Spring Clean for the Peach Queen

by Sasha Wasley

Elizabeth didn’t say anything but rested her head against mine.

  Dad and Elizabeth did a good job of holding a conversation on behalf of the rest of the family. Grandma interjected every now and then with one of her discontented remarks. Mum and I were silent. When Grandma started to talk about going for a ‘short lie-down’ after the pavlova had been served, I used the opportunity to get out of there.

  It was so early – only one-thirty. I couldn’t go back to Brooker’s yet. They probably hadn’t even eaten their Christmas dinner. I went down to the Centenary Park with its timber sign and commemorative plaque. Families had gathered so that kids could try out their Christmas toys. Dads hung onto the backs of new bikes as children wobbled along the path around the lake, and a girl of about ten was practising on a skateboard. There was an argument in the sandpit over a bucket.

  I sat under a tree and watched it all. I’d spent a lot of time at this park as a child. Mum did the Rabbit’s Foot administration from home back then and would often take a break around midday, bringing Elizabeth and me here. A creek ran into the lake, willows dipping their long branches in the water here and there along its trail. I played on the swings or stood on the wooden bridge and pretended I was on a stage. A willow branch stripped of leaves was my lion tamer’s whip or a gymnast’s ribbon. Elizabeth joined in my imaginary performances if I let her. She was quite happy to be the lion or the Olympic judge, or even a member of my audience. I instructed her minutely in how to marvel at and applaud my performances.

  But Elizabeth also loved wading and would bring a net to catch minnows or tadpoles, standing up to her solid ankles in muddy water.

  ‘Come and see this, Lottie!’ Mum would call to me. ‘This tadpole has nice big legs already. It’ll be a frog soon.’

  I would pause my fantasy life and go over to look dutifully at the muscly-legged tadpole in the pickle jar. ‘Don’t take them home, Lizzy. It’s like a frog jail in the jar. Let them stay here.’

  ‘But Lizzy wants to watch them become frogs,’ Mum told me. ‘It’s fascinating, don’t you think, Lottie?’

  Then I felt bad for not being fascinated like Elizabeth, but I felt worse for the tadpoles who had been happy flitting around in the creek and were now going to be stuck in a stagnant jar of pond water on Elizabeth’s windowsill.

  Today, I stayed at the park until after four, watching the families come, play and leave. Finally, it was late enough to drive back to Brooker’s. Pris’s car was still there, with its Siamese Society sticker on the rear window. I heard raised voices from the house as I climbed the verandah steps with my box of food.

  ‘Give it a bloody rest, would you?’ That was Angus.

  ‘Watch your language, young man.’ Pris. ‘Living in denial won’t help her.’

  ‘I’m not in denial, I just don’t think she needs to be in a facility, for Chrissake. It’s nowhere near bad enough. And she’d hate it.’

  ‘Angus, look at me. It’s only a matter of time until she does herself a mischief. What happened today – imagine if it had been the other way about. Imagine if she’d left it on too long or forgotten to use the potholders when she took it out of the oven – imagine that! You’re out in the orchards all day, and she needs supervision.’

  I pushed through the front door. Angus and Pris put their argument on hold while they composed themselves for a newcomer.

  ‘What’s going on?’ I placed my box on the kitchen table.

  Pris shot Angus a righteous glare. ‘Caroline got muddled while she was cooking the Christmas dinner.’

  ‘Is she all right?’

  ‘She’s fine,’ said Angus. ‘She’s having a rest.’

  ‘Everyone’s starting to notice,’ Pris told him. ‘It’s no secret any more. Lottie knows, don’t you?’ She didn’t pause to let me answer. ‘It’s nothing to be ashamed of, Angus – but you need to protect her. You need to act.’

  He rubbed a weary hand through his hair. ‘Stop, Aunty Pris. Please.’

  ‘You won’t hear of her living with me, for whatever ridiculous reason, but if you don’t put her on the waiting list for Olivetree Lodge, she won’t get a place there for years. And she’s going downhill much faster than that.’ Pris jutted her chin, daring him to deny it.

  ‘She doesn’t want—’

  ‘She doesn’t want this; she doesn’t want that. It won’t be long before she doesn’t know what she wants at all. Then what will you do, hmm? Take her out into the orchards with you so you can keep an eye on her during the day? Or stay in the house with her all day and let the orchards run to ruin? I was talking to my doctor about it and she said—’

  Angus sat up straight. ‘You talked to your doctor?’

