House of Sticks (18 page)

She bent closer and saw the faint broom-marks on the paving stones, the fine dark earth in thread-like lines, scuffed and messed slightly in parts.

Pete cast around with the torch. ‘And here you go.' He reached down and picked something up, held out his hand. A sliver of ceramic, pinky-pale on its inner curve, glossy green-blue on the outer.

She took it and held it, closed her fingers over it.

‘You know what I reckon?' Pete sat down on the steps. The torch played over his feet, his Explorer socks, old and pilled.

Bonnie stayed standing. ‘What?'

‘I reckon it was him.'

‘Who?' Bonnie found herself whispering. ‘Doug?'

‘Yeah. I reckon he broke it by accident, and took it and dumped it to cover up.'

She glanced behind her at the clothesline. ‘Took the towel off the line, you think?'

‘Yep. Swept it all up, used the towel to carry it, stuck it in the back of his van and chucked it in the laneway.' He switched off the torch, and his feet disappeared. ‘You know why I think that?'

‘Why?'

‘Because he sits up here to smoke. What he does — well, what he used to do — is kind of lie back, leaning on the railing, and rest his foot on the edge of the pot plant. And he'd kind of rock it, tip it up.'

She looked up at the back porch, the faint glow of the concrete in the light from the half-open door. In her head she saw Doug, his scrawny body reclined, one leg bent, decrepit boot on the rim of the pot. The scrape of ceramic on concrete. Cigarette smoke in the cold air.

‘I guess he was doing that, one time — I must've been inside the workshop with the door shut, or maybe out somewhere. And he must've tipped it too far and it fell down the stairs.'

Bonnie saw the cigarette between Doug's battered fingers, him leaning back on his elbow, head sunk between his shoulders. She saw the boot tipping the pot and then easing off, letting it fall back. Tipping it again but further this time. The cigarette lifting to his thin lips. One last tip, the pot teetering, swinging for a moment, balanced, poised, ready to fall.

‘But …' She was still whispering. ‘But why wouldn't he say something? I mean, if it was an accident?'

Pete's face was in darkness, but she saw his shoulders rise and fall in a shrug. ‘Like I said. He's proud. Won't admit to a mistake.'

‘But, Pete, why would you put up with someone like that?' She sank down beside him, put her elbows on her knees and her head in her hands. ‘Why do you? I just don't get it.'

There was a pause, and then he said in a tired voice. ‘I don't know. I guess I just want to give him a chance. He's a smart bloke — he's really smart, you know, and …' She could hear him rubbing his eyes. ‘Shit, he drives me crazy too. Every time I spend any amount of time with him I find myself thinking, God, Pete, what have you done? But, I don't know … And then there was that whole thing at the party that time, when we were young.' He sighed. ‘I guess I feel like I owe him.'

‘But,' she said, and put her hand on his arm. ‘Even if that hadn't happened that night, all that time ago — I mean, if you hadn't given him the beer, if he hadn't got beaten up — do you think it would've really made a difference? To his life, the way it's turned out?'

He put his hand over hers. ‘Of course not. No. But look at me. Look how things turned out for me. I got lucky.' He rubbed Bonnie's hand. ‘I guess I just feel like it would be, well, bad karma or something, to shut him out of my … good fortune.'

All the love she'd ever felt came swooping down on her. She lifted his hand and kissed it, the backs of his rough fingers.

For a moment there was quiet.

‘Okay. So.' She let go of his hand, stood, and started up the steps. ‘We'll just stick with our original plan?'

‘What plan?'

She turned. ‘You know. Wait until the Grant job's done and then just not offer Doug any more work.'

Pete glanced up at her. In the light from the kitchen the corners of his eyes were soft with relief. He smiled. ‘Sounds good.'

Mel sent a text message at ten o'clock.
U still awake? Shld I call?

Bonnie, in her pyjamas, stood at the kitchen bench with the phone in her hand.
Thanks anyway but just going to bed
, she keyed in.
Sorry again about today
. She clicked
Send
. Put the phone down.

Outside the back door something stirred, a shiver of wind through the dark yard, or a possum or a cat. Bonnie pulled her robe tighter. She felt exposed with the light on, the impenetrable black of the back-door glass showing only her stricken reflection. She had a vision of herself from the outside, standing in the middle of the lit room, eyes halted at the pane, seeing no further, like a creature in one of those zoo enclosures with the one-way glass walls. She went over and turned off the light. Now the sky appeared outside, high and cold, with weak stars and a sickle moon. Over on the bench the phone buzzed. She picked it up. Mel again.
Ok but call if u want tmrw. Can make time 2 talk. Quite serious if u do think was D
.

