The Unexpected Life of Carnegie Lane (2 page)

The divorce was messy and costly. The magical plastic card that gave her everything she wanted on any given day suddenly stopped working. Assets she believed belonged to both of them had been perfectly disguised in a bottomless pit of debt, hidden behind loans, which were bigger than the value of what they jointly owned. It didn’t take Carnegie long to figure out that he had been planning this jump for some time. In doing so, he’d made sure that the overdrafts they agreed to were available to him if he ever saw the “bargain” he could buy quickly. She agreed to the overdrafts. She signed them. Now, after all this time, Carnegie left Paddington behind with nothing and moved as far away as she could think to go.

Queensland seemed like as good a place as any to pretend she could start again. The small weatherboard house at number 27 Willow Street Bundaberg was all she could afford. It was a far cry from what she was used to.

Even her BMW with leather seats and the fantastic stereo had been downgraded to a ten year old Toyota station wagon. At least in Bundaberg no one would point fingers at her and whisper the tragedy of her story as she drove shamefully to the school to pick up the kids. How it affected them at the time, she didn’t really know. Carnegie Lane had learned to live above herself mentally, in a semi denial of what was happening around her.

The tofu dinners turned quickly into frozen party pies heated in the oven and served with tomato sauce. She didn’t even care if they had soft drink. They sat in the lounge room and happily watched the Simpsons while they ate dinner. Carnegie stayed in her bedroom with the music turned up, singing to the bedside tables, appreciated most by the lamp.

All of that is history now, her life continued on and our story really begins on a day almost like any other for Carnegie Lane. The only variation had been her alarm set one hour earlier than usual to 5am. This was because, the night before she had neglected to wash the school uniforms for those four children, who would be up by 6.30 demanding control of the TV and looking for missing lunchboxes. Well, two of them would be up. The younger ones had not yet recognized the advantages of sleep.

Sienna, was an unruly nine year old girl, who would rather let her long dark hair fall into ruin and dreadlocks before it was brushed and tamed, followed closely by her eleven year old brother Cooper. His living breath was to annoy his little sister as much as possible, which in turn annoyed Carnegie. It was almost like you could see him thinking. Plotting away for any reason to make her scream at her mother to make him stop! He was also able to remain innocently on the other side of the room at the same time. Just amazing. His face would give him away as the uncontrollable trace of a grin would spell out the word “GUILTY” that lit up like a neon flashing sign. This would cause Carnegie to sigh in defeat.

The older two, Olivia and Sobian, both girls, both seventeen, were in their final year of high school. They would remain defiantly under the covers in their beds, rolling around the idea of creating a mystery illness. One that may, or may not get better within five minutes of the school bus rolling down the hill without them. It rarely worked anymore. Carnegie had them all figured out on this one, right down to the heated washers on the forehead and the thermometer in the glass of hot water under the bed. They may not get away with it, but they could sure make it a hard road to travel, the one between home and the bus stop at 8am.

Knowing their uniforms were not prepared and waiting for their arrival like expecting parents could, if played correctly, be a catalyst that gave them a day off. Just not today. No, not today.

Right now, none of that mattered. All Carnegie wanted was a cup of coffee and ten minutes of dedicated silence alone. Sitting out the back on her veranda, watching the world come to life around her was the most important moment of her day. She had no way of stopping it. Therefore, she chose to embrace it, while giving herself enough time to wake up, without the frustration of those children. That cup of coffee allowed her to survive whatever was coming for her.

The only sound she would be happy to hear for the next hour was the washing machine as it worked it’s magic, then the dryer, leaving no trace that she, as a mother, had been careless enough not to have those clothes ready the night before. Thankfully, no one but her cat would know her secret.

Carnegie had many secrets. A lot of them she forgot she had kept. Most remained silent reminders of a life that existed long ago, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth. When Pavlov’s dog was still played occasionally on the radio and colored TV was something about to happen in the not too distant future. She was eight years old then, full of dreams and wild ambitions. Who she really was changed over time and what caused that change, was a familiar story to many. She took another sip of coffee, hoping to get through another day without blaming herself for the imperfection of her life.

What went wrong was a mystery she was yet to solve; it had been eleven months since that fated phone call. Today she sat on her back verandah, listening to the mechanical beat as those clothes whirled in the dryer. She finished her second cup of coffee and even though she tried hard to make it stop, the sun came up regardless.

Thinking about her life was one thing, remembering the highlights and trying to figure out how she missed what she never saw coming was the hardest task ever set. It hurt to search for an answer, like looking at a picture of a room in her brain, trying to spot the object that didn’t belong there. She just couldn’t find it. She went to the kitchen and made up four lots of school lunches. All of it was an automatic response with little thought. The uniforms would soon be hanging off the kitchen chairs and the morning gauntlet before school was nearly ready to be run.

