Morning in Melbourne

by Nicole Taylor

  “Oh,” said Louise. “Come in.”

  Both officers entered the house and looked around. They looked puzzled and exchanged glances. “Is anyone else at home?” asked Johnson.

  “Yes,” answered Louise. “My three kids are here.”

  “May we see them please?”

  “Sure.” She went to James’ door but he was already opening it. “Hello,” said James.

  The police nodded at James. “And the others?”

  Louise took them upstairs and the police met Camille and Peter, and looked into every room in the house. Then they followed Louise downstairs.

  Constable Johnson spoke. “Camille and Peter can go back to bed, and we will talk to you and James.” Louise nodded and they went back into the lounge room. “What happened here tonight?”

  “I had a melt-down and was shouting at my eldest son, James.”

  Both police nodded. “So, there was no alcohol here tonight?”

  “Yes,” said Louise, “we had friends to dinner, and they had a glass of wine, but I didn’t have any.”

  “You?” Johnson asked James.

  “I had a glass of wine,” said James.

  “And there was no violence of any sort?”

  James and Louise looked shocked. “No!” They answered as one.

  “I’m really sorry about the shouting,” said Louise. “The poor neighbours – they hear me shouting at the kids a lot and tonight I was really loud. I’m so sorry.”

  Constable Johnson shook his head. “You have no idea what a relief it is for us to be called to a house that is clean and where there is no alcohol or blood.”

  Louise gulped. “You poor things,” was all she could think to say.

  Constable Johnson asked her, “So, what was this about?”

  Louise waited to see if James wanted to answer, but he gestured that she should respond, so she said “James is 21 and Camille is 15. The two of them fight all the time over petty things and I just can’t take it anymore. I’m a single mother and if their father was here, I know James wouldn’t pick on Camille the way her does. The boys gang up on her and –“

  “Okay,” said the policeman. “I think I get it.” He turned to James. “So; it might be time for you to make a move,” he suggested. “Out.”

  James shook his head as though the whole thing was beyond his control. “I’m still a full-time student,” he said.

  The policeman nodded. “Yes, but plenty of young men study part-time. I did.” He turned to Louise. “It’s a relief for us to see a mother standing up to her adult kids,” he said. He shook his head. “You should see some of the things we see. Kids who won’t leave home – especially where there is just the mother at home. They strut around as though they own the house their mother has worked to pay off and still keeps clean. And these are people in their twenties – it’s pitiful.”

  The policewoman nodded her head in agreement. “How long have you been living here?’ she asked.

  Louise thought. “I bought this place when we separated, so about 4 years ago. I’m so sorry for the neighbours,” started Louise.

  “Why?” asked the policeman. “They know you are a single woman trying to raise three kids on your own – and your kids look alright to me. So, you shout at them! So what? They couldn’t knock on your door and see if you needed a hand? Great neighbours they are! And this is supposed to be a posh neighbourhood!”

  The policewoman said “I will get a counsellor to call you next week, and you two can make an appointment if you think it would help.”

  “Thanks,” said Louise.

  “Yes, thanks you,” said James.

  “And you need to start looking for a group house, and a job,” said the policeman. “If you can’t live peaceably with your mother and the younger kids, do the other thing. You are too old to be your mother’s problem. She’s got those other two to raise, and that is usually a two-person job. Don’t make it harder than it already is. Parenting is a lot harder than it looks, and single parenting is twice as hard.”

  James stood looking at him, trying not to look as confused as he felt. Louise watched her son take instructions from a man in a uniform. Where were his smart-mouth, and over-confident retorts now, she wondered? All tucked away and hidden from view. Fancy that.

  After she had closed the door, she opened her laptop. “What are you doing?” James sounded nervous. Surely she wasn’t going to tell Dad?

  “Emailing Alison,” answered Louise. “She had to put up with all the shouting and arguing. She deserves to know the ending.”

  Chapter 26 – Jane

  “Louise!” It was Jane. She usually called at this time – just before they both began cooking dinner – and they discussed the events of their lives. Jane was 10 years into her second marriage, having been previously married at age 20 for 15 years and producing 4 children. She and her current partner, David, had a son who was now 7 years old. One of her older children was herself a mother and separated from her troublesome partner, so Nana-Jane provided more than the usual grandmotherly support. In addition to this, Jane was a senior public servant with a federal department in Canberra. Consequently, Louise’s news paled into insignificance beside the events of Jane’s life and Louise was loath to miss even an episode of the unfolding saga of her little sister’s extended family.

  “Hi Janey-Paney,” she chirruped into the phone. “What’s going on?” This was her invitation to unload the next instalment into the earpiece where Louise was poised, wine glass in hand.

  “I need a favour.” Jane paused.”

  “Sure, if I can do it. What is it?”

  “I need to tell David that you have borrowed $5,000 from me,” Jane was breathless in her nervousness. “You see, Joshua” (her eldest, currently aged 25 and living near his father on the Gold Coast) “needs $5,000 and asked me for a loan. I can lend it to him but David would go mad if he found out; but if I say you needed the money, he wouldn’t.”

