by Rose Hartley
‘Excuse me?’
‘That’s what it’s called when you get the clam shells.’
‘Ah. How fascinating.’
From the change room, Rueben’s voice floated over to us. ‘I think I might be too short for this jumpsuit,’ he called. ‘I wouldn’t want to disappoint you.’
‘Come out, come out!’ Mrs Fitz-Hammond shouted. She turned to me. ‘I never waste time with men who refuse to lay bare their weaknesses in the name of art. The only truth is the raw truth, the truth that hurts, the truth that exposes our short legs.’
Suddenly she bounded over to the racks of clothing in the op shop, her spindly legs making her look like a young deer.
‘Here’s a jumpsuit for you,’ she said, holding out a pair of 1990s sunflower-print denim overalls to me.
‘I tend not to wear jumpsuits either,’ I said. It was a lie. I loved jumpsuits – it was the childish sunflowers that deterred me. ‘Bum’s too big,’ I explained.
‘Big bums are a gift from Creation.’
‘I tried to make mine smaller. Critical ex-boyfriend.’
‘Never prune yourself to fit someone else’s stunted notions of beauty,’ she said. I took the sunflowers but didn’t make any move to try them on. I was anticipating Rueben’s emergence as a rhinestoney butterfly.
He didn’t disappoint. The change room door was flung open and he stepped out, magnificent in the glittering white, slightly baggy jumpsuit, his shoulders held proudly back. The legs of the jumpsuit had been rolled up a couple of times. He’d slicked his hair back like Elvis’s, and the resemblance, while not uncanny, was adequate.
Mrs Fitz-Hammond and I applauded.
‘Bravo, bravo!’
Now will you hand over the Yves Saint Laurent? I wondered. I noticed the volunteers’ hungry eyes on the boxes around us and realised I’d better sort through the donations myself to make sure nothing went missing.
‘Stay like that, it suits you,’ she told Rueben. ‘It is time for me to leave.’ She waggled a painted fingernail at me. ‘I like you, Maggie Cotton.’ She ferreted around in her Louis Vuitton handbag and drew out a small cream card, embossed with gold writing. ‘Here’s my address. When I die, come to my house and take my Chanel suits before my daughter pawns them for blow.’ She blew Rueben a kiss as she left, her driver trailing after her.
I sent the op shop grannies on their break so Rueben and I could sort through the boxes. They left, grumbling, annoyed at missing the unveiling of Mrs Fitz-Hammond’s donations. Rueben and I were alone.
‘Aren’t you going to put that on?’ Rueben asked, nodding at the sunflowers in my hand.
‘No, she just picked it out for me.’
‘Oh, so I’m the only one who has to embarrass himself? Try it on.’
‘All right, but brace yourself.’ In the change room, I wriggled out of my jeans and into the sunflower overalls. I left my T-shirt on underneath to complete the preschooler look. Craning my neck in the mirror, I saw that the biggest sunflower luxuriated exactly over the spot where the sun didn’t shine.
I burst out of the change room and did a twirl, wiggling the lewd buttflower ostentatiously. ‘So,’ I said as Rueben/Elvis clapped. ‘Tell me again why you knocked me back that time?’
‘What time?’ he said, and I couldn’t tell if he was trying to get a rise out of me or if women threw themselves at him in bars so often he genuinely couldn’t recall one encounter from another.
‘You know.’ I shimmied over to baggy Elvis. ‘At The Fainting Chair. How come you weren’t up for a bit of vertical sexy times in the bathroom? Not that I want it now, I’m just curious.’
‘Let’s see what Mrs Fritz-Hambone has donated,’ he said. He reached around me to pick a red spangled dress out of the big box the Elvis suit had come in. ‘Nice. Very Showgirls.’
I opened another box and found a small, polished mandolin. Rueben plucked a string and a high, fearless note rang out.
‘I think this is cherrywood,’ he said. ‘Beautiful.’
I couldn’t concentrate on his words because his arm had gently brushed mine, making me shiver. Christ. My face must have broadcasted the mixture of alarm and longing I felt, because he half-smiled.
‘It’s just not my thing,’ he said finally.
‘What?’
He leant closer until I could feel the warmth of his breath on my cheeks.
