by Joy Dettman
‘When he was happy,’ Lori adds. He looks happy, looks so young and . . . and like the whole world belongs to him.
‘If we want pictures on the walls, we should get these copied,’ Alan says. ‘They can make copies of old photographs. I saw some before and afters in that photo shop window.’
‘It would cost a fortune.’
‘Probably no more than a carton of cigarettes used to cost. We can afford to have our own face looking down at us instead of that hard old dame’s. She spoils the frame,’ Alan says. ‘What’s the use of hanging up other people’s ancestors?’
Our own face? He can’t mean Mavis’s face, he must mean Henry’s, Lori thinks. He’s looking at both.
They sit on, and decide which one they’ll have – if it doesn’t cost too much. Lori says she wants Henry – though she’d like to give her vote to Mavis; it’s a gorgeous photo. She always thought it was one of Henry’s old girlfriends, always used to wish that he’d married her. And he did – sort of.
‘They must have looked good together when they were young,’ Eddy says. ‘If I had my computer and scanner I could make those two photos into one.’
‘You haven’t got your computer and Mavis probably wasn’t even born when that photo of Henry was taken. Eva is fourteen years older than her and Henry was twenty years older.’
‘What was she doing nicking off with him for? He was old enough to be her father.’
‘Maybe she had a father fixation,’ Lori says.
They talk frame costs, and Mick, who is on day-watch duty tomorrow and Tuesday, says he’ll go and check out how much two photos and one frame would cost, and see if the shop can put one of the photos in the old dame’s frame. With Eddy starting full-time school, they plan to each take two sick days per fortnight to do day-watch, but not the same days each fortnight, just in case the school starts to smell a rat.
Jamesy makes cocoa all round and he drops off a mug at Mavis’s window, plus two diet crackers with Vegemite. No Valium. They are going to have to cut her off Valium or ring up Martin, get him to phone the doctor and see if he’ll give them another prescription – or try to get Donny to go to the doctor and cry nerves.
‘We’ll have to move the television in here,’ Jamesy says.
‘If the little kids are watching television in here the suite will get wrecked.’ This room sort of belongs to Eddy. He created it, so they agree that the television can stay in the kitchen. ‘Next time those social workers come, we’ll sit them down in here and give them a cup of tea,’ he says.
They laugh, picture it. Picture a coffee table. They’ll have to get a coffee table like Nelly’s, and a small plastic lacy cloth to hang diagonally over it.
Eddy starts playing the welfare dame, Henry’s old reading glasses perched on his nose, then Jamesy takes off the man, keeps lifting his eyebrows. The two of them get a real act going. ‘Mmm. We’re here for another visit, Mrs Smyth-Owen. I’ve brought along the “Mother of the Year” medal for you. Mmm. Oh my, but haven’t you got the lounge room looking just lov-er-ly. Oh, what a lov-er-ly warm fire, and what’s that stink?’
‘Mmm. What stink? Oh, you mean the O-Cedar oil.’
‘Mmm. Marvellous stuff. Have you tried bathing the children in it, Mrs Smyth-Owen? Wonderful stuff. It kills head lice and foot odour with one application.’ Eddy warms his hands, then dusts a chair with a tea towel before he sits down, the towel over his shoulders, his arms folded and holding that tea towel close, like the lady was wearing her jacket over her shoulders that day and sort of hugging it close. They are great actors. They ape the duo’s expressions, and the audience love it. They are laughing fit to choke, which only makes Eddy and Jamesy go at it harder. It’s better than television.
They want Alan to play Mavis, accept the medal, but Alan is sitting back, content to be entertained. He’s quieter than his twin and it’s plain obvious that he still believes in miracles. ‘We can have our own face on the wall,’ he said. He was looking at the photo of Mavis, all right. It’s like he looks on her as their own now.
Eddy tries to make Lori play Mavis, but her mind has been away, sort of saying over and over, our own face, our own face.
‘Nick off, moron,’ she says.
Eddy weaves it into his act, so that all Lori has to say is some insult and Eddy makes it sound as if she’s doing a Mavis. They are choking with laughter, and Lori is getting more inventive, getting caught up in his game.
