He opens one eye and peers at her. ‘How about I come and live with you?’
She gives him a sharp-edged grin. ‘Not an option. I live in a shoe box. There simply isn’t room.’
‘You’re right,’ he says with a self-deprecating smile. ‘It wouldn’t work. You don’t cook well enough. And how would I survive without my desserts?’
Abby pokes the soft layer of fat over his ribs. ‘A diet might be good for you.’
He chuckles and Abby is pleased to see his sense of humour re-emerging. ‘I’m with Garfield on this one,’ he says. ‘Now that Brenda has converted me to sweets, the word diet has become die with a t.’
5
Abby spends the night in her childhood bedroom . . . although it’s not really hers anymore, Brenda has stamped herself all over the place. That was the hardest thing to accept: Brenda’s efforts to rub out all evidence of Grace’s existence. Matt won’t come here anymore; he doesn’t like Brenda and refuses to pretend. Abby doesn’t like her much either, but she accepts that Brenda is something they have to endure.
Before Brenda, Abby lost count of the women who passed through her father’s life. She had moved to Melbourne to study science, so she wasn’t around when Brenda began to feature. Matt told her all about it though. He couldn’t believe he was meant to take Brenda seriously. Abby tried to counsel him from afar, which wasn’t easy, given his aversion to chatting on the phone.
Then Brenda moved in to the farmhouse and took over. Next she tried to bulldoze the rest of the family. She had offspring of her own who Abby and Matt were expected to like. Abby recognised that her father had no choice. Brenda’s grown children were in the farmhouse all the time so he had to accept them. But Matt was furious. He resented that Steve saw more of Brenda’s family than he did of his own.
Gatherings were planned, and Abby was expected to come from the city to attend. It annoyed her that she and Matt were supposed to join in and play happy families. They were supposed to stand by and watch Brenda’s kids bagging Steve out. It was humiliating. Brenda and her family laughed at him, denigrated him, made him look small. Abby tried to switch off, and Matt fumed, barely containing a violent eruption, while Steve watched on with a glass of beer in his hand and a detached, bemused smile on his face. Abby concluded that although Brenda’s family was a twisted nasty lot, her father had grown tired of living on his own. It seemed he was prepared to stomach put-downs and derogatory digs as a trade-off for leaving loneliness behind.
Then they were married. Matt refused to go to the wedding and Abby couldn’t blame him. She went only to remind Brenda that Steve had a life and family before her. It was a strangely tragic day: watching her father relinquish his independence and his past for a compromised future.
But despite Brenda’s efforts, there’s obviously a corner of her father’s soul that hasn’t been subdued—he shows it every year on the anniversary of Grace’s death—and this brings Abby a significant degree of smug satisfaction. Brenda has done her utmost to delete Abby’s mother—she’s bought new furniture, new drapes, new carpet, had the kitchen renovated—but Grace is still with them. There’s no escape. While Brenda is living with Steve, Abby’s mother will always be present. This is Abby’s consolation.
Abby’s family has lived in this staid brick farmhouse for twenty-five years. They moved here after Matt was born—at least that’s what Gran said. Before that they were living in the flat suburbs of Melbourne where Abby’s father worked as an accountant and her mother taught at the local primary school.
Abby still remembers the day Gran presented a tray of scones with jam and cream for afternoon tea and sat down to explain how Abby’s family was different. Abby was eight and already aware that her home life wasn’t like everyone else’s. Until then she’d simply accepted it, but Gran said there were things she should know.
Apparently Abby’s parents were ‘normal’ until Matt arrived. Then Grace became depressed like many other first-time mums. Medications prescribed by the doctor didn’t seem to work. Grace tried to care for Matt, but simply couldn’t do it. Gran offered to help, but the family house in Melbourne was small and Abby’s father hadn’t seemed receptive, so Gran had given what support she could from her home in Mansfield—listening to Abby’s dad’s concerns over the phone. It hadn’t been easy for Gran to stay away while her daughter’s life fell apart, yet she had to allow them their independence, at least initially.
