House of Sticks

by Peggy Frew

  He knows, and he thinks you were never going to tell him.

  ‘Mu-UM!’

  ‘Great!’ called Bonnie, weakly. She held Jess closer against the cold wind and stared out at the street, the passing traffic. A van went by, yellow, shabby, rust-spotted. Her scalp prickled. She pictured Doug sitting on the end of Louie’s bed, holding out the little carvings, the warrior and the sly-smiling woman. Her two children in their pyjamas, arms reaching, receiving. Doug’s own sly grin, his cigarette stink and dirty clothes, his presence reaching into every corner of the room. Her children’s bedroom. Rage and fear tore at her. She stood, clutching Jess. The wind blew her hair into her eyes and mouth. Why was she so hopeless? She should have done something ages ago, stood up to Doug, forced him out. A sound broke from her, a wild, despairing sob. She sank back down on the bench. She was hopeless, hopeless; she’d fucked it all up.

  When she returned to the house there was a note on the kitchen table. Pete’s writing, but unsigned. Back later, was all it said.

  She marched into the living room and put on the television, found a kids’ show.

  ‘TV?’ said Edie.

  ‘TV!’ said Louie.

  Like zombies they stood before the screen, arms dangling.

  ‘Sit on the couch,’ she said, and slowly, stares fixed, they reversed up to it, climbed on.

  She went to the bedroom, lay on her side in the bed, feeding Jess. The baby looked up at her, one hand gripping the edge of the covers. She watched her daughter fill up, her sucking slow, her long and searching look waver, her eyelids drop, once, twice, slowly, reluctantly, and then a final time, into sleep.

  She waited a bit and then pulled away gently. Jess’s mouth made a languorous empty sucking motion, and then she sighed and slept on. Bonnie rolled over and faced the other way. She lay gazing at Pete’s pillow. What was she going to say, to tell him, when the time came? Think, think, she told herself, but a great, desolate blankness settled in her. She tried to let go, to feel, but nothing came — she didn’t even want to cry. After a while she closed her eyes and slept too.

  ‘Mum?’

  It was Edie, standing by the bed. Bonnie gasped, half sat up.

  ‘I’m hungry.’

  Jess was stirring, frowning and stretching out her arms, eyes still shut.

  ‘Shh.’ Bonnie put her finger to her lips.

  ‘I’m hungry,’ Edie whispered.

  Jess’s eyes opened.

  ‘She’s awake,’ whispered Edie.

  Bonnie sighed. ‘I know.’ She drew back the covers and picked up the baby, glanced at the clock. ‘Oh my god,’ she said. ‘It’s two-thirty.’

  Edie flopped onto the bed and kicked her legs up. ‘We watched so much TV,’ she said in a satisfied voice.

  Bonnie groaned and stood up.

  She went out into the hallway. No sign of Pete. In the kitchen she checked her phone, and the home phone. No messages, no missed calls. She walked around the room with the baby in her arms.

  ‘I’m hungry,’ said Edie.

  ‘Okay, okay,’ she said, pacing. ‘I’ll get you something to eat. Hang on.’ She went to the fridge and opened it, stared into it, closed it again.

  ‘Mum!’

  ‘What?’ She tried to focus on Edie’s face, but her head felt too fuzzy. Jess wriggled and she switched her to the other hip.

  ‘I’m hungry!’

  ‘Okay, okay.’ Bonnie opened the fridge again and took out a block of cheese. She set it on the bench and picked up a knife, struggling to pull back the wrapping from the cheese with Jess in one arm. The knife fell to the floor. ‘Oh god.’ Her voice sounded like someone else’s, a feeble whine. ‘What am I doing?’

  She went around the table and tried to put Jess in her baby chair, but the child clung to her arms, grizzling.

  ‘Mum?’ It was Louie now, coming in from the living room. ‘I’m hungry.’

  ‘I know!’ She knelt, still holding the baby. ‘I know!’ Tears rose at last, hot in her eyes. ‘I can’t …’ She put her head back, looked up at the ceiling and away from the watching faces of her children. ‘I just can’t deal with this!’

