by Joy Dettman
There aren’t enough intact sheets to go around. Lori raids what the glass man left in the ex cigarette jam jar and she rides up to Kmart, buys a few cheap sheets, while Alan takes over the mop. He’s mopping the bunk room walls now, spraying them with Mr Muscle then slopping water everywhere, but the vinyl wallpaper is coming clean. The blankets, that also came clean, are not drying.
Eddy has got his almost brand-new feather doona, Lori has been using Mavis and Henry’s new doona – she’s been using their bed since Mavis moved out back, though she’s never washed that doona cover before. It sort of changes colour. Dirt is funny stuff. You forget about the colour of it when life revolves around finding enough food, but the house isn’t dirty now and it’s starting to smell different; wet, but different. It looks more than different, like Lori’s room actually looks good; it’s got decent curtains and carpet. Kids were not allowed to play in this room in the old days, so it survived. The lower half of the walls are brown panelling and above the panelling there’s a textured pinkish beige wallpaper. Once the bed is made and the dust swept off the dressing table, the room looks like a real bedroom.
‘It makes our room look like crap,’ Eddy says. ‘We need doonas and covers. Blue ones.’
‘We need a million dollars too.’
‘They’ve got doonas at Kmart for twenty-something dollars each. I saw them in the junk mail. Pitch those blankets in the green bin, and the pillows.’
Lori is out at the clothesline, wringing water out of the ends of the blankets, and she’s still doing it when it’s time to pick Neil up from school, but no matter how much she wrings out, the blankets look wetter. No one is going to be using those blankets for, like, days. Alan collects Neil and Lori grabs the bankcard; she and Eddy go to Kmart, toss five single-bed doonas into a trolley, then Eddy tosses in four navy blue sheets to use for bedspreads, and he’s not putting them back.
‘Mick can have my doona and cover.’
Mean gets to be a habit but Lori is breaking that habit today. She picks up two green sheets for Timmy and Neil’s beds, tosses them in. They are working in fast motion, thinking fast, paying fast with the card, but riding home slow like a pair of pack mules.
Matty still sleeps in the cot. Because cot blankets are smaller, no one used his spares. They dig out two clean ones from the linen cupboard and that’s about all it’s got in it. Everything else is on the clothesline.
‘Tomorrow we go to school because those sticky-nosed buggers will probably check out the schools before they come to check us out here.’
Doing an Eva
It’s Wednesday, and Eddy has disappeared. He was there for breakfast and now he’s gone. It’s Alan’s turn to go to school, and as sure as hell, Eddy hasn’t decided to do a swap. Then Lori looks for the bankcard that lives in her purse, which she left on the kitchen table. It’s not there, nor is the old withdrawal form for two hundred dollars.
‘He’s taken off with my card and licence.’
‘He’s doing an Eva – gone spending mad,’ Alan adds. ‘That’s what she does sometimes, and once she starts, she can’t stop. Alice has to hide her cards until she gets over it. Eddy used to be as bad as her in Melbourne . . . sort of spending addicts.’
They wait for Eddy to come back, they stand out front and watch for him, and for strange cars that might be the department people, then Alan gets on Jamesy’s bike and rides off to find his twin, who has probably cashed that withdrawal slip so he can buy a computer – or he’s paid in Eva’s cheque for that Tasmanian school camp.
‘Kill him if you find him,’ Lori says. ‘Murder the moron.’
Minutes later they both turn up, one bike looking like a loaded camel. Eddy has bought a dozen pillowslips and six pillows and they are strapped onto the carry seat of Lori’s bike. She’s relieved it’s not a computer, but he’s not going to see that she’s relieved. ‘We didn’t need them,’ she yells.
‘Of course we needed them.’
Nelly is out at her front gate, staring hard, both twins are out and Eddy’s not wearing his disguise. Lori waves, runs inside, Eddy behind her. He tosses the card onto the table, and the bank withdrawal licence. ‘It’s only a loan. I’ll pay you back when I get my money.’
‘We’ve got a million pillows, you moron.’
