House of Sticks

by Peggy Frew

‘Yeah, but, Mum —’

  ‘So what’s going to happen now?’

  Bonnie put her hands over her face. ‘I don’t know.’

  Suzanne drew a breath in through her nose. ‘Well, the two of you would be fools to throw it all away — everything you’ve got.’

  ‘I realise that.’

  ‘It’s not easy on your own, with kids.’

  ‘Jesus, Mum, I know.’ Bonnie could feel her face getting hot.

  ‘Remember Jan? I mean her life was bloody miserable — cooped up in that council flat all on her own. Those kids just constantly —’

  ‘I know! I know how hard it is, Mum. I don’t want to break up with Pete.’

  ‘Bonnie. Listen. These things happen. You need to get Pete back, you need to both just forget about all this, and you need to just … get on with it.’

  She lay on the bed. She could hear Suzanne and the twins in the living room.

  ‘No — Edie. You stay here with me, please. Mummy’s just having a lie-down. She needs a bit of a rest. Now. Who can do this puzzle?’

  Bonnie closed her eyes. Think, she told herself. But nothing came. None of it seemed real.

  Sleep then. Rest. But every time she closed her eyes they opened again. She stretched out her neck, made her arms and legs soften into the mattress. Then felt them all draw back into tightness again, as she stared at the ceiling.

  ‘Where’s he gone anyway?’ said Suzanne later, as they hung clothes on the line.

  Bonnie looked up into the grey sky. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Well, where did he say he was going?’

  ‘To stay with friends.’

  ‘But he didn’t say which friends?’

  Bonnie sighed. Her throat hurt. ‘No,’ she said in a low voice.

  Suzanne clicked her tongue. ‘Well, did you ask?’

  ‘Yes, I did.’ She picked up more clothes from the basket. ‘But he didn’t tell me.’

  Suzanne clipped pegs on briskly. There was the sound of the twins shrieking in the house.

  She thinks you’re hopeless. She felt her ears go hot. ‘He just said he was staying with friends,’ she repeated.

  ‘Not what’s-his-name,’ said Suzanne.

  ‘Who?’ Bonnie could feel the heat creeping into her face, and at the same time a shrinking feeling in her stomach, the tender trembling of her own suspicions. Pete’s words, the other night. Doug came round. He’s looking for a flat.

  ‘You know — the lame duck, what’s-his-name? The one who was helping in the workshop, making a pest of himself.’

  She swallowed. ‘Doug.’ Her voice shook.

  Suzanne made a sharp, frustrated sound. She turned to Bonnie, a towel in her hands. ‘Why didn’t you do something about that, that … situation?’

  Bonnie kept her eyes on the line, on her own hands spreading a pillow case. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Why didn’t you bloody well get rid of that feller? Pete was never going to — you knew that.’

  In her head Bonnie saw Pete and Doug, the two of them, together in a flat with no furniture. Drinking and staying up late. Watching the races on some crappy little TV. A record player set up maybe, a crate of old records from their punk days. Eating toast and takeaway, getting the newspaper from the local milk bar. Like old times. Two men with nothing to worry about but their own immediate needs. Going on with their unfathomable, unexamined friendship as if more than ten years hadn’t passed. As if she and the kids, Pete’s business — none of it — had ever happened.

  Suzanne bent to the basket. ‘Someone has to take charge, with these things. You can’t just drift along and trust everything will be okay.’

  Bonnie stood staring at nothing.

  Suzanne clipped up the last towel and turned. ‘Can you? Darling?’ She came closer, reached out and touched Bonnie’s arm. ‘Never mind,’ she said. ‘It’ll be all right. Come on. I’ll make you a cup of tea. God knows, I need one myself.’

  Jess had a fever. She whinged all afternoon, protested during her usual naptime. Her eyes and nose ran, she rubbed at her ears.

  ‘Can’t you just dose her up with something?’ said Suzanne impatiently as they stood at the kitchen bench, Bonnie jiggling the baby on her hip. ‘Panadol? Or what’s that other one — that makes them sleep?’

  ‘Phenergan?’ Bonnie allowed herself a dry laugh. ‘I think they’ve changed the rules on that one. I don’t think it’s actually very good for kids.’

