‘A role in a movie called Romper Stomper,’ Matthew says, his eyes lighting up as he tells us the news. I choke with happiness and pride. God, he looks like Dad. It could be Dad sitting there, something of him in each of my six brothers.
‘I need a black leather jacket and maybe I should get a crew cut or an earring,’ Matt says.
‘All that for an audition?’ I wonder.
‘Well they won’t want a surfie. It’s about gangs in Melbourne.’
‘You’ll be right,’ says Seamus. ‘Tell ’em ya from Broady.’
‘Heard of Russell Crowe?’ Matt says.
‘Yeah, he’s in Neighbours. Or is it Sons and Daughters?’
‘He’s the lead in the movie.’
‘Did the Actors Agency get you the audition?’ I ask, as the waiter arrives to take our orders.
‘Yeah, the agent has been great. She’s got the photo you sent them up on the wall.’
‘Next to Guy Pearce,’ I add.
Margie’s mood swings continued through the next few weeks and with them my anxiety rose and fell.
One warm, sunny afternoon we met in the Botanic Gardens, not far from her latest accommodation – a hostel room on busy Punt Road. There was a light breeze playing with the trees and messing with Margie’s chic new bob, which bounced as she ran towards us.
‘Where’s my hug?’ Margie called to James, tossing bunches of leaves for him to catch.
‘Look, Marnie, new boofs,’ he said.
‘Boofs?’ Margie laughed and turned to me for an explanation.
‘Boots. He has trouble with his t’s. Haven’t you heard him say truck?’
‘Let’s go for coffee. I need a few tips for the new job.’
She looked relaxed as she took control of the stroller. Was she getting better? Was it the job? The new tablets? Were the zombie trances and the shakes gone? Cast aside with the old medications?
‘When do you start?’
‘Tomorrow. And I’ve found somewhere to live.’
‘You moving again?’
‘Yeah. The sergeant major who runs the hostel said Philip can’t even visit. “No boys allowed” he bellowed and threw him out.’
‘Where are you moving to?’
I felt the bubble burst, the joy replaced by a cold shiver that chilled my blood. Please not with Philip, I wanted to say, wary of the on-again, off-again boyfriend. She’d met him in the hospital.
‘I’m moving in with a single mum, she seems nice. I’ll be helping out with some babysitting so the rent is only fifty dollars a week.’
‘Where to this time? I’ll give our removalist some warning.’
‘Prahran. Not far from the magazine. Gotta dash,’ she smiled. Gulped down her coffee and blew James a kiss goodbye. I allowed myself some hope. At least it was better than the Cecil Street flat she shared with Paul and Seamus for a short time. When rent payments were a little bit late – perhaps even well overdue – the agent took the front door off the flat. My brothers stayed on for a while and Margie came to the farm with me.
Restless legs, itchy arms. It’s impossible to sleep. My mind is in overdrive, thoughts racing, crowding to be heard. Voices compete. Sad. Confused. Angry.
You’re a bad sister. You should have protected her.
And then I let the others take over. You do too much. Let her be. It’s not helping.
I shove Jon next to me, impatient with his loud snores and jealous of his ability to sleep through anything and everything. I want to wake him, to hear a good voice, his voice of reason. But he has to work, a business to run, bills to pay. He doesn’t need my worry as well.
Then, as I finally drift to sleep in the early hours of the morning the phone call comes. Margie has had her hours cut back and she can’t afford the flat. She’s thinking of moving back with Philip.
‘Come and stay with me for a while,’ I urge, but she’s not interested.
‘Is Philip okay? Is he taking his medication?’
‘No. He says he’s better without it.’
‘Are you taking yours?’
‘Kind of. Mostly.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘I just take the pimozide. The others make me feel sleepy and stupid. I hate it.’
Twenty-three
Mid-May. Cold. Non-stop rain. Tired and pregnant to bursting, I drag a backpack up the stairs to Margie’s new room. The magazine job is over. So is the South Yarra apartment. Both gone after a few short weeks. Cost cutting, they said. ‘They wanted someone to do reception and typesetting,’ she told me and appeared to be taking it well.
