Gucci Mamas (14 page)

‘Pricked again,’ thought Mim, recoiling in pain as the sewing needle plunged into her finger.

‘Mum, be careful,’ Jack whined. ‘That blood will ruin my costume.’

Mim leaned back on her heels, sucking her finger and quietly contemplating the string of expletives flowing through her head. ‘I’m not going to ruin it,’ she answered in a threatening whisper. ‘I spent hours making it, so I am not going to ruin it, am I?’

She tightened the neck of his voluminous snowman suit a tad tighter than necessary and Jack gulped. ‘Now stand still and let me finish this or we’ll be late for the production.’

Tonight was Langholme Grammar’s annual
Appreciation-and-Encouragement-of-Effort-and-Talent Night
. It sounded warm and fuzzy, but in reality it was a theatrical bloodbath where the precocious brats who’d scored bit-parts in TV commercials or soaps were given an undeserved spotlight, while ‘nobodies’ like Mim’s children stood at the back of the stage dressed as plants or furniture. Last year Jack had been a cabbage and poor Charley had been the leg of a table.

Mim made the best of it, praising their efforts – but
really, how enthusiastic could you be about their interpretation of a vegetable or a piece of wood?

Each February the drama teacher gave the same speech: ‘Our aim is to stimulate an organic process sown in the rich earth of our families which will spring anew each season and flourish with a bounty of talent and success.’

Mim had heard it all before and knew what he really meant was that parents would have to make their kids’ costumes, attend set-building working bees, ferry the children to after-school rehearsals, help them learn their lines, and then pay $25 a ticket for the privilege of watching the whole agonising process unfold.

The school insisted on handmade costumes to reinforce the ‘organic creation,’ making Talent Night and the school cake stall the only two times a year when Mim couldn’t buy her way out of hands-on mothering – though most of the other mums still managed to. Most simply ignored the rules and outsourced the task to the nanny or the housekeeper, then bribed their children to keep their mouths shut.

Mim couldn’t bring herself to make her children lie, so, inept as she was with her hands, she struggled every year, producing lopsided bunny ears, lacklustre pirate suits and truly tragic dragon tails.

This year the production was to be ‘The Four Seasons’, set to Vivaldi’s symphony, which was no surprise to anyone, as it had been the annual concert for the past twenty-five years. Somehow the drama master managed to weave a cast of elaborate characters into a simple weather allegory, but Mim despaired at the lack of creativity and imagination and couldn’t see why they didn’t try something different once in a while.

As Mim finished the last stitches on the now slightly grubby snowman suit, Chloe ran through the room, draped
in Charley’s flower costume, tripped over the long stem and gashed her lip open with her teeth.

Christ, that’s just what I need, Mim thought, as Chloe threw herself dramatically into Mim’s chest and revved her screams up a notch, right into her mother’s left ear. It was all Mim could do not to shake her. As Chloe slumped more forcefully against Mim’s body and wailed bloody-mouthed onto her new Karen Millen shirt, Mim was ready to give it all up. Chuck in this mothering lark altogether.

A deep sense of failure threatened to overwhelm her. She saw herself as though from above – sitting cross-legged on the floor, a screeching child pinning her down with snot and screams, a snowman looking at her like she was a misbehaving servant.

She’d stressed and panicked about this night for weeks, whereas James was briefly apologetic about missing the great event, yet managed to happily swan out of the door for his client meeting several hours before the concert started. ‘Break a leg,’ he’d yelled, heading off to The Flower Drum and leaving Mim to dress the boys and go over their lines one more time:
The chill of winter doth embrace me
for Jack and
The rays of sun warm thine heart
for Charley.

These were their first speaking parts and Mim thought they’d have a much better chance at getting them right if only they made any sort of sense.

Mim dreaded the humiliation she was set to face tonight when her desperate attempts at handiwork were revealed. The Reading Mums seamlessly morphed into the Sewing Mums at this time of the year and formed smug little sewing circles that produced beautiful creations – it didn’t hurt that the former wardrobe mistress of the Australian Ballet was among their number, so of course Mim felt like a ham-fisted clod beside their displays of costume prowess.

