by Joy Dettman
‘It’s all been said, Sall. If we’re patient we’ll both get what we want.’
‘Nothing has been said! It never is. I need you now, Matt. I needed you to be with me yesterday. A car crashed right in front of me and I thought it was going to burn.’
‘Did it?’
‘No.’
‘You turn molehills into mountains, just for the climb. I can get whingeing and nagging elsewhere, Sall. It’s not why I come here. Now I have to go. Have a safe trip. I’ll give you a call when I can.’ His hand was on the doorknob, and she rose up on an elbow, lonely, angry, the black coming down to get her.
‘Have a good weekend,’ she yelled. ‘Not a problem. Have a nice day. Those lines were perfected by checkout chicks, and I ought to know. I deserve better from you, Matt. Tell me you’ll miss me, or give me the rote, “Love you, Sall”.’
‘Love you. I’ll miss you, kiddo.’ He opened the door. ‘Have a good Christmas.’
‘I hate Christmas, and I hate you. What have I got of you, Matt? Nothing. She’s got it all, and I hate her.’
‘Me too, but we’ve got this room. We’ve got each other in our cardboard paradise. What more have we ever wanted?’
‘More than a couple of hours a week on this bed. I want to get dressed up and go to parties with you, sit in dark pubs, walk down the street holding your hand.’
He stood at the door, his face ungiving, and she thought of Ross’s face, an open book. She couldn’t read this one. Expensive book, Matt, deep, too heavy for a reader of popular fiction.
‘Go then. Leave your money beside the bed, because that’s all I am to you.’
He took a two-dollar coin from his pocket and tossed it at her. She caught it.
‘I’ve got no change on me, smartarse.’
‘Credit it to my account.’ She tossed it at his head, and got him too, on the shoulder. He picked up the coin, pocketed it. ‘At this rate, you’ll never make enough to retire on, Sall. I suggest you get yourself a financial adviser.’ And he left her, left her to drive home to Hallam, to a Christmas tree with lights, and Christmas dinner with the parents. He left her for that bitch he’d take to his office party. Left her, and she packed her case and counted her money for Lakeside.
A Naked Chicken
Sue was going home for Christmas dinner, under sufferance; her grandfather would be there. ‘Chauvinistic old fuck, he needs an injection of lead,’ she said.
‘You’re lucky to have a family.’
‘Meet them and still say that. The old sod is a Collins Street specialist and he thinks I should be sterilised.’
Her tribe of brothers and sisters would be there, all older, all professionals, teachers, one a doctor. They’d have turkey and pea-green hair with red spikes, matching red and green beads on a nose ring.
‘Why do you do it?’ Sally asked, flicking the nose ring.
Sue smiled her twisted grin. ‘To nark the old fucks. I voted Labor too, helped oust poor old Jeff. I need putting down.’
Sue’s father wanted to pay out her mortgage; in return, all she had to do was go back to uni. Sue wanted to do law, but she wouldn’t give in, let her father win.
The more kids had, the more they rebelled; give them nothing and they strived all their lives to gain parental approval. Sally had spent two hours and sixty-five dollars buying her mother a new dress to wear on Christmas Day. Sue was doing her mother a favour by turning up for Christmas dinner, her only presents dangling from her ears.
‘Want to come with me? Eat turkey and be my buffer zone?’
‘I wish I could.’
‘Say that after two hours of them. Ten minutes of their pompous crap and I’m puking.’
A lifetime search for approval landed Sally in Lakeside, alone in a motel room at noon on Christmas Eve; she was weighing a large frozen chicken in her hand.
Christmas was about relatives. Between them, Sally and Ross couldn’t raise many. He had cousins in Tasmania. They sent cards. For the past fifteen years Sally and her mother had eaten Christmas dinner at the farm, and tomorrow would be no different. Ross had called last night.
‘Christ. We’re family, love. We can still eat Christmas dinner together, can’t we?’ he’d said, his voice not so certain.
What could she say? I’ve made a booking for two at the motel? Matt might drive up for a night, or an hour? When she’d booked the motel unit she’d convinced herself that Matt would give her one day out of his Christmas.
