The clouds lifted because I dragged Bad Nikki into the light and gave her an ultimatum. Stop messing with my life. And the sun began to sneak out, as the sun always did. Everything passed and I began feeling more in control. I started looking after myself better. I ate good food and stopped sitting in front of the television eating crap. I curbed the drinking. I realised alcohol was the combustible ingredient that fuelled Bad Nikki like water and the Gremlins. I started going to bed earlier. I got back into reading stories to the boys. We got through the Goosebumps series almost as fast as R.L. Stine could write them. I started writing again. I wrote in my journal every day. I wrote stories for the kids. I wrote snippets of my own story. Funny recollections. Not so funny recollections. I wrote long lists. I wrote plans and goals and Academy Awards speeches.
In between baskets of ironing and looking after my little babysitting wards, I went to the library in Katoomba and got lots of books and I read and read and got swept away by other people’s stories. I distracted myself from even thinking about Bad Nikki and tying myself up in knots, afraid she was lurking in the shadows. She seemed to get bored with being ignored and Good Nikki began to enjoy an energy burst and a clearer head. ‘You’re not so bad,’ I said to myself as I scribbled notes and planned and plotted my life and our future. ‘You’re doing OK.’
One of my ironing clients developed a crush on me. He was a single middle-aged guy who looked like a potato and smelled like rotten eggs. One week he put a bottle of wine in the bottom of the basket and a poem he wrote about the ironing lady. I was touched and a bit creeped out. It was the worst poem in the world. The very worst. I told him it was lovely and that ‘it wasn’t him’; it was just that I had three kids, one still a baby, and the last thing I needed right then was a man in my life. I had nicknames for my clients. He was Mr Potato Head. There was The Murderer. The Freak (she was an uptight airhead) and Smokey the Bandit, because all her clothes smelled like tobacco. The Murderer ended up marrying a woman to get Australian citizenship or something. I was a bit put out he hadn’t asked me because he was very rich and handsome. But when I met the new wife, I realised my theory that rich men like good hair was spot on, because she had shampoo-commercial hair and my hair at that point was getting to be borderline dreadlocks. I didn’t see much point even brushing it most days.
Harry was taking his first steps. He was such a little elf of a boy, and looked like Clay with his big dark eyes. Toby was doing really well at school and his teacher thought he was the funniest kid she’d ever taught. Ben’s very cute teacher had inspired him to learn guitar and he practised like a demon and was getting really good. I woke up most mornings with the sun streaming through my bedroom window and the thought that ‘we are going to be OK, it’s all going to be OK.’
I knew Bad Nikki was always there, sulking in some corner of my mind, just waiting for an opportunity to come out and be a mean girl, but I felt stronger for knowing she was just a cauldron of chemicals and not really real, not really me. Knowing who and what she was meant she had a little less power over me. I knew she might pop up but I’d be ready for her. I’d give as good as she did and I would not let her push me around the way she had in the past. ‘The gloves are off now, bitch,’ I warned her. ‘Come at me again at your own peril!’
I decided to finally get my driver’s licence. I was sick to death of scabbing lifts from Rhoni and I was even more sick of walking everywhere, although it had shaved off the third arse-cheeks I was carrying around. And while I had no way of actually purchasing or saving for a car, the couple I babysat for offered to buy me a really cheap one and I could pay it off in babysitting hours. Thank goodness for lovely people. We found a little white Corolla runabout wagon and Andrew, the dad, drove it into my driveway and there it would sit, being used as a cubby house by the kids until I got my act together and got my licence. It took all of two weeks. I was a natural. All the years of being a passenger had been a good rehearsal. I hadn’t had the dream about drowning in a sinking car for years and I realised the phobia had probably left me years earlier and I just hadn’t noticed.
I took the kids on a maiden voyage, with my shiny new provisional licence in my wallet, to Lithgow so we could get some drive-through McDonald’s as a rare treat, and then I completely freaked out when it got dark, because no one had shown me how to turn the headlights on. I drove all the way home on high beam with people honking horns at me.
