by Joy Dettman
She looks at the other plates. The solicitor has got two big bits of potato. He got the extra one that was supposed to be for her birthday, and she knows it, and she hates his stupid little moustache and his stupid glasses that make his eyes look like cheap chipped marbles. All the little ones only got one quarter of a potato. Even Mick only got one quarter, yet he’s going on thirteen. It’s a big quarter though, bigger than Lori’s.
Bloody solicitor. Mavis always says that they are thieves, and this one is a roast potato thief. She watches him pick up his fork, stab her potato, cut her potato, tuck it underneath his moustache. And she hopes he chokes on it, hopes it burns all the way down to his ferret belly. She eats her beans while counting potatoes and bits of chicken, working out exactly what bits are not on this table.
Mavis hasn’t got a lot of food on her plate, only a quarter of a potato, a small piece of chicken breast and beans, no pumpkin, no cabbage. She won’t eat vegetables. She’s already told Eva that the doctor said her weight is glandular so she has to prove it by not eating too much. There are three pieces of potato missing, and a whole chicken thigh and drumstick. They’ll be on a plate in the fridge, all covered with foil and ready to go back in the oven to get heated up as soon as Eva has gone.
‘Is there nothing the doctors can do for you, darling?’ Eva says, taken in by what is on Mavis’s plate.
‘Not a thing, dear.’ Watch it. Mavis is getting plain sick of hearing that fake ‘darling’.
Lori glances from sister to sister as she makes a puddle out of her cabbage, pumpkin and gravy then swallows the mess down fast. The meat goes down next; she saves the potato for last because she loves roast potato, loves it next best to crisp chips from the takeaway, loves it, loves it, and hates the solicitor, who is staring glassy-eyed at Mavis, like he’s never seen anyone as big as her. No one has, except on television, and so what? That’s her funeral. And it might be soon if she doesn’t lose some weight, or that’s what the doctor said after Matty got born.
‘Have you seen a doctor recently, darling?’ Eva asks.
‘I’ve got a two-week-old baby, dear.’ There’s that ‘dear’ again.
‘What did he say?’
‘He can’t talk yet. As you know, my kids are all smart but they’re not that smart.’ She’s winding up. You can tell by her eyes. They are getting that excited look.
‘He said that her heart will give out, that she’ll be dead before she’s forty,’ Martin says.
‘Unless she has her stomach clamped,’ Lori adds, mouth full.
Martin nudges her. She elbows him back. They are elbow to elbow, sharing the outdoor stool from the verandah.
Mavis’s eyes narrow; she places a sliver of chicken in her mouth and her throat muscles try to get it, toss it down but she forces herself to chew, keep chewing. ‘It’s a genetic condition, passed down the male line – as you well know, dear.’
Eva looks down at her plate, cuts a lump of potato and puts it in her mouth. It’s scalding hot and she can’t spit it out onto her plate, which Henry says is bad manners, so she swallows it, gasps, swallows hard again, helps herself to a slice of bread, eats it dry, breathes deeply, letting in some air which is almost as hot as the potato. At least that changed the subject away from stapled stomachs. The doctor also said tubes tied, and Valium tablets for sleeplessness, because Henry dobbed. He told about how Mavis does most of her eating at night.
The plates are emptied fast, except Eva’s plate. It’s still half full, and that’s wasted chicken, and wasted potato. Then Henry puts a supermarket apple pie on the table, with one candle stuck in its middle, and everyone sings ‘Happy Birthday’ – except the twins. They look at each other, cover their mouths and start laughing. Eva tries to hush them with her eyes and when she can’t, she takes two envelopes from her purse, hands one each to the boys. They hand them to Lori, but the little mongrels are still laughing.
She doesn’t even say ‘Ta,’ just gives those two a dirty look. Maybe those envelopes have got money in them, not just cards, and she’d like to open them and look but she’s not going to give those laughing little mongrels the satisfaction of seeing her accept their money.
