by John Clanchy
Shelley’s crying, incoherent with some grievance. She’s got hold of the remote, which ought to be taken from her, but no one seems bothered.
Everyone here would know Tom’s first wife. It’s a small town; they’re probably all still good friends with her.
‘Can I help with anything?’ I ask Cherry.
‘No, it’s all done,’ she says, and another glance, almost too quick to spot, slides off me.
So I settle on Zoe, Shelley’s older sister.
‘Shall we go and feed the chooks?’ I ask her.
‘Yes,’ she says. She grabs a handful of bread off the table. We thread our way through the people. When we get down the steps into the garden, she takes hold of my hand. It’s shady, the grass littered with jacaranda blossoms. The noise of the BBQ recedes. Suddenly the whole awful day seems bearable.
Zoe stands on a box, and we throw the bread to the chooks.
‘That’s my favourite,’ she says, pointing to a fat, amber-coloured chook.
‘Does she have a name?’
‘No, I’m not allowed to give them names. Dad says they’re not pets.’
I would like to feed the chooks all afternoon. I make my pieces of bread smaller and smaller.
‘Shelley’s always getting me in trouble,’ Zoe says. ‘It’s not fair.’
‘No, it isn’t,’ I say.
‘My friend Lauren gave me a book, and Shelley can’t even read yet but she said we had to share it.’
‘Perhaps she’s jealous because she didn’t get anything,’ I offer.
‘Even if she had, she still would’ve wanted my book.’
When some people think you’ve got something you shouldn’t have, I want to say, they’ve just got to try and spoil it for you.
‘What’s the best thing to do, do you think?’ I say.
‘Pretend I don’t care,’ she says.
‘Zoe!’ It’s Cherry shouting.
‘Uh-oh,’ Zoe says, jumping down off the box. I follow her back up to the house. I feel braver. Perhaps I could take a leaf out of Zoe’s book?
‘Did you take that bread that was on the table and give it to the chooks?’ Cherry asks Zoe.
‘Only a few slices.’
And only the supermarket brand white bread that’s barely fit for human consumption, I’d like to have added.
‘Well, ask next time, we’re short of bloody bread now.’
I take a sausage and some salad, smile nicely at Frank—Cherry’s red-faced, black-haired brother with the BBQ tongs—and sit down in the middle of them all.
‘What a lovely afternoon!’ I say.
Several conversations wind down, like cars backfiring on a race track and then giving over. Frank says, after a long pause, ‘When did you and Tom get together again?’
Some bloke sputters into his beer, someone turns away, someone throws a glance at Cherry, who has just come out, a glance I don’t see, but know its texture, know its message—fucking Frank’s gone too far as usual, but Jesus, can you blame him?
Where is Tom? Sitting in a camp chair under the jacaranda, legs stretched out, eating macadamias, and holding forth to a pale blond, lipsticked woman about private schools.
‘Get together?’ I venture. ‘Do you mean…?’ Is it possible he doesn’t know we’re married?
‘They met through Tom’s community garden thing,’ says Cherry, ‘you know that, Frank, you great dork. Take no notice of him,’ she says to me, ‘he’s just being an idiot.’ So it’s not possible to pretend he hasn’t insulted me.
‘Where’s your glass?’ says neighbour man, who I have not been introduced to. ‘What are you drinking?’
‘She doesn’t drink,’ says Cherry.
‘I’ll have a juice,’ I say, ‘if…’
Neighbour man looks helpless, his rescue mission aborted.
‘I’ll get it,’ says Cherry.
My mother was English and a doctor’s daughter, and taught me that good manners are about self-effacement, and making other people feel comfortable even at your own expense. I will leave here with nothing to blame myself for, even if it kills me.
A wave of determination carries me forward. I stack dirty plates and cutlery and carry them into the kitchen. I gather empty glasses and bottles. I take the overflowing rubbish out to the bin. I attempt conversation with just about everyone. I retrieve the chicken bones from the dog’s dish. They evidently don’t know you never give chicken bones to dogs. I run water into the sink for the dishes.
