Henry’s Daughter

by Joy Dettman

  Eddy comes out the back and Lori moves away from the window. ‘She’s washing her hair,’ she whispers, wanting to protect Mavis. Last year she wouldn’t have cared who looked in that window and saw that saggy skin. ‘We have to open that door, Eddy. We’ve become the new tyrants. Power to the masses. It’s a replay of the French Revolution.’

  ‘Cut off her head,’ Eddy says, and mimes knitting. Lori elbows him, walks into the kitchen.

  Then Alan buys in. ‘She’s the colour of bread dough. She needs sun. She’ll get sick soon, then what are we going to do? People need sun.’

  ‘Redheads don’t,’ Eddy says.

  Alan is all for letting her out. He’s softer than Eddy, who is still full of cheek and this sort of frenetic energy. If he’s not working, he’s at his computer, like his brain can’t turn the power off. Mick, who is raking ash out of the fire, isn’t buying into the conversation.

  ‘She’ll be okay now,’ Alan says. ‘I bet she’ll want to stay on her diet.’

  ‘She’ll want the bankcard,’ Jamesy says. He’s also got a thing about money.

  ‘And as soon as she gets her hands on money, she’ll start stuffing. As long as she’s got no, like, temptation, she’s not tempted.’ Vinnie speaks from experience. They listen to him too. He was tempted a couple of times by Mavis’s Valium, so Lori keeps the new packet hidden in her room. What he doesn’t see, he doesn’t want.

  ‘Let her climb out the window if she wants to get out,’ Jamesy says. His memory is long; he saw too much of the bad Mavis and can’t remember enough of the good. But there was good. There was the comedian and, earlier than that, there was the woolly maroon cardigan and delicious stews and apple pies and – there was good. ‘She’ll be able to walk anywhere she wants to walk when she’s out. She’ll go walking up to the pub for counter meals and she’ll be laughing with Wally Johnson and the other blokes and she’ll probably end up having more babies.’

  Five sets of eyes turn to Jamesy. Why hadn’t anyone else thought about that? He’s grown up this year, and he’s grown even older in the head. He’s eleven, going on sixty, but he’s got them all thinking of more babies and maybe understanding a bit why Henry hanged himself.

  Lori looks for Matty, the last of them. And God Almighty, he’s got to be the last. Can’t take any more shitty napkins, any more kids on her back. ‘Where is he? Matty? Where did he go?’ she says.

  ‘He was under the table a minute ago.’

  They check under the table. ‘Matty,’ Vinnie calls out back. ‘Matty! Where are you? That little bugger is turning into an escape artist.’ Vinnie heads for the front door, calling through the house. ‘Matty? Are you in here? Matty!’

  ‘Matty! Will you answer when you’re called?’ Lori is in the back yard, adding her bellow to Vinnie’s, and she reminds herself of Mavis.

  He’s climbed the gate again but Vinnie has got him, so Lori walks back to the kitchen. ‘What do you really reckon, Mick? Like, this isn’t living like normal people, is it?’ she says, harking back to her previous subject.

  Mick shrugs, looks at the kitchen floor where he lay helpless on the day of the dislocated leg. There is brand-new black and white checked vinyl on the floor and it still smells new. The kitchen walls and ceiling are white, the cupboards black. It has been changed and they did it. He pulls out the stove’s ashtray, empties it into Henry’s metal bucket to sprinkle around his garden. Snails and slugs hate ash. He read that in a gardening book, bought new the other day. And he had the money to buy that book. He can remember what it was like when they didn’t have money. He can remember life in this house before he dislocated his leg.

  ‘I know what I want to do, but I dunno what we ought to do. I know she likes what’s happening with the scales. She looks excited now when she tells us what she weighs. I dunno, Lori. Maybe Vinnie is right; she knows herself better than we do.’

  Around the table there is a joint relieved exhalation. This house is run on democratic lines; the subject has been raised, the decision reached, life, as they prefer it, will continue a while longer.

  Then Vinnie is back, Matty under his arm and sucking on an envelope, which is addressed to Mavis. It’s from Eva’s solicitor because his name is on the front.

  ‘They’re into it again. I didn’t think they were coming back until September.’ Eddy rips off the wet end, opens the well-sucked contents, but as he reads, the blood drains from his face and his hand moves to his mouth. ‘They’re dead,’ he says, sort of quiet, breathless. ‘They’re both dead.’