She closed the phone. Stood for a moment looking down at it. Opened it again and deleted Mel's message.

As she left the room she couldn't help rushing the last few steps in a tiptoed half-run, the way she did as a very small child when going back to bed after using the toilet in the night, when the hallway with the light left on had always seemed so still and empty in the strange quiet of the house. The somehow frightening idea of her parents asleep in their room, off-guard, inactive, having laid themselves down, she always imagined, the way oversized animals did — with a slow, effortful lowering of bodies, a final folding and settling of heavy limbs.

Pete was at the computer desk in the living room.

She went over, bent to put her arms around his shoulders. ‘How's it going?'

‘Okay. Got orders for two new tables. And one sideboard.' He yawned. ‘Don't know how I'm going to get all this done, plus the Grant job.'

‘Pete?'

‘Yeah?'

‘Would you ever ask Doug? About the pot-plant thing?'

He didn't answer. Bonnie waited.

He closed the computer and rubbed his eyes. ‘No,' he said at last, without turning around.

There was more silence. She was uncomfortable bending over but she didn't want to move, to take her arms away from him. She didn't want to break the mood, in case he was going to say more.

‘Look, Bon,' he said after a while. ‘I don't like the idea of him lying to us either. And sneaking around, you know, covering up like that. But …'

Through her palms she could hear the vibration in his chest as he spoke.

He shook his head. When he spoke again his voice was different, louder. ‘Look. Doug. He's just — he's so fragile. You really have no idea how fragile he is, and it's just, it's not worth — I know you think we need to do all this … boundary stuff, and, you know, communicate clearly and all that. But, honestly, I really think our best plan is to, like we said, just wait until this work's over and, well, hope he moves on.' He put his hands over hers.

Bonnie saw that foot again, the pot teetering. She bit her lip. ‘Yeah.' She took Pete's hands. ‘Okay.'

DOUG CAME AND WENT. SOME MORNINGS HE'D BE THERE, EDGING HIMSELF IN THROUGH THE BACK DOOR, FLAPPING AND STAMPING, CURSING THE COLD.
Seating himself at the table, grinning round, drinking tea, eating porridge, talking relentlessly.

Bonnie couldn't ignore him. Everything he said she heard with excruciating clarity, and she was racked with the effort it took not to respond.

‘Went to see me mate Vinnie yesterday,' Doug might say, tipping his chair onto its back legs. ‘He's bought a new car. Had a big win. Splashed out.' Lowering the chair, placing his hands flat on the table, sticking his face forward and letting each word drop with theatrical importance. ‘B … M … W … nineteen … eighty … five … Seven … Series.' Leaning back again, eyes half closed, a wise nod. ‘The classic — you know, the sports sedan — the cute one with the squared-off shape and the sunroof?' Forward again, hands on table, voice lowered. ‘He wanted to get a Merc. Late seventies' — back again, flapping a hand — ‘but I talked him round. If you're going to spend that sort of dosh you might as well put in ten grand extra and go for real quality, you know …'

And Bonnie would get up and move around the kitchen because she couldn't stand to be that close to him, to be stuck there as he jabbered and gesticulated and the twins hung on every word and Pete ate his breakfast as if behind some invisible barrier, untouchable, removed.
Who the fuck are you to tell someone which expensive car to buy?
she might shout in her head. Or just,
Shut up, shut up, shut up!

And Pete would go out to the workshop, and Doug would hang around, performing for the twins who always provided such an infuriatingly willing audience, and she would peck around them like some sort of ineffectual chicken, trying to get the kids away, move them on to something else. Making comments such as, ‘Come on, guys. Let's leave Doug alone now — he's got work to do with Dad.' And with what seemed at times to be simple blithe intractability, or at others a sort of indulgent tolerance — as if she really was a bird and if he wanted to he could just raise an arm and shoo her away — Doug would go on with his banter, his show.

Or he might not come, and they'd sit at breakfast with the spectre of his figure at the door. And at these times it was Bonnie who foisted on the others conversations they didn't appear to have much interest in. ‘Looking forward to kinder today, Lou?' she might say, and receive absolute silence in response. Or, ‘Be cold out there this morning' to Pete, who'd maybe offer a ‘Hmm'. And she would feel her face get tense, hating the insistent blather of her own voice yet unable to stop it. In the pauses she'd sip her tea, and back her eyes would slide to the door, the waiting pane of glass.

