by Helen Brown
Whenever she stressed out about flowers or seating arrangements, the boys told her to relax. Everything was under control. The day after she fretted over what to wear to her son’s wedding, James arrived with Terence, a stylist friend from the city. Terence threw open Lisa’s wardrobe doors and emitted cries of dismay. Lisa recoiled. She hated clothes shopping, especially since the mastectomy, let alone the thought of schlepping down Collins Street with an impeccably groomed young man in an Italian suit.
To her relief, Terence was a mind reader. He told her he’d pop into the city and bring out a few garments for her to try on later in the week. It was only fair to tell him about her prosthesis. He waved it aside and said there was nothing he liked more than a challenge. She could’ve kissed his handmade shoes.
According to the boys, another friend, Damien, was dying to do her hair and makeup on the wedding day. When she started to fret about the devastated-looking driveway, they booked her a massage.
There were no bridezillas, no tears over tiaras. The boys networked with the best. Their taste was impeccable as always. She was beginning to think nothing could be easier than being mother of one of the grooms at a gay wedding.
An avalanche of luggage clattered into the hallway. The bags were all matching brown with pale trim. Lisa bent to examine them. The marks she’d mistaken for bird droppings were carefully formed LVs. She could never tell the difference between the real deal and stuff from the back streets of Bangkok. She wondered if there was a collective noun for designer luggage—an ostentation?
To say she was dreading having her ex-husband and his lover to stay was an understatement. The thought of sharing her upstairs bathroom with them, perhaps even having to dredge Cow Belle’s flaxen hair out of the plug hole, made her skin crawl.
‘Great to see you!’ Jake chirped, heaving a wheelie bag up the steps. No doubt Belle had talked him into the tightly fitted shirt. It made him look six months pregnant. Grey never was a good colour for him. Belle was a wardrobe satirist.
Bright desperation shining in his eyes, Jake put his hands on Lisa’s shoulders. She resisted as he drew her down into his neck. His smell, a stale concoction of offices and planes, was so familiar she felt a stab of loss.
It was quickly replaced with resentment. Belle, hiding behind huge sunglasses, glided towards them. ‘It’s quite small for a manor, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘I guess you do things differently in Australia. I mean, I’ve been to beach houses in the Hamptons bigger than this. How do you put up with the heat?’
Lisa and Jake lugged the bags upstairs while Belle fanned herself on the balcony.
‘It’s not easy for her coming here,’ Jake whispered. ‘She feels an outsider already.’
‘Your towels are on your bed,’ Lisa said, escorting him to the guest room.
It’d been quite a performance getting their room ready. She’d stripped the bed and made it up with fresh linen, filled a water jug and placed glasses on the bedside tables. Not to mention a vase of bottlebrush, a book entitled Picturesque Drives of Victoria and copies of Vogue Living. She’d even dragged the vacuum cleaner up the stairs and scraped it around the floor. The towels were just an afterthought. Resisting the urge to dip them in poison, she’d crowned them with a little square of guest soap each (an inexplicable birthday present from Maxine).
Not only that, she’d shovelled all her makeup and old towels out of the bathroom, and scrubbed the toilet with lemony stuff that made her hands sting.
‘That’s one helluva fire you had,’ Jake said, pulling back the curtain. ‘Are you okay?’
Why did he always ask that? Did he think she couldn’t breathe without him?
‘I’m fine.’
‘Who’s that?’
Lisa joined him at the window. Scott, wearing nothing but boots, shorts and a sunhat was strolling down the driveway looking like a Cosmo centrefold.
‘Oh, he helps with the garden.’
‘Guess he costs more than a Mexican.’
Scott shaded his eyes, looked up at them and waved. His tan heightened the spectacular curve of his chest muscles. She focused on a tantalising valley running through the centre of his torso down to his belly button. Her eyes lingered over a strip of dark hair rising from the top of his shorts. Liquid heat rose between her thighs, but she quickly extinguished it. Scott was taken.
‘That guy should watch out for skin cancer,’ Jake said, pulling the curtain closed.
‘Where’s the ensuite?’
