Madness, Mayhem and Motherhood

by Nikki McWatters

  Toby’s birthday party that year had been a barbecue in the park down at Bronte Beach and I’d cleverly invited all the parents as well. That way they were responsible for their own little misbehaved monsters!

  ‘Pass me the champagne and I’ll put it in this ice bucket,’ Davidson asked. ‘She’ll be here before too long.’

  I did and then walked around the house for a last-minute once-over. I reversed that damn cushion in the living room that Davidson was always re-arranging to keep me on my toes, and I made sure the silverware was sitting in military formation on the starchy, well-pressed damask tablecloth in the dining room. All was as it should be.

  Davidson was fussing about the kitchen, slicing up a salad. ‘Here, you do the tomatoes,’ he said, sliding the board towards me.

  He donned the oven gloves and pulled out the huge baking dish of chicken.

  I watched – it was like a slow-motion sequence at the cinema – as the dish cracked in two like an egg opening, and the chicken pieces, still bubbling in their own juices, flopped to the floor like freshly dead fish. Davidson stared, the two broken bits of china hanging from his hands.

  ‘Oh my God!’ he gasped, as if he’d just witnessed a child murdered.

  I laughed. He glared at me, but I couldn’t help it. It was such an absurd situation. It just couldn’t have been any worse. The timing was catastrophic. I was wearing a fancy outfit to show off, but Davidson was making that amazing chicken dish to show off as well, and I could completely understand how he felt – it would be like if my dress just fell off.

  ‘Just pick it up and stick it in another dish,’ I offered. ‘I’ll help.’

  ‘I can’t do that … it’s been on the floor.’ He was beginning to shake.

  ‘I won’t tell.’

  ‘I couldn’t.’

  ‘You could.’

  He stared at me for about six seconds and then shook his head violently. ‘I couldn’t, and I can’t believe you even made me stop to think about it for a moment. You are terrible!’

  Davidson went into overdrive. He threw the broken dish into the bin, stripped off his oven gloves and strode towards the keys hanging in the pantry.

  ‘You clean this up. I’ll be back.’

  ‘Where are you going?’ I looked from him to the slop all over the floor. The dogs arrived at the back window, having smelled the wafting chicken, but the back door was thankfully shut.

  ‘I’ll get something from a restaurant in Double Bay. Something really fancy. You hold the fort.’

  ‘Should I let the dogs in to clean it up?’ I asked, thinking practically.

  ‘No!’ he shouted, looking aghast. ‘You can’t let the dogs in! My God, woman, what are you thinking? Are you insane? Just clean it up, and fast!’

  Fine.

  Davidson disappeared and I heard the staff car zooming away up the driveway. I began picking up the chicken and plopping it into a plastic bag. What a waste. I finished mopping up the hot oily mess with a sponge, squeezing the excess into the sink. Chicken fat was plastered over my hands and arms. It was not pretty.

  ‘Hi.’ I heard a voice from the other kitchen door. American accent.

  I turned to see a breezy, beautiful face standing there. The supermodel. She’d come across from the main house. I was stupidly expecting her to arrive at our front door.

  ‘Come in … I was just …’ I gave up and smiled.

  She walked in. Petite. Not as tall as I had imagined. I thought all models were giraffe tall. Very warm and friendly. Flawlessly stunning with skin like lightly bronzed velour. Designer clothes enhanced the perfect body.

  ‘I’m Jennifer.’ She put out her hand. I discreetly wiped my palm against my dress to remove the last of the chicken and we shook.

  ‘Nikki, the housekeeper.’

  Jennifer had a gift wrapped in classy paper with a silver ribbon.

  ‘Just go through to the living room.’ I pointed the way and grimaced at the tiny morsel of gristle hanging from my thumb. ‘Gretel and the baby will be down soon. I’ll let her know you’re here.’

  I got Gretel on the intercom, and when she appeared with her lovely baby daughter I gave an inward smile. The baby was wearing the little blue and white outfit I had given Gretel as a present for the new arrival.

  A hot soapy mop removed the rest of the slick from the floor.

  Davidson arrived back with steaming foil trays of Mediterranean Chicken he’d convinced some five-star chef to whip up.

