I Have a Bed Made of Buttermilk Pancakes

by Jaclyn Moriarty

  Maude and David scarcely knew each other. They had spent more than a year apart, and David had returned to the news of Maude’s affair and pregnancy. Accepting that he was at least partly to blame, David had tried to be calm and understanding. Once, he questioned Maude’s resolve to accept the Valerio offer, and suggested he raise the child as one of his own. But Maude, oddly detached and determined, had declared that the choice had been made. Then they had both been distracted: the house by the sea; the visits from Valerio agents; legal documents and large sums of money; the terrible handover day; and then the return home and Maude’s several weeks in bed.

  Now that she was up again, they worked on the Secret together. They chose a colour for the garden shed, and bought clipboards, maps and cameras. They researched baby carriages, and their first major gift to Cath, presented as ‘market research’, was a cutting edge stroller. They were polite and friendly with each other, but David continued to sleep on the couch.

  At last, after some months had passed, he knocked on the bedroom door and walked into the room. It was late and the girls were asleep. He pressed the door quietly closed behind him, his right hand still clenched from the knock.

  There was no moon and the room was deep in darkness. He stopped still in perfect helplessness.

  ‘I’ll get the bedside light,’ offered a voice from the bed. There was a click and a small glare of light, pooling itself on Maude’s hair and the edge of her arm. She sat up against the headboard.

  ‘I hope I didn’t wake you,’ David said. He sat on the far edge of the bed, in the shadows by the bumps of her feet. Their voices were cheerful yet measured.

  David edged his way along the bed, until he was gazing at Maude’s pale face. She studied his face also. They were silent, conscious that now they must speak. Their words would be soap operatic.

  Maude would say: You left me for a year!

  David would respond: That may be, but while I was away, you fell in love with someone else.

  Maude would cry: But how could I know you would return?

  David might be silent and torn.

  Maude would admit, a tremble in her voice: I don’t know if I love you anymore.

  David would murmur: How can I convince you that you do?

  Maude would whisper: My heart has been broken by another.

  David would say, bluntly: He’s a movie star. Get over it.

  Maude would say: I gave away my child.

  The final truth would eclipse the other truths. In a soap opera, it would give way to an ad break.

  Instead of speaking, they continued to stare at one another. David unclenched his fist, and there was a small, crackling sound. He revealed a folded square of glossy blue and handed it to Maude, who moved it into the light.

  ‘That’s next weekend,’ said David, in a voice like a challenge.

  The paper was a pamphlet, advertising a Festival of Balloons at Berowra. ‘But you’re not even interested in balloons,’ said Maude, and then added, pointedly: ‘You’re afraid of heights.’ She caught his eye and they both acknowledged that this might be the only truth spoken.

  ‘That’s true,’ he agreed. ‘But that doesn’t mean I wasn’t interested in your balloons, Maude.’

  ‘You didn’t even listen to my stories.’ Her tone was tear-filled, defiant and teasing all at once.

  ‘Oh, I didn’t listen, did I?’ He chose the teasing tone. ‘Lie down,’ he instructed. ‘And close your eyes.’

  She moved back under the sheets, so she was flat on her back, her head in the centre of the pillow, watching him. ‘I’m not closing my eyes,’ she said.

  ‘But I’ve decided to tell you a story,’ he said. ‘And next weekend I’ll take you to the festival. Look at this.’ He took the pamphlet back from her. ‘They’ve got balloons in every shape you can imagine. Rabbits, cats, cars and Pepsi cans. And they’ll have arts and crafts for sale, those doily things you like, and they’ll have steak and onion sandwiches, I bet, and fairy floss.’

  Maude did not look at the pamphlet, but at his face. ‘What story?’ she said.

  It had been more than a year since Maude last told David the story of Monsieur Blanchard, the first man to fly the English Channel. But that night, sitting on the edge of her bed, he repeated the story the way she liked to tell it, almost word for word: ‘Now, Jean-Pierre Blanchard was determined to be the first man to fly the English Channel,’ he began. ‘And he wanted to do it alone. Even the American physician who financed his trip was not to be allowed to come, although the doctor, in point of fact, loved the idea and, in second point of fact, insisted.

