above the begging. Some over time, became stars, landing themselves on Countdown with Molly Meldrum. They would get to be the lead acts and play in venues ranging from the Tivoli to the Horden Pavilion. Later some even performed at the Sydney Entertainment Center. If she was lucky enough to be standing at the front, her face would be familiar and they would greet her as if they cared. A subtle wink or a wave between rifts was what she had come to live for. It was hard for Carnegie to walk away from a gig unrecognized. Before they were famous, she had mattered to most of them.

  Moving forward to 2009 her world was very different. She had a semi–awesome husband, with a financially rewarding career. An amazing Paddington town house and a credit card that had no end in sight to what she could or couldn’t do with it. All of the perfection she had created so far was ingeniously accessorized by four very… perfect…children.

  Carnegie Lane was happy. She belonged in this world that had been carefully manufactured by her and she refused to leave. Caught in a time warp, she danced through her housework and kept her sanity in between, all the time listening to The Cure and singing along word for word. For her, like the music, it was ‘Just like Heaven’.

  There was nothing that could touch her as the essence of the songs took over. The rhythm guitar pumped a familiar drug straight into her veins; the bass guitar would set a mood as the lead touched the highest joy centers of her brain. The drum became the pace for her heartbeat to follow and the vocals would set her spirit free. By the time the CD rolled over to ‘Kiss me Kiss me Kiss me’ the broom had become a microphone and she had become an obsession to no one. Strategically, she performed for the inanimate objects that made up the aesthetics of her home. Her world was perfect. Carnegie Lane in those moments was someone. She had become - A legend in her own lounge room.

  For seven hours of the day, those books and ornaments were her audience and she decided they mattered. She would perform and clean, create and cook until all her dreams and secret desires were removed by the sound of children walking through the door. Once again Carnegie Lane, the idol to inanimate objects, would become Carnegie Lane, the mother of four needy children, and she loved it.

  So what was it that drove her, underneath the insatiable love for those children? Underneath her undying need to be the perfect wife and partner? It was a complicated question for a complicated woman. She was a multi-dimensional being that was driven by the need for her own self created perfection. So what was it, underneath it all that she really wanted for herself? The answer was not as remarkably different as to what you would think. Carnegie Lane just wanted to be a Rock Star.

  So between the reality of her life and her secret world that kept her sane, there was nothing much that needed correcting. Carnegie convinced herself she was happy, her kids were great, her husband came home at night and ate dinner with the family. Her twin daughters went to ballet lessons, and her two little ones learned the piano.

  They entertained friends on a Friday night and she cooked amazing dishes from exotic locations around the globe. All the current events of the day, including politics, would be discussed at the table as if they had the credibility to actually comment, all the while consuming a standard prescription of wine. She had an art for remembering to smile and look casually in control of it all.

  Then, with the final wave of farewell to the last visitor at the door, she would turn and go to bed, ready to slave for her man, just like all good wives did after a successful dinner event. It was a ritual dished up long ago and made to feel like a reward for good and proper behavior on both sides of the bed s
heets. Somewhere deep within her, Carnegie Lane wanted more out of life, only she didn’t know it then. Somewhere, her husband was already getting more out of life. Only he wasn’t quite ready tell her the truth.

  It was a nearly perfect day when her world unraveled like a ball of string. Her four children sat quietly at the dinner table, eating a healthy concoction of veggies and tofu without complaint. The house was spotless and out of the corner of her eye, Carnegie could almost see the statue in the hall still applauding her best concert yet. Her husband was late, but it happened occasionally. Then the phone rang…

  Carnegie Lane listened to the voice of her husband at the other end telling her something unbelievable. Her head swam as if in lost in a vortex. He wasn’t just late, he wasn’t coming back at all. Her semi-awesome husband was at the home of his semi-plastic secretary. They were in love and he was going to marry her. There was no apology. There was no regret. There was no message for the children. He said he would come over the next day and collect some of his things, he asked her not to be there when he did, then he hung up without hesitation. She put the phone down and listened to the happy voices of her children as they picked the best out of their dinner. Then they became silent as a billowing wale came from the den where the call had taken place.

  Carnegie Lane was screaming.

  The divorce was messy and costly. The magical plastic card that gave her everything she wanted on any given day suddenly stopped working. Assets she believed belonged to both of them had been perfectly disguised in a bottomless pit of debt, hidden behind loans, which were bigger than the value of what they jointly owned. It didn’t take Carnegie long to figure out that he had been planning this jump for some time. In doing so, he’d made sure that the overdrafts they agreed to were available to him if he ever saw the “bargain” he could buy quickly. She agreed to the overdrafts. She signed them. Now, after all this time, Carnegie left Paddington behind with nothing and moved as far away as she could think to go.

  Queensland seemed like as good a place as any to pretend she could start again. The small weatherboard house at number 27 Willow Street Bundaberg was all she could afford. It was a far cry from what she was used to.

  Even her BMW with leather seats and the fantastic stereo had been downgraded to a ten year old Toyota station wagon. At least in Bundaberg no one would point fingers at her and whisper the tragedy of her story as she drove shamefully to the school to pick up the kids. How it affected them at the time, she didn’t really know. Carnegie Lane had learned to live above herself mentally, in a semi denial of what was happening around her.

  The tofu dinners turned quickly into frozen party pies heated in the oven and served with tomato sauce. She didn’t even care if they had soft drink. They sat in the lounge room and happily watched the Simpsons while they ate dinner. Carnegie stayed in her bedroom with the music turned up, singing to the bedside tables, appreciated most by the lamp.

