by Ilsa Evans
That is an absolutely ridiculous situation. Now that I am a criminal of sorts I need to develop some courage. I need more damn spunk. Or maybe I just need more scotch, or more therapy. I resolutely reach out and hang up the phone.
It immediately rings.
Damnation, I knew it, I knew it, I bloody well knew it! That woman has a sixth sense, or extra powers or something. Pure evil always does!
Despite my concentrated stare, the phone keeps ringing. I give up.
‘Hello?’
‘I can’t believe I’ve got through! I’ve been trying nonstop all evening!’
‘Diane!’
‘Don’t sound so surprised, I promised I’d ring you and I’ve been really wanting to talk, but (in a stage whisper) now I can’t!’
‘Well, that should make for a one-sided conversation!’ Scotch always helps me articulate witty rejoinders. I feel like giggling in relief. So I do.
‘God, what’s with you? [Just a minute, I’m on the phone.] Shut up and listen. I can’t talk because I’m having problems with my family!’
‘Heavens! How dreadful, how absolutely awful for you!’ Now I try for subtle sarcasm.
‘Have you been drinking?’
When all else fails, try honesty. ‘Yes.’
‘Well, if that isn’t typical. It’s lucky I can’t talk, isn’t it? [Yes, I’m coming, dear!] Because you couldn’t have even if I could have! You knew I was calling, you knew I had this … this situation and – [No, it’s just my sister, I’ll be there in a minute!] I needed to talk – [No, of course it’s not Bloody Elizabeth!] I’ll have to go … oh, I really wanted to talk, I’m having major problems with David and the boys, I’ve told them but they, they – [Yes, I said I was coming, didn’t I? Just bloody well wait!] I’m sorry … I’m taking it out on you. Can I ring you at the library in the morning?’
I stare at the phone in wonder. So she really wants to talk? Well, amazingly enough so do I! I have some news too, if anyone is even remotely interested! Is this the way it’s always been but I’ve only just noticed it now because I have a lot that I want to talk about for once? I’m always bloody listening! Enough is enough! It’s my turn now! I feel empowered –I put the phone back to my ear and prepare to say my piece …
She has hung up.
TUESDAY
10.53 pm
Now I am very drunk.
Now I cannot even remember what my inhibitions are. And I would love to have verbal diarrhoea – if only someone would answer their damn phone. I have even managed to fall flat on my face twice while trying to balance on this cursed telephone stool.
I am well and truly inebrey … inebrat … inibriate … pissed.
Which is good because now I don’t care that when I tried to ring Diane back, I was tersely informed by my brother-in-law that she would call me tomorrow as they were trying to have a family discussion. I also don’t care that I now know Bronte’s asinine message on their answering machine off by heart and still don’t know where Terry is. I certainly don’t care that I have blown my week’s fourteen allowable alcohol units out the window (Weight-Watchers need to realise that some people need at least fourteen units per day – it’s all to do with stress levels). I also don’t care that the phone is back on the hook and my mother might call (extremely unlikely as she goes to bed religiously at 9.15 pm) and I don’t even care about the way the wallpaper keeps fading in and out of focus.
An hour ago (out of curiosity, not because I particularly cared), I tried to ring Bloody Elizabeth but even she wasn’t home – has everyone got a life except me? So, instead I spent a considerable amount of time trying to dwell on the positives involved in having one’s ex-husband residing next door. After a while I gave up and bolstered up my courage to try and call Maggie in order to actually confirm her brother’s future living arrangements. There is still a chance that Samantha and Ben got the message a little wrong and confused ‘next door’ with the ‘next suburb across’ or maybe even the ‘next-door’ state – like New South Wales or Tasmania or something equally distant. But I don’t seem to have an up-to-date phone number because I just kept getting a strange recorded message about early opening hours and discount rates. So I gave up and made a mental note (with the few brain cells that have remained on active duty) to find out her new number from Samantha at some time.