Lisa and Jake turned from the window. Belle stood in the doorway clutching a handbag adorned with gold Cs, her sunglasses now perched on her head. Panting slightly, she wore the expression of a new arrival at the Brontë sisters’ school for daughters of impoverished clergymen.
‘It’s a shared bathroom,’ Lisa said.
Belle blanched.
‘They weren’t fussy about that sort of thing in the old days,’ Lisa shrugged. ‘Chamber pots and what have you.’
Belle flicked the latch of her handbag in a series of compulsive clicks. ‘Never mind, honey,’ Jake said. ‘We can rough it for a few days.’
Lisa was about to remind them there was a perfectly good motel in town. Then she thought of Ted.
‘There’s some kind of wild animal downstairs,’ Belle said, tapping across the floor towards Jake.
‘You mean Mojo?’ Lisa said.
‘It looks like a dingo. They eat babies, don’t they?’
‘How many eyes did it have?’
‘I have no idea. I was too busy running.’
‘Aw, honey,’ Jake crooned, embracing Belle, which was awkward, considering she was at least six inches taller.
Lisa felt vaguely nauseous. ‘Maybe she’s right,’ she said. ‘We did have some wildlife come inside to shelter from the fire. Killer kangaroos and things.’
Belle whimpered. Jake shot Lisa a warning look.
‘And Scott was bitten by a snake. He really was. A big brown one.’
‘Give it a rest, Lisa,’ Jake said.
‘Oh well, I’ll leave you two to settle in. Come down for dinner when you’re ready.’
Taking refuge in the kitchen, Lisa poured herself a large glass of merlot. The only way she was going to get through the next few days was with regular doses of alcohol.
Where was Mojo? There was no sign of Kiwi either. She set the table and threw together a baby spinach salad with sliced orange and walnut pieces. If she’d been feeling benevolent towards Jake she’d have made his favourite roast lamb with potatoes and garlic for old time’s sake. Instead, she pulled a supermarket chicken out of the fridge and broke it in pieces.
As the wine filtered through her veins, her heart softened towards Belle. At least the woman had gone to the trouble of showing up. Perhaps some music would help Belle relax. Lisa put on the radio and let Beethoven flood the room. The god of music was in one of his raucous moods, galloping across hills, laughing into the rain. Lisa drained her glass, filled another and toasted her reflection in the window. She turned the music up, swung her glass in time with Beethoven and laughed along with him.
‘Excuse me?’
Belle stepped timidly towards the table. She was wearing a tiny black evening dress, the back of which appeared to have fallen out. Her hair swung glamorously over one shoulder.
Lisa froze with her glass in the air.
‘I thought it was formal.’
‘What?’
‘Dinner in a manor house.’
‘Oh. There’s a dining room somewhere, but I haven’t got round to setting it up. It’s full of boxes.’
Belle looked crestfallen.
‘I could get changed if you like, but it’s only chicken salad. I could make an apple crumble . . .’
‘I’m on a diet,’ Belle said.
‘So am I.’
At last some common ground—aside from shared knowledge of the wart on the underside of Jake’s — Lisa quickly erased the mental image.
Lisa dug out a pair of candles from a drawer
and stuffed them into Mexican pottery holders. She thought about lighting them, but naked flames had lost their allure lately.
‘What are you two girls talking about?’ Jake said, rubbing his hands together as he strode into the room. ‘I could feel my ears burning up there.’
‘It’s not all about you,’ Lisa mumbled, taking a surreptitious gulp.
‘God, you look beautiful!’ he exclaimed.
Belle flicked her hair and tittered.
‘Wine, anyone?’ Lisa said, spilling what was left into glasses.
Jake radiated disapproval—he hated it when she got tipsy, which was almost never. ‘Would you mind turning the music down?’ he shouted.
As Beethoven faded into the background there was a tap on the back door. Assuming master of the house status, Jake padded over the bluestone and reached for the handle. The door burst open to an outrageous squawk. A flurry of white feathers swooped over their heads and circled the kitchen with clumsy flaps. Kiwi was flying!
‘It’s a vulture!’ Belle yelled.
A small yowling lion exploded into the room, hot on the bird’s tail feathers. Mojo pranced onto a chair and leapt up at Kiwi.
