‘Here you go, kids.’ The waiter smiled and offered the boys two wads of dough. ‘You can make some funny pizzas. Any shape you want.’
‘Thanks.’ What a great idea.
I ordered a large Hawaiian. The standard. And the boys ordered a small one each. I was feeling piggy.
Ben made a snail out of his dough and Toby rolled his into a snake.
It was undoubtedly the best pizza I had ever tasted. Ravenous hunger blurred every previous pizza experience and, in a rush of slices, I heard myself murmuring hmmmmm while eating. The final piece was a squeeze but I managed it and sat back massaging my gut, looking across the road to where a big old white hotel sat like a shabby relic of old-world charm. It was closed for renovations.
‘Nice hotel.’ I nodded and smiled at the young waiter who had arrived with two steaming balls of cooked dough. A pizza snake and pizza snail. The boys took them gleefully, blowing on them to cool them.
‘Apparently it’s haunted. Like really haunted,’ the waiter said.
‘Cool,’ Ben enthused and looked more closely at the long driveway. ‘We should go over there and have a look.’
‘It’s closed.’ I shook my head. ‘They’re renovating it.’
‘So what? We’ll break in.’
When had my son turned into a little criminal?
‘Maybe we’ll come back when they reopen.’
‘Are ghosts really real?’ Toby asked, finishing off his last bit of pizza.
‘Nobody knows … some people say they’ve seen them. I don’t believe it really.’
‘What about Shadow?’ Toby asked.
‘Well, obviously Shadow is real.’ I smiled.
‘I think there are ghosts. When you die, Mum, you should come back as a ghost and haunt us.’ Ben pointed his snail pizza at me as if he was pointing the bone. Jinxing me.
‘I’m not ready to drop dead for a long time yet, thanks buddy.’
Back in Leura we were nestled into our tiny caravan just as a clap of thunder blasted through the early evening sky.
‘Storm,’ I murmured.
There were two mini-bunks in the body of the van and the dining alcove morphed into a double bed. As the wind stirred itself into a fury outside and the lightning and thunder built into an orchestra of weather, we made up the beds and tried to concentrate on a game of cards. Snap. Followed by Fish. The storm ran out of steam and we decided to all sleep together in the double bed.
It was cosy and comforting to hear the little sleep breaths coming from my boys. Ben ground his teeth ever so softly. At times like these, I felt moved to tears with gratitude for my beautiful children. They were healthy, happy, intelligent people. Funny. Annoying and creative. Loud. Sometimes naughty. Just absolutely perfect. They were also incredibly cute. Both blond. Green-eyed. Petite. Athletic and artistic. They bickered but were the best of friends and I hoped they’d stay that way until they were old and wrinkled. I wondered what the future would offer them. Who were the men that these boys would become? I was so looking forward to that journey. I wondered if I was carrying a brother or sister for them and how that little person would fit into the mix. I wanted to tell them but knew I had to wait until I was sure everything was going to be fine. I didn’t want to get their hopes up and then have something bad happen. I knew they’d be excited.
I was more scared about telling them about Clay. The idea of having a man living with us would be more daunting for them than a baby. Clay and I had decided we would take it slowly to let the boys get used to the idea. He’d stay with friends in Sydney and keep working part-time, and live with us part-time, and we’d merge into family life gently.
In the darkness, I watched the arms of trees outside, dark ghosts waving menacingly. The wind pursed its lips and sang out a howling lullaby. I held my boys close and felt the heat of their blood. We slept entangled like a restless Cerberus.
Dreams are the poetry of sleep and mine came in lyrical bursts. Snippets and snatches of reality stirred into a fantastic, senseless soup. I flew. I breathed under water. I made love to invisible creatures and found myself naked on a stage. Clay was in the front row, clapping. I had an enormous, swollen belly. The children melted into birds and dipped and soared. There were three of them. All boys.
I woke early. Disoriented.
‘Let’s go to Medlow Bath. There’s a very cool place called the Hydro Majestic,’ I said to the boys as they dressed sleepily. ‘I remember going there years ago.’