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘You mean sex isn’t your thing?’
‘I think I’ve found your Yves Saint Laurent,’ he said. He even pronounced it correctly, the way Agnes had. It was a cream woollen dress, long and finely woven with black piping at the collar and cuffs. Beautiful. The upmarket second-hand shops could probably get five hundred dollars for it, meaning two-fifty for the Angels. He held the dress up against me, easing me gently against the wall of the change rooms. The cold bricks pressed into my back and Rueben’s warm, hard body pressed into my thighs and belly. My breath left me and I willed him to kiss me as his lips came close to mine. One curl of black hair hung over his eye, resting against dark eyelashes.
‘I didn’t want to have “vertical sexy times”, as you put it,’ he said, ‘that time at The Fainting Chair because I don’t like getting intimate in bathrooms. They smell like cleaning products.’
‘Makes sense,’ I managed to say.
All I needed was a kiss; one kiss and I could forget the humiliating emails, the obscene sunflowers, hell, one kiss and I could forget my own name.
The sound of the door handle turning made us both jump. Rueben took a quick step back just in time as Agnes popped her head in.
‘Oh look, it’s Sunny the Clown and Elvis. Aren’t you a handsome hound dog,’ she said to Rueben.
Rueben and I stood awkwardly, waiting to be reprimanded for slacking off.
‘I see Mrs Fitz-Hammond has got you trying on the wares, as usual. I must say, it’s nice not to be the one forced into a spangled dress.’
So that’s why Agnes took off for the vet. She probably didn’t even have a dog. She winked at Rueben and dropped a box on the floor, turning to me. ‘Someone just dropped these off at the office. Antique books, I think. Price them, Priscilla.’
That night, my mind shifted in a million different directions. Thoughts of Rueben and the heat of his lips muddled with spangles and black-clad rich grannies. Dan and the mysterious ex whose engagement party I would be crashing. Sean, Sarah and denim sunflower overalls. Rueben again, and his long eyelashes. The only thought I could grab hold of for long before it skittered away again was the one that took root in my mind, squirrelling down to the dark, angry place where I nursed my grudges: that it might have been Sarah who orchestrated the Centrelink tip-off.
Chapter 12
Mum is like those Dawson’s bees in the desert. The male bees fight each other to the death to fuck the females, killing a few ladies accidentally in the process. After the mating frenzy is over, not a single male is left alive. My mother was like one of those male bees, only hers was a long, drawn-out frenzy of reproduction as she slowly exhausted herself raising my brother and me. What would she have left to show for herself when she died? Two inferior copies that at no point in their lives did what she expected.
The months after my dad left were the worst. Mum was as edgy as a cut snake and twice as venomous. She’d curl up on the couch in her dirty bathrobe after the chores were done for the night and cry silently, covering her face so Harry and I couldn’t see. That only made it worse, because we couldn’t approach to comfort her if we were not supposed to see she was crying. Once I made the error of hugging her anyway. All she did was press her face into the couch cushion and push me away with one hand. Her nails were long and sharp and left deep impressions in my upper arm. I never tried to comfort her again.
My brother had better luck, though he still wasn’t allowed to hug her. Harry is eighteen months younger than I am, and Mum’s favourite. Back then, he had Dad’s thick ginger hair and button nose, and thin teenage shoulders. He used to hang off doo
rframes in the house like a monkey until one day he accidentally ripped off an Art Deco ledge in the kitchen. Anyway, Mum let Harry squeeze her shoulder from time to time when she was crying on the couch, but that was it.
The only creature that could hug her was our old cat, Zelda. Zelda was a tabby with a white moustache, an enormous bum and a purr like a truck engine. She’d curl up around Mum and nibble on her ear. Sometimes she tickled Mum’s ear so much she even got a laugh out of her. I’d frequently find Harry and Mum huddled together at the kitchen window, feeding Zelda treats, patting her and saying, ‘I love you, I love you, Zelda,’ over and over again. It was the saddest day in the world when Zelda died four years later. Mum howled with grief when we buried her in the backyard. I think it was the first time in the history of our family that we could acknowledge how sad we all were. The cat was the only person none of us were embarrassed to love.
