It was Rick who had suggested that she go back to study, and it had been great advice. In the short term, the two evenings a week at college had seemed only to add to her exhaustion, but she had completed a diploma in tourism in three years and by the time Kalinda had started high school she was working full-time for Harvey World Travel. She and Rick could now joke about her aversion to ironing; for the last few years Rick would bounce out of bed on his birthday and announce, taking off Cartman from South Park, ‘It’s my b-b-b-b-b-b-birthday, you have to iron my shirts.’
She didn’t want to retire, didn’t even want to think about it, but these days she appreciated the rhythms and meditative pace of housework, the pleasure that came from cooking and organising the running of a home. She and her girlfriends would chuckle and complain about the laziness and unreconstructed apathy of their suburban husbands, but she was always a little annoyed when Rick wanted to cook or thought it a good idea to reorganise the lounge or bedroom. No, damn you, she would think, that’s my terrain. She went to the gym twice a week, had recently joined a Pilates class. Housework was part of her relaxation. It had ceased to be a job long ago.
She had baked an upside-down pear and caramel cake, washed the dishes, scrubbed the stove top, got rid of the out-of-date bottles gone grey at the back of the pantry, when she glanced at the clock and realised it was time to pick up the boys for soccer. Her hair, unwashed, silver at the roots, was a mess. She quickly stripped off her gardening shirt, put on a blouse, tied a scarf around her head and ran out to the car. She knew the boys would be waiting for her outside the school gates, checking the time on their phones. As she waited at the lights, she texted her son a quick message, keeping her eyes out for the police. The woman in the four-wheel drive in the next lane beeped her horn at her and Marianne threw her a tight grimace. Come on, lady, you’ve got kids, you know what it’s like. The lights went green, she pressed send and took off.
Jack was waiting with his mates Stavros and Billy and they didn’t seem at all concerned about the time. As she made her way slowly up St Georges Road, she could see them mucking around with a soccer ball on the footpath. Freda Carlosi’s daughter, Amelia, was with them. As always happened, Marianne felt a small tremble of sadness go through her on seeing the girl. Amelia had been born with Down syndrome, and even though she was Jack’s age, Freda and Anthony still dressed her in pink hoodies and track pants that were more appropriate for a girl half her age. The one she was wearing today had Walt Disney bunny rabbits printed on it, but her body could scarcely be contained in the children’s clothes: her breasts were enormous, her bottom fleshy and prominent. As Marianne pulled into the kerb near them, she could see that the girl was trying to get the boys’ attention. Billy, the tallest of them, was holding the soccer ball high above her head and Amelia was trying to grab for it. Her son and Stavros were laughing. Marianne pushed the button to wind down the passenger window and call out to them, tell them to stop teasing Amelia and fooling around, when the girl’s fingers hit the ball and it bounced back off her hand and flew onto the road. She felt a jolt of terror, thinking Amelia would rush into the traffic, but Bill reached out and pulled her back. The ball had gone under a car and unleashed a torrent of horns.
It was then she heard Billy’s voice pierce the noise: ‘Freakin’ hell, Meels, watch what you’re doing!’ She saw the girl’s face blush red and then she heard her son: ‘Yeah, Meels, why are you such a dumb mong?’ Stavros broke out into mocking giggles and Billy gave her son a slap across the back. ‘Mong,’ Jack repeated, even more loudly, and that was when he looked up and saw Marianne. His face broke into a grin and he grabbed his schoolbag off the ground. ‘Come on, Mum’s here.’ The traffic had come to a complete halt and Billy took the opportunity to dash across the road and scoop up the ball.
Jack and Stavros scrambled into the car, Billy following with the ball tucked under his arm. ‘Hey, Mrs P,’ ‘Hello, Marianne,’ ‘Why are you late, Mum?’
She ignored them. Her eyes were fixed on Amelia waving at them. She waved back uncertainly. She looked over at her son. ‘Who’s picking up Amelia?’