Three sausage rolls from the local bakery and we headed down and then up the very steep and appropriately named Megalong Street that led all the way to Katoomba. Quite a hike.
From Katoomba we continued on foot. Heading west. I remembered the art deco castle that was the Hydro Majestic as being only a little further along from Katoomba but as we staggered crazily along the highway, pressing ourselves nervously against the guardrails, I had to accept I was wrong. It was much further than I had anticipated.
‘How much longer?’ Toby moaned.
‘Just up ahead,’ I told him hopefully.
Another bend. More trees. More traffic. More road.
‘Let’s go back. This is stupid,’ Ben groaned. ‘My feet hurt.’
There was no point turning back. It had been over an hour and it had to be close. If not, there might have been something else. A train station. A bus depot. A service station. I’m sure the cars whizzing by must have thought I was a mad mother dragging my small kids along a blustery highway in the middle of nowhere. It became so ridiculous we all started finding it funny.
‘We’re explorers like Burke and Wills!’ Ben said. ‘I hope we discover a toilet soon.’
I was actually beginning to feel as lost and hopeless as the early explorers who had followed the same route without the road as guidance. We were Blaxland, Wentworth and Lawson. I gave the kids a history lesson to distract them from the hike.
At last. The dome appeared. The Hydro Majestic was indeed a majestic sight. A long art deco castle perched on the edge of the Megalong Valley with views stretching out for miles and miles. There was something almost sacred about the place. A large dome perched on top of the central section like a mythical orb.
We walked inside and the boys ran about the countless rooms and halls. Now that place certainly felt haunted by the ghosts of fashionable honeymooners of the past. We had a cool drink sitting on the back balcony, drinking in the panorama of the Blue Mountains.
‘This place is awesome.’ Toby grinned.
He was right. The place was awesome.
‘I was thinking we should maybe move up here,’ I said casually to the boys.
They looked at me, wide-eyed, and I held my breath.
‘Are you serious?’ Ben asked.
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Oh my God, that would be awesome. I love this place.’
‘Toby?’
‘Me too. I love the Blue Mountains so long as we never have to do that walk again.’
The place was packed up and it was with heavy sadness but not regret that I said goodbye to my Purple Palace. It had been good to us. The boys were cartwheeling about the purple expanse making noises that echoed in the emptiness. We were all excited about the move to the mountains. The boys would miss their friends, but Leura was only two hours away by train and people could come to visit any time at all and stay for weekends. The fresh mountain air and the wide open bushland would be a nice change from living on a busy six-way intersection, across the road from the pub.
Just the day before on our walk to school we’d had to step over a bloody finger. A severed finger. It was lying in the gutter outside the hotel. A real-life severed finger! One could only begin to surmise how the fuck that had got there! I had nearly vomited all over it. The boys had been completely fascinated and Toby had wanted to take it with him for show and tell. All the way to the school we came up wi
th stories to explain it. Most likely scenario was a drunken brawl, but you would imagine that someone would notice that their finger was missing and perhaps want to find it and have it reattached. Someone somewhere was waking up that morning with a massive hangover and one less finger. It looked like a pointer but it was hard to be sure.
I was so very emotional during those days. The city had really become too big and ugly for me. I wanted my boys and my new baby to grow up with the scent of eucalypts in their nostrils instead of petrol and exhaust fumes. I wanted them to have a backyard they could play in, trees to climb, maybe even some chickens. That was all a massive about-turn for me. The city mouse had morphed into a country mouse. Some pregnant women craved pickles and ice cream; I craved a little cottage in the mountains where I could garden and learn to bake.
It was a Saturday morning and Clay was working. He had paid for the removalist and the extra for the piano, and he was going to pack up his car after work with his meagre belongings and meet us at the new house in Leura. Clay’s share-house was apparently fully furnished, so he just had his clothes and a record collection and little more. They didn’t even have the phone on – I always had to ring Clay at his mate Matt’s place. It was his second home and that was where he would stay in Sydney until we’d fully integrated as a family in the mountains. Matt had been the guy he’d been with at the pub on the first day we’d hooked up. It was going to be really weird, living together. We had our fingers crossed that eventually Clay would find some work up in the mountains.
