by Joy Dettman
‘Maybe four Valium was too many. There isn’t so much of her now,’ Alan says.
They glance at the sheet and the pillowslips. They are dirty, but they can’t do much about that; she’s lying on them.
The clock ticks its way to eleven. The kitchen has been swept again, the bathroom checked for underdaks, and they are waiting, sweating. Then the car stops out front and Jamesy runs through the house spraying air-freshener while Eddy unlocks the brick-room door, opens it slow, prepared for the charge.
No charge. Mavis is still flat out on her back. Jamesy gives her feet a spray with air-freshener and her feet don’t even flinch. He and Eddy place the quilt over her, pull it up to her chin, then down again, due to it’s exposing her filthy feet. They sidle by the end of the bed, spray the couch with air-freshener, toss the tartan blanket over it and sidle back to the door. Jamesy waits there, on door duty, while Eddy disappears down to the chook-pen. That’s their latest plan, made ten minutes ago. They don’t really know if it was Eva who dobbed on them or just one of the neighbours; they’ve made so many plans and discarded as many, but there’s no more time to wonder if they discarded the right ones or not. The department people are knocking at their door and Mick is turning the key.
‘Good morning. Is your mother in?’ the man says, his nostrils flaring as he sniffs the scent of Forest Glen. He’s poked his nose through this door many times before and the scent and greeting were not so sweet.
‘She’s asleep,’ Mick replies.
‘She’s on a strict diet now and it makes her tired,’ Lori adds. But the buggers are coming in anyhow and not waiting to be invited.
People have learned to come to this address in pairs. The man is familiar, the woman a stranger. She looks around, sees age, sees dilapidation, holds her jacket closer to her shoulders as she walks the dark passage; the male’s eyebrows rise, become lost beneath a sparse sandy fringe, when he’s hit in the eye by the blue kitchen. It’s so tidy, it’s almost painful to behold. He sees the curtains and the clean cloth on the table and a bunch of red geraniums in a posh vase bought from the reject shop. He looks up, sees the blue ceiling, but no Mrs Smyth-Owen, or her couch and lolly papers.
She is the reason he is in this place.
‘Can you tell your mother we’re here,’ he says. Lori shrugs, opens the back door then walks out to the brick room. The two follow her and the little ones follow them.
Mavis is snoring, smelling of Forest Glen. Her hair is very red, daggy and greasy. She didn’t wash it, but she looks sort of peaceful, sort of vulnerable lying there on her back, rattling the rafters.
‘The doctor said she needs her rest,’ Lori whispers. ‘Her heart is weak, due to her . . . her morbid obesity.’ She got that one from the television. ‘She’s taking a pile of tablets every day since she had her last heart attack.’
‘Mmm,’ the woman murmurs, and the man raises his eyebrows to the woman. They turn, return to the kitchen, and maybe they are pleased there is no adult around, which gives them the freedom to stick their noses into the fridge, the freezer, the cupboards. They’re packed with food. The woman looks in a pot on the stove. One of Lori’s pink-sausage stews is bubbling there and it smells good.
The male walks through to the lounge, checks out the two beds and Matty’s cot. The carpet is rotten, and the curtains, and pretty much everything in that room, except the new doonas and the green sheet bedcovers. Then they go to the west bedroom, Lori tailing them, Mick bringing up the rear, the little ones behind Mick. The four bunks are made up hospital-tight, by Eddy, their navy blue sheet bedcovers tucked in.
The duo ‘mmm’ at each other and Lori knows why – because this room looks like a room. They walk into Mick’s room, which until a week ago was a dog’s breakfast of a wrecked bed and chucked stuff. Now it houses only one bed, covered by Eddy’s ex quilt and cover. There is an old desk complete with typewriter, a bookshelf full of books; it looks like a study – bedroom. It’s also the most dangerous room because it backs onto Mavis’s pen and it’s got that hole drilled through for the extension cord. A lot of noise comes through that little hole.
Please, God, let her stay asleep. She usually wakes at eleven and it’s after eleven, but maybe it’s her empty stomach that wakes her, and this morning her stomach isn’t empty.
Mick has got the bookcase against his shared wall, and his wardrobe. He’s pushed his old desk against the west wall. He’s got a swivel office chair too, which he picked up at a garage sale for two dollars, and a desk light, found long ago at the dump. The light only needed a wire connected up and a new screw in the swivel bit of the chair.
The visitors ask Mick a lot of questions, and he answers in his quiet voice. They look at Henry’s typewriter, which Eddy might think is ratshit but Mick is learning to love, because his writing is worse ratshit and always will be. They start acting a bit different then, not so condescending. Mick is fifteen now, and he looks fifteen and sounds it, and he sounds serious about finishing high school and going to university, so serious they almost believe him. Lori almost believes him. She leads the visitors out of his room, leads them hopefully towards the front door. They sidetrack into her bedroom.
This furniture isn’t old junk; it’s a proper bedroom suite. They open the wardrobe, which is still full of Henry’s clothes, still full of the smell of Henry. He always hung stuff, had a fetish for hanging stuff, which Eddy must have inherited.
‘Our mother can’t bring herself to throw his clothes away yet,’ Lori says. ‘She had a complete nervous collapse, from grief. It’s been a . . . an extremely challenging time for her but she’s getting better – as long as she’s got no stress.’
‘Mmm,’ the woman says, nods, smiles benignly at small beings who have crept closer, who now stare up at her with wide, trusting eyes. Lori backs out to the passage, opens the front door. They don’t take the hint. They want Mavis.
Some prime minister in the olden days once said that life wasn’t meant to be easy, and oh boy, was he right.
Back in the kitchen, the man is looking at his watch, the woman studying the border of postcards Blu-tacked along the eastern kitchen wall, little kids surrounding her. Maybe they know her from that time they were in emergency care.
Timmy pulls at her skirt, and Lori hopes his hand is clean. ‘Dat is a pitcher of da Colosim from Eba,’ he says.
‘Colosseum,’ Lori corrects, draws him away, checks his hand. It’s clean enough. She offers tea. The visitors accept stale coffee, sit, then the woman asks about the twins.
So it was Eva who dobbed on them. Lori makes the coffee in new mugs, opens a packet of biscuits and decides it’s no use trying to hide Eddy. She sends Alan to find him, and Eddy comes from the chook-house with an ice-cream container full of eggs.
‘Pleased to meet you guys,’ he says, offers his hand. The man takes Eddy’s hand, shakes it. The woman just stares from one twin to the other. They are still the same person to strangers, though to Lori and the kids, they are not even a bit the same.
‘Your aunt was previously married to your father, Edward? I believe your father wished you to remain with your aunt, who you have lived with since nineteen – ’
‘Since we were around two. We both had operations at two and again at five. Want to see my scar? Mine’s bigger than Alan’s.’ He doesn’t wait, but flashes it.
‘Mmm. And you lived with your aunt until last February?’
‘Eddy did. Alan didn’t. Our mother never wanted the twins to stay with Eva and Alice, but once those two got hold of them, they wouldn’t give them back,’ Lori says.
‘We want to live here now,’ Alan says.
‘’Cause Eva pinched all Mavis’s dollars, ’cause Eva is called a lebsian,’ Neil says. The woman’s mouth drops four inches. They see her tonsils. And Jesus, how does that little twit remember that word? Nobody has said that word in months. He could have a brain in his head if he’d stop pulling faces long enough to find it.
‘You shouldn’t say that,’ Lor
i chastises.
‘Mavis says that,’ Neil defends, but he’s looking out back, looking into the brick room, looking right at what is snoring in the brick room. He doesn’t like Mavis and celery and broccoli, so he says no more. Matty crawls up on Lori’s knee, cuddles his face against her, sucks hard on his dummy.
The visitors toss each other a few meaningful glances, then the man stands, walks to the brick room. Mavis has rolled over and her quilt has fallen to the floor; she’s showing all her humps and bumps through the colourful material, showing two very dirty bare feet, but there’s not a lot of light in there and the visitors are standing back.
‘What time does your mother usually wake?’
‘It depends on . . . on things. She wanted to get the house looking nice so she was up at dawn and she exhausted herself,’ Lori says. It’s after twelve and Mavis is starting to lick her lips between snores. It’s a sure sign she’s dreaming of food and thinking of waking. ‘At weekends, when we’re home to look after the little ones, she occasionally sleeps all afternoon.’