‘They died of old age a hundred years ago. They’re hard as bricks and they stink. The pension is due again and you’re too mean to spit, Lori.’
‘Yeah, well you’re a bloody spending addict like Eva, and we don’t need her in this house. We’ve spent too much money already. And you give me that cheque that you’re still carrying around, you money-hungry moron. You give it to me now!’
‘I won’t, you bossy bitch. You think you’re God come back as a female. If you were two hundred kilograms heavier, you’d be as bad as Mavis.’
Stress. They are all stressed. They’re all standing there wide eyed and worried. This is their first real killer argument. Lori and Eddy are yelling true and not so true stuff, but it’s the true bits that hurt most.
Lori stops yelling first. Someone has to stop first and Mick wants her to stop. She walks over to the mound of new plastic-wrapped pillows now tossed onto the kitchen floor and she picks one up, belts Eddy over the head with it. He falls down, pretends he’s dead.
Then it’s all right again, because he’s only dead until Lori turns her back, then he’s up and he’s grabbed a pillow. He belts her with it. Then everyone has got a pillow and everyone is belting everyone else and Neil has got the old pillow from his bed. He tries to belt Timmy with it and all the stuffing falls out.
Of course the old pillows are dead. Everyone knew it, it was just that Eddy saw it. They are laughing, ripping off plastic and chucking it. There’s plastic everywhere, and a mound of pillows and pillowslips that the little kids start rolling on.
‘Grab that plastic before one of them suffocates himself,’ Lori says.
No one goes to school. It’s far too late. They put the television on and sit the little ones in front of it, and there’s stereo kids’ shows, one from the brick room, the other from the kitchen where Eddy is belting out two notes for the schools on Henry’s typewriter.
Everyone has got the flu, except Alan and Neil, who had to do some shopping for their mother this morning, the note says. Those two are going to school at lunchtime and they’ll take the notes. Mick signs them. M J Smyth-Owen.
That night they’re too tired to lift their baked beans to their mouths. They’ve been washing walls and doors and the bathroom. They feed Mavis half a tin of baked beans and six diet crackers, which is what she had for dinner last night. She screams at them and keeps it up until Eddy makes her a Valium custard.
So tired. Legs tired, arms tired, backs that want to hit their clean new beds.
But who will dare to crawl into these beds? The new pillows, new pillowslips, the sheet bedcovers all tucked in tight, even on the bottom bunk bed which no one uses. That room looks like it’s never looked in its entire life. Its walls were covered with blue striped vinyl wallpaper the same year Henry bought the second set of bunks, and it must have been tough as nails because it’s only ripped a bit behind the bunks. The floor is bare boards, and with all the water and Mr Muscle Alan has been sloshing around, they came clean. And the fireplace has got a nice mantelpiece, which Alan also cleaned with the mop. They wish they had curtains now, but they’ve spent too much. The window only looks out onto the verandah and fence, and to the bush over the road; no one can see in, and they wouldn’t see much if they did climb on the fence because the bottom window hasn’t been washed in umpteen years and the new one up top is still smeary with putty from the glass man.
‘Woe betides anyone who doesn’t hang their stuff in that wardrobe,’ Eddy warns. ‘Woe betides anyone who doesn’t use the drawers, who knocks my stuff on the floor, who pinches my socks, leaves one pair of underdaks on the floor. Woe betides anyone who doesn’t make his bed properly every morning.’
Jamesy names him Woebet
ides.
Everyone is falling down tired, so pure proud of themselves, laughing tired. They’ve got this house looking as good as when Henry was alive. They’ve got it looking better!
But it’s going to end. Those sticky-nosed buggers will walk into this place and let Mavis out and it will probably make the newspapers, like DEMON CHILDREN LOCK UP MOTHER. GO ON SPENDING SPREE WITH HER BANKCARD.
No one will see that it was the locking up, and the feeding her pills, and that diet book, that kept her alive. No one will know that she’s maybe a bit more sane than she was, due to the locking up. They’ll open that green door, Eddy will go home and Mavis will continue her self-destruction party. The first thing she’ll do is get herself another chequebook and a new mobile phone, then she’ll start stuffing and the kids will start starving. She’s more agile now. She’ll be more dangerous.