I’d held off introducing the boys because Clay kept finding excuses and I didn’t want to organise it only to have it fall through. We were planning to have a couple of days in the mountains together to break the ice and explore. I was going to make it like a new adventure.
I was avoiding heavy lifting. I couldn’t believe how much superfluous junk I had collected in the space of a few years. I had left Bill four years earlier with the clothes on my back and a child on each arm. But there I was with a piano being awkwardly dragged down the narrow staircase. Beds. Couches (nicer ones than the old cheese-smelly-sofa). Tables and chairs. Paintings. Thousands of quirky collectibles. Bags and bags of clothes. I donated back about a quarter of my belongings to the Vinnies down the road. I’d bought most of my stuff there, so it really was the ultimate recycle. I couldn’t wait to explore the op shops in the Blue Mountains to fill up my new home with treasures.
My feelings for Clay had really deepened as our tiny cluster of cells divided and grew. My first ultrasound showed I was much more pregnant than I’d calculated: almost twelve weeks along. The little creature was over five centimetres at that stage, the size of a lime, and looked completely human. The boys and I had sat up on our last night in the Purple Palace, in among all the boxes, and pored over my Pregnancy Bible, looking at pictures of growing babies. They were really fascinated and couldn’t wait until the baby started to move and kick so they could feel it.
‘So we all had tails to start with, like fish?’ Toby asked.
‘Yep.’ I laughed. ‘We looked like aliens, hey?’
‘Maybe we are,’ Ben added, nodding.
I grinned at him, thinking of my old mate Kathy and our planet Basidium.
I watched the truck drive away and we all piled into Kate’s car to follow it to Leura. She’d come up from the Southern Highlands to help out. The really truly wonderful news she brought with her was that she was pregnant too. Due a little before me! And she was still managing to study. Kate was my superwoman. My inspiration.
‘I’ll be up to visit you soon, Dogsbreath,’ Krissy called affectionately from the back door of the surgery. ‘I’ll call you.’
God. I would miss the mad cow. I hadn’t told her I was pregnant or that I’d been seeing Clay. I tried to keep my private life from my landlords and bosses. They might have been weirded out I was sleeping with a patient. Maybe. Maybe not. She’d nearly busted us a few times when Clay had snuck up the back stairs for lunch, but we’d kind of enjoyed the stealth and sneaking around. I hadn’t even told my parents about the baby or Clay at that point. I was so scared of their reaction. I felt like a naughty fifteen-year-old. But if I kept putting it off, they were going to have a stray grandchild who would need explaining.
I knew I was going to miss Sam and Girl George, but I was only moving up the hill a bit and they’d promised to come for regular visits. A change was as good as a holiday and all that. I was really excited. It was going to be a new chapter of my life and I knew it would be good for my boys. It was so much cheaper up there, so I could maybe improve and expand the quality of their lives and opportunities.
Clay was going to enrol in distance education and study psychology, and I was toying with the idea of doing something at uni as well. I had decided to write a book. I’d pretty much given up on the dream of being a famous actor. It really wasn’t panning out that well and my brag list was looking lamer and lamer. I’d kissed Simon Baker Denny in an audition for a role I didn’t get. Auditioned with Russell Crowe for a role I didn’t get (he ended up marrying the girl who did get the role). Auditioned with Sam Neill for a role I didn’t get and once sang a bad Elvis song for the super director Gillian Armstrong for a role I … didn’t get. See the pattern there? Me too. The writing was on the wall. A walk-on role in Dead-End Drive In. A stint in the theatre with Tony ’n’ Tina’s Wedding, a guest role in Police Rescue and another in Stringer and the Clean Machine and a string of television commercials. Nothing remotely Oscar-worthy in my show reel, and with two kids, another on the way and a move to the Blue Mountains, my dream of being an actor was officially dead in the water. And over. Cut. It’s a wrap. So I’d decided to win an Oscar for Best Screenplay instead. My plan was to write a book, get it made into a film and I’d write the screenplay. I could have just written the screenplay, but I didn’t know how to do that, so I’d start with a book. I’d always dreamed of holding a book in my hand that I had written.