On the second anniversary of Clay’s death, Bad Nikki started bitching at me again. I tried very hard to tell her to piss off but it became really hard to hear anything else over the mean dialogue.
BAD NIKKI: You are such a loser. You will never be a writer. No one will ever love you. Drink all the cask wine. All of it.
GOOD NIKKI: You have no power over me.
BAD NIKKI: Oh yes I do. And you know it.
So the week after I finished paying off the car, I said goodbye to Rhoni and the mountains. I knew I was not strong enough to keep holding the world on my back, and I kept thinking back to that day in the park, in the mountains, in spring, when I’d popped grapes into Clay’s mouth and called him Atlas and he’d said he was carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. I wished so much that he had shared some of that load with me, or with anyone, so that he could still have been there, by my side, to watch Harry take those first steps between the coffee table and the couch. If he’d only reached out to someone, life would have been so different.
And so I reached out.
Mum offered to bring us all home to Queensland. She’d put down the bond on a nice townhouse with a pool. Up until then I’d been too proud, too ashamed and too humiliated by my poverty, my bad choices and Bad Nikki to ask my family for help except when truly desperate. But for the sake of my boys, we packed up and moved again like turtles, to the Gold Coast. With my family nearby to support me, the boys would have a much better life and I owed them that. Unfortunately Bad Nikki had to come too, but I hoped some time lying in the sunshine by a pool might just cheer her up.
We loaded up the little Toyota Corolla wagon. I was a little nervous about driving all the way to Queensland when I was still so green. I’d had my licence for exactly a month and I was stalling the car and getting the gears mixed up, though I couldn’t believe it had taken me so long to do it – being a driver was so liberating.
The removalists closed up the back of the truck with a groan and a slam.
‘See you on the Gold Coast!’ they called and waved.
I’d sold the piano and had a wallet full of money, which felt like a nice change.
I looked at our mountain cottage and let out a sigh. It had been good to us. Kept us warm. Kept us dry. But it was definitely time to move on. The ghost of Clay was hovering there up the back of the built-in wardrobe and it was time to leave him behind. I needed some family loving. I would miss Rhoni terribly, as she had become a very good friend. I sometimes wondered if I would have made it through the wilderness of the previous years without her. We promised to stay in touch.
‘I’m only a phone call away.’ Rhoni, my fairy godmother, smiled and hugged me tight.
On the open road I felt the wind playing with my hair. Ben was the chief navigator with the map book on his lap, and Toby and Harry squabbled like irritable geese in the back. We were loaded up with pillows and quilts, so if I did crash that might have offered some protective padding. Ben’s nylon-stringed guitar was wedged on top of everything in the back. We left the mountains, heading towards Lithgow. As we cruised through Blackheath I had a sudden pang of regret. The Blue Mountains were so very beautiful. The Megalong Valley was a spectacular panoramic experience. The place was truly magical. Lush. Cool. Peaceful. I was trading all this for the Gold Coast? How much of my decision to uproot us again was my crazy bipolar? Was I just being a manic lunatic?
After Lithgow the landscape unfolded and we sketched a path up the New England Highway heading north. The road was wide and e
mpty of traffic. The bubbles of anticipation began popping in my belly. I hadn’t lived on the Gold Coast since I was seventeen. Perhaps, as an adult, I would see it with different eyes – I had always found the place shallow and plastic back then. But I was looking forward to spending time with my younger brother and sister, who were young adults now. Mum. Dad. Perhaps I’d track down some old school friends. Make some new ones. Find Kathy and see if she remembered our old Basidium days, when we believed we were from the mushroom planet. I think we were right about that.
The day was as long as the road and we pulled into Gunnedah for the night. I booked in to the first budget motel I could find. Mum was funding the trip north, so I went for a motel rather than a tacky caravan park. I collapsed on the cheap terry-towelling bedspread. After I rested my road-weary eyes for half an hour we all walked down to Woolworths for provisions. Some bread and ham and a big bottle of juice.
