Henry’s Daughter (19 page)

‘I don't care whether we're allowed to go to Tasmania or not, so stop making Nelly run backwards and forwards getting me over here. I am not going back to that
effing
place, and you can tell them that too,' Alan yells and he hangs up the phone.

So it gets to the next Tuesday. Everyone is in bed except
Mavis, who hasn't slept in her bedroom since the night she fell, like she's too scared to leave that couch. Somehow she gets herself out to the toilet, but not often, though she's usually got the brains to go out there before the kids go to bed. They watch her, wait for her to heave herself back.

It's got to be after twelve when Lori is dragged from her sleep by the blinding light of a torch
directed into her eyes.

‘Is she down?' She swings her feet to the floor, still half asleep, doesn't know where the torch came from, but as her eyes evade the light, she thinks she sees Alan behind it.

‘She's in the brick bathroom.' Then the torch is off and the lounge-room light switched on and Alan doesn't sound like Alan and he isn't even dressed for bed and he's wearing Eddy's snakeskin headband.
‘I've got a plan, Lori,' he says. And maybe she's dreaming this, maybe she's sleepwalking, because that's not Alan standing there.

‘Are you both as bloody mad as rabbits?' she says. ‘What the hell are you doing back here?'

‘I'm not here. I'm on that school camp in Tasmania,' he says, leading the way to the brick room where Mavis is sitting on the loo and sort of slumped against the corner wall,
which is the only thing that's stopping her from falling.

‘Mick! Mick! She's dead!'

‘Stop your yelling. She's not dead.'

Mick comes hopping out, Alan behind him. They stare at Eddy, like, what the hell is going on here? Eddy just leans against the doorframe waiting until they wake up enough for him to explain what he's doing back here.

‘Alan told me on the phone that she's dying. Right? You
all know that, but you keep stuffing food into her. Right? Now stop and think of what you're doing to her – and to me. You're actually murdering my natural mother, and when she's dead they'll pack all of you off to homes or hostels. Am I right?' They don't argue, just stare at him and scratch heads, yawn and scratch ribs. ‘What I'm proposing to do is to put her on a diet. She gets to live, you
mob get to stay free and I get to come for a visit from time to time.'

‘You moron. As if we haven't tried that. As if Henry didn't try that.'

‘Alice and Eva will be up here tomorrow to get both of us now,' Alan says.

‘No they won't. I'm on that camp for ten days.'

‘How come she changed her mind?'

‘I told you that having Mave kidnap us would work, didn't I? Anyway, that's where I am tonight,
so we've got ten days before they start chasing me and ten days to try something different.' Lori is staring at him, shaking her head. ‘She can't walk as far as the bedroom, Alan told me. She can hardly walk out to the toilet. Right? So what if we lock her in here and she learns to eat what we give – '

‘You're even crazier than you look, you moron. The camp people will have told Eva that you're
missing. She'll already have a search party out looking for you.'

‘No she won't. It's all under control. The school has still got her note saying that we're not allowed to go. I went into fretting for Alan mode again and Alice actually suggested I go to Tasmania. They wrote another letter and gave me a cheque to pay for it – and two hundred dollars for emergencies, so stop worrying about me and
them, and listen for a minute. I was looking at that brick room when I was up here before. It's rock solid, it's got a toilet and a washbasin – '

‘You can't lock people up.' Lori is at the door, staring at Mavis, who definitely isn't dead because her head has fallen back and she's started snoring. ‘She wouldn't just go to sleep sitting there like that. There's something wrong with her.'

‘No
there's not, or nothing that is beyond my control.'

‘Stop talking like a smartarsed snob. What did you do to her?'

‘I've been here since nine . . . I came on the bus . . . I mashed a packet of Mum's Xanax tablets on the way up . . . , then put them in the custard powder . . . as soon as you lot went to bed.' Eddy is looking around, stepping from foot to foot. ‘I stirred it well.' He's trying
to look confident but he's sounding a lot more confident than he's looking.