As the weeks passed, Steve had become increasingly desperate, living in a filthy house full of flies and dirty nappies and stale milk and food left on the kitchen table. Gran heard about it all. She said Steve had feared for Matt’s safety while he was away during the day. But what could he do? He had to work to bring in money and pay the mortgage. Gran was afraid for Matt too. She was worried Grace might forget the baby when she drifted away—let him drown in the bath. From what Steve had described, Grace was completely disconnected from the baby, unmoved by him.
Steve was exhausted. Gran knew he was trying to do everything each night after work, racing from one disaster to the next: cleaning, washing clothes and dishes, heating bottles, settling Matt, shopping, cooking. He was losing patience with Grace, and with the crying baby, and the mess.
That’s when Gran went to the city to take control. She’d found Grace sitting blankly on the couch looking at Matt as if he was a doll, a red, angry toy that screamed. And it seemed that Grace didn’t care. Time and again, Gran would find her in the bedroom staring out the window or vaguely flicking at the bedspread with her fingertips. It was a sad and stressful time, Gran said, but it was far better when she was there to watch out for the baby.
In the end they all moved to Mansfield. Steve took a job with a local accountant and they lived in Gran’s house for a couple of months until Steve bought the farm. Gran understood it was a decision he made for himself; Grace was too vague and misty to contribute to running the family, let alone choose a home. The farm was Steve’s solace, a base from which to manage the rest of his life. Gran knew he needed it.
Then things looked up. A new anti-depressant drug seemed to move Grace out of the clouds. Gran said it was wonderful to see her become a person again. She started singing and playing the guitar, and she cared for Matt with revived interest. She didn’t work—that would be too much for a fragile mind—but she began riding horses, something she had enjoyed as a child. Gran had been happy to see Steve start a vegie patch. It was a good sign. Then he built a chook shed, bought a tractor and cows.
Grace secretly weaned herself off the drugs and fell pregnant. Both Gran and Steve were concerned, but Grace seemed to remain even. Abby was born.
At first everything was fine. Grace had managed to breast-feed little Abby, the house was messy, but not dirty, and Gran minded Matt three days a week so Grace had time to rest. But Grace nose-dived and it took longer to recover than the last time. At least Gran was close and knew she could help.
It was tough for eight-year-old Abby to hear all these things about her mother, and at the time she’d been more focused on eating scones with cream than listening to Gran. But the stories stayed with her, and she’d been proud Gran considered her old enough to listen and understand. After that Abby had become more aware of her mother’s cycles. She’d noticed how her mother would lift slowly from depression and re-engage with life and people and music, until she began to wind up, becoming faster, busier, more hectic. Grace was entertaining and funny, and Abby would laugh and feed off her mother’s energy. She would watch her mother whirling around the house, singing, or pouring out great chunks of Shakespearean plays in character. In the space of a day her mother could be Cassius, Lady Macbeth, Portia and Puck. The couch in the lounge room was her mother’s stage, where she would stand with an actor’s erect posture and distant gaze, unloose her wavy auburn hair and let the words flow. Abby remembers being an enraptured audience.
As a child, she loved her mother’s weird and potent energy, her creative impulsivity: dances in the rain, Christmas lad
en with cakes and presents, singing in the kitchen, pots banging. She remembers cooking frenzies of butterfly patty-cakes, carrot and walnut muffins, sponges with enormous whorls of cream, fruitcakes doused in brandy. The kitchen was always cluttered with used bowls, cracked eggshells, stray mounds of flour. When Grace was energised, it was feast or famine. The cake tins would be crammed with treats and the fridge would be stuffed with food (both fresh and rotting—Grace never knew what she’d stashed in there). Or, when Grace shifted focus, the cupboards and pantry would be empty. After-school snacks became snow peas from the vegie patch.
Often when Abby came home from school, she would walk down the drive to the sound of music. Her mother would be sitting on the doorstep, playing guitar, singing to the chooks pecking on the lawn. Once, Abby found her perched on the roof, guitar slung around her neck, picking out a tune.
What are you doing up there? Abby called to her.
Why sit on the step when you can be up here? her mother said. You should come up and see.