However, all that talk about hours and rates made me think rather wistfully about my therapist and I came quite close to ringing her rooms and leaving a message begging for an appointment before I remembered that I didn’t much care. In fact, apart from the wallpaper, life has been much simpler since I stopped caring. So instead I decided to start my own therapy with a list of Ten Important Happenings and I am rather proud of what I have accomplished:
1. My mother is getting married for the fourth time
(on my b/day),
2. I killed Hanson,
4. My sister (age 42) is pregnant,
5. My ex-ex-husband is moving next door to me
(Unbelievable!!!!),
5. Where’s Terry?,
7. Train travel is not for the faint-hearted,
8. At least one of my fellow librarians is psychotic,
9. My bag is stolen
10. and
10. I got arrested today.
I am feeling rather sublime and light-hearted (and quite definitely light-headed) at the moment, leaning on the telephone stool back against the wall, watching the wallpaper gyrate and swirling my scotch around in its glass. Or am I leaning on the wallpaper against the wall, swirling my telephone stool and watching my scotch gyrate? Or maybe I am gyrating on my telephone stool, leaning on my scotch and … Frankly, my dear, I just don’t give a damn. I think it’s time to go to bed. After all, tomorrow is another day.
Goodnight.
WEDNESDAY
The rain it raineth on the just
And also on the unjust fella
But chiefly on the just, because
The unjust steals the just’s umbrella.
Lord Bowen
(1835–1894)
WEDNESDAY
7.15 am
Oh, I am not well. Not well at all. I think I must have picked up one of those 24-hour bugs that seem to be floating around at this time of year. I reach out and switch off the alarm before it blows off the top of my head, and even this minor movement makes my stomach feel decidedly queasy. I can hear the garbage truck making its second pass up the other side of the street. I must have slept through its first pass, although I don’t know how – it sounds like a minor earthquake that just won’t bloody stop. I hold my thumping head in one hand, roll back over and pull the doona over my head – and that’s when I realise that I’m not alone.
It occurs to me that if I had made a statement like that twenty or so years ago, the possibilities would have been scintillating. But at this stage of my life, there can only be one other person who is sharing my space – CJ. She is curled up in the foetal position smack in the centre (which is also smack in the centre of the electric blanket), and has obviously been there for quite some time. Apart from the fact that she is taking up the vast majority of the bed-space, she is also snoring loudly enough to wake the dead. Which, coincidentally, is exactly how I feel at the moment. I decide not to move for the foreseeable future.
Five minutes later I change my mind and race for the bathroom – just in time. After painfully ridding myself of at least 350 Weight-Watchers’ points, I lean over the basin and stare into the mirror in consternation. Yesterday’s Ms Average is nowhere to be seen. Instead I bear a distinctly close resemblance to one of the sworn enemies of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, after a severe beating. And my pimple has grown as well.
I try to make a quick calculation as to how many sick days I have in hand, and then decide I don’t care anyway. There is absolutely no way I could go to work feeling (and looking) like this.
I rinse out the basin and brush my teeth in the forlorn hope that this will improve matters and then head straight ba
ck to bed. CJ starts to stir as I crawl gingerly under the doona and we cuddle for a while. Just as I am starting to feel a little better, CJ decides to play her favourite bed-game of ‘The Hatching Dinosaur’. This game involves her curling up into a tight ball (i.e. a dinosaur egg), and then slowly unfurling while making some really strange noises that she fondly imagines would accompany a slow-hatching dinosaur egg. After she ‘hatches’ she then drapes herself all over me (yes, I am the mummy dinosaur) and proceeds to bond and purr at the same time. I don’t much feel like pretending to be a dinosaur this morning, especially one who has just given birth, but I play along because it’s easier than trying to dissuade CJ while she’s hatching.
Well, it would have been the easier option this morning except that she manages to upend her egg and during her vigorous shell-breaking does a sudden back-flip and head-butts me in the stomach. Now I am the one curled up in a foetal position.
CJ makes a strategic withdrawal and heads off to the kitchen in search of breakfast. After a while, when my breathing has regulated itself somewhat, I follow her, not for breakfast (heaven forbid), but rather for a strong cup of coffee with an Eno chaser.