  ‘Smells better than yours anyway,’ I teased.

  He opened the bottle of Veuve Clicquot and pulled a petulant face at me.

  ‘The baby’s wearing the suit I gave Gretel,’ I gloated. ‘I’m just so pleased she likes it.’

  ‘That’s nice.’ He smiled as he popped the cork. ‘It was a lovely gift. Where did you find it?’

  ‘Vinnies.’

  He cocked his head and frowned. ‘Double Bay? Not sure I’ve …’

  ‘No … Vinnies as in St Vincent de Paul.’ I grinned.

  He sucked in a deep breath as if he were breathing through a reed. ‘No way!’

  ‘Yes way. Australia’s richest baby is dressed in welfare chic.’

  ‘You are terrible, Nikki,’ he said, his eyeballs popping out of his skull. ‘Really terrible.’

  ‘No.’ I laughed. ‘Just enterprising.’

  Davidson poured one glass of the champagne for Jennifer and disappeared with it; Gretel was still abstaining. I grabbed a coffee mug and poured myself a good glug of expensive bubbles. After a moment’s hesitation, I opened the bin and fished out a piece of the chicken from the plastic bag and bit into it. That floor was clean enough to eat from and so was the bin and fresh bin liner and, being as poor as me, I did not like to see waste! The chicken was fantastic. Coq au Bin. And for the record, Veuve Clicquot tasted a whole lot better than four-dollar spewmante.

  ‘I’ll do all the Medicare batching; you just bundle them for me,’ Krissy explained. I was nearly twenty-nine and I was doing the first job in my adult life that didn’t involve cleaning (or acting, but hey, come on, acting isn’t like a real job, or so they say). This was like a real job. In an office. Filing. Talking to everyday people and lots of them. I was the new part-time receptionist in the medical centre beneath my apartment. This was ridiculously convenient. I fell quickly into the flow of filing and answering calls. The place was Wall Street busy. There were two full-time doctors, a part-time doctor, a physiotherapist and a speech therapist who only worked weekends.

  Krissy, with her shock of pink hair, was great fun to work with. She had the most irreverent sense of humour and called me ‘Dogsbreath’, but it was a term of endearment, apparently. She made me laugh so hard I nearly peed, so we spent most of our work time cackling like wild hyenas. The benevolent doctor/landlord let me choose my own shifts and so I was doing every Saturday morning, which was brilliant because the boys just sat and watched movies upstairs and there was no need to pay a babysitter. On Thursdays and Fridays I just worked school hours.

  The doctors were fun and I had been so blessed to slide from one perfect job into another, although I missed Davidson and Gretel and the little baby and the fantasies I’d had of actually being a resident at the Bellevue Hill mansion and the Architectural Digest magazines and the out-of-date foodstuffs. That had been a wonderful job but, as the little household had relocated overseas, I had to move on. I was so grateful to the doctor downstairs for coming to the rescue and offering me some work. I was really starting to feel good about myself again.

  God it felt good to be able to finally say that, because my self-dialogue had been pretty loathsome for the previous couple of years. Being constantly poor, being constantly up to my elbows in other people’s shit and dirt, being an actual beggar and running out of tampons shreds your self-esteem. But I’d finally reached the stage where I was thinking that maybe
it would all work out OK, and I might just start being able to feel like a normal worthwhile member of the human race again. I was making ends meet. I was also balancing my psychological needs well enough that Bad Nikki hadn’t been lurking about whispering sweet nothings at me for a while, and I hoped she’d got so bored she’d evaporated. Perhaps my happiness and stable equilibrium had acted like water on the Wicked Witch of the West and melted her out of existence.

  My social life was down to an afternoon of bubbles with Girl George now and again, either in Centennial Park while we watched our children throw stale bread at the geese and eels in the ponds or, if there was money left over at the end of the fortnight, a lunch down at the Clovelly Hotel. Bobby, my jet-setting friend, had watched her daughter graduate from school and had promptly decided, once again, to go travelling in search of Prince Charming.

  ‘I am not going to meet him at a piss-soaked bar in Bondi Junction now, am I?’ she’d sighed.

