by Joy Dettman
Nelly stares hard at her, like, trying to read behind her eyes. ‘It depends on what you’ve done, doesn’t it? But I’ll accept that, Smithy – just as long as we both know that we’re not as silly as we look, eh?’ Nelly says. ‘Just as long as we both know that.’
Lori is halfway out the door. ‘Ta for everything. For every single thing. For before . . . for feeding us, for looking after the little ones, and for now, for the tents. And one day maybe I’ll tell you all about it. Okay?’
‘I’ll settle for that.’
‘Tomorrow we’ll bring you over some eggs, and Mick’s got onions and carrots too.’
‘You don’t have to, Smithy.’
‘I didn’t ask if I had to, Nelly.’
That night Lori puts a new tent and clean sheets on the windowsill, with soap and a towel, deodorant, a bottle of disinfectant, some air-freshener, and a loo brush. She tosses in the old jacket, which might be better as a cape than that mouldy blanket. The air coming out of that room smells mouldy, worse than when Greg slept in there. They’ve talked about cleaning it up while she’s asleep but it would be too dangerous.
‘You’re the mother, Mavis. You’re the one who is supposed to be clean,’ Lori says. It does no good, but when Eddy delivers the breakfast and medication the next morning, he actually gets the dirty tent flung in his face. It goes straight in the green bin. Then a blast of air-freshener hits Lori when she takes Mavis a salad lunch and two diet crackers – no butter. Her eyes sting for hours, but that night two filthy sheets come out.
That’s good. That’s very good. They go in the laundry, get soaked in bleach until washday.
No one can see any change in Mavis’s brain or her shape. In her new tent she looks twice as big and six times as visible as she looked in her stretchy petticoat tents, but at least the new one is loose and clean and bright.
‘It’s got to be glandular,’ Alan says. ‘She always said it was glandular. And fluid. She always said that.’
Then, on Friday night, Martin turns up. He’s back from his honeymoon and surely it’s not three weeks yet? Maybe he got a brain and left Karen in New Zealand. No one heard his ute, no one saw him walk past the window, heard him climb their gate. He walks in through the back door while they’re eating home brand apple pie and ice-cream.
‘Where is she?’ he says. ‘What did you do with her?’ He’s been talking to Nelly! Or maybe Bert Matthews, like, he thinks she’s dead and they haven’t told anyone. The television is missing. Her couch is missing. ‘What have you done with her, I said?!’ Like what could they have done with her if she’d carked it? Carried her out? Buried her? Hired a forklift and a bobcat digger?
Neil tells him she’s playing grizzly bears, that Eddy is Davy Crockett. He sings the song and dances around the kitchen, and the stupid little coot can sing in tune too. Matty dances with him, tries to sing, his dummy in his mouth, but Martin isn’t waiting around to applaud.
He’s in the front bedroom, he’s checking the bathroom, all the bedrooms, then he comes back, sees the bolt has been slid on the green door and he knows. ‘Oh, Christ,’ he moans, runs to open it, knowing now where they’ve hidden the corpse.
They cower in the kitchen until they hear that bolt slide. Then they hear Mavis, hear that green door slam shut. Eddy pushes by Martin and slides the bolt home.
‘You can’t do that! You stupid pack of half-witted bloody kids. You can’t do that!’ They sort of shrink into themselves, except for Eddy. He’s mentally packing. Martin doesn’t open the door, though. He comes back to the kitchen, walks in circles for a bit then sits down, shakes his head, keeps shaking it. ‘You can’t do it, I tell you. It’s illegal.’
‘You sound like Henry doing his illegal. You didn’t take any notice of his illegal when you were building that room,’ Lori says.
‘You can’t do it!’
‘Shut up saying that. And we’ve already done it and we are not undoing it, and who else came up with a better idea?’
‘Shit,’ he says, then he’s quiet for a long, long time. Mavis isn’t. She’s thumping that door again, turning the air blue again. ‘Are you feeding her?’
‘Of course we’re feeding her. What do you think we are? She usually gets a thousand calories, most days,’ Lori says. She’s not familiar with kilojoules; the diet book is old, printed in the calorie days.
