by Erina Reddan
She clawed at her slice to pull it in half. I knew enough not to try to help her.
‘Arthritis bad?’
She shrugged. ‘Turn that fan down, will you, love? It’ll blow the cake right out of my mouth.’
I squeaked off the bed and notched the fan down and angled it away from her face. Her white hair settled back into its usual helmet as she got down to business. I gave her a turn around Peg’s funeral, using a lot more shorthand than I had with Tye because it was a world she understood having been a known offender of the Country Women’s Association variety herself back in the day.
‘Least you got there,’ she concluded.
I got up to switch the kettle back on, smiled. I had to admit, now that it was over, she’d been right all along. I was glad I’d been there for Peg. For Mum. I patted myself down. I was still in one piece.
‘Some things have to be gone through in life, and death is one of them. Can’t avoid it. It comes running at you anyway. And if you’re not careful it will have a knife in its hands.’ She dabbed at a crumb with the pad of her thumb. ‘Not that I need to tell you that,’ she said, licking her thumb.
I scanned the ceiling, running my eyes over the cracks. I didn’t know whether she was thinking about my dead mother or her murdered children.
‘Peg would have liked that you made the effort.’
‘You didn’t even know her.’
‘I know her. All us old women know each other. All the lines and wrinkles—they tell the same story. Life has carved itself right into us.’
‘Cheery.’ I laughed. ‘And she was a good sight younger than you.’
‘Matter of perspective.’ Marge laughed, taking a bite and speaking anyway. ‘Suppose someone will have to spend hours convincing you to put in an appearance at my funeral, too.’
‘Depends on the quality of the booze at the wake.’
The kettle set up a whistle again. I scooted from the bed before it could get to shrieking.
‘What about you?’ I asked. ‘News?’
Her mouth twisted to the side. ‘Any day now.’
I grunted back. We were all skitty with waiting for the community centre to send her an appointment time to discuss the shit-hole she lived in, we all lived in, only she actually wanted to live here because the alternative was some old folks’ home out in Woop Woop. And she definitely did not want to live there.
A door slammed at the other end of the corridor and a few seconds later Rocco’s head with his wild mess of curls appeared around Marge’s door. ‘I’m out for a couple of hours.’ His white teeth gleamed. He winked at us. ‘Stay away from my Scotch, Marge.’
‘Leave your door unlocked at least and give me a fighting chance,’ she said. We heard his laugh all the way to the front door. The rest of us couldn’t work out why he was even in the boarding house, although he made an effort to fit in by only buying his clothes from Vinnies, but he had too much of the whiff of possibilities about him, all smooth tanned skin and effortless cheer. Even though I had the fancy job, there was never any confusion over me fitting in. I screwed up my face. ‘Scotch—is that what he’s calling that nasty stuff he makes in his room?’
‘All Italians are poets.’ She dusted her hands together, the crumbs dropping to her plate. ‘Least he’s got a bit of sunshine in him.’
‘Not this again. I’m happy.’
She pursed her lips. ‘Not sure if you have that definition of happy quite pegged.’
I got up to take the tray from her.
‘Leave the dishes,’ she said. ‘Give me something to do.’
I told her I’d see her later, and gathered up my files and went on down the corridor to my room. I unlocked my door, kicked it closed behind me, threw my bag and files onto the bed, and rolled down after them. Face down, head to the side, muscles melting into the curve of the mattress. Feeling the breath fill me up and abandon me, fill and abandon, fill and abandon. Breathing took a lot of effort when you slowed right down to notice.
PROOF
Two days later, Tessa stood in the middle of Aunty Peg’s kitchen with her arms wasp-angled on her waist, just like Mum. ‘This changes everything,’ she said.
‘Which bit of everything?’ I asked.
‘Obviously we can’t just chuck all Peg’s junk out now—we have to go through it.’ Her head swivelled from one side of the chaos to the other. She stepped around piles of crap and leaned between towers of boxes to snap up the blinds and yawn the windows wide so we could get a better handle on the ghosts of Peg’s past. I pushed papers off a chair and perched on it, pulling my knees in tight to my chin, while Philly stood near the front door at the beginning of the path Tessa and I had cleared, like a flighty roo about to spring, her mouth pressed into the smallest line.