The old wrought-iron gate hung off its hinges. The rusted intercom no longer buzzed and the security-warning sticker was just for show. Many of the larger houses in Camberwell had security cameras and panic buttons that buzzed the local police station directly when there was an intruder. Mum’s house had a shitty alarm that hadn’t worked in years, and a nice little sticker pretending it did.
I was still on the footpath staring at the gate when Dan showed up in his work shorts with tool belt attached.
‘I’m warning you. Mum can be temperamental.’
‘Don’t worry. Mothers love me.’ He pushed on the gate.
‘Not that way! Pull.’
Too late. At Dan’s push, the remaining hinge creaked and snapped and the gate crashed to the ground. The noise brought a neighbour across the street shuffling out to watch. The broken gate lay on the ground like a dead bird.
‘That wasn’t a good start,’ Dan said.
‘Can you fix it?’
‘It might need to be welded.’ With a heave, he picked up the gate and leant it against the column. ‘Sorry.’
‘Not my gate. Let’s go in.’
Mum had put on her best jeans to meet Dan, and had evidently blow-dried her hair. She opened the door before we had a chance to knock, looked at the gate and then from Dan to me.
‘It just fell off all by itself,’ I said.
Dan cleared his throat. ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Cotton, I pushed on the gate instead of pulling it open.’
I stared at him. Why own up to it?
Mum’s cloudy expression cleared. ‘Well, that’s all right. It was crumbling already. Dan, is it?’
Jesus Christ. If I had owned up to smashing her front gate, Mum would have thrown the garden rake at me. Dan confesses and she tells him it’s all right? They shook hands, Mum beaming, and she ushered him inside. I followed, feeling like a third wheel.
‘Watch the hall,’ she said. ‘It’s nearly rotted out. I took up some of the carpet. Would you like a cup of tea, Dan?’
‘Jeez, Mum, you should put danger signs around that.’ A tear in the sagging carpet gave way to eerie darkness through which no floorboards could be seen. Like a sinkhole to suck you into an eternal Camberwell hell of tea and crumpets and botox.
Dan declined the offer of tea, saying he’d better just get to checking out the floors, and would she like him to look at the rest of the house as well?
‘I used to work for a company that does a lot of renovations of old houses,’ he said. ‘I’m qualified to do building inspections.’
‘Wonderful!’ Mum gushed. ‘And you must stay for dinner.’
I pulled Mum aside. ‘What are you doing?’
‘He’s nice. Not as handsome as Sean, but still handsome.’
‘Mum, I’m not dating him.’
‘Why not?’ she hissed. ‘Is he gay?’
I poked my head into the hall to make sure Dan was out of earshot. He was pulling up more carpet around the sinkhole.
‘He’s hung up on his ex. And we don’t . . . click.’
‘Just because the sex isn’t there right away doesn’t mean it’s not worth pursuing.’ Gross. As if my mother was allowed to talk about sex.
‘Don’t be filthy, Mum.’
‘I know what you’re like. You place too much importance on sex. It goes, you know. The sex goes, and then you’d just better hope you’re good friends with the man, because that’s all that’s left.’
‘God, I hope Dan can wrap this up quickly. This is inhuman.’
‘You should shave your legs,’ she whispered, looking at the hairy pins sticking out of my skirt. ‘You’re going to seed.’
With my mother and me, there was no clear line between affection and insult.
A muffled groan shut us up. Mum and I trotted down the hall and poked our heads into the living room. Dan had pulled up the entire carpet and was staring in abject horror at what used to be floorboards beneath.
‘Is it termites, or just rot?’ I asked. The carpet had smelt mouldy for as long as I could remember.
‘Looks like both. Have you had water damage recently?’
‘The roof’s been leaking for ten years,’ I informed him.
Mum sniffed. ‘Don’t exaggerate, Maggie.’
‘Eight years.’
He looked up at the ceiling. It was stained brown in places, and peeling.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Any other rooms I should be looking at?’
‘All of them,’ Mum and I said together.
Mum followed him into the dining room while I took the opportunity to sneak next door into my old bedroom to bundle up some clothes into a duffel bag.
‘I like men with tools,’ I heard Mum say to Dan. I caught a hint of longing in her voice.