She knew that Chloe would wriggle and fret on her
knee throughout the performance, spoiling it for her – and that the boys would hate their performances, dragging off their ‘stupid’ costumes and ignoring her praise with ill humour, scowls and flushed faces. Several of their mates had been chosen to portray the Soldiers of Spring and Warriors of Winter (no weapons, of course) and her boys would be angry and humiliated in their ‘girly’ costumes.

If all that wasn’t enough, Mim knew she’d face a scathing appraisal from James’s mother, who would meet them at the school hall. Again she’d be judged as too thin, tired or jaundiced. Apparently this was how she’d looked ever since she and James first met.

It’s going to be such a difficult night, Mim thought in defeat, so why are we even going?

She had a brief fantasy about ditching the event, getting a movie and snuggling up in front of the telly with the kids in their jammies.

‘Yeah, that’ll happen,’ she sighed, absently patting Chloe on the back and intoning soothing words as though she were on autopilot. ‘There, there, never mind,’ she said, more from habit than concern, as Chloe finally stopped bleeding and crying.

She couldn’t even feel sympathy for her little princess. What was wrong with her?

The backstage of Langholme Hall was awash with anxiety and tension – and that was just the parents. One father was shouting at the drama master and pointing angrily at his son, who was dressed as a rather ashamed daisy.

‘Looks like Bernard got back from overseas then,’ Mim thought, as she watched Bernard Worthington III vent his rage at coming home and discovering that Bernard IV, a skinny, spotty kid with braces, was playing a flower.

The drama master finally disentangled himself from the
confrontation, leaving Bernards III and IV seething and plucking satin petals from junior Bernard’s elaborate costume to macho it up a bit. ‘No son of mine will be a bloody flower,’ Bernard raged. ‘You can be a weed, boy, but no Worthington has ever been a flower.’

Sally-Anne Armaund was loudly suggesting that her son, Michel-Jon, required better lighting for his cactus interpretation, in order for the audience to truly appreciate the veracity of his spikes. Her toddler daughter, Lilly-Jo, sat behind her, happily dumping the contents of Sally-Anne’s fawn-skin purse into her lap. Mim hurried the children away as a box of super-sized tampons spilled across the floor.

She found the Grade One teacher close to hysterical tears in the Lower Primary Boys’ dressing room. Mrs Clark had spent the day fielding objections from a stream of angry parents strenuously voicing concerns about their child’s stage position, lack of lines or on-stage period. A group of Preps was bellowing the ‘Song of Spring’ at the tops of their voices in one corner; a wilted flower
sans
stem was pulling at the teacher’s skirt, and another was holding her leg and threatening to vomit – again.

A tantrum was in full force near the bathroom, where Julie Simms-Walsh had discovered that her son Barkley had snuck out in his footy boots rather than the pixie boots she’d spent hours watching the nanny sew for him. As Julie jumped up and down on the spot in a fit of rage, Mim felt the corners of her mouth twitching. This was a nightmare and the only thing to do was laugh, she decided.

Mrs Clark stood on a chair and yelled to get their attention. It was time for the parents to take their seats and for the children to get in position.

Mim waved the boys goodbye, gathered up Chloe and headed for her seat. Chloe stroked Mim’s face with her
chubby hands and kissed her on the lips, ‘I love my mummy, mummy,’ she said, her angel’s face glowing.

‘Oh darling, I love you too,’ Mim said, her heart melting.

‘You’re my special mummy – and you know what?’

‘What?’ said Mim rushing towards their seat as the orchestra burst into action.

‘I’ve got a big poo in my bum.’

Mim froze. ‘Oh darling, not now,’ she said as the lights dimmed. ‘Can it stay in until the end of the show?’ she asked hopefully.

‘No,’ Chloe answered sweetly. ‘It’s already coming.’

Mim instantly dropped Chloe from the hip of her Ralph Lauren trousers and rushed back to the toilets.

She spied Ellie in the hall, speaking earnestly into her mobile. Ellie, who never had a hair out of place, seemed agitated and troubled, her beautiful features marred by a frown.

‘Oh no, I can’t believe it. I knew this would happen. Now what will I do! What if everything’s still there?’ Mim heard her say as they reached her.

