by Joy Dettman
The three little kids, engrossed in E.T., hadn’t moved far. It was at the part where you think E.T. is dead, then you see the flowers start coming back to life, the part that always made Lori want to cry, not for E.T., but because he reminded her of Henry. Like for E.T., the world had turned toxic for Henry.
‘If you expect to sit in here, you need to have a shower and put on decent clothes,’ Lori said from the doorway.
‘There’s nothing cooking out there,’ Mavis said. ‘I’ve had nothing to eat since breakfast time.’
The air conditioner had a remote control, a small white box of similar size to an old-fashioned mobile phone. Lori had been studying it when Mavis walked it. She pointed it now at the unit, hit the power button and stopped that refrigerated air.
‘Turn it on!’
‘Have a shower.’
‘Turn that bloody thing on and make me something to eat.’
‘Have a shower and dress yourself in something decent. Those little kids can see everything you’ve got.’
And the little kids turned to see everything she had, but skedaddled when she rose up from the couch.
There was a power switch on the unit. Mavis might have been a part-time mental case, but she was a smart mental case. She turned it on and as soon as she flopped again to the couch, Lori pointed the remote and again hit the power button.
‘Give it up,’ Jamesy said.
To look at his face, you’d think he was amused. Some damaged nerve in his cheek forced one side of his mouth into a permanent smile. He wasn’t amused, just preferred peace to war. Lori followed him out to the kitchen as the air conditioner started up again – and the lounge room door slammed.
They made process-line sandwiches for dinner, the slices of bread dealt like playing cards to the table, a long table, extendable, and both ends permanently extended. There were nine kids left at home, though Vinnie wasn’t often at home, which was lucky, because when he was, he spent a lot of time threatening to decapitate Mavis with the wood axe – which Lori might have encouraged tonight. She peeled and sliced an onion, sliced three tomatoes while the boys buttered the bread and Mick opened a can of beetroot. She was studying Henry’s ever-sharp carving knife, considering decapitation, then Eddy mentioned the bathroom manhole, which got her thinking about the meterbox, thinking that if the installer dudes had to run a new wire back to the meterbox, they would have put in a new fuse.
She washed the knife, slid it back into its sheath then went out the back door and walked around to the front corner of the west-side veranda.
If their meterbox ever had a cover, it had gone missing long before Lori had known that there was such a thing as electricity. She knew now, knew about blown fuses too. Mick had fixed a few.
There were four fuses in a row, three a dirty beige but one new and white. She got a grip on the white one and yanked. It came out, as did blue sparks, but on the far side of the house, the air conditioner’s motor hiccupped, clunked, then died – whether permanently or not, she didn’t know or care. She’d only agreed to buy it for Mick’s sake.
She ran then, the fuse in her hand, aware the kids would suffer for what she’d done, but apart from Mick they were fast movers and Mavis wasn’t – and she knew better than to go for Mick again. She’d broken his bad hip two years ago and he’d dobbed on her. If she’d been movable she might have been locked up for child abuse and her kids spread everywhere. Her size saved them. The cops who had kept turning up for a week or so would have needed to hire a tow truck to move her to jail.
Their house was on the bottom south-side corner of Dawson Street, where the bitumen and cement guttering ended. There was a wide stretch of dusty clay, then a massive levee, built by the council to keep the river out of town. On the far side of the levee was untouched forest that followed the river to the bridge.
Martin and Donny might have forged the track between the trees to their private swimming bend. The rest of the kids had worn it wider. It was cooler amidst the trees, though tonight they were sweating eucalyptus. She could smell the river too, and didn’t slow her pace until she reached its edge, where she zipped the fuse into her uniform pocket, removed her shoes, paddled out until the water was deep enough to shallow-dive, then swam down, down, down, relishing the silence until her lungs’ need for air forced her to surface, well away from the home bank. Needing distance tonight, she continued effortlessly across to the far side.