‘I like tools with balls,’ I called, but they didn’t hear me.
‘What’s that you’ve got?’ Mum asked. I moved to the doorway to hear better.
‘It’s a lenker rod,’ Dan replied.
‘A wanker rod?’ This time they heard me.
‘Maggie, go and put the chicken on,’ Mum snapped.
I obeyed, dropping the duffel bag in the hallway. In the kitchen, I turned on the gas to heat the pot of Moroccan chicken, one of two dishes Mum always cooked.
‘How’s your new job going?’ Mum had followed me in. She leant against the tiled wall.
‘Fine.’
‘Does this mean you’ll be moving into an actual abode, instead of living in a caravan like a homeless gypsy?’
‘Mum, gypsies aren’t homeless. They deliberately move around, it’s not the same thing. Besides, it’s not a crime to be homeless.’
‘Actually, I think you’ll find there is a law against being itinerant.’ She took the spoon out of my hand and stirred the pot. ‘It’s called vagrancy.’
‘I think you’ll find the law’s a dick.’
She slammed her hand onto the kitchen bench. ‘Young lady! You can’t come here and eat my food if you’re going to talk like that.’ Her hair was so neatly tucked behind her ears she looked like a schoolgirl.
‘Come off it, Mum. You’re being a dick, too. And no, I’m not moving into an “abode”. My caravan is a perfectly legitimate dwelling.’
Mum raised her palms and looked to the ceiling as if to supplicate God. ‘I’ve raised a daughter who calls me a penis,’ she told the peeling plaster. She dropped her chin to look me in the eye. ‘Why do you always talk about penises? What did I do wrong?’
‘Nothing.’ I lifted the wooden spoon to my mouth to taste the sauce. It was salty. ‘The chicken’s good.’
The sound of Dan’s footsteps made us go quiet, even though we weren’t talking about anything particularly secret. Maybe both of us wanted him to think we were a normal mother and daughter. He stuck his head through the doorway, face flushed.
‘Mrs Cotton? Could I talk to you for a moment?’
‘Of course, Dan.’ She smoothed her hair and joined him in the hall.
My suspicions were instantly raised. I waited half a minute and then followed them out as quietly as I could. The floorboards creaked and the laundry
door banged in its familiar way. I snuck through the sunroom and pressed my ear to the cold plaster to listen in. Dan’s voice was low and muffled.
‘. . . if you’d prefer I didn’t,’ I heard him say.
‘Yes, best not. Maggie’s not the sort of person who . . .’ Mum’s voice dropped, and I couldn’t make out the rest.
Not the sort of person who what? I leant against the wall, arms folded, so they’d know I’d been listening when they came out. Mum looked a little pale and glum, but Dan just seemed embarrassed. He couldn’t meet my eyes as he put his tools away in their box and adjusted his tool belt. He brushed a hand through the sandy scruff on his head and cleared his throat.
‘Well, I’ll be off, Mrs Cotton.’
Mum looked like she’d hardly heard him but automatically said, ‘Stay for dinner.’
‘Nah, I’d better be going. See you soon, Maggie,’ he said to me.
After I shut the door behind him I turned to Mum. ‘What, was he asking your permission to date me?’
Mum eyed me as if I was mental. ‘Date you? Why the hell would he want to date you?’ She shook her head and shuffled into the kitchen, shoulders slumped.
He definitely likes me, I thought. ‘If you warned him off me, you’ve lost your marbles.’
‘You need to stop drinking,’ she called back. ‘It’s making your skin dry and your ego swell.’
Time to go home. I grabbed the bag of clothes and made for the door. Mum heard me walking down the hall and poked her head after me.
‘What, aren’t you staying for dinner?’
I stopped to consider the offer. Sit through her meddling in exchange for a hot meal or eat cold sandwiches in the caravan?
‘Nah, I gotta go.’
‘Fine, go. And take your mail with you.’ She opened a drawer and took out what looked like six months of letters. ‘When I was your age I was married with two children,’ she called out, as I stepped around the broken gate.
‘Yeah, and look how well that turned out,’ I shouted back.
The ways a mother can harass her daughter are limitless. The ways a daughter can disappoint her mother are pretty cosmic as well.