by Peggy Frew
‘But he’s supportive of me too. He always encourages me to do music stuff.’ Tears pricked her eyes again. ‘He’s pretty amazing actually. He does just about an equal share of the housework. He’s always bailing me out, you know, making dinner and going off to the supermarket late at night because I couldn’t get my shit together …’
‘Of course.’ Mel shifted in the seat. ‘I didn’t mean he wasn’t pulling his weight. I just wonder how much you acknowledge what you’ve lost — or put on hold. And I’m not saying he made you do that, but, well, you did it, didn’t you? I mean, his work comes first.’
‘Yeah.’ Bonnie touched the skin on her face again, rubbed her eyes. She felt suddenly weighed down with tiredness, hardly able even to speak. ‘I’d better get going,’ she said. ‘My mum’s probably freaking out because Jess needs a nappy change or something.’
Mel gave her a sideways hug. ‘Give Pete some time.’ She rubbed Bonnie’s arm. ‘Where is he, anyway? Where’s he gone?’
‘I don’t … know.’ Bonnie put her sunglasses back on. ‘He just said he was going to stay with friends.’
‘Not Doug, I hope.’ Mel made a face and got out of the car.
Bonnie’s stomach contracted.
‘Or has he vanished again?’
‘No, he’s — he’s still around.’ Bonnie fumbled with her keys, leaned forward to reach the ignition. ‘I’ve got a bad feeling it is Doug,’ she said, the words blundering out as if of their own accord.
Mel bent to look in at her. ‘But isn’t he — I mean, I thought he was living in someone’s back shed or something?’
‘No. He’s rented a flat apparently.’ She tried to rein in her voice, make it light. ‘He won lots of money, remember, on the horse?’ A forced eye-roll. ‘The one I wouldn’t let Pete have a bet on.’
‘Oh right. That.’ Mel gave a pinched smile. ‘Oh well. Hopefully he’ll drive Pete mad quickly — give him an extra reason to come straight home to you.’
Bonnie tried to return the smile.
Mel sighed. ‘It’ll be okay, Bon. Pete loves you. You love each other. He’ll come back.’
‘I don’t know, Mel.’
‘Give him some time,’ said Mel again. ‘He can’t stay angry forever.’
‘How do you know where anything is?’ said Suzanne, on hands and knees on the kitchen floor. She reached into a cupboard. ‘All these cans back here’ — she pulled some out — ‘I take it there’s no system?’
Bonnie wiped Jess’s face and took her bib off. ‘Not really.’
‘Okay then.’ Suzanne leaned into the cupboard again.
‘Just leave it, Mum.’
‘It won’t take long.’ Her voice was muffled. ‘Might as well sort it out, while I’m here.’
‘No, really — it’s fine. I’ve been meaning to —’
‘Won’t take long.’
She noticed Suzanne had a tea towel spread under her knees.
‘And someone needs to do some shopping.’
‘Yeah, I know.’ The bib fell from Bonnie’s hand, and she bent awkwardly with Jess on her hip to pick it up again. ‘I’ll …’
‘Now what have we got here?’ Suzanne took her head out of the cupboard. ‘Chickpeas. Lentils. More chickpeas. Beans.’
‘I’m going to put Jess to bed.’
‘Okay then.’
‘And then I might lie down myself, for a bit.’
‘Yes, you should.’ Suzanne didn’t look up.
Bonnie settled Jess and went to her own room to lie awake and tense, staring up at nothing. From the kitchen came the faint clack and burr of a can falling to the floor and rolling. She tried to shut her eyes, to push away the image of Suzanne’s industrious back; the cupboard full of cans in new, neat rows. She’s trying to help. But she couldn’t stop herself from seeing the flimsiness of the new order, how quickly it would all come undone again.
‘I’ll do the shopping tonight, if that’s okay with you,’ she said to Suzanne over dinner. ‘Later, I mean. Once everyone’s asleep.’
Suzanne nodded and went back to her plate. ‘Good idea.’
Jess whacked her spoon on the highchair tray.
‘When’s Dad coming back?’ said Louie.
‘Soon.’ Bonnie reached across and pushed his sleeve up. ‘You’re getting pumpkin all over your jumper.’
