My sisters and I used to get some sweatshop nod as well, like ten cents for every bucket of leaves we collected from the front yard. It ended up being pretty lucrative because Mum loved the big shedding trees that threw shade over the front of the house on Monaco Street in our leafy suburb of Florida Gardens, Surfers Paradise, and wouldn’t let them get pruned. Dad would have liked to uproot them and concrete the whole yard, but Mum’s green thumb won out.
There weren’t many jobs around the house I couldn’t do. That’s not to say I was much good at them, because I did every job at breakneck speed, and was constantly being told off for washing up under a running hot tap instead of doing the whole plug, detergent, gloves routine. It wasn’t rocket science. I just wanted to get the gunk off enough so that it looked like a clean plate to the half-closed human eye.
‘I can clean houses fine,’ I told Sam, thinking this might not be such a bad caper after all.
‘I’ll help you save up,’ she said. ‘Give me the money and I’ll look after it because you and money …’
Are easily parted, is what she was getting at. I agreed. This was a fact.
‘You’re going to need four weeks’ bond and two weeks’ rent in advance. I’ll give you a reference and we’ll begin looking when you start pulling in some money. You just need a one-bedroom dog-box to start, something really basic and cheap. I can lend you a few things. Cups. Towels.’
What I most wanted to borrow from Sam was a little of her common sense and calm demeanour because my hands were shaking from terror and a tottering hangover. Inside, I was a gyroscope of stress and felt like throwing up.
‘Oh God, I’m going to have to tell the kids!’ I groaned. ‘Oh God. Ben. He’s …’
And the hot tears came like another salty geyser. Sam put her hand on my back and patted, not saying any words and, although that really was only about as helpful as a bandaid on the neck of a decapitated person, it felt nice. I felt that she really actually cared.
‘And my parents. I’m going to have to tell them as well,’ I sobbed. ‘But Ben first. And I’ll tell Toby gradually. Or maybe just as he starts asking questions. Or Bill and I can tell him together. I don’t want to confuse him. Or maybe Ben can help me tell him because he understands Toby better than even I do.’
‘Kids are resilient,’ Sam said. ‘And adaptable to change. They’ll be OK. Look at Dasche – he’s fine.’
I looked at her son, who was running around dressed as Batman, making a noise like a train, chasing Toby, who was dressed as Robin, through the cramped unit, both laughing and squealing like the most deranged and happy little puppies on the planet, and hoped she was right. But were my kids going to be resilient and adaptable enough? Were little kids really like plasticine? Could I mould and shape this freaking horrid tragic turn in our lives into something positive? I had no choice. I had to. I had to make out that it was all an awfully big and exciting adventure, a new fork in the road, a detour to a different destination that was going to be rad and awesome and ace. I knew I would have to sell it up and slap some glossy glitter on it, because to tell it like it really was would be pushing them both off a cliff and saying, ‘You’ll be right.’
Sam watched the younger ones, the super duo, while I took Ben for a walk.
We sat on the grassy fringe of lawn at the top of the staircase that led down to Tamarama Beach. I was in no mood to walk down and then all the way back up. The grass was cool and the view was spectacular. Seams of surfers spun to shore and seagulls barked into the pale blue sky.
‘You and Dad have broken up.’ He shrugged after I told him the basics in staccato pidgin English, trying to sound as jolly and upbeat as possible, skirting around words like ‘separation’ and ‘divorce’, which might have sounded scary. But he had it figured all out.
‘I already know. I get it.’
He was nearly five. He had got it. I hadn’t even really got it.
‘We both love you just the same, Benji,’ I said, the words catching like fish hooks in my throat. ‘Nothing’s changed from you having a mummy and daddy who love you. We are just going to live in two different places, that’s all.’
That’s all? That’s ALL? I did try hard to talk it down and not catastrophise the situation. He seemed, on the surface, to take it well. I wrapped my hand around his little one and pulled him closer under the wing of my arm and spoke into his curly sand-coloured hair.
‘It will be OK.’
‘Are we going to live with Sam forever?’ he asked.
‘No,’ I said slowly. ‘I’m going to organise some money and work and then we’ll find our own place. A little unit. And sometimes you’ll go and visit Daddy at his house.’
‘Cool. Where does Dad live? I miss him.’
My stomach knotted up like it had in early labour. I didn’t know where he lived. The inner west somewhere.
I’d left Bill because our relationship broke. There were things I couldn’t think about or dwell on. Deeds done. Dirty ones. Bad words spoken that could never be retrieved. There was no point rubbing salt into the wounds by thinking about all that or analysing it too hard.
Billy and me. We’d had something special, but we grew apart. I hated thinking those trite, clichéd words grown apart but I couldn’t think of any better. We grew apart was something a cheesy novelist would write and there would be wind blown characters standing on the precipice of divorce. Her long hair would be gusting beautifully about her tear-blown face and he would be walking away with the sun setting behind him and she would be saying, ‘We just grew apart …’ and then that would be the end. The We grew apart clause let us both off the hook, though, and I guess that’s why people said it – it sounded a shitload better than, ‘We just ended up hating each other’s guts.’