‘She looks as if she’s dropped a ton,’ Martin says, sort of quiet, sort of head-shaking quiet.
‘She’s got rid of some of her fluid, that’s all.’
‘She’s dropped a ton. You can see it on her neck. On her chin. She’s got one. You can see it on her arms, her feet. See it all over.’
‘We can’t see anything.’
‘What are you feeding her?’
‘We’ve got a diet book, and we go by what it says to do each day. It’s for two weeks, so when we get to the end, we start back at the beginning again,’ Alan says.
‘And they make her have celery, and she don’t like it, and I don’t like it too,’ Neil says.
‘It’s good for you. It’s full of roughage, and you eat it every night in stews and you don’t know it, and get away from that cornflakes packet or we’ll put you through Mavis’s window the next time we feed her,’ Lori says.
Martin is leaning, elbows on the table, head shaking, while he stares at the green door. Alan gets out the new family bible they’ve stuck together with sticky tape and tries to show him the fortnight diet plan.
‘We give her everything that’s on it, mostly, so if it’s in the book, it can’t do her any harm, can it?’
‘Harm? She’s dropped a ton. She looked like death warmed up the last night I saw her. Her feet were footballs. She could hardly move the last time I saw her, but when she saw me just now, she moved all right.’ His head is still shaking from side to side and he’s still staring at that door. ‘She got up from that couch like I haven’t seen her get up from that couch in months. Shit!’
‘She looks the same to us – except her feet – except the way she gets up.’
‘You’re looking at her every day. I haven’t seen her in weeks. How come she hasn’t knocked that door off?’ Mavis is still thumping it.
‘She’s not this bad all the time. She’s due for her pills.’
‘She’s taking her pills?’ Martin has been around this place when Henry tried to get Mavis to take her pills. He’s not understanding.
‘We give them to her in her food,’ Lori says. ‘And we’re going to run out – ’
‘What?’
‘We’re going to run out of Aropax soon and we ought to get some of the Valium prescriptions filled too. We’re going through an awful lot of it.’
‘You crazy little shits. You can’t go around locking people up, drugging people’s food with Valium.’
‘Don’t you start that again, Martin. Anyway, the doctor said she had to take – ’
‘He didn’t say to lock her up and feed her the bloody pills in her bloody food, you mob of stupid little buggers!’
‘Eddy done it,’ Neil says.
‘We all did it. And keep your voice down.’ Lori climbs up on a chair, drags down the pile of dusty scripts. ‘The doctor didn’t write out all this stuff for the flies to use as loo paper. He’s a doctor and he’s supposed to know what he’s doing. And we know what we’re doing and we’re doing it the only way we can because nobody else is doing any bloody thing at all, are they? Except talk about putting us in homes and letting her die.’
‘I bet he doesn’t bloody well know how you’re doing it.’
‘Someone had to do something. You just ran off and married stuck-up Karen, who we’re not good enough for.’ Lori has got the scripts on the table and Mick is sorting through them, finding Valium that might not be out of date, placing the silverfish-nibbled ones to the side. He finds an Aropax with a heap of repeats and he hands one of each to Martin, who sort of looks at Mick, looks at Lori, runs his fingers through his hair.
‘You can’t d
o this, Splinter.’
‘You said she looks better. We’re trying to save her life, and we’re not asking you to do anything except get some prescriptions filled. What’s illegal about that?’
‘I’m not getting involved, that’s what.’
‘You can get pills for your own housebound mother!’ She’s not going to listen to him ever again. He left everyone for bloody Karen, and now he’s got a wife who is too good to even bring around to this dump for a visit – not that Lori wants her to visit, not that she wants anyone to visit, not right now, but she could have before. The prescriptions are on the table, she pushes them at him. ‘Get the Aropax. And this one is her fluid pills. This one is the Valium. Her pension number is already on . . . on the Aropax. That one. See?’
‘How long have you had her in there?’
‘Since I came home the second time,’ Eddy says.
‘And she’s staying in there until she’s small enough to get out the window,’ Jamesy adds.