‘We just have to sweat it out, Lori,’ Eddy says, like he’s reading her mind.
Maybe that’s why she doesn’t think too much these days, because that crazy idiot always seems to read her mind. It has got to be something about life force, like all family heads being wired into some central core.
‘Thursday tomorrow. They’ll be here for sure.’
‘So you lot go to school and when they get here, I’ll tell them I had to lock her in because she told us to lock her in when she’s having a panic attack, and that she’s only been in there an hour. They can’t do anything to me. I’ll just go back to St Kilda for a while.’
He didn’t say go home. He didn’t say, I’ll go home to Mum.
He won’t go. He’s hung all his clothes in the wardrobe and shoved the case under the bottom bunk. He won’t leave now – or not until they all have to leave.
The Final Day
No sign of the enemy on Thursday and now it’s Friday, and maybe the department mob have forgotten about their house call, or they’ve got the flu. Please, God, let them all have pneumonia.
It’s Eva’s money-in-the-bank day and Eddy wants it. The kids are over their pretend flu and gone to school when Eddy locks the front door, dons his disguise and lifts the two little ones over the side fence. If anyone comes while he’s gone, if they climb the gate and slide the bolt on the green door, then too bad; there are things he needs to buy.
They don’t get around the back, but Mick finds their card in the letterbox that afternoon, and later on they find Matty sucking on another one that must have been poked under the locked front door.
‘Back Saturday morning’ they both say. So they do work at weekends.
One more night to scare the little ones into silence. One more night to scrape down cobwebs and wash windows, clean the bath and basin, wash the floors again.
‘Wipe your feet on Eddy’s new mat before you come inside, I said. Do you want that emergency care lady to get you again?’
‘Dow,’ Matty replies, but Neil is not too sure. He’s into new experiences.
‘Brush that soot off the stove, Mick.’
‘Whose underdaks are these? Who left them on the bathroom floor? What do you think my new laundry basket is for? Decoration?’
They are the army of the little people, digging in for battle, determined to survive the adult attack. While a pasta stew is cooking, half of the kids are inside hitting the windows with Windex and old rags while the other half work outside with hose, broom, bucket of water and dishwashing detergent, and by six o’clock you can see through the windows for the first time in fourteen years, so they hang the two navy blue sheets Eddy bought for curtains, and the bunk room smells like a material shop.
Mavis’s room smells like a cross between a public loo, a budgie cage and a mouldy sweat factory. It’s disgusting and Mavis looks disgusting. The kids stand at her window when they deliver her dinner – a pile of cabbage, carrot and broccoli, with a taste of pasta stew poured over it. She hates cabbage and broccoli, but that’s all she’s getting. Just looking at her, listening to her tonight, makes them know their work has all been in vain.
‘Your mouth is as disgusting as this room, Mavis. Clean it up and we’ll give you a packet of chewing gum to clean your mouth,’ Lori tries.
Mavis has never been into cleaning, and her language isn’t fit for general exhibition, so they take the little kids inside and put them in the bath because they sure aren’t getting into those clean beds with dirty feet.
They are studying Mavis again at eight and she hasn’t had any Valium since midday so she doesn’t like being studied. They gave her a loo brush, months back, which has never been used for its intended purpose. They’ve given her deodorant soap and roll-on deodorant and deodorant powder and cans of air-freshener, which are her favourite weapons.
‘So we open the door tomorrow and we all take off and leave her to it.’
‘And where do we sleep tomorrow night?’
‘What if we don’t give her any Valium tonight, then give her a double dose in the morning before they come?’ Eddy says.
‘Like, wear her out, then zap her hard,’ Jamesy says.
It might work. When she sleeps, she sleeps heavy.
