“So, be here on time for every class. If you are late returning from the break, don’t return and I will mark you down for half a class. Do not answer your phone in class. If I see you texting in class, I will ask you to leave. Mobile phones were not available in this country till 1994 and we all got degrees, raised kids and went to work without them up till then, so I think we can make it through a 90 minute class without referring to our Facebook page. Go to the toilet before the class. If you have a weak bladder, do not drink water during the class. What goes in must come out and I have never known anyone to die of thirst in a class of 90 minutes duration. I am a lot older than most of you, and have given birth to three large babies so if I can hold on, so can you.” Louise consulted the unit outline and opened her textbook at the appropriate page. “Now, let’s take a look at the Australian Accounting Standards, shall we?”
Chapter 19 – End of the renovation
It was time to finish renovating the house, and only the courtyard remained to be done. From the living room, you looked from two sets of double French windows out onto the paved courtyard. The surrounding garden was lovely, but the old cement pavers were dark grey, uneven and embedded with decades of possum faeces. And now that the light fittings and blinds had been replaced with modern, minimalist styles, the grotty old grey pavers and the Italianate pillared which contained the border garden simply didn’t match.
Louise was loath to spend any more money, but the view from the living room was a reminder of the previous horror of what had existed throughout their home when they’d taken it over. Louise remembered that even as a little girl, these Italianate pillars had signified European taste which, while possibly appropriate on the Riviera, was out of place in suburban Australia. It was like trying to understand why men thought moustaches made them look masculine – there was no point in trying to understand the ridiculous. It just was.
Louise looked at the courtyard and canvassed her options. As usual, in her inimitable, methodical way, she costed out the job after collecting information from garden landscapers and paving shops. She invited people to give her quotes and was informed that it would cost $17,000 and $14,000 and $11,000 and $7,000 by various contractors.
To the man who quoted her $7,000 she said “But I can only afford $5,000.” She knew it should only cost this amount, too.
“$5,500, then, including G.S.T.,” he said.
“Great!” said Louise. “When can you start?”
“Tomorrow,” he’s replied. “See you at seven.”
And that had been that. Before the end of the week, the grey pavers were gone and a beautiful pale orange sandstone paver was in its place. The sandstone almost matched the wooden floor of the living room and the whole effect was to stretch the living room out into the courtyard.
*
Louise lay in her bed and stared at the ceiling. She’d just had an email from Jeff and needed to think about what it might mean. He was angry that she was happy living apart from him. He was angry that the lives of the kids just rolled along without him – as though he was inconsequential to them. She understood his hurt feelings; they were natural. And anger was Jeff’s most exercised emotion, so it was predictable that he would be angry now.
But Louise also understood that kids had to be able to cope with great change. That was their survival mechanism. Kids had no control over their own lives for so long. Their parents moved them without consultation; made changes to their lives; chose their schools, their neighbourhoods, indirectly, by choosing the neighbourhood and school, they even chose their friends – a child wouldn’t survive if they were going to get ramped up over every change inflicted on them by their parents. Jeff had moved the kids every two years for their whole lives – and now he wondered why they coped so well when he left? It was just another change.
Jeff’s email was direct and to the point. “We should give things another go, or get a divorce,” he wrote. “If you are not prepared to come over here and live in the United States, let’s lodge the divorce papers.”
Louise tried to clear her mind before even contemplating this statement. The bed was warm and embracing. Her room was airy and light. The pattern of the white painted wooden plantation blinds replicated the louvred closet doors. The whole room was painted white, and the horizontal blinds and louvres textured the whiteness without breaking it. The sand coloured carpet and sand-and-cream doona added to the soft feeling of the light room. Louise felt safe and whole and able to think clearly when she was alone in this room, lying by herself and relaxing in this bed.
Did she want to remain married to Jeff? Louise closed her eyes and concentrated on the warmth of her bed. Did she miss him? What did she like about her life now? What did she want from her future?
Louise realised with a sudden clarity that she and Jeff did not want the same future. And that really was the problem.
She hadn’t really had to think about any of this till now. Just establishing their new home and life had been a full time occupation. She forced herself to analyse her situation, past and present.
Marriage to Jeff had seemed so wonderful at first. It had been full of new and interesting experiences. More than that – it had been the fulfilment of a long held dream to have a husband and a family and a home. She’d been single for years and wanted all those things for herself. She had wanted to move into the next phase of her life, but she couldn’t do it until she met a man and got married. Then she met Jeff and he had immediately been so keen on her and so keen to marry her, she felt that the wait had been vindicated.
Louise had realised that Jeff wasn’t single because he was the kind of man everyone wanted to marry. For a start, he was 15 years older than she was. He was only 5 years younger than her mother. And he changed jobs and moved – a lot. But that was exciting to Louise. And he was a very well paid professional – all his moves were paid for by the companies he worked for; and everywhere he worked, he was a senior executive in status as well as age.