  Pete didn’t come back. Neither phone rang, and there were no text messages. She stumbled through the afternoon and into the evening, making cheese on toast, cutting up fruit, leaving the mess on the table, wiping noses, doing up shoes, reading stories in automatic mode, staring sightlessly at the pages. She paced, unable to keep still, wandering from room to room, driven by some mindless, restless energy, the thinking part of her brain switched off. It was like being in labour. What she might actually say to Pete, how to explain herself — coming up with any kind of plan — was unreachable, beyond her.

  She heated baked beans for dinner, bathed the children, put them to bed.

  ‘Where’s Dad?’ said Edie at one point.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  But Edie was waiting, and Bonnie saw that more was expected of her.

  ‘Out somewhere,’ she said, trying to sound normal. ‘He’ll be back later.’

  It seemed to be enough.

  She stood with the phone in her hand. She selected the recent calls icon and Pete mobile came up, top of the list. She hovered her thumb over the call button.

  But then she saw his note on the bench, the two stark words. And don’t call me, it might as well have said — and she took her thumb away, put the phone back down.

  She woke, and it was dark. The house quiet. The bed empty beside her. She fumbled for the bedside lamp. Outside the pool of light the edges of the room retreated. A terrible thought came to her: what if Pete had returned, taken the children and gone? What if she was alone in the house? Fear wrenched at her.

  She got up. The floorboards were cold. She pulled on her ugg boots, tugged the old blue dressing-gown off the edge of the chair and put it around herself. Crept out into the hallway. Silence. The tangle of kids’ clothing where she’d left it outside the bathroom door. Shoes kicked off.

  She went to Jess’s room. Turned the knob in practised silence and opened the door. There she was. Sleeping. Arms up either side of her head. Blankets tucked in. The side of the cot up. The heater on, ticking comfortably. She closed the door again. Went to the twins’ room. Checked them, a head on each pillow, their slow sleepers’ breaths.

  In the hallway again she stood and listened. Silence and darkness in the living room. She went to the kitchen. Light on but empty. The dishes as she’d left them, half done. Crumbs on the table. But a bottle of wine on the bench, open. And a pack of tobacco and papers.

  She stood at the back door, peered out through the glass. Pete was sitting on the porch steps. She saw the glow of the tip of a cigarette, then the flurry of sparks as he stubbed it out on the concrete and got up.

  She stepped back.

  He came right in before he saw her. ‘What’re you doing?’ he said, as if talking to one of the children. ‘I thought you were asleep.’

  Bonnie drew the dressing-gown closer around herself. She felt self-conscious, ridiculous in her layers of clothing, vulnerable next to Pete in his day clothes and jacket, shoes still on.

  ‘You should go back to bed.’ He went to the bin and threw in the cigarette butt, poured more wine.

  She swallowed. Don’t cry. It’ll just annoy him. ‘Can we talk?’ she said. ‘About what’s going on?’

  He sighed and picked up his glass. ‘Okay.’ Annoyance did seem to show on his face, as if she really was a child making untimely demands, someone he had to both indulge and be responsible for. He didn’t offer her a drink.

  Bonnie followed him down the hallway and sat while he lit the heater and perched at the far end of the couch, away from her.

  ‘So,’ he said, staring down at his glass. ‘What’re you going to tell me?’

  �
�Pete.’ Bonnie’s voice blared in her own ears. She had no idea what she was going to say. In the light from the heater he looked so young. Younger than her. He could be twenty. How were you — how were they, the two of them — supposed to manage something like this? Her shoulders ached, and her back.

  He didn’t move or look at her.

  ‘I’ve never lied to you,’ went her blaring voice. ‘You know that.’

  He didn’t answer.

  ‘In Sydney. I did something.’

  ‘Go on.’ He was rubbing one thumb over the knuckle of the other. She could hear the rasp of his rough, dry skin.

  ‘I just — after what happened with the bet and everything — I just felt so horrible. I hated myself so much.’ Her voice was coming back down now, sounded closer, more real. ‘After the show there was a party. I was so drunk. And this guy, some guy, I don’t even know his name …’ She leaned towards him. ‘I didn’t even like him, Pete, you have to believe me.’