‘Shush,’ Alan says. ‘I think I heard her laugh.’
‘You’re dreaming,’ Lori says, but they shush for a long time; they hear the wind and the old house creaking and groaning, like it knows it’s lost its chance to fall down, like it knows it’s going to have to stand up for maybe a few years more. They hear Spud Murphy’s dogs barking and the television in the brick room blaring.
Then that laugh again.
They haven’t heard Mavis laugh since she laughed at Henry that Christmas Day. They listen, hope it was her. Probably only the television. They wish she was thin, and back to beautiful like she was in the photograph – which would be twice as gorgeous as Wendy Johnson’s mother. They wish Mavis was sitting in the new lounge room, laughing with them. The room is silent and all eyes stare at the fire or at the hard-faced dame above the fire and Lori’s mind wanders far away.
She’s looking at the photographs of her English grandparents. They are just people, strangers. There is nothing of them in her, not her eyes, not her mouth, not her hair, or her body. There is no more of her in them than in that old dame on the wall, but she could see there was a bit of seventeen-year-old Mavis in her – the curly hair, the hands, the eyes, a bit of the chin.
You can’t borrow ancestors. You can’t make yourself look like them. Okay, you can learn new ways from borrowed ancestors, maybe better ways, you can learn to speak like them, but you can’t be of them. She thinks of Henry. He was like a shadow that came out of nowhere, came out of Lily and a boy called Henry. Just a shape of life, floating on air. His borrowed family caught that shadow, tied it down and kept it safe; they gave Henry their name, left him their money and their photographs when they died, but it was like they’d taken his . . . his moorings with them when they died, like he had nothing to hold on to except a borrowed name, so he just floated away again.
She springs upright in her chair and stares at the dame on the wall, suddenly understanding why Aborigines, raised by white people, need to go back and find their own. It doesn’t matter if they were actually stolen from their mother’s breasts or just given away by their mothers, and it doesn’t matter if the white people who looked after them were good, bad or indifferent, because it’s not about that.
It’s about the life-force elastic connecting people back to someone they know they belong to. Someone of their own. So some of them had more European ancestors than Aboriginal, but like poor little child Henry, most of those European ancestors didn’t hang around long enough to even see the babies they left behind. Everyone needs someone of their own to cling to, even if it’s only one of your own people’s faces looking down at you from a wall. If Henry had had a photo of Mary or old Woden the Indian, or fourteen-year-old Lily or even the boy called Henry, he would have known there was some life-force thing that went back, and back, and back forever. He wouldn’t have given up and killed himself, because if elastic stretches back then it has to go forward too, right?
She looks at Eddy. He’s holding the photo of Henry, sort of staring at it, like he doesn’t like it, or maybe he likes it too much. Yeah, for sure he likes it too much because his eyes haven’t got that smartarse look in them. They look sort of big and sad.
Family. That’s all there is.
Lori hasn’t done a whole heap of thinking lately – hasn’t been game to think much further than the next day, the next week – due to Mavis. Sooner or later someone will make them open that door and let her out. Then this room and everything else will all go to hell.
Big always rules small, like, size is power. Small
countries get taken over by the army of big countries, who kill the people, wreck everything then set up that country the way they want it. The little people lose their houses and half of them starve until the aid workers come in to feed them and give them tents. How do you control big countries if you are a small country? How do you make a world change when you can’t make people change their socks? How do you stop Mavis’s eating unless you lock her away from food?
You can’t.
So why is Martin so paranoid-crazy about her being locked in?
Because it’s illegal, and why it is illegal is because everyone in this world today is supposed to be equal and, like, have equal rights, prisoners who murder people, even, and crazy people, everyone is equal. And how can kids believe that crap, when the whole world is in-your-face unequal? Like all of those parliament guys getting to fly overseas every week or two and not paying one cent of their own money to do it, and poor Henry, always dreaming of flying home to his England and never getting to do it. That’s not equal. And it’s not fair.
And allowing a person to kill themselves with food if they want to, due to equal rights, is also crap. That’s like a country attacking itself, like civil war, and no one sending in their army to stop them.
