Listening to Mondrian (10 page)

‘Mmmmm . . . ?’ Callie said. She hadn’t really thought about it. Might go to the movies with Voula.

‘Are you or aren’t you?’

Mum was a bit sharp this time. She was obviously planning something, but what? If it was a party of Mum’s friends, then Callie definitely was. Who wants to watch half a dozen middle-aged women drink beer and listen to Janis Joplin? But if it was one of Mum’s mad escapades – ‘Come on, you kids, grab your sleeping bags, we’re going camping!’ – then maybe she wasn’t. On the other hand, it could be a working bee – putting newsletters in envelopes to save the world . . .

‘Callie?’

You had to be careful.

‘Are
you
?’ Callie ventured.

That threw her. ‘Am I what?’ Mum stopped scratching at the frying pan. It’d been
oeufs à la Damien
tonight. More seemed to have stuck than not.

‘Busy!’

Mum went a little pink. ‘Mmmmm . . .’ She started scratching again furiously so she could avoid Callie’s eye as she quickly threw in, ‘So I was wondering if you’d stay home and babysit the kids. You could have Voula over to stay, maybe hire a couple of movies . . .’

She’ll be offering to pay me next!

‘You could get pizzas,’ Mum rattled on wildly, ‘and Coke . . .’

What about a new pair of jeans? Get her while her defences were down. Whatever she wanted to do, she sure wanted to do it.

‘Where are you going?’ Callie temporised.

Mum was very intent on the egg stuck in the pan-edges. ‘Just out to tea . . .’ Making it vague.

‘Where?’

‘Maybe a restaurant. Maybe someone’s place. I’m not sure.’

Someone! Aha!

‘Whose place?’

‘You don’t know him.’

Him. The masculine, singular pronoun. Aha again. Push her a bit further.

‘Well, maybe Voula and I could get the pizzas and a couple of movies and put Damien and Soph to bed, and then when you came home we could still go out.’ There was some talk of how Ben Nguyen might be going to have a party.

‘Well . . .’ Scratch scratch scratch. ‘I mightn’t be home in time for that . . .’

Bullseye!

‘You’re going on a date!’ Callie teased, like Soph and Damien teased Callie when she (once in a blue moon) did.

‘Nonsense!’ Mum dumped the pan in the rack and pulled the plug out. The water gurgled away nastily, bits of grey egg hanging in filaments on the surface. ‘Must do something about this drain . . .’

Callie wasn’t about to let her mother change the subject. ‘Mum’s got a boyfriend, Mum’s got a boyfriend . . .’ She danced a Damien-chant. ‘Here, this has still got a bit of egg around the edge!’

‘Stop that! And scratch it off with your fingernails, what do you think they’re bloody for?’

‘Pick your nose with?’ Callie suggested, and got flipped with the sponge. Still, Mum was smiling as she attacked the trail of egg that ran from one end of the kitchen to the other. Damien’s method was to crack the egg on the south side of the bench, dribble it up to the north end, tip it in the bowl, then dribble the shell back to the compost bucket, over in the east of the kitchen. Repeat seven times. Then whip contents of the bowl vigorously, finally slurp the bowl westwards, towards the stove.

‘Honestly, I don’t know why you bother,’ Callie said, as she said every time it was Damien’s turn to cook. There was such a thing as taking feminism too far.

‘He’s got to learn,’ as Mum also said every time. ‘I’m buggered if I’m going to raise a boy who can’t lift a hand. I mean, think of his wife.’

Callie tried, but couldn’t. Anyway, all this was just a diversionary tactic.

‘So what’s he like?’

‘Who?’

‘Someone.’

Mum seemed mystified. Callie nudged her memory. ‘You know – “Someone”.
The
someone. The one and only someone. The one you’re planning to spend the night with on Saturday.’

As Callie said it, she realised the implications. She’d just meant ‘spend time with’, but now sharp specific questions came into her head. Would they use a condom? Mum was always going on at
her
. Would he . . . Stop it, Callie.

‘Stop it, Callie,’ Mum said reasonably. ‘Fair’s fair. I don’t pester
you
about your boyfriends.’

‘Don’t get much chance,’ Callie muttered, finding herself suddenly swamped by a nasty wave of jealousy. To punish herself, she scraped the egg-gunk out of the sink with her hand.

‘Snap out of it, Cinderella.’ Mum held the compost bucket for her. ‘Now, will you or won’t you? Because if you won’t, I’ll send the kids over to Kaye’s.’

It really was important, Callie could see. She rinsed her hands, and now she felt all kind and motherly. My little darling, out for her big night, I hope he’s nice to her . . .