A CD arrived in the mail, rough mixes of the Mickey recordings. Bonnie stood in the living room with an armload of folded towels. From the sagging old speakers the sounds opened themselves out, filling the room. She shut her eyes. The bass and drums and strum of acoustic guitar slid together and merged, a layered, solid slab, heaving and rolling. In dropped Mickey's voice, landing like a cat, soft-footed and sure, slipping from note to velvety note. And then, trembling in the distance, vast and silvery, a hovering mist of sound, Bonnie's guitar.

Shivers ran up her legs. She kept her eyes closed and dropped her face into the pile of towels, mouth split in an unstoppable grin.

That night Doug stayed for dinner. Pete opened a bottle of red. Bonnie had a glass and felt her cheeks grow warm, her limbs relax.

‘Remember at McKean Street?' said Doug. ‘That backyard with the brick path and to get to the toilet you had to balance on the row of bricks and on one side was all the rotten plums that fell off that bloody tree — about a hundred of them every day — and on the other was all the dog shit?'

Pete smiled. ‘Yeah. That was really disgusting.'

Bonnie smiled as well. Somehow, on this night, for what seemed like the first time in ages, possibly ever, she was able to block Doug, diminish his blaring presence. She focused on Pete, watched his face, felt the same old twist she always did when she thought about his past, or saw old photos — the person he was before she knew him. That sort of hungry wish to somehow get inside the history, share it, so she could have all of him, every corner of him and his life. And the other side of it — the sadness, the hollow pang of knowing that such access was impossible, that no matter how open he was, how much he told her, how many stories, there was a whole slab of his life, the things that made him who he was, that she had missed out on. That didn't belong to her and never would.

Doug tipped up the bottle, emptied the last few drops into Pete's glass. ‘We had some parties there.'

Pete made a noncommittal sound. He drained his glass. ‘There's more wine somewhere.' He stood up.

Bonnie lifted her own glass, but it was finished. She put it down and glanced at the clock. ‘Come on, kids. Bath time.'

Pete put his hands on her shoulders. ‘Do you want me to do it?'

‘No, no — it's fine, really. You guys keep talking.' She got up.

‘You sure?'

She looked at him. His skin under the kitchen light appeared smooth, cheeks flushed slightly from the wine. As if Doug wasn't even there the vision came easily to her: Pete, his younger, straighter self, balancing step after step along a line of bricks in a bare, untended share-house yard. She could see the back of his neck, his lean shoulders. His slim hips. She smiled, reached up and kissed him. ‘Yeah,' she said. ‘I'm sure.'

She ran the bath and got the twins in it. Left them to play while she took Jess to change her nappy and clothes. She switched on the oil heater and felt its waves of warmth at the backs of her legs. The room filled with its comfortable smell and quiet ticking sounds. Jess on the change table gripped a toy with fat fingers, passing it from hand to hand with open-mouthed concentration.

‘Where's the mumma duck?' Louie was saying in the bathroom. ‘Oh, here she is. “Hello, baby duck. Would you like to come to my house for a visit?”'

Bonnie paused at the doorway. ‘You guys happy here while I just go and feed Jess?'

‘“Hello, mumma duck. I'm your baby,”' said Edie, head bent over the floating toys.

‘Okay then. I'll be back in ten minutes. Dad's in the kitchen if you need anything.' Carrying Jess she went down the hallway to the bedroom, put on the bedside lamp, bolstered up the pillows, settled herself and latched the baby on. She closed her eyes.

‘Now it's your go with the baby duck,' came Edie's voice.

‘… and they turned up with a slab of beer and two bottles of whiskey …' came Doug's.

Bonnie hummed the opening of one of Mickey's new songs. In her head she saw her fingers climb through her part, test out a variation, bend the strings on the last note.

She tucked the blankets firmly in around Jess, clicked up the side of the cot, checked the setting of the heater dial and went out. Pulled the door quietly shut.

‘… and Deano said “Never heard of him” …' said Doug in the kitchen.

Bonnie went into the bathroom. ‘How's it going in here?'

‘Go-ood,' came the chorus.

She stood watching the two heads, the two slender bodies, the incredible clarity of their skins. How could she regret it, any of it, no matter how ruined her own body, how fractured her life? She perched on the low stool at the end of the bath and leaned back against the cold tiles. The chatter of her children bounced around the small room. Across the darkened hallway a wedge of lit kitchen was visible. She could see Doug in profile, tipped back on his chair, one hand reaching to the glass on the table. His voice wound on, broken now and then with scrapes of laughter, or a palm-slap on one knee. Bonnie glanced back at the children. She should get them out and into bed. It was getting late. But she still felt loose and warm, and weary from feeding Jess. She sat a while longer and returned to the song in her head. Experimented with a picking pattern instead of strumming in the verse before the singing came in.