  ‘Don’t muck around, you moron.’

  ‘They’re both dead. A bus smash. In Argentina. They’re dead.’ He’s standing, shaking, looking around him like he wants to run and he has no place to run to.

  ‘They’re in Paris.’ Alan takes the letter, reads, shakes his head and reads it again, then he shudders, turns to Eddy. ‘What were they doing in Argentina? What – ’

  And the kids know it’s true and many eyes grow wide and they all stare at Eddy.

  ‘They’re flying their . . . they are bringing them home tomorrow, it says.’ Alan is beside his twin, a smidgen taller than his twin, and heavier. They still look the same to strangers but they are not the same, not their eyes, not their expressions, not their responses to this news, either. Alan doesn’t know what he should feel, what he should do. He’s jumpy, shrugging his shoulders, looking out towards the river. Eddy is ghost white and shaking. His power has been turned off.

  ‘We get everything plus Watts as trustee,’ Alan says, ready to head for the bush. ‘It says he’s coming up here to get us.’

  ‘You own that house!’ Lori breathes and she reaches for the letter, scans it. Alice and Eva are dead, all right, but all Lori can think about is houses. She’s got a house fetish. But her own brothers, her own two brothers, own that posh house she once saw. Cool, calm, green. Ocean waves in the distance. She’s not a very nice person; a nice person would be saying something different, but she’s not saying it. ‘You own that posh house? The letter says you two are joint beneficiaries. You’re rich!’

  The twins don’t look like joint beneficiaries. They don’t look joined. Eddy looks as if he’s coming unjoined fast.

  ‘Get him a drink of water, someone,’ Mick says. ‘Sit him down before he falls down.’

  Alan gets the water and he drinks it, then he remembers what he’s supposed to be doing and fills the glass again, offers it to his twin. Eddy sits, drinks, shakes. This news has hurt him but it hasn’t hurt Lori. She didn’t like those two dead women and she knows a lot more about Eva since Mavis’s pot-smoking night, so she actually hates her now, and her mother. They were two rotten heartless people – and old Alice? Well, she was just a rangy, mangy old stranger. Thousands of strangers get killed and you might feel a bit sorry for the families, but you can’t get heartbroken about the dead one.

  ‘What does Mavis get?’ Jamesy asks.

  ‘Her mother hated her, left her nothing. She used to put her in this big pantry they had, and lock the door,’ Vinnie says. ‘And Mavis used to sit there in the dark and eat all the sugar and stuff. She was going on about all sorts of muck the night she got into my grass.’

  Mick has stopped scraping ash out of the stove. He’s standing, rubbing at his frown, rubbing ash on his face. Some tribe somewhere does that when someone dies, Lori thinks.

  Alan claims the letter. ‘Watts says that he’ll be up here on Wednesday. He’s expecting us to go back there!’

  ‘We’ll have to go back. For the funeral. That’s all.’ Eddy is sitting statue stiff, his eyes sort of red, shaky – not crying, but his mouth is, and it’s working hard at making those words try to come out near normal.

  ‘So we don’t have to stay there, with Watts, as our guardian?’ Alan is at the door, looking out at freedom. He’ll give up his inheritance if it means giving up his freedom.

  Eddy’s hand shakes as it reaches again for the letter. He licks his lips, gets a few deep breaths in, then reads it again, reads i
t slow, Mick leaning over his shoulder. They’re all grouped around Eddy, stuck for something to say. Dumb.

  ‘If I hadn’t left, they would have still been alive,’ Eddy says.

  ‘Crap. When your time is up, it’s up, even if lightning has to come in that bloody window to get you,’ Vinnie says with conviction. He’s been there, done that. He’s tried most stuff but he couldn’t afford heroin. He’s been at Greg’s side when they crashed a stolen car with the cops right on their tail, and he got out, jumped a fence and ran. He got hit by a baseball bat one night when he went into a takeaway to buy a pie and chips and Greg decided on the spot to rob it. Vinnie didn’t get his pie, but he got away, lived to run another day. And he didn’t lose the sight in his eye, either, when Mavis tried to scratch it out that night. Close shaves have made him a fatalist, made him good up ladders too, and at walking around roofs like a circus performer.