  ‘But you still fucked him.’ He kept his eyes down. Bonnie had never heard his voice so thick and mean. He made it sound like the ugliest word in the world.

  ‘No — no!’ Her hands were clenched in her lap. ‘I didn’t. I … I was so drunk. He just helped me back to the hotel. And he left.’

  The heater hummed and zipped, liquid orange now. One side of Bonnie’s face felt scorched. She put her hand to her cheek.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  She dropped her eyes. ‘What do you mean? Of course I’m sure. Nothing happened. We just … we left the party together and …’ She crossed her legs, squeezed all the muscles in her thighs and between her legs, feeling those fingers again, the rawness of her too-dry flesh. Oh, Pete. How can I make you understand? It wasn’t sex. Or lust or fun or anything. It was the opposite.

  ‘So what about the condom?’ Pete’s thumb kept up its rasping.

  ‘What condom?’ But even as she said it the memory came bouncing up, as if a lid had been lifted, a button pressed. The hotel, the bathroom. Her hateful reflection in the mirror. Swivelling, her boots echoing in the tiny room. Swivelling back, swaying, leaning over the counter. Beth’s make-up bag. The spill of tubes and pencils, toothbrush and paste, the strip of little squares with their perforated seams. Their padded feel under her fingers, their anonymous neat shapes.

  ‘The condom that fell out of your jeans pocket when I picked them up this morning.’ He turned back to the heater, lifted his glass.

  She could see the anger in the movement of his arm, the jerk of his head as he drank. She squeezed her muscles tighter. Shit. The memory floated before her, luminous. Her crumpled, drunken face, her voice slurring, begging him to stay. Nothing happened. Nothing happened. You wouldn’t have gone through with it.

  ‘Pete.’

  ‘What?’ There was an edge to his voice now.

  ‘I didn’t mean to …’

  ‘What, you didn’t mean to stop the taxi and go into a shop and buy condoms? Or, I don’t know, get one from one of those vending machines at a pub or something? How can you not mean to get a condom, Bonnie, to put it in your pocket?’

  There was a catch in her throat, a hopeless ache. ‘I was at the hotel. I went to the toilet, to the bathroom — I was sharing with the bass player — and her stuff was in there. Her make-up and stuff. In this bag, on the bench, and it was open.’ Tears were in her eyes and through them her hands turned into fat, pink blurs in her lap. ‘And I just — I just took one, without thinking, you know. I was so drunk.’

  ‘So the guy had already left and you were just so drunk you took a condom and put it in your pocket for no reason.’

  ‘No.’ She blinked and the tears fell onto her laced fingers. ‘No, he was still there.’

  ‘I thought you said he just took you back to the hotel.’

  ‘No. He came up to the room.’

  ‘Bonnie.’ Pete shifted abruptly on the couch, licked his lips. He spoke slowly, as if having to let each word out with restraint in order to prevent an avalanche of anger. ‘Can you just please tell me the fucking truth because I can’t — I really can’t sit here much longer trying to piece it together, okay?’

  ‘Okay.’ She was crying properly now but she didn’t try to stop it. Her face felt raw and strained. ‘Okay. We went to the hotel, just to have a drink. And he was about to go and I went to the toilet and I saw the condoms and I took one because I — I don’t know why.’ A sound burst from her, a kind of choked flat laugh. ‘I didn’t like him. I wasn’t attracted to him. He didn’t turn me on. When he said stuff to me it made me want to laugh. When he touched me it was embarrassing.’

  Pete sat with his head down.

  ‘I was so drunk, Pete. I didn’t know what I was doing.’

  He didn’t move.

  Bonnie’s words were blurred with her sobbing. ‘Nothing happened, Pete. Nothing actually happened.’

  He stood up. He didn’t look at her.

  She put her hands over her face. ‘I know you probably don’t want to hear this right now and I don’t know if it’ll make any difference, but I love you. I love you so much, and the kids, and everything, our life together. I don’t want to lose any of it.’

  She pressed her fingers to her eyes. She heard him move. He was going to the door.

  ‘I can’t listen to any more of this,’ he said in a low voice.