Even though it was a day just like any other day, it
was
slightly different. The night before while she slept, Carnegie dreamed the most amazing dream. It was about life and the connection of human spirit. What she remembered most was the gorgeous young woman who told her a beautiful and ever haunting love story. What remained very strongly were her parting words as she began to wake abruptly from the relentless buzzing of an alarm. The beautiful voice had said. “
Write this down
.”

After she sighed in relief that all her children were out the door and heading somewhat reluctantly to the bus stop, Carnegie went to the spare room to find the unpacked box that contained her neglected computer. Once, she had used it as a constant source of support. Emails to and from friends, jokes, school events, the weather, latest fashion, sales, face book, band tour dates, you name it, she tracked it.

Everything she needed including a long forgotten organized diary had been driven by the machine she had avoided until now. Carnegie didn’t want to open her email and find a hundred notes from distanced friends that really only wanted to gossip about her, disguised by pretending to care. Too many of them had been caught out, and besides, when she moved, she made herself a pact that she would recreate her world. She wanted something new and completely different without any memory of her past, because it hurt too much. Deep in her heart was a large box containing the shattered remnants of her life, destined to remain hidden for all of time. She had tied it with a red bow and a note saying ‘
don’t…ever…open again!
’

It was an inkling of an idea, fed from a dream that sparked Carnegie to begin typing away at an almost uncontrollable pace. Words became sentences and soon they were chapters. Pages and pages of strategically positioned letters began to tell an amazing twisted tale of a secret love sent from somewhere in the cosmos. It was gracefully appearing, almost lyrically, in front of her eyes. Performing her motherly tasks as if on automatic pilot, every opportunity she had, she spent in her room. Typing, just typing.

One month in the making, then as suddenly as it began, it was finished with the final word placed on the page early one Friday morning. When the sun came up that day, Carnegie didn’t feel the need to go fight it. She didn’t sit out the back hoping that a cup of coffee and silence would save her life. Something in her broken little world had changed.

Carnegie Lane, mother of four and idol to inanimate objects, had suddenly and unexpectedly…written a book.

“
I walk along the city streets you used to walk along with me.

And every step I take reminds me of just how it used to be,

So how can I forget you

When there is always something there to remind me.”

“
Always something there to remind me”

Written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David

Released by Naked Eyes in February 1983

2

“
Who
wants pancakes?” Carnegie asked as her children awoke to the smell of something vaguely familiar.

Olivia and Sobian both looked at each other, in their eyes was not joy, but confusion.

“What is she doing?” Sobian asked her sister.

“I don’t know… just run with it, can’t be a good sign.”

Both the girls walked over to their mother, noticing how happy she was. They had forgotten what it was like to see her this happy and making breakfast only added to their panic. The twins had become used to living with a mother who was absent while present. It was a state that they learned to play to their advantage on many occasions. They were about to begin a joint interrogation, when they were rudely interrupted by Sienna who bounded out of her room with her shoes on the wrong feet and her hair knotted up in balls on the side of her head.

“Why are you cooking?” She asked, although to her it was a great thing and it didn’t bother her that she hadn’t had a cooked breakfast of pancakes for over ten months. All that mattered to her was that she was getting one now.

“Why does your hair look like that?” Her Mother asked back, ignoring her question for fear it would lead to a persecution for her previous abandonment.

“Cause I’ve got nits, I told you that on Tuesday.” Sienna replied without a care in the world, and began scratching with both hands as if to prove a point.

“Shit…forgot all about it… Sorry.” Carnegie was trying to finish the last pancake so she could take over the taming of the jungle, that she now realized, held an entirely new civilization all on its own. She wondered if nits had a contingency plan when they saw the enemy coming in for the kill in the form a comb. Somewhere in her mind, Carnegie was convinced head lice were intelligent beings and were selective of whose brain they chose to suck on. Sadly, Sienna seemed to be a popular choice.

The poor kid flinched as the comb pulled at the knots, so she tried to make her mother feel better, in the hope she would stop ripping her hair out from the roots.

“It’s OK mum, all the kids in school have them. Sometimes we trade.”

Carnegie stopped what she was attempting to do, and grabbed a softer brush. Carefully she put her daughters’ hair up into a satisfactory messy bun and promised herself she would deal with it that afternoon. She then turned to look for Cooper who was standing at the kitchen counter, scoffing the pancakes one after the other like he had never eaten before.

“You ate my pancake!” Sienna screamed, as she turned to look at her mother for back up. Carnegie just shrugged her shoulders.

“Did not, you ate yours already.” Said Connor with that neon sign starting to turn on as he grabbed the last one and took off to his room.

“MUM!” Sienna cried out as if in pain. She was
not
happy now, but there was nothing she could do.

Once again Carnegie had gone into a frozen state, seeing for the first time in a long time, how out of control things had become around her. She grabbed the cornflakes and poured a bowl for Sienna who muttered something about fairness under her breath as she ate. Olivia and Sobian just looked at each other with relief when they saw their mother returning back to her normal state of distance.