Maudy knows her dad would never have shaken Ernestine or her when they were babies, but when Kasie was born he’d had his car accident, which injured his brain, and it’s true he was more bad-tempered after that. Maudy doesn’t know if he did it or not, but she’s sad that Kasie’s not here to grow up as her little sister. Kasie would be about four now. She was eight months when she died. That was a sad time for them alright.
* * *
Friday afternoon Maudy’s mum comes home early from work and she calls the girls into the bedroom. Her face is loose and sweaty with red marks on her chin. She tells them there’s not enough hours for everyone at the moment, so for a couple of months, she’ll be working less and that’ll mean less money. Maudy nods and doesn’t say anything, though she wants to ask how much. Ernestine’s not saying anything either, but she’s shifting her bum around on the bed like she can’t wait to get the hell out of there. The afternoon train goes past and the mirror on the dressing table and all the bottles of perfume and nail polish rattle and ping together. Maudy’s mum keeps her eyes on their reflections in the glass as they shudder and settle down. She asks Ernestine if she can get more shifts at the chicken shop and says she’ll have to help out a bit with bills and stuff. Ernestine cracks it and says she’s not the parent and her money’s supposed to be for her own stuff. Then they have a huge yelling fight and Ernestine says she’s out of here and off she goes.
Maudy’s mum goes into the bathroom and soon there’s the water filling up the bath. Maudy goes outside and sits down at the back sliding door with her feet up on the splintery timber frame where the decking was going to go. There’s a stray dog, grey around the muzzle and mangy-haired, sniffing around the backyard. He’s sticking his snout under the unfinished decking, trying to get at a burger wrapper blown under there when the workmen left. Maudy sits and does some good hard thinking till it’s cool and dark. Her mum calls her in and then they eat their dinner together in silence.
Maudy’s been to the market in town and checked it out and she has a foolproof plan to earn some money. She puts all her sunglasses in the cardboard box and takes a dark blue towel down from the bathroom rail. She takes a cereal box out of the bin and cuts out a rectangle to make into a sign. LATEST FASHION SUNGLASSES. $5 A PAIR she writes with a black pencil in block letters. She takes the box with the sign and towel and walks to the bus stop. The town bus is crowded with women going to the market. They carry baskets and string bags and some have vinyl trolleys with wheels. There’s a man standing up with his arms around a bundle of straw brooms, looking like he’s dancing an old-fashioned waltz. Maudy pushes her way along the aisle and sits on a seat right at the back. She puts her cardboard box down on the floor between her feet. She wasn’t going to keep a pair for herself, but now she thinks she will. She reaches into the box and pulls out one pair of each colour. She puts on the blue ones and looks at her reflection in the side window. She tries on a pink pair and then a yellow, and decides she’ll keep one of each. That’ll only be fifteen dollars less. Still enough left for her plan.
When Maudy arrives at the market, she finds a place in the shade of a peppercorn tree and lays out her towel. Then she lays out all her sunglasses, two yellows, then a pink and a blue, and repeats the pattern in rows until she’s laid them all out neat with her sign in front for passers-by to see. She sits cross-legged on the edge of the towel and wears her yellow pair on her eyes, and sits the blue above on her forehead and then the pink up on top of her head. People walking past look at her and laugh, but then they stop to look at her cheap fashion sunglasses and some of them buy a pair. In an hour Maudy has a bundle of five-dollar notes. She holds them in place under the side of her foot to stop them blowing away.
After another hour’s passed, Maudy’s starting to get hungry and her legs are getting pins and needles from being crossed so long. She decides to take a break and stretch her legs, so she packs everything back into the box and goes for a wander around the market.
While she’s checking things out, Maudy sees a woman who sells banana milkshakes. There’s such a long line of people waiting and they’re paying three dollars each. She must sell hundreds a day. Maudy stands by the rubbish bins calculating how many more sunglasses she’ll need to sell to have enough to buy a blender like that woman’s using.