Samantha is already up, showered and dressed. She has turned the heater on and is now making tea and toast while looking ridiculously healthy. On the other hand, Ben, who is also having breakfast, looks decidedly dishevelled and is clad only in a pair of Garfield boxer shorts so bright that they make my eyes throb.
‘Good morning, guys.’ I muster up an element of camaraderie. ‘Everything under control?’
‘Of course, Mommie dearest, everything is just –’ At this point Samantha breaks off as she turns and takes her first look at me. ‘Heiliger Strohsack! Mum, you look terrible!’
‘I know, I feel terrible too.’ I collapse into one of the kitchen chairs and hold my head up with my hands. Not for the first time, it occurs to me that Samantha could be saying just about anything when she breaks into German – certainly I’d have no idea. However, ignorance can be bliss and I suppose as long as we steer clear of any actual Germans or Austrians, we run very little risk of offending anyone. Besides, this morning I feel too sick to care.
‘I think I’ve picked up one of those wogs.’
‘At your age you should know better,’ comments Ben as he gets up and dumps his bowl in the sink on his way out of the room. I stare after him in amazement. That remark sounded distinctly like my son is actually developing a sense of humour! This thought cheers me up a bit so I smile at CJ, who is picking her cornflakes out of the packet one by one. She immediately recoils and I can’t say I blame her. Even to me that smile felt more like a grimace. In fact, I think I shall add it to my repertoire of frightening facial contortions in place of that obviously ineffective lip-curl I tried yesterday.
‘Here you go.’ Samantha puts a beautiful, hot, steaming cup of coffee in front of me and I immediately lose myself in its aroma. ‘With belly-button rings, do you think a plain stud would look better than one of those flowers? Did you know you’ve got a pimple on your chin that is sooo big? Oh, and I need nineteen dollars-fifty today for that book I told you about last week.’
Okay, that pretty well killed the aroma.
‘Oh, Mummy, I need money too for our footy thingy and I hab to get all dressed up, wait a bit.’ CJ abandons the seven cornflakes she has handpicked so far and leaps off her chair. ‘I’ll get it for you!’
‘I actually need mine now, Mum, because I want to head off early this morning.’
‘I can’t remember you telling me about needing another book.’ I know even as I speak that it just isn’t worth it, but force of habit wins out. ‘I’m sure we never had any such discussion.’
‘Oh, Mum, don’t you remember? You were, like, standing over there by the fridge and you were wearing that red jumper that makes you look like sooo plumpish and you were making meatloaf for tea – which I don’t much like but the others do – and I put my bag down over there and we were, like, discussing belly-button rings and it was the same day as the day I got the letter from Wolfgang and I had my hair in –’
‘Okay! Enough! I give in! Just go and get my bag.’
I take a big gulp of coffee to steady my nerves and immediately gag on the high sugar content. I jump up and tip the rest down the sink before Samantha returns. Straightaway I realise that I shouldn’t have moved so rapidly in my delicate condition. My head starts to ache uncontrollably and my stomach starts to churn in sympathy. I decide to have some Eno and a couple of aspirin. Then I put the kettle back on and stand guard.
‘Mummy, here ’tis.’ CJ has arrived back and proffers me a rather ragged piece of paper. It confirms a footy thingy which will take place on Friday and for which CJ must provide three dollars and fifty cents in advance (by this afternoon’s kinder session at the Very Latest) for a meat pie and drink.
‘But you don’t even like meat pies, CJ!’
‘Now I do,’ the gourmand changeling states emphatically as she returns to her breakfast selection.
Subject closed. End of discussion. Just pay up, fill out the form, note the upcoming event in your diary and ensure that a complete football outfit in relevant colours is ready and available on the big day.
Enter Samantha, looking extremely annoyed.
‘I’ve looked everywhere and I can’t find your bag and now I’m going to be late. And I found a pile of mail underneath the hat-stand.’ Sam holds out a pile of what look like bills towards me. ‘Were you hiding them?’