‘Daddy and I just grew apart,’ I said to Ben and left it there for the time being, wrapping him up in a big teary Mummy hug. ‘But we’ll be all right. I promise.’
I really didn’t know how it was going to be all right. I really didn’t have any idea. But when I made a promise, I kept it. Except for ones I made in a church, in front of a priest. Except those ones. God never listened anyway, because he lived on a planet that had been sucked into oblivion eons earlier. I’d never been surer than I was that day that there wasn’t anyone up there looking out for me. I was on my own. And yet, I wasn’t. I had two boys to look after. I had to somehow grow them into men. For a girl who’d done very little growing up herself, it was a daunting prospect!
‘Yeah,’ Ben whispered, his words wisping on the salty breeze. ‘We’ll be all right.’
And then he turned into me and we hugged tight and I tried not to shower him in tears.
I had mixed feelings about my first little rental. It was mine. All mine. My name on the lease. That was a first, so I felt a rush of independence. But looking up at the old brick block of tired flats on Ramsgate Avenue called Studley, a much nicer-sounding name than the actual building could claim, I found myself wishing it was, well, nicer.
I’d been brought up in a very lovely family home with a pool and a colourful garden in the heart of the Gold Coast, where everything that glittered was fake gold. A four-bedroom, two-bathroom, built-in bar, brick-veneer provided my youthful self with a very acceptable abode. Yes, it had been, by middle-class standards, a very respectably pleasant place to lay my hat of an evening. But I’d always admired the houses at the other end of our street. Monaco Street was a long street, and just like Ramsgate it ran from one end of the housing spectrum to the other: from pretentious mega-mansions to, well, apartment buildings like the turd-brown brick box I was about to move into. My family home as a young girl had sat smack-bang midway down Monaco but I’d always wanted one of those houses with the big numbers on the mailboxes. Studley, however, was about as pretentious as an overflowing cat-litter tray. It was what it was. A perfectly square box of dark brown pre-war bricks, full of coffin-sized apartments w
ith windows gaping out to the street and dead junk mail bunched up in the courtyard. There was a concrete path leading from the row of security mailboxes, most of which looked like they’d been jimmied open and broken into, to the frosted-glass front door, inside which was a dingy foyer that smelled like tobacco and boiled cabbage.
Early that first evening, I looked around at our new home, taking in the stained, threadbare carpet and the wallpaper of live cockroaches, and listened to the blood-curdling hot-water system. It was our new family home. This is what I could offer my children. I’d signed up for a year of living in a tiny, stuffy box.
‘Isn’t this exciting? Isn’t it great, kids?’ I said, crowbarring some fake enthusiasm into my words.
But I hadn’t needed to because the boys, like mice in a new cage, were sniffing out every corner of the place, fast, taking it all in: the windows, the walls, the bathroom, the kitchen cupboards.
‘It’s awesome!’ Ben said, finally stopping, hands on hips, eyes glowing, wide grin.
Toby trundled around on legs that thudded rather than walked and I wondered how the people below us would deal with the three-year-old hippo overhead. He turned from the sunroom and clapped his hands.
‘I love it,’ he said, clear as day.
I felt the sting in my cheeks as I smiled, nodding, swallowing hard. I couldn’t really bring myself to speak, as my throat had constricted to stop me from sobbing. It meant so much to me that they accepted the place. Their innocent, non-judgemental eyes just saw possibility. My self-esteem crept up a notch. I’d done something good. Well, good enough. Well, it wasn’t completely shit!
The last few years of my relationship had been a slow shedding of my self-esteem. I had lost so much confidence that I was now scooped out and hollow. As I looked around at the small, musky unit, I wondered if my family would come down to Sydney to visit me any time soon and I cringed, thinking about what they would all think of the place. My mother, father, two younger sisters and brother – I had my doubts that they’d even all fit in at the same time. Perhaps they could visit in shifts. In the pit of my belly, I knew Mum and Dad would look at where their daughter and grandsons were living and be sorely disappointed.
But I tried to grasp at some positives like catching thistles from the air. I tried to be as sunny as the boys about the place, although the raw shards of afternoon sun were picking up mini-cyclones of dust and dead skin cells, swirling them into warm tornadoes:
It would be a relief not to be underfoot at Sam’s any more. I’d overstayed my welcome though I would be forever grateful for the halfway house and the companionship that got me through the choppiest of seas.
The boys would have a little more stability now, knowing that this would be home for at least a year.
It was a new beginning.
Um. I just underlined the new beginning idea again and focused on that.
I’d had exactly three pieces of furniture donated to me: a green-striped velvet two-seater couch that smelled like cheese, a double mattress in the bedroom that smelled like sweat, and a set of red tubular bunk beds for the boys that were actually quite new and clean. They were wedged into the sliver of a sunroom off the living area like a foot in a sock. My friend Kate, who I’d met at Ben and Toby’s preschool, had given me the hand-me-downs as she was giving her house an overhaul. She’d brought all the furniture in her four-wheel drive and helped me move it up that morning and assemble the bunks.
Kate was the polar opposite of me.
Kate was happily married.
Kate lived in her own terrace house.
Kate drove a nice car.