‘Or until someone makes us let her out – and it’s not going to be you.’ Lori’s eyes have got that brick wall look. Martin can’t hold them. He looks back to the green door, shakes his head.
‘She was killing herself with cigarettes and food. Everyone could see it,’ Mick says. ‘The last time the men came to get her on her feet, the doctor said she’d probably had a heart attack and the next one would kill her.’
‘And what were you planning to do with us when she was dead?’ Lori adds. ‘As if we don’t know.’
Martin looks from Mick’s quiet eyes to the brick wall eyes of this sister, that half wild little skin-headed bugger who has gone and turned into something else while he wasn’t watching. He shakes his head, takes the scripts and puts them in his pocket. He takes out a fifty. Offers it to Lori, or Mick.
‘We don’t need your money.’
‘Since we stopped her smoking, we’ve got pots of it,’ Jamesy says.
‘Shii-iit!’ Martin sounds just like Eddy. ‘Shiiiiit.’ He’s still offering the fifty, so Eddy takes it.
‘So, how much weight do you think she’s lost?’
‘Christ knows.’
‘What did she used to weigh?’ Eddy is folding the note, long and slim. Lori thinks he’s going to put it in his pocket but he reaches for the ex cigarette money jar and slides it in with the other fifties.
Martin is watching him, staring at the jar. ‘She reckoned she was close to thirty stone once, I know that much. I think that was before Timmy was born – or Neil. It was probably Neil. God knows what she was that last time I saw her. God knows. Thirty-five – forty.’
‘What’s that in kilograms?’
‘Multiply it by seven then take away a bit,’ Alan says.
‘Shiiiiit,’ Martin says.
‘If a person who is, say, eighty kilograms can expect to lose half a kilo a week on a thousand calories a day, like it says in the book, then a person who weighs three times as much is going to lose three times as much each week, isn’t she?’ Alan says.
‘Shii-iit.’ Martin shakes his head.
‘Stop saying that. We’re trying to teach Neil not to swear. He’s getting into awful strife with his swearing and pulling faces at everybody at school. We got a letter for Mavis again this week.’ Lori takes the cornflakes packet from Neil, pushes it back into the hole in the wall, sticky-tapes it in so the little ones can’t make that hole through to Mick’s room any bigger than they’ve already made it. All the little kids do it. They miss their television.
‘Christ!’ Martin says.
‘Is Christ good to say at my teacher?’ Neil asks.
Emotional Blackmail
Mavis
Your cruelty knows no boundaries. From the day of your birth you have caused nothing but grief. And after all the pain, the sorrow, you now choose to use those boys as weapons against me. If you think I will respond to this emotional blackmail with offers of money, then you are wrong. This time I intend taking it to the courts, and there is not a court in the land that will force those boys to share your squalor.
Sincerely,
Eva
For once in her life Mavis is innocent, but she doesn’t get to read Eva’s letter. She’s been in lock-down mode since mid March and now it’s late May, when the seasons do their annual swap-over.
It’s raining cats and dogs the night Donny calls in. He wouldn’t believe it when Martin told him what they’d done so he’s got to see it for himself. He comes to the front door, finds it locked, knocks, yells at the lounge-room window, so they let him in and he looks a bit out of place. He’s grown thicker around the shoulders, his hair is longer and he’s wearing a pigskin suede black jacket. Also, he drove up in a near new car.
‘Look what the cat dragged in,’ Lori says.
‘You’re thinner than her, Splint, but you’re still a chip off the old block.’ And he’s still pretty much the same even if he does look different. He sits with them in the kitchen and tells them about Martin’s wedding, but mainly about a bridesmaid called Jackie, and maybe they know why he’s looking so pleased with himself. He doesn’t talk about Mavis, but he has a quick peep through the window when they give her the medicated cocoa and a diet cracker for supper. She doesn’t see him, and he doesn’t tell the kids that what they’re doing is illegal either. It’s a while since he’s seen her but he doesn’t say she’s dropped a ton, which is a bit disappointing.
Then he’s leaving and he asks if they need anything, offers money. Eddy exchanges the money for a Valium prescription.