‘I’m not touching a thing,’ she said, her fingers plucking at the seams of her pale-blue skirt.
‘Yes, you are! Despite your allergy to the past,’ said Tessa. ‘We all are.’ She turned to me. ‘Even you, JJ.’
‘Never said a word.’
‘You’re speaking all the time, just not with your lips.’
I rolled my eyes.
‘Like right now you’re accusing me of being trivial,’ Tessa said, circling her finger in front of my face. ‘Because out of everything Mrs Tyler told you, I end up focusing on the practicality of locating the valuables rather than exclaiming upon Aunty Peg’s unknown pregnancy.’
She was good.
‘Don’t be stupid,’ I said, bending below the table so she couldn’t see how right she’d been. I re-emerged, pulling my shoulder bag to my lap, fishing in its depths for pen and paper. ‘But being knocked up out of wedlock. You have to admit—in those days. That’s something, surely.’
‘It might have been,’ said Tessa, ‘but luckily fate intervened and there was no baby. Imagine passing her particular genes on.’
I used the back of my forearm to shove things aside to clear enough space on the table so I could begin writing out the list of jobs to be done, just like we used to do every Saturday when we were kids, AM—After Mum.
Philly gingered her way to the table where we were, resting her black leather handbag on top of a pile of newspapers. She snapped her handbag wide, inserted her hand confidently and withdrew a small, clear bag.
‘Really, Philly? A sewing kit?’ I said.
‘Brownie training. Be prepared, JJ. You never do know what will come in handy.’ She unzipped the bag with a flourish and handed me a pair of scissors.
‘Any other signs of madness?’
‘Leave her alone, JJ. It’s not as if it isn’t well established that if there’s a Peg Award to be given out, you’d be first in line.’
I mimicked Tessa, shaking my head from side to side like Aunty Peg used to do at Dad. Philly laughed.
Tessa made a show of deliberately ignoring us and poured herself another full cup from her thermos and slugged it back. ‘This is a hell of a job. How am I going to find the time to sort through every bit of all this?’
‘I vote we turf it all out as per the initial strategy,’ said Philly, half hopeful.
‘Now that’s short-term thinking, right there,’ I said. ‘There’s gold in them there hills.’
‘Laugh all you like, JJ. But it would be just like Aunty Peg to have hidden stocks in the fridge or something.’ Tessa swigged directly from the thermos this time. ‘How did you live in this, JJ?’
I widened my eyes at Philly, giving her the secret shut-up code. She cocked her head.
‘Yeah, how did you, JJ? What was it? Five years, day in day out while you were at uni?’
I gave her a dark look out of Tessa’s eyeline. But at least she didn’t let on I’d moved out of Peg’s and into the boarding house after only a month. I winced on the inside at what a baby I was being, but even now I didn’t want to give Dad the satisfaction of knowing that I’d been safely out of the Peg zone all along, just as he’d wanted.
Tessa went to get empty boxes from her car. Philly found a wh
eelbarrow in the lounge room and wheeled it into the kitchen, tipping it on the side to navigate through the narrow path between the towers of newspapers. Joining me at the table, she picked a pile of things off a chair opposite mine and looked around for a space to lay them. I looked up from writing to dare her. She shrugged, and held her arms high and opened them.
‘Stop winding her up,’ Tessa hissed at me, coming back through the front door, her arms full.
I laughed, going back to my list.
‘Both nightmares! One ignoring the past, the other drowning in it,’ Tessa said.
‘I am not,’ I said back, still like I was about five. Philly didn’t bother denying it. She made a meal out of staying contemporary. Besides, she’d worked out who she was years ago and she wore it like skin. She made short work of the rest of the things on the chair and sat, elbows on the table, waiting.
When I finished writing, she cut the jobs into strips while Tessa folded them into a bowl. Maybe I missed this. This together thing. Seeing Philly every few weeks, her ‘schedule’ permitting, was one thing, but this being more than two, this fitting back into well-worn and oiled grooves was something different, like hands cupped around hot chocolate and staring into flames. For a moment I thought about showing them Mum’s cameo, which was with me all the time now, but I let the moment pass because I still hadn’t confronted what it meant to me. I didn’t yet have the courage to breath air into that dark place.