Catching sight of her best friend, Ellie first registered shock and then immediately relaxed her face and trilled into the phone: ‘Anyway, must be off, sweetie, things to do, people to see.
Ciao bella
.’

Depositing Chloe in a cubicle, Mim caught up with Ellie in the hall.

‘Darling,’ Ellie gushed. ‘You look fabulous. What a bun fight!’

‘Ellie, you seemed upset just then, is everything okay? Who was on the phone?’

‘Oh it’s fine, darling, just the babysitter.’ Ellie waved her manicured hand dismissively. ‘I’ve left Paris at home. My Ursula’s in Sweden so I was forced to book that awful agency babysitter and the nanny-cam is on the blink so I
have to ring in every half hour to make sure the stupid girl isn’t drunk again. Anyway, how are the boys? All set for their big entrance?’

Chloe emerged from the toilet with her skirt back-to-front. Mim bent to straighten her out and before she could ask any more Ellie breezed off to chat with another mum.

I’ve never seen Ellie so ruffled, Mim thought as she rushed Chloe back to their seats in the darkened hall.

She caught sight of James Snr and they exchanged broad smiles as he waved her over to their seats in the second row. James’s mother smiled thinly as Mim apologised her way down the row of seats. Mim for once escaped the full force of Mildred’s critical eyes as her mother-in-law was striving for an incognito look behind enormous Dior sunglasses. Obviously the savaging Mildred had received from the nation’s gossip columnists after slyly pocketing the diamond pendant at the charity lunch had taken its toll. But, Mim noticed with a start, not enough to prevent her sporting the flashy rock.

She slumped into her chair with Chloe’s heavy weight on top of her.

‘Hello, Mildred, hello, James,’ she whispered to her in-laws.

‘Darling, you look exhausted,’ Mildred whispered back.

‘Headache,’ Mim said apologetically.

‘No wonder you’ve got a headache, are you starving yourself again? You look like a skeleton,’ her mother-in-law hissed, and her eyes went to the stage, her daughter-in-law summarily dismissed.

Mim sighed inwardly and discreetly studied her mother-in-law in the darkness. Skeletal herself, her bones were draped in a Vera Wang boucle suit, accessorised with matching Chanel bag, pumps and very big rocks. Mildred’s paternal grandfather had owned a shipping company, which had been
in the family for three generations before being developed into an international freight operation. When it sold several years ago, Mildred and James Snr’s bank balance zoomed into an even more stratospheric zone – not that it did us much good, Mim thought bitterly.

Mind you, I guess we did get the beach house, she reminded herself, but still a wad of cold cash or assistance with the school fees wouldn’t have gone astray.

James’s dad leaned in front of his wife’s rigid posture as she studied the stage. ‘You’re looking as beautiful as ever, Mim darling,’ he whispered to his only daughter-in-law. Mim was the daughter James Snr had always longed for and he adored her and the amazing grandchildren she’d given him. He was thrilled that his son had married so well.

‘Thanks James,’ she returned and smiled at him and went to return the compliment when Mildred spoke.

‘Oh dear, Mim, you’ve done your own costumes again,’ Mildred sighed, and Mim’s attention was drawn reluctantly back to the on-stage action.

Mim balanced a jar of wasabi in one hand, a tin of smoked salmon and a packet of dried lentils in the other and stood in front of the pantry staring quizzically into space. Moments passed with her standing there motionless until Jack broke her trance.

‘So, what are we having?’

‘What? Oh, yes.’ Mim shook herself back to reality and stared blankly at the foods in her hands. ‘What was I saying?’

‘You said, “What the bloody hell am I going to do with this crap?”’ Chloe said innocently, her blue eyes wide.

‘Oh … yes, that’s right … dinner,’ Mim remembered. ‘Chloe, those aren’t appropriate words for you to use,’ she hastily added.

‘I’m staaarving, Mum,’ Jack whinged again.

‘Wasabi salmon with lentils?’ Mim pondered. ‘No, the lentils will take forever to soften and there’s not enough salmon … maybe eggs on toast … too basic … Oh Christ, I forgot James’s dry cleaning, must get that tomorrow … I could do eggs Benedict but I hate making
the hollandaise … Jack why are you doing that to your costume? … Maybe a salmon omelette?’

