I sat at the wooden table, sipping smoky tea, scooping up some beans with my triangles of toast. We were in the national park just north of Lismore and it was so pretty and still. The people in the Kombi van across the way were still asleep, and the grey nomads in the snazzy motor home had already left the site. I’d rung Kate the day before from a phone booth and had a really good long talk while the boys kicked a soccer ball around the park. She had so often been my voice of reason. I trusted her judgement. She’d listened as I told her about the hospital and the eviction.
‘Nik,’ she’d said. ‘We see you as family, and life down here is so lovely. It’s cheap and the air is clean. If you want I can find you a place and organise it. Your boys and mine would love to be going to school together. The local primary is great – and Harry’s got a readymade friend as well.’
Kate had a little girl only a few weeks younger than Harry. Her idea was growing on me. I loved her like family as well. I didn’t know much about the Southern Highlands but maybe that was a good thing. No expectations. I asked her how much it would cost to rent a little house and nearly fell over when she told me. It was so cheap.
‘We’ve got horses and dirt bikes and it’s a brilliant place to bring up kids,’ she went on.
There was no way I could afford to return to Sydney, and the Blue Mountains held too many memories for me. I sat in the tent by torchlight the night before and ran the idea by the boys.
‘Yah!’ Toby had said, enthusiastically. ‘Dirt bikes. How cool!’
‘And you’ll have friends at the new school straight away,’ I had added.
Ben had thought about it for a few moments and then nodded. ‘It sounds good.’
And we’d put our hands on one another’s and agreed that we would head to the Southern Highlands.
The beans were good. I inhaled the scent of garlic and listened to the bush sounds around me, the whip of a bird, the crack of a branch and the scratch of the scrub turkey by the fire-pit.
I shut my eyes and thought about myself: the confusing, confounding mix of Good and Bad Nikki. On the surface you had a run-of-the-mill, not-too-hideous thirty-something-year-old woman with dry, thin, reddish sort of hair that fell to her shoulders, kind of like the before shots in the shampoo commercials, striking almond-shaped green eyes and thin lips that were always flaky. She was short like a hobbit and had huge knockers and fair skin. She’d been called attractive. She wasn’t too bad. But then I looked behind the surface image. Who was I really?
Nikki McWatters grew up hating her name. ‘Nikki’ sounded like the name of someone who only wore boob tubes. She always wanted to call herself something else. Something glamorous. She grew up on the Gold Coast, a most horrible town full of tinsel and tack. She was a good student and played the church organ at St Vincent’s Catholic Church of a Sunday through her teens, despite the fact that she knew God was a silly story to scare children and susceptible people into being good. She rebelled against her conservative parents via the hobby of sleeping with rockstars. This went on until she fell in love with a punk rocker and ran away to Sydney to find fame and fortune. Instead she had two little boys and got married and that didn’t work out too well. So she pulled the tablecloth off the table and everything got broken, including her. She spent years trying desperately to keep instant noodles on the table and Kmart shoes on her children’s feet. She fell in love with a poor broken boy; she didn’t see the cracks. And he broke into pieces and that was the end of him. Nikki popped out a little baby though, so he lived on. Nikki got really, really sad but learned there was good reason for that – she wasn’t bad; she was just a bit mad. Nikki then went back to the beginning, but the Gold Coast really was a hellhole of apocalyptic proportions. So Nikki, with her little gaggle of boys, drove off into the sunset. To be continued …
I looked at my boys drawing patterns in the dirt. Who were they? Who would they become? Ben with his guitar. His incredible art. His dreams of walking on Mars. His gentle nature and wacky sense of humour. A boy who looked at me and saw some of the ragged bits but loved me all the more for them. A boy wiser than his years.
Toby, a boy who wanted to be called Sonic, with his cheeky grin and boundless energy. A boy who once sucked out an entire tube of Bonjela because he liked the taste. Toby, who always knew just when to say the right thing to me to make my heart melt.
Harry. Little Harry. My Buddha. My laughing boy who hugged me till I was breathless. Who looked at me with such trusting eyes, knowing I would do anything for him.
