by Joy Dettman
‘It’s a mild antipsychotic,’ he said, then he left, as did Lori on her bike. Their usual pharmacy was closed, but she found one that wasn’t. She wanted those antipsychotic pills.
Mavis was still on the floor when she returned. The boys had eaten but Lori’s meal was keeping hot over a saucepan of water. She ate while Mick and Vinnie removed the two pieces of the green door that might have once belonged to an antique shed. They tacked up a blanket in its place, which hid Mavis from view but did nothing to muffle her snore.
No one had ever asked Doctor Jones what he shot into Mavis to tame her, which he’d been shooting into her backside periodically since Henry’s death. They’d named it elephant dart, horse tranquilliser, zapper or common sedative. What’s in a name? It worked, worked fast and lasted long.
They got the little kids into bed at eight-thirty, Neil complaining about being almost nine and old enough to sleep in the spare bunk bed. They’d move him soon, but not tonight. He was a snooper and Lori wanted the doors closed between him and what she was planning to do in the kitchen.
Once they settled, once the bedroom and passage doors were closed, she emptied the pharmacy bag onto the table, then while the boys studied the packets and Mick read the instructions for use, Lori found Eddy’s mortar and pestle.
‘You’re not doing that again?’ Mick said.
‘I am,’ she said. ‘You keep saying that we have to do something, so I’m doing something. Close that door, Jamesy, and put a chair against it.’
Eddy was studying the unfamiliar packet, the antipsychotics. He opened it and popped a pill from its foil bubble.
‘You can’t force people to take pills,’ Mick said.
‘Watch this space,’ Eddy said, and took charge of his mortar and pestle, bought two months ago to grind herbs for one of his internet recipes.
‘We’ll need to get a new door first,’ Jamesy said.
‘I’m not talking about locking her in again,’ Lori said. ‘If Eddy can get Xanax into her in coffee, we can get the rest of them into her somehow.’
The mortar and pestle made easy work of turning pills into powder. Jamesy labelled four small jars with BP, X, Z and ZP, and Alan said that they looked like apothecaries from a Dickens novel, preparing potions to treat the plague.
Eddy did. He’d removed the elastic band from his man bun and his hair hung long around his face. His eyes were the same shape, the same deep blue as Alan’s, but different. Even before the man bun, Lori had only to look at their eyes to know which twin was which. Alan’s were open windows. Eddy kept his blinds drawn, hiding a lot of the stuff that went on behind them. Devious stuff. He was the one who’d originally come up with the idea of crushing Mavis’s pills.
the door
The blood-pressure pill and the anti-anxiety became a salmon-pink powder that disappeared totally and almost tastelessly into apricot jam, mashed pumpkin or egg custard. Mavis’s antidepressants and antipsychotics were white, as were mashed potatoes, boiled rice and ice-cream. Only on one occasion did they mix up two plates, which meant two wasted meals. They couldn’t even scrape them into Mick’s chook bucket. He was fond of his chooks. He didn’t care about the worms in the compost heap. A few might have been less anxious, depressed or psychotic the next time Alan and Matty threaded them onto fishhooks. After a week of crushing, Mavis was no less psychotic or depressed, but had stopped using her shower cubicle.
She came wafting into the kitchen the night Eddy was cooking his beef stir-fry, but with Vinnie never missing when Eddy was on dinner duty, she didn’t hang around to tangle with him.
Alan was a one-pot cook. Eddy got a kick out of using as many bowls and saucepans as he could, every sauce in the fridge and half of the spices in the cupboard. He used cornflour too, which no one else ever used. He made a batter with it and egg whites, then sliced expensive rump steak into worms he left to marinate in his spiced and sauced batter while he prepared multiple vegetables and boiled a saucepan full of rice. If he didn’t become a brain surgeon or a mafia boss, he might become an international chef. His meals were restaurant class.
They medicated Mavis’s share. She now had a designated plate, white, with a yellow ring around its edge, the sole survivor from some ancient dinner set. She ate in her room, at her own small table, ate too fast and came out to get more, or came halfway out, got her feet entangled in her blanket curtain door, and when she ripped it down, the tacks that had been holding it up flew – and of course she trod on one.