It’d been a long time since Mum had gone out with a man, and longer still since she’d had a boyfriend. As Mum said, not many blokes wanted a woman with three children. Now Callie came to think of it, there hadn’t been anyone Mum had really fallen for since they’d left Damien and Soph’s dad.

‘Sure,’ she said. ‘I’ll tell Voula.’

Tuesday, Mum went on a diet: one hard-boiled egg divided between two brown Ryvitas, with tomato on top and a lettuce leaf on the side.

‘Here, do you want to lick the spoon?’ Callie offered as she served up the macaroni cheese.

But Mum wouldn’t be tempted, and ate standing up at the bench, then dashed off to bed with a book till all the melty-cheesy smells had gone out the window.

On Wednesday afternoon when Callie came home from school, The Dress was draped over the kitchen stool, with the biscuit tin on top, and a note stuck onto the top of the biscuit tin:

Dear Cal, Could you please take this to the Dry Cleaners
for me. Tell them it MUST be back by Fri arvo AT THE
LATEST. (They’re shut Sats.) Will be late tonite – aerobics –
Have defrosted a bol sauce (in sink) – just do some spag, and
lettuce for greens – don’t worry about me.

Love, Mum.

ps Make D have a bath and eat his lettuce!!

pps Don’t forget to keep the docket!!!

Callie picked up the garment. It was brown and black and cream, with a low waistline, and was made of some silky material. It was known in the family as The Dress because it was the only one Mum had. She wore it to weddings, funerals, christenings, job interviews, Speech Night, and the annual office party. A hand-me-down from Kaye’s posh sister-in-law, The Dress made Mum look taller and slimmer, and generally more swish than a single mother of three. Yet Callie didn’t know if Mum was making the right decision. It’d look a bit overdone if the date turned out to be a bowl of noodles at the Saigon Palace around the corner.

Honestly, why didn’t she ask him where they were going, Callie fussed as she grabbed a couple of biscuits and hurried out the door with The Dress.

‘It’ll be back by this time tomorrow,’ the woman at the dry cleaners reassured her. ‘Don’t worry, love!’

Callie remembered Mum’s note: ‘
Don’t worry about
me
.’ She knew Mum just meant about the spag, not to cook any for her, but it was the sort of thing Callie always said to Mum. Don’t worry about me: when Callie was off to a party and hadn’t arranged a lift home. Don’t worry about me: when a TV ad about teenage drug use or road accidents came on . . .

‘I’ve lost the docket already!’ Callie panicked.

‘In your purse, love,’ said the dry cleaning woman. ‘Now don’t you
worry
. . .’

‘No,’ Callie agreed. And bought herself an icecream on the way home to remind herself that she was the child and Mum was the mum.

She boiled up the spag and heated the sauce, lost the battle of the lettuce and bribed Damien into the bath with the promise that she and Soph would do the washing up.

‘Why me?’ Soph complained. ‘Just because I’m a girl! It’s not fair!’

‘It certainly is not,’ Mum agreed, arriving home in her tracksuit and starting to potter about with lemon-grass tea. ‘Damien can do yours tomorrow.’ But then her militancy turned to flusters. ‘Did you take The Dress? When’ll it be back? Have you got the docket?’

‘Yeah,’ said Callie. I am not, I am
not
going to get into a fuss about this. Honestly, the woman is infectious!

But later, when Damien’s light was off and Soph was reading her last chapter and Callie and Mum were sitting over another pot of lemon-grass, Callie found herself voicing her doubts.

‘You’re right!’ Mum said. ‘Oh Cal, you’re so right!’

And on Thursday afternoon when Callie got home there was a note on the fridge:

Might do a bit of late nite shopping – don’t bother about
tea – will bring something.

Love, Mum

Callie had already picked up The Dress on the way home. It shimmered inside its plastic wrap like a just-hatched cicada. Callie hung it on Mum’s door.

Of course, Mum didn’t even notice it. She bustled in with a bag of barbecued chook and potato salad and coleslaw, hiding the other bag beside the dresser as she whipped the dinner onto the table. ‘Do a bit of lettuce and tomato for me, will you please, Cal? No dressing.’ And she let the kids watch some stupid game show instead of the ABC News.

This time, as soon as Damien and Soph’s lights were off, Callie was ready.

‘Well, young lady . . .’ she said, mimicking Mum when Mum was mimicking the Wicked Stepmother. ‘Just what’ve you got in that bag?’