The river curved at that point, widening as it curved. There was a caravan park and a boat ramp opposite their swimming bend. She didn’t aim for the boat ramp but for a partly submerged log downstream from it, and before the boys emerged from the trees, she’d hoisted herself up to the log. Mick had ridden his bike; he didn’t walk easily or far. Until last Christmas he’d never ridden an adult-sized bike. He owned a beauty now. Last Christmas, the old dude from the bike shop gave him a brand-new battery model, not because he was feeling charitable but as payment. He’d broken his wrist just before peak tourist season and would have had to close up his shop if not for Mick, who had spent half of the holidays repairing the bikes that old dude hired out to the tourists.
He was a fixer. He could fix anything that was broken. Jamesy had a theory as to why. He said it was all about Mick’s crippled leg that was unfixable. He could have been right. Lori could remember him fixing the older boys’ bikes when he’d been about ten years old. Maybe he’d envied their freedom, though he’d never shown it.
He seemed to like people, such as Spud Murphy, who was a moaning old bugger. Mick had actually offered to feed his dogs when Spud had to go to hospital, and Spud, who didn’t like anyone, liked Mick. Most people did. It wasn’t fake, PC liking because of his crippled leg either. It was because there was nothing about him not to like. Even girls liked him. Cathy Howard had started hanging around with Lori just so she could flirt with Mick.
His crippled leg was probably the reason why he had a different attitude from Lori and most of the others. According to Martin, Mavis had refused to touch Mick when Henry brought him home from the hospital, so he’d spent his first three years at childcare. He was number five in the family. Lori, number six and female, may have been a novelty for a year or so, until the twins slid out with faulty hearts – which was why Eva had ended up raising them. Jamesy, number nine, had been Mavis’s first DIY birth. The shock of doing it alone might have thrown a spanner into her production line of babies. There was a four-year gap between Jamesy and Neil, but his birth had restarted her. Timmy arrived two years later, then Matty.
From her perch on that log, Lori watched the boys strip down to their shorts before wading in, apart from Mick. He was a powerful swimmer, though he rarely swam during daylight hours. He’d go in with his brace on to save Matty, who could swim like a fish but didn’t know his limitations. She’d have to go back.
She knew that river’s current, knew that if she wanted to end up where she’d left her shoes, she needed to walk upstream to the boat ramp – in her wet and clinging uniform, but there weren’t many campers around. The park had spaces for umpteen vans, a huge amenities block and two rows of prefab cabins, which filled during the holiday seasons. Today they looked deserted.
Martin and Donny could remember living at caravan parks. Greg and Vinnie had been there, but were too young to remember Mavis’s preferred lifestyle, which Mick’s crippled leg put an end to. She’d never forgive him for caging her in Dawson Street.
At times, Lori understood that caged feeling. Matty had been a ball and chain around her neck since Henry died.
‘They won’t let me swim,’ he complained when she swam back.
‘You learn to stay in the shallows, or I’ll bring a rope down here and tie you to that tree until you learn,’ she threatened.
‘I can swim good,’ he argued.
‘You can drown good too! Do as you’re told, or I’ll go home and get the rope.’
She wasn’t his mother, had no desire ever to be anybody’s mother. Matty thought she was and usua
lly obeyed her.
They stayed at the river until the sun went down, until the mosquitoes came out to feast on bulk blood, and when they got home, there was evidence of Mavis’s punishment at her loss of cool air. She’d smashed their sugar jar, thrown it at the stove, and spilt sugar and glass everywhere. She’d emptied their tub of butter, raided the freezer for more bread and left the freezer door open. Her door was closed, her television was playing. Disconnecting the power to her light globe had no effect on her electrical appliances. They were plugged into a power board pushed through from Mick and Vinnie’s bedroom.
