House of Sticks (17 page)

She froze, shock jolting through her. She took two steps back, swung the pram into the narrow mouth of the laneway and bumped closer. Went right up to the edge of the mess and stood there. The smell of the bruised leaves of the plant rose, sharp and strong. She bent and picked up a piece of the pot and turned it over. Angled it in the overcast light to see the depth of the glaze, the network of cracks, the colour that seemed to change, sometimes blue, sometimes green. One of the edges was pointy and she pressed the pad of her finger to it, watched the indent it made, felt its tip like a blunt needle. Then she dropped the piece again, and it landed on the cobblestones at her feet and broke into three.

‘Shit,' she said. Then she saw what the dark thing was, lying underneath. A blue towel, dirt-covered and torn. The smudged white label stuck out at one end.
Sheridan
. One of the towels Pete's parents had sent as a housewarming gift. The only towels they owned that were soft and not frayed or threadbare.

She looked around. The laneway ended not too much further down, at a greying timber fence. It seemed darker in there, enclosed, trees crowding above the fence-lines. She could smell urine. Everything was very quiet. She turned the pram again and went back out, trying not to hurry, trying to contain the fright that was buzzing in her arms and legs and hammering in her chest.

She walked past the house, past Doug's van and the space where Pete's van still wasn't, and down to the main road. Spent the afternoon in a cafe, in shops. She even went to the library, feeling naked without the twins. Found herself standing aimlessly in the middle of the children's section, where a toddler kept throwing himself face down into the sagging vinyl beanbags and biting them. ‘Come on, Charlie, shall we read a book?' the mother said, giving Bonnie a weak smile of embarrassment, but again and again the child launched himself, legs flailing, something too intimate in the way he pressed his face to the rubbery surface and then pulled back, teeth gripping. Bonnie moved away.

She sat and leafed through magazines. Jess slept. Twice she took out her phone and started to call Pete, but then she thought he might still be in the meeting and put it away again.

At three-thirty she walked back to the house. Pete's van was there, parked behind Doug's. She put Jess straight in the car, left the pram on the front porch and drove to the childcare centre.

She checked the sign-in book. Mel was due to pick up Freddie in fifteen minutes.

‘Can we play for a bit longer?' said Louie.

‘Yes. You can today.' Bonnie followed the twins out into the centre's yard and perched on the edge of the timber sandpit frame with Jess on her lap.

‘Look at this, Mum!' Louie hung upside down from the monkey bars.

‘Mum! Mum! Look at me!' called Edie from the mini-trampoline.

‘Wow! Great!' The smile strained her face. Her skin felt numb, her whole body hollow and husk-like. She heard her voice go on responding to the twins with the kind of facile praise she'd always taken pains to avoid. It hardly felt like she was even opening her mouth, but there it went, echoing out of her, robotically insincere. She imagined a gust of wind or a blow from a passing child catching her, knocking her off her perch, breaking her apart, Jess tumbling back amongst the pieces into the sand.

‘Hi.' Mel stood over her.

‘Oh. Hi.'

‘Everything all right?'

‘Well, no, not really.'

‘What's happened?' Mel sat down beside her and as she did Bonnie felt tears rising, the mask of her fake-smiling face cracking, the terrible, unstoppable crumbling of her composure. ‘Bon?' Mel's arm drew around her shoulders.

‘Oh, sorry, sorry — have you got a tissue?' She snuck a glance at the children, who were taking oblivious turns in some game on the climbing frame.

Mel handed her one, and Bonnie wiped her nose and eyes. ‘Sorry, Mel,' she said.

‘What's happened? Do you want me to hold Jess?'

‘No. It's okay.' She held on to the baby, put her nose into the top of her little knitted beanie. ‘Oh god, sorry about this. Hang on, I'll just pull myself together and then I can tell you.'

‘It's all right. Take as long as you want.' Mel rubbed her back.

Out of the corner of her eye Bonnie saw one of the childcare workers approach, hesitate, move away again. She threw another glance at the children. Any moment one of them would come over, call out, want something. She needed to stop crying, to regain control. She closed her eyes and breathed slowly, in through her nose and out through her mouth, like she'd learned at birth preparation classes. Jess's beanie smelled of wool wash.
Calm down, calm down
.

All around the sounds of children went on, a busy tangle of noise.

‘Okay,' she said after a while. ‘Did I tell you about the pot plant?'

‘No.'

‘Okay. Well, I've got this pot plant. A geranium — in a beautiful old glazed ceramic pot that my great-aunt gave me years ago. It was on the back porch.'

‘Yeah?'

‘Well. Yesterday I noticed it was missing.' She took a deep, wavering breath. Another surge of crying threatened, but she pushed it down. ‘It just vanished. Off the back porch. And then today I was out walking just down the street and I saw it in a laneway. All smashed up.' She turned to Mel. ‘Someone came into our backyard and took it — I don't know when, in the middle of the night maybe — and carried it down the street, took it into that laneway and just' — she heard her voice wobble again — ‘smashed it all up.'

‘Mu-um!' called Freddie from the climbing frame.

‘In a minute, Fred.' Mel kept her eyes on Bonnie's face. ‘How awful,' she said. ‘And it seems so much worse that it was out the back. I mean, even if it'd been out the front it would still be bad, but …'

‘I know,' said Bonnie. ‘The thought of someone sneaking around the back of our house. I mean, we forget sometimes even to lock the —'

‘Mummy.' Freddie ran to Mel, leaned into her knees. ‘Mummy, I want to go home now.'

‘Okay, Freddie. One minute.' Mel turned back to her. ‘That's so creepy. I wonder who it was?'

‘Come on, Mummy,' said Freddie, pushing at Mel's legs.

‘Actually, we do have to get going.' Mel stood up. ‘Sorry, Bonnie. Will you be okay? It's just that we've got my parents coming for dinner and I have to pick up some groceries on the way home and —'

‘Yeah, of course.' She wiped her nose again and stood up too. ‘I'll be fine. Sorry I had such a meltdown.'

‘No, of course. I understand.'

‘But the thing is …' Bonnie put her hand on Mel's arm. ‘Can I just tell you quickly?'

Mel nodded.

‘It's not just the idea of some random creepy, I don't know, drunk kids or whatever, sneaking in and taking a pot and smashing it up for kicks or something. Even though that's not a great thought. And I can't really imagine why anyone would do that. But the thing is —'

‘Mum!' Louie ran up. ‘Edie says I can't be in her game.'

‘Hang on, