My Life and Other Catastrophes

by Rowena Mohr

  Saturday 25 June 9.45 pm

  SLB must be making his money some other way because I really don’t think he’s got what it takes to be a drug lord! Mum and the Creep went out for dinner and left me and little bro on our own. Watched Down With Love one-and-a-half times before I remembered that I still hadn’t found out anything about his suspected underworld activities so I paid him a surprise visit. I kind of accidentally forgot to knock before I went into his bedroom and it was like I’d busted him downloading porn or something. He was practising his radio show voice and recording it to CD but when he saw me he practically yanked the computer connection out of the wall trying to shut it down. And then he starts shoving all these sheets of paper away under the books on his desk but I grabbed them and guess what? They were like designs of snakes and lizards and stuff! Reptiles! He’ll be keeping spiders in a jar next!

  Almost asked him if Mum had told him about Dad’s affair but figured that Mum wouldn’t have said anything to him because he’s too immature and he wouldn’t be able to handle it.

  Sunday 26 June 8.33 pm

  Thought about writing to Dad in Bali to ask him whether he now regretted throwing away his marriage and his family for the sake of a moment of passion. Decided against it because I don’t have his address and also I still can’t believe he would actually do this to us.

  Maybe Mum has just made the whole thing up to distract me from Creepazoid’s drug activities?

  Sunday 26 June 11.08 pm

  Not coping. Can’t sleep. Can’t eat. Think I’m becoming anorexic and it’s all my father’s fault!

  Monday 27 June 2.07 pm

  Got a call from Rock God Russo this morning asking me if I wanted to rehearse tomorrow. Should have guessed. And here was I thinking that when he asked me what I was doing over the holidays he might actually want to – you know – see a movie or something! And of course, I’d forgotten that Rami’s not around. (The Cambodian holiday. One of those eco-tours where you’ve got to bury your own poo as you go trudging through the snake-infested jungle. With any luck they’ll all get captured by the Khmer Rouge and held hostage for six months or so!) So he’s obviously just filling in time till she gets back!

  Problem was, I knew the school music rooms would be locked up over the holidays and there was no way I was going to rehearse at his place with his whacko mother hanging around. She seriously creeps me out. Anyway, Brendan must have read my mind because he said, ‘Don’t worry, Erin. Mum’s not going to be there so you don’t have to try and think up an excuse. Besides, you need all the practice you can get.’ Smartarse! Told him I’d be there at eleven but only because I’m a professional.

  Tuesday 28 June 5.22 pm

  What a freaky day – I’m talking complete horror show! When I got to Brendan’s he said he had something to show me and he took me into what I guessed was – or used to be – the main bedroom. There was something really weird about that room and I couldn’t figure out what it was at first. It smelt funny – sort of like a really old person’s house – or an op-shop or something. But it wasn’t just that. It was really neat and tidy. Too neat and tidy. The bed looked like it had never been slept in and on the dressing table there was a man’s watch and a brush and comb and some other stuff – all laid out as if they were in a display case in a museum. And on every other surface were photographs of this laughing dark-haired man with very white teeth who looked a lot like Brendan. Beside him, in some of the photos, was a beautiful woman with long straight hair and lots of eyeliner – it took me a while to figure out who it was – whose skin was so white she seemed almost ghostly beside Brendan’s olive-skinned father. Which was kind of fitting, really. Not just because Mrs Russo had become sort of ghostly since her husband died but also because that room was like some kind of shrine where nothing had been touched since the day of the drowning.

  I looked at Brendan wondering why he was showing me this super-private part of his life and also because, to be honest, being in that room was starting to freak me out slightly. But Brendan had his head stuck inside a huge old wardrobe and was rummaging through the clothes looking for something. When he came out he was holding an old-fashioned suit – pale pink with flared pants and really wide lapels. I recognised it from one of the photos of his dad.

  Brendan held the suit up against himself and asked, ‘What do you think?’ He was looking at me like he’d just discovered a cure for cancer or something. I was getting more weirded out by the minute seeing Brendan standing there channelling his dead father but he didn’t seem to notice.