Mum was shy, but at the same time only too eager to show off her spoils. She brought out the David Jones bag, and pulled out a pair of jeans.

DJs? Callie thought. If only she’d asked, I’d have sent her to the discount place! But Mum already had her work slacks off and was modelling the jeans around the dining table. Unlike Callie, Mum was short and a bit plump, but they looked OK, even if they did drag on the floor.

‘Course I’ve got to take them up a bit!’ Mum forestalled criticism. ‘But tell me truly. Do they make me look fat?’

(Mum, you
are
fat, well, a bit, and if you look fat, it’s because of you, not the jeans . . .)

‘No.’

‘Sure?’

‘Sure I’m sure.’

So Mum hopped up on the table and Callie got the scissors and cut off the last two inches of the legs. And Mum hopped down and took the jeans off and got out the cotton and started hemming, just in her knickers.

‘After all,’ Callie went and spoiled it, ‘if he thinks you’re fat, then he’s not worth worrying about . . .’

Mum stopped. ‘So they do make me look fat!’

‘No they don’t!’

‘Well, why did you say it?’

Because that’s the sort of thing you say to me when I’m going out and I’ve got pimples and . . .

‘Just keep hemming. They’re great.’

Anyway, Callie thought as she unpacked her History assignment sheet, I don’t know that I
want
you to look good. What if he’s a creep, and he moves in, and I hate him . . .? She tried to remember what it’d been like when Mum had started living with Damien’s and Soph’s dad, but Callie had only been five then, so it probably hadn’t meant much. But now she suddenly saw the neat pattern of the family’s life thrown out of kilter. Four people, after all, was a solid, manageable sort of number. Like in the Chinese history they’d done, there was the Gang of Four. And even the Famous Five only had four people in it. At the moment, there were two castes or classes in the hierarchy of the family: her and Mum, and the kids. Whereas if he came in and made it five – Callie knew what’d happen. There’d be him and Mum, and the kids – and then her, by herself, all alone, with no one to back her up. And Mum wouldn’t need her for company any more, wouldn’t let her stay up late, gossiping and playing music . . .

Mum bit off the cotton and stuck the needle into the reel. ‘Cheer up, it might never happen.’

Callie quickly rearranged her face. ‘What?’

‘Whatever you’re worrying about.’

‘I am not
worrying
.’

‘Good.’

But now that Callie wanted to avoid the topic of Saturday night, Mum brought it up again. ‘I was thinking, you and Voula can sleep in my bed, and when I come in, I’ll have your bed. That’ll save Voula from sleeping on the couch.’

You mean, that’ll keep us out of the way, and the couch will be empty if you bring him home for coffee and canoodling . . .

OK, Mum had started it – ‘What’s his name?’

Callie’s mother seemed suddenly to need to put her CDs in order.

Callie could see her mother mouthing the alphabet. H-I-J-K-L . . . Billie Holiday. Janis Joplin. Chrissie Lennox.

‘What’s his name?’

Finally . . .

‘Roger . . .’

Callie tried to get an angle on it. Roger . . . Roger . . . Roger the tax-dodger! He’d be on more than a hundred thousand a year, no risk. A man in a suit! A man in a blue pinstriped suit with a bit of a beer-gut! No, a wine-gut, and he’d play squash and go jogging to keep it down. Sleaze, Mum . . .

Oh well, at least he wouldn’t want to move into this place. And Mum’d be sure to reject him on ideological grounds, sooner or later. Callie studied the topics for next week’s assignment. They were doing a unit on urban development. Talk about bor-ing!

‘Cal . . .’

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’ But Callie’s mother looked pink now, as if she wanted to keep on talking.

It’s that stage of being in love, when just saying what colour garbage bin they have keeps you happy, Callie thought. Better ask her something. ‘Where’d you meet him?’ Mum never went out, except with her women mates.

Mum gave up on sorting, dumped Janis on loud on the CD player and shyly murmured, ‘Work . . .’

Uh-uh, a wine-gutted social-worker jogger on fifty thousand a year. Mum worked behind the counter at Centrelink, telling old-age pensioners where to get a bus pass, helping school leavers fill out their first dole form, advising invalids how to get the rent subsidy. Mum saw herself as a subversive in the system. And now she’d fallen for some jogging bureaucrat . . .

‘You’d like him, Callie,’ Mum volunteered.

Callie was very busy, choosing her topic. ‘
A case study
of the history of concrete in Australia
.’ That sounded suitably masochistic. ‘Don’t expect me to look after the kids tomorrow afternoon,’ she said. ‘I’ve got to go to the library. And can you turn that thing
down
!’