House of Sticks (30 page)

‘Oh, Glenn, right.'

‘It's Bonnie, isn't it?'

‘Yeah. Sorry, yeah — Bonnie.'

A pause. He cleared his throat. ‘Well … when will he be back, do you know?'

‘Um.' She swallowed, pushed the words out. ‘Soon. He's — he's just out for the evening, so I'll let him know you called and he'll …' She glanced towards the hallway, the living room where Suzanne was watching television, lowered her voice. ‘He'll probably call you back tomorrow.'

She hung up. Pete's work, abandoned. His pride. His reputation. Pete just leaving, going off to live with Doug, of all people. She went into the hallway, stood in the dark, a sliding, tilting panic gripping her.
How has this happened?
She reached out and touched the walls on either side. Their house: draughty, cold, full of piles of things she never seemed to get around to putting away. All just as it was, but changed somehow. Everything — the rooms, their furniture and belongings — seemed flat, insubstantial. Like a stage, a set. As if she could reach her arms out and knock it all down, break it apart and see, as the pieces fell, the light of real life come flooding through. Real life, the way it was before.

It just wasn't possible that everything had changed so quickly.

She took the phone into the bedroom and shut the door.

Pete's mobile rang and rang until the voicemail kicked in. Her heart leaped at the sound of his recorded voice. When the beep sounded she laboured for a moment in the waiting silence, trying to muster words.

‘Hi,' she said at last. ‘It's me. Um. Glenn rang. The joiner.' Her voice jumping out in staccato spurts. She heaved in a breath. ‘But that's not really why I'm calling.' She sat down on the end of the bed. ‘I need to talk to you, Pete. Please — please call me.'

She let the hand holding the phone fall onto the mattress beside her. Then she flopped her whole body down. Lay looking at the phone, its blank screen. She tried to imagine what Pete might be doing — sitting in an op-shop armchair drinking beer, the stubble on his face dark with anger — but what came to mind were the old photos, of his youth, his real share-house days. Eighties hair and thin faces: Pete and Greg and Deano and various others, and Doug, always Doug, a bit older, a bit more weathered, hovering in the background, grinning narrowly, eyebrows cocked.

She washed her face and brushed her teeth. Checked the children. Jess was sleeping peacefully, the heat gone from her body.

She went towards the bedroom but then stopped, sighed. Dragged herself back to the living room. Stood just inside the door for a moment, cleared her throat.

‘Goodnight, Mum.'

Suzanne looked up from the screen. ‘Goodnight.'

Her face was in shadow. She had the crochet rug around her shoulders and her knees pulled up. In the flickering light she looked small, almost childlike, and Bonnie had a sudden vision of her alone like that, every night, across town in her little apartment.

She folded her arms over the unexpected spurt of pity and went closer. ‘What're you watching?'

‘Oh, I don't know, one of these panel discussion things. It's pretty boring.'

‘Will you be okay sleeping here, on the couch?' she said. ‘Are you sure you don't want to take the bedroom?'

‘No, no — I'll be fine. I slept here the other night, remember?' Suzanne reached over and patted her hand. ‘It's quite comfortable actually.' She kept her hand on Bonnie's. ‘You go and get some rest. Go on — you need it.'

‘Thanks, Mum.' Bonnie felt her voice go watery with tears. ‘Thanks for coming over.'

Suzanne patted her hand again. ‘That's all right, darling. And don't worry — you'll sort something out, you and Pete. I'm sure you will.'

She lay on her side with her knees pulled up. She slid her hand against the sheet, still feeling Suzanne's touch. The image wouldn't go away, of her mother, small and lonely on that couch, the rest of her mother's life stretching out, strung with night after night of aloneness. Bonnie took one of her own hands in the other and gripped it. She could feel it there, ready to open up and swallow her — the kind of stiff and desolate loneliness she'd only ever tasted, fleetingly, on school camps, or in the last week of a too-long tour.

She reached over and grabbed Pete's pillow, shoved her face into it and breathed.

She wore her sunglasses the next morning, dropping the twins at kinder, imagining strange looks from the staff and other parents, thinking it must be written all over her:
damage
,
crisis
. Kissing the children a hasty goodbye and slinking out again.

She was sitting in the car, keys in her lap, staring at nothing when Mel tapped on the window.

‘Hi,' Mel mouthed, and the sight of her, her work clothes and her everyday, unknowing smile, brought tears out of Bonnie like something shaken loose.

They sat together in the car, and Bonnie cried and talked, lips numb and shaking, reaching up to swipe at the tears rolling down from under her sunglasses.

‘So you were going to tell Pete?' said Mel. ‘Anyway?'

‘I guess so. I didn't really get a chance to think about it. I mean, he was acting so weird I just — well, I thought he'd found out somehow, that someone had told him; maybe someone saw me leave the party with the guy and, I don't know … Anyway, I didn't know he'd found the condom.' She shook her head. ‘I can't believe I forgot all about it.'

Mel gave a dry laugh. ‘You must've been so drunk.'

Bonnie's teeth were clenched. That night, the party, the taxi, the hotel — it all loomed there, vast and dark and shameful, nudging at her as she tried to keep her back turned.

‘So.' Mel lined her handbag up across her knees. ‘If he hadn't found the condom — if he wasn't acting weird — do you think you might not have told him?'

‘I don't know.' She thought about the day between her getting back and it all coming out, being with Pete in the house, the doubt and guilt dragging at her. ‘No,' she said slowly. ‘I would have told him. For sure. I don't think I could've lived with the strain of not telling him.'

Mel frowned. ‘It's a tough one though because — well, nothing really happened, did it?'

‘Yeah, but it was only because he left that nothing happened. The guy, I mean. Something
could
have happened.' She put her hands up and gripped the steering wheel. ‘I let it get as far as it did. And isn't that just as bad?'

