House of Sticks (20 page)

One day she was passing and out on the edge of the veranda pillows and a quilt had been hung to air in the sun. Something, some hunger had stirred in her at the sight of those plump white shapes, their dazzling cleanness, and the square of bedroom visible through the opened window behind — simple dark timber furniture, a picture in a frame. The loveliness of order, of cleanliness, the pride and industry of those invisible inhabitants — Bonnie tasted it as she walked by, this morsel so foreign and beautiful in her life of mess and dim pubs and beer and smoky band rooms, of a mattress on the floor, of clothes in a pile.

She always looked for it, that house, and even when she moved to a different suburb she thought about it sometimes. It wasn't that it was what she wanted then. She had smaller, more tangible aspirations — the skeletons of songs she laid down on her four-track recorder, hunched in her room with the door shut; the
guitarist wanted
ads she scanned in record shops, her face burning just at the thought of ringing the numbers; the sweet-faced boy with the Dinosaur Junior t-shirt in her twentieth-century literature tutorial — but that house, that beautiful house waited there somewhere in the back of her mind as something she might one day like to have. A tempered, peaceful, ordered life.

‘Mum?' It was Edie. ‘Where's —'

‘Ta-da!' went Louie, bursting up and out from behind the cushion, and Bonnie only just managed to save the stack of Pete's clothes before it was scattered all over the floor.

‘Oh god!' But the energy wasn't there to tell them off. ‘Look. Just please don't mess up any more of these piles, okay, you two?'

They were gone anyway, chasing and shrieking. She held the bundle of clothes to her chest and went with it to the bedroom. Dropped it onto the end of the bed on Pete's side. Glanced over at the table and saw the slip of paper alongside a handful of coins. Unfolded, curving up at the ends, showing crease marks in an elongated cross. She didn't have to go much closer to read it. Blockish writing, all in capitals. Doug's. Amazing how a person's handwriting could evoke them so completely. The familiar tingle of discomfort, of annoyance, set up in her fingers as she reached for the paper, turned it slightly on the table so it sat square.
FRI NITE TROTS. MOONEE VALLEY
.
RACE 4 HORSE 7 — BRAGGART
.

‘God,' she said. ‘It's not even the real races.' She gave the paper a flick with her finger, and it twirled on the spine of its crease. ‘It's the bloody trots.' She flicked it again, and it skittered, hit the coins and stopped.

‘So,' said Pete the next evening, once the kids were in bed. He stood behind her in the kitchen. ‘Um.' As if they both didn't know what he was going to say, as if it hadn't been hanging over them for two whole days. ‘That race is on soon.'

Bonnie stood at the bench, her hands on the folded newspaper. She dangled the pen over the crossword, over her single pathetic answer straggling down one side.

Pete stirred, cleared his throat. ‘So … have you thought about it?'

Leviathan
, read her word, the letters floating in their little boxes.

‘Bon.' She heard Pete pull out a chair and sit down. ‘I had a good look at it. At the form. I reckon it's a good chance. I know' — he brought his voice up as if she had spoken, challenged him — ‘I know there's no such thing as a dead cert. But sometimes, especially with the harness racing — well, I reckon these insiders sometimes know something we don't. And I reckon — that money, we weren't counting on having it. Maybe it's worth, you know, having a bit of a gamble. We could put two grand on, and still have two left. If we lose, well …' She could feel him watching her. ‘We could still go to Queensland for a week. Something like that.'

She stared down at the newspaper.

‘I don't know.' His voice was muffled — he was rubbing his eyes. ‘I just — sometimes I feel like all I do is work, and help you with the kids and, you know, fall into bed exhausted and then get up and do it all over again. I feel like my life's …'

Bonnie turned.
Look at him
, she told herself.
Go close. Look in his eyes. Touch him
. If she did, she thought she might catch it again, that ripple of the younger him. Whatever it was he wanted to go back to, to get near again, just for a little while. And that vision of the two of them together, his arms around her, him gazing into her face, her kind, generous face, and her sharing it with him, the victory, the thrill of the win. But she felt stiff and unwieldy, choked by it all — Doug's leer across the darkened hallway, the dip of his head, his clamouring presence in the house day after day. The way he sat at the table, the way he ate and drank, the way he slathered himself all over everything like he owned it. She closed her eyes and saw the smashed pot, the naked roots of the plant, the spray of dirt on the cobblestones, the ruined towel. Her fingers buzzed. She gripped one hand in the other. She opened her eyes again but she couldn't look at Pete.

‘Bon?'

Doug's clunking handwriting on that slip of paper.

Pete sighed. ‘Bon?'

She stared at the floor, at his boots, at a hardened bit of pasta missed by the broom. ‘I'm sorry,' she said. ‘I just don't think it's worth the risk.'

She knew he was listening to the race. She saw him fiddling with the stereo tuner in the living room, heard the bone-dry voices in their ceaseless tides listing names and weights, jockeys, trainers, odds. She went into the bathroom and shut the door. Flossed her teeth and brushed them, taking as long as she could. But when she'd finished she could still hear it, faintly, through the door, so she got in the shower. Washed her hair. Let the water and the foam fill her ears. Closed her eyes. Her heart was pounding, and she had the water too hot. When she got out she couldn't see for a moment, and had to hold on to the towel rail. By then the radio was off again.

She went straight to bed and turned off the lights.

She must have fallen asleep, but she woke up when Pete switched on his lamp. He sat facing away from her, feet on the floor, still dressed. She lay with her hands over her eyes.

‘It won,' he said.

‘I'm sorry,' she said, almost at the same time.

There was a silence. ‘I'm sorry,' she said again, pulling herself up on one elbow, looking at his slumped back.