She moved out into the car park with the full trolley, swinging in a wide stiff turn, arms braced, fighting a dodgy wheel. The wind blew her hair into her eyes, and she had her usual out-without-kids weird feeling. It was dark, the lights orange against the overcast sky. She paused to hitch her bag higher on her shoulder.
She thought about Suzanne, back at the house, sitting alone in front of the television, and it rose again, the tender confusion of feelings, swamping, paralysing. Could there be any way around it, the hugeness of habit, the worn rut of their relationship?
Bonnie shook her hair out of her face and pushed on, to the car. She loaded in the bags and returned the trolley. Then she got in and sat, hands on the wheel, watching people walk in and out of the car park, and up and down the street.
Was there any answer? She tried to imagine some parallel life, Suzanne living with them, in a granny flat perhaps, or a house nearby. Suzanne there every day, in their house, Suzanne bringing her own rules and expectations. Suzanne clicking her tongue and sniffing.
And Suzanne’s own needs, her own sadnesses, whatever it was she carried around with her, stitched in behind the wall of activities — work, bridge, book club — that only occasionally came leaking out. What about all that? Could Bonnie open herself up to that? After all her other responsibilities — the children; Pete, if he was to be a part of the equation; herself; her music — did she have anything left over to give?
She watched a woman waiting to cross the road to the pub opposite. She thought about Pete, about a summer weekend afternoon, them together in the house, one of those easy days when the children played and didn’t fight, when they listened to music, lay outside on the grass, when they might cook a meal together and it wouldn’t seem a joyless task but the opposite — full of joy, full of pleasure.
When it worked, the two of them, with the kids — when they were rested and together — it really worked. It did. But of course it couldn’t always be like that. The two of them weren’t enough. So what was the solution? Suzanne? Could you open the closed circuit? Could you, after so much time, draw together people who didn’t know how to be together, graft them onto one another like bits of a tree?
Who knows, anyway? she thought. All this might be the least of your problems. She tried to imagine Pete not coming back, to really feel the possibility, but she couldn’t do it, couldn’t make it seem real.
She backed out of the parking spot. Shifted gears, checked her rear-view mirror. Braked. Two small figures framed by the rectangle of black plastic, going along the street opposite. She stiffened her legs, raised herself in her seat, turned and craned her neck to see through the back window. There they were, bigger, real. One man walking head down, hands in pockets. The other in front, striding with purpose, chest thrust out.
Bonnie’s whole body tensed. There was a car behind her, waiting, headlights in her eyes, but she squinted past. ‘Shit!’ she heard herself say.
The car bipped its horn. Bonnie stayed in her twisted position, squinting. ‘Shit!’
Towards the pub door the two figures moved. Pete, round-shouldered, heavy-stepping. And, lunging into the building as if launching an attack, Doug.
‘So what’s happening?’ said Suzanne over breakfast the next morning. She folded her hands under her chin. ‘What’s the plan?’
Bonnie lowered her head, mumbled into her muesli. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Well, have you’ — Suzanne glanced at the twins and put on a whisper th
at seemed somehow louder than a normal speaking voice — ‘heard anything?’
Bonnie shook her head.
Suzanne’s lips formed a line.
‘Why can’t we have porridge?’ said Edie.
‘Where’s Dad?’ said Louie. ‘Why is Grandma here all the time?’
Bonnie didn’t have the energy to answer, or to look up at Suzanne’s told-you-so face. She swallowed the last mouthful of muesli, stood, and began to gather up the plates.
‘More Vegemite toast, please,’ sang Louie.
‘I’ll get it.’ Suzanne followed Bonnie to the bench. ‘You’ll need to tell them something,’ she went on in her stage whisper.
‘Tell them what?’ said Edie from the table.
Bonnie stacked the dishes and wiped her hands on the tea towel.
‘Tell them what? said Edie again.
Bonnie went to the high chair and lifted Jess out of it. ‘Come on,’ she said, not looking at anyone. ‘Let’s get ready for swimming.’
She stood in her bathers and towel, Jess on her hip, watching the twins splashing laboriously up and down with all the other children, belly-up, kickboards clutched to their chests.
‘Shall I take her?’ said Suzanne.
‘Thanks.’ She passed the baby over.