  ‘For Lucard,’ he said. ‘What do you think? Isn’t it great?’ Suddenly I couldn’t wait to get out of there. Brendan was starting to act as crazy as his mother.

  ‘Put it away, Brendan. Mrs Parisi’ll find you something. She’s in charge of the costumes, remember.’

  And that’s when things started to get REALLY weird. I heard this funny little whimpering sound coming from the hallway and when I turned around there was Mrs Russo hovering in the doorway like something from a horror movie.

  ‘Frank? Is that you?’ she said. ‘Frank?’ She was looking at Brendan like he was a vision of the Virgin Mary come to earth in Wilga Heights. And at last Brendan snapped out of his creepy communing-with-dead-father trance.

  ‘It’s me, Mum. Brendan,’ he said, but Mrs Russo didn’t seem to hear him. I think at that moment she really thought that Brendan was her Frank come back to life and it wasn’t until Brendan dropped the suit on the bed and grabbed her by the shoulders that she realised that it wasn’t him. Freaky!

  But then, it was like she was suddenly really angry at Brendan for not being Frank and she turned to me and started saying all this weird stuff like, ‘He was there. He could have saved him but he didn’t.’ At first I didn’t get what she was on about and I thought she was just rambling. But then – and how totally psycho is this? – I realised that she was talking about the accident and saying that it was Brendan’s fault!! That if he’d saved his brother from drowning then his father would still be alive.

  I couldn’t believe it coz I remembered Mum saying that Brendan was only five or something when this happened and how could she seriously blame a little kid for not being able to save his older brother. I kept expecting that he was going to tell her to shut up but he just kept repeating in this really quiet voice, ‘Mum, I don’t think Erin wants to hear that,’ or, ‘Mum, you know that’s not true.’ And then he would turn to me and apologise over and over again. Eventually he grabbed her arm and steered her very gently out of the room and she just followed him like she’d forgotten where she was or something.

  I got out of there as fast as I could.

  That wasn’t the end of it though. Brendan rang as soon as I got home and said that he needed to talk to me and could I meet him for a coffee somewhere? I didn’t really want to – I’d had enough of him and his freaky family for one day – but he sounded so desperate I said I’d meet him at Le Cafeteria. When I arrived he was already there and he got up and grabbed my elbow and pulled me over to the table like he was going to pull my arm out if its socket. I thought he was going to beg me not to say anything about his crazy mother at school or something, but instead he just sat there squeezing both my hands really hard and staring at me like he’d gone crazy too. Then he said the strangest thing. He said, ‘It’s not true, Erin. You do know it’s not true?’ I didn’t have a clue what he was talking about and he must have seen that because he said, ‘I didn’t let my brother drown. It wasn’t my fault.’ OMG! What is going on with this family? I was so horrified I didn’t know what to say. I mean, what would you say? ‘Of course, Brendan, only a complete psycho like your mother would blame a five-year-old for something like that.’ Or, ‘Gee, Brendan, I’m glad you cleared that up because there was no way I was gonna go swimming with you next summer.’ Instead, I just sort of laughed and told him not to be so silly. Boy, his mother has really got a lot to answer for!

  Tuesday 28 June 10.53 pm

  Been thin
king about Brendan and his mother all night. How does he cope with that kind of craziness all the time? And look what it’s doing to him. He’s so caught up in his mother’s twisted reality that he actually believes that he’s to blame for everything.

  And do you know what else is weird? When Brendan was showing me around his father’s room with all those old pictures of his mum and dad on the walls and everywhere . . . there weren’t any of Brendan – or his brother. It’s like they don’t exist – or never existed. And I don’t remember seeing any in the rest of the house either.

  Wednesday 29 June 6.07 pm

  Today started out as a perfectly normal day – and then Brendan rang. I thought, ‘Oh no, no way am I going back there again,’ so I told him that Creepazoid was taking us all out to Luna Park for the day and I couldn’t get out of it, which was actually a lie coz I’d already told Mum there was no way I was going to be seen hanging out with her and the Creep. That would have been that, except Mum must have been listening in and she yelled out, ‘Tell Brendan he can come too,’ so loud that he could hear it down the phone and before I could say anything Brendan said, ‘That’d be great, I’ll meet you out the front,’ and he hung up.