  Bonnie lay in the dark. She took one hand in the other and squeezed it, pushed at the scabbed-over cut. A jab of soreness, but not enough. She dug with her nail, dug till pain came shooting and fresh tears popped into her eyes. Fuck, she thought. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

  She woke to the sound of Jess crying. She pulled back the covers and sat up, but there was movement in the hallway and the crying stopped.

  Pete came in carrying the baby. He was still in his clothes.

  ‘What time is it?’ She reached for the clock. ‘Jesus, Pete, it’s five-thirty. Have you been up all night? What’ve you …?’

  Pete passed Jess down. ‘I’m going.’

  ‘What?’ she said, thickly. ‘Where?’

  ‘I don’t know. To stay with friends.’ He wasn’t looking at her. ‘For a while.’

  Bonnie sagged back into the pillow with Jess grabbing at her, rubbing her face on her top, making hungry sounds.

  Pete went back across the room.

  ‘Wait!’ She sat up. ‘How long for?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He pulled his overnight bag from under the chest of drawers and stuffed clothes into it.

  Jess started to cry.

  ‘But where are you going? Which friends?’

  He didn’t answer. He zipped the bag and went out.

  ‘HE’S WHAT?’

  Bonnie held the phone further away from her ear. ‘It’s probably just for a little while,’ she heard herself say. ‘It’s not —’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Nothing!’ She glanced down the hallway. ‘Nothing actually happened, but …’ She went into the bedroom and half shut the door. ‘Mum.’ She stood in the middle of the room, head down, spare arm clamped across her body. She tried to speak quietly. ‘In Sydney. The other night. I — Pete and I, we’d been fighting, and I just …’

  Don’t tell her.

  Bonnie gulped, struggled, but the words were coming out. ‘I just hated myself so much.’

  Suzanne’s tongue-click sounded through the phone.

  Don’t tell her.

  But she was sliding towards confession now, the collapsing relief of it. ‘I got really drunk, and there was this guy, at a party.’ She spoke in a rush. ‘And I took him back to the hotel …’

  The click again.

  ‘And, I mean, nothing really happened, in the end. I mean, we didn’t, you know, have sex.’

  ‘Bonnie!’

  ‘
But I still — I betrayed Pete.’ She tried to control the crying, to keep it quiet — she could hear one of the children running past — but it was getting away from her.

  ‘Bonnie.’ Suzanne’s tone was firm. ‘Calm down. I’m sure this isn’t as bad as you think.’ There was a moment’s pause, and Bonnie pictured her mother glancing at her watch. ‘Look.’ A brief sigh. ‘I’ll come over, okay? I’ll be there soon.’

  ‘Mu-um!’ It was Edie, out in the hallway.

  ‘Okay?’ said Suzanne. ‘Darling?’

  Bonnie’s whisper wobbled and scraped. ‘Okay.’

  ‘Mu-UM!’

  Bonnie hung up the phone and crouched by the bed, trying to breathe evenly, to rein herself in.

  ‘MUM!’ yelled Edie. ‘Where are you?’

  She flattened herself to the floor and pressed her face into the crook of her arm.

  ‘What did you tell him for?’ Suzanne pulled out a chair and brushed her hand over the seat before sitting down.

  ‘Well, he kind of … It’s complicated, but he would’ve found out anyway.’ Bonnie stood at the back door.

  ‘But I thought you said nothing actually happened.’

  She put her face closer to the glass. ‘Yeah, but …’ The twins digging in the dirt were two blockish shapes, bright red and blue in their jumpers, the garden around them layers of watery grey and green, the black workshop hulking behind. Bonnie let her gaze float past them all, up into the cold white sky. ‘I still … It was a betrayal.’ Her voice was high and caught at the back of her throat. ‘I’ve fucked everything up. I mean, I didn’t even like the guy.’

  ‘But, Bonnie … Look.’ Suzanne shifted in her chair. ‘These things happen. You’d be surprised how often they happen. And you’d be surprised who does them.’

  ‘But —’

  ‘What I’m saying is, it’s not the end of the world.’

  ‘But how can he … how can … I mean, if Pete did something like that to me I don’t know if I could ever …’

  ‘Don’t start thinking about that. None of that matters. You have a life together. You have children. There’s a lot at stake.’