Abby had tossed her schoolbag aside and scaled the ladder. Young children navigating gutters and steeply gabled roof-lines—Abby knew it wasn’t sensible. But her mother made no move to help. Abby was on her own up there, stepping breathlessly across the tiles while her mother smiled and watched. She sang again while Abby sat with her, and in those moments Abby felt she understood. She saw how her mother’s craziness gave her enlightenment. Her mother was right. The view was different up there. The beauty of the landscape was heightened by the headiness of elevation.
Other times Abby would be sitting at the kitchen table doing her homework and she would hear the drumming of hooves. Out on the flats, her mother would be galloping her horse, helmet-free, her lithe shape fused to the horse’s back. When she was surfing a wave of exhilaration, she was reckless, without a sense of self-preservation. Her horse seemed to respond to her effervescence and revert to its wild, flighty self, leaning into the joy of a frenzied gallop with matching verve.
Abby and Matt learned to ride too. Their mother would lead them up into the foothills of the mountains where she loved to fly her horse along the tracks and trails. They would follow her on their ponies, pulling up when she careered ahead on some manic dash. They feared for her safety and their own. When she was gone, they could still hear the thud of her horse bolting up the hill. They would follow at a more sedate pace. Often she would be waiting on a high ridge, looking out over the forest that rolled down into valleys then climbed to the nearest peaks. When she turned to look at them, her eyes would be shining, while her horse blew and heaved from the effort of the uphill pull.
The journey home was even more frightening. Grace would gather her reins without warning and charge downhill. It was much more difficult to restrain the ponies on the homeward run, but Matt always stayed back to help Abby control her pony, grasping Abby’s reins and checking the pony himself.
Occasionally the ponies took off before the children could contain them. Abby would dig her fingers into her pony’s mane, hook her fingers beneath the pommel and cling on while the pony scrambled headlong down the hill. She would be too terrified to breathe. If the pony stumbled she knew they would roll into the scrub. The pony could break a leg, could fall on her.
Their mother would meet them at the gate and the ponies would reef and chafe while she swung it open, knowing this was the last homeward push. Once the gate was secured, Grace would turn her horse and gallop off with the ponies trailing madly behind her, Abby imagining legs twisting in rabbit holes. Grace would be oblivious. Abby still remembers the musical sound of her mother’s laughter on the wind, the way Grace would fold herself over her mount’s wither and seem to become a part of the horse, her hair streaming like the horse’s tail as they hammered back to the house.
Grace climbed trees too. She loved to press up high where the branches thinned and the wind spun through the leaves. Occasionally she scaled one of the oaks near the house, but she preferred the pines down the paddock. She would drag Abby and Matt down there and coax them to climb with her, leaving them behind once they started to cower at the dizziness of height. Ensconced safely on the lower sturdier limbs, they would watch as she worked her way higher while the wind whined in the pine needles.
Those times were full of a bright happiness, colourful and vibrant. It seemed to Abby that her mother touched on the very essence of life. She showed them the thrill of freedom, of living without kowtowing to risk. But things would always change. Abby would notice her mother’s speech accelerating, her thoughts cluttering, and she would look on with dread as her mother became confused, rushing so fast from one task to the next that she finished nothing. Chaos would overtake the thin veneer of order in the house. Then it was a case of keeping her mother safe until she broke.
When the crash came, Grace would be back in bed, staring at the ceiling. The horse would stand in the paddock under the tree, swishing its tail with boredom. The house would be quiet: no singing, no music, no Shakespeare. And Gran would come again with her old brown suitcase and her gentle smile to tend to them all in her patient methodical way.
These were the hard times for Abby, and they would last for weeks. Her mother would emerge only when everyone was sleeping. Abby would hear her wandering as if lost through the house and sometimes outside. That’s when her dad would emerge and quietly intervene, gently retrieving Grace from the doorstep, folding her against his chest and guiding her back to the bedroom.
Several times, Abby remembers staying with Gran while her father took her mother to Melbourne to see specialists, psychologists, psychiatrists. They tried different drugs, new therapies, natural products, acupuncture. Sometimes the medications seemed to lift the blanket of depression for a while and Grace would normalise—whatever that meant. But she hated the side effects. She said the drugs dulled her and she forgot who she was. She was vaguely acceptable as a human being, but she felt like a zombie, a ghost, bland and absent.