  After a consultation with her clairvoyant she learned that her soul-mate would be a man who had devoted himself to the less fortunate, and so Bobby had decided to trek around the world volunteering at orphanages, hospitals and various centres for the most unfortunate souls around the planet, looking for Mr Right. I called it her Mother Teresa Tour of Duty but as her goal was to score a bloke I don’t know if the motivation was quite the same. I missed her laughter and crazy sense of humour.

  Sam was marrying the father of her child. Seemed she was getting her happy ending after all. I was happy for her. But jealous too. You know that adolescent thing where you get totally put out when your girlfriend hooks up with a boy and starts ignoring you? Well, for a while I had it bad. I didn’t want Sam to marry me – I couldn’t offer her that sort of commitment – but her being in a serious relationship took more of her away from me than I was prepared to give. This was a very selfish stance of mine as I really didn’t see all that much of Sam and probably leaned on her far more than she ever leaned on me. I got over it. The kids and I went to their place for dinner sometimes. It was still fun, but not as much fun as when it had been just the two of us. It’s so much easier to laugh about men when they aren’t a part of the conversation.

  The day Kate told me she and her family were planning to leave Sydney was a tough one. The Purple Palace was just up the road from her place and we had become like family. So much like family that over one barbecue lunch at her place, we figured out, after talking about old family stories, that some of my stories overlapped with her husband’s. And it turned out, after some unravelling of family tree fronds, that her husband’s mother was my grandmother’s cousin. I know that sounds like some riddle you are supposed to work out, but as far as we could ascertain it meant Kate’s kids and mine were about sixth cousins twice removed or something equally remote but uncanny enough to be a little bit exciting. Never mind that if you sat down for long enough with just about anybody you could eventually string a line between your family tree vines and Tarzan’s. Six degrees of separation and all that.

  But Kate was selling up her business and they’d bought a farm in the Southern Highlands, which was about two hours on a train south from Sydney in the ranges, where it snowed and was awfully pretty in spring, apparently. Kate had decided she wanted to go back to university to study nursing – her childhood dream. She would live in the rolling hills of the highlands and study via correspondence. I had to respect that. At least she was happy, and I was happy for her. She even got me thinking about going back to do some external study. But my boys and her boys had become inseparable at school, at day-care and on weekends in the park, and they were always having slumber parties, which freed the parents up for quiet child-free time. I was going to miss that too.

  That left me with a social life that relied completely and utterly on Girl George and every time we went out it was the same. She was a girl on the prowl. This Saturday we had my boys with us. They’d gorged on hot chips and were playing over near the fence.

  ‘I don’t like being alone.’ She pouted at me over the rim of her sunnies and a glass of champagne.

  ‘I’m starting to really like it,’ I answered. ‘I’ve been on my own for years now and it’s kind of empowering. I don’t have to answer to anyone.’

  ‘I saw this beautiful frosted ivory dress in a bridal store in the Junction,’ Girl George mused and I laughed so hard champagne frothed out of my nose.

  ‘Oh, oh, I want to be your matron of honour, and when they ask if I know of any reason you can’t get married … I’ll shout “Because she doesn’t have anyone to marry!”’

  ‘Oh, shut up,’ she snapped. ‘It’s a trivial detail.’

  ‘Well, there’s him,’ I said, pointing at the guy at the pub sitting at the table by the gate leading to the car park. ‘I like what he’s done with that midriff look. It really enhances the droop of his beer belly. Or, or, what about him? That one over there with the chest hair. Look at that chest hair. Man, George, you could get lost in that. He comes with his own bearskin rug … just add romantic fire.’

  ‘Shut up.’ She giggled. ‘I met this guy.’

  ‘What? When?’

  ‘A dating company.’

  ‘Get out. You did not.’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘A dating company? Aren’t they full of creepy losers who live with their mothers and can’t meet women in real life?’

  ‘No, silly!’ she scoffed. ‘It’s what everyone’s doing.’

  ‘Well, I’m not.’

  ‘You’ve become one of those man-haters.’ She smiled.

  ‘That’s not true. I like men. I am just in no hurry to marry one again. Once bitten …’

  ‘I’m more of a back-on-the-bike girl myself,’ she said.