  ‘Yes—’

  ‘Who the hell asked you to do that? This is none of your business.’

  Pris was affronted, ‘She’s my sister-in-law. It’s my business.’

  ‘She’s my mother. It’s my business and Mum’s business, nobody else’s.’

  ‘Edward would be turning in his grave—’

  Angus stood. ‘It’s getting late. You’d better go, Aunty Pris.’

  She stared at him for a long moment, then scouted around for her bag without another word and departed in a cloud of deeply offended dignity. Angus sank back into a chair and I waited, wondering if I should just disappear into my room. At length, he looked up.

  ‘Hi. How was your Christmas?’

  I joined him at the table, relieved. ‘Horrible. Big fight with my mother right in the middle of Christmas lunch. Yours?’

  ‘A bloody disaster. Mum forgot to turn the oven on again. She basted the turkey every twenty minutes for hours before I got suspicious and sneaked in to check. The oven light and fan were switched on, but not the heat. It was two-thirty in the afternoon by then. Mum went to pieces when she realised what she’d done. Cried. Went into her bedroom and now she won’t come out or talk to us.’

  ‘Oh, hell. She’s still in there now?’

  ‘Yeah. I’m giving her some time before I go try again. What was the deal with your mum?’

  ‘She has different values from me,’ I said.

  ‘In what way?’

  I chewed my lip. ‘Well, not so much different values, but she takes hers to the extreme. She was a student activist and she can’t let her politics go.’

  ‘Your mum?’ His eyebrows went up. ‘An activist?’

  I managed a smile. ‘I know, it seems weird, right? Here she is running a lotto store in a little farming town, as married and middle-class as hell. You wouldn’t know she once ran the Women’s Rights Office at university.’

  ‘Huh.’ Angus thought it over. ‘So she wasn’t always involved with the newsagency? I assumed one of your parents must have inherited the business from their folks or something.’

  ‘No, Mum never planned to work in a shop. She studied journalism, in fact. She met Dad while she was at uni.’ I unpacked a couple of cans from the food box. ‘I think Mum was hoping to do serious journalism but her first job was a cadetship at the Bonnievale Examiner, so Dad dropped out and followed her here. Then his father died and left them a chunk of money. There were two businesses up for sale in town – the roadhouse or the newsagency. They chose the newsagency. Dad ran it and Mum worked at the Examiner until the shop became too demanding for him to run on his own, and she ended up quitting the newspaper so she could help. But she never gave up her activist leanings,’ I added a little bitterly.

  ‘Does she put pressure on you to be an activist, too?’

  I hesitated. ‘Not really. She just struggles with who I am.’

  He waited.

  ‘You know.’ I gestured vaguely. ‘She always hated my interest in pop culture and celebrity life.’

  ‘She didn’t want you to go into acting?’

  ‘No, she was okay with it as long as it was on her terms.’ I dropped my chin into my hand. ‘When she realised I wanted to be an actor, she started taking me to plays – Shakespeare, Tennessee Williams, Oscar Wilde, that kind of thin
g. Like she wanted me to be more highbrow, when all I wanted was to visit the set of Neighbours and take hip-hop dance classes. I wanted to be a popular actor – to be on TV. But she didn’t even want me watching the soapies. I loved Home and Away and I had a serious The Bold and the Beautiful habit. I had to watch in secret. Once or twice, she sprung me and sat down to watch them with me, giving me a running commentary to make sure I noticed the misogynist subtext. I had to steal celebrity news mags from the Rabbit’s Foot because if Mum knew I was reading them, it would have been like a regular parent catching their kid with a hardcore porno mag.’

  Angus had cracked up and I managed a half-grin. ‘She caught me watching the Kardashians once and went off her brain at me! And another time, she found a collection of makeup tips I’d snipped out of Cosmopolitan magazines. “Make yourself flawless” and “How to create come-hither eyes”. She was so mad at me, she burned them – as if she’d found me collating satanic rituals or something.’

  He was laughing even harder by now. ‘Your world’s topsy-turvy,’ he managed. ‘You hear about girls fighting their mums wanting them to be more ladylike or whatever, and there you were, trying to be girly against your mother’s wishes.’