Donny isn’t too sure about this kid who looks like Alan but isn’t Alan. ‘Better if you get them done in town, Splint. Use that money to pay for them.’
‘We’ve already got Martin to get a heap filled here. They are getting out of date.’
‘They mightn’t do them in Albury.’
‘Tell them your mother is staying with you for a week and she forgot her pills and she found these old scripts in her purse,’ Eddy says, putting the fifty in the cigarette money jar. He’s money hungry and he’s got an answer for everything; he’d make a good politician, Lori thinks. Edward Smyth-Owen, MP.
‘They’ll think I’m a druggie, that I pinched her prescription.’
‘Not if you dress like that, they won’t. Druggies can’t afford two-hundred-dollar jackets,’ Eddy says, quick as a wink.
Donny looks at his jacket, looks guilty, then leaves the way he came. But he comes back a week later, still wearing his jacket and loaded down with supermarket bags, as well as a packet of Valium. He also brings a set of dusty bathroom scales – and what the hell does he think they’re going to do with them? Ask Mavis to hop on, please?
‘She’s not talking to us. We don’t go near her. What are they supposed to be for?’
‘My mate’s mother was chucking them out – ’
‘So you thought we could give them to Mavis so she could chuck them at us,’ Jamesy says while Lori unpacks tins of food, which were probably also being chucked out. Mick is playing with the scales, turning the button on the end. ‘They only go up to a hundred and forty kilograms,’ he says.
‘Scales go around twice, don’t they?’ Donny claims them, steps on, almost gets to seventy. Eddy stands on Donny’s feet, and they clinch, Alan climbs on Donny’s back while Eddy hangs in there, and maybe it skips over the ‘140’ before the boys fall in a heap.
‘You’ll end up as tall as her,’ Donny says. ‘You’re getting to look like her too, Splint, now that you’ve got a bit of hair.’
‘Go ahead, make my day, Quack-quack.’
They laugh. Even Donny laughs. He was always Quack-quack, like Mick was Pullit, and Jamesy was Gnome Face. They can remember. Martin . . . well, it started with an F and it rhymed with Martin. Vinnie was Moron. Greg? No one ever bothered to give Greg a nickname – other than ‘mummy’s boy’, which he was.
They sit then, eat popcorn – Eddy is a whiz at making popcorn – and they talk about the old days, get to talking about Henry and his potting s
hed, his nightly songs.
‘Could he really sing?’ Eddy asks. They look at him with disdain, like he’s got the stinking audacity to question some precious God-given fact.
‘Of course he could sing. He was better than those three tenors put together,’ Lori says, and Eddy nods, goes quiet for a bit then gets up and goes to the shower. He stays in there until Donny has to leave.
Dear Mavis,
A long time ago I gave up expecting any form of common decency from a slut who spread her legs for anything in pants. I gave up expecting that you may still have an ounce of humanity in your heart, however I did expect a reply to my letter and a figure I can work with.
How much longer do you intend disrupting my life and the lives of those boys? Have you any comprehension of the emotional damage you are causing me? As if you care. As if for one moment you ever considered the damage your actions caused this family.
You have not previously been backward in coming forward with your demands for money. How much do you want, Mavis? Put a price on the lives of those boys and let me buy them out of purgatory.
Please reply.
Eva
Mavis doesn’t reply, doesn’t know she’s supposed to reply, though if she saw that letter she might like to reply and name her own price.
So life goes on and it’s so good, it’s frightening.
Donny pops in some Sunday nights and he always brings his supermarket bags full of food, and most Fridays they meet Martin at McDonald’s. He won’t come near the house now, won’t set foot in Dawson Street, probably won’t even drive over the railway line, due to he’s petrified that someone is going to find out about Mavis and he’ll end up in jail, and his father-in-law, who is a hard-headed, silly old bugger, so Martin says, will have his guts for gaiters. He buys them dinner on Friday nights and always gives them fifty for their jar. He’s making piles of money and he’s got nothing to spend it on, except a new ute, but he pure refuses to get rid of his old one, due to his father-in-law keeps on nagging him to get rid of it.