Suzanne took her but didn’t move. She sighed. ‘I’m going to need to get back to work, Bonnie. By Monday, at the latest, but if possible —’
‘Okay.’
‘I’m sorry, darling, but I can’t take any more leave. I used it all up on that Tasmania trip last year with Gail. And anyway, we’ve been short on staff since Brenda left and —’
‘It’s okay, Mum.’ She looked down at her toes, feeling the sweat pop on her face. ‘Don’t worry about it.’
‘Well’ — Suzanne glanced around, lowered her voice — ‘I am worried about it.’ She brought her voice down even further. ‘What are you going to do, Bonnie?’
‘I’ll work something out,’ she said. ‘I’d better get swimming.’
‘Are you calling him?’ whispered Suzanne. ‘Pete? Have you spoken to him?’
She felt like a teenager, wooden with unhelpfulness, dumb with it. ‘Don’t worry about it, Mum.’
‘Bonnie!’ Suzanne put her hand on Bonnie’s arm. ‘This is ridiculous! You need to —’
‘Don’t worry about it!’ Bonnie’s voice ripped like an arrow into the moist cushions of air, shot through and up to bounce off the giant metal beams that ran overhead. People turned to look.
Bonnie pulled her arm from her mother’s grip and marched past her, over to the deep end where she entered the pool in a clumsy unpractised dive, too shallow, so the water smacked her thighs.
She swam churning laps, breathing raggedly. Through her goggles she stared down at the tiled bottom, the black lines falling away at the deep end, but what she saw, couldn’t stop herself from seeing, was Pete trailing Doug into the pub, Pete the shadow to Doug’s forceful figure, Pete following blindly like a dog.
She tried his mobile that afternoon, and it went to voicemail again. She hung up without leaving a message.
‘Who was that?’ Suzanne was there behind her, a basket of folded clothes in her arms.
‘No one.’ Bonnie put the phone down. ‘You don’t have to do that. Just leave it — I’ll do it.’
‘I might as well keep myself busy. You’ll have to put them away though. I don’t know where anything goes.’
‘Thanks, Mum.’ She stepped forward and reached for the basket.
Suzanne kept her grip on it. ‘Was that Pete?’ She raised her eyebrows.
‘Sorry?’ Bonnie felt the block-of-wood teenage feeling descend again.
‘Pete. Was that him? Have you got onto him yet?’
‘I’ve tried,’ she said, dully. ‘He’s — he’s not answering.’
‘Well, have you left a message?’
Bonnie felt the basket between them, her mother’s insistent hold on it. She tightened her own fingers and pulled. ‘I’ll put these away now,’ she said in a mumble, trying to move off.
Suzanne held on. ‘You need to leave messages,’ she said, taking a step closer. ‘I mean, it’s all right for him to go off in a huff for a day or so, but he’s got responsibilities.’ Her voice rose. ‘The children. It’s just not fair.’
The plastic basket was cutting into Bonnie’s fingers. Fuck this, she thought, and anger flew open like a parachute. ‘Unfair?’ she said, and heard herself laugh, high and gasping. ‘Unfair on who?’
Suzanne gaped. ‘Well —’
‘Jesus, Mum!’ Bonnie let go of the basket, and it tipped. Clothes fell to the floor. ‘You don’t mean me, do you? Me, that it’s unfair on?’ She laughed again, low this time, and shook her head. ‘I don’t think you mean me. Actually.’ The cut of the word. Suzanne blinking. ‘I think you’re talking about yourself. That’s who you’re worried about, isn’t it?’
Suzanne tried to steady the clothes tipping from the basket as it swung against her legs. ‘Help me,’ she said, head down. ‘Help me here.’
Bonnie stood back, arms folded. ‘You don’t care about me and Pete,’ she said. ‘Whether or not we love each other. Whether or not we’re happy.’ She watched Suzanne’s bent head. The grey roots of her hair caught the light, and a thread of pity rose, but Bonnie ignored it, stayed with the anger, the wide-open feeling of it, its power. ‘You’re terrified Pete and I’ll break up, aren’t you?’
No answer. Suzanne stayed bent over the basket, holding it with both hands now, steady at knee level, the pile of spilled clothes at her feet.