  So there we are, Mum and the Creep, SLB and me and Brendan hanging out the front of Luna Park looking like the Frankenstein family. I was expecting that Brendan was going to try and tell me all about his loopy mother and stuff but instead he’s horsing around with Ben like he’s auditioning for a sequel to The Brady Bunch, and Mum and Creepazoid are pawing each other like a couple of superannuated nymphos, and there’s me looking at them all and wondering what planet I’ve landed on!

  The rest of the day went downhill from there.

  I don’t know what Brendan was on, but it was like that whole strange scene with his mother yesterday never happened. Once we got inside, he went into super-charged overdrive and was laughing and cracking jokes and being so revoltingly charming that he sort of infected everyone else. Mum was gushing all over him and saying how I’ve told her what a fabulous singer he is (as if!) and how she’s really looking forward to hearing him sing in the show. Creepazoid’s off in some fantasy land pretending he’s not really a drug dealer but Super Step-dad, and SLB’s like a kid who’s had too much red cordial, dragging us around and making us go on every stupid ride in the place. The highlight of the day came on the appropriately named Arc of Doom when Ben suddenly began to regurgitate all the crap he’d eaten just as our car swooped past the line of people waiting to get on, spraying everyone on the ground with a chunky puree of dagwood dogs, fairy floss, caramel popcorn and ice-cream!! Nice. It’s a wonder we got out of there alive!

  We drove Brendan home and after we dropped him off (I checked to see if psycho-mum was twitching the curtains but I couldn’t see her), Mum didn’t shut up all the way home going, ‘Oh, Brendan’s such a NICE boy! Isn’t he, Chris? He’s such a NICE boy. I’m so glad you’ve made such a NICE friend, Erin,’ on and on until I nearly did an SLB and projectile-vomited all over her.

  Thursday 30 June 11.31 am

  Brendan rang again this morning but this time he wanted to know if I wanted to go to a movie with him!! I told him that Mum, Ben and the Creep had already left for the day so it was just me and there was this pause on the other end of the line and then he said with this fake sigh, ‘Oh well, I suppose you’ll have to do. Meet me at Southland at one-thirty, okay?’ and then he hung up.

  What is going on with this guy? I just can’t figure it out. Is he just hanging out with us all the time because he wants to get away from his loopy mother? Or is it because Rami is away on holidays and he’s got nothing better to do? It’s weird, you know, because I’ve seen him every day for the last week just about. If I was the incredibly vain self-centred type I’d say that maybe he liked me – except that when he’s around he doesn’t really pay any attention to me because he’s too busy chatting up my mum or Creepazoid or joking around with Ben like he’s his favourite younger brother. It’s almost as if he thinks we’re the perfect family or something – what a laugh – and he just wants to hang around with us because he doesn’t really have one of his own.

  Just for being so weird I’m gonna make him see a chick flick!

  july

  Friday 1 July 11.39 am

  Brendan must have made a new friend – thank God.

  No word from my two-timing father either – not even a postcard. Obviously his family is not important anymore now that he’s got a new girlfriend.

  Saturday 2 July 11.16 am

  No Brendan.

  Sunday 3 July 10.18 am

  Had a dream about Brendan. We were in the middle of a performance of Dracula but I couldn’t remember any of the lines so Rami kept yelling them out to me from the audience. Everybody was there – all the kids and teachers and Mum and Dad – and they were all laughing at me because I was so crap. And then Rami climbed up onto the stage and pushed me out of the way and started doing the scene with Brendan and the audience was clapping because she was better than I was. Afterwards, everyone was crowding around Brendan and Rami to congratulate them and I was left standing in the middle of the stage on my own and I realised that I’d never actually been to any of the rehearsals and it wasn’t fair that they had expected me to do the play without having a clue what I was supposed to be doing. Then Brendan came up to me and said that I should come and rehearse at his house tomorrow since my dad was having an affair with his mum!! What the hell is that supposed to mean?