‘Thanks, Ross,’ she’d said. ‘I’ll supply the chicken. You supply the wine, and plenty of it. Mummy is coming out for the day.’ She didn’t ask him if it was okay to bring her along.
‘I’ll get some port,’ he’d said.
So there she was in a classy room with no view; but it was big and it had heavy drapes and a well-stocked bar fridge, complete with a pricey list for tourists.
‘And a naked chicken,’ she said. She’d bought it this morning from the supermarket freezer. A quick wrap in the motel-supplied newspaper, into a plastic bag and she carried it out to the car, where she tossed it into the boot beside a foil-wrapped supermarket Christmas pudding. She’d made her own pudding last year.
A sigh too deep as she picked up a parcel wrapped in red and gold. She’d bought Matt a black silk dressing gown, visualising him wearing it in their future mansion. What future? But that was all she had to hold on to today, so she clung to it. He might drive up for a night. Half of her life had been spent pretending that things might get better. She was still good at it.
A second parcel, smaller but wrapped in the same red and gold paper, she balanced on her palm. A shirt for Ross, bought in a hurry yesterday at Target. Sad, really. It had cost a third of what she’d paid for Matt’s dressing gown, but Ross would accept it gladly, wear it proudly.
He was like a big kid with presents. She’d always bought him heaps, just rubbishy things. Last year she’d bought him duelling water pistols and they’d spent the day chasing each other around the farm, guns blazing, dogs barking, spinster chickens looking on, cluck-clucking their disapproval while Mummy had disapproved from the lounge room, pursed lips tut-tutting. A fun day. Only one year ago, but a hundred light-years away.
She reached for the third parcel, her mother’s dress, then the car boot slammed. She returned to her room, aware that she would have to buy something else for Ross, something silly. She’d have to make it a good day for him; he’d probably refused half a dozen invitations to Christmas dinner.
Shopping was therapy, a place to go when there was no place to go. The main street a solid wall of cars at midday, she turned down a side street and into the supermarket car park, cruising until she caught the eye of a woman pushing her trolley out of the building. She tracked her to her bay, stopping behind her while the trolley was unloaded, slowly.
Time. So much time in the world for some people. Motor idling, blinker blinking, she waited, frustrating other drivers eager to get by, to get home to their Christmas trees. She didn’t have one.
‘Merry Christmas,’ she said. ‘Merry Christmas.’ She waved.
Some returned her wave. Many had heard about the wedding, and the hair appointment she hadn’t kept, and the beautician who had come to the Davis house to do the make-up. Sally had applied her own lipstick smile that day. She didn’t belong in Lakeside, not any more. Only Mummy kept pulling her back.
The supermarket car park was for supermarket shoppers. It said so on the sign, but she wandered through the store and back to the main street where she bought a giant rainbow lollipop. Ross would like that. Out front of the menswear shop she saw a pair of Father Christmas pyjamas, complete with white fur trim. Couldn’t buy him pyjamas. He’d think it was all on again.
The shops were busy, shopkeepers rubbing their hands in glee. Christmas loosened the purse strings, buyers became desperate. So many faces wore that anything-will-do-him expression, but anything wouldn’t do for Ross. For an hour she wandered and browsed, picking up, putting down, until she found a pregna
nt-cow jug at the craft shop. It looked like Ross’s house cow, a weighty udder, its tail the handle, its snout to pour the cream.
Buying presents had always been the best part of Christmas. It was making her feel a bit Christmassy – being in the crush, queuing with the great human horde.
‘Merry Christmas,’ the checkout girl muttered. ‘Merry Christmas.’ Like counting sheep as shoppers pushed through the gate, their tired bleating little lambs at their sides.
‘Merry Christmas, Jen.’ She’d known Jen Larkin since school. Jen, sex mad.
The woman looked up, recognising her. She grinned. ‘Bugger Christmas, Sall. Roll on 5.30. And what are you doing back here? I thought you’d escaped.’
‘They caught me at the pass and brought me back in chains.’ Sally took a hundred-dollar note from her purse, then put it back and handed over her Visa card.