Getting away to the river by herself to do some hard thinking used to make Lori happy, but her thinking tonight is making her feel sort of sad, sort of hopeless sad, like how can anyone ever hope to fix up this stupid world? Probably, each person just has to try to fix up the bit of it that belongs to him and let the rest go to hell if it wants to.
She shrugs, sniffs in a big whiff of O-Cedar oil and wet couch and woodsmoke. They are good smells. Eddy sure fixed up this part of his world. And he fixed up the boys’ feet – as soon as Lori starts to even think she smells dead socks, she mixes up a brew of Condy’s crystals and makes the one with the diseased feet soak them, makes them spray the insides of their shoes with vinegar. She takes control before the bacteria get control.
Henry knew pretty much everything. He must have bought those Condy’s crystals, yet he didn’t use them. Why? Because he was only a shadow and a shadow just floats where it is taken, sort of stuck to the feet of the one who is taking it. Lori is not a shadow. Vinnie was; he went wherever he was taken, just clinging, becoming the shape of the one he was with.
Mavis is not a shadow.
Lori looks at the window. Dark out tonight. Late now. Who is Vinnie clinging to tonight? She takes a deep breath, doesn’t really want to think about that. Her eyes wander the rotting curtains, seeking a safe place for her mind to go. Those old curtains will have to stay up for a while because the roll of curtain material bought for this room is no longer good enough for it. Mick’s room needs curtains.
He won’t mind having the birds and Neil will love them. And Mavis, she’ll need a new summer tent soon. She’ll get birds whether she loves them or not.
Lori’s last attempt at tent making wasn’t a success, but the next time she’ll do better. Maybe if she cut the tents in four bits, like two big oblongs for the body, and two small ones for sleeves, then sort of shaped the top bits in like raglan sleeves, stitched those top bits together and threaded elastic through the neck and cuffs. It might work out better than a zipper – or leaving one shoulder seam open.
She yawns and her mind wanders to if land, like if two years have passed and she’s left school and Mavis is slim and beautiful and wearing jeans and dangling earrings, and her face is looking like that photograph, and if she’s looking like that she’d never want to eat again. The mind picture is coming and it’s coming strong. Lori can see her in the kitchen and she’s making her custard and –
Cut that picture. Cut it fast. If and pretend stuff is for little kids. Once Mavis is out, the couch will be back digging a hole in the wall and the kitchen will be Mavis’s kitchen, not Lori’s. That’s reality. That’s looking the future in the eye. And Mavis will never be slim and beautiful again because she won’t ever be seventeen again. That’s fact and it’s no use thinking ifs and pretending that things are different to what they are.
Still, they can at least have a picture of how she was when she was beautiful. And they can have a picture of Henry too, of before he got lost. They can bring him back into this house and make him stay, make him put down new roots, so that she and the brothers have got something to hang on to, and maybe, wherever Henry is, he’ll be able to grab on to them too and stop his floating around.
‘We’d better put that fire out and go to bed,’ Mick says.
Eddy prods the log back with his foot. ‘It’s safe. If the chimney was going to catch, it would have done it by now.’
‘What if a spark flies out?’
‘What if the roof falls in, more likely,’ Eddy says.
‘What if Mavis escapes and axes us in our beds?’ Jamesy says.
The what ifs keep getting sillier and the laughing starts again.
‘What if we don’t wake up in the morning and get to school?’ Lori says. ‘Go on. Go to bed. Everyone.’
‘Yo, boss,’ Eddy says, but they go.
It’s funny the way they let her be boss – probably because she’s the one who carries the bankcard. She also gets to make the decisions about spending the extra money. Like Eddy asked her if he could have the lounge suite, as if she was the boss of the money. Probably she got born bossy, like a chip off the old block. She sighs, thinks maybe she’d prefer to be like Mavis than Henry.
Wow! What a thought. Put that one to bed!