While she’s counting in her head, a short man with hair in a ponytail comes and stands beside her and says, ‘Hey, sweetie. I know you.’ He says he’s an old friend of her dad’s and he remembers Maudy and her sister when they were little kids.
‘How’s that sister of yours doing?’ he asks Maudy. ‘I see her round town sometimes, I do.’
The man has a tray of mangoes on a trolley he’s pulling around behind him and he picks one out for her.
‘This is the sweetest one of all,’ he says as he slices off a cheek and holds it out to Maudy on the blade of his pocket knife. He watches as Maudy bites the cubes off and swallows them down with hardly a chew. When she’s finished, he slices the other cheek for her and eats the rest himself. He slips two more mangoes into her cardboard box for Maudy to take home.
‘One for your mum and one for Ernestine.’
He says he can get her cheap trays of mangoes. Five trays a day he can get her. She can set up a table with a blender and make mango milkshakes that’ll sell even better than the banana ones. Maudy says she doesn’t want her mum to know about her plan. She wants to give her the money when she gets a thousand dollars. That’ll blow her mind.
The man says that’s a brilliant plan alright. He says, ‘But how are you going to get the mangoes without your mum knowing?’
Maudy asks if he can drop them off at the house while Mum’s at work tonight. She works night shift and when she gets home she goes straight to sleep and doesn’t wake up till lunchtime. That way Maudy can cut up all the mangoes tonight and put them in a cooler and take it all to the market Sunday morning on the bus.
‘That’s a fine plan,’ says the man. ‘You sure are one smart young lady.’
Maudy smiles behind her glasses like a businesswoman.
On the bus home Maudy calculates it all. Even with the cost of the milk and the plastic glasses to pour them in she’ll make one hundred and fifty profit each day. Three hundred for the whole weekend. That’s probably more than her mum makes in a week.
That evening, with the sun dropping low behind the banksia trees, Maudy sits down at the back door and puts her feet up on the timber joists of the decking. The grass has grown back through the cleared dirt underneath. It reaches up between the lengths of wood and brushes the soles of her bare feet. Her dad will have to spray the weeds before he nails the decking down. Maudy thinks that in a few weeks she’ll have enough to buy the wood to finish the decking and get a gas barbecue and outdoor table and chairs. In a few months there might be enough for a family-sized blow-up pool and when their dad gets out they can spend all afternoon in the sun-warmed water and then he can fire up the barbecue and they can eat steaks with potato salad and mango mousse for dessert. Ernestine won’t be allowed to swim in the pool. That’ll teach her for being so selfish and not helping out. Maudy’s boyfriend will come around and her dad will call him mate and her mum will say, ‘He’s a looker alright.’
Maudy takes a mango from her cardboard box and slices off the cheeks and the thin strips from the sides. She puts them on a plate and leaves them in the fridge for her mum. She looks at the clock on the kitchen wall. It’s seven o’clock and the man said he’d come round at eight. Maudy holds the slippery seed in both hands and takes it out to the back door. The sun is down below the branches of the trees now, balanced like a ball on top of one of the timber posts. Maudy slides the yellow sunglasses down from the top of her head to shade her eyes against the orange flare. Sitting with her feet on the timber, she scrapes the flesh off the seed with her front teeth. Her mouth fills with the honey-smooth juice and she sucks on the seed till her cheeks feel like they’re caving in with sweetness and her eyes behind the dark len
ses fill with tears.
Moving Men
He knows she’s booked them for today, but he jolts all the same when they knock at the door. It’s mid-morning and he hasn’t had a shower in two days. He must be starting to smell. And he probably should have got dressed. His tracksuit pants have a stain on the knee and his singlet is stretched and greying. Makes him look like a slob. Like he’s let himself go. Gives the wrong impression altogether.