  They watch him open the fridge, take out the milk, think of drinking it from the bottle, watch him change his mind, pour a spurt into a mug, drink it. He even puts the lid back on, puts the milk away, puts the mug in the sink. They’re house-training him. Slow.

  Then everyone is doing things. Picking up things, looking for something to say. Nothing much anyone can say except, ‘Poor old Eva.’

  ‘Poor ole Eba,’ Matty says. It raises a few smiles, though they are wiped away fast. This is no time for smiling.

  It’s time to start cooking a stew, but somehow it doesn’t seem the right thing to do. Nothing is the way it was. It’s weird. Like, what do we do now? Like, this isn’t what was supposed to happen. Where do we go to from here? It’s like when you read one of those books where for five hundred pages the author has been setting you up to expect the story will end with the hero getting murdered, then suddenly, on the second-last page, the whole plot changes. The murderer goes off to the jungle and gets eaten by a giant python and the hero wins the lottery. It’s not that you aren’t pleased for the hero, it’s just that it doesn’t feel real so you don’t believe it, and you pitch the book at the wall.

  ‘We’ve got to tell Mavis,’ Mick says.

  People to tell, like when Henry hanged himself. But it’s not a bit like when Henry hanged himself because none of this is happening to Lori.

  It’s happening to Eddy, though. He’s got that scared, lonely, empty feeling, like she had when Henry died, and she knows it. And he’s got all the guilt too, and that chewed-up hurting inside that won’t go away. He’s sitting at the table, playing with his empty glass, turning it around and around in circles. A few tears are wetting his eyes, but they’re not leaking out.

  Alan isn’t hurting. He’s stalking the room, backwards and forwards, from the window to the door, from the door to the window. Maybe he cried all of his tears for Eva when he first came home, so he’s walking, stalking, thinking, like, God, when does life settle down to fishing and reading? Like, God, what’s going to happen to me next?

  ‘We’ve got to tell Mavis,’ Mick says again.

  ‘We’ve got to let her out,’ Lori adds.

  ‘Shit,’ Vinnie says and he looks up at the cupboard, to where the Valium used to live. ‘Shit,’ he says again and he heads for the front door.

  Lori goes to the green door. She slides the bolt.

  It’s happening. It’s happening.

  Life Force

  Mavis knows something is wrong. She jerks out of her chair, looks from face to face, her eyes wide, startled. ‘Is he all right?’ she says. Maybe she heard them calling for Matty. Mick tells her that Eva is dead.

  She shakes her head, stares at the faces, then follows everyone through to the kitchen. Fast. Easy.

  Lori makes a cup of tea. It’s something to do when there isn’t anything else you can do. Jamesy snatches the sugar, replaces it with the sugar substitute granules while Mavis sits down at her old place at the table. She’s silent, and they’re silent. Eddy is pale. He hasn’t moved from his chair. They are watching him, watching her, watching Vinnie creep back, stand in the passage doorway.

  Mavis’s eyes are roving the walls. Clean. White. They are finding the curtains, the new vinyl floor. It’s like she’s not sure if she’s dreaming this, dreaming she’s out. She’s sort of disorientated – Rip Van Winkle, slept for thirty years. She can’t recognise the new world, and the kids can’t recognise her shape at the end of the table, either. It’s not the same world and she’s not the same shape. She’s around nineteen stone now. That’s big, sure, but she’s tall, so it’s not as big as it sounds.

  She moves forward on her chair. It’s the same chair, but it feels strange beneath her; they know it by the way she moves it forward, moves it back. Then she opens her mouth. ‘Dead? Eva?’

  ‘You got a letter from Mr Watts. We opened it.’

  ‘How? Where? When?’ She wants information fast, doesn’t look at the letter.

  Alan does the talking, does it quiet, matter-of-fact. He tells her Alice is dead too.

  ‘Alice? What the hell happened to them?’

  ‘A bus smash,’ Lori says and they all nod, watch Mavis, half afraid of what they’ve done to her, half proud. She’s back in their kitchen and she’s wearing her tracksuit pants but not the top; she’s changed it for a man’s tartan shirt. Lori offers a mug of tea, offers a choc-mint biscuit. Mavis accepts the mug, looks at the biscuit long but doesn’t take it.

  ‘She’s only fifty-three. She’s . . . I don’t believe it.’