  ‘Well, you had it.’ Suzanne lined up a handful of green beans on the chopping board and sliced off their tops. ‘You turned out all right.’

  Bonnie took a careful breath. ‘I’ll give her Panadol if she can’t sleep tonight,’ she said. ‘But they say it’s best not to, if they’re not suffering too much — it’s best to let the fever do its work, fighting the bug or whatever.’

  Suzanne sniffed.

  Jess put the backs of her little fists to her face and began to cry.

  ‘You’re not feeling too good, are you, possum?’ Bonnie sat down and put the baby to her breast.

  ‘Didn’t you just feed her?’ Suzanne brought the knife down on another bundle of beans.

  She didn’t look up. Her neck ached. Just ignore it, she told herself. She smoothed the moist hairs back from Jess’s forehead.

  ‘I’m sure you just fed her only half an hour ago. Won’t she have some dinner? Doesn’t she have solids now?’

  Ignore it. Bonnie tried to sit straighter in the chair, to ease her neck and shoulders.

  Suzanne lifted the chopping board and swept the beans into the top of the steamer. ‘Surely you don’t need to be wearing yourself out breastfeeding all the time. Shall I pop her in the pram and take her for a quick walk? Would that settle her?’

  Bonnie touched the backs of her fingers to Jess’s burning cheek. If it was up to you, a voice inside her shouted, you’d shove her in a room and shut the door and leave her to cry, like you probably did with me. She breathed slowly. ‘Thanks, Mum, but I think I’ll just feed her and try to put her to bed.’

  There was quiet for a while — the muted burble of the twins’ talking book from down the hall.

  Suzanne pulled open a drawer. ‘Well, you’re not helping anyone being a martyr. Least of all yourself.’

  Bonnie adjusted her grip on the baby and, with her still attached, stood up and left the room.

  They fed the children and got them to bed, side by side, cool and careful, not looking at each other. This is ridiculous, thought Bonnie. Someone else to feel weird around. But the prospect of a confrontation exhausted her. It was easier just to press on like this, to retreat into wounded distance. To let her tiredness push aside the frustration, the guilt, the whole tricky mess of feelings.

  ‘Where’s Dad?’ said Louie as he lay in bed.

  Bonnie looked down into his waiting face. ‘He’s — just gone away for a little while.’

  ‘To get more wood?’

  ‘No.’ She smoothed the covers, tucked them in around his compact little shoulders.

  ‘No,’ said Edie from the other bed. ‘Of course not. He’s got so much wood. He doesn’t need any more.’

  ‘Dad just …’ Bonnie sat up straight and spoke into the middle of the room, the space between the two beds. ‘He just needs a bit of time to himself.’

  Silence from the children.

  ‘Okay?’ Her voice trembled, but she recovered. ‘Okay?’

  ‘He might’ve gone to get more wood, Edie,’ said Louie. He got up on his elbows. ‘You don’t know everything.’

  ‘He’s got heaps of wood!’ Edie’s voice rang against the ceiling.

  ‘Shh.’ Bonnie pushed Louie gently back down. ‘Okay, quiet now. Time to go to sleep.’

  ‘He just needs some time to himself!’ said
Edie.

  ‘Shh.’ Bonnie crossed to Edie’s bed and bent to tuck her in. ‘Night-night. Sweet dreams.’

  ‘Louie’s stupid.’ Edie kicked up her covers and thumped her heels on the mattress.

  Bonnie rearranged the bedding. ‘Edie — come on. Lie down properly and be quiet, please.’

  ‘Well, he is.’

  ‘Shh. No, he’s not.’

  ‘I’m not!’

  ‘Yes, you are. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.’

  ‘Na-na-na-na-na!’

  ‘Enough!’ Bonnie stood up. Her hands were shaking. ‘Lie down both of you and go to sleep! Or I’ll have to turn off the hallway light and shut the door!’

  The phone rang later that evening — the landline. A man. ‘Is Pete there, please?’

  ‘Um, no — sorry.’ Bonnie’s heart started to race. She didn’t recognise his voice. What to say? ‘He’s … not here just now.’ She felt she was speaking ridiculously slowly, the words oozing out. ‘Did you try — have you got his mobile?’

  ‘Yeah, I tried it. It went straight to voicemail.’ He had a faint accent.

  ‘Who … who is this?’

  ‘Sorry.’ He laughed. ‘It’s Glenn. I’ve got some joinery for him. He was in a hurry for it, kept calling me all last week, but now it’s ready I can’t get a hold of him.’

  ‘Oh, Glenn, right.’

  ‘It’s Bonnie, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yeah. Sorry, yeah — Bonnie.’

  A pause. He cleared his throat. ‘Well … when will he be back, do you know?’

  ‘Um.’ She swallowed, pushed the words out. ‘Soon. He’s — he’s just out for the evening, so I’ll let him know you called and he’ll …’ She glanced towards the hallway, the living room where Suzanne was watching television, lowered her voice. ‘He’ll probably call you back tomorrow.’

  She hung up. Pete’s work, abandoned. His pride. His reputation. Pete just leaving, going off to live with Doug, of all people. She went into the hallway, stood in the dark, a sliding, tilting panic gripping her. How has this happened? She reached out and touched the walls on either side. Their house: draughty, cold, full of piles of things she never seemed to get around to putting away. All just as it was, but changed somehow. Everything — the rooms, their furniture and belongings — seemed flat, insubstantial. Like a stage, a set. As if she could reach her arms out and knock it all down, break it apart and see, as the pieces fell, the light of real life come flooding through. Real life, the way it was before.

  It just wasn’t possible that everything had changed so quickly.

  She took the phone into the bedroom and shut the door.

  Pete’s mobile rang and rang until the voicemail kicked in. Her heart leaped at the sound of his recorded voice. When the beep sounded she laboured for a moment in the waiting silence, trying to muster words.

  ‘Hi,’ she said at last. ‘It’s me. Um. Glenn rang. The joiner.’ Her voice jumping out in staccato spurts. She heaved in a breath. ‘But that’s not really why I’m calling.’ She sat down on the end of the bed. ‘I need to talk to you, Pete. Please — please call me.’

  She let the hand holding the phone fall onto the mattress beside her. Then she flopped her whole body down. Lay looking at the phone, its blank screen. She tried to imagine what Pete might be doing — sitting in an op-shop armchair drinking beer, the stubble on his face dark with anger — but what came to mind were the old photos, of his youth, his real share-house days. Eighties hair and thin faces: Pete and Greg and Deano and various others, and Doug, always Doug, a bit older, a bit more weathered, hovering in the background, grinning narrowly, eyebrows cocked.

  She washed her face and brushed her teeth. Checked the children. Jess was sleeping peacefully, the heat gone from her body.

  She went towards the bedroom but then stopped, sighed. Dragged herself back to the living room. Stood just inside the door for a moment, cleared her throat.

  ‘Goodnight, Mum.’

  Suzanne looked up from the screen. ‘Goodnight.’

  Her face was in shadow. She had the crochet rug around her shoulders and her knees pulled up. In the flickering light she looked small, almost childlike, and Bonnie had a sudden vision of her alone like that, every night, across town in her little apartment.

  She folded her arms over the unexpected spurt of pity and went closer. ‘What’re you watching?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, one of these panel discussion things. It’s pretty boring.’

  ‘Will you be okay sleeping here, on the couch?’ she said. ‘Are you sure you don’t want to take the bedroom?’

  ‘No, no — I’ll be fine. I slept here the other night, remember?’ Suzanne reached over and patted her hand. ‘It’s quite comfortable actually.’ She kept her hand on Bonnie’s. ‘You go and get some rest. Go on — you need it.’

  ‘Thanks, Mum.’ Bonnie felt her voice go watery with tears. ‘Thanks for coming over.’

  Suzanne patted her hand again. ‘That’s all right, darling. And don’t worry — you’ll sort something out, you and Pete. I’m sure you will.’

  She lay on her side with her knees pulled up. She slid her hand against the sheet, still feeling Suzanne’s touch. The image wouldn’t go away, of her mother, small and lonely on that couch, the rest of her mother’s life stretching out, strung with night after night of aloneness. Bonnie took one of her own hands in the other and gripped it. She could feel it there, ready to open up and swallow her — the kind of stiff and desolate loneliness she’d only ever tasted, fleetingly, on school camps, or in the last week of a too-long tour.

  She reached over and grabbed Pete’s pillow, shoved her face into it and breathed.

  She wore her sunglasses the next morning, dropping the twins at kinder, imagining strange looks from the staff and other parents, thinking it must be written all over her: damage, crisis. Kissing the children a hasty goodbye and slinking out again.

  She was sitting in the car, keys in her lap, staring at nothing when Mel tapped on the window.

  ‘Hi,’ Mel mouthed, and the sight of her, her work clothes and her everyday, unknowing smile, brought tears out of Bonnie like something shaken loose.

  They sat together in the car, and Bonnie cried and talked, lips numb and shaking, reaching up to swipe at the tears rolling down from under her sunglasses.

  ‘So you were going to tell Pete?’ said Mel. ‘Anyway?’

  ‘I guess so. I didn’t really get a chance to think about it. I mean, he was acting so weird I just — well, I thought he’d found out somehow, that someone had told him; maybe someone saw me leave the party with the guy and, I don’t know … Anyway, I didn’t know he’d found the condom.’ She shook her head. ‘I can’t believe I forgot all about it.’

  Mel gave a dry laugh. ‘You must’ve been so drunk.’

  Bonnie’s teeth were clenched. That night, the party, the taxi, the hotel — it all loomed there, vast and dark and shameful, nudging at her as she tried to keep her back turned.

  ‘So.’ Mel lined her handbag up across her knees. ‘If he hadn’t found the condom — if he wasn’t acting weird — do you think you might not have told him?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She thought about the day between her getting back and it all coming out, being with Pete in the house, the doubt and guilt dragging at her. ‘No,’ she said slowly. ‘I would have told him. For sure. I don’t think I could’ve lived with the strain of not telling him.’

  Mel frowned. ‘It’s a tough one though because — well, nothing really happened, did it?’

  ‘Yeah, but it was only because he left that nothing happened. The guy, I mean. Something could have happened.’ She put her hands up and gripped the steering wheel. ‘I let it get as far as it did. And isn’t that just as bad?’

  Mel looked down at her bag. ‘I guess so,’ she sa
id after a while. ‘But there’s still a big difference between nearly doing something and actually doing it. I don’t think you could ever really say what might’ve happened if things went any further. You might’ve — when it really came down to it — you might’ve, well, changed your mind.’

  Bonnie took off her glasses, touched the skin around her eyes. It felt swollen from all the crying. She breathed in deeply, trying to dislodge the weight in her chest. ‘I just feel like the worst person in the world.’

  ‘People do these things, Bonnie. You wouldn’t believe the stories I hear through my work. And from friends too.’

  ‘But …’

  ‘God knows I’ve been tempted.’ Mel lowered her voice, glanced at the window.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah, of course. Haven’t you?’ Mel leaned back in her seat. ‘You know — life gets boring, you feel a bit neglected by your partner, you meet someone at work or at a party or whatever; they pay you attention and it feels good.’

  ‘Yeah, I guess I’ve had … crushes.’ She thought of the lanky blond man at the cafe she used to go to, near the old house — that extreme self-consciousness that came over her whenever she saw him, the way he’d drift into her thoughts sometimes afterwards, unexpectedly, and she’d feel guilty even about that.

  ‘But of course I always just think, Well, what could I do? I could leave Josh for this guy, and break up a household and a family, and start all over again only to end up in the same place after a few years. Except with an ex-husband and having to share custody of a child.’ She looked at Bonnie. ‘I mean, usually I’m attracted to them because they kind of remind me of Josh. Or at least what Josh was like when I first met him.’ She grinned. ‘So might as well stick with the original model, I guess.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Bonnie bit her lip. ‘I know what you mean, and I guess I’ve thought similar things. But this thing, with the Sydney guy — I wasn’t even attracted to him. It was weird. What you were saying about someone paying you attention, someone noticing you — I guess that was part of it. But …’

  ‘I could understand you feeling a bit neglected by Pete,’ said Mel. ‘You’ve sacrificed a lot — your music, your career — you’re very supportive of him.’