As soon as he opens the door, he suspects they’re the sort to judge. Don’t really look him in the eye. All nods. No smiles. And so crisp and clean with their lime green shirts and dark blue pants. One tall. One short. Embroidered logos on square, solid chests. Moving Men. That’s all. No fancy name. No fancy slogan. As if they’re the only ones in the business. As if there’s no one else to call. No doubt that’s why she’s hired them. No time for hesitation. No more mucking around. Just get them in, pack it all up and move it out. Move right along.
She’s made a list. From memory. And given it to the moving men. Doesn’t want to come back to the house. Not even to select and label. Not even for the personal stuff.
Their bedroom is first on the list. He stands by the door, arms by his sides. Not leaning on the doorframe, just keeping still with the soles of his bare feet sinking into the carpet, thinking he should turn and leave, but somehow needing to watch. He indicates her side of the wardrobe and they start with the shelves. The short one slides his hand under a pile of t-shirts, places the other on top and pulls them out in one smooth move, like a slice of rainbow layer cake: blue, pink, yellow, green. Into a cardboard box they go, up against the side, leaving room for the jumper pile. The blouses stay on their hangers and are laid down gently, sleeves crossed in front, like delicate corpses laid out in a coffin.
She always dressed so well. Even through the crisis. No one at work would ever have suspected.
He, on the other hand, wore his turmoil for all to see. Just couldn’t get it together. Nothing seemed to match. He started wearing strange combinations when he was alone. And sometimes to put out the bins and walk the dog. Footy shorts with Hawaiian shirts, pyjama pants with parkas. Like a child playing dress-ups.
As they transfer the nightclothes, he sees it, incongruous in the middle of the crisp whites and pale mauves: the stretched and faded rugby top.
‘She won’t want that,’ he says. ‘It’s mine.’
‘Okay,’ says the tall one.
‘She just sleeps in it. In winter. It’s warm.’
The moving man nods and turns away to put it back into the empty drawer.
* * *
When he’d told her about the affair, she’d not said a word at first. Just turned her shoulders slightly away, held her jaw tight and gone back to reading her book. But in that moment he’d realised that she’d probably never loved him; in fact, that she’d probably hated him for years. He’d said it was over; that he regretted it; that he was just looking for some warmth. And she knew deep down he was telling the truth. At first she even considered staying together, putting it behind them, for the sake of the kids. Maybe there was some blame to be shared. Maybe they both needed to make an effort.
And then he’d told her about the emails. Long emails.
‘About what?’ she’d asked.
Dreams, projects, fears, he’d tried to explain. It had gone on for almost a year. And then, while she was in Noosa with her sister for her fortieth, he’d asked her over to the house and they’d stayed up all night talking.
‘All night?’ she said. ‘Where the hell were the kids?’
He looked past the top of her head. ‘Asleep.’
She’d been so furious at him. She never swore. Not since they’d had the children. Thought it was safer just never to do it. But she called him a prick. ‘Freakin’ prick!’ she’d screamed.
And the next day and the next, when she cried and thought and cried some more, she was almost sure she couldn’t bear to love him once again. Not after she’d hated him so fiercely.
* * *
Then came the obsession with finishing the garden. She’d been neglecting it all summer. But now she was determined to get it done. Barrowloads of mulch and heavy bags of potting mix. She didn’t want his help, and he didn’t offer any. And then one evening she blew up over the herbs. She’d said she wanted them in pots, but he’d said, ‘No. That’s stupid. They should be in the veggie patch.’ She’d stewed and fumed and then gone out there in her pyjamas after midnight to dig them out, with just a tablespoon and her bare hands. She’d thumped them back down in the pots, one by one, till there was a row of gaping holes behind the strawberries and dark moist earth jammed under her nails.
From the inside she’d just been making a statement. But from the outside it looked like she was losing her mind. Now, though, he can see what she’d been trying to say. With all he’d put her through, with all the hurt he’d made, why the hell couldn’t he give her this one tiny rightness, make this one tiny concession.
* * *
The men make their way down her list, moving from room to room. Not too much contact at first. Seated at the kitchen breakfast bar, he keeps his head bent over the newspaper. Not reading. Breathing. Keeping it in. Two green-shirted forms move in and out of view, speaking in lowered tones and keeping their footsteps light on the floor.