‘I don’t know—her mum.’
‘We can’t leave her here alone.’
Jack rolled his eyes and pointed to the groups of boys and girls at the tram stop, straddling the school fence, drifting down the school drive in pairs, in trios, in groups of four and five.
‘She’ll be fine, Mrs P,’ Stavros said from the back, wrestling the soccer ball off Billy. ‘She knows she has to wait for Mrs C.’
‘She nearly ran out on the road before.’
‘Mum! We’re going to be late.’
Marianne put the car into drive and hit the indicator. As the car pulled into the traffic, she could see that the girl was still waving at them. The boys ignored her.
‘I heard what you called her.’
‘What?’ Jack shrugged his shoulders. He was pulling off his jumper and white shirt, fumbling in his bag for his soccer shirt.
‘I heard what you called her.’
In the back, Stavros and Billy had fallen silent.
She could smell her son’s day-long musty pong. His boyhood sweetness was all gone. It appalled her, the overwhelming vigour of his stink.
‘I think it is disgusting, calling her names.’
Jack mumbled something.
‘What did you say?’
He was struggling to pull his soccer shirt down over his chest, his middle, wriggling in his seat, all sinewy arms and sprawling legs. ‘I said, whatever.’
I could smack you.
‘It’s alright, Mrs P.’ Stavros was leaning forward. ‘It’s just a word—she doesn’t mind. It’s like when they call me a wog.’
‘That’s right.’ Billy leaned forward as well. ‘Or when they call me a Maco dickwad.’
‘You are a Maco dickwad.’
Billy grabbed the ball off Stavros and threw it hard at the back of Jack’s head.
‘Stop it!’ It felt good to scream at them. She wished she could stop the car and order them out into the traffic on St Georges Road, force them to walk all the way to the game. She felt overwhelmed by the stench of them, the size of them, their vanity and arrogance. Billy was eyeing himself in her rear-view mirror. She glanced over at her son. He had his arms crossed and his neck and face were flushed. She had embarrassed him in front of his friends. Good. He should be ashamed. No one said a word all the way to the oval at Pascoe Vale.
•
All three boys played well that afternoon and their team won 3–1. At one point Jack took the ball all the way up the field, kicked it across to Billy, who then flicked it expertly with his left foot back across to Jack, who kicked it long and smooth into the corner of the goal. The boys wrapped themselves around her son, their screams filled the air. Jack emerged from the scrum with his hands held aloft, his eyes searching the stand for her. She looked down at her feet, pretending to studiously observe a small streak of mud on her heel. She would not catch his eye. She had wanted him to miss that goal, had wanted him to be disappointed, to feel nothing but shame.
She continued her silence on the drive home, dropping off Billy first and then Stavros. Both boys thanked her but neither apologised for teasing Amelia. Her goodbyes were short, gruff. She had not congratulated them on the game.
Jack combated her silence with his own, his eyes fixed on the world rushing past the window. As soon as she had driven up their drive, Jack was out of the car, slamming the door behind him.
She caught the word he muttered as he heaved himself out of his seat.
Bitch. He had called her a bitch. Another word not supposed to hurt.
You called her a mong. A mong? What kind of animal are you?
•
Rick was home and cooking a stir-fry. She kissed him curtly on the cheek, annoyed that he had taken the ritual of preparing the meal away from her. She’d been looking forward to the routine of chopping the vegetables, grinding the spices and chillies. Jack was already i
n the shower.
Rick turned to her and gestured with his chin towards the bathroom. ‘What’s wrong with him?’
‘I heard him call Amelia Carlosi a terrible name. I’m not speaking to him till he apologises.’
Rick started to laugh and then, wary of the look in her eyes, stopped mid-chuckle. He turned back to tossing the beef and vegetables. ‘You two are exactly the same.’
I am nothing like him. Nothing.