Margie found a room at a boarding house in Punt Road, South Yarra. Cheap and ugly, she called it her shoebox.
‘I’ll have to go outside to change my mind,’ she joked.
At the end of May my beautiful baby arrives. Another boy. I call him Liam for a day, but his dad wants William and his big brother calls him Wilma. Margie is at the hospital with me on this first day, only hours after he’s born.
I watch from my bed, my caesarean stitches hurting when I laugh or move. But I feel my heart bursting. How lucky am I? Surrounded by love. I feed William easily.
‘You’re my big boy now,’ I call to James as he leaves with Jon, who promises him a ride on the tractor when they get home.
Margie visits the hospital every day. She is lost without work, without a purpose to her days. William brightens an hour or two for her. On the day I am leaving hospital, Margie is there nursing William as I pack my suitcase. She looks pale. She fidgets. Can’t sit still. Sits on the bed. Stands up again.
‘What’s wrong?’ I ask and pray it’s not the ex-boyfriend hanging around again. It seemed he just made her feel miserable with his own demands and had little time or energy to support her when she most needed it.
‘I don’t know,’ Margie says. ‘I just don’t know anything anymore.’
I wish I had the right words to make her feel better, but I don’t.
‘I’m just not coping,’ she says. ‘I don’t have a job, anywhere decent to live. I can’t seem to make anything work.’
The phone rang and I jumped. It was not uncommon for me to jump, hold my breath or even ignore a ringing phone these past few years.
‘It’s Margie,’ Jon called to me, his hand over the mouthpiece. ‘She sounds upset.’ I handed William to him and took the phone.
‘Hi Margie.’
No answer, only a soft sniff.
‘What’s wrong? Where are you?’
‘At work, a function at the Arts Centre.’
The waitressing work for Margie was a godsend. After William’s birth and the loss of her magazine job Margie had deteriorated rapidly. At the suggestion of her doctor she was again admitted to Royal Park. This time the challenges were greater and the stay longer but the part-time work she had secured while preparing to leave was recognised by her medical team as critical for her returning to the world outside the hospital.
‘Are you okay?’ I asked.
‘Not really, I feel sick. I might have to go home.’
‘What is it?’
‘I don’t know. I can’t stop shaking.’
‘Do you want me to come and get you?’
‘No. I’ll just go home.’
‘Is there anyone at the house?’
‘No. Not yet.’
I didn’t like Margie being alone at the house. It was a four-bedroom house in Brunswick but Margie was the first to move in and Paul stayed with her to keep her company until other outpatients from Royal Park moved in with her.
‘Are you sure you won’t come back here?’ I said.
‘Yeah. It’s okay. I’ll just get a taxi home and go to bed.’
‘Margie, I’ll come down if you like.’
‘No. I’ll be okay.’
Early the next morning, after Jon and I count the newborn calves in the paddock and check to see that they are all standing up and drinking from their first-time mothers, I make a mental note of things to pack for Margie�
�s new house. The stockpot for soup, electric frypan and a baking tin for her muesli bars. We eat breakfast together, James crushing Weet-Bix into his highchair as I feed William a few mouthfuls of rice cereal. Jon leaves for work as I pack the car. James in the back seat next to William in his baby capsule. Spare sheets and towels for Margie tucked between them. James sings along with our favourite Carpenters cassette tape, at the top of his voice. ‘I’m on the top of the worrrlll.’
Heavy, peak-hour traffic on the freeway makes for lots of stops and starts, waking the sleeping William. ‘Can you pass Wilma his dummy please, honey.’
‘He doesn’t want it.’
‘Well, see if you can make him laugh.’
In the rear vision mirror, I sneak a look at James blowing bubbles on Will’s cheek as they both giggle.
Finally we pull into the driveway of the big empty house across from the Royal Park hospital. It’s dark inside as I peer through a window and knock on the front door. No answer. I knock again. Still no answer. There’s no noise from inside. Should I wait? Go home? Call someone?