There are things they won’t be packing up; things they haven’t been told to take, things she doesn’t even know she’s left behind. Like the cold sheet his arm finds on her side of the bed at 3 am; and the leaf-scattered corner of the decking where she’d read and forget to drink her tea.
But they’ve got their list, their instructions. She must have gone through the house in her mind, through each room, through wardrobes and drawers and shelves and buffets. She’s examined the contents of their life and crossed and ticked things off. And after looking through the remnants of their marriage, there are things she’s taking with her and things best thrown away.
She’s told them they can leave him most of the kitchen stuff. She just wants her recipe books and the clay pots she bought in Kerala. And she guesses she should keep the silver knife her mum gave them for their wedding cake. He tells them to pack the juicer too, and the cake tins and the set of different-coloured cutting boards for meat and bread and vegetables. But they’ve got their list, so they just say, ‘Sorry, mate. Just give them to an op shop. Or sell them online.’
The short one says, ‘When my wife left me, I made enough selling all her stuff for a trip to Bali.’ He doesn’t look up and the tall one scratches his cheek and clears his throat.
‘Okay if we use your kettle to boil some water for morning tea?’
He nods.
‘You want one too?’
He shakes his head.
While the kettle boils, they stand and shuffle and look out the kitchen window.
‘Got any kids?’ the short one says eventually.
‘Three,’ he replies. ‘Fourteen, twelve and seven.’
He lifts his head to indicate a white frame on the wall above the meals table. Three baby photos. Two blue blankets. One pink.
‘They’re with their mum,’ he adds. No bitterness. It makes more sense. He knows the fist-shaped hole he’d left that day in the entrance hall had scared them. Their fourteen-year-old had stared at him with grown-up eyes and said, ‘I’ll protect you, Mum.’ He was never going to hurt her, of course. It was just the anger at himself for having thrown it all away. But they weren’t to know that. And he regrets that more than anything.
‘She left a week ago,’ he says. ‘Told me she can’t believe she ever married me.’
‘That’s rough,’ says the tall one, sounding unsure of what to do with this sudden intimacy.
‘Hmm,’ he replies. ‘Most blokes I know would’ve cracked. But I was pretty calm.’
(His wife, telling her girlfriends what had happened, said, ‘He just crumbled. Shattered. Reduced him to dust.’)
* * *
In the fourteen-year-old�
�s room, before the moving men pick up the unwashed socks and juggling balls from the floor, and all the tennis trophies and school books, the room still feels expectant, like he’ll walk back in and dump his backpack on the bed and not talk to his father or even look at him, but just be there, taking up space like only fourteen-year-olds can. But when they’ve finished, and the boxes are by the door, the space feels like an echo. With all the words they never said just lying in the corners.
* * *
The moving men make their way steadily from the tops of wardrobes to the bottoms of drawers, like an archaeological dig through the layers of their life together. Long-buried history. Year after year laid down. Times of scarceness and plenty; of carnage and calm. From the hazy early days to the numbing recent past.
There were so many years when she’d just held it in, for fear of losing control. And also to shield the kids, he guessed.
‘Then one day,’ he says, ‘she just sat down and let it flow by the gallon.’
‘Let what flow?’ the short one asks.
‘The blame.’ She said his failing in life was being honest. ‘Why are you always so honest,’ she’d said, ‘when sometimes I just need you to lie?’
‘Weird thing to say,’ says the short one.
‘I guess there was so much in me that could’ve drove her crazy. She just had to pick and choose.’ He doesn’t wait for a reaction. Just folds his newspaper flat and runs his thumbnail along the crease.
* * *
In little Oscar’s room, the seven-year-old’s kingdom is being dismantled and packed away. The toilet-roll farm and dried bread-dough sheep; the crayon box with the worn-down pink from his pig-drawing phase. When they pack up the books, the tall one says, ‘My son loves this one. Yours too?’
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