‘He’ll calm down, you’ll calm down, then he’ll apologise.’ Rick lifted the wok off the flame. ‘He’s a good kid, he wouldn’t have meant anything by it.’
‘I can’t believe you’re defending him.’
‘Can you check the rice cooker?’
Check it your fucking self. He looked over his shoulder at her, sighed, put down the wok and moved over to the cooker. He turned around with a wounded smile. ‘It’s ready.’
She knew it was childish, pathetic really, but she couldn’t help it. She kicked off her shoes into a corner. ‘I’m not hungry,’ she growled as she walked out of the kitchen.
•
She tried reading a book but couldn’t concentrate. Amelia’s blurred babyish features, the old woman’s eyes in the young girl’s face, kept appearing in and out of the words, flooding the spaces between paragraphs and sentences. She turned on the television instead. Hunger scraped at her insides but she couldn’t bring herself to leave the bedroom. In a while there was a knock. Jack walked in with a bowl of food in one hand, a fork in the other. He laid them sheepishly on the bedside table and then sat awkwardly at the foot of the bed. An episode of Seinfeld was playing, a rerun they had both seen two or three times before. ‘I’m sorry,’ she heard him mutter. She knew exactly what she should do. She should reach out to him, rub his shoulder. She should. But she couldn’t. She picked up her bowl and started eating, her eyes fixed on the screen. He sat there till the ad break, then left the room.
•
Marianne woke just after four, the bedroom in darkness, Rick snoring softly beside her. She couldn’t recall a dream, there was dryness in her throat. She carefully slid out of bed. Rick turned over, called out for her, and she whispered to him to go back to sleep. She pulled on a T-shirt and walked out into the kitchen. Let it go, she kept whispering to herself, let it go. But she couldn’t. The dirty word kept repeating itself in her head. Mong. Mong. Mong. Wog. Maco. Nigger, slope, bitch and cunt and slut and fag and poofter and dyke. She did not trust their ease with words that hurt so much. She refused to believe that they had been exorcised of their venom and their cruelty. She squinted, tried to make out the hands of the clock. It was four-twenty. She switched on the light and put on the coffee.
•
She got to the gym just as the morning staff were switching on the computers. She spent forty minutes on the treadmill, running on an incline at a tremendous speed. She did fifteen minutes of weights, swam twenty-five laps. Exhausted, she drove home and showered. She woke Rick and called out to Jack to get up. She dressed for work, brewed another coffee and, while Rick was dressing and Jack was showering, she went into her son’s room and looked around. The photos of Beyoncé and Gwen Stefani, of Harry Kewell and Ronaldo, tacked on the walls, the poster from True Blood, the shelf of soccer and swimming trophies, his books on a pile by his bed, his laptop on the desk, his clothes strewn across the floor. She quickly snatched up his soccer shirt, his socks, his track pants, lifted the lid off the cane basket, tossed the clothes inside. But not before she noticed the handkerchief rolled into a ball at the bottom of the basket. She jumped when Jack entered the room, a towel around his waist. The hairs around his belly button tracking down beneath the towel were wiry, thick and black. There was a sprout of thin curls around his nipples. When had they appeared?
Her son tightened the towel around himself. ‘What are you doing?’
‘I think it’s about time you did your own laundry.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘I was not put on this earth to be your slave.’
‘No, but you are my mother.’
He thought he’d won, she could see a half-smile flicker across his face. She could smell the cologne he’d splashed on his face, under his arms, a cheap birthday present from Rick’s mum and dad. All-chemical imitation of spice. You’re so full of it, you think you’re God’s gift. It delighted her that the odour was so awful, that it revealed his ignorance, showed that he knew shit.
‘I’m not washing your clothes anymore.’
‘Oh, piss off.’
‘And that includes your handkerchiefs.’ Her eyes dared his. ‘I don’t want to touch them.’
That wiped the smile off his face; he dropped his gaze. For a moment she thought he might cry. And then he sneered and she flinched, as though he was about to strike her. ‘Get the fuck out of my room!’