For her own good, Vinnie got her face down on her bed and held her there while Lori operated on the tack with a vegetable knife. Eddy tried to stick on a bandaid once the tack was out but bandaids refuse to stick to filth.
It had been interesting, not the operation on a filthy foot, but watching the effect of those pills during the duration of the operation, which in all must have taken twenty minutes. They calmed her. By the time Vinnie rehung the blanket, with nails he drove in far enough not to come out, drove through its folded-over top so it didn’t dangle on the floor, Mavis was relaxing on her recliner, watching Home and Away.
‘We need to do something about getting a door,’ Mick said. Bunnings sold doors but their shed was two kilometres out the Melbourne highway. They’d need someone to transport a door. Martin owned a ute, so Lori texted him.
He phoned back. ‘Which door?’ he asked.
‘The brick room.’
‘What did she do to it?’
‘The middle boards haven’t been strong for a while,’ Lori said, which was sufficient explanation for someone who’d marry that sneering pig face.
‘I’ll need to measure the space,’ he said. ‘I’ll come around after work on Friday.’
‘We need it tomorrow.’
She gave him Mick’s measurements, and at five-thirty the following evening he dropped off a door. Alan timed how long it took him to lift it out of the back of his ute, carry it around to the laundry, tell them he was running late – for something – then go.
‘Three point three minutes,’ Alan said.
*
Shaved, showered, wearing jeans and a shirt Karen had chosen, Martin was seated in his in-laws’ dining room, knife and fork in hand and thinking about that door when his mobile vibrated in his pocket. He knew who’d be texting, knew what she’d be texting about.
He hadn’t put a lot of thought into door sizes when he’d built that room. He hadn’t put a lot of thought into that room. It was an idea that had grown, after Greg’s expulsion from the high school. Martin and Donny had attempted to bribe that thieving little bugger into staying home. They’d offered him thirty dollars to rip up the back veranda’s rotting floorboards.
Martin’s mind usually wandered at mealtimes. The conversation was dominated by Reg, his father-in-law, and Karen. Sylvia, his mother-in-law, never opened her mouth, other than to load it. He followed suit.
The discussion tonight was about a neighbour, in debt to the bank for hundreds of thousands. Reg Kelly wasn’t in debt. Reg Kelly had inherited his farm from his father, who’d inherited it from his father, and Reg had no son to pass it down to. He wanted grandsons, which he would have preferred to be fathered by someone other than his brickie son-in-law. He’d made this very clear before he’d had a son-in-law and every time their eyes had met since.
The mobile vibrated again. This time Martin reached for it.
‘Turn it off,’ Karen said.
He might have if she hadn’t told him to. Instead, he read the text. It’s not long enough and it’s too wide. Mick wants to know if you can swap it over tomorrow.
Tell him it’s as close as they had to his measurements. He can saw a bit off the side and a gap at the top will allow some through ventilation.
Like ventilate into our kitchen. And it’s not a bit. It’s over an inch too short, Lori replied.
He was about to turn his phone off when Karen started singing. Sylvia owned a collection of old vinyl records that included ‘House of the Rising Sun’. Twelve month
s ago, Karen had altered the lyrics. Her version wasn’t complimentary to Dawson Street.
He had it all. He’d landed on his feet. Given the life he’d led before Karen, he knew he should have kissed the ground Reg Kelly strode on. He lived rent free in a house he’d helped construct five years ago, a brick McMansion with garage space for four cars. He had fifty thousand in the bank, most of it saved since he’d been with Karen – saved so he could put a deposit on a unit in Willama, which he could have done tomorrow and got the hell out of Reg Kelly’s McMansion. It stifled him, was wrecking his marriage, which Karen refused to admit. She wanted him to toss in his job and play sheep farmer.
He’d given up a lot to be with her, but give up his job he would not. Sheep were fools and they stank. Martin liked watching brick walls rise, and the only dirt he was interested in was bricklaying mud. He loved the smell of it.
Reg owned two thousand acres of dirt, thirty kilometres west of Willama. Martin owned a V8 Ford that drank fuel by the gallon. Moving into town made good financial sense. Most of his work was in town, which he’d said to Karen earlier that night while showering.