My life was all about them.
I needed to stop treading water, because my legs were tired. I needed to make a proper nest, feather it and nurture them all the way they needed to be nurtured.
I had the potty beside the tent and my little one was nearly toilet-trained. I was getting sick of eating canned tuna and baked beans. There were storm clouds brewing so I took the kids to the library. It was a good thing too because, as soon as we arrived, Armageddon broke out and a storm hit Lismore that was like no other storm I had ever encountered. It was so voracious and violent that we were immediately evacuated from the library. In the foyer we all stood back from the glass doors and watched in horror as wheely bins were flung down the street, bouncing off car bonnets and smashing into gutters. My car was in the library car park and not undercover so I was really worried about it. The hail started and hit like enemy fire. Fist-sized balls of solid ice rained down ferociously, exploding against the bitumen, smashing windscreens on cars and peppering everything with pits. The bodies of the cars outside were looking exactly like golf balls. The kids were scared. I was scared. The world outside the library foyer was a war zone of weather. And it sprang up so suddenly, like a stealthy sniper. It just went on and on and on until it stopped.
We all walked out into the aftermath, rain still skipping down over a world of debris. Lismore was a town in shock. Cars everywhere were wrecked. Building awnings were torn and flapping in the gusty breeze. We got to our car and found it, too, was peppered with pits like acne scars all over the roof and bonnet. One small crack in the windscreen. It wasn’t too bad. It could have been much worse. The car was an old bomb of a thing but pretty reliable, so I didn’t really care about the hail damage. It gave the car some character. The most pressing concern was the tent. It was our turtle shell. It wasn’t much but it was all we had.
I stood there, looking at the broken remnants of my life. The tent was dead. So was everything in it. The clothes could be wrung out and hung out but the air mattresses had all sprung a few leaks. I wasn’t upset. It was fate’s way of telling me it was time to move on. Living in a tent had been kind of fun for a couple of weeks. It had been an adventure.
I rang Kate and told her we would be down at her farm in two days’ time. She told me she’d start looking for places and arrange some inspections.
I was finally ready to move somewhere new and settle down. I was feeling good. Strong. The fresh air had done us good. The sun had dried up all the tears.
We drove and drove and drove.
‘I know you’ve been sad,’ Ben said to me from the passenger seat, ‘but I want to just stop and make some friends and stuff. And for you to be happy.’
He was a good boy. He’d weathered some shitty mothering. All the boys had. I owed it to them to straighten my life out.
And then we all sang ‘Ninety-nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall’. All the way through until there were no bottles left. And then we started again. After we got sick of that, I turned on the radio and we all sang ‘Don’t Go Chasing Waterfalls’ at the top of our lungs and I couldn’t help but see the metaphor at work in my own life.
When we drove into the little township of Bundanoon in the Southern Highlands, not far from Kate’s farm, I felt something. It was a sense of overwhelming relief. I looked at the little main street with its sleepy shops, and the train track cutting through the village, and I felt welcomed.
It felt like home. It felt like my place.
Our cottage sat on a long, lean acre down to the tracks. The boys loved watching the trains whizz by and always waved. The train driver usually tooted his horn for them. The kitchen was my favourite room in the house. It had a wrought-iron rack above the kitchen butcher’s block where I could have hung copper pots if I’d had any.
I woke up early one day not long after all my furniture arrived from the Gold Coast and made myself a cup of milky tea. I scribbled in my diary and could see, while flicking back through it, when I’d been happy and when I’d been sad, because the handwriting changed. That morning I had happy handwriting.
The day before I had done something I hadn’t done for many years: I’d gone to the hairdresser. I now had short snazzy bright-auburn hair. I liked it. The boys liked it too.
‘It makes you look even prettier,’ Toby said.
I’d unpacked all the boxes. Harry was booked into preschool and the boys had started at the local school and loved it.
I was startled by the phone. It was the local doctor’s surgery, where I’d gone for an asthma script.
‘Hi, you were in at the surgery yesterday,’ the receptionist said.
I remembered her as a kindly older woman with short white hair.