  Louise knew the scenario well. Both David and Jane worked long and hard and earned extremely good money. They lived very well and enjoyed what there was of their leisure time. However, the one – or perhaps it was more accurate to say the four – black spots on this successful horizon were the constant and unmitigated calls made on their purse by Jane’s first four kids.

  Jane, to assuage the undeserved guilt she bore because she had left her first husband, felt compelled to comply with every demand for money. David, aware of Jane’s inability to refuse her offspring, had taken control of both their incomes and managed it extremely well. Unfortunately he had not allowed any amount in his budget for ‘incidentals’ and had not provided her with a discretionary ‘slush-fund’; surely a necessity in the most transparent of marital financial arrangements; and this omission had rendered his financial administration draconian and unworkable for the obliging Jane.

  The problem was that Louise never ever borrowed money. Her independence was well known and well deserved. She had only lent money once, and that had been to Jane, about 20 years previously, during her first marriage, when she had wanted to join an expensive weight-loss club. The money had been repaid but the event never repeated. Jane understood that her elder sister was independent and frugal and lived on much, much less than Jane did.

  Although Louise agreed with David’s response, and understood what David was doing probably better than Jane understood it, she did not understand why he did not allow some small ‘slippage’ in his calculations. Louise herself had accumulated – and continued to accumulate – savings and investments at a steady rate no matter what her circumstances; but she never deviated from her budget, which she calculated, re-calculated and reconciled regularly. She told her own children that this discipline gave her the freedom to do everything she wanted to do – only the timing had ever to be adjusted. But she always budgeted for extraneous expenditure, because a rigid budget always ended up in the bin.

  So, although Louise was proud that she had never borrowed money from anyone other than
the Commonwealth Bank, and only then at 7% to purchase real estate which appreciated at 8%, she was more inclined to assist her sister than uphold her reputation of financial independence with her fiscally astute brother-in-law.

  “Sure,” said Louise. “Just don’t ask me to thank him!”

  “No,” laughed Jane. “Thanks.”

  “Will I be paying it back?”

  “Yes! I’ll pay it back as soon as I get my tax return – in about two months.”

  “Alright. But make sure you do!”

  “I will,” promised Jane.

  *

  These days, years after they’d separated, Louise’s thoughts were frequently interrupted by surprise ‘epiphanies’ on her marriage. She wondered if this was common during a long separation when divorce was clearly on the agenda? Did others find that the missing piece of puzzle, long since relinquished and regarded as insignificant, suddenly appeared and illuminated an hitherto unknown element of past history?

  She remembered a time early in 1998, when Jeff had moved out of the bedroom and into the study. He’d moved without explanation, and Louise had spent weeks worrying about what she had done, or could do, to entice him back to their bedroom. He’d erected an old double bed in there, and without comment had begun sleeping apart from Louise. He wasn’t working in those days, so the only time Louise could enter his study was while he was in the shower. Jeff did his own washing and tidying – not to help around the house; but to ensure his privacy.

  But all she could see in the study, apart from the bed, were two television screens which were connected to the computer.

  It was only now, years later, and with a better knowledge of her husband’s pornography collection that Louise put the information together: Internet connection: late 1997; separate bedroom: early 1998; interest in pornography; ongoing.

  It was nice when things made sense at last. Having spent so many years wondering how she could make her home and her husband happy, Louise laughed at her egotism. It had had nothing whatsoever to do with her! Fancy thinking she could have changed anything. Jeff must have enjoyed watching her trying in vain to please him and taking part of the blame for their marital tension; trying to design the day in accordance with his wants; cooking only the things he liked; entertaining only the people he liked; never leaving him alone with the kids, or asking him to undertake any of the household chores he should have helped with, since he didn’t actually go to work from 1997 to 2000. She’d starved herself to get her weight down to 53 kilos after the birth of her third baby, hoping this would entice him back to her bed. She’s denied herself any nice food and endured headaches and hunger pains as she’d run around after two toddlers and a 7 year old. And all the time Jeff had been enjoying his afternoon naps with naked teenage porn stars being televised into his bedroom while she pushed a double stroller alongside the grocery trolley at the supermarket.

  Louise laughed and laughed.

  These realisations were like gifts granted to her by each advancing year. Louise remembered another event, in Sydney. It was a picnic they’d been invited to with friends Louise had made in the neighbourhood and who had been very friendly and inclusive towards Jeff. At the picnic, Louise had sat down and accepted a glass of wine. It was a spot to which she and the other woman, Geetha, often brought their kids after school, but on those occasions there was too much racing around after the kids to enjoy the backdrop of the Kuring-Gai Chase National Park – or, as Louise thought of it, the “Skippy the Bush Kangaroo” setting.

  Geetha’s husband, John, had collected the four younger kids and invited Jeff to join him in taking them all on a walk. Jeff had gone too, but came back and snarled at Louise for drinking in front of the children.