‘Oh, don’t do those!’ cries Cherry, ‘I’ll chuck them all in the dishwasher.’
But I’m ready for her. ‘No, no, I don’t mind a few dishes; it’ll keep me out of trouble.’
She shrugs. ‘Well, you don’t have to.’
‘What a lovely little girl Zoe is,’ I say. ‘Bright as a button.’
‘Yeah, she’s doing OK. She can be a bit of a smarty pants though.’ She cuts slices of watermelon with a knife that looks like a small axe. She sucks the juice from her red painted fingers. My mother would have thought she was a tart.
When finally everyone leaves, they say, ‘nice meeting you,’ as if I am some passer-by whom they will never see again.
Tom makes a cup of tea, and we sit together on the deck, his leg touching mine.
‘That went well,’ he says.
‘Yes, it was a lovely afternoon.’ Once or twice a year I can grit my teeth and put up with this, for his sake. And when Mark sends him photos on the mobile—Shelley with her fingers covered in icing, Shelley wearing her sister’s new bike helmet, several sizes too big for her—I can say, ‘Oh she’s so cute!’ and ‘she’s growing so fast!’ I slide my hand into his, and breathe the steam from the hot mug of tea.
Then, into this quiet little space, suddenly a child’s voice. ‘What a lovely afternoon!’
Tom seems barely to register it. It’s Shelley, sitting under the table with some lurid coloured soft toy, staring at me. Her parents appear not to have noticed her either—Mark is stretched out on the couch with another stubby watching the footy and Cherry is texting on her mobile.
‘What a lovely afternoon!’ she says again, staring at me with simpering insolence.
She means evil, of course. The TV rattles on. Tom has started telling Mark about all the mistakes he thinks the neighbour man is making with his drainage plans. I smile at Shelley. A smile we both know is false. She does not smile back.
I take my mug into the kitchen and she crawls out from under the table and follows me.
‘What a lovely afternoon!’ comes her breathy, singsong little voice behind me. She is leaning on the cupboard, addressing her purple monkey which she holds by its long, floppy arms in front of her.
‘What’s his name?’ I ask her.
‘It’s not a “he”,’ she says.
‘What’s her name, then?’
‘She doesn’t have one.’
I turn back to the sink and wash my mug slowly. There are only a few more minutes now that separate me from the refuge of my room.
‘What a lovely afternoon!’ She has sidled closer and bumps against me.
‘Did you enjoy yourself then?’ I force myself to incline, as if kindly disposed, towards her.
‘What a lovely afternoon! What a lovely afternoon! What a lovely afternoon!’ She has found her rhythm now and settles into it, repeating the phrase over and over in an exaggerated, prim little voice.
Cherry comes into the kitchen. ‘For God’s sake, Shelley, cut that out,’ she says, grabbing more stubbies out of the fridge.
‘Jenny said it.’
‘It’s not Jenny, its Jeannie,’ says Cherry, without looking at me.
‘Jeeeeneee then.’
‘Bugger off and stop being a pest,’ Cherry says.
Shelley falls silent, but she follows me out of the kitchen. I walk out onto the deck and she’s right behind me. I pick up my cardigan, and she pretends to pick up something from the back of the chair also. I look at her in puzzlement, and she stares back
, eyebrows raised, puzzled also. I put the chair straight that I had been sitting on, and she also pushes and fiddles with a chair. I sigh with irritation, and I hear her exaggerated little sigh copying me.
I remember Zoe complaining earlier in the day, ‘Mum, Shelley’s copying me!’ This is what she does, I tell myself. It’s not personal. But I imagine pushing her hard in the chest, sending her thumping to the ground.
She follows me back into the house, so close behind me that when I stop to talk to Tom she actually bumps into me.
‘Will you please not walk so close behind me?’ I say, smiling.
She stares, and pushes an imaginary lock of hair behind her ear, exactly as I have just done.
‘What time shall we order a cab for in the morning?’ I say to Tom.
‘We’ll take you to the airport,’ Mark offers, although his eyes don’t leave the TV screen. ‘Want to go to the airport in the morning, darls?’ he calls to Cherry.