‘Yes,’ I answered. ‘That’s right. Is there a problem?’
‘You mentioned to the doctor you used to work in a medical centre in Sydney and he wonders if you would like a job. I’m retiring soon.’
I felt like high-fiving the wall behind me. ‘Absolutely. Yes. Oh yes.’
‘It’s a full-time position. Can you start next week? Monday. Say nine?’ she asked. ‘I’ll spend my last few weeks training you up. We had a girl lined up but she’s just got a better job in the city.’
‘I’ll be there,’ I gushed.
‘Nine. See you then. Perfect.’
I hung up and did a happy dance around the living room. ‘I’ve got a job! I’ve got a job!’
A little bit of confidence goes a long way and just having a haircut had made me feel better about myself – let alone being handed a job after all my useless struggles to find work on the Gold Coast. It made me wonder whether, if psychologists and welfare agencies started handing out free make-overs to the sad, the poor, the lonely and insecure, maybe the world would be a better place.
One Sunday morning, a few weeks later, I was sleeping in. It was cold and raining outside and I was snuggled up under my quilt. Harry wasn’t there, though he’d taken to sleeping with me since we moved into the cottage and I didn’t mind one bit. He was like a wrap-around hot-water bottle. But he’d got up early. I patted the spot beside me and rolled over and was just drifting off back to sleep when I heard my bedroom door creak open and I pulled myself up onto an elbow and stared, smiling, feeling those sentimental tears spring to my eyes.
‘Happy Mother’s Day!’ they said in unison.
My three boys. One big tray. A glass of orange juice and two pieces of peanut butter toast.
‘Oh my goodness, kids,’ I blubbered. ‘Thank you.’
I sipped the juice and nibbled at the toast while I unwrapped their gifts. The paper was awkwardly sticky-taped so I had to tear it.
‘I made them myself,’ Toby announced, beaming. ‘At school.’
He proudly presented me with a little clear plastic packet of chocolates.
‘I had to eat a couple to make sure they were OK.’ He grinned cheekily. ‘They are.’
On his card he had drawn a mouse. A girl mouse in a prim and proper dress with stripy boots. Toby was a great little artist. The name on the bottom said Absinthe Mousketeer. The mouse-girl was green.
‘She’s a superhero mouse.’
I laughed. I liked it. It was weird.
Ben had made me a wooden box and Harry gave me a painting he’d done at kindy.
The boys all crawled into bed with me and we snuggled and giggled the morning away.
‘This was the best Mother’s Day ever,’ I told them.
‘You’re the best mother ever.’ Ben smiled and the other kids high-fived me.
I lost it. The poor kids had no idea why I was sobbing like a baby but I kept telling them, ‘They’re happy tears. Really, they’re happy tears.’
I knew in my heart I was not the best mother ever, but that day, at least, I felt like I was. But one thing I knew for certain, the thing that every mother knows? I knew I had the best kids ever!
We end with a dream sequence.
I had a dream about Clay again last night. He’s been haunting me a bit lately. Last night he was in the mouse-suit with the little pipe-cleaner whiskers. Just like the first dream I’d had about him. But unlike the first one, which turned into a nightmare when the boat we were in capsized and he drowned, this one was … nice. I really don’t understand what the mouse-suit signifies. There were mice in the Purple Palace, of course. But Clay was a cute giant mouse in my dream. I’m not going to try to understand it because dreams are just mental and strange and probably don’t mean anything at all. But it was what Clay said to me that made this dream significant. He told me he was sorry. I’ve been waiting for so long to hear those words from him. And he explained he really did have his own Bad Clay and that his Bad Clay was afraid of mice. You know, how elephants are supposedly afraid of mice. He told me that he wore the mouse-suit so his Bad Clay would leave him alone. And he said (and it sounded a lot to me like that old Chinese man in Gremlins when he warned the dude about feeding them after midnight), Clay said the mouse-suit only worked as long as it didn’t get wet. How ridiculously cryptic is that? My dead boyfriend comes to me in a dream and tells me his mouse-suit is like some kind of Superman cape that protects him against mental illness, but it can’t get wet. And then, in the dream, he takes off the mouse-suit and gives it to me. He says again that he is sorry, and he’s crying and I’m crying and I wake up crying my eyes out and I’m gripping my quilt in my hand and have to look down to check. And I am actually surprised to see that it is the quilt because the dream was so real that I half-expected to be holding a mouse-suit.