Anyway, Henry is cutting the pie into wedges, then cutting a second one, serving it with ice-cream. Nelly from over the road always has ice-cream in the freezer and cones in her cupboard, but Mavis can polish off four litres while she watches Play School, so Henry only ever buys it when he’s going to serve it all out. He doesn’t even leave a lick for later and Mavis’s big eyes threaten to murder him because he’s only given her a tiny wedge of pie and a baby dollop of ice-cream.
Lori eats her giant serve slow, dipping from the outside, working in, licking the spoon clean between each dipping while she watches Mavis sling her serve down; she can’t pretend to chew ice-cream.
Tea is poured into a mess of cups and mugs. Martin passes Eva a chipped cup, notices the chip, snatches it back and replaces it with an unchipped mug. He hands the chipped cup to the solicitor, who sees chip, thinks germs, turns the cup, holds it in his left hand and drinks from the unchipped side. Alice pushes her chair back, lights a cigarette just to keep Mavis company, then she’s puffing smoke and drinking her tea, not caring about the crack in her mug one bit, due to her being used to biting heads off dead rats.
The ferret glances at Eva. He’s in shock, shocked silent. It’s plain obvious he just wants to get those papers signed and get the hell out of this place. Henry offers him more tea. No, thank you. He eases his chair back.
Eva glances at her watch. That solicitor is probably charging her by the hour. ‘Well, goodness me. Just look at the time,’ she says. ‘If you could get the papers out now, Mr Watts.’
‘You’re still gullible, Eva, still greedy. Gullibility and greed don’t mix well.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Thanks for bringing them home. You can go now,’ Mavis says, helping herself to one of Lori’s envelopes, ripping it open. There’s a five-dollar note in it. Lori rips the other one open, finds another five, but Eva’s chair is squealing back from the table, her eyes darting to Alice, to the solicitor; their eyes are sort of saying ‘we told you so’.
‘We agreed last night, Mavis.’ Eva lowers her voice. ‘The divorce, and the adoption papers. You said you wanted – ’ She turns to Henry, who is standing behind his chair, swallowing spit. ‘You said you wanted – ’
‘Spit it out. We’ve got no secrets in this house – unlike some.’
And Henry finds his voice. ‘Go outside now, boys. All of you, outside. You can finish the dishes later. Take Alan and Edward with you.’
‘They’re staying right where they are, Henry!’ Mavis stamps her foot and the rafters shake and any termites who might have been thinking of moving in for a quick chew pack their bags and run. The brothers stay and the twins stay.
‘I don’t understand. You said . . . you said, Mavis, you said you’d sign, that you have no desire to disrupt – ’
Lori scoffs the last spoonful of ice-cream, wipes the rim of her plate clean with her finger, her eyes watching the play.
‘I’d be up for child abuse signing those poor little buggers over to you.’
‘She will sign, Eva. You will, Mavis. I’ve got nothing here to offer those boys.’
‘You’ve got me,’ Mavis says. ‘And I’m a lot more than “nothing”, Henry.’
‘They’ll visit us twice a year, Mavis. That’s what we agreed last night. We’ll still watch them grow.’
‘Ah, go outside and sing your bloody love songs to your chooks. You can’t see what’s right in front of your own eyes, for Christ’s sake.’
Mr Watts reaches for his briefcase but Mavis is fast when she wants to be. She pounces on it, tosses it out to the verandah. He and Neil follow his case.
‘We can do a lot for those boys,’ Alice finally breaks her silence, and Mavis turns to her. Almost, but not quite, looks at her.
‘I know exactly what you can do, you bloody old bull
dyke. Exactly. And I know how you do it too. You weren’t invited to my house, now get out of it, and take your girlfriend with you. I wouldn’t trust you pair to raise a Rottweiler with rabies.’
Voices are running together. The brothers move away from the sink, take up positions on the safe side of doors. The twins, who don’t know a thing about survival, have got a chair and they are sticking to it. They look bored, lean heads on hands at the table, see Alice walk away, pleased to walk away. Lori hears the car motor, then the car horn. Beep-beep-beeeep-beep.
‘I’ll pay you fifty thousand. Fifty thousand dollars, Mavis. That will make a lot of difference to your lives. Think of it. Think of your children.’ She’s talking fast now. She’s sounding more normal.