  All of that is history now, her life continued on and our story really begins on a day almost like any other for Carnegie Lane. The only variation had been her alarm set one hour earlier than usual to 5am. This was because, the night before she had neglected to wash the school uniforms for those four children, who would be up by 6.30 demanding control of the TV and looking for missing lunchboxes. Well, two of them would be up. The younger ones had not yet recognized the advantages of sleep.

  Sienna, was an unruly nine year old girl, who would rather let her long dark hair fall into ruin and dreadlocks before it was brushed and tamed, followed closely by her eleven year old brother Cooper. His living breath was to annoy his little sister as much as possible, which in turn annoyed Carnegie. It was almost like you could see him thinking. Plotting away for any reason to make her scream at her mother to make him stop! He was also able to remain innocently on the other side of the room at the same time. Just amazing. His face would give him away as the uncontrollable trace of a grin would spell out the word “GUILTY” that lit up like a neon flashing sign. This would cause Carnegie to sigh in defeat.

  The older two, Olivia and Sobian, both girls, both seventeen, were in their final year of high school. They would remain defiantly under the covers in their beds, rolling around the idea of creating a mystery illness. One that may, or may not get better within five minutes of the school bus rolling down the hill without them. It rarely worked anymore. Carnegie had them all figured out on this one, right down to the heated washers on the forehead and the thermometer in the glass of hot water under the bed. They may not get away with it, but they could sure make it a hard road to travel, the one between home and the bus stop at 8am.

  Knowing their uniforms were not prepared and waiting for their arrival like expecting parents could, if played correctly, be a catalyst that gave them a day off. Just not today. No, not today.

  Right now, none of that mattered. All Carnegie wanted was a cup of coffee and ten minutes of dedicated silence alone. Sitting out the back on her veranda, watching the world come to life around her was the most important moment of her day. She had no way of stopping it. Therefore, she chose to embrace it, while giving herself enough time to wake up, without the frustration of those children. That cup of coffee allowed her to survive whatever was coming for her.

  The only sound she would be happy to hear for the next hour was the washing machine as it worked it’s magic, then the dryer, leaving no trace that she, as a mother, had been careless enough not to have those clothes ready the night before. Thankfully, no one but her cat would know her secret.

  Carnegie had many secrets. A lot of them she forgot she had kept. Most remained silent reminders of a life that existed long ago, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth. When Pavlov’s dog was still played occasionally on the radio and colored TV was something about to happen in the not too distant future. She was eight years old then, full of dreams and wild ambitions. Who she really was changed over time and what caused that change, was a familiar story to many. She took another sip of coffee, hoping to get through another day without blaming herself for the imperfection of her life.

  What went wrong was a mystery she was yet to solve; it had been eleven months since that fated phone call. Today she sat on her back verandah, listening to the mechanical beat as those clothes whirled in the dryer. She finished her second cup of coffee and even though she tried hard to make it stop, the sun came up regardless.

  Thinking about her life was one thing, remembering the highlights and trying to figure out how she missed what she never saw coming was the hardest task ever set. It hurt to search for an answer, like looking at a picture of a room in her brain, trying to spot the object that didn’t belong there. She just couldn’t find it. She went to the kitchen and made up four lots of school lunches. All of it was an automatic response with little thought. The uniforms would soon be hanging off the kitchen chairs and the morning gauntlet before school was nearly ready to be run.

  Even though it was a day just like any other day, it was slightly different. The night before while she slept, Carnegie dreamed the most amazing dream. It was about life and the connection of human spirit. What she remembered most was the gorgeous young woman who told her a beautiful and ever haunting love story. What remained very strongly were her parting words as she began to wake abruptly from the relentless buzzing of an alarm. The beautiful voice had said. “Write this down.”

  After she sighed in relief that all her children were out the door and heading somewhat reluctantly to the bus stop, Carnegie went to the spare room to find the unpacked box that contained her neglected computer. Once, she had used it as a constant source of support. Emails to and from friends, jokes, school events, the weather, latest fashion, sales, face book, band tour dates, you name it, she tracked it.

  Everything she needed including a long forgotten organized diary had been driven by the machine she had avoided until now. Carnegie didn’t want to open her email and find a hundred notes from distanced friends that really only wanted to gossip about her, disguised by preten
ding to care. Too many of them had been caught out, and besides, when she moved, she made herself a pact that she would recreate her world. She wanted something new and completely different without any memory of her past, because it hurt too much. Deep in her heart was a large box containing the shattered remnants of her life, destined to remain hidden for all of time. She had tied it with a red bow and a note saying ‘don’t…ever…open again!’

  It was an inkling of an idea, fed from a dream that sparked Carnegie to begin typing away at an almost uncontrollable pace. Words became sentences and soon they were chapters. Pages and pages of strategically positioned letters began to tell an amazing twisted tale of a secret love sent from somewhere in the cosmos. It was gracefully appearing, almost lyrically, in front of her eyes. Performing her motherly tasks as if on automatic pilot, every opportunity she had, she spent in her room. Typing, just typing.

  One month in the making, then as suddenly as it began, it was finished with the final word placed on the page early one Friday morning. When the sun came up that day, Carnegie didn’t feel the need to go fight it. She didn’t sit out the back hoping that a cup of coffee and silence would save her life. Something in her broken little world had changed.

  Carnegie Lane, mother of four and idol to inanimate objects, had suddenly and unexpectedly…written a book.

  “I walk along the city streets you used to walk along with me.

  And every step I take reminds me of just how it used to be,

  So how can I forget you

  When there is always something there to remind me.”

  “Always something there to remind me”

  Written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David

  Released by Naked Eyes in February 1983

  2

  “Who wants pancakes?” Carnegie asked as her children awoke to the smell of something vaguely familiar.