And how the hell did he think of doing that? Lori thought of doing that same thing with Valium ages ago. What the hell made him think of doing that?

‘What's Xanax?' Jamesy has joined them.

‘Tranquillisers. They're similar to Mavis's Valium . . . or so it says on the Internet. She looks tranquil.'

‘How much custard
powder was left?' Lori yells, loud enough to wake the house. Mavis doesn't move, doesn't interrupt her snore.

‘Plenty. She only uses one tablespoon. I watched how she made it when I was here the last time.'

‘One heaped tablespoon,' Jamesy says.

‘How many tablets?' Alan asks. He's picked up the custard powder packet and he's peering into it.

‘A new packet. Fifty.'

Then Jamesy has got the packet.
‘There's a ton of custard powder left. She probably only got five tablets worth and the last Valium packet says two tablets three times a day and two at night if she needs them.' He's eyeing the empty couch and liking what he's seeing.

‘And who says she only made one lot of custard?' Lori yells.

Mick is back. He's put his brace on. Neil wanders out, pulls a face at Eddy – only because he's
pleased to see him.

‘It's just another game to you. You go back in ten days and we have to live with her when you're gone,' Lori says.

‘I might decide to stay for a while. They can't make me go back.'

Lori is staring at him. Mick is checking the level of two milk bottles in the fridge and he's concerned. ‘She's got to have made two lots of custard, Lori. He's overdosed her.'

‘I didn't make
the custard, Mick. I didn't make her eat it – '

‘Yeah, well, someone better go over and get Nelly to ring the doctor, that's all I'm saying. There's too much milk missing for just one lot of custard.'

Lori is leaning against the open door, staring at Mavis, or at her exposed thigh, which is bigger around than most men's stomachs. She's not dead, but she just as easily could have been dead. Lori
wouldn't have heard her if she'd fallen in the loo. She probably would have died, due to she can't breathe properly when she's lying flat out.

And how come Eddy thought of the custard powder idea? How come? How did such a crazy idea get planted in two separate brains? It was her original crazy idea – that or mixing the crushed pills in a tin of condensed milk.

‘You can't even think about doing
it, Lori,' Mick says.

‘Just let me think. Just everyone shut up and let me think for a minute.'

They all shut up for a minute, then a minute more as they stand and lean, watching the sleeper. She looks unusually peaceful.

‘She's killing herself. What's the difference between her killing herself with food and Henry hanging himself?' Jamesy says.

Lori looks at him. It's true. There is no real
difference. If the kids had seen Henry cutting the clothesline wire, they would have stopped him. She picks up the old quilt and walks into the brick room, places it over Mavis, tucks it between her shoulders and the bricks. Mavis doesn't move and Lori returns to the door. It's a strong old door, made of thick, long boards with other boards going across it like a double Z, and it's got huge old-fashioned
hinges. She has seen them tested, has been behind that door when those hinges were tested.

‘We put her couch in there, give her the television – ' Eddy starts, but Lori pushes by him, walks into the kitchen. The boys follow her, Eddy behind them, his snakeskin now being drawn backwards and forwards between his fingers.

‘Okay. I know we're still thinking about it, but think for a minute on this.
The doctor gives her Valium for her nerves and antidepressants for her brain and that other stuff for something. She won't take her medicine so we lock her in the brick room and give her the pills in her food. The doctor told Alice to do that with Eva's pills when she was going out of her brain that first time Mavis got Alan. It cured her enough in one week to get her on a plane to England, so
the ten days I'm on the camp should be enough to see if we can cu . . . improve Mave.'

‘And if it doesn't, you go home and we're worse off than we were,' Lori says.

‘As I see it, if she's no better, then you're no worse off, and if she is better, then I might stay for a while – but I'm not staying if she's sitting in this kitchen, stuffing her face, smelling like a sweat factory and ruining
my lungs with smoke.'