‘She panics if she gets woken out of a deep sleep, thinks something is wrong with one of us kids,’ Eddy adds.
‘The last time she had a heart attack we had to get the doctor and about six men to get her up off the floor. We can give you his phone number if you like.’
The woman looks at the man. She’s not here to make things worse, and she’s got a bad back, can’t lift a thing, and she’s not going to attempt to –
The man raises his eyebrows. It’s Saturday, after all. He’s got a wife and his own kids and he wants to watch the football this afternoon.
Mick is not doing much, not saying much either, but he wants those visitors away from that green door. ‘Would you like to see our vegetable garden?’ he says.
They follow him to his onion patch. He’s proud of those onions, which the bugs leave alone. He pulls two, offers them to the woman. She takes them, can’t do much else; doesn’t want them – they give her wind. ‘Goodness me. That’s wonderful. Wonderful.’ She turns away before he can pull any more and she walks back to the kitchen, glancing at the sleeping mound as she passes, and at Jamesy, who hasn’t left his post beside the green door. The man walks back, the kids at his heels. He’s holding a bunch of silverbeet, probably full of bugs.
‘Perhaps your mother could arrange another time . . . ?’ He speaks to Lori, who seems to be in charge. She nods, tries not to do it too emphatically. He juggles the silverbeet, offers a card. ‘School, Edward.’ He’s looking from one twin to the other. ‘You haven’t been attending school.’
‘I’ve got an IQ of a hundred and seventy. Alan makes sure I keep up – or I make sure he keeps up,’ Eddy says, takes the offered card, puts it in his wallet beside a twenty. The man notices the twenty, loses his eyebrows. Twelve-year-old boys with mothers on supporting pensions shouldn’t be carrying twenty-dollar notes around.
Eddy knows it too. He’s like ten steps ahead of the rest of the world. ‘Mum said I’d be going to school on Monday. I’ve got to go to the shops to buy some books today.’
‘And why were you not enrolled before?’ the woman asks.
‘It’s a long story.’
‘Mmm?’ the woman says. She’s got time to listen. And she puts Mick’s bloody onions down – on the clean tablecloth, and they are covered in dirt. Then she sits down again. Bugger. The man doesn’t sit.
‘Mum probably wouldn’t want me to tell you,’ Eddy says.
‘Mmm?’
‘Well, it’s because of Alice, Eva’s partner.’
‘Mmm?’
‘She’s been putting the fear of God into Mum for months.’
‘Mmm?’
Eddy is inventive, but he’s working hard on this one. ‘Well, with a heart condition and social phobia and her obesity, she’s got enough problems without having to worry about me being kidnapped every time I leave the house.’
‘Kidnapped?’
‘Yes. They’ve kidnapped me before and threatened to get me if I go to school. We blame anxiety for Mum’s last heart attack, don’t we, Lori?’ He’s running out of steam. He needs help. Mick isn’t saying a word. He’s leaning against the kitchen door looking pale. Alan is standing beside the fridge, looking paler.
‘Aunty Eva has been . . . sort of appalling to Mum,’ Lori says. ‘Like writing terrible letters all the time and getting her solicitor to send legal letters and stuff.’ She hunts through a drawer full of junk, finds that last mad letter from Eva, which is perfect evidence, like the loathsome, depraved, obese slut bit, and the born of corruption bit, and the bit about cursing and wishing her dead. It sounds totally mad. Neil has drawn a picture on the rear of it but it’s only a fire-breathing dragon picture with red hair and probably celery and broccoli growing around its feet. She shrugs, offers the letter, right side up. The woman reads it, passes it to the man. And does it make his eyebrows disappear. She hands them another, this one from Mr Watts. It’s sort of threatening.
They tut-tut for a bit, shut up for a bit while the kids stand around, waiting for the buggers to go.
‘You have more – ’
‘Our mother usually burns them. They . . . they upset her, make her scared stiff to let Eddy out of her sight.’