Bang. Bang. Bang. I beat my fist on the door. Frustrated, I call out.
‘Margie. It’s me. Cally.’
Still nothing. I call louder. ‘Margie.’
Nothing.
I lift James from his car seat and he runs to the door and copies me, shouting, ‘Marnie…Marnie’. He runs to the window, peeping inside like he’s playing hide and seek.
‘Is this Marnie’s house?’ he says and I nod. James is always asking me to visit Marnie. William, tucked tightly at my hip, lifts his mouth to the bottom of my cheek and sucks hard. He needs a feed. I have to get into the house. Maybe I could climb through a window?
‘Shusssh, Will, shusssh. I know you’re hungry. Won’t be long.’
‘Let’s go around the back,’ I call to James and take his small hand in mine. We walk down the side of the house to the back door. Locked. Panic strangles my chest, making it hard to breathe.
‘Where is she?’
I shout again and beat my palm into the door. James bangs and shouts as if it was a game.
It’s warm and I’m sweating. Too much heat and too much colour in the garden for this early in spring. Pink and white blossoms fill the fruit trees in the corner of the large yard. Roses open up along the fence. And then I feel cold, shaking as if it’s the middle of winter. Suddenly I am a child again, hiding under my blankets in bed, counting my rosary beads and praying. My mother is lying on the floor in the hallway, her legs thrusting and her mouth dribbling. Another epileptic fit that seemed to come and go with her mood shifts. Mum unconscious, gurgling noises from her throat like our dog Susie, when the car ran over her and she went under the house to die.
Memories like frenzied blowflies buzz in my head, feed on my fear. Then I am five years old again, awake in my room listening to hushed voices. ‘He needs a doctor,’ Mum’s voice muffled through the closed door. The door from where the coughing, gasping, wheezing came. Which of my brothers was it this time? Mum’s voice, calmer, softer than normal. ‘Take it easy, Tommy. Breathe slowly, love. Slowly. In. And. Out. In. Out. Slowly. Lie back down now.’ Another asthma attack. A dash to the hospital.
I stand there at Margie’s door.
Thinking of Tom and then his friend, Russell.
And the gun.
I am shivering, sweating. A heaving in my stomach. I put William down on the lawn. Vomit into the weeds under the lilies. Drag the boys out of the sun into the shade. Try to think.
I go back to the door. Call out one more time. Still no answer. What should I do? Shaking, I kneel down close to James and I put Will to my swollen breast and he feeds hungrily. James digs quietly in the dirt with a twig.
‘Can we go home now?’ he says.
‘Yes, honey.’
I want to escape too. I have had enough. I hate her for doing this to me. I pray for it to end. As I turn away and take James’s hand in mine, the door opens. Margie peeps out, half hidden behind the door.
‘Hi. I thought I heard something.’ Her face is swollen and puffy with dark shadows under her eyes. ‘I was asleep.’
‘At ten o’clock?’ I growl as I watch her stumble, her hands out to take William from me. ‘No,’ I shout and cuddle him to my chest.
I follow her into the cold lounge and sit on an old milk crate.
‘What have you taken?’
‘What does it matter?’ She’s too weak to care. ‘I had a fight with Philip. I just wanted to sleep it off.’
‘He’s a useless idiot. A fucking dickhead who doesn’t care about anyone but himself.’
‘I know. I’m sorry. It’s over. I promise,’ Margie sobs. ‘I’m so sorry. I love you. I won’t hurt you again.’ Margie clings to James who has climbed on to her knee.
‘You need to see a doctor.’
‘I’ll be okay.’
She staggers towards the kitchen bench and fills the kettle with hot water, spilling half of it.
‘Go back to bed and get some sleep. I’ll call back later.’
But I don’t go back. Instead I call to see Jon at work.
‘I can’t do it anymore,’ I tell him.
‘It’ll be okay,’ he says and settles me with a hug.
‘I’m going to give up work, even the little bit I do is stressing me.’
‘That’s a good idea. At least until Margie’s well again.’