The boys wriggled and giggled in the back seat, laughing with Chris, Kate’s son, who’d come along to help as well. All the way up to Leura I chatted to Kate about babies and watched the urban scaffolding melt away into scrubby bush that blossomed into ancient rock gorges and lush fernery.
The new house felt like a mansion, even though it was really pretty modest. It was the first time the boys had seen it and they were running madly around shouting ‘This is my room!’, ‘I bags this room!’, ‘Check out the garden!’, ‘Whoa!’ and it made my heart glad to see them so excited. We would be paying less rent for it than I had been in Sydney for a ramshackle unit. I couldn’t believe it had never occurred to me to move out of the city before. I suppose the huge removalist bill might have been something of a deterrent. And my support network had all been in the city.
Our place on Balmoral Road was set on nearly an acre of land and there were giant pines growing in the backyard. There were three enormous bedrooms and the kitchen had a classy black and white tiled floor – well it wasn’t really tiled, it was just lino, but it looked tiled. The bathroom was newly renovated and all my dreams had come true because the toilet was separate and I could soak in a deep bathtub without looking at a stinky cistern. The garden was overgrown and neglected but I had grand plans for it. Being pregnant had made me go all earth mother. I craved getting my hands into the dirt. I wanted to grow stuff. Herbs. Vegetables.
The truck arrived and the big burly blokes worked like demons to unpack it in record time. They put the furniture into the rooms but left all the bags and boxes on the front balcony and then they were gone. Kate had to get going because it was a long trip back to the Southern Highlands.
‘Thank you so much.’ I smiled and hugged her. ‘Drive safely. And I can’t wait for our new babies to be friends!’
‘You have fun unpacking and I’ll bring the family up in a few weeks when you’re more settled. I can’t wait to meet the mysterious Clay.’
‘You’ll love hi
m.’ I grinned.
The boys entertained themselves in the backyard while I unpacked like a whirling dervish. Toby was psychotic with excitement and had begun making a scarecrow out of old sticks. Some people sat with unpacked boxes for months after moving but that was not the way I rolled. I wanted everything in its place and settled as quickly as possible. I repositioned the couch with Ben’s help, but the rest of the work was fairly lightweight. We’d still need to save up for a new fridge because the bar fridge looked ridiculous in so much space. The new kitchen was much more luxurious than the old alcove, and I couldn’t wait to start baking. My stomach was still a bit uneasy, so I wasn’t able to eat Clay’s curries and I started each day with a wad of dry white bread. But with such a swanky new kitchen, I reckoned I could even get into making my own bread!
Clay had paid the bond on the house, so I had my bond from the Purple Palace in the bank. We’d decided to split our expenses down the middle to start with. That meant that I was going to have to apply for the Parenting Payment Partnered at Social Security, and I’d also come up with the brilliant idea of taking in ironing. While the kids were at school, I could get people to deliver baskets of clothes and linen to me to iron. My mum had sometimes had an ironing lady when I was growing up. I’d seen heaps of ads in the classified section of the local paper wanting ironing done, and I could charge ten bucks a basket. I liked ironing and it would be cash in hand. I didn’t want to look for cleaning work. I was sick of that and with a growing belly and no driver’s licence it would be too hard to get around. The streets were very hilly and not really conducive to long walks by a relatively unfit, lazy person, and the mountains didn’t have as much public transport coverage as the city.
By five I had pretty much finished. The place looked spectacular. I’d hung my paintings, filled our cupboards and wardrobes. This was going to be a fine home for us and our new baby and our brand new life. In the cardboard box of foodstuffs I had some cans of kidney beans and tomatoes. A capsicum with a bit of life in it and some rice. I cooked up some Mexican bean slop for dinner and the kids and I ate at the table with a glorious view of the pine trees from the dining room. A misty fog descended outside. It was eerie and atmospheric.
Madness, Mayhem and Motherhood Page 19