Later the same day I go to Harry’s graduation thing at the preschool at three. I can’t believe he’s off to big school next year. Doctor P gives me an hour off to attend the presentation and the kids are performing a song and Harry is dressed in … a MOUSE-SUIT. With two little pipe-cleaner whiskers! And I have never, ever told anyone about these weird dreams. Never! And I am crying and crying, way more than the other parents, who are just indulging in regular milestone tears. The kids are singing ‘Three Blind Mice’ and Harry is dancing with two other mice and I don’t know what the hell is going on but it’s freaking me out. And I can’t figure out what the getting wet part of the message means, or maybe that’s because it got blended and confused with the actual Gremlin movie because I think they couldn’t get wet either. I don’t know. I just don’t know. I think we watched Gremlins on video recently. Maybe it’s all in my own mind.
Back in the surgery, I have eyes so puffed and swollen from crying that I am wearing my blue-tinged sunglasses inside so the patients don’t think I’m completely stoned, and a patient walks into the surgery and smiles at me like no one has ever smiled at me before.
And I smile back at him and I get the very strange feeling that I’m about to get my happily ever after.
THE END … which, of course, is really just the beginning.
~
First of all I’d like to thank Wendy Harmer for giving me the courage to tell my story. You are an inspiration to me and your strong social conscience helps to get the important stories out into the public arena so they can be better understood. You’re a light-shiner, babe. Our chats about the struggle and your wicked sense of humour and passion encouraged me to go further and actually write the book. So, cheers, love!
As always, I say thank you to my family for putting up with me.
It can’t have been easy! My darling children Benjamin, Toby, Harrison, Mia and Thomas – you are the wind beneath my rather tattered wings. I love you.
I roar howling gusts of gratitude to my poor, poor, husband Zeus for bearing the brunt of my unique and often disturbing craziness. You’re a long-suffering saint. You deserve a 24-carat gold halo, my forever darling.
Nancy, John, Anne-Marie, Rachel and David McWatters – you are a super bunch to be related to. Your constant love and support are deeply appreciated. I love you all very, very much.
Others that I count in my family super team and am so happy to have in my life include Charley Mason, a woman with the kindest heart I know, and Stephanie and Colin Humphreys, who are always there for me.
Madelaine and Jason Rumbel, Carol-Anne Humphreys, Michael and Tracey Humphreys, Patricia and Javier McWatters del Valle, William Coglin and Dan Owens, Christine Turner Coles, Joan and Jim Ballenger, Sheree and Mark Ballenger, and Akka Ballenger Constantin. And to my co-grandies Julie and Gary Mason. All good eggs!
A thank you to my good friends, from the very first playground buddy, Kathryn Cruise – my intergalactic sister – to my newest and most fabulously fabulous friend Haley Chartres (who strangely and independently of me, knew each other … spooky weird).
And to all you groovy cats who’ve made me laugh over the years: Donna Matulis; Paul Rodgers; River Tetro; Gavin Eadie; Stefan Redford; Susie Ketchell; Karen Cox; Melinda Batley-Ole Keko; Marina Rose; Annemarie Freeman; Amanda Fullerton; Dee and Reny Rennie; Sandy Hollis; Rosalie Bock; Dale Fox; Zoe Davis; Raelee Felsman; Rhonda Seeto; Tammy McCarthy; Carolyn Davies; Sue Krucker; Danielle Fielding; Toni-Anne Ticehurst Pescud; Kerry-Ann McPadden; Susie Bent Zecca; Leonie Tyle; Natalie, Brian and Anne Powles; Adair Dever; Stephen Hamper; Noah Dawson; and Fiona McCowan. Y’all better buy the book or you’re off my Christmas list!
Madness, Mayhem and Motherhood Page 24