  ‘Close your eyes,’ said David, interrupting himself.

  ‘Am I making you nervous?’

  ‘I’m not nervous. It’s supposed to be a bedtime story, that’s all.’

  He ran two fingers from her forehead over her eyelids, so that they closed, but she opened them at once.

  ‘Jean-Pierre tried all sorts of tricks to stop the doctor from coming. One day, he wore a lead-lined belt in his trousers, so that the balloon seemed to sink beneath their weight. ‘We’re too heavy!’ he exclaimed, sadly, to the doctor. ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to get out!’ But the doctor smelt something fishy, and made him turn down his pants.

  ‘Look at this,’ said David. ‘The fitted sheet’s come away. No wonder you can’t sleep. Move over a moment.’ Maude moved to the other side of the bed, and David dragged the bottom sheet back where it belonged, pulling it over the mattress corner. He straightened up the quilt, placing it carefully around her shoulders. Then he swung his legs onto the bed, and sat up in her place. She closed her eyes.

  ‘Eventually, they sorted out their quarrel, and Jean-Pierre agreed that the doctor could come along. It was January 7, 1785 that they set off from the Dover cliffs, carrying with them the following:

  barometer

  compass

  thirty pounds of ballast

  flags

  anchors

  cork jackets –’

  Here David paused, repeating the words to himself: ‘. . . flags, anchors, cork jackets . . .’

  ‘A packet of pamphlets, a bottle of brandy,’ prompted Maude.

  ‘A packet of pamphlets, a bottle of brandy, some biscuits, some apples, a pair of silk-covered aerial oars . . .’ He had taken her wrist, as if it helped him remember, and as he listed each item, he tapped her wrist bone once with his thumb.

  ‘A rudder,’ provided Maude.

  ‘Hush,’ said David, and tapped her wrist again. ‘And a useless, hand-operated revolving fan.’

  ‘Which later –’ she began.

  ‘Which later,’ he reproved, raising a finger to silence her, ‘which later would be useful as an aeroplane propeller.’

  Maude nodded, satisfied. She turned onto her side, her head pressed into her pillow.

  ‘The flight went very badly. The balloon zipped up and down like a yoyo, and they began, calmly at first, to throw bits and pieces overboard. Yes, they had to throw the brandy and the apples! By the time they reached the French coast, they were frantically hurtling more and more, and Jean-Pierre, most likely, eyed the doctor longingly! Instead, he took off his trousers and threw them overboard.’

  David curled a strand of Maude’s hair around his finger, let it slide away again, and said, ‘I didn’t listen to your stories, eh?’ She smiled without opening her eyes. He had been sitting up on the bed, with his knees propped up before him. Now he lay down close to her and continued.

  ‘The story has a happy ending.’ He spoke the words into her hair, and kissed her head once. ‘They landed safe in the forest of Guines. They were entertained, as heroes, for weeks afterwards by the French.’

  The Berowra Hot Air Balloon Festival was the first of several attended by Maude and David over the years. Later they took to bringing one or both of their daughters along, but this first festival they attended alone. Maude packed an overnight bag containing: four candles, flowers, a bottle of wine, bread, cheese, olives and choco
late brownies. She scarcely knew why she did this, but it appeared to do the trick.

  19

  CATH MURPHY

  Cath spent the morning of the Redwood Sports Carnival holding one end of the finish line ribbon. She spent the afternoon supervising novelty events. The novelty events were anarchic and unstructured: it was something to do with the pointlessness, Cath thought, of running with legs tied together, or with potato sacks strapped around your waist, or an egg-and-spoon thrust out before you. She did not supervise closely, but allowed small episodes of chaos to erupt and subside while she considered her life.

  It was the first week of the new school year. Warren and Breanna Woodford had resigned over the summer, and Lenny D’Souza had returned as full-time counsellor. Lenny and Billson were back together, and rather cloying. Cath herself refused to speak to those who had been Zing family spies, such as Suzanne Barker or Katie Toby, but she also said little to anybody else.