Philly chose first and pulled out the scrap of paper marked ‘fridge’, which she immediately tried to barter away, but Tessa and I grinned, arms folded.
‘It’s only mould,’ I said.
She made a face. ‘I would have brought jeans if you’d told me.’
‘I did tell you,’ said Tessa, pulling out a second pair of tracksuit pants and a T-shirt from her bag. ‘But I expected no less.’ She shoved them towards Philly. ‘Nightmare number two.’
‘See? You’re number one,’ Philly said to me.
After we finished the job lotto, I bunched all my tasks up on the table while Philly lined hers up one after the other.
Tessa clucked her tongue at both of us and started on the nearest newspaper tower, checking each one for share certificates or treasure unknown. I rolled my eyes, but got to work on sorting the earrings, bills, tape measures and nails on the kitchen table into piles. We got into the rhythm of things although none of us had thought to bring a tape deck for music.
After we’d been going a while, Philly stripped off Tessa’s elbow-length yellow gloves. She sat with a groan at the table, spreading herself long across my now cleared and cleaned table.
‘So soon?’ Tessa asked, opening the door of the oven and sitting back on her haunches to scowl at the newspapers jammed inside.
‘I’m bloody hungry,’ said Philly.
‘Sandwiches in the bag by the door.’
Philly and I exchanged of-course-there-are stares.
‘I’ve got eyes in the back of my head now that I’m a mother of three, so you can stop communing behind my back.’
Philly and I poked our tongues at her behind, half expecting her to see that as well.
Philly had the sandwich triangles in designer pleats across a plate pretty quick. Tessa sank into a chair wiping her forehead with the back of her arm.
‘Found your diamonds yet?’ I asked.
‘Shut up. Nobody asked you to come, JJ.’ She bent over to pull another thermos out of her bag. ‘Mother’s helper.’ She poured a cup of tea for herself.
Philly slid her plastic cup along the table towards Tessa. Tessa screwed up her face and hesitated, looking between the cup and the thermos as if she wasn’t quite sure what to do.
‘Hurry up, girlie,’ said Philly, in a cockney accent. ‘Christmas’ll get ere sooner.’
‘Is that the perfect-public-relations, run-a-million-dollar-company-one-day girl talking?’ I asked.
‘You can pluck the girl from the farm,’ she said in now plummy, cut-glass tones.
Tessa gave in and filled Philly’s cup. Philly took a sip and spat it out. Tessa jumped away from the spray of liquid, as I squalled my chair back and roared at the sacrilege to my pristinely clean table.
‘What?’ said Tessa and Philly at the same time, one challenging, the other accusing, but it was Philly who took the running.
‘Mother’s helper? What the fuck, at eleven-thirty in the morning?’
Tessa got up to get a cloth from the sink, so we couldn’t see her expression. ‘You’ve got no idea,’ she said, quietly, her back still turned.
‘I’m the one with the “allergy” to the past.’ Philly made finger quotes in the air. ‘But do you see me—?’ She ran out of words. ‘Or even her?’ She indicated me. ‘And JJ’s—you know…’ She fished about for a word. ‘Delicate.’ She paused. ‘No offence, JJ.’
‘None taken.’
I took the flask and smelled it to get myself caught up on the facts. Just warm sweet tea. I splashed a little into my cup and swigged it down. I worked hard to stop my eyes from watering from the extra alcoholic kick. ‘Nice drop,’ I got out through my coughing.
‘Don’t encourage her, JJ,’ said Philly. ‘She’s got babies.’
‘It’s because I have babies,’ said Tessa, coming back to the table and throwing down the rest of the contents in her cup, as if Philly’s stare might evaporate it before she could get it into her.
I took the cloth from Tessa’s hand and started mopping up Philly’s mess.
‘Does Geoff know?’ demanded Philly.
‘Shut up, Philly,’ said Tessa. ‘There’s nothing to know. A little softening early in the day makes the rest of it possible.’
‘Do you think Mum felt like that?’ I asked, not daring to meet their eyes.
‘Was Mum sozzled, you mean?’ asked Philly, her voice skidding up again.
‘I mean, maybe she wasn’t coping,’ I said. ‘Maybe that’s why she left.’
