House of Sticks (22 page)

She's waiting for the catch
. ‘Yeah, it is.' Bonnie watched the children bounce round and round. ‘But the thing is, Pete's … Pete can't take any time off work. He's got this big job on and, well, Doug's disappeared, so he's on his own —'

‘Disappeared?'

‘Yeah.'

‘What do you mean? He just left?'

‘Yeah.' Bonnie closed her eyes and spoke rapidly. ‘I guess so. Got a better offer maybe. Anyway, he's gone.'

Suzanne made a clicking sound. ‘Told you that feller was a liability.'

There was a cry from the trampoline. Bonnie opened her eyes again. Edie was swinging Louie around by the back of his jumper. She glimpsed his furious crying face whisk by before she turned away. ‘Yeah, I know.' She leaned over the kitchen counter, trying to ignore the screams. ‘But, anyway, so the thing is, it would be really great for me to do this job — to bring in some extra money — but Pete can't afford to take any time off at all. He has to work weekends till …'

‘So you want me to babysit?' Suzanne's voice sounded small and cold through the phone.

Babysit
. How detached the word was. As if Suzanne was someone who might be paid — someone with no connection or obligation. She willed herself to answer. ‘Well …'

There was a sigh.

Bonnie fought the shame that lay thick and choking in her chest.
She's your mother
.
You can ask her for help
. ‘Sorry,' she heard herself say.

‘It's not much notice, is it?' said Suzanne.

‘I guess not.'

Another sigh. ‘I'll have to cancel some things.'

The yelling outside was reaching a crescendo. Bonnie moved further into the house. She couldn't face the living room with its piles of laundry so she stood in the bathroom. ‘Sorry,' she said again, hearing her voice echo.

Suzanne was speaking quickly now, brisk and clipped. ‘So when is it again? Next Friday — from Friday morning till Saturday afternoon?'

‘Yeah.'

‘All right.' Another tongue-click. ‘I'll get myself organised.'

Bonnie sat down on the edge of the bath. ‘Thanks, Mum,' she said, hating her meek voice.

The kitchen door crashed open, and there was the sound of Louie calling. ‘Mu-um!'

‘Sounds like you're busy there,' said Suzanne.

‘Mu-um!' Footsteps, running.

‘Yeah. I'd better go.'

‘All right then.'

‘Bye.' Bonnie pressed the
end call
button and cradled the phone in her lap.

‘Mu-um!' yelled Louie in the hallway. ‘Edie hit me!'

Bonnie reached out with her foot and nudged the door gently so it swung shut.

‘Let's jump on the couch.' Louie pushed away his plate and slid down off his chair.

‘Yeah,' said Edie. ‘And let's make a train with all the cushions.'

‘Hang on,' said Bonnie, leaping up with a tea towel. ‘Wipe your hands and faces first.'

The twins paused, taking it in turns to make brief scrubbing motions with the towel before running out of the kitchen.

‘That's not …' She gave up and started to clear the table. ‘Watch out for my guitar,' she called after them.

Jess leaned sideways in her high chair and let a rusk drop to the floor.

Pete picked it up and handed it back to the baby, who smiled, leaned over and dropped it a second time.

‘Ah-ha,' said Pete gently, bending again. ‘This old game.'

Bonnie stood on the other side of the table. She found herself averting her gaze, as if the moment between Pete and the baby was something she wasn't meant to see. She gathered up cutlery. ‘So,' she said after a while. ‘I've got my mum.'

‘What?' said Pete.

‘To look after the kids. Next weekend.' She added the leftovers from one twin's bowl to the other's.

‘Really?'

‘Yeah.' Bonnie's heart picked up. ‘So I can do the Mickey show.'

He stared. ‘Your mum?'

‘Yeah.'

‘And you reckon that'll be okay?'

She turned her eyes away from his face, its hard look. ‘Yeah,' she said, hesitatingly.