I loved staying in a motel with the boys. Harry toddled around on his stick-thin legs, his huge round eyes taking everything in. He had a repertoire of about twenty words. He seemed to think this motel was our new house. A little cubby house. Toby entertained us by dancing to the radio. Ben tinkered with his guitar. And I tried to write in my journal because I was starting to realise there was a correlation between writing and my sanity. I felt more centred and grounded after unloading some of my many, many, many, many thoughts onto the page. It relieved some of the pressure from my hyperactive brain.
As I re-read previous entries, trying to detect the patterns and rhythms in my life, I was suddenly struck by something. I looked over to the boys, hand over my mouth, and said, ‘Oh my God, the cat!’
We looked at one another and Ben and I started to laugh. How had we forgotten that evil cat? We all hated him, so nobody was actually upset.
‘I’ll ring one of the JW women. They love cats.’
I really hoped that cat was a symbol of the devastating bleakness and jet-black depression that had been eating away at me on and off for the last year and a half, and I prayed (not actually prayed to God, it’s just a handy expression) that I had left that behind too. I hoped wildly Bad Nikki might not have noticed that we’d left. My greatest wish was that she’d been left behind. Fat chance!
‘OK, so who thought this was a good idea?’ I asked myself one morning, out loud. I did hate the Gold Coast. It was a glittering gaudy circus of crime and bogans and bikies and fake boobs. I was living in a little villa in a complex full of retired people. They floated around the pool with their leathery skin crinkled like burned parchment. It was the school holidays so at least we got plenty of swims in, because it was stiflingly hot. The manager of the complex was a sleazy middle-aged guy with dyed black hair like an Elvis impersonator, and whenever I went for a swim he came and pottered around the pool perving – it felt uncomfortable.
It was kind of nice to be around family again, but not as lovely and wonderful as I’d hoped. They were all busy and had their own lives and work and routines. I’d been desperately trying to get work myself. I’d applied for so many jobs. In the end I did some telemarketing from home but, after being abused for three hours straight one morning and not getting a single bite, I realised working on a commission-only basis didn’t really fly if you weren’t a tenacious sort of go-getter. It was pretty disheartening to be told by complete strangers to fuck off two seconds after introducing yourself and mentioning drink-coaster promotions. It seemed there was a lot of telemarketing going on around the Gold Coast.
In the end I asked Mum if she knew anyone who might need some ironing done. She said she did and paid me to do a basket. It was so weird to be back on the Coast, my family town, and have my parents living separate lives. They got on well enough and we all gathered for regular happy family barbecues. I couldn’t imagine hanging out with Bill, even though I didn’t have any animosity towards him. I had, after all, walked out on him. I was disappointed that the boys were missing out on fatherly input, though they still talked to him on the phone every now and again and he sent them birthday and Christmas presents. I chatted to his girlfriend on the phone sometimes too, giving her updates on the boys, and I was genuinely pleased that they sounded so happy together.
I went on a date with Sam’s brother. I’d had a thing for him when we were younger, but he still saw me as his kid sister’s best friend and had always stopped short of taking our friendship to the next level, despite my lusty attempts. I found some old friends from school and invited them to a party. I had an actual party. It was a mess. Everyone got smashed and my back courtyard was full of pool toys the next morning and no one could remember how they got there. Mum turned up to drop the kids home after their sleepover and she gave a steely glare as she looked around at the bodies and debris.
One morning I turned on the television to discover that Michael Hutchence was dead. We’d been friends for a bit and I’d loved him for a bit and I was just so, so sad and the hanging got to me. The hanging really got to me. Bad Nikki reappeared after quite a long hiatus and she really went for the jugular and dug her claws in and held on tight. I went underwater for a while and, to be honest, I don’t really remember where I went, for about a week. My body just went through the motions of mothering and living but wasn’t really there. Somehow, we got by. The kids lived on Weet-Bix and watched television until after midnight. But we survived and I came up for air.