They watched her door while cleaning up the mess. They listened for her while eating the sandwiches Mick retrieved from the vegetable crisper. He’d hidden them safe beneath celery and cabbage, safe because Mavis never raided their greens.
bendigo
Alan, who was on Matty-duty that Wednesday, took him fishing. They didn’t return until the rest of the kids came home from school. Everyone expected to walk into another Mavis mess, but the kitchen was as they’d left it, and at six, when Eddy attempted to deliver a meal to the brick room, the door was locked. Back when Martin and Donny had shared that room, they’d made its old green door impregnable, with heavy-duty slide bolts on both sides.
‘It’s battered fish, Mave,’ he called. No reply. He knocked and called for minutes before returning the meal to the kitchen, where it was shared. Everyone liked battered fish and chips.
On Thursday afternoon, Mick became concerned about the pedestal fan. It had been going day and night since Tuesday. Its power source in his and Vinnie’s bedroom, he turned it off. They waited for the explosion, and when there was none, Lori went to the window to lift the shade cloth. Not a lot of light penetrated that room but enough to see Mavis flat on her back on her bed and she didn’t move when Lori called to her.
People worry even if they don’t want to, or they worry about the repercussions of no Mavis. She was the only adult in the house.
At eight, Eddy phoned Doctor Jones’s mobile number. He was at the front door by eight-thirty, and he looked tired. A tall old dude with not an ounce of fat on him, he should have been home in bed, not looking after people who didn’t deserve to be looked after.
Lori led him through the house, explaining why they’d called. He knocked on the green door, identified himself, but when Mavis didn’t answer, Lori led him around to the window. She hooked the shade-cloth blind back, then handed him Mick’s big flashlight.
There’d been no glass in that window since last September, and as he was about to stick his head through the gap, a spray of deodorant hit him in the face.
Give Mavis her due. She’d probably been expecting Lori’s face, which didn’t alter the fact that if not for his glasses, she might have blinded that poor old dude. They took him into the kitchen where Lori washed his glasses; Eddy handed him wet paper towels to wipe his face.
‘Is she violent towards the children?’ Doctor Jones asked.
‘Not if we stay out of her way,’ Neil said, and grinned. At times, Lori was convinced that he’d missed out on the morality DNA, either that or he didn’t have a nerve in his body.
‘Does she leave the house at all?’
There was a chorus of ‘No’, and a communal shake of heads when he asked if she’d been taking her medication. His weary old eyes blinking, he did a silent count of heads, found Mick’s, then said, ‘Bendigo. The decision has to be made, Michael.’
In September, he’d spoken to them at length about the Bendigo psychiatric hospital.
And what was going to happen to them if he put her away? Vinnie might have looked like an adult but in years was still a minor, and Matty was four years old. They’d have Child Welfare on their backs again, someone would find out about the bankcard, and the high school would get into the act about Smyth-Owen kids missing too much school, and everything they’d managed to achieve during the last two years would be as nothing.
Doctor Jones had staying power. He put his glasses on, then returned to the window to speak to his patient about her voluntary admission, though from a distance.
‘Fuck off,’ she said.
‘This can’t continue, Mrs Smyth-Owen.’
‘I told you to fuck off!’
He returned to the kitchen, took an old mobile phone from his pocket and dialled that hospital.
If you believed half of what you read in the papers or heard on the news, then you’d think that everyone and their dog was suffering from some type of mental illness, which saved the kids that night. The hospital had no available bed – or Mavis’s notoriety had travelled further than Willama, and Bendigo had blacklisted her.
He didn’t give up. If you listened only to his voice, you’d imagine a younger man, a stronger man. Lori stood, her back to him, listening until he put his mobile away.
‘They’ll contact me when a bed becomes available,’ he said. ‘It may take a few days.’ He picked up his bag, patted Matty’s head, looked at Lori, the tallest, at Mick, the oldest. ‘I’ve seen ECT have a very good effect in similar cases. She’s done the hard work. Now we have to deal with the depression.’