‘It's just another joke to him, Lori. She's something to laugh about – '

‘Dying of lung cancer is no joke. Think of the little kids,' Jamesy says.

‘Shut up, you. You're as mad as he is,' Lori says, and suddenly realises what she has said, realises it's true. Jamesy is a bit like Eddy. Not in looks, but in other ways.

He's talking again, or still. He's a big talker. ‘We
move a bed in for her. Put her couch in there, and the television. We feed her three normal meals a day. What's wrong with that? All she does is smoke, eat, watch television, and go to the toilet. If she's got it all in one room she won't have to walk up and down that step and end up falling over. And if we put enough furniture in there, there won't be room enough for her to fall over.'

‘How
do we fit her bed and couch in?' Lori is still thinking of the custard powder, and thinking the only difference between her and Eddy is, he had the nerve to do what he was thinking; she was too chicken to try it.

So now it is done and it's scary – like some accident, where people are just driving along a road looking at the view, then suddenly, without any warning, they're all dead. She's standing
in the kitchen and her stomach is jumping and she's thinking of how things went from Henry's good to something so bad that it couldn't get worse. For weeks she planned to mix the Valium in condensed milk and pour six packets of pills down Mavis's throat while she was asleep – murder her. That's what she was planning to do back then. All Eddy is planning to do is to get her out of the kitchen,
make her take her pills, put her to sleep at night instead of letting her eat. And maybe save her life.

Lori only stopped planning murder when she got control of the bankcard and things got a bit better. She began to think life was almost okay when there was money for food and shoes and stuff. But it isn't okay. It's surviving, not living, it's keeping things going from one pension day to the
next and waiting for Mavis to commit suicide with food. It's waiting until the house falls down.

And it's going to fall, this week, this month or this year.

Then they'll all be split up and they won't be a family any more. Having families split up isn't okay. Having Alan – and even Eddy – back in the family is. And that's the truth, though she wouldn't ever tell Eddy.

Maybe he's right. The
doctor wants Mavis to take those tablets. Maybe they should give them to her the best way they can. Would it really matter if they had to lock her up to do it? Who's to know, anyway? No one sees her, except the kids – and Nelly.

They'd have to tell Nelly. She'd be okay with it. She's not like a grown-up.

Jamesy has decided to go with it. He's trying to drag the couch out of the wall. Mick is
measuring how many heaped tablespoons of custard powder are left in the packet and he can only make six and the last one isn't really a heaped tablespoon, either.

‘She's probably made two or three lots, Lori.'

‘If she'd taken five in the first lot of custard, then she wouldn't have been able to make the second lot, Mick, so she's probably made a big serve, that's all, and even if she made two
lots, it would take a heap more than ten Valium to do much harm. There's a lot of her.'

They walk out again, stand beside the green door and stare at Mavis. She doesn't look blue like she did that night she fell. Lori looks at the door, at the bolt on the door, knowing that for some reason she is the one who has to say yes – or no.

She has to say no. Of course she does. Now. She has to say it
now. She can't just stand here looking at that door all night.

If she says no, Eddy will go back to St Kilda in the morning.

She turns to him. She's missed the laughing since he left. Ten days of laughter, ten days of his mad cleaning lady routines. Ten days without Mavis in the kitchen. They could look on it as a sort of holiday. None of the kids has ever had a holiday.

She shrugs, closes
the green door and her hand reaches for the slide bolt Martin fixed high. It probably won't slide. It hasn't been slid for over a year. It's probably gone rusty and jammed.

But it slides eagerly into its keeper. So easy.

Like it was meant to be.

In the kitchen Jamesy has been waiting for that signal. He drags the old couch free. Eddy is up on a chair pulling down dusty packets of pills. There are eight packets of Valium, some ancient, the packets faded, but the pills are still sealed up tight inside the bubble packs. There are two packets of Aropax, which are antidepressants, two lots of fluid pills, a container of Slow
K, just potassium, and three other types of pills, which Lori knows nothing about and Eddy hasn't got his Internet to find out what they're for. Behind those pills and beneath them, like a dusty mess of scrap paper, are the prescriptions, some curled, some faded, some nibbled by silverfish and probably out of date, but some brand new. There is one for Aropax. It's got a heap of repeats and there's
a whole mess of Valium scripts – not that they'll need any more of those.