Abby also preferred the roller coaster of her mother’s emotions to seeing her drugged out. Eventually Grace stopped taking the drugs, and they all learned to endure the ride. Life wasn’t easy, and home was never normal as other people knew it, but love is love, and family is family, and they found ways to work around Grace’s illness, learned tolerance.
The only good thing was having Gran move in to help. Even though Abby knew her father didn’t enjoy having Gran in his space, Abby loved having her grandmother to stay. Gran was someone Abby could talk to, someone to hug, a listening ear. Abby loved the sense of order when Gran was in charge. Clothes were washed, folded, and put away. Dishes cleaned and put in drawers. Food appeared in the fridge. There were kisses goodnight, long talks about issues at school, knitting lessons, jigsaw puzzles on the dining room table, a fresh fire set in the fireplace each morning, hot scones after school.
For Abby, Gran was the light when her mother was in darkness. It was a double whammy when Gran passed away so soon after Grace’s death. And for a long time Abby wasn’t sure who she missed most. Fact is, you expect your grandparents to die while you’re young, but your parents should last till you don’t need them anymore. At least, that’s how Abby used to see it. It seemed she just didn’t have enough time with her mum, felt like she hardly knew her. Even now, it still didn’t seem fair.
6
When Abby wakes, milky light is weaving its way through the swaying shadows of oak leaves to fall softly across the bedroom floor. She forgot to pull the curtains last night and now she is glad of it, allows herself to drift in and out of consciousness like a snowflake wafting on the wind. She figures there’s no rush to impose herself on Brenda and her father this morning. Hopefully the very fact of her presence will remind them that reconciliation must somehow be achieved. And it’s pleasant to wallow in bed, reminds her of the unhurried nature of childhood, when unplanned days stretched lazily in front of her, waiting to be filled.
She emerges from bed slowly and wanders into the kitchen where Steve is sitting at the tab
le, hunched over a cup of coffee. Brenda stalks and parades beside the bench, rattling dishes and cutlery. Resolution must be nigh, Abby figures, although punishment and retribution are obviously still incomplete. Brenda has a point to make, and Steve’s contrition, however absolute, will be insufficient until she has had her fill of huffing and posturing.
Abby slides into a seat, smiles at her father, and winks. At this stage of recovery the only asset Steve requires is endurance. He must stomach Brenda’s moaning and accusations without retaliation, and soon all will be back to normal.
Brenda is a whirlwind of hurt and anger. She inflicts upon Steve the smart of humiliation she has had to bear due to his drunken performance: an eye for an eye. Steve is like a reprimanded child, and Abby would like to protect him, to stand up to her step-mother. She can think of many scathing things to say, insults that would put Brenda back in her box, such as: ‘you old bitch, you’re only in this for the farm’, or ‘did you know they crucified the last person who was as perfect as you?’ But she knows this would serve only to prolong Brenda’s attack. It’s best to observe in silence and let the storm pass.
After breakfast, while she is showering, Abby thinks perhaps she hears the sound of shouting, maybe Brenda’s shrill voice above the hiss of water. But it seems unlikely; her father is generally non-confrontational, and after a decent night’s sleep he seemed genuinely remorseful this morning. Abby rushes her rinse-off anyway, and as she dries herself she is certain she hears Brenda in full cry, like a scalded rooster calling in the dawn. Abby dresses in a flurry and tiptoes to the kitchen, pausing outside the door to listen.
‘That’s not an apology,’ Brenda is shouting. ‘But it’s exactly the sort of rubbish I’d expect from you, you pathetic man. What were you doing, singing to a dead woman! How am I supposed to live with that? Oh, I don’t want to hear your grubby explanations. Ten years that woman’s been dead and I still have to live with her. Then your daughter shows up to make sure you say sorry because you haven’t the strength to do it yourself. What did she offer you? A lollipop for good behaviour? I don’t know why I put up with this.’
The Grass Castle Page 5