Something, some word in the endless drag of Doug's voice brought her back, tuned her in. She sat up and listened.

‘… that girl,' he was saying. ‘What was her name?'

A pause but no answer from Pete, invisible on the other side of the table.

‘Remember?' Doug went on. ‘She came with Sarah and Vicky, those girls. Oh, she was an absolute knockout. And you — you were like a little puppy dog following her around.' That titter, an undulation on the chair. ‘She had a tab of acid and a bottle of wine and there you were just following her around with your tongue hanging out. Oh god' — he hooted — ‘I can see it like it was yesterday.' Under the light he shifted, brought the front legs of the chair back down to the ground, raised the glass to his lips. ‘Little lovestruck Peter Holmes.' That hoot again, and then he swivelled his head, turned it to the hallway, towards her sitting there in her own pool of light. Across the darkness his eyes met hers, held them. ‘Ooh, yeah.' His lips split to show the broken teeth dark with wine. ‘You lost your cool over that one, Pete.'

No sound from Pete. Doug kept looking at her, the stained grin lingering. She stared back. Cold stirred in her stomach. Doug moved his head, dipped it in a slight nod like a formal acknowledgement. Bonnie got to her feet, lunged at the door. It swung almost shut, sticking soundlessly at the towel hung over the top. There was a moment's more silence, and then she heard Doug's voice start up again, resume its drone.

‘Okay, guys.' Bonnie reached for the plug. ‘Time to get out.'

‘Bon?' Pete was sitting on the edge of the bed.

‘What?' She rolled over, squinted in the dazzle of his bedside lamp. ‘I was asleep.'

‘Sorry.'

She pulled the covers up over her eyes. ‘What is it?'

‘It's all right,' he whispered. ‘I was just seeing if you were awake.'

‘Well, I wasn't.' She lay for a moment and then pushed back the cover and sat up. ‘But I am now so you might as well tell me.'

‘No, it's all right. It's … nothing.' Pete got in beside her. He lifted the full glass of water from the bedside table and slowly drank the whole thing, his swallows loud and regular. He smelled of pot.

‘Did you smoke a joint?'

‘Yeah. Just a bit. Douggie had some.' He slid down under the covers. ‘You don't mind, do you?'

‘Course not.' She stayed sitting up. Underneath the cold, awful feeling that had been there since that moment in the bathroom — all through drying the kids and getting them in their pyjamas, reading to them, taking them out to the kitchen to say goodnight, enduring the sight of them flinging their arms around Doug to receive his kisses — there was still the vision of the young Pete balancing on those bricks, the soft, sad love that came with it, that remained somehow untainted by Doug and his words, his look. She met Pete's reddened eyes.
Don't be a bitch
, she thought.
It's not his fault
. But still, as if it was beyond her control, she couldn't help saying something, one small barb. ‘Must be nice though, not to have to worry about waking up if one of the kids cries in the night. Or staying sober to feed the baby.'

Pete closed his eyes, drew in a breath and let it out slowly.

‘So.' She tried to lighten her voice. ‘Did you have fun? With Doug?'

‘Oh god, I can't win, can I?' He lay right down and turned away from her.

‘What do you mean?'

‘Well, you're always saying I should be his friend, you know — offer support by being his friend, rather than giving him work, treating him like a charity case, and then when I do the right thing you —'

‘Oh, sorry, Pete.' She put her hand on his shoulder. ‘I didn't mean to hassle you. You're right. It was the right thing to do — I really think it was. It's the way it should be — you should invite him for dinner, have a few drinks, have a chat, all that stuff. It's just …' His shoulder under her touch was unresponsive. She sighed. She felt too tired to go into it now, to try to explain. And it would feel silly, embarrassing, to say it aloud, to admit to feeling jealous of some girl at a party so many years ago. And how to tell him about Doug's look without seeming paranoid? She stared at the back of Pete's head, the curve of his ear. She couldn't see if his eyes were open or closed. And anyway, he was stoned. She lifted her hand away.

She fed Jess at six and came back to bed. Curled into Pete's warm body. Shut her eyes and slipped down under the covers, pulled up his t-shirt, kissed his chest, tasted his skin. Drew close, pressed into him, her head under his chin, her tongue against the few coarse hairs that grew in the hollow at the base of his throat. He lifted himself on one elbow, dragged off his t-shirt without opening his eyes. Sank back down and turned onto his back. The air was cold on Bonnie's shoulders as she took off her own clothes and got on top of him. She pulled the covers up around herself, but he loosened them, reached up and ran his hands over her. Her nipples stood out, her breasts hanging full and heavy. For a moment she crossed her arms shyly, but gently he pulled them away.