‘At eight Valium a day and one Aropax, we've got enough pills here to keep her going for about sixty days,' Eddy says.

‘So we give her a two-month sentence for child abuse,' Jamesy says.

‘She's on remand for ten days,' Judge Eddy says.

Alan is standing back shaking his head. Mick is shaking his head too but he's picked
up a packet of Valium and the instructions say one tablet three times a day. Neil is trying to help Jamesy push the couch across the vinyl and the metal legs aren't doing the vinyl any good.

‘That packet is out of date, Mick,' Lori says. ‘The new packets all say two tablets three times a day and two at night, when necessary.'

Eddy reclaims the packet, dusts it with an old towel. Out of date
or not, he's going to use it. Alan moves to stand in front of the couch – to stop its progress. ‘Leave it where it is. This is stupid. We're not doing it.'

‘We are.' Lori lifts one end, just to save the vinyl, then she and Jamesy are lifting it, dragging, pushing the old couch through the door, where it jams. Eddy climbs over, helps tug it free. And the green door is open and after one hell of
a struggle Mavis's couch goes through.

The logical place to set it is against the north wall, the weatherboard wall, but that couch's metal frame starts marking out a new hole through to Mick's room before they even get the thing positioned. Have to look for a brick wall. The loo is in the southeast corner, and they can't sit the couch beside the loo. The hand basin and window are halfway along
the south wall; there would be enough room in the southwest corner – except Mavis would be sitting too close to the door, which is dead centre in the west wall.

They've got no choice; it has to be that long north wall, the brick section which Martin joined up to the weatherboards then took out to the edge of the east verandah. It's still close to the loo, but it's a long way from the door.

The room is full of junk. Greg's old mattress is dragged out and tossed onto the backyard junk heap. They haul out the collapsed chest of drawers, which Eddy names kindling. It goes on the wood heap. He loves cutting kindling. Mick finds the long extension cord Henry always kept with his electric drill. They plug it into the kitchen power point, out one door and beneath the other before carrying in
the television, which won't work without its cable. They pull it out of its socket then Jamesy goes up through the manhole with Eddy's torch, drags the cable up and across, finds a gap in the brick-room ceiling, and pokes the cable through. It's not neat, but the television picture is clear. Mavis's queen-sized bed is too big to drag through the house so Lori says she'll do a swap. Her bed has got
a timber bookshelf bedhead which might do less damage to that weatherboard wall, which it will have to go against. They've got no choice; Lori wants to use that bed as a barricade between the couch and the door.

Then they are done with the furnishings, it's way past two o'clock and Mavis hasn't moved. Maybe she'll never move again.

‘She probably needs her stomach pumped,' Mick says.

‘She needs
it bypassed,' Jamesy says, while Eddy and Lori make up the bed with clean sheets, and Mavis's five big pillows so she can sleep propped up. She's got the old quilt, but they toss in an extra blanket, a clean towel, a face washer, a comb.

Lori picks up the half packet of cigarettes from the floor, the lighter beside them. There's a lot of ash and butts around the loo. She sweeps up, places the
lighter in the box and the box on the couch.

‘No can do,' Eddy says. ‘She'll set fire to her mattress like the crims do in jail.'

‘She'll die of withdrawal,' Mick says, but Eddy has got those smokes. He removes the lighter then tosses the cigarettes into the stove. Sacrilege. Those things cost money.

They eat toast, drink cocoa, speak in whispers. It's like, what have they done? You can't go
around doing things like that – even if it is for the person's own good. It's illegal. They know that. They've been watching the news on television since they were in the pram.

But they've done it.