‘I was always their favourite – after Alice decided I was a borderline genius. Alan’s IQ is only about a hundred and fifty, and he gave Eva a hard time when he found out our father had left her because he was a bit old-fashioned about her and Alice having a lesbian relationship.’
‘Eddy said lebsian.’ Neil pulls at Lori’s T-shirt. ‘Lori, Eddy said – ’
‘Anyway . . . anyway, Mum knew that if I left the house Alice would probably snatch me like she did the last time.’
‘The last time, Edward?’ the man says.
‘I thought she would have told you about that.’ The visitors shake their heads. ‘That’s Mum for you. She likes to keep family things in the family and that’s the main trouble with her. If she’d just talk to people, just let it out, she’d get better.’
‘Not that talking to her psychiatrist does Eva much good,’ Lori says.
‘You were saying, Edward, that your aunt’s partner . . . grabbed you.’
‘Yes. When I was just a kid, about nine. I was playing in the drive one day and Alice picked me up and threw me into the back seat of the car and the next thing I knew, I was in England for twelve months. I think they drugged me with Eva’s pills. She’s hooked on pills. She’s got an eating disorder too. Like, she’s scared to eat in case she gets fat like Mavis and her father, so she’s always sick.’
It’s twelve-thirty. Mavis’s eating disorder will be waking her any minute. Lori wants Eddy to shut up now. And saying about pills – he’ll get Neil doing his Valium show-and-tell bit in a minute. But the visitors are both watching Eddy and shaking their heads, understanding so much more now. That poor woman. Saint Mavis, the martyr.
Lori picks up the onions, looks at the patch of dirt on her new tablecloth, which is keeping her eyes away from the visitors.
‘Mum knew once you got here, and saw things were okay, that you’d throw a spanner in their works. She said this morning. “Get your books today, Eddy. When the department people get here, they will see that you’re so much better off with your family. We mightn’t have much, but we’ve got love in this family”.’
Big-mouth actor, moron. Lori wants these people out. She walks, with the onions, toward the passage. ‘I’ll tell Mum what you said about making another appointment.’
The man looks at his watch, looks at the front door. Eddy is still talking. ‘She’ll be disappointed she didn’t get to talk to you, because she also wanted to speak about getting me and Alan back on her dependants list for the pension.’
‘We’ll see that she gets the forms,’ the woman says. ‘If she has any further threats from your aunt or her partner, she can, of course, take out a restraining order.’
‘That’s a last resort.’
And finally t
he woman is standing. She takes a last look at Mavis then walks. They’re on the front verandah, Lori straddling the worst broken floorboard. She pushes the onions at the woman, who takes them, looks at the broken board, at the house, and God it looks bad, sort of grey and tumbledown, guttering hanging, weatherboards hanging half off.
They walk to the car. But the buggers don’t get in. They walk over the road to Nelly’s. ‘She’ll give them an earful about Mavis.’
‘She mightn’t be home,’ Eddy says. ‘Someone picked her up about half-past ten.’
‘That’s over two hours ago.’
They watch at the lounge-room window, wait. Then the two are back at their car. They’re driving away.
And they hear the green door slam and for five minutes the door quakes and the ceiling shakes and the neighbours are probably out watering their gardens. Nelly isn’t. She wasn’t home. Sometimes you can almost believe there is a God.
They make a coffee and a slice of toast and Aropax jam, then remember Mavis has already had one tablet – too bad. Upping the dose of Aropax might alter her brain waves faster.
‘The welfare people said you were doing an excellent job, Mave,’ Eddy says.
‘They said they’re going to send up some forms for you to fill in, to get Alan and Eddy on your dependants list,’ Lori adds.
Getting money out of the government always made Mavis happy before; it doesn’t work today. ‘I’ll fill in some bloody forms. I’ll fill in your bloody death certificates before you’re all much older. You open that bloody door now, or by Jesus, when you do, you’re going to be very sorry.’
‘That’s why we won’t open the door. You start acting like a normal sane person and then we’ll open it,’ Lori says.
This is communication. Maybe not the sort they’d hoped for, but at least there is a backward and forwarding of words! The toast and coffee are tempting. She claims them and walks to her television, turns it on and sits down. She’s still yelling but not so loud, just that she wants more toast. ‘And put some bloody butter on it!’