‘There it is!’ Belle wailed at Mojo. ‘That’s the . . . the thing!’
Screeching, Belle knocked the chair over. Mojo sailed through the air, narrowly avoiding collision with the cockatoo. As Kiwi attempted a second circuit, Belle ran from the room. Jake was about to follow, until he saw an imposing silhouette filling the door frame.
Scott had mercifully managed to put on a shirt, though he’d forgotten to do up the buttons. ‘Great, isn’t it?’ Scott beamed up at Kiwi. ‘I taught her to fly.’
‘You did?’ Jake asked.
‘Yeah, we’ve been practising around the orchard. But she can’t land yet.’
‘She can’t land?!’ Lisa was incredulous. ‘Why did you let her in here?’
‘I didn’t,’ Scott shrugged. ‘I thought you’d want to see . . . She let herself in.’
Kiwi flapped over the table and, rapidly losing altitude, toppled the candles.
‘She’ll wear herself out soon,’ Scott added.
Kiwi circled her favourite chair, lowered her claws and attempted landing. The chair clattered backwards on to the floor. The parrot flapped frantically to regain height.
Mojo sat on his haunches and watched with a combination of admiration and concern as Kiwi rallied—only to collide with the pantry door.
Lisa cried out as the parrot slid to the floor. The bird lay lifeless at her feet. Kiwi’s eyes were closed, her beak slightly open, her yellow crest frozen in a smile. She was lifeless.
Mojo trotted forward and examined the prone parrot. With a shielded paw, he patted the bird’s head and licked her chest with slow, loving strokes.
To Lisa’s astonishment, Kiwi’s wrinkled eyelids slid open to reveal shining crimson eyes. The cockatoo rubbed her beak against Mojo’s forehead, as if to say thanks.
‘You should put those guys on YouTube,’ Jake said.
Lisa felt weak with joy when Kiwi rolled over and regained her footing. The bird shook her head and preened her feathers as if she was as surprised as anyone else she was still alive. After taking a moment to regain her senses, the cockatoo lumbered out the door to the garden with Mojo trotting after her.
Silence settled over the kitchen, apart from the radio, which had morphed into Mozart. Lisa picked up the two chairs and straightened the candleholders.
‘Pleased to meet you,’ Jake said, extending a hand and dousing Scott with alpha-male charm.
‘Welcome to Tumbledown,’ Scott replied.
Jake’s eyebrows twitched with confusion.
Chapter 30
The arrivals hall was frantic. Throngs of people pressed against the barrier and waited for the automatic doors to open, presenting loved ones like game-show prizes.
Lisa stood at the back of the crowd near the café. Maybe she’d been living in the country too long, but there were too many people squeezed in too close for her liking. Her heart started doing a butterfly dance, the excitement at the prospect of seeing Portia again tempered by anxiety.
She ordered two takeaway coffees and passed one to Zack, who badly needed to pull his jeans up. The coffee trembled in its paper cup. Her hands were damp. Maybe she had a new phobia.
If she kept hovering at the back of the crowd, Portia would never see her so, breathing in, she plunged into the human stew.
Two hours later, Lisa’s phone vibrated with a text. ‘Where r u?’
‘At the barrier on the right as you come through the doors. Can’t wait! Where r u?’
‘Outside by taxi stand. Been here 4eva.’
Zack trailed after her towards the taxi rank, where a lofty Bedouin was leaning against a pole. The figure waved and clopped towards them, trailing scarves.
‘Darling girl!’ Lisa cried, kissing her daughter’s angular cheeks and drinking in a perfume that smelt like aftershave.
Portia didn’t seem surprised to be greeted by a cameraman. She flashed Zack a professional smile. In an uncharacteristic act of chivalry, Zack loaded her bags on a trolley and wheeled them to the car.
Lisa wasted no time starting her two-week fattening-up campaign. Halfway to Castlemaine she turned off to Macedon and pulled up at a café.
As always happened when she was out with Portia, a waiter was at their table in seconds and smiling beguilingly.
‘Mmmmm, the chocolate forest cake looks good,’ Lisa said, perusing the menu for calorie-laden fodder.