‘I'm going to bed. I'll take my globe out of my light so we can leave the one on in the brick room. She's not going to know where she is when she wakes up,' Mick says.

‘
If
she wakes up,' Alan says.

 

Lori is awake before eight, and for a moment what happened last night didn't actually happen. She almost says, do you know what I dreamed we did last night? Except Eddy is in the kitchen and he's cleaning it up and it looks big and bare. It sounds bare too, like voices sound loud in it. No couch. No television. No Mavis. She's locked in the brick room, all right, flaked on a bed not wide enough
for her. But she's snoring steady and her face isn't blue.

Most of the kids are standing around, feeling jumpy, feeling scared to talk above a whisper. Everything looks different, even the hole in the plaster wall, which they all knew was behind the couch; it's much worse than they thought it was because while Mick is fitting on his brace, Neil pokes a knife through the weakened plaster on the
other side of the hole so he can watch how Mick fits that contraption.

An empty cornflakes packet and a big cross of Mick's masking tape almost plugs that couch hole, then they sit, get on with eating the cornflakes. It's so quiet you can hear them chewing. It's so quiet you can hear the old battery clock ticking on the mantelpiece. They didn't know it ticked.

‘I'm going to school. I'll walk,'
Mick whispers.

‘If you're not staying, I'm not staying here. I'll dink you,' Alan whispers back.

‘You can't just turn up at the high school. You have to get enrolled or something.'

‘I'll enrol myself, Mick.'

‘Do it next week,' Lori says. ‘You and Eddy stay here and watch her today. And don't let the little ones go anywhere near Nelly – not until I tell her.' And by tonight there mightn't be
anything to tell anyway. Mick has got the bread out and the plastic bags, he starts cutting lunches so they form an assembly line, spread, fill, cut and shove sandwiches silently into plastic bags. Alan spreads extra, makes three-layer Vegemite sandwiches.

‘You can't just turn up at school, Alan,' Mick whispers.

‘Well, I'm not going to be here when she wakes up, either. What if she doesn't wake
up?'

Mick rubs his neck, looks out at the brick room as a shudder works its way down his spine. ‘We'll see what happens today. Just see. We've got to go, Lori. We're late.'

Alan takes off for the river with his sandwiches, plus Matty and Timmy and the old pram; Neil and Jamesy head off in the other direction.

That leaves Eddy. He's cool.

He sweeps the kitchen, washes down the benches then
makes a small medicinal custard. It's a bit lumpy but it tastes okay. He makes pancakes too, learned how the last time he was up here, and he makes great pancakes. The clock ticks its way past eleven before he hears movement, hears the loo flush. Only then does he spread his pancakes with apricot jam, an Aropax crushed and mixed with it; he rolls each one, sets them in a row on a big plate, scrapes
the custard into a bowl, makes a mug of tea, and while Mavis is trying to get out the door, he carries her breakfast tray to the window. ‘Good morning,' he says. ‘Can you open your window, please, Mave. I've got your breakfast.'

She stares at him, at the plate, says nothing.

‘Your pancakes are getting cold.' His words don't appear to be making it through the glass, so he waits until she gives
up on the door, squeezes between the foot of her bed and the washbasin and starts belting and yelling at the window instead of opening it. Fast then, Eddy is around the side, slipping the bolt. Plenty of time to run in with the tray and place it on her bed. She's not a fast mover and it's a tight squeeze getting back to that door, which he closes, bolts. Then
he
bolts, spends the day in town,
eats McDonald's for lunch, spends an hour in the supermarket buying low-fat ice-cream, two tins of sugar-free pineapple, a bottle of diet chocolate topping, a new broom and a bundle of six cheap tea towels because the ones in that house are germ factories.

Alan's day is productive too. He's been sitting with a fisherman and taking every European carp he pulls in, tossing them flapping into the
pram. Matty won't share it with gasping fish, so Alan ends up filling the pram with firewood and sitting Matty on top. The twins are waiting at the gate with their loot when the others arrive home; they don't want to brave the house alone, due to Mavis is awake and she's letting the whole neighbourhood know she's awake.