‘It’s too little, too late, you cold-eyed, lying bitch. And I am thinking of my bloody kids. Now get out of my house before I have to throw you out.’
Eva ups the price. It’s like when the house down the street got sold at auction. ‘I’ll give you a cheque in your hand now, Mavis. Sixty-five thousand.’
‘I’m not too sure of the going price of child’s flesh these days, dear. Have you had an appraisal recently?’
Henry is standing there with a saucepan full of hot water, and by the look on his face, he’s thinking of letting Mavis have it. ‘They don’t know us,’ he wails.
‘Then it’s past bloody time they got to know us, isn’t it?’ Mavis roars. She’s getting mad. She’s on her feet and looking for a weapon. ‘And if it hadn’t been for that screwed-up bitch, they would have known us five years ago when we went down there to bring them home. Get her out of here, Henry, before I have to do it myself.’
Eva starts towards the twins. Mavis blocks her with her bulk and Eva backs off.
‘We’re booked into the motel for the night, Henry. We’ll discuss this again in the morning. Come, boys.’
‘They’re staying where they belong. It’s you who is leaving.’
‘Oh, you know me better than that, darling.’ That ‘darling’ sounded like a curse word, but every word coming out of the sisters’ mouths is a curse. ‘You certainly know me better than that.’
Then Mavis is a combine harvester coming to mow Eva down. ‘I know you too bloody well, don’t I? And that’s the trouble. I know you and that old bitch were too money hungry to leave that house and find a bit of bloody pride. I know you hated my guts from the day I was born, too. I know a lot about you, Eva.’ The harvester has picked up a slashing blade from the bench. ‘Get! Before I shove this through the bloody bankbook you call a heart.’
Eva is at the brown curtain. Through it she can see the passage leading to the open front door, but she’s not going anywhere until her possessions are out, and those twins are on the far side of Mavis and her carving knife.
‘You have the audacity to call this hovel a house. Do you really think you can take those boys away from me now, bring them back to this, let them rot here with the rest of you? Dear God. You don’t know me at all, Mave.’
‘Do you want me to tell the kids what I do know?’
‘You’re repulsive. You’re an insult to womanhood. If Mother could see what you’ve come down to, she’d roll over in her grave.’
‘And if it had been up to me, she wouldn’t have had a bloody grave to roll over in. I would have left her to fossilise on the garbage dump like the hard old piece of pill-popping shit she always was. Get out!’
Words are flying backwards and forwards now, words dredged from the past Lori can no longer follow, though she’s trying hard. The twins, fingers jammed into their ears, are looking from Eva to Mavis, from Mavis to Henry. Then the harvester heads for them and they’ve got enough sense to get out of the way. They go under the kitchen table with Neil and Timmy.
It’s a bomb shelter with strong metal legs, a house within a house. It’s spare, unused floor. Lori has done her share of time beneath that table and today looks like a good time to see if she’s still small enough to fit.
Eva’s high-heeled shoes make ground back to the table. They are almost toe to toe with the flattened scuffs. Then they head them off at the pass, giving the twins a clear pathway out the back door.
‘Out to Alice, boys!’ Eva yells. ‘Run for your lives!’
Those twins have been well trained. They make their break for freedom from either side of a table leg. And they’re through the door and running, until one falls over Mick’s bike parts and sprawls on the verandah, lies there and bellows.
‘Help me, someone,’ Mavis yells. She slams Eva against the table, beats her to the door. No one is helping her, so she’s helping herself. She’s slow moving, but if she’s going through a doorway, there is no room for anyone else to get by. And she’s on the verandah, dragging the bawling twin up by his arm; he’s probably split his head open, but she gets his head and his shoulders captured beneath her arm while Eva screams for Alice and the chooks cackle and squawk and Murphy’s dogs over the road want to eat meat but can’t get off their chains to party.
Eva is running down the drive, looking for her reinforcements while the captured twin screams and his other half is bundled head first into the rear seat of the car.
‘Get the other one!’ Mavis yells. All Henry is doing is trying to remove the captured twin from Mavis’s armpit. He might get the body, but he won’t get the head.