‘Yummy!’ Portia chimed in.
Portia listened ravenously while Lisa ordered cake with cream and ice cream on the side. Zack asked for a meat pie with tomato sauce.
‘And I’ll have a small green salad, no dressing,’ Portia added.
Lisa prickled with annoyance. ‘Aren’t we sharing the cake?’
‘Yes, of course,’ Portia said. ‘I’m just so hungry I’m having a main course as well.’
The waiter returned minutes later and placed the salad in front of Portia with a flourish. It was big enough to fill a grasshopper. Portia bedazzled him with a smile.
‘Sorry, guys,’ the waiter said, pulling himself together to look at Lisa and Zack. ‘I forgot what you ordered.’
After some time, he reappeared with the pie and a mountainous wedge of chocolate rising from a lake of cream. Two breasts of ice cream rested either side of the cake, along with three token strawberries. Though Lisa had asked for three spoons, Portia was engrossed with her bowl of leaves, psyching herself up to spear a spinach leaf. Zack made quick work of his pie. She was grateful he was there to help her plough through the cake.
‘So what are you wearing to the wedding?’ Lisa asked, casting about for neutral ground.
‘I found a fantastic dress in a charity shop,’ Portia said, jiggling her leg.
It was a new thing, the leg jiggling. Maybe she was short of magnesium.
‘Wouldn’t you rather wear a new outfit? We could go shopping together.’
Portia shot her a withering look. Lisa swallowed another lump of cake.
Portia sighed. ‘You don’t get it. The whole point of fashion right now is to look like you’ve just had sex.’
Zack scooped his spoon around the plate to collect the last vestiges of cream.
‘Really? In my day . . .’ Lisa stopped herself right there. ‘What about your hair?’
‘Same thing. Messed up is good.’
Lisa ordered a skinny cappuccino. Zack drained a mug of hot chocolate and four marshmallows before disappearing to the bathroom.
‘What happened to that nice boy you were seeing. Charlie, was it?’ Lisa asked quietly.
‘Charlie who?’
‘I thought you were serious for a while.’
Portia stabbed a tomato and jiggled her leg so violently Lisa wondered if she should say something about it. ‘We didn’t hold hands or anything.’ Portia’s tone was impatient.
Lisa was certain Portia ha
d slept with Charlie several times.
‘I mean you can have sex with as many friends as you like,’ Portia continued. ‘But holding hands . . . that’s commitment.’ She raised a glass of mineral water. A scarlet Care Bear on the underside of her wrist flashed a menacing grin. Two weeks was beginning to look like the limit for both of them.
For the rest of the trip, Lisa was too hot with annoyance to bother with conversation. She let the countryside unravel under violent blue sky while Zack and Portia prattled about film school and the perils of Hollywood. Lisa had to bite her lip when they agreed they’d rather be famous than rich. She feared for the young’s obsession with celebrity. From her own experiences of a very minor version of recognition, she knew the concept was overrated.
Her thoughts drifted to Three Sisters: Emily. She hadn’t heard a word from her publisher, even though Vanessa surely had read the manuscript by now. Maybe something was wrong. Lisa pictured Vanessa in front of her computer piecing together a tactful email telling her it was rubbish. If the book was rejected her finances would be stuffed.
‘Wow!’ Portia said, as they approached the manor’s blackened gates. ‘That’s some barbecue you had.’
As they turned into the driveway, a tall stepladder reared over the windscreen. Lisa spun the wheel, narrowly avoiding crashing into the ladder. Ron waved at her from his perilous position on the second to top rung. On the ground beneath him, Ted was holding what appeared to be a sheet.
Portia leapt out of the back seat into her brother’s arms. Seeing her two children together again, Lisa felt momentarily complete.
‘What do you reckon?’ Ted asked, flourishing the sheet. Decorating the driveway with bed linen was beyond fanciful, but it was his wedding.
Ted bundled Portia back into the car. As they rounded the bend, Lisa saw two figures sitting on the veranda. Kiwi was perched on the balustrade, presiding like Judge Judy over the short bald man and the giant in work boots.