Eddy and Lori offer her a bowl of ice-cream, pineapple and chocolate topping.
She doesn't open the window but her coffee mug cracks the glass. They stand back, wait for her to settle down. She doesn't. The mug smashes through. They run, open the door while she's bellowing through broken glass and they place their offering on her bed.

They get the stove going, get Alan's fish cleaned up and wrapped in supermarket bags and they are trying to peer through that broken window
when the empty ice-cream bowl is tossed through, both glass and china flying free. She's more active than she's been in months, panting for her smokes, leaning against the door, hitting at it.

‘We've got to get plastic containers and some decent plastic mugs,' Lori says, peering though the break while the air inside turns a brighter shade of blue and Mavis's colour is starting to match it.

‘We can't do this, Lori,' Mick says. ‘She's giving herself a heart attack.'

‘We're not giving up before we start, Mick. Who said it was going to be easy?' Lori comments, and she returns to the kitchen, starts making a small medicated custard, making it smooth, pouring it lovingly over two beaten eggs. She adds vanilla while Mavis gasps out just how she's going to murder the lot of them.

They
can't get the custard in. She's onto their trick of getting her to the window before they open that door, so she's not leaving the door, and every minute or so she's heaving her shoulder against it. She hasn't got a lot of power but she's got a lot of weight and the three screws holding the slide bolt are rocking in their holes. It's Jamesy who ransacks Mick's screw collection and comes back with
six long ones, the screwdriver and Henry's electric drill.

‘We can't do this!' Mick is growing louder with his protest; maybe he has to be louder; there's a lot of noise to compete with. He takes the drill, though, when he sees Jamesy isn't going to give up until he wrecks it, and he takes the fatter, longer screws, puts them in the slide bolt and in its keeper, squeezing a bit of wood glue into
the screw holes, using all of the screw holes instead of the half Martin used. He has plenty of worried eyes assisting him. Others glance occasionally through the broken window while Eddy wriggles a bit of the glass free.

‘Pour the custard into a container with a lid, and we'll drop it through to the basin,' he says. So that's what they do while Mavis and Mick are working on opposite sides of
the door.

They wait. It takes forever, but she finds the custard, eats it. Half an hour later the custard works and Mavis is sitting panting on her couch, watching the television.

‘We have the technology,' Eddy says.

‘We can rebuild her,' Jamesy grins. They are sweating, and the day isn't even that hot.

‘Shut up, you morons. We're going to have to medicate her three or four times a day, like
it says on the packets.'

Nine o'clock and the little ones, worn out with fishing and no television, have been in bed for hours; the big ones are still wandering, wondering, peering in that window as they walk by, but not letting her see them. She's quieter when she doesn't see them.

It's Alan who finds a length of chipboard, probably left over from the kitchen floor when it got extended. Like
Mick, he's been against this plan from the beginning, but it looks as if he might be coming around. ‘If we could get the broken glass out, we could reach through and screw this onto the windowsill to put her meals on.'

It's a pure brilliant idea; they can't keep putting food on her bed or dropping it into the washbasin, but they have to wait until Mavis is sleeping to do it. She's still watching
television.

They give her more medicated custard at eleven and a packet of sugar-free mints.

‘What time did she wake up this morning?' Mick says.

‘Eleven.'

Mick nods, goes to bed. They're all worn out with lack of sleep, and stress and guilt. They sleep like logs, and if Mavis yells for her smokes, they don't hear her.

Eddy's Xanax custard is served four times a day and apricot jam on toast
or pancakes disguises the taste of the Aropax Mavis has with her breakfast, which doesn't seem to be altering her brain waves any, not by Friday, the day Martin comes, and thank God they hear his ute. The kids run out to the fence, talk to him out there. He's got a pile of fruit and vegetables from Karen's farm and he wants to carry the boxes in.