Although I was home and in the bosom of family for the first time in years, it felt like a nightmare that I couldn’t wake up from. I used to have dreams about being back at school, even though I was an adult, and they were awful dreams because I felt trapped in childhood and that was how it felt being back on the Gold Coast. My parents were still teaching and lived in nice houses and had their lives all sorted out. My brother and sister lived in a share-house and both worked and I barely saw them because they were teenagers with a full teenage social schedule. They had it together more than me. Sister Annie lived in Melbourne and I missed her terribly. It was strange but I didn’t feel like I belonged any more. Not on the Coast. Not in the family. Not in my own skin.
I couldn’t get work and the more I tried the more miserable and useless I felt. It was like being a dependent child again. I had to borrow money from Mum because I needed tampons one day, and she gave me five bucks. I was left feeling like a little puddle of shame. I could see in Mum’s face how sad she was that I was so inept at running my own life at the age of thirty-two. I fell behind a little in rent and asked for a loan. I knew I was a disappointment and I was trying to make something of my life, but all my time was taken up with surviving, just getting through each day, one day at a time, so that I couldn’t afford to spend too much time thinking about my wasted potential, which were words someone had used about me once but I couldn’t remember who it had been. Most of the time, I felt like that mythical serpent, forever eating its own tail.
Mum of course had picked the villa and had paid the bond and it felt like I owed her a lot for that. Not money. More than that. When my damn car broke down and needed some work, I had to borrow money again from my folks and got the obligatory lecture about ‘if you buy such an old car what do you expect?’ I’d bought the car for nine hundred bucks-worth of babysitting hours. I guess I knew what to expect but that wasn’t going to help me any to get a newer, better car. I couldn’t keep borrowing money from my parents because every time I did my self-esteem stepped down a notch and there weren’t many notches left. None of it was their fault. I was in my thirties and didn’t think like everyone else and somehow seemed to have been given the wrong road map to life. If you aren’t plagued by mental illness, it’s very hard to understand the thought patterns and thoroughly ridiculous decisions a sick person is capable of and, in seeing the frustrations my family had with me, I developed a deeper understanding of Clay, and I felt less angry at him as time went on.
But I was struggling again. Everything seemed too hard. The sunshine burned. The air was muggy and heavy
. I went for job interview after job interview and got nothing. I couldn’t even find any cleaning or ironing work. Bar work. Nada. The villa was too expensive and it was hard to keep up with the rent. I pinched toilet paper from Dad’s place. I was sinking. I was so sick of struggling, of treading water. My arms were tired. I was tired.
And then Harry got sick.
I navigated my bomb of a car along the Pacific Highway down towards Miami from Broadbeach, where I knew there was a medical centre that would bulk bill for consultations. I could see in the rear-vision mirror that Harry was still flushed in the face. His eyes were glassy and he looked miserable. A mother just knows when her child is really, really sick, not just got-a-cold sick, and I didn’t like this at all. I felt in my bones that there was something seriously wrong with my little boy. He was very unwell.
‘Is Harry still hot?’ I asked Toby.
‘Yep,’ he responded after feeling his little brother’s forehead. ‘Burning.’
Ben had his smelly foot wedged into the corner of the passenger window and the stench of mouldy socks wafted back into the car.
‘Put your foot down, Ben. It stinks.’
As Ben’s body was beginning to contemplate puberty, the musky, cheesy boy aroma thickened.
By the time we reached Miami, Harry was coughing with every breath, his nose was streaming and his eyes were all gunked up. He lay heavily back in his car seat, staring at nothing, limp and listless.
‘Asthma,’ the doctor said dismissively after listening to Harry’s chest.
I was asthmatic. I had been asthmatic my whole life and, while I was not a qualified medical practitioner, I could tell that Harry was most definitely not suffering from asthma. With a script for Ventolin, I left the surgery in disgust and drove straight to the Southport Hospital.
Madness, Mayhem and Motherhood Page 22