She knew her son, she knew his fears, his shames, his strength. She had received a warning. She knew she had hurt him. She had hurt him more than if she had raised a hand to him. She was in a daze as she walked down the corridor. My God, she thought, a coldness settling in her, do I hate him?
•
At work she could forget. She joked with Aliyah and Siobhan, listened to Darren boasting about the woman from Jet Start Travel he had picked up at the pub on Sunday night, smiled at Aliyah making faces at her behind his back. It felt so good to laugh. She went to visit agencies in Elwood, Sandringham and Elsternwick. She had lunch on her own by the beach at Elwood, and took off her shoes and stockings and paddled in the freezing shallow waters of the bay. When Kalinda and Jack were babies, they had taken them down to this beach, stood with them as they fearfully entered the water, squealing at the cold, their eyes growing enormous with astonishment at the roll and pull of the waves around their little feet. Rick had never been a swimmer and it was she who had first taught them to swim. She’d been awed by their trust in her when they had first battled with the power of the sea—she had held them, released them, held them and released them, till they understood they could master the waves, the rolling of the sea currents, till they were able to laugh and relax and enjoy the water.
She loved Elwood Beach. On achingly hot Melbourne summer days, the whole esplanade would be filled with families from across the world: Greeks and Italians with baskets of food; Muslim families, the women in their heavy dresses and their veils, hoisting their skirts above their knees like strange black birds at the water’s edge; Tongans and Vietnamese, Turks and alabaster-white families like her own caking on layers and layers of sunscreen to protect themselves from the unforgiving glare of the Australian sun. Her kids had played in the water, in between the wading Muslim women and the beautiful young gay men cruising each other as they tanned on the beach. Holding them, releasing them, wanting them to be free and good in this world. Mong, mong, mong. Wog, Maco, poofter, nigger, faggot.
She met up with Joyce from Tourism Tasmania for an afternoon coffee in Richmond and they gossiped about the weekend trade show. Joyce worked with a man as conceited and deluded as Darren was. He too had boasted about picking up some bright young travel agent at the drinks session at the end of the trade show. I mean, do they honestly think we believe them? Joyce giggled incredulously over her coffee. Don’t they ever look in the mirror? They talked about work, then the conversation moved on to their husbands and then their sons. Marianne said nothing to Joyce about the word that had made her so contemptuous of Jack or about how she had humiliated him that morning. She listened as Joyce rolled out her usual complaints about her own son, how lazy Ben was, how absent-minded and forgetful. But there was no harshness in the complaints, no bile. Her love tore the sting from her words.
Marianne returned to the office though there was no reason to. She didn’t want to go home. She deliberately left at the hour the traffic would be at its worst, drove twice around the block to finish listening to an interview on ABC radio with the minister for transport justifying the terrible performance of the state’s public transport system. Roun
d and round the blocks of her suburb: past young men with their ties loosened, swinging their backpacks as they trudged up the hill from the railway station, groups of Indian students waiting at the bus stops, the drinkers and the smokers crowding the café tables on the footpath of High Street. The sun had set by the time she got home.
Rick had phoned earlier in the day to tell her that he was going to be late, and there was a message from Kalinda saying she was coming over for lunch on Sunday. Marianne slipped off her work blouse and skirt, stretched out on the bed. She thought she might sleep but the silence of the house was too intense, created its own din. She turned onto her side, rolled her hands across the fleshy padding of her belly, looked across to Rick’s bedside table, at his jug of water, the clock radio, the book on the history of the Ottoman Empire that he had been reading for months. What if he didn’t come home? What if there had been an accident? She gave herself over to the shameful release of imagining the funeral, the never-ever again of having to explain herself, the run of an empty house. She reached for the table next to his side of the bed, touched wood, mouthed Rick’s name and lightly sketched a cross on the naked skin above her breasts.
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