  ‘I could say something but won’t.’

  ‘I just miss being married.’

  I looked at her. She was scarily attractive. Thanks to her settlement she had some money and a small cottage that she owned outright. Her daughter spent fifty-fifty, one week on, one off, with her divorced parents, so Girl George had lots of free time. It had turned out her husband had been lying about being in financial difficulty because he hadn’t wanted George to get her fair share. After the sale of the family home and the settlement, she had enough for a very quaint little place in a leafy street of Waverley and enough change that she didn’t need to work for a while. Why ruin all that and take a punt on some guy? I’d read second marriages had an even greater failure rate than first ones. Why take that chance?

  ‘Don’t you miss having a man, Nikki?’ she asked.

  ‘Well … there’ve been a few.’

  Over the years there had been a few one-night stands and I’d come to accept them as such. If I had a weekend free from kids, I made the most of it: shallow, cheap, fun. Men had become like junk food for me. Tasty. Fast and forgettable. An occasional treat. One particular rockstar was on the top of my speed dial.

  ‘Sometimes, at the end of a long day, I wish I had someone to help me clean my house and make me a nice meal.’ I shrugged. ‘But you know, the whole stepparent thing with kids is so fraught with problems. I don’t want to put my boys through all that. Some stranger elbowing into their lives. It seems wrong.’

  ‘I’d love to get married again,’ Girl George mused over her third champagne. ‘I love the pomp and ceremony. Weddings are so beautiful.’

  I looked at her and tried not to laugh too hard directly into her pretty face. ‘You need help,’ was the nicest thing I could think of to say to that. ‘You’re that person who loves puppies but gets over them when they become dogs, aren’t you? I know your type. And that puppy in the dating company photo, Mr Handsome, who’d scrub up in a nice little suit for the wedding, will become a dog and leave the toilet seat up and soak the frypan instead of actually washing it up …’

  ‘Shut up!’ she roared with laughter. ‘And I suppose you’ve stopped shaving your armpits too?
You raving, independent, man-hating single woman.’

  ‘What the hell has armpit hair got to do with anything?’

  ‘See this is what happens if you stay single too long,’ she explained, draining her glass. ‘My mother warned me about it. If you live like an old spinster for long enough you become a man-hater and end up on the shelf.’

  ‘The shelf? What shelf?’ I laughed. ‘Who listens to advice from their mother?’

  ‘Well, she’d know, she’s been married three times.’

  ‘Arghhhhh.’ I almost screamed with laughter and then saw that Toby was walking precariously along a fence on the perimeter of the hotel.

  ‘Stop! Toby! Stop!’ I shouted, waving my arms.

  He and Ben looked my way and Toby jumped down and they started cutting back through the lunchtime crowd of people enjoying the sunshine at the popular pub by the beach.

  ‘I’ve got to go,’ I said. ‘We’ll catch the bus home. You stay and keep cruising.’

  ‘Oh don’t go! Lance is meeting me here and I wanted you to meet him. It was going to be a surprise. He’s really nice. And rich.’

  ‘So he says.’ I stood up and looked down at her, shaking my head. ‘Nah, I’m good. Invite me to the wedding, eh? I’ll wear my shirt made from the scalps of all the men I’ve hated.’

  I took the kids home and stared out the bus window as we wound up the hill on Clovelly Road. Perhaps George was right and being on my own for so long was making me harden and become closed to the idea of another relationship. But my parents separating after so long had been such an epic shock that I think at that point the idea of marriage and monogamy and true love had been tossed into the same basket as the tooth fairy, Santa and God. Love was not bestowed upon us like sprinkle glitter, but was hard work – harder than most of us are prepared for.

  It wasn’t that I didn’t believe in love. Love was real and tangible. I watched my boys in the bus seat in front of me, laughing and hand wrestling: that was real. I just didn’t believe in fairy-tales any more.

  Girl George got engaged within the month. I bought her a card and wrote something extremely cynical in it, but she didn’t get it. She had her fairy-tale blinkers on and a diamond ring the size of a rissole. I really did wish her luck. She was going to need it.