House of Sticks
Page 27
Afterwards, though, when she cries, when she leans over him and kisses his face and whispers, ‘I’m so sorry. I love you so much,’ he moves from underneath her, sits up and reaches for his clothes.
For a moment he stays like that, with his jeans and shirt in his hands, and then he puts his arm around her and lands a fumbling kiss on her ear.
‘I don’t want to talk about that,’ he says, looking at the floor.
She sees Doug, one afternoon, two or three weeks afterwards. She’s driving with the kids and she sees him come out of the sports bar of a pub. He has someone with him, another man, short and slight. The word crony flicks through Bonnie’s mind. In the moment of her passing she sees the dirty white edge of the bandage at the cuff of Doug’s shirt, the swagger of his shoulders, the wag of his head as he shoots off some sideways comment.
And then she’s past, and he shrinks in her mirror like any other person, any other dot on the street.
She turns from making porridge one morning and there’s Jess, up on all fours, rocking, chubby knees edging forwards, eyes alight with uncertain triumph. ‘Quick!’ calls Bonnie, and then hesitates. Pete! she wants to yell, but her throat clogs. It feels too bold, an imposition. ‘Everyone!’ she calls instead. ‘Quick!’
‘What?’ Edie and Louie run in.
‘Look.’ Bonnie points. ‘Jess’s almost crawling.’
‘She is crawling!’ Louie and Edie fling themselves down beside the baby. ‘Jess! Jess!’ they cry, patting the floor in front of her.
Jess, dribble running in a clear string from her chin, mouth agape in an astonished smile, shuffles one hand an inch over the lino.
‘She’s crawling!’ yells Edie. ‘Dad, Dad — Jess is crawling!’
Pete comes in, and Bonnie watches his face. She sees the gentleness there, the smile that comes so easily for the baby, and then the caution when he glances at her, and she feels the jaws of a lunging helpless need swing open. She closes her hands into fists. She turns bluntly back to the stove.
But then Pete comes over and touches her, his hand warm on her arm, and there’s something, some shy offer there, and her heart takes off in soaring, fraught hope.
A delivery arrives, a giant cardboard box. Corrugated plastic tubing in a loop on top, tied with wire. They all stand round it.
‘What is it?’ says Edie.
‘It’s a dishwasher,’ says Pete. He bends and pulls away the plastic packet that’s taped to the side, tears it open and takes out the invoice. Glances at Bonnie. ‘It’s from your mum.’
‘Wow,’ she says. ‘I think it might be a good one.’
There’s a pause, and then Pete grins. ‘So,’ he says, ‘Suzanne comes through with the goods.’
They stand each side of the hulking box, smiling nervously at each other.
Mickey sends new demos, wants to book in more studio time. Bonnie sits up late with headphones on and plays and plays. Her calluses harden again. She drifts away from the children during the daytimes, goes to the living room, picks up the acoustic.
‘I like that song.’
It’s Edie, hanging over the end of the couch. She comes round to sit, back straight, hands in her lap, trying so hard to be good that Bonnie’s chest is squeezed with love.
Bonnie smiles, and before Jess can start to cry or Louie run in, or Edie get bored and fidget and bump the guitar, she shifts round to face her daughter, and she plunges back into the song, and the chords roll full and open around the two of them.
An afternoon wears on. The twins bicker. Jess cries and grabs at Bonnie’s legs. Pete comes in late from the workshop, and she clangs a saucepan lid down and yells, ‘Fuck this!’
And Pete says, quietly, ‘You wanted this. This is what you wanted.’
And he picks up the baby and turns and leaves the room, and she is left standing there, gasping, breathless.
But later he puts his arms around her and says ‘Sorry’, and Bonnie feels the strength in his arms, the heat of his body, his face, his scratchy chin as he kisses her. She feels it, close and alive.
Sometimes she looks at Pete, and he looks back at her, straight, the way he always did, and it comes so easily, the hugeness of their old love. And for a moment they slip out from under it, the shadow that flaps and skims, waiting, ready to bring them undone. And the love flares bright between them like nothing ever happened, and it doesn’t matter that it’s only for a moment.
He’ll come back, one day, Bonnie knows. Doug.
She tries to prepare herself, to rehearse the scenario.
She puts herself outside, returning to the house with a load of washing from the line. It’s night. She’ll climb the steps holding the laundry basket, stop at the kitchen door and look in through the glass.
Pete will be at the bench with Jess in his arms. The twins kneeling on chairs. Doug standing directly under the hanging light, in its beam, arms spread, eyebrows jerking, lips curved away from the wreckage of his grin. He’ll bend his knees, bob his head, bounce back up with the triumph of a story’s end.
And Bonnie, out in the dark, will watch her children, their keen interest, their open faces. And she’ll watch Pete. She’ll see his ease, his generous smile. And it will come leaping up, that love, like a living thing. And she will pull it close around her, hold on to it. And she’ll open the door, and go in.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thank you to The Readings Foundation, The Wheeler Centre, and Writing at Rosebank via the Victorian Writers’ Centre for providing valuable time and space during the development of this book. I’d also like to acknowledge the Victorian Government’s investment in new writing through the Victorian Premier’s Prize for an Unpublished Manuscript by an Emerging Victorian Writer.
For help in various forms thank you to Claudia Murray-White, Naomi Rottem, Trisha Valliappan, Edward Frew, Tim Frew, Ian See, Robin Lucas, Miriam Rosenbloom and Caroline Kennedy-McCracken.
For her assistance, encouragement and good humour, I’m grateful to my agent, Clare Forster.
Special thanks to Louisa Syme for all her reading and insights, and to Mick Turner for many late-night discussions.
Extra-special thanks to Aviva Tuffield, publisher and editor at Scribe, for her thoughtfulness, her honesty, and her incredible hard work. It’s been a pleasure to share this project with her.
And to my family, as always, my gratitude and my love.
Contents
About the Author
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Part 1
Part 1 (cont'd)
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Acknowledgements