She’d coped with his moods and even his depressions. She’d concentrated on the kids, their lovely homes – wherever they might be – and made friends in each new place. But once the kids had all started school, Jeff had been resentful of her lifestyle and badgered her to return to work. Never mind that he travelled constantly; or that she had been out of her profession for over ten years, and would go back, at the age of 43, as a junior. He had been scathing in his criticism. “You contribute nothing to this family,” he had said to her after the birth of their last child. “I could pay someone four dollars an hour to do what you do.”
Louise was fairly certain that you would have to go to an isolated village in a third world country to find a housekeeper/nanny who would work for four dollars an hour looking after a large home, three small kids and a husband – and even sleep with him – but she said nothing. She just remembered.
So, to keep the peace, Louise had employed after-school babysitting, and a cleaner, and paid extra to have her groceries delivered, and went back to work. She resented it. She resented waking up every morning at 5.30 with a headache from lack of sleep. She resented running to the train and standing in it as it jolted her to work. There was nowhere to sit in the morning train – it was standing all the way. She resented the bitchy secretary who smelt of last night’s rum and coke and laughed a fake laugh every time the boss said anything, yet scowled at Louise and made sure that she removed the toilet paper so that there was never any when Louise paid a visit to the office loo.
But mostly she resented Jeff, who received a bonus each year after 35 years of uninterrupted employment, while she, who had the same number of degrees as her husband, earned much less, and still had to run home at 6pm to pick up the tired little kids, cook the dinner and tidy the house, bath the kids and feed them, read them stories and clean up after dinner, make tomorrow’s lunches including her own (Jeff often reminded her that he had lunch at the café in town near his office with the cute young waitresses) and make sure everyone had clean clothes re
ady for tomorrow.
She resented him because he didn’t care about her. He didn’t worry that she was tired. He never thought of doing a nice thing for her. He wouldn’t even answer the phone at work if he knew it was her calling him. She was a necessary annoyance in his life. She was just a housekeeper who the kids really, really liked.
Louise remembered the conversation they had had when she realised that Jeff not only did not love her, he simply didn’t care about her at all. He’d arrived home late after a work dinner and everyone, including Louise, had been in bed. Jeff walked into the room. “Oh, you’re still awake?” he remarked.
“Yes,” said Louise. “How was the dinner?”
“It was fantastic,” Jeff smiled. “We were at the restaurant in the Sheraton, and at the table next to ours were all the young models from Cleo magazine!” Jeff looked so happy and excited. Louise blinked. He was 55 years old, talking about girls of 20. “It made our whole night!” he said happily, removing his suit and hanging it carefully as he spoke.
Louise felt like Alice in the Brady Bunch. Poor old androgynous Alice, technically female but lacking all the desirable features of a woman. She pretended to fall asleep while Jeff preformed his protracted nightly washing ritual.
Now, lying alone in her own bed, Louise realised that she no longer loved her husband. He had scratched and torn at her love for him for so many years; he had numbed the spot in her heart where she felt sensitive to his comments. She despised his lecherous remarks on every woman he saw on television, in the movies, in the print media, on an album cover, waiting in a queue at McDonalds, waiting on their table in a restaurant. She had hardened her heart so that she wouldn’t be hurt or behave inappropriately when he told her he had been to a stripper’s bar on a recent business trip. When he told her what a prude she was; how jealous she was of younger, more attractive women; how normal he was and how boring she was. And now she had no feelings for him whatsoever. None at all. Jeff had stamped them all out dead before he had left. At least he’d had done that much for her.
So, why would he even want her to come to America to re-try their marriage? Had the two years of separation re-sparked his former love of her? Had he realised that she was a good wife and that he had left a lovely, loving family which was impossible to replace? Louise had to admit that even for her, even after everything, this was the real issue. This family was the only family for both of them. Could they reunite it so that everyone was happy?
Louise knew that she would love to be able to give up work. Her teaching job was very stressful and exhausting; and now she wanted to be able to slow down – retire; pursue other interests; take it easy; spend time looking after herself and her growing family.
But she knew that Jeff would never allow her to be a full-time housewife. He hadn’t allowed her to stay at home when their youngest was 6 and off to school – he would never entertain the thought now that Peter was 13.
Being married to Jeff was a full-time job. If she had to go out to work anyway, why stay married? It was a double burden. It wasn’t as if by returning to him she would resume any enjoyable activities which she now missed. He never wanted to spend time alone with her, except in bed, and even that had become unrewarding for her. He would rather get root canal than take her out for a meal on a Friday night. He didn’t drink, so that was out – they couldn’t even share a drink at home. He only liked to watch films about war or shows with half naked young girls, neither of which she enjoyed; and he hated the comedies and dramas she loved. Jeff had no friends outside work, and his favourite pastime was going on a lone run. She would be lonely and alone and working in another new job if she moved.
She re-read his email, and a few others he had sent since they had split. Many of them spoke of his loneliness; and his wish that they could be re-united. Not a single one spoke of his love for his wife; nor of his longing for her company. In fact, the word “love” was conspicuous by its absence.