It was nearly three o’clock when she drove out to the farm to face Ross, to get that over with. She placed her presents beneath his lopsided tree, beside the scattering of presents already there, and she saw her name on one. With a smile, she picked it up, felt it.
Ross snatched it, held it high. ‘No peeking, you cheat,’ he said.
Cheat hurt. It killed her cheeky mood. Soon after, she left him to return to her unit, the naked chicken forgotten in her boot. It thawed for half an hour in the hospital car park while she sat at her mother’s side and spoke of the morrow.
‘I’ll pick you up at ten. I’m cooking dinner out at the farm.’
‘I won’t be going out to the farm.’
‘Why not?’ The petulant mouth remained pursed. ‘We don’t have to stay there all day, Mummy.’
‘I thought we were going to the motel for lunch.’
‘It will be more Christmassy at the farm and the food will be better.’
‘Then I won’t spoil your Christmassy day. I’ll stay here.’
‘You’ll spoil my day if you don’t come, and you’ll spoil Ross’s day too. I thought you might spend the night at the motel with me. I’ve got a spare bed. It would be like old times.’ Her mother’s expression was pained. ‘It will do you good to get out of this place.’
‘Do me good? One night with my daughter, then nothing, would do me good?’ Her mother lay back on the pillow and closed her eyes.
‘Don’t lie down. Come for a walk with me in the garden. It looks beautiful.’
‘Sleep is beautiful.’
‘Not at this time of day.’ Sally reached for a box of chocolates someone had left on the locker. ‘Who has been visiting you?’
‘Mrs Jenner brought them. She knows I can’t eat chocolate.’
‘I haven’t seen her in months. How does she look?’ A chocolate in her mouth, she unwrapped a second.
Glenda ignored the question. ‘I hope you’re happy with your new man,’ she said.
Two could play at that game. Sucking chocolate, Sally picked up two pieces of what had been a Christmas card. ‘Didn’t like the picture, or the message?’
‘Throw it in the rubbish.’
Tiny writing. Glenda. Ripped at the point. Then forg –but her mother slapped at the pieces, her eyes filled with their old loathing. ‘How dare he. How dare he.’
Sally knew that tone. ‘Your father?’ She was on her feet, backing away, two small pieces of card still in her hand.
‘Throw that filth in the rubbish.’
‘You said you never heard from him.’
‘He drove my mother to her death then he left us for that slut. He took everything of value, and left Bernice and me to live or die. He didn’t care about us any more than he cared about our mother. How dare he send me a Christmas card? How dare he.’
‘But you always said –’ Sally stared at the segments of card. Tiny handwriting. love t – ‘You said you never heard from him, that –’
‘I saw my mother driven to suicide by his sluts. You understand nothing!’ Glenda was screaming now, building up to a throwing attack, but not a lot of ammunition here. Only a glass and a water jug. The box of chocolates.
Sally moved them out of danger. ‘Settle down, Mummy. That’s enough!’ She dropped the scraps of card into the bin. ‘See, it’s all gone. Finished. Now settle down.’
Small teeth clenched, the woman panted and lay back on her pillow.
Sally turned to the window, then back to the rubbish bin. Sa–erlath. ‘They’re forecasting a nice day for tomorrow.’ Good old weather, always a safe topic – but not today.
‘And I’ll spend it alone. As I’ve spent every day alone since my boys died.’
‘Don’t do this. Not today. Please, Mummy.’
‘If you hadn’t been climbing around in the car that night then they’d all be here with me today.’
‘Oh, yeah. And a very merry Christmas to you too.’
‘You killed them.’ Cutting little eyes, trying to draw blood. ‘You can’t stand the truth, can you? The truth still hurts, doesn’t it?’
‘Hurts like hell, so go tell it to the fucking kangaroo, Mummy.’ She ran from the ward and she and her naked chicken returned to the motel car park to drip a while in the last of the heat.
Ross came by at eight. She didn’t want to go with him for drinks at Greg and Deb’s flat, but he talked her around. She painted on a lipstick smile and left the chicken to drip alone in the motel car park.
There was a mob at the party, a happy, laughing mob Sally was no longer a part of. She’d been culled from the herd. She saw the looks, the words spoken behind hands. The expression on Deb’s face when she’d walked into the kitchen and caught her talking to Karen Matthews.