‘No, of course not.’ I dimly remember flinging Monday’s mail underneath the hat-stand as it attacked me. The stand that is, not the mail. I riffle through the letters feeling sicker by the minute: one gas bill, one electricity bill, one overdue rates reminder, one hand-addressed letter from – I turn it over – Alex to his two children. I dump the bills on the bench, hold Alex’s letter up to the light and try to peer through the envelope.
‘Mum, I’m going to be late! Where is your bag?’
I look at her distractedly and am about to say something along the lines of opening your eyes, when I remember yesterday and the disappearance of my handbag. Now you see it, now you don’t.
‘Oh god, that’s right, I lost my bag yesterday, with my purse in it.’
‘How? Was it an ebil robber? What happened?’ Suddenly I have CJ’s complete attention but I don’t want it so I hold up my hand. Amazingly, it works.
‘CJ, eat up and I’ll tell you later. Samantha, go and see if your brother can lend you twenty dollars … no, make that twenty-four so that I can fix up CJ.’
‘Yeah, good idea.’
I don’t think she means just the money, but I ignore it. Luckily, Ben always has money. He never ever seems to spend his pocket money and is the only person in this family who is always financially solvent. He’ll probably charge me interest.
I wince as the kettle starts to whistle and turn it off quickly. As I make the coffee I check outside and realise that the weather looks as foul as I feel. The sky is a gunmetal grey and plastered with clouds pregnant with the promise of rain. Definitely a good day to be sick and housebound. Just as I reach this conclusion, a flock of cockatoos comes screeching down into the largest tree in the backyard, taking a temporary break on their way up into the Dandenong Ranges. They shriek at each other gregariously as they settle themselves along the branches, setting up such a cacophony of noise that my head threatens to explode.
‘Got it.’ Samantha dumps four dollars in change on the bench and waves a twenty-dollar bill in the air before pocketing it. ‘Now I’m off, Lieblings, see you this afternoon, hope you’re feeling better then.’
‘Hang on! Letter for you – from your father. And it’s for Ben too.’
‘Oh! Thanks.’ She grabs the letter from me and exits, brushing past her brother as he sprints into the kitchen, now fully dressed but still managing to look just as dishevelled.
‘If they’re all having money, then I want some money for lunch too.’
‘I don’
t have any money, Ben, that’s why I had to get some off you!’
‘Yeah, I know, but I’ll use my money and you can pay me back.’
I try raising my eyebrows to signify disbelief without words, but this action has an adverse effect on my headache. So, with my head throbbing, I sink back into the chair nursing my fresh, sugarless coffee and decide any argument is simply not worth it, considering my fragile state.
‘Okay, whatever.’
‘Cool, I’ll write it up as an IOU. See you.’ Exit Benjamin again, this time for the day.
I sigh heavily and look across at my one remaining child, noting that she has now managed to select about a quarter of a bowl of cornflakes. Mesmerised, I watch as she picks another golden flake out of the packet, holds it up to the light, turns it over, peers up for a closer look, and then shakes her head emphatically as she rejects it.
It’s going to be a long, long morning.
WEDNESDAY
9.10 am
It’s taken two cups of strong coffee, two more aspirin and another glass of Eno, but I’ve not only managed to make a list of almost everything that my missing handbag contained, but also a list of phone calls that I really need to make. I have even made two of the calls already. One to cancel CJ’s child-care for the day, and another to make transport arrangements for afternoon kinder on the grounds that I am too ill to drive. Very true. Heading the remainder of the list is a phone call to the library to make my excuses, so I dial them first and ask to be put through to Barbara.
‘Barbara Sullivan speaking.’
‘Barbara, it’s me,’ I say, trying to inject extra pathos into my voice. ‘I’m not going to be able to make it in today, I’m really –’
‘My god! You have to come in! All hell’s broken loose! Alan’s spitting chips over that picture of you. I couldn’t believe it – front page no less! And Joanne’s already been in to see him. She’s not saying anything but Lucy said it was something about assault. Did you hit her or something? What happened to you yesterday, anyway? What is going on?’