House of Sticks (19 page)

‘I love them,' he whispered. She looked down, and his eyes were open. ‘You're so beautiful.'

She bent to kiss him. ‘You are.' He was beautiful. In the early light his face was calm, full of peace. She put her hand on his chest over his heart and kept looking into his eyes.

Later she was almost asleep again when Pete whispered, ‘Bon?'

‘Mm?'

‘I just want to ask you something, before the kids get up, while I've got a chance.'

‘What is it?'

‘You know that money.'

‘What money?'

‘That we've got put away. The four grand. You know, for the holiday.'

She opened her eyes. ‘Yeah?'

‘Okay.' He moved a bit away from her, pulled himself up to sitting. ‘I want you to think about this. Don't just get mad straight away, all right? Just hear me out and think about it.'

She turned to him. ‘What is it?'

He looked away from her, towards the window. ‘Douggie's given me this tip.'

‘What?'

Pete lifted his hand. ‘Wait — please just listen.'

She waited.

‘Okay.' He took a breath. ‘I've got this tip. It's from Douggie, but really he's just passed it on from this friend of his, who works for the trainer, you know?' He glanced at her, then back to the window. ‘Anyway, it's — look, he says it's a sure thing, and apparently this guy's … well, he knows his stuff. And say what you like about Douggie, but I reckon he's onto something here.'

She stared at him.

‘So …' Pete made a grimace. ‘What do you reckon?'

‘About what?'

‘Come on, Bon.'

She shook her head. ‘I don't get it. I don't understand what you're asking me.'

He rubbed his hand over his face. ‘The money. It's a risk, but we could turn it into ten times as much. Even more. I was thinking we could maybe keep some of it — maybe keep half. So if we put on, say, two, and the odds stay at ten-to-one —'

‘What?' She gave a dull bark of a laugh. ‘You're not serious.'

‘Please, Bonnie. I asked you to keep an open mind on this.'

She let her jaw hang slack.

‘I mean … Think about it. We've put that money aside anyway. It's not — we haven't counted on having it for the mortgage or anything.'

‘I can't believe you're suggesting this. I —'

‘Will you just think about it? Please?'

She rolled her eyes, blew out her lips with a derisive puff of air.

‘Bon? Please? The race is tomorrow night. Just — you can tell me tomorrow. Okay? Just think about it, okay?'

She closed her eyes. He got up. Bonnie could hear him pulling on some clothes. Then there was quiet. She opened her eyes again.

He was standing there by the bed watching her. In his striped pyjama pants he looked like a little boy. ‘Think about it?'

She pulled the covers over her head. ‘Okay. But I doubt I'll change my mind.'

Pete came in for lunch. Doug as well. She heard them in the kitchen, heard Pete call — ‘Hey, Bon, you here? Had lunch?' — but she didn't go out. There was the sound of the fridge opening and closing, cutlery rattling. Doug's voice winding on, lifting and falling.

She passed through on her way to the clothesline. They looked up at her, Pete quickly, anxiously, Doug with that head-back grin, still talking.

‘… and they put him up for a fifteen-hundred after a spell, blinkers on, and he just ab-so-fucken-lute-ly
caned
'em …'

Bonnie went out into the cold. She felt watched, clumsy at the line, her movements strained as she reached and stepped. When she came through again with the empty basket in her arms Pete kept his eyes on the paper and Doug paused in his monologue. As if allowing for a minor interruption he reclined in his chair, arms folded, thin lips open, teeth and tongue on display. She felt the heat rise to her face, her steps get awkward, his eyes at her back. As she started down the hallway she heard him take it up again, the tireless thread of talk.

In the bedroom, with the door shut, she sat with her acoustic, picking quietly, marooned in the weird stillness of a kindergarten day — no sounds from Jess asleep in her room. Only the enduring drone from the kitchen.

Around the room she wandered, picking things up and putting them down again. The ornamental perfume bottles that had been her grandmother's. The photo of her and Pete holding the twins, one each, in the hospital. Edie's drawing of a tree, coloured with scented textas that still smelled, faintly, like lollies. She ran her fingers over the cluster of laminated music-festival passes that hung from their lanyards, looped on the door handle. Long-ago logos and coded text:
Access all areas
;
Performer main stage
;
Artist day 2
.

She lay on the bed. After a while she heard the back door open and close, the faint bells, and then there was silence, Doug's voice gone. She pulled the blanket over herself and closed her eyes. In the warm lapping place between resting and sleeping her mind softened, draped itself over the idea of being generous, understanding, of saying yes to Pete. Giving it to him as a gift — that thing he needed, whatever it was. A last hoorah, a flight of nostalgia. Of them listening to the race together, jumping up with open smiles of triumph when the horse won, arms around each other, heads flung back. Even more: of Doug there too, the three of them shouting and jumping together at their collective good fortune. Pete in the middle, arms around the two of them: Doug the old friend, and Bonnie the warm, kind partner. The woman you'd want to be with, who you'd love forever.

She fell asleep for maybe a minute. Dreamed of being backstage trying to tune her guitar and the tuning pegs coming off in her hand, one after the other. Then the whole guitar falling apart. The house music going down and the lights up. The crowd falling quiet. Stepping out onto the worn gaffer-scarred carpet completely empty-handed, the last fragments of varnished wood and metal dropping away from her, the strap over her shoulder slipping to the ground. Going out there into the hot lights and the terrible hush holding nothing.

The baby's crying jarred her awake. She'd dribbled on the pillow. Her head felt thick — it was worse than if she hadn't gone to sleep at all. She lay for a moment and stretched out her legs until they trembled. Wiped her cheek with the back of her hand. Then eased herself up and swung out of the bed.

When she got back from collecting the twins Doug's van was gone.