Mel looked down at her bag. ‘I guess so,' she said after a while. ‘But there's still a big difference between nearly doing something and actually doing it. I don't think you could ever really say what might've happened if things went any further. You might've — when it really came down to it — you might've, well, changed your mind.'

Bonnie took off her glasses, touched the skin around her eyes. It felt swollen from all the crying. She breathed in deeply, trying to dislodge the weight in her chest. ‘I just feel like the worst person in the world.'

‘People do these things, Bonnie. You wouldn't believe the stories I hear through my work. And from friends too.'

‘But …'

‘God knows I've been tempted.' Mel lowered her voice, glanced at the window.

‘Really?'

‘Yeah, of course. Haven't you?' Mel leaned back in her seat. ‘You know — life gets boring, you feel a bit neglected by your partner, you meet someone at work or at a party or whatever; they pay you attention and it feels good.'

‘Yeah, I guess I've had … crushes.' She thought of the lanky blond man at the cafe she used to go to, near the old house — that extreme self-consciousness that came over her whenever she saw him, the way he'd drift into her thoughts sometimes afterwards, unexpectedly, and she'd feel guilty even about that.

‘But of course I always just think, Well, what could I do? I could leave Josh for this guy, and break up a household and a family, and start all over again only to end up in the same place after a few years. Except with an ex-husband and having to share custody of a child.' She looked at Bonnie. ‘I mean, usually I'm attracted to them because they kind of remind me of Josh. Or at least what Josh was like when I first met him.' She grinned. ‘So might as well stick with the original model, I guess.'

‘Yeah.' Bonnie bit her lip. ‘I know what you mean, and I guess I've thought similar things. But this thing, with the Sydney guy — I wasn't even attracted to him. It was weird. What you were saying about someone paying you attention, someone noticing you — I guess that was part of it. But …'

‘I could understand you feeling a bit neglected by Pete,' said Mel. ‘You've sacrificed a lot — your music, your career — you're very supportive of him.'

‘But he's supportive of me too. He always encourages me to do music stuff.' Tears pricked her eyes again. ‘He's pretty amazing actually. He does just about an equal share of the housework. He's always bailing me out, you know, making dinner and going off to the supermarket late at night because I couldn't get my shit together …'

‘Of course.' Mel shifted in the seat. ‘I didn't mean he wasn't pulling his weight. I just wonder how much you acknowledge what you've lost — or put on hold. And I'm not saying he made you do that, but, well, you did it, didn't you? I mean, his work comes first.'

‘Yeah.' Bonnie touched the skin on her face again, rubbed her eyes. She felt suddenly weighed down with tiredness, hardly able even to speak. ‘I'd better get going,' she said. ‘My mum's probably freaking out because Jess needs a nappy change or something.'

Mel gave her a sideways hug. ‘Give Pete some time.' She rubbed Bonnie's arm. ‘Where is he, anyway? Where's he gone?'

‘I don't … know.' Bonnie put her sunglasses back on. ‘He just said he was going to stay with friends.'

‘Not Doug, I hope.' Mel made a face and got out of the car.

Bonnie's stomach contracted.

‘Or has he vanished again?'

‘No, he's — he's still around.' Bonnie fumbled with her keys, leaned forward to reach the ignition. ‘I've got a bad feeling it is Doug,' she said, the words blundering out as if of their own accord.

Mel bent to look in at her. ‘But isn't he — I mean, I thought he was living in someone's back shed or something?'

‘No. He's rented a flat apparently.' She tried to rein in her voice, make it light. ‘He won lots of money, remember, on the horse?' A forced eye-roll. ‘The one I wouldn't let Pete have a bet on.'

‘Oh right. That.' Mel gave a pinched smile. ‘Oh well. Hopefully he'll drive Pete mad quickly — give him an extra reason to come straight home to you.'

Bonnie tried to return the smile.

Mel sighed. ‘It'll be okay, Bon. Pete loves you. You love each other. He'll come back.'

‘I don't know, Mel.'

‘Give him some time,' said Mel again. ‘He can't stay angry forever.'

‘How do you know where anything is?' said Suzanne, on hands and knees on the kitchen floor. She reached into a cupboard. ‘All these cans back here' — she pulled some out — ‘I take it there's no system?'

Bonnie wiped Jess's face and took her bib off. ‘Not really.'

‘Okay then.' Suzanne leaned into the cupboard again.

‘Just leave it, Mum.'

‘It won't take long.' Her voice was muffled. ‘Might as well sort it out, while I'm here.'

‘No, really — it's fine. I've been meaning to —'

‘Won't take long.'

She noticed Suzanne had a tea towel spread under her knees.

‘And someone needs to do some shopping.'

‘Yeah, I know.' The bib fell from Bonnie's hand, and she bent awkwardly with Jess on her hip to pick it up again. ‘I'll …'

‘Now what have we got here?' Suzanne took her head out of the cupboard. ‘Chickpeas. Lentils. More chickpeas. Beans.'

‘I'm going to put Jess to bed.'

‘Okay then.'

‘And then I might lie down myself, for a bit.'

‘Yes, you should.' Suzanne didn't look up.

Bonnie settled Jess and went to her own room to lie awake and tense, staring up at nothing. From the kitchen came the faint clack and burr of a can falling to the floor and rolling. She tried to shut her eyes, to push away the image of Suzanne's industrious back; the cupboard full of cans in new, neat rows.
She's trying to help
. But she couldn't stop herself from seeing the flimsiness of the new order, how quickly it would all come undone again.

‘I'll do the shopping tonight, if that's okay with you,' she said to Suzanne over dinner. ‘Later, I mean. Once everyone's asleep.'

Suzanne nodded and went back to her plate. ‘Good idea.'