‘You need to decide who deserves your first loyalty, Marty,’ she’d said. ‘You need to ask yourself who has done more for you, my family or your own.’
‘Living out here isn’t working for me. We’ve got enough money for a deposit on that unit. If you’d look at it, you’d like it.’
‘We’ve got our own apartment here and it costs you nothing. Why go into debt to live in a box?’
They weren’t boxes. They were small houses with their own backyards. He’d told her so a dozen times, had shown her a photograph of the one he wanted. He’d made the mistake of telling her tonight that she could get a full-time job in town, that they could have the loan paid off before they turned thirty.
‘I’ve got my own business out here,’ she’d said.
‘And no customers,’ he’d said, which was a fact she refused to admit.
‘I’ve got that big wedding in May,’ she’d snapped. In May, the end of May, weeks away.
She was a hairdresser, a fake nail technician in a one-horse town where customers didn’t queue up to pay for fake nails or blow-waved hair. Had she paid her father rent on that salon, most weeks she wouldn’t have made enough to pay him.
They argued too often, argued about a baby, argued about him running around after his family, about her mother having to delay dinner because he’d been running around after his family.
He’d never introduced her to Mavis. She knew her, or of her. Everyone in a fifty-kilometre radius had come into contact with Willama’s big-mouthed fat lady and her never-ending supply of runny-nosed kids. Karen hadn’t taken his name when they’d married, not that he blamed her for that. These days he introduced himself as Martin Smyth – and felt smaller for it.
He’d almost allowed himself to be baptised Catholic. Sean, his mate since third grade, had talked him out of doing that.
‘We got this far without religion, mate,’ he’d said.
Backing out of the baptism had caused ripples. He’d smoothed them out by agreeing to any kids born of the marriage being baptised Catholic, which wasn’t likely to transpire. By his ninth birthday, Martin had suffered his fill of babies. And back when they’d got married, being tied down with a kid had been the last thing on Karen’s mind. She was a party animal.
You don’t know people until you live with them. He’d believed that he’d stumbled on a house full of love when he’d moved out here. They were of the kissy, love you persuasion, them and their relations. Two years on, he could feel himself being absorbed by a father and daughter determined to ride roughshod over anyone who got in their way.
His will got in their way – as did his utility. It was a manual. Karen couldn’t drive it. Reg could, but the one time Martin had handed over his keys to him, he’d been sorry. That ute meant more to Martin than it should have. The day he’d bought it as an unroadworthy wreck, he’d named it Old Red. It and Sean’s father had taught him a lot about motors. He’d learnt to drive in Old Red, on Henry’s vacant block. He’d got his licence in it, had driven it around with an unmatched door and bonnet until he’d started making big money. Since his marriage, he’d had its interior redone, had bucket seats installed, had its rust cut out, its chrome re-chromed, paid for a spectacular paint job. It was veteran now, and the last of its breed on the roads around Willama, worth big money, according to Sean’s father – and Reg Kelly had less respect for it than he had for its owner, which was saying a mouthful – and getting rid of it wouldn’t make Karen happy, nor would having a kid, nor would breaking off all contact with his family. She’d been too young. She’d got sex confused with love.
As had he.
mister terrence clay
Eddy was up to something, or he had an embarrassing medical problem, probably the former. He made an appointment to see Doctor Jones at his surgery and was late getting home.
‘There was a crowd there,’ he said. ‘I had to wait for over an hour.’
He tossed a pharmacy bag onto the table where Mick was serving his usual frozen pie and chips dinner. Vinnie was home. He liked meat pies and chips.
Lori claimed the pharmacy bag, which revealed a new bottle of Xanax pills and a tube of some new breed of anti-itching cream. They weren’t the reason Eddy’d sat around for an hour in Jones’s waiting room, though he didn’t come clean until they were eating.
‘I got a letter of referral,’ he said, passing a sealed envelope to Lori.
It was addressed to a Mister Terrence Clay. She knew that name but didn’t know why she knew it, had seen it written somewhere or she’d heard it. ‘Who is he?’