Barely a week later, after a night out at a play with a friend, and after taking too many sleeping tablets, Margie spends a night in the Royal Melbourne Hospital. I get a call from her the next morning after she has checked herself out of the hospital and we meet up at her house. After this and the previous episode, it scares and angers me that she has access to tablets that might kill her but more than that it feels so sad that she wants to hurt herself, even die.
When I get to her house she’s in a talkative mood. Planning her twenty-sixth birthday party. Here we go again. I’m angry now. She’s just playing with us. I hate myself for thinking it. Margie is almost manic. She gets onto the phone to enquire about enrolling in university again. Dad’s superannuation education fund will support her through another year. She makes an appointment to see the administrator. I leave her, excited and beaming, looking at course options.
The next morning, back at the farm, I wake from a fretful sleep to William’s loud breathing beside me. Another rough night for my darling boy with bronchitis. I wonder if family genes mean some of us will battle respiratory problems all our lives. The hum of the humidifier soothes him as I finish a second cup of tea and James’s leftover toast and vegemite. We are ready to start the day.
First I call Margie, a morning routine since her moving into the Brunswick group home. I call a little less throughout the day now that Jacinta, a student, had joined her there, also after leaving the hospital.
It’s now only a few days until Margie’s birthday and we’ve been talking about having a small party. She thinks The Clyde in Cardigan Street would be a good spot.
I make plans to take William to the maternal and child health centre for the nurse to check his chest and his progress. I dial Margie’s number. No answer.
Still asleep. Good for her. I’ve been up since six, feeding the boys and mixing red and green playdough for James to make dinosaurs. I ring again at nine o’clock. Still no answer. That’s strange. It’s rare for Margie to sleep so late and I feel those small bubbles of nerves jiggling in the pit of my stomach, like simmering water.
Jacinta answers the phone around ten, just as Humphrey B Bear waves to James from the TV and he squeals back at the big goofy bear.
‘Margie’s not here.’
‘Do you know where she is?’
‘No.’
‘Did she come home last night?’
‘Don’t know.’
‘Could you check her room please?’
‘What for?’
‘To see if she came home.’ I’m getting annoyed.
I shake my head, roll m
y eyes at James, pull a funny face and poke my tongue out. He copies, laughing.
‘There’s no sign of her.’
‘Is her bag there?’
‘Can’t see it.’
‘When you see Margie, can you please tell her I called?’
Anxiety tramples my stomach like waves dumping on the shore. It’s a familiar feeling for me; my mother’s bad nerves. My fear lands in my stomach and persists when things don’t go to plan. When Jon is late home or my boys hold their breath too long when they cry.
Now as I wait to hear from Margie I push those dark thoughts from my mind. I keep busy with James and William. Nothing better than a toddler and small baby to keep you sane. I wash Jon’s farm clothes, James’s overalls. Hang out the nappies and sheets. When I find myself yelling at James for tipping the sand in the wrong bucket I know I am losing it. I have to do something. My chest is so tight that just breathing hurts. I call Jon at work.
‘Margie’s missing,’ I tell him.
‘What do you mean?’
‘She’s not home and I don’t know where she is.’
‘Have you tried her friends, your brothers?’
‘Just Tom and John, I couldn’t get on to the others. Margie would tell me if she was going somewhere.’
‘You try Paul and Andrew again and I’ll give Matt and Seamus a ring.’
‘Thanks. I’ll call her girlfriend, Cathy. She might be with her.’
‘Don’t worry, she’ll be okay.’
I nod. Breathe deeply. Try to relax. Jon’s right. Margie will be okay. I lie on the bed with William, massaging his chest while James pretends to read me a story from Thomas the Tank Engine. I imagine the places Margie might go, the people she might see. Perhaps she has caught the train to see Andrew at Torquay. She’d done that the other week, the day after I’d found her drugged and dazed. Margie had caught the train from Spencer Street to Geelong and spent a few days at the beach, watching Andrew surf with John and Matthew. She loved the water and said the ocean gave her a sense of freedom.
‘No, she’s not here,’ Andrew tells me, when I finally get him on the phone. ‘Let me know when you catch up with her.’
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