They’d spent the day recovering from last night’s production. Mim had spent half the morning on the phone chewing over the PPA (Post Production Analysis) with Liz and Ellie. Then there’d been Jack’s dinosaur diorama to build, a finger-painting project for Chloe and suitable educational show-and-tell to find for Charley for school tomorrow.

With everything sorted, Mim realised her cupboards were bare. Coles Online and the Just Fresh organic food delivery both came tomorrow morning.

‘Okay,’ Mim thought. ‘Time for some lateral thinking.’

With James out golfing with clients again it might just be the perfect night to immerse the children in a culinary experience, Mim decided. Yes, this will be a rich learning experience, some quality family bonding time, and a lesson in cultural diversity, she thought happily. All her own strict parenting criteria had been met in one fell swoop, and she felt momentarily brilliant.

The designer-clad family headed to the busy Toorak Village, where the scent from various restaurants firing up their kitchens wafted tantalisingly in the air. They stood on the windy street as Mim avoided chewing her nails, and debated which restaurant to patronise.

The local Chinese was too slimy, according to Chloe; the boys didn’t like the spiciness of the Thai or Malaysian (although Chloe had a very sophisticated tolerance for hot food for a child of her age). Pizza was in the banned junk-food category, as were hot chips.

Japanese was perfect, Mim suddenly decided – it helped that they were right outside the restaurant and Chloe suddenly needed an immediate ‘tinkle, tinkle’ and was holding herself most unattractively; and wasn’t that the Morgans
across the road with their new Swedish nanny, well goodness, that was just asking for trouble wasn’t it, hiring a girl with legs like that – and oh dear, tinkle, tinkle on the pavement, let’s get inside right now.

Besides, Mim soothed herself once the bathroom crisis had been sorted, Japanese was divine: delicately battered, lightly cooked and offering all kinds of nutritional benefits.

The children whooped with delight as they settled at a low table surrounded by cushions, but Mim quickly regretted the choice, as they turned the table – which was sunk into a pit – into a cubby furnished with the floor cushions.

‘Get out of there, immediately,’ Mim hissed at them. ‘Remember the restaurant manners we discussed?’

The children took their places once again and Mim beamed with pride at her beautiful family. She thoughtfully perused the menu, thinking happily that any passing ad execs would quickly nab this attractive family group for their next Country Road commercial. Then she looked up again, smiling benignly at the children, to catch Jack with his eyelids inside out, chopsticks up his nose and in his ears, making terribly politically incorrect impersonations, to the delight of his siblings.

Goodbye Country Road, hello minimum security, Mim thought despondently. ‘It’s okay,’ she said to the nervous-looking waitress, as she ordered tempura vegetables, sashimi, sushi and teriyaki chicken. ‘We won’t be here long, and I promise there will be no damage.’

Mim could feel the eyes of the other diners on her and willed her children to behave. Glasses of apple juice silenced them for a few minutes at least. But Mim had unresolved juice issues and spent the precious seconds of peace conducting an internal debate on the topic. Those television current-affairs shows insisted that juice was a sugar-laden, tooth-rotting ruse and that she may as well buy them those
caffeinated fizzy drinks. But what else could she do? The children flatly refused to drink water, even in those trendy bottles.

Maybe this water aversion stemmed from her not drinking four litres of water daily during breast-feeding, as all the books advised? Well, juice it would have to be tonight, she finally decided, and at $4 per glass, she hoped that at least they enjoyed it.

‘Can I have another one?’ Jack asked, slamming down his empty glass.

‘After you’ve eaten something, or you’ll dilute your gastric juices,’ Mim warned.

Finally, the meal arrived.

‘Raw fish! You’re joking!’ Jack spat the contents of his mouth onto the tablecloth. ‘Yuk!! Why didn’t you tell me first?’

‘Because you seemed to be enjoying it, darling, I didn’t want to put you off it,’ said Mim, regretting her honesty.