Matty and Timmy are sound asleep, snuggled up together in the central sag. The poor old mattress has had to stand a lot of pressure and it’s just about caved in. Lori is pleased to creep into her narrow bed, but tonight she lies on her back, thinking, watching the new patterns on the walls made by the flickering fire. It’s warmer in her room tonight. Fire warmth is beautiful.
She rolls over. This sure is a hard bed, which is due to having wooden slats beneath it instead of a normal base. She’ll get used to it. After a bit, people get used to most things – like celery and cucumber. Mavis eats them now. Mostly.
The glow from the lounge room fades as the fire slowly dies and she sleeps.
Decisions, Decisions
Life isn’t fair. Things start to get a bit easier in one direction and they explode in another direction. It’s Saturday and it’s late; the kids are eating a pile of fried sandwiches, and Mavis, who they left starving for her lunch until three o’clock, due to they’ve been doing the rounds of the garage sales, can smell their fried sandwiches. She’s cursing the lot of them – and her plate full of salad and boiled egg – when the kids hear footsteps on the verandah.
No one heard a car drive up. No time for medicinal coffee or custard. The first they know of their visitors are footsteps on the verandah. It’s a nice day, both front and back doors have been left open to let some fresh air through. Mick’s door is open, and his window. Everything is open – except Mavis’s door.
They think it’s the social workers but it’s not, because the footsteps don’t stop at the door. Social workers at least have the good manners to knock.
Lori runs, tries to head the intruders off mid passage, but a rangy greyhound brushes by her, an anorexic poodle not far behind. Eva and Alice have tried threats, bribery and corruption, and probably the legal way, so now they turn criminal. They’ve got kidnap on their minds, like, if Mavis and her team can snatch those twins from St Kilda in a furniture van, Eva and Alice can do it too.
Eddy pales, shrinks two sizes, places his sandwich down as Alice enters the kitchen, snorting and snarling like she’s been forced to chase a lure she’s got no interest in catching. She’s blowing smoke from her pinched nostrils and it looks like steam; her lips drawn back in a snarl aren’t holding her teeth in today; the teeth are fighting to get out, to bite off rats’ heads, or kids’ heads.
‘Out to the car. Move it, boys,’ she says.
‘Please, darlings, hurry,’ Eva whimpers, looking seasick beneath that blue ce
iling, looking washed out against that blue wall. ‘Where is she?’
‘In the loo.’ Lori is standing behind them, looking at that green door and wondering what has happened to Mavis, who has stopped her cursing. ‘Close the door. Close that door!’ she mouths, signalling to Eddy.
He’s sitting in front of it and he hasn’t said a word. Eva mock-kisses him – she doesn’t get a chance to kiss Alan.
‘I’m not going with you,’ he says, dodging around her, leaving his half-eaten sandwich for whoever gets to it first, and he’s out the back door and over the side fence. Gone bush.
Eddy watches him go, wants to go with him. But this is his mother, isn’t it? This is who he still thinks of as Mother. While he didn’t see her, he could put her on hold, knowing if he wanted to go back, he could. He just hasn’t felt the want yet, or not often. Not a lot to want back there, really – except his computer and the money. That’s what he thought. But seeing her here now, in the kitchen, strange wanting stuff is grabbing at his insides. It’s like he’s come face-on to his own green door. He can go through it, get rid of this wanting feeling, or he can slam that door shut and shove the bolt, but once he’s locked that door, he could be stuck here forever.
Does he want to be stuck here forever? Probably not. He doesn’t know. This place is like a game he’s been playing. Maybe he ought to go home. He can’t make up his mind. Doesn’t want the decision. Not today. This is a real-life decision, not computer stuff, not funny fiction for the telephone. He has to take off, go after Alan and leave the decision for another day, and if he doesn’t go over that fence soon, he’s going to go back, crawl into his computer for the rest of his life.
It’s a brilliant computer, better than the library’s; Eva always bought the best. He’s got his own room in St Kilda, he gets pots of money to spend and he sure misses that money. Doesn’t miss the school. Misses the city. Doesn’t miss old Alice. Misses the traffic and the buzz and the crowds and the ocean. Up here there is nothing. Everything is dry and looks like crap. Nothing to do – except being with the kids and living free.