  What was there to say? She had no personality. She had watched the accumulated records of her life burn to cinders in a garden shed. In a gazebo, under the blackened bark of a scribbly gum, she had learned the explanation for practically every important event, surprise, or success in her life. She was nothing. An imaginary character. An elaborate Zing family fiction, brought to your TV today (she liked to add, with bitter humour) by Valerio Soap-on-A-String!

  All that was real, thought Cath, were these burn scars on her forearms and this incessant sensation of burning in her cheeks. The feeling of being watched.

  She had moved to a new apartment, choosing one through a reputable agent. She had discarded all her furniture, and bought everything new from Ikea. She had washed down the walls and windows of the apartment and padlocked the doors. She had also threatened the Zings with legal action if they so much as glanced her way. But still she narrowed her eyes if a sales assistant asked her how she’d been, and flinched when she saw a camera.

  She could tell the police, of course, or the media, but what was the point? Even if they believed her, her life would just be theatre once again.

  She stepped backwards, absent-mindedly, and landed on an egg. Nearby children, seeing this, shrieked and jumped up and down.

  The complication was this: that, sometimes, in the darkest part of the night, she wished that the Secret continued. While her cheeks burned, angry and humiliated by their surveillance, somewhere in her heart was the cold recognition that now she was truly alone. It was almost as if, all her life, she had intuitively known they were watching and had basked in the limelight.

  Children, she knew, imagined themselves to be performers. She remembered once when she was five or six turning cartwheels on the sideline of a cricket game. She had believed that the cricketers were secretly watching her acrobatics, far more impressed by her skill than they were by their game. But children eventually realised they were part of a crowd.

  Now she almost panicked when she woke in the night, alone and broken-hearted, and realised that no-one was paying the slightest attention. She might never get over Warren. She might never fall in love again. And she had to face this alone: the yearning she felt when she greeted this year’s class on the 2nd grade balcony; the starkness of the staffroom without him in it; her splintering memories of Warren: a glimpse of his shoulder through a moth-hole in his T-shirt; feet tapping, side-by-side, on the dark wooden floorboards of a jazz café.

  Also, the broken heart was complicated by guilt, self-loathing, and the knowledge that she had been there from the start. She hated him, but also she felt a powerful longing to have him back, and she begged each night: Come back to me. Leave your wife. Find someone else, Breanna. Let me have him.

  As far as she could tell, the Zings had not known about her affair. But she wondered if eventually they would have found out. Would they have gathered in the garden shed, worried, and arranged to send flowers and a ‘Cheer up’ note? (That had been them last year, and not the former boyfriend in New Orleans, after all.)

  The final of the three-legged race collapsed into fits of giggles, and Cath caught a sudden glimpse of herself in a memory. It was the first week of her affair with Warren, and they were running through the streets of Bowral together in the rain. They ran with their arms held tight around one another’s waists, towards the shelter of some shops in the distance, their legs keeping time like a dance.

  The three-legged race was not pointless. You used these skills when you ran in the rain with your arm around your lover’s waist.

  The carnival, she realised, was closing down and thinning out. She caught the eye of Fancy Zing, opening a car door. Fancy smiled and waved, and then leaned to talk to her daughter.

  Cath did not wave back. She stared and turned away. But even from this distance, she thought, Fancy’s smile was warm.

  FANCY ZING

  Fancy walked across Redwood Primary School oval, and a small flock of pigeons rose into the air. She smiled to herself, modestly.

  It was strange how things worked out – there was Cassie, running towards her. Although she still had asthma, she had recovered from the smoke inhalation and her breathing today, as she ran around the field, was so pure it was almost silent.

  Marbie had taken a day off work to watch Cassie win the races. ‘It turns out,’ she had confided, ‘that Vernon doesn’t need to have a revenge affair, because he already got his revenge.’

  ‘How?’ wondered Fancy.

  ‘He pushed me in the path of a sports car!’ Marbie’s eyes shone.