She’s sitting on the couch when they pass her coffee through the window, strong coffee, which is supposed to keep people awake. The couch looks putrid and so does she, like her hair hasn’t been washed in weeks, and probably not combed in days. She’s got combs, she’s got her hairbrush. They bought a baby’s bath at the market three weeks back, and maybe it’s about big enough for her to get her feet in, though her feet don’t look as if they’ve ever been in it. They gave her the hand shower attachment Henry used when he showered her and she hasn’t used that either, except as a whip which she aims at heads through the window. She could have connected it to the taps, could have had a fast shower if she’d wanted to. The walls are brick and the floor only cement. It would dry. She’s got towels, got a bottle of shampoo.
‘We’ll give her another coffee before we go to bed and something to eat, like biscuits.’
‘Popcorn has got less calories.’
‘Who cares about calories? She won’t when she gets out tomorrow. Give her a packet of chocolate biscuits.’
Lori makes the second strong coffee at midnight. She gives her four chocolate biscuits – and a brand-new tent with long sleeves. She made it, and it took more than an hour to make, too – it took from half-past eight to half-past eleven, but she had to do something to keep herself awake so she could make that coffee to keep Mavis awake.
Mavis sure looks tired. She’s sitting on the couch yawning, but she comes for the coffee and stares at the biscuits. ‘What’s going on?’ she says, and it’s the first normal sentence she’s said since she’s been in there.
‘I’ve been making you a winter dress,’ Lori yawns.
It’s floral windcheater material, bought at the market weeks back, brownish with big orange flowers and green leaves all over it, but it was cheap and extra wide, so tonight Lori experimented, tried to make long sleeves by curving the sides a bit beneath the armholes. She couldn’t make buttonholes on the shoulder, so she recycled a long zip fastener from an old windcheater, stitched it in from neck to navel, and broke two needles doing it too.
Mavis doesn’t even look at the dress. She’s too busy chomping on her biscuits. Lori stands at the window, watching her chomp.
‘Open that bloody door,’ Mavis says.
‘Have a wash, why don’t you? You look filthy,’ Lori says. ‘And wash your hair too. You’ve probably got nits.’ Shouldn’t have said that, but what’s the use anyway? What was the use of nearly killing her neck to make that dress? No use.
So tired. Everything is aching and everyone else has been in bed for hours. That’s where she’s going too. Mick removed the globe from his light before he went to bed; they intend leaving Mavis’s light turned on all night. It might help to keep her awake.
The morning actually comes before Lori closes her eyes, and that might sound stupid but it seems true. And . . . and Mavis is wearing her new tent!
It l
ooks like a second skin, stretched to fit. It looks seriously atrocious. Like it shapes all of her bulges instead of skimming them and it reaches down to the floor so it’s tight at her ankles too; it hobbles her. But it sure makes you see that she’s thinner! And how the hell she wriggled into it, God only knows. And how she didn’t pinch her stomach to death doing up that zipper, who knows? She’s sort of sitting like a trussed-up giant turkey on the couch, sort of nodding, the television playing some slam-bang-whiz kids’ cartoon show. She sees the kids at the window and wakes up enough to do the usual.
They wait, clock-watching and keeping an eye on that window, refusing to let her go to sleep.
Then it’s nine o’clock.
‘All systems go,’ Eddy says and they pass in a highly medicated cocoa, two slices of toast with butter, apricot jam and Aropax. She’s tired, but she sort of hobbles over to claim her breakfast and eats the lot standing up, which is probably easier than sitting down. Then fifteen minutes after the last slurp of cocoa, she’s flaked on her bed doing her chain-saw imitation.
Fast then, they are in the brick room, sweeping, washing, tacking a scrap of leftover white lace curtain at the window, tacking shade cloth on the outside, tacking the old brown curtain to the brick room ceiling so it hangs in front of the illegal loo, working fast, working quiet, while Jamesy stands guard at the door, ready to shoot the bolt and lock the kids in with her if she moves. They’ll go out the window. They’ll get Mick out somehow.
All that tacking makes Mavis’s eyes flutter, otherwise she’s not moving, and as soon as they stop with their tacking, she starts her chain-sawing snore, sounding just like when Bert Matthews prunes his apple trees.