Tessa thrust her head into her folded arms on the table. ‘I knew this bloody funeral would unhinge you, JJ.’
Tessa called from the lounge room. ‘Finished?’
‘Nearly,’ we both chorused. We leaped up from the table where we’d been taking a break and each grabbed a side of a large box full of crap and bustled it out to what you might call a lawn if it had ever met a mower. I blinked in the fresh air and slowed again, getting the ease of it inside me. We tumbled the stuff from the box into the skip. Philly let go of her side, pulling her arms together at the back of her so her yoga-limber shoulder blades just about touched.
‘Do you remember what Aunty Peg used to say about madness?’ Philly asked.
The clouds skidded across the sky. I shifted my feet to get a better grip on the ground.
‘Madness is for the brave,’ Philly went on, now hugging herself.
‘Well. She was wrong,’ I said, dropping the empty box to the ground and leaning against the skip. ‘Madness is for the mad, Philly.’ I didn’t say what Aunty Peg had added to me: ‘Madness is for the brave, JJ. Just you remember that when your time comes.’
‘Maybe it is brave, though. Not caring what others think. Not matching every colour, shade for shade.’
‘You are obsessive, even nuts, Philly, but you’re not mad.’
I had to admit everyone was probably right: that if anyone did take after Peg, it was going to be me. Sometimes I could already feel it crawling around under my skin. I mean, there were times I was sure Mum was talking back to me when I spoke to her.
I’d felt it more than usual since Peg had kicked the bucket. Even Tye had noticed it. Straight after Philly told me about Peg’s heart attack, tiny jackhammers had started in on my nerves all the way along my arms and down my spine. If I’d known Dad and Tim were going to skip out on her funeral maybe I would have done it too. I winced as Mum gave me a clip around the ear from beyond the grave. But then laughed back. Course I wouldn’t have not gone, I told her. There was something gutsy about Peg, I added for myself. Like Marge said. Yo
u had to honour the quiet fierce of ordinary lives.
Marge knew a lot about that. She’d never told me. I was one hundred per cent sure I didn’t want her to, but Rocco had, the words tight and grim. Marge had got up early to cream the milk in the dairy before the kids were out of bed. Her husband was on the tractor already, so she thought the coast was clear. She’d only just sat down to begin when she heard them: two clean gunshots. One for each kid. Then he turned the gun on himself. I did ask once why she kept going. Because she had to, she said. She lived her life because her kids didn’t get a chance to live theirs.
The sad of it could strangle you if you let it.
Compared to that, all the muddy, loose ends fraying around Mum were nothing. The thing was, I might have made it all up, anyway. Maybe there was no mystery. Mum had just taken off to some boarding house without a phone for a break from us. None of it had been easy. You only had to look at Tessa with her kids to see that. And that was with Geoff being a much better husband than Dad had ever been. Had a steady job at the bank, for starters, so there was enough money to keep the kids in warm clothes.
Mrs Tyler had just got caught up in all my drama. But maybe she was right about one thing. Peg dying was an end of an era. Maybe it was time to let Peg carry all our madness with her to the grave. I could be like Philly. I had my career in the right place. Now was not the time to lose focus. I rubbed my arm, hard and fast. I just had to shut down these jackhammers.
A few minutes later, Tessa cried out. Philly and I raced back into the house and into the lounge room. Tessa cradled her index finger as blood spurted out. Philly ran to get her first-aid kit from her handbag. I bundled Tessa to the kitchen sink and got cold water coursing over her hand. We both watched the blood spatter and river down the drain with the water. When Philly got back with bandages and ointment, I leaned against the wall for a while, taking in the way their dark heads arched together.
I wandered back into the lounge to see what had cut Tessa’s finger. I kneeled over the pile of things she’d been sorting. The broken glass was hidden beneath a calendar. Aunty Peg and her bloody obsessive calendars. I tipped the broken glass into a sheath of newspaper. There was Philly’s name on the calendar. Friday afternoon: four pm. I turned the pages over, her name repeated over and over. I hadn’t even known. Philly just quietly turned up week after week to visit Peg. The visits lasted forty-nine minutes, fifty minutes, there was one as long as sixty. I pushed the calendar aside and twisted the sheath closed so none of the glass could get at anyone else, laying it in the wheelbarrow ready for the tip.