‘Next you’re going to tell me it’s wrapped in seaweed or something,’ said Jack, wiping his tongue with a napkin.

No, not if I’m smart, thought Mim.

The chicken teriyaki was also a failure, apparently the sauce was filled with too many unidentified ‘green things’ and was too ‘weird’-tasting to be tolerated.

Third time lucky? Mim hoped, as the tempura vegetables made their appearance and the children hungrily grabbed them.

‘Well, that was a triumph,’ she laughed, until she realised the children were just eating the batter and leaving the naked vegetables on the plate. ‘For goodness’ sake, children, do you realise how lucky you are? Do you know that there are children in the world whose parents take them to fast-food restaurants several times a week? Can you imagine the condition of their arteries?’

The children ignored her and went back to bickering over the last crumbs of batter.

With relative peace at her table, she sat back to survey the restaurant and noticed Seth Barlow walk in with his two children. Mim waved congenially to hide her evil thoughts.

What a pig, she fumed to herself. Poor Gwendolyn had taken on night work at that twenty-four-hour hair salon (which had such unsavoury clients) to help pull them out of a financial crisis induced by Seth’s fondness for a flutter – and here he was easily squandering twice what she would earn tonight!

‘Good evening, Mim,’ Seth said greasily. He had always been a slimy little number.

‘Hi Seth, having a family night out, are you?’ Mim asked cattily.

‘Just doing a bit of babysitting for the wife,’ Seth explained, as he shepherded his children to a table.

Mim turned away from him to prevent further conversation. Dreadful man, she thought. According to the rumour mill, Gwendolyn had been getting the kids in the car outside their (heavily mortgaged) Malvern house when two enormous tattooed beasts had approached to repossess her red four-wheel drive. Seems Seth had been secretly gambling away the repayments for months. How mortifying for poor Gwendolyn, especially right in front of her neighbours, who had hit their phones within minutes.

Bastard, thought Mim, turning her attention back to the children, who had at least managed to swallow some boiled rice along with their batter-fest.

Mim was starving and went to launch into the sashimi just as Chloe crawled into her lap, spilling her second glass of juice into the teriyaki. Then Charley insisted that Jack kept looking at him ‘funny’ and set Mim’s teeth on edge with his squeaky Pee-wee Herman impersonation.

‘Mmm, that’s delicious,’ Mim said, intent on ignoring her children’s irritating behaviour and making the best of the evening. ‘Isn’t this fun? Do you know that the Japanese culture is one of the world’s most ancient? In fact – ’

‘Muuuuum,’ wailed Chloe, ‘Charley’s kicking me under the table!’

Cultural lesson over, she snapped, ‘Charley, stop it! Jack, where are you going?’

‘Toilet.’

‘Me, too.’

‘Me, three.’

‘All right, but don’t be long.’

Mim sat revelling in the sudden calm and took the opportunity to enjoy several mouthfuls of the chicken, before she suddenly realised it was too quiet and went in search of her offspring. As her stringent public-facility rules stipulated, they were all in the ladies’ toilet, but not acting in any manner that made her want to claim them as hers. Her private-school-educated, well-brought-up-children-from-an-excellent-family were bellowing like maniacs. But worse, they had made huge, wet, toilet-papier-mâché balls and were aiming them at each other, the walls, the windows and the ceiling.

‘OH … MY … GOD!!!’ Mim exploded. ‘I can’t leave you alone for one minute! Clean this mess up!’

Still sniggering and hiccoughing with over-excitement, the trio made a half-hearted effort at scraping soggy toilet paper from the walls and floors; but Mim got the worst of the job, ruining her French polish and ripping off two nails altogether.

Mim couldn’t breathe. She was blind with rage; this was beyond any mass destruction she could have possibly imagined her children capable of. Her mind raced with unflattering thoughts about the so-called top private schools in
the city for which she and James paid an absolute fortune. So much for the best education money can buy, she thought, as she grabbed her bag and pushed her brood out of the restaurant. You’d think they could have taught her kids how to behave better than this.

Guilt at the frightening and soggy mess in both the bathroom and at the table made her drop a $100 bill on the front desk as she left, knowing she could never show her face in the restaurant again.