She got out of bed and sent him an email. “You’re right,” she replied. “I’ll lodge the forms tomorrow.”
And she tucked herself back into bed and fell fast asleep.
Chapter 20 – Transplants
The best place to think, Louise had discovered, was on a walk through the streets around her home. From Laburnum St, she could walk past well-maintained homes, both old and new. Some of the original homes had been knocked down and replaced with large houses with values more closely resembling the land price; while others were sufficiently grand to begin with and now only required new kitchens and bathrooms. Laurel Grove led her to Black’s Walk, along the creek bed – running now, and home to frogs and ducks; then past the Scout hall and the playground, till she found herself on Salisbury St, outside Gourmet Girl café, where diners sat inside the glass walls and out on the patio footpath in the Parisienne style. This completed the loop to Laburnum St and took about 25 minutes. You could always find 25 minutes, even in a busy day.
The gardens in general, and Black’s Walk in particular, were beautiful and fragrant in every season. Due to the houses from the earliest years of the previous century, and their neo-Georgian neighbours, travelling down the labyrinth of wooded streets became a journey into the past. This was where the artist Fred McCubbin and his wife Anne had lived a century before; and the native bushland he had so lovingly represented in his paintings was still apparent.
Many of the houses were of the between-the-wars period; but there were a few Federation homes and these reminded Louise of Brisbane. Painted wooden buildings, with ornate arts-and-craft fretwork around the entry way, they harkened back to another era in a way a brick house could not. Not many survived but those that did drew Melbourne back to its Australian roots, when wood had been the mandatory house building material. The newer homes reflected the mono-culture of architectural economy, and provided resistance to the ever-present Australian element: fire. So, red brick represented the war years, and orange brick the sixties. Brown brick with stained wood window frames and pergolas in ‘mission brown’ showed the style of the seventies, while a mixture of clinka brick and reproduction federation window frames in yellow aluminium remembered the eighties. The nineties favoured a return to Georgian squareness and sparseness, and the new millennium delivered a period of rebuilding over replacing, where exteriors were left whole while interiors were gutted and re-arranged.
Depending upon what time she chose to walk, Louise would meet her unknown neighbours or be completely alone as she wandered past a hundred homes. Before 8 am, the dog-walking women and the jogging fathers were out. After 6pm, families walked together and their dogs got to smell the twilight air. Before lunch, mothers with prams would walk their babies to the shops to post a letter or buy some flowers. It was only between 1pm to 3pm that Louise could be assured of uninterrupted solitude on her walk. All the fathers and many of the mothers were at the office; all the children were at school and the pre-schoolers and the family pets were taking their afternoon siestas. If she saw a man sitting alone on a bench in the bushland that ran beside the Laburnum Primary, she called the school office so that the principal might take the opportunity to stretch his legs.
*
“He doesn’t love you!” Mary was vehement and spoke with a sneer. “Don’t do it, Louise, don’t make the same mistake all over again.” She shook her head, her face contorted by a look of disgust.
Louise was shocked by her mother’s reaction, and quite sure that she would not be influenced by it. Already she doubted her mother’s ability to separate Louise’s best interests from her own. As far as Mary was concerned, Louise no longer needed a husband. She had her home, her career and her family. “Why put yourself in a situation where he can call the shots again?” Mary asked her. “You’ll just be moving around all the time again, and one day one of the kids won’t come with you. Before you know it, you’ll have no home to retire to; and three kids in three different countries.”
“I know, Mum. I’ve told him I’ll arrange our divorce.”
“I hope you do,” said Mary. As if it made any difference.
*
The tensions in the house were being aired daily now.
First it was James. “Mum – I have to study for my VCE exams and that oxygen machine is so noisy I can’t concentrate. It sends a vibration through the floor that rocks the whole house!”
It was true. The machine, which couldn’t be put against a wall because it required ventilation, sat away from the kitchen bench. It was the size of a garbage can and hummed like an idling car engine. The tubes which fed Mary oxygen were metres long and trailed all over the house.
“Well,” suggested Louise, trying to think of a solution, “If you swapped rooms with Peter, you’d be further away from the machine and it might not bother you. Let’s go up to Peter’s room and see.”
But James was adamant. “I’m not swapping rooms with Peter!” he protested. “I’d never get my room back.”
“True story,” Peter nodded, having overheard the conversation as he came down the stairs. “I think it’s a good idea, though.”
“Of course you do – you can’t wait to get my room.” James growled.
Peter shrugged. “Just trying to help,” he smiled.
Then there was Camille. “Mum – I want my room back!” Camille urged. “It’s been 4 months, and you snore!”
“I do not!” Louise retorted.
“You do – especially on Friday night when you come back from drinking at Julia’s.”
Louise sighed. She knew that Camille could not be expected to share a room - and bed - with her mother for ever. It was only ever meant to be a short-term arrangement, but Mary had settled in and did not seem interested in returning to Canberra.
But when you were on the organ transplant list, you just had to wait for the phone to ring. When would it be her turn?
Morning in Melbourne Page 15