‘I don’t know how she’s game to show her face here,’ Karen said.
‘She’s making a prize fool of Ross. I know that much, ‘Deb replied. ‘I wish he’d wake up to himself and tell her where to go.’
Sally wanted to crawl into a corner and cry, but she wouldn’t let them see her cry. Her lipstick smiled. Big smile. Wide party smile. They’d both blushed. Deb pinkly, Karen puce. She and Pimples might make a good pair, both gangly six-footers and great blushers. The image helped keep her smile fixed for fifteen minutes but by 9.30 the lipstick had worn away and she knew she had to get away, go back to the hospital and get that rubbish bin, or its contents.
‘Want the last spring roll, Sall?’
‘No thanks, Deb.’ Probably laced with poison.
‘More wine, Sall?’
‘Yes thanks, Greg.’ It came out of a cask. Probably safe.
Coming here tonight had been a mistake. Sitting at Ross’s side was a mistake. She didn’t belong at his side any more and everyone knew it. Every time she lifted her head she caught Karen Matthews staring at her – or Ross.
Noise. Chatter, music and laughter and not enough air in this room. She had to move. Get outside that door, get away from Ross and his arm behind her chair. Get away to free air. Breathe.
‘I’ll take Mummy’s dress around to the hospital. I meant to leave it with her this afternoon,’ she said, standing abruptly, spilling her wine onto her jeans, her chair, Deb’s carpet. Only white wine.
‘She’ll be asleep.’
‘Then she’ll think Santa came while she was sleeping.’ She picked up her bag. ‘We’ll see you around ten.’ He stood, wanting to go with her. ‘Stay,’ she said. ‘Stay. It’s not far.’
Everyone waved, said their goodbyes, but when her back was to them she felt their accusation hit her between her shoulder blades. She turned at the door, in time to catch the lead bullets shot from Karen Matthews’ eyes.
Deb lifted her drink. Greg called, ‘Merry Christmas.’
‘Merry Christmas all,’ she said. ‘Watch out for the booze bus.’
And she was away and walking. A strange night. Still. The century was old, barely breathing. You could hear its sigh of relief as a breeze brushed the grass on a vacant lot, sweeping up the last of its memories. The party was almost over. Soon it could go home.
All of the little houses. All of the little h
omes. All of the little parties. All of the mummies and the daddies and the little girls tucked into their safe beds. They’d grow up in the year 2000. Wouldn’t remember the 1900s, but her generation would remain trapped in it, probably call it the good old days.
She stopped at the motel to pick up her mother’s gift, then ran off again. Running was good, the sound of her sneakers on cement, leaving the last of Lakeside’s Sally De Rooze behind.
Bleak place. Stale, sterile place of white light and shiny floors and Mummy. No tears, though. Her mother was sleeping like a baby.
She glanced at the rubbish bin. Empty. On her knees she searched the floor for just one scrap of that Christmas card. No scraps. Her grandfather was lost again.
Two of a kind, Mummy always said. Selfish. They ran away from her in search of something better. Sally had no memory of her grandfather, unsighted in twenty-four years. Through those years, her mother had named him a womaniser, thief, drunk, deviant. She’d come home from the psychiatric hospital ten years ago claiming he’d sexually abused both her and Bernice. Maybe he had, but Sally could remember her Aunty Bernice. She’d been taller than Mummy, and always laughing. She’d kept in contact with her father. He’d been at her funeral.
Sally could remember that day. She and Shane had spent the funeral afternoon with Raelene and Mrs Mason. Mummy had come home crying, then the next thing she was at the front door screaming at someone.
Through the window Sally had seen a man walk away, seen his hand raised in a half-wave, seen him get into a car. Back then she hadn’t known who her mother had screamed at. Now she knew it must have been her grandfather.
‘Grandpa?’ she whispered, testing the word. ‘Grandma and Papa,’ she whispered. That word felt right somehow. Memory and imagination mingling, she thought of a car, and a red and white checked cloth on the grass. But she shook her head, shrugging off the fantasy.