Chloe arched her back and screamed as Mim bundled her into her car seat and tried desperately to connect the harness. ‘For Christ’s sake, Chloe, I am going to throttle you.’ Mim’s controlled, mum-in-public demeanour slipped for an instant to reveal her much less attractive at-home self. Her heart sank as she bent to extricate herself from the car and heard the unmistakable sound of stilettos clacking against the concrete.

They were still a distance away, but even from here Mim’s finely honed aural fashion sense could detect that several women were about to descend on her, in tiny shoes, with heels a good two centimetres above acceptability.

‘Oh no,’ she shuddered. It could only be the Triple Ds, the trio of diabolical mothers from the boys’ school. Truly the perfect ending to the perfect night, she sighed, looking up to face the enemy.

Trip-trapping up the street with all the finesse and charm of the three Billy Goats Gruff came the Triple Ds, their beady eyes locked on her as if she were prey.

‘Hiiiiiiii, Miiiiiim,’ the group sang out in unison.

‘Bad night, lovey?’ smirked Bindi Munt, the most feral of the group, indicating a still-screaming Chloe.

Shelby Harrison and Trixie Casey-Roxborough-Jones (a keen surname collector) lagged behind Bindi as they stopped to use the ATM. Sure they had their gold Amexes,
but their dealers insisted on cash. Although it was past bedtime on a school night, Mim noticed with distaste that they were well on their way to being drunk.

Bindi was feeling particularly chuffed with herself having persuaded some rich geezer in Harvey’s Bar to shout her a Slow Comfortable Screw followed by a Screaming Orgasm. It was more than she got most school nights as a single mum.

‘Been out for dinner, Mim?’ asked Bindi, cornering her between the car and a street pole.

‘Yes, the children and I have had a delightful meal out together at Osaka’s,’ Mim lied, refusing to admit a less-than-perfect life.

‘Oh God, you’re lucky, my Minx and Devlin do my head in. Thank God they’re both at their dad’s places this week.’

Parenting really wasn’t an issue for the Triple Ds, who had strings of ex-mothers-in-law and ex-husbands to take over when the Early Learning Centres and After School Care closed. The biggest role they played in their kids’ lives was choosing their seasonal wardrobe – and then borrowing from it.

‘So, the word on the playground is that Ellie’s, like, next on LJ Mahoney’s hit list,’ said Bindi with a hint of glee.

Mim’s blood froze at the mention of LJ’s name. Now there was a true personification of evil. Caught hideously out of the loop, she covered as best she could.

‘Ellie? I doubt it, that … um … incident … was nothing. Why, what have you heard?’

‘Well
I
heard that Ellie went to the preview of LJ’s exhibit last month and then so totally trashed it to Bryce that he, like, yanked the
Today-Live
coverage.

‘LJ is, like, so furious and reckons that she’s totally going to bitch-slap Ellie when she catches up with her.’

Mim was shocked. Ellie would never have got Bryce to
pull TV coverage. And it wasn’t like Ellie even had any idea about art: she liked what she was told was good and ignored the rest like everyone else did. Ellie might be vacuous at times, but she wasn’t nasty.

But this could become a serious issue. LJ Mahoney was a self-proclaimed artist, and megabitch, and would make life hell for anyone who slighted her.

In reality, LJ was more of a magpie than an artist. Her style was to collect other well-known artists’ work and arrange or replicate it in what she called an ‘arty’ fashion. Her work was constantly exhibited at an exclusive city gallery (owned by her uncle) and sold mostly to young, impressionable collectors who were readily sucked in by the buzz created about her exhibitions thanks to her husband Philby’s PR firm. LJ’s low self-esteem and desperate need for the limelight meant nobody stood between her and a photographer. She’d cut acquaintances with a look, elbow family out of the way, bad-mouth ‘friends’ to reporters – anything to get her mug in the social pages. It was a bit daunting that Ellie appeared to be her next target.

‘I am sure that Ellie didn’t do such a thing,’ Mim said loyally. ‘She certainly didn’t mention it to me. Perhaps Bryce simply had something else come up for
Today-Live
and LJ just got bumped. These things happen,’ she said hopefully.