  Louise had been very upset, and allowed Jeff to make their excuses and go home earlier than had been planned. Jeff had gone straight to bed when they had gotten home, and Louise and the kids had quietly watched a movie in the family room. Louise had felt guilty about having the wine and worried that she was a bad mother.

  But now, 12 years later, Louise realised that what had angered Jeff was that he had been expected to do the child minding for those hours at the picnic, and it had exhausted him. In his mind, that was Louise’s job, not his! However, not even Jeff had the effrontery to say so at the time, so he camouflaged his anger in any criticism he could make of his wife, and as usual, Louise had fallen for it.

  What was wrong with her? Why was she so non-critical of Jeff and so accepting of criticism herself? Did she have low-self-esteem or was she just stupid? Now, looking back, Louise thought that she had been young and nice and inexperienced, while Jeff had been old and cranky and onto his third wife - Louise.

  When Louise remembered these things it made her resent Jeff in a way she’d hadn’t resented him when they had split. Now that she understood the behind-the-scenes happenings over the years of their marriage, it not only explained so many frustrating times, but made her angry that she had allowed the days of her young motherhood to be dominated by an omnipresent fear of her husband’s mercurial mood.

  What kind of relationship had they had, really? Had Louise lived in a make-believe world of home cooking and homework; of neighbours and neighbourhood parties; of birthdays and holidays? Had she dragged Jeff along, unwilling and unhappy, to stand beside her and her children, while he endured each moment, desperate to escape back to his own world?

  A world of naked, compliant young women he never had to meet.

  Work was where Jeff felt real and work was what took Jeff into his future. Home life – his family life – was the essential backdrop to prove his success on another level; an insurance policy to ensure that he had another place of importance in the world. His wife, his children, his house – all facets of an environment in which to sleep and keep his work clothes clean. He must have read about it somewhere, or seen it on TV. How else would he know? All Jeff’s friends were at the office; he repeated his conversations to Louise, but did not invite her comments. If she offered one, he quickly let her know that she could make no meaningful contribution, being entirely outside of the office experience in her suburban world of children and neighbours and doctor’s visits and schools.

  It was odd that now that Louise understood her husband, in a way she never had while living with him, she had no desire to be near him. She didn’t want to talk to him or impress him or even tell him that she now understood. She was simply sorry that she had wasted so much effort wanting him to be happy with her. This was her one-and-only life, and she’d wasted 15 years of it trying to please a man who was unhappy because she stood between him and his relaxing internet activities. That had been her great crime in their marriage, and she hadn’t even known.

  But she should have been smarter than that. And there was no real reason that she had to understand why he was always angry with her. She should have seen his anger and been immediately repelled by it. Understanding it was not a pre-requisite for an appropriate and healthy response.

  It was her egotistical expectation of a rational explanation that was the real cause of her wasted prime-of-life years. To Louise’s mind, now, Jeff had simply been selfish. But she was being egotistically, to think that she could fix their marital problems.

  It was the function of the problem-solver in her. Other women, like Jeff’s first and second wives, might detach themselves quickly and absolutely from a bad-tempered, selfish partner, but not Louise. No – Louise hung on and tried to fix the situation. She didn’t take his behaviour personally – she decided that this was a character flaw in him – that was how she explained it to her kids and her sisters when they demanded to know why she couldn’t talk on the phone or meet with them on the weekend. And everyone knew that the family was greater than the sum of its parts. Didn’t they?

  But that was no excuse. Louise herself knew that a dysfunctional family was one in which a member – any member – was subjugated to allow another member or members to behave as they liked, regardless of the negative impact that
behaviour was having on their co-family member. Louise’s other error was in not identifying that this was Jeff’s nature; not an episode because he was 50 when he first became a father, and probably too old to have children; or because he was stressed out at work; or because he was unwell. He was behaving badly because he didn’t care about Louise’s feelings and knew she wouldn’t blame him for it, and this was his nature. He was by nature a bad-tempered, critical person. He wasn’t thoughtful or kind or self-sacrificing. That was Louise’s role.

  Chapter 27 – A realisation

  It had happened slowly, over a long period of time. At first Louise had thought that she just needed some “space” – that requirement people had to remove themselves from the place where dramatic events caused conflict in their lives, and so they became confused about what they should be doing to improve their lot. Once she had acquired and experienced some of this “space”, she would gain clarity of vision about her future in general, and her future relationships in particular.

  When she thought of a relationship, she thought of being with a new man. Someone attractive, whom she admired, and who valued her as a person.

  At first, she had been busy re-ordering their lives, so that the new single-parent regime worked smoothly, that she didn’t have time to put very much effort into being a single woman who might like to have a relationship.

  But then she got some new clothes and remembered to smile when she met people. Not just men – everyone. You had to be the person you wanted people to see when they met you. She’d read that somewhere.

  And she did meet men – at work, and when she was shopping. But they were other people’s husbands. Of course, she had to expect that. She lived in the suburbs, after all. And she was 50 – most people her age were married, and if they weren’t, they didn’t live in Blackburn. They lived in Richmond or the Docklands – aka “Divorcelands”.