Kate owned her own business.
Kate was happy and had her life all figured out.
Nikki, on the other hand …
Nikki was a single mother.
Nikki lived in a mouldy shit-box.
Nikki was too scared to drive.
Nikki cleaned rich people’s houses for ten bucks an hour.
Nikki was a teeny bit miserable but faking a smile and didn’t have a clue where her runaway train of a life was headed.
But … at least I had a roof over my head and a box of Weet-Bix in the cupboard and a carton of No Frills long-life milk in the fridge. The fridge came with the unit and seriously stank as if the last tenant had kept bits of his mother in it. Sam had helped me clean it out with Ajax that morning and then she’d sprinkled vanilla essence over the shelves, telling me that it would cover the stench. But it just ended up smelling like a corpse who’d been doused in a vanilla milkshake and left out in the sun.
In that emphysemic fridge, I had a bottle of champagne. It wasn’t real champagne like from the proper vineyards in France: it was really just cheap wine with bubbles. What we called Shampoo, with an emphasis on the second syllable.
I was working six hours a week for a couple Sam nannied for and I had come to refer to them affectionately as the White Collar Criminals. They reminded me of those young folk who’d gone to exclusive private schools and now belonged to some very secret organisation with shifty handshakes and dodgy under-counter deals. Bankers. Money-changers. People who played with numbers very creatively and like Rumpelstiltskin, spinning other people’s money into their own gold. I had not much to go on regarding my suspicions of criminality other than the fact that they were not that much older than Sam and me but lived ‘the life’. Double Bay mansion. BMWs, plural. A nanny. A cleaner. It just seemed so unthinkable that they could have such a life without criminal intervention.
He would come home early from long business lunches and proposition me and I’d laugh it off as a joke and slap on some gloves and go and clean a toilet to get him off my scent. The wife seemed to be a professional shopper. I only ever saw her at the end of my shift, when she flounced in laden with designer bags and a broad porcelain smile, trotting awkwardly, like a horse avoiding puddles, in skyscraper heels. Her long fingernails did not look as though they’d ever been chipped on a vacuum or shoved inside an industrial washing-up glove, and her clothes were immaculate ensembles straight from the catwalk. I always felt like a peasant in my leggings and sweat-stained T-shirt as she handed me an envelope of cash. That week, after proudly laying down the bond and two weeks’ rent in advance, I had enough left over for a delivered pizza and the cheap bubbles. I’d been so good, saving and scrimping. It was time to reward myself for a job relatively well done.
I popped the cork, inhaled the fumes and laughed. It was so tragically funny but I really was feeling like I’d made it to base camp. I started singing a Madonna song while dancing around my empty living room, which you quite literally could not swing a cat in because you would brain it against at least one of the walls. The kids joined in squealing and laughing and doing some kind of funky chicken dance around my legs. I was drinking the frothy, sweet bubbles from a glass I’d bought for ten cents from Vinnies. At that price, I had bought four. We danced and laughed until something thumped loudly on our floor, beneath our feet, like a seismic boom, and a voice shouted, muted through the floorboards beneath the grotty carpet, for us to ‘shut the fuck up’. I guess that was the tenant below’s neighbourly way of saying, ‘Welcome to Studley Manor.’
The phone had been connected and the electricity. All in my name. Although it was maybe a small step for womankind, it felt like a giant leap for me. I’d always deferred to Billy because he’d been four years older and considerably more worldly when it came to things … of the world … like renting houses and organising utilities. I’d managed to talk my way around the glaring red mark of eviction on my tenancy record by blaming my ex and flirting with the young property manager.
‘I’m going to ring and order a pizza,’ I called to the boys and they let out a cheer.
‘Pizza!’
I put a finger to my lips and shushed them, pointing to the floor.
‘Shh. There’s a grumpy troll that lives under the floorboa
rds.’
That wiped the smiles off their faces.
Champagne and pizza. The celebration of kings. Or queens, as the case may be.
While I waited for the Hawaiian pizza, garlic bread and lemonade combo, I looked out the kitchen window at the neighbouring building, which I could almost reach out and touch with my hand. It was another brown brick monstrosity of ugly uniformity. The boys played in their sunroom; it was about the size of a large white-goods box. Their toys spilled out of a blue milk crate wedged into the corner. My little Studley shoebox, I thought with a sigh. It wasn’t too bad.
My bedroom was almost as large as the living room. One wall of old creaky push-up windows looked over Ramsgate Avenue, a very long street that cut from the belly of Bondi to the knob of North Bondi, reaching like a ballerina’s extension into a bald car park perched above an angry sea that ate rock fishermen for breakfast. There were no curtains or light fittings in the unit, nothing as fancy as that, just jammed naked windows and the swinging scrotums of light globes.
I could hear the neighbours banging pots, and people above us creaking floorboards. The water pipes moaned like a bored porn star when I turned on the water and the grime between the bathroom tiles had become permanent putty. A narrow bath nudged up against a toilet with a cracked blue plastic seat and a bowl that had rust stains tattooed to the bottom of it, or at least that was what I was telling myself they were.
Madness, Mayhem and Motherhood Page 4