‘You can’t do this, Mavis,’ Martin says, goes to assist Henry. She thumps him with her free elbow, curses him and Henry for a pair of blind fools, then heads for the bathroom, dragging the twin with her. It’s got the only door with a key, and she’s in, throwing her weight against that door, she’s turning that key.
Martin and Henry have a go at twin retrieval by trying to go in through the bathroom window. She slams it down, almost takes the first knuckle off Martin’s thumb. He probably won’t be doing any bricklaying for the next week.
Eva is in the drive and she’s bawling but there’s no help to be gained from Alice and the solicitor. They’re in the car and it’s moving, one twin safe in the back seat.
‘Get in, lass. Get in,’ Alice urges.
Is a bird in the hand worth two in the bush? Eva looks at the house, sees, hears bedlam. She cuts her losses and runs after the moving car.
It looks as if one of Henry’s twins has come home.
The Freedom Fighter
No one has cooked any stew. It’s after six o’clock and that twin is still screaming. He’s doing it in the kitchen now because two hours ago Henry and Martin went around to the motel to talk to Eva, so Mavis came out of the bathroom to heat up her chicken and roast potatoes while standing guard over that twin and not letting anyone else in the kitchen. She’s armed with her whip now. No one wants a dose of that so they’re giving her plenty of space.
The twin is under the table again and he’s going to sit there and scream until Eva comes back. He’ll be ten in a few weeks time but you’d think he was about three because he’s wet his funeral pants. No one knows which one he is, either; Mavis couldn’t get his pants off to see if his mole is on the right or left side of his bum. All of the kids are outside, even the little ones. Most of the neighbours are out too, watering their gardens so they can get an earful.
Donny comes home from work around half past six and doesn’t know what’s been going on, but he says that the cops will be coming around here in a minute. He could hear that kid screaming from up at the corner. He’s not treating Mavis as if she’s got the plague, though, so they sort of get their heads together, get her Valium down from the top cupboard over the sink and crush a tablet between two spoons, mix the powder in condensed milk, then Donny grabs the twin from behind, drags him free of table legs and Mavis forces the spoon into his mouth, which isn’t hard to do because it’s sort of open in a never-ending scream. He gags and chokes, but he swallows some of the concoction and ten minutes later he’s zapped. Donny picks him up and they put him into Neil’s bed.
The silence is so good, until Henry and Martin come home and Mavis has to go
in and sit guard on the bed while she feeds Matty. She’s not modest about breast-feeding, but Martin is, because it is a seriously awesome sight – Nelly makes those tents with buttons on the shoulders instead of down the front. Martin waits until she’s buttoned before he tries kidnap. A lot of cruel stuff is being said, but the twin isn’t hearing it; nor is Henry, who is outside rounding up the rest of the kids, except for Greg and Vinnie, who are long gone. He finds Timmy asleep on Nelly’s front lawn and he puts him to bed down one end of the lounge room while Mavis and Martin are still going at it at the other end.
Donny, who has been back to the supermarket for bread and cold meat and stuff, starts making a pile of sandwiches, and saying he’s going to murder Martin if he gets that twin screaming again. He’s been at work all bloody day and he’s come home to bedlam and nothing to eat. And it’s bloody Sunday tomorrow, and Martin might be able to piss off out to his girlfriend’s place but Donny has to work again, so everybody just shut up their yelling and come out and get a sandwich.
‘One way or another I’m taking that poor little bugger around to that motel, and that’s the bloody end of it,’ Martin yells. ‘She can’t do this to a little kid. You can’t do it, Mavis.’
‘I’ve done it, and you as much as touch him, then I’ll do something to you too, you treacherous little swine,’ Mavis yells back. ‘Why didn’t you help me get the other one instead of turning on me, and crawling around that twisted bitch?’
They are screaming across that bed now, but the twin keeps snoring. He’s probably in a drug-induced coma, and it’s a pity someone doesn’t give Mavis a dose of her Valium and put her in a coma for a while. It’s not good for her to get riled up like this, and Martin knows it. Maybe that’s why he gives up, slams the front door and takes off in his ute, screaming the tyres, roaring the guts out of the motor. He’s going out to Karen and the farm to find some bloody sanity. That’s what he yells.