‘Yeah, no worries,’ she says.
Shelley is frowning, and has turned the corners of her mouth down. It is a crudely accurate representation of how I feel about the prospect of suffering for another hour, jammed into the car with them all, making conversation right up to the last minute.
She follows me all the way up the stairs to the door of my room. I’m determined to say nothing. I open the door, and there is the quiet space and the glimpse of my own things. But she is actually trying to follow me in. I hadn’t anticipated this.
‘Off you go now, Shelley,’ I say, in as bright-sounding a voice as I can manage. ‘I want to shut the door.’
She leans on the doorjamb, staring at me. Her eyes are a pale and unremarkable blue, and her blond hair thin and very fine. A faint smell of urine and sweet raspberry lollies lifts off her. Her stare is wide and fathomless.
‘Move. Go on, let me shut the door.’
She does not move.
I imagine picking her up and hurling her down the stairs, watching while she tumbles and crashes to the bottom. I breathe shallowly, in a rising panic, blocking her entry. It is a standoff, and I don’t know the ending.
Then she moves a leg slightly closer inside. I grab her arm; she is soft and unexpectedly crumbly. I push, bundle, and shove her little body out, she falls in a resisting heap, and I shut the door, all in one hot explosion, and hear almost simultaneously her piercing yell of pain. I yank the door open again, and she’s clutching her hand, and Cherry is bounding up the stairs. I’ve managed to slam the door on her fingers.
I put my hand on his knee. He drives silently and does not look at me. I take it away again, and turn my face to the window. He’ll see I’m hurt, surely. But he says nothing. Earlier in the day, when Mark drove us to the airport, and on the plane, Tom talked to me—perfunctory, necessary things, I realise now. We’re boarding. Do you want anythingto eat? Now, in our own car, just the two of us going home, he has withdrawn. I can’t bear it.
‘Tom, what’s the matter? Are you angry with me?’
‘Leave it,’ he says, ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’
He’s never left me out in the cold like this before. It’s his bloody family, they have caused this, and I’m not going to let them.
‘We have to talk about it,’ I say, ‘you can’t be angry with me and not tell me why. It’s not fair.’ I feel like a child, and an unexpected sob catches my throat. ‘Is it about what happened with Shelley last night? You know that was an accident, I’ve apologised to everyone, I don’t know what else I can do.’
‘It wasn’t an accident.’
‘What? You think I jammed her fingers in the door on purpose?’
‘I think you lost your temper with her. She was pissing you off, you manhandled her. She’s a three-year-old child, for God’s sake; she was just playing a game.’
We are passing our local shops now.
‘Can you stop to let me get milk?’ Stupid of me to think we were so special that we’d never have rows. I’m afraid there are worse words waiting to burst from him and spoil everything.
‘I don’t want to stop,’ he says, unbelievably. ‘You know, I don’t think a weekend was asking too much. They’re my kids, my grandkids. You could at least have made an effort.’
I am breathless with the injustice of it. We turn through the familiar streets. There is the oval, there is the Gilbert’s horse float parked in the street as usual.
‘How can you say that? I’ve made a huge effort all weekend! I’ve talked to everyone, played with the kids, done dishes, taken the dog for a walk.’
‘The dog didn’t need taking for a bloody walk!’ He is shouting suddenly, as he swings the car into our leafy street. The Tylers are home. The roses are out. ‘All you needed to do was be friendly, act like you liked them. But no, you couldn’t manage that, could you? You had to be this stuck-up, prissy, critical, superior fucking bitch.’ He has yanked the car into the driveway and stopped.
I stare at him, amazed. His face is red with fury, and something else I can’t read. Pain?
‘How dare you speak to me like that?’
‘Do you want to know what Mark told me this morning?’
‘Something he didn’t have the guts to say in front of me, obviously.’
‘Cherry’s told him she doesn’t want you to come again. She says I am welcome always, but she won’t have you stay again.’
‘What did you say to him?’
He looks away from me.
‘Tom, what did you say back to him?’
The silence extends. Then he starts to get out of the car, and I know.
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