ECT meant shock therapy, meant shooting electricity through the brain, which would only put more charge into her batteries and there was enough in them already. And whatever was wrong with her was not fixable. For a time, they’d been convinced that her loss of weight had fixed her. It hadn’t, and nothing would, due to Mavis believing it was the world around her that required fixing, not her. She wanted what she wanted when she wanted it – which they could maybe blame on her rich parents . . . or on her father . . . or maybe blame on him for dying before he’d given her everything she’d wanted. Lori was thinking about fathers when she led the doctor out the same way she’d led him in.
He stood a moment on the veranda, looking west. ‘This wind change will assist the firefighters,’ he said. Lori hadn’t had time to notice the wind change but nodded, then walked him out to the letterbox. Like Martin, he parked in the street. She checked for late junk mail and removed a sheet of pink paper advertising a garage sale. They liked garage sales, so she hung on to it.
‘A new box,’ he said as she closed its lid. It looked like a house, like their house, its lid-roof green, its walls white.
‘Mick made it,’ she said.
‘What is Vincent doing these days?’ he asked. How he remembered their names, she didn’t know, but he always did and was the only person outside of the family who did. Nelly didn’t try. She called the lot of them ‘Smithy’. Bert Matthews called them ‘Lad or Lass’.
‘He’s been working for a house painter now for a year.’
‘Still living at home?’
‘Yes,’ Lori said, or he slept at home, or he usually slept at home. He even ate at home if Eddy or Mick were on dinner duty.
‘What age would he be?’ He knew Mick’s age, and Lori’s, and the twins’. He’d delivered them. He hadn’t delivered Vinnie.
‘Eighteen in April,’ Lori said. She was sweating on April, had been sweating on April since last September. Having another adult in the house would change everything.
‘Call me if you need me,’ he said, as he always did, then he walked to his car, a silver-grey Commodore that Vinnie would have killed to own. Mick might drool over tools but Vinnie salivated over cars.
Gone then. She stood watching his taillights disappear while sniffing the air. Yesterday, every breath had been scented with burning forest but tonight the air smelt clean. A fire over the west had been threatening the new multimillion-dollar golf course and its buildings this morning. Tonight’s wind change might save Willama’s Easter golf tournament.
‘She’s done half of the work,’ that old dude had said. Like hell she had. All she’d done was exercise her throat muscles, screaming for help while attempting to bash her way through the door they’d locked from the outside. Too long accustomed to her screeching, no neighbour had come to her aid. Had they known that her kids had sentenced her to twelve mon
ths’ solitary confinement, they might have applauded.
During those months, they hadn’t phoned Doctor Jones, but had used the pills he’d been prescribing for years for Mavis’s depression and anxiety. She’d refused to swallow them so Eddy had crushed them and put them into her food. They’d calmed her, eventually, or she’d become interested in her loss of weight. When that letter came from Watts telling them about Eva’s death, they’d let her out – and had expected murder and mayhem but she’d remained tame – until September, until those cops told her about Greg.
Anyone who’d known him as a kid had known he’d come to a bad end. He’d stolen at school, stolen at home, stolen from the neighbours. He stole Mrs Roddie’s old Datsun the night he took off for Melbourne with Vinnie, who hadn’t been old enough to leave school.
He’d stolen the car he’d been driving the night he’d killed that woman and her daughter.
Matty almost died that day. After the cops left, for no reason other than he’d been small enough and available, Mavis had grabbed him by an arm and tossed him at the louver wall. They’d pack-attacked her when she’d gone in for the kill. Eddy’s mouth got in the way of her elbow, which had almost done for his two front teeth. Nelly phoned Martin, Doctor Jones and Mr Watts that night.
For a week they’d seen Martin every night. They’d seen Doctor Jones and his bodyguards night and morning but hadn’t seen Eddy for a week, and when he’d finally come home, he’d had a mouthful of metal and plastic, which he’d had to wear for months, which had given Lori an understanding of what it meant to have access to unlimited money. Dead or not, Eva had paid out a fortune to a city orthodontist to save Eddy’s teeth. Had it been Lori’s mouth that copped that elbow, she would have been lucky to end up with a plate and false teeth.