Her phone rang as she was walking up the path. She reached for it, dropping the kids' backpacks and the nappy bag in a pile on the porch and shifting Jess to the other arm.

It was Mickey.

‘Hey, Bon?'

‘Yeah?'

‘Have you thought about the shows?'

Bonnie resettled Jess on her hip. ‘Yeah. I mean no — not really.'

Mickey said something, but it was lost under an outburst of bickering between the twins, who were trying to climb the squat front-yard lemon tree.

‘Hang on, sorry, Mickey.' She moved further away, down the other end of the porch. ‘Sorry,' she said again, ‘what was that?'

‘Sounds like I've caught you at a bad time,' said Mickey. ‘But quickly …'

‘Get OFF!' yelled Louie.

‘Mu-UM!' yelled Edie.

‘… getting a bit late,' said Mickey. ‘So I kind of need to know.'

‘Oh,' said Bonnie, jiggling Jess, who was starting to whinge.

‘… but I do have this other show, in Sydney, this kind of arts festival thing …'

‘Na-na-na-na-na!' went Louie.

‘That's my branch!' went Edie.

‘… be a weird one — they're calling it a showcase — but lots of money,' came Mickey's voice, tiny and fractured.

‘Shh, shh,' she said to Jess, tucking the phone in against her shoulder and trying to bend her head away from the noise.

‘Na-na-na-na-na!'

‘Get off, get off, get OFF!'

‘… crazy money, if that makes any difference …'

Jess's whingeing was getting louder.

‘Sorry,' said Bonnie. ‘Sorry, Mickey, I think I'm going to have to …' Real crying now from Jess. She pressed the phone closer to her ear. ‘Sorry, can I call you back?'

‘Sure.' Mickey laughed. ‘Talk soon.'

Bonnie shoved the phone in her pocket and swapped arms again with Jess. ‘Come on, you two,' she called to the twins.

‘But I want to climb this tree, and Louie won't —'

‘Na-na-na-na —'

‘That tree's got thorns.' Bonnie bent and with one hand gathered all the bags up. She turned to the door, tried to reach the keys in her pocket, sighed and dropped all the bags again. ‘Bloody hell,' she muttered.

‘Oww!' came Edie's cry.

She slid the key in the lock. ‘Well, I told you that tree's got thorns.'

‘Ow-ow-ow-ah!'

Bonnie opened the door and slung the bags in one at a time. Marched quickly to the living room with Jess and plonked her on her play mat. Marched back out to the porch and knelt with her arms open ready for Edie who came, red-faced, tears spurting. ‘Come here,' she said, folding the girl into her arms, taking the scratched finger and kissing it. ‘Poor possum.' She put her lips to Edie's forehead, felt the hot fury of her tears.

Pete came in at five. ‘What should we do for dinner?' he called from the bathroom over the water running in the basin.

‘Oh god, I don't know.' She looked in the fridge. ‘I haven't thought about it, sorry. There's some chops here.'

‘Want me to do it?'

‘Sure. That'd be great.'

Bonnie watched him pass, the glance he threw her. Under his tired face, the sag of his shoulders as he bent to the vegetable crisper, she saw again the shadow of that younger self, walking along the bricks. Or running back from the TAB with the phone-bill money multiplied by ten stuffed into his pockets. The crack of the champagne cork in the dingy kitchen of some share house. Pete and Doug and all those other long-ago friends, young and full of easy pleasure, raising their glasses, yelping and smacking palms on the table.
Just let him do it
, she thought.
Give it to him. Why can't you just be kind?

She went out into the dimming yard to get the clothes in off the line. She couldn't tell if they were still damp or just cold. She kept testing each thing with her fingers as she took it down, gripping the fabrics at different points — the pockets of Pete's jeans, the toes of Edie's tights. She piled them loosely in the basket, carried it back inside and dumped it down in front of the heater. Then she started pulling things off the clotheshorse and sorting them hurriedly, tossing them into piles on the couch.

Louie ran in and almost knocked over the framed print that had been leaning against the wall since the wire broke. He clambered up the back of the couch and somersaulted into one of the piles of washing.

‘Louie! Get off!' Bonnie flapped one of Jess's romper suits at him. ‘I'm trying to sort clothes here.'

‘But I need to hide,' said Louie, trying to burrow between the couch cushions. ‘I need to hide from Edie.' Clothes slid to the floor.

‘Well, hide somewhere else.' She picked the clothes back up.

‘But I need to hide here.' Louie wedged himself behind a cushion. ‘Please, Mum, can you put more cushions on me?'

She sighed. ‘Okay. But you have to keep really still, all right? Until I've finished sorting this stuff.'

‘Okay,' came the muffled reply.

Bonnie stacked up the threadbare op-shop cushions and stood back looking at the couch, the heaps of clothes, the room crowded with old, cheap furniture — the computer desk, the mismatched bookshelves crammed full. The cracks in the walls, the spotted mirror over the mantel, the wobbly coffee table Pete always said he was going to build a replacement for, when he got a chance.

‘Is she coming, Mum?' said Louie's squashed voice.

‘Not yet.' She stood with one of Jess's tiny singlets in one hand. It had once been white, but she'd washed it with something red and now it was a blotchy brownish pink.

A memory came, from her own early share-house days, when she'd missed most of her lectures to sit in her room with her shitty first guitar and tinny little amp, playing along to Sonic Youth albums. Further west, and about eight years later than Pete and Doug and their trifecta and champagne. There had been a house on the same street as hers, red brick, with roses in the front garden. The black-painted front door sometimes stood open, and Bonnie would sneak glances in at the quiet gleam of floorboards, the little hall table always with a vase of flowers; further in a pale couch, a clear expansive living area, big paintings on the walls. There might be the sounds of classical music playing, or the smell of coffee. She never saw any actual people.