  It was even possible that Fancy’s mother would win Cath around.

  She had been phoning her occasionally, and Cath had been hanging up. But now Mrs Zing had a plan: she would suggest that Cath herself carry on with the Secret. Nikolai would still be expecting reports, ready to authorise funds. Why not let Cath draft the reports?

  ‘Would she really want to report on herself?’ Fancy asked, doubtfully.

  ‘Who said she had to tell the truth?’ replied her mother.

  Fancy reached her car, opened the door and, coincidentally, there was Cath, way across the oval, staring at her. She waved and smiled but then Cassie reached her, ribbons and trophies spilling everywhere.

  Cassie’s friend Lucinda was panting a few steps behind, trying to keep up.

  ‘Okay,’ said Cassie from the back seat, polishing a trophy on her T-shirt as they drove home. ‘Okay, Lucinda. Never eat an apple and jump up and down.’

  ‘Why not?’ said Lucinda.

  ‘The apple goes up your nose.’

  ‘I’m going to try it as soon as I get to your place, Cass.’

  ‘Never. Did you hear me, Lucinda? NEVER. What did I just say to you?’

  ‘Take it easy, Cassie,’ said Fancy, checking in the rear-view mirror.

  ‘You could just get some apple and put it up your nose, if you wanted,’ Lucinda commented. ‘You wouldn’t have to jump up and down.’

  ‘Lucinda,’ murmured Cassie, shaking her head.

  Fancy turned in to her driveway, and pointed the remote control at the garage door. It rose.

  While the girls ran in to the house, she wandered down toward her mailbox. A mynah bird was pecking at her lawn, so she detoured slightly and approached the bird, watching with pleasure as it fluttered out of her way. This was Fancy’s new regime. She made things happen.

  She went to shopping centres as often as she could, so she could march towards automatic doors and dry her hands in the bathrooms. She raised her right hand to make taxis stop. When she passed dog-walkers on the street she said, ‘May I?’ and then, holding a single finger in the air, she said, ‘Sit!’ Usually, the dog would.

  Also, she had made her husband leave, simply by saying the words: ‘I want a divorce.’

  Such small gestures led to such grand results!

  Radcliffe had been surprisingly compliant once the Secret was burned to the ground. (At present, he was living in the caravan out the back of the Banana Bar, but she was thinking of making him move on from there. It was no place
for Cassie to visit.)

  All her life she had been so caught up with rules, she had hardly had space in which to live. She used to wear her blazer in her bedroom, because the school rules said the blazer must be worn whenever ‘outside the school gates’. Once, at the gym, she felt a frisson of fear when a police car flashed by a window, and she realised that her arms were not swinging. As if the police might arrest her for failure to achieve a complete cardio workout.

  The only freedom in her life, she realised now, had been in her foolish fictions.

  She glanced over at the Canadian’s house, and tched at herself. What a fool she had been about him! She didn’t even know his name! He was a figment, a fantasy, constructed of chocolate terrines and lingerie!

  Fondly, sadly, she recalled a particular fantasy she had developed around something he had said. He had come to her door to offer a cake, apologising for something rude his friend had said. She herself had blathered that it didn’t matter, that she wrote erotic fiction, that the only person she had ever slept with was her husband. At which moment, the door had squealed and the Canadian had said, ‘I could fix that.’

  Days later, she had begun to believe that this was a cryptic message. That he was referring not to the door, but to her desolate sex life! What a dreamer! What a fool she was!

  She laughed softly, and opened her mailbox. Its lid hung loose from its hinge and she wondered vaguely if she could replace it with a remote control cover. Then she could make it open.

  There was a metallic clang nearby. It was the Canadian. He was standing at his own letterbox, and had just let the lid drop closed.

  ‘Nothing,’ he called.

  ‘Oh,’ she replied.

  At least, she admitted to herself, she had not imagined his darkly tanned skin, nor the brightness of his eyes behind their spectacles.

  ‘How about you?’ Now he was walking towards her, companionably. His feet were bare, and the edges of his jeans were frayed.