Pete puffed out his lips. ‘You sure?'

She stacked the two bowls and carried them and the fistful of dirty forks and spoons to the sink. Her throat hurt. Her body felt stiff with it all: guilt, worry, swelling anger. ‘Yes.' Her voice ground out roughly. ‘Why wouldn't that be okay?' She threw the cutlery into the sink.

‘Well,' said Pete behind her, evenly. ‘It's just — you know — she's kind of, hopeless, and I don't want her knocking on the door every three minutes asking me things.'

Bonnie clanged the saucepan down beside the stack of plates. ‘I'm trying to
help
,' she said, her voice catching. ‘I'm trying to help, to make up for everything — fuck it.' She leaned over the sink.

Pete stood, scraping back his chair. ‘How much is it again? Four grand?'

She didn't answer.

Pete brought his plate over and added it to the pile. Then he went to the door. ‘It's better than nothing,' he said. ‘But — you realise, it'll just cover the difference between what I was paying Doug and what I have to pay Glenn.'

Bonnie closed her eyes.

‘So' — Pete pulled open the door — ‘we'll pretty much be back where we started.'

She kept her eyes shut. The cold wind was rushing in.

‘You'll be right with the kids, won't you?' he said, as he stepped out. ‘I'd better get back to work.'

After she'd fed Jess in the early morning and put her back to bed, Bonnie used the breast pump. She huddled on the couch in the grey almost-dawn with the heater on and the rug around her, pressing the funnel to herself, squeezing the handle until one hand got sore and then changing to the other. When she touched the bottle she could feel the warmth still in the milk. It hissed against the plastic as it went in, its fine jets almost translucent. Outside various noises started up: a barking dog, a car engine, a few sparse bird calls. Bonnie pumped, both sides, until no more would come out.

She went to the kitchen and carefully poured the milk into a storage bag, labelled it with the date and quantity and put it with the others at the rear of the freezer. Then she returned to the living room, shut the door and got back under the rug on the couch. Picked up her acoustic and ran through her parts for Mickey's songs. She played them straight, one after the other. Then she mixed them up, spliced the verse bit of one with the bridge from another, went into the chorus from a third. The fingers of her left hand swung from note to note, the riffs ran and merged, took off in their own directions.

Bonnie forgot she was cold and the tired aches in her shoulders and throat. She swam into it, the bright-edged trails of notes, the hums of chords, the opening of the sounds as they lifted out of the belly of the guitar. Their shining ascent, their moment of life, their leaving.

She pumped every chance she got. The stash of bags grew at the back of the freezer. She went through the corner cupboard, the dusty collection of bottles, teats and white plastic accessories, sorted and washed them. Matched bottles, lids and teats and lined them up in ordered rows in a shallow cardboard box on the bench. She wrote a detailed schedule for Jess. Feed and sleep routine; times she was likely to need her nappy changed:
Usually does a poo mid-morning so don't forget to check her nappy before you put her down for a sleep
. She added general tips and rules, feeling stupid and obsessive but unable to stop.
Obvious of course but NEVER let go of her in the bath!! Always put her to sleep on her back
.

She stood at the kitchen bench with the pen in her hand. How much did Suzanne know or remember? Was any of this common knowledge? Was any of it the same as it was back then, when Suzanne was the mother, and she, Bonnie, was the baby? All she could think of was how when the twins were newborns, she'd begged for some advice, crazed with exhaustion, and Suzanne had only smiled vaguely and said she couldn't remember anything.
Sorry, darling. It all seems so long ago now
. Sitting there holding one of the blanket-wrapped babies as if it was a cake, or some extremely delicate or breakable thing, that she couldn't wait to give back.

Every now and then Bonnie would try to pack.

One show. One night. It should have been easy. The overnight bag stood in the middle of the floor waiting. But every time she actually went to the wardrobe, looked at the clothes, tried to make a decision, her mind slid away from it and her limbs felt weighted down with hopelessness.