‘That Richard Gere dude we saw on the fat boy documentary,’ Eddy said, adding tomato sauce to his pie.
They’d watched that documentary months ago. It was about a humongous baby-faced dude dying of obesity. They’d watched his keyhole surgery, watched the internal stapling of his stomach, then followed his weight loss for two years. He’d dropped as much weight as Mavis or more. Like her, he’d ended up with deflated balloon syndrome, which was where the Richard Gere look-alike, a cosmetic surgeon, had come into the story. He’d transformed that dude, sliced and diced him into a decent-looking young man. At which point, the documentary had become one of those feel-good, back-slapping, you changed my life shows which Lori couldn’t stand. She hadn’t watched the end. Eddy had.
‘You get crazy ideas into your brain and there’s no stopping you,’ she said, but when her plate was empty, she opened that envelope very carefully.
‘He could change her life too,’ Eddy said.
‘Get her looking halfway decent and she’d bring home a Henry replacement,’ Jamesy said.
In the main, the envelope contained computer printouts listing Mavis’s medications and medical history, but Jones had written one page to Mister Terrence Clay. It mentioned Mavis’s massive weight loss and her ongoing battle with depression since her husband’s suicide. It mentioned her under-sag disease, which had a medical name, then at the end, it mentioned her pension and her eight dependent children.
‘Her pension only supports six of us,’ Lori corrected.
‘Eight sounds worse,’ Eddy said. ‘I’m going to make a copy and post it to Watts, guilt him into paying for her operation.’
‘Guilt isn’t built into a ferret’s DNA,’ Lori said.
Eddy posted his letters and received a fast email reply from Watts, like four lines containing a lot of figures and dollar signs and ending with a very definite no, which didn’t put a stop to Eddy’s conniving. He emailed him straight back.
As I see it, the estate owes Mavis. Had her mother predeceased her father, she would have inherited half of the Buhler money. Both Alan and I are in agreement that we are morally obligated . . .
‘I’m not morally obligated,’ Alan said. ‘Delete that.’
‘Delete the lot,’ Lori said.
‘It’s true,’ Eddy argued. ‘Ev
a got everything when their mother died.’
‘Mavis got fifty thousand that I know about,’ Lori said.
Jamesy suggested they give Watts an option, like if he wouldn’t pay for cosmetic surgery then to ask him if he’d pay for a lobotomy. They were discussing further options when Neil came running in with news.
‘There’s an ambulance up at Bert’s place and they just put Mrs Matthews into it.’
It was leaving before Lori got out to the street. Nelly was still on their side, talking to Mrs Roddie and her yapping little mutt. Lori joined them. Mrs Roddie, who lived next door to Bert, told her that Bert had been taken away too, that he’d phoned for the ambulance before collapsing beside his wife.
‘Their children will sell that house,’ Mrs Roddie said.
They had six children who hadn’t been ‘children’ for forty years. On Saturday they arrived, six cars of them, cars they parked in front of Bert’s place and opposite, at Spud Murphy’s kerb. Bert had a long driveway but it was too overgrown to park in.
All weekend that bunch of strangers hung around. The kids saw them peering over the paling fence, tut-tutting at Mick’s cackling chooks or at the thigh-high dry grass fire hazard on the half of Henry’s block that the chooks couldn’t clear.
That Matthews mob was an argumentative bunch, the male half argued about who should get the contents of Bert’s shed while the females argued about what was in the house, and they all argued about Melbourne or Willama nursing homes – which Bert had always referred to as Satan’s waiting rooms.
Lori was returning from the supermarket on Sunday afternoon when a taxi pulled into Bert’s sweep and he got out of it, dressed in hospital pyjamas.
‘Give him six dollars for me, will you, lass,’ he said. ‘I’ll pay you back.’ She balanced her bike and load while finding three two-dollar coins while Bert disappeared into his shrubbery, holding up his borrowed pyjama pants.
Two cars cleared the kerb fast. An hour later, a woman, who looked like a younger version of her mother, tried to get away with an interesting old table. Bert, now clothed, thwarted her escape. He mowed the rest of them out, or he started mowing his nature strip, which got stones and dust flying. His ‘children’ owned nice cars.