  ‘She was out fighting for my rights while I stubbornly refused to stand up and claim them. Get this; before I started high school, they didn’t have a pants option for girls in the dress code. Remember that? So Mum went in to bat for us, lobbying the principal, getting a petition up. She won. They allowed shorts and pants for the girls and everyone was really pleased – a bunch of the other parents and girls, I mean – and what did I do? Refused to wear anything but the school dress. Mum bought me shorts and pants in hope that I would change my mind, but I only ever wore the dress. She had to give my pants to Lizzy in the end.’

  He shook his head. ‘Bloody troublemaker.’

  ‘I wasn’t trying to make trouble. I just didn’t care about that stuff like she did.’

  ‘So, was that what the argument was about today? She has strong beliefs and you don’t?’

  I shrugged. ‘I can’t be the warrior woman she wants me to be. She’s really angry about – about the Jack the Lad thing.’ I felt myself blushing.

  He braved the discomfort. ‘The nude shoot?

  ‘I wasn’t nude,’ I said. ‘Not fully. But as far as Mum’s concerned, I was gaffer-taped to a bench, stripped naked and subjected to multiple demeaning humiliations at the hands of dominating men.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Angus’s eyebrows had pulled down into a frown of real concern. ‘Didn’t you want to do the photo shoot? Did someone pressure you into it?’

  ‘No! The magazine contacted my agent and I decided to do it. I’d been playing Glinda the Good Witch in a stage production of The Wizard of Oz and then I got a bit-part playing a really sweet timber worker’s wife in Sawdust Valley, and then I got a call-back from this kid’s show set at a Catholic school – for the nun who taught music. I had visions of myself as Maria from The Sound of Music and panicked. I didn’t want to get typecast as a good girl.’

  He nodded. ‘But your mum …?’

  ‘She doesn’t understand that I used the photo shoot strategically. Consciously. It was a career decision. She thinks I was fooled by the system.’

  ‘Maybe she thinks you played the game without realising you’d be, like, the ultimate loser, you know? Maybe she thinks you got played.’ He spun a butter knife on the table, his eyes trained on the whir of silver. ‘Is that it?’

  Memories of the photo shoot flickered across my mind like the staccato flashing of an old film reel: the solicitousness of the photo shoot director, the way the makeup artist apologised as she brushed glitter over my breasts, and we laughed together about the intimacy of it. The photographer was highly professional, making a few gentle jokes to put me at ease, checking I wasn’t getting uncomfortable from the sand or wind. Then a couple of days later they invited me back to approve the photos they’d selected. I was thrilled with the result. My abdomen looked flat and toned above a white muslin beach wrap, my glitter-sparkly breasts high, my face flawless and my smile knowing. I was just the right blend of sophisticated and sexy.

  Then the photos didn’t appear. Occasionally I emailed to ask when they’d be in print and each time I was told ‘probably next month’. It wasn’t until four days after Jai died that I woke up and read a congratulatory email from Kelsey with a link to the cover of Jack the Lad on Twitter.

  My stomach grew suddenly tight.

  I stood up. ‘Should I go check on Mrs B, do you think?’

  He looked up from his butter knife. ‘If you want. Just don’t be upset if she refuses to talk to you.’

  I went to Mrs Brooker’s closed bedroom door and knocked. There was no answer, so I edged the door open and peeped around. She had a big bedroom, painted lilac, with the heavy woollen curtains drawn so it felt like night-time. Mrs Brooker was lying on the bed, her gaze on the slowly rotating ceiling fan. The fabric of her bedspread matched the curtains, navy circles shot through with teal.

  ‘Mrs B.’ I stepped in. ‘It’s just me – Lottie. I’m back. Can I come in?’

  She didn’t answer so I closed the door behind me and approached. A Queen Anne dressing table sat angled in one corner like a wealthy family might position a grand piano. I recognised the rosewater bottle with its dusky pink diffuser in among hairbrushes, sprays, powders and half-empty packets of Quickeze. In the large mirror, I saw myself arrive at her bedside, hair unruly from the breeze, the scar on my chin bright and obvious.

  ‘Hey, Mrs B. I hear you had a pretty crappy Christmas.’ I sat on the end of her bed. ‘Me, too.’