She threw the last dress down on the end of the bed and put her hands to her face. ‘Nothing,' she said. ‘I've got nothing. What am I going to do?'

‘What about this one, Mum?' Louie held up one of the unworn tops she'd bought not all that long ago, but that was still just a bit too tight, and anyway would require a proper bra. ‘I like this one.'

‘Yes, it's nice, isn't it. But it's just … It's not quite right.'

‘I'll put it in your bag.' Louie went over and stuffed it in.

‘Thanks, Lou.' Bonnie heaved a sigh and looked down at her thighs, her old underpants, faded black, with a hole at one of the side seams, her pale, ruined stomach. ‘What am I going to do?' she said again. She took the small pile of clean underwear and her best pyjamas, went over, pulled out the top and pushed them to the bottom of the bag.

‘The top, Mum.' Louie picked it up and tried to stuff it back in.

‘Oh, no, I actually don't think I will take that one after all. Thanks anyway though, Louie.'

‘But it's my favourite.' Louie shoved it right down into the bag, gazed up at her with satisfaction.

‘No, really, Lou — I think I'll have a bit more of a look at what else I've got.' Bonnie bent to pull the top out again.

‘No.' Louie kept his arm stuck in the bag, his hand pressing down on the top.

‘Come on, Louie. I'm trying to get packed here.'

‘Na-na-na-na-na! Na-na-na-na-na!' went Louie in a chatter of protest, resisting her efforts, bearing down with all his weight.

‘Louie. Lou.' She gave up and sat on the edge of the bed. ‘Can you please go and see what Edie's up to? I'd really like to do this by myself.'

‘Na-na-na-na-na!'

‘Oh god, Louie. Come on. Please?'

‘Na-na-na-na-na!'

‘Forget it.' She stood up and pulled her jeans back on. ‘I'll do it another time.'

On Sunday she tried to go clothes shopping. Mel came over with Freddie, and Bonnie left all the kids with her and caught the tram into the city.

She was so early none of the shops were even open. She got a coffee in a laneway cafe and sat looking out at the passers-by — middle-aged or elderly, all of them — who seemed to share the same tentative, hesitant movements. Cautiously they crept, as if aware of their status as trespassers in this half-asleep city whose rightful owners — younger people — had only temporarily receded and would soon return. A grey-haired couple in sturdy khaki pants walked with backpacks. An elderly woman in an immaculate wool suit and a hat took on the cobblestones with her twiglike legs. As she passed she turned her head, and Bonnie saw the careful placement of colour on her face — the coral lips and dabs of blush.

Young people, Bonnie realised, would still be asleep, or only just waking for the day. She thought of the time, one early morning, when the twins, still babies, had been up screaming since five and in desperation she'd stuck them in that horrible double pram that never fitted through any doorways and taken them out for a walk. The muted, secret colours of a winter dawn. Everything brittle with cold. Waiting gardens and the sleeping windows behind them. She'd gone all the way to the 7-Eleven and bought the paper, and it had been on her way back that she'd passed the two girls walking arm in arm, inadequate jackets buttoned, gauzy scarfs floating, make-up and hair still holding some of the glossy promise of the night before. For a second she'd actually thought,
They're up early
, before the realisation hit and in the same moment she saw herself as she would appear to them: heavy-thighed and pale, hair tucked into her beanie, the pram before her like some kind of giant prosthesis, an extension of her body, of her, the person she was. The girls passed, heels clipping on the pavement, stepping around Bonnie and the pram heedlessly, as if around a tree or a rubbish bin. Bonnie found herself slowing, twisting to look round after them, full of a kind of irate sorrow.
Hey
, she wanted to call.
Stop — wait!
She came to a halt, stood and watched their backs, their easy passage past and away. Before she knew it they'd gone.
Wait!
The dew on the empty street shone. The words sat in her mouth like stones.