  ‘The funeral is on Friday. Watts is coming up to get us on Wednesday,’ Alan says.

  ‘We’ll have to go, Mave. She had no one else.’ Eddy slides the letter towards her, and she stares at this son she’s barely known since he was two years old. She turns to Alan, stares at him, and back to Eddy. Then the mug is down and she’s reading.

  It’s a short typewritten letter. She reads it twice to make it go in. She looks at the blank back. Looks for more. No more, so she places it on the table. Looks at the walls again, then at her op shop shirt, at the leg of her op shop tracksuit pants.

  ‘What were they doing in bloody Argentina?’ she says.

  Eddy shakes his head. ‘The last we heard, they were in Paris. They must have gone for a holiday.’

  ‘She’s only fifty-three.’

  ‘Fifty-four next month,’ Eddy says.

  ‘June,’ she says. ‘In June. They named her Eva June.’ She stares at Eddy. ‘Same date as Timmy. She was twenty-eight when she married Henry. I was a crazy mixed-up fourteen. He taught me to play chess. My father was dead. I had no one.’ She’s looking around her now, her big frightened eyes staring at faces and finding Vinnie, who is still leaning against the doorjamb. ‘You’re the bloody living, spitting, breathing image of him – the perverted bastard,’ she says.

  Everyone looks at Vinnie. ‘Not my fault, is it?’ he says. ‘And I don’t go around raping kids, anyway.’ There was no wall between him and Mavis on that crazy pot-smoking night; he heard most of her ravings up close and very personal.

  Mavis rubs her eyes, sighs in a breath and pushes her long, daggy hair back. She’s got Eddy’s eyes, or Eddy has got hers. They’re identical today, scared, can’t find a place to look where it’s safe from other eyes. Maybe they want to tell everyone to fuck off so they can cry in peace.

  She sure looks as if she wants to cry. So she didn’t like Eva, but losing her is like one too many changes in a whole world of change. Maybe she doesn’t know what to do with freedom either. She’s sitting on that chair, afraid to move from it. She’s been dieting hard, walking her treadmill hard these last weeks, but now she’s out and the world is pressing on her so she’s sitting, staring at that choc-mint biscuit.

  She lifts her hand, and they all think she’s going for that biscuit, but she just stares a while at that hand, then pushes her sleeve up, studies her arm.

  The hand looks good again and it’s exactly like Lori’s, even the long, strong nails. The wrist looks good, even the elbow, then the sag starts. She checks out her leg, her foot. She kick
s off her slipper, looks at her toes as if she hasn’t seen them for years, then she puts the slipper on. It’s too big and worn flat, worn out and filthy.

  She doesn’t know where she should look, or who she should look at. It’s like she’s thinking, who am I? Half of my hard built layers of protection have gone missing and I can almost see myself, and I’m too scared of what I’m going to see.

  Her couch is on the junk heap. There’s an enlarged photo of a young Henry hanging on a clean white wall where her couch used to be. Her eyes find it, lock onto something safe. ‘He was too good for this world. She should have left him in his England. I thought he was so bloody old when she brought him home. A gentle, decent man, your father.’

  Matty starts giving the no-swearing lecture, but Lori cuts him off. ‘That one was taken before he came to Australia,’ she says.

  ‘I know when it was taken.’ The voice sounds like Mavis, but the mouth it comes out of doesn’t look right any more. It’s trembling with wanting to cry, but wanting to talk more than cry. ‘I didn’t know it then. Didn’t know until after Donny was born that I’d been sleeping with my stepfather. Eva was your grandmother – my bloody mother. She had me two weeks before her fourteenth birthday.’

  Her mouth is losing the battle. She tries to hold it steady with her fingers but tears are flooding down, wetting those fingers. ‘Christ!’ she says. And her palms swipe at those tears. ‘Why should I cry for her? She hated me, and for half my life I didn’t know why she hated me. I didn’t find out until the old bitch died, and she hadn’t left me one cent in her will.’

  She sniffs, sucks a breath. ‘I went to Watts . . . planning to break the will.’ Her nose is running. Alan passes her a wad of toilet roll, which is cheaper than tissues. She blows her nose, wipes her eyes. ‘I found out I was the old bitch’s grandchild, and that redheaded bastard I’d loved had fathered me with his own daughter.’