  Monday 4 July 11.02 am

  Ben and Creepazoid went to the movies to see some bare-chested martial arts action-hero flick and do some male bonding. Mum had to work. I stayed home. Creepazoid has been keeping a really low profile lately. Probably because he knows I’m onto him. But this happy family routine of his is ridiculous. You’d think Ben would be able to see through it, but no, he’s as sucked in as Mum.

  Bored! Bored! Bored!

  Thought about SMSing Rami in Cambodia but decided my principles were more important. SMSed Brendan instead. No answer. Ditto Door Matt. Forced to watch Jerry Springer, Oprah and The Bold and the Beautiful till I collapsed into boredom-induced coma. So desperate nearly rang Marisa Mendoza but recovered sanity just in time.

  Tuesday 5 July 10.11 am

  Think rigor mortis has set in.

  Wednesday 6 July 11.05 am

  No sign of Brendan. How do you like that? One day he’s all over me like a rash, the next he’s dropped off the face of the earth. Typical!

  Thursday 7 July 3.12 pm

  Postcard from Dad arrived today. Nice of him to remember us! You know, I’m beginning to see a pattern emerging here. What is it with these guys who think they can just use you up like a box of tissues and then chuck you away when they’ve finished with you?

  Thursday 7 July 3.47 pm

  OMG! I’ve just remembered something. On the last day of school, Marisa Mendoza asked Mrs Parisi what she was going to do over the holidays and she said something about getting as far away from Wilga Heights as possible, sitting on a beach with a strawberry daiquiri in one hand, a trashy novel in the other and trying to forget for two whole weeks that she was a teacher! Well, they have beaches and strawberry daiquiris in Bali, don’t they?

  And that’s not all! Back before Mum and Dad split up, Dad and Mrs Parisi were working on some committee together – trying to raise money to send the netball team to the state finals or something like that. I remember Mum used to get annoyed with him because he always had to go out after dinner and on the weekends and she used to joke and say that she was sure he was romancing the whole netball team. But it wasn’t the netball team he was after at all. Now it’s beginning to make sense!!

  Of course, this means that Mum wasn’t lying and that Dad really is a two-timing slimeball. Hard to believe he could be so devious, really. And as for Mrs Parisi! Well, I’m shocked. Not just because she’s a married woman but because she actually finds (or at least found) my father attractive!!

  Thursday 7 July 4
.44 pm

  I guess this means that Mum and Dad really won’t be getting back together. Not that I was hoping they would. Not really. I just want Mum to end up with someone less repulsive than Creepazoid.

  For her own sake.

  I just want her to be happy.

  And she’s never going to be happy while she’s going out with him!

  Friday 8 July 5.22 pm

  Couldn’t stop thinking about Dad all day. Kept imagining him and Mrs Parisi together. Horrible! Stayed in room and finished Dracula which I’ve just discovered is now seven weeks overdue. Damn! Have to borrow money off SLB to pay fine.

  Saturday 9 July 10.17 pm

  Second-last day of the holidays. My sentence is nearly up! Since Creepazoid decided he was going to have a night out with the boys and leave us alone for once, I hogged the TV and watched Ghost World for the fifteenth time. But all the time I was watching the movie, I kept thinking about Mum and Creepazoid and how tragic their relationship is. Like how, when he was leaving to go out, Mum was being totally pathetic and jealous or something, asking him to be careful and look after himself. Like he might fall down the stairs of the pub or chip his tooth on a stubby of beer! She never worried about Dad like that!

  Sunday 10 July 11.57 am

  Dad arrived back from Bali this morning. He rang Mum to tell her he was back and I think they were having an argument about something but Mum went into her bedroom and shut the door just as it started to get interesting.

  Also, Creepazoid didn’t get home till about four in the morning. Maybe that’s why Mum’s in such a bad mood.

  Sunday 10 July 2.21 pm

  Have been thinking about Dad and his betrayal of us and have decided that I do not want to see him ever again. Told Mum that I won’t be spending any more weekends at Dad’s place and she just cracked it at me. I don’t get it. I mean, she was the one who told me about the affair and now she just expects that it’s not going to make any difference to my relationship with Dad. Do you know what she said to me? She said that if she could get over it and move on then so could I!