  She didn’t speak for a long time, her face pale and eyes red-rimmed. I stayed there, not wanting to leave her on her own while she felt so sad.

  At last she focused her gaze on me. ‘That’s no good,’ she said as though we hadn’t just sat in silence for over fifteen minutes. ‘Why was your day bad, love?’

  ‘Family drama.’

  ‘Well, that seems to be the way of Christmas,’ she said. ‘Perhaps it’s because we build it up in our heads, expecting a perfect family day instead of a normal family day.’

  ‘Yeah, could be that. What about you? Angus says you’re angry at yourself because you messed up the turkey.’

  She looked up at the fan again. ‘My memory …’

  ‘Memories always fail us when we don’t want them to. Trust me, I’ve had to remember lines on stage. I’d know.’

  ‘It’s not even my memory. It’s my concentration.’ She fixed her blue eyes on mine. ‘I was never a daydreamer. I’ve always been reliable. Mum Brooker – she often said I was a godsend: that I had the house running like clockwork.’

  ‘I bet. I think you’re amazing, the stuff you can do.’

  She clenched her fists in her lap. ‘I made a dreadful mess of it. Of – of …’ She looked at me, abruptly bewildered.

  ‘Of the turkey?’ I said gently.

  Tears filled her eyes. ‘I forgot to turn on the oven. How could I do that?’

  ‘It’s okay, you know, Mrs B. No one minds. We all love you just the same and it’s just a stupid turkey. Who even cares? At my place, Grandma got drunk and bitched for hours because my mum made duck. Christmas is just, you know, a shit-fight.’

  Her reddened eyes remained glassy with tears. ‘We weren’t allowed to swear when I was your age. Women weren’t.’

  ‘I’m sorry. It’s a hard habit to break. I’ll try harder.’

  ‘I don’t mind it, actually. I know Pris hates it. I swore occasionally, you know. When Angus was in bed and Ted watching television with his mum and dad, I would stand in the kitchen and dry dishes and say swear words to myself.’ She took a breath. ‘Shit. Bloody hell.’ She paused for my response and I couldn’t help a half-grin. The words sounded so funny from her sweet old mouth. ‘Sometimes, I even said the F-word. Fuck you all. I would whisper it to myself as I dried the dishes. I don’t even know why. I didn’t feel angry, not
really. I didn’t hate anyone. I just wanted to say it.’

  This was quietly wonderful. ‘Fair enough,’ I said. ‘I’ve thought it plenty of times, myself. Fuck you, Grandma, for regretting not moisturising your décolletage. Fuck you, Mum, for being way more political and awesome than me. Fuck you, Elizabeth, for loving science, not giving a shit about how you look and making Mum proud while I hid in my room and spent hours giving myself smoky eyes.’

  ‘Fuck you, Christmas dinner,’ Mrs Brooker whispered.

  ‘Fuck you, oven,’ I added. ‘Fuck you, turkey.’

  She gave a soft laugh. ‘Yes. Silly old turkey. And I’m a silly old goose.’

  I laughed aloud at her joke, relieved that she wasn’t mourning any more. She heaved a big sigh that seemed to gust away her guilt and grief.

  ‘I’m tired,’ she said.

  ‘Why not hop under the covers and have a sleep?’ I said.

  ‘I ought to get out of these clothes,’ she said, but allowed me to pull the cover back and shuffled about to slip her feet under the bedspread. She wiggled down so her head was on the pillow, then rolled to one side. Her eyes drifted shut. I touched her soft grey hair, those short natural curls, silkier than I would have thought possible. She burrowed down further into the blankets, and soon her breathing was slow and even.

  I sat with her for a while longer, observing the objects on her dressing table and stroking her downy hair, aching with the knowledge of what was happening to this kind woman. And all the while my grandma, a good ten years older than Mrs Brooker, had all her faculties and used them to make my mother feel like shit about her Christmas lunch, and make me worry about getting craggy skin on my chest.

  Fuck you, dementia.

  The light faded from around Mrs Brooker’s bedroom window. I left her sleeping. Angus had relocated to the lounge room and sat with his feet up, drinking a glass of something that looked like iced coffee.

  ‘She okay?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes. She seems calm. I think she’s gone to bed for the night.’

  I sank onto the couch beside him and he poured milky stuff from a carafe into another glass, adding ice from a bowl. He passed it to me.