‘Fuck it!' He straightened, picked up one of his boots and hurled it into the corner. It landed with a deadened sound on a pile of dirty clothes. ‘Fuck it!' He whacked his fist into the mattress.

‘Pete.' She reached out but didn't touch him. Her hand hovered. ‘I'm really sorry. But — I mean, it might not've won. It's always easy with these things, you know, afterwards, to say —'

‘Yeah, yeah, I know.' His back sagged again. He pulled off his jeans and lay down, facing the other direction. Bonnie's hand was bumped away.

‘Pete.' This time she did touch him. She put her hand on his arm. ‘I really am sorry. I feel like such a bitch.'

He was silent, lying still.

She felt his flesh under her fingers. She pressed harder. ‘I'm sorry,' she whispered.

He didn't move. ‘Yeah, okay,' he said.

After a few moments she took her hand away again, and Pete switched off the light and rolled onto his back.

They stayed like that, like corpses in a tomb, side by side, a decent space between them. The house settled into night. Bonnie thought she would never sleep. She lay rigid, listening to his wakeful breathing beside her in the darkness.

At six Jess cried, and Bonnie went and got her and fed her on the couch in front of the heater. The red glow burnished the glossy hip of her acoustic guitar resting on the armchair. She sat empty of thought, the warm weight of the baby against her. If she moved her head from side to side, just a tiny bit, hardly at all, the flaming stripe on the side of the guitar stretched and contracted like the neck of a wading bird. Jess reached up and pinched the skin of her throat, squeezed with strong fingers, and the nip of pain rang through Bonnie's unresisting body. She took the tiny hand, prised it open and kissed its padded palm. At the window the light was not yet even a gritty grey. She looked down at her daughter, her last baby, so surprising every day in her singularity.

After a while she leaned her head back and closed her eyes, but she was starting to wake up properly, and in it crept at last, turned a circle like a dog, tucked its tail around and settled itself — a miserable, flat helplessness that had been waiting, it felt now, for a long time. It was too late. It was done. She couldn't change anything, or make up for it.

A first bird made a cautious chitter outside. Bonnie kept her eyes closed. It would get light soon. She could almost feel them, the others, Pete and the twins in the bedrooms at either end of the hallway, the gradual ebbing of their sleep, the coming-to of their thoughts.

She tried again anyway, when he was in the shower. Went into the bathroom and shut the door behind her. Stood watching his shape, the waterlogged mass of his hair, the blurred brightness of his warmed-up skin through the shower curtain.

‘Pete?' Her voice came out rusty, and she had to clear her throat and say it again. ‘Pete?'

‘Yeah?'

‘I really am sorry.'

He didn't answer. The water beat down, sluiced against the curtain.

‘Pete?'

‘I heard you.' He cupped his hands and sloshed at his face, then did it again.

She waited.

‘I just' — he kept his hands to his face so his words were muffled — ‘need a bit of time to get over this, okay?'

Bonnie stood a while longer with her back to the door, breathing the close, steamy air, the smell of soap. The helplessness spread through her, thin like watered-down milk.

‘Where's Douggie?' said Edie at dinner on Tuesday.

Bonnie glanced at Pete, who was standing at the bench cutting bread.

‘Where's Douggie?' Louie joined in.

Bonnie put a forkful of pasta in her mouth, eyes on her bowl.

‘Where's Douggie?' Edie said again.

‘I don't know,' snapped Pete.

Bonnie chewed and swallowed and shovelled in more, the food sitting heavy in her stomach. The weight of the tension crowded the room, the bank of accumulated unease between the two adults pressing at them all.
How long can this go on for?
she thought, eyes on Pete's back.

Pete sighed, and there was the click of him laying the knife down carefully. ‘I don't know where Douggie is,' he said in a gentle voice. ‘He … he won some money. Lots of money. I think he might've gone on a holiday.'

‘Can we go on a holiday?' Edie bounced in her chair.

Silence. Pete stood without moving.

‘Why can't we go on a holiday?'

Bonnie put down her fork, reached across and took Edie's hand. ‘One day we will,' she said, feeling Pete listening, her voice taut with self-consciousness. ‘Just not right now.'

Bonnie filled the kettle and switched it on. She went down the hall to the living room, automatically checking the children sleeping in their rooms. Pete was at the computer. He didn't turn around or say anything when she came in.

‘Cup of tea?' Her voice grated out stiffly.

No reply.

‘Pete?'

He didn't look around. ‘No, thanks.' He moved the mouse, clicked it, muttered ‘Shit' under his breath.

‘Sure?'

‘Yeah. I've got to get back out to the workshop.'

‘What?' She went closer, stood behind him. ‘Why? It's nearly ten o'clock.'

He turned in his chair. His eyes looked blurred, tired. ‘I have to get this Grant job done. Doug's — well, I don't think he's coming back, and there's just so much work.'

Something spurted in Bonnie, a flood of guilt and love together in an awful gush. ‘Oh, Pete, I'm so sorry,' she said quickly. ‘I didn't think …' She stepped towards him, but he put his head down, rested his elbows on his knees, and she halted at the last moment, stood over him uncertainly.

‘Yeah, whatever,' he said, rubbing his eyes, his voice thick. ‘It's done now, and everything's fucked.' He glanced up for a moment. ‘I've got payments to make, Bon. Suppliers. I thought …' He shook his head. ‘That money, it was really going to make a difference.'

The feeling cooled in her. She frowned. ‘But to rely on a bet for paying suppliers? I mean, how could you even …'

He didn't answer.

‘How much do you owe?' The words felt foreign in her mouth. It was as if she was speaking a part, as if she'd somehow dropped into some other, different life. ‘Pete?'

What was going on? Who were they now — a couple with money troubles, real ones?

‘Pete? Why didn't you tell me?'

He made a movement with one hand. ‘It'll be all right.'