‘You’re terrified,’ she went on, ‘that you might have to help me. Regularly. That you might have to spend time with your grandchildren. More than one hour a week. One hour! Fuck!’ She ran her hands through her hair. ‘Do you know what other people do? Other grandparents? I have friends, Mum, whose parents take their kids for whole weekends. Whose parents take their kids for weeks while they go overseas. Whose parents look after their kids regularly, for whole days, every week. Jesus! I mean’ — she laughed drily — ‘even if you’re not interested in your grandchildren, which you’re obviously not, I can’t believe you’re not prepared to help out for my sake, to help me. Your daughter.’
Suzanne dropped the basket. She folded at the knees and bumped down to the floor beside it. At first Bonnie thought she was going to pick up the clothes, but she didn’t touch them. She lowered her face into her hands. Her shoulders shook.
Bonnie waited, the anger leaving her like the black twist of smoke from a blown-out candle.
‘I put,’ said Suzanne at last, ‘the best years of my life into you.’ She spoke into her hands. ‘You and Luke, and it was bloody miserable.’
Bonnie’s legs felt weak. She let them bend, slid down to sit on the floor opposite Suzanne.
Suzanne dropped her hands. Her face was red, the powdery foundation gone from her nose, mascara veined in the lines under her eyes. ‘I don’t know what makes us do this,’ she said, as if to herself. ‘This, this … urge, this drive, to have babies.’ She straightened. ‘I remember it, still. Clear as day.’ She smiled then, looking somewhere down near Bonnie’s feet. ‘My mother warned me, you know.’
Bonnie waited.
‘Oh yes. “Don’t do it,” she said. “It’s a death sentence. Get your tubes tied before anything happens.”’ Suzanne pulled a tissue from her sleeve and blew her nose. ‘And that was in the sixties. No one said anything like that back then. You were supposed to want to be a mother.’
A hurt-child feeling uncurled in Bonnie. ‘But …’ She heard the shyness in her own voice, felt an urgent, embarrassed smile flit across her face. ‘But surely — surely it wasn’t all bad?’
Suzanne glanced at her, as if only just realising who she was. ‘Of course not,’ she sai
d. ‘You were delightful, both of you. I told myself that every day. You’re wasting it, I told myself. Why can’t you enjoy this, this precious time?’ She refolded the tissue, wiped under her eyes with it. ‘You were delightful,’ she said again. ‘That made it even worse — it was like a, a pressure. Knowing that I was getting it wrong somehow.’
She watched her mother’s hands holding the tissue in her lap. ‘Mum,’ she said, feeling enormous all of a sudden, swollen with pity. ‘You probably had post-natal depression.’
‘Oh, I’m sure I did.’ Suzanne flashed one of her regular, bright smiles. ‘But no one talked about that back then. I’m not sure if it even existed.’
‘But that’s terrible.’ Bonnie leaned forward, voice loud in her own ears. ‘I mean, to struggle all on your own like that.’
Suzanne made a rueful face. ‘Oh well. That’s just the way it was.’
‘But didn’t … didn’t Dad …?’
‘Him?’ Suzanne laughed. ‘He was always at work. He did nothing — nothing — to help with you children. Oh’ — she flapped a hand — ‘he read your stories, at bedtime, when he got home from work. Once I’d fed you and bathed you and got you all ready.’
There was a pause. No sound from Jess, sleeping in her room. Bonnie stared down at the scuffed toes of her boots. The warmth of her father’s giant body, the smell of his clothes — like newspapers, and pencil shavings — the rumble of his voice, the vibration of it as she rested against him. She felt her mouth twist, the swim of angry tears. She couldn’t look up at Suzanne. How unfair, that this vision of her father was so readily available, so alive and full and easy, when if she tried to summon the mother of her childhood all she got was impressions: a blurred figure always moving; a weary voice pleading Hurry up; impatient hands busy and full; a turned back.
‘You’re much luckier,’ said Suzanne after a while. ‘You’ve got Pete.’
‘Now,’ said Suzanne, the next morning, when Bonnie got back from dropping the twins at kinder. ‘I’ve got bridge tonight …’
‘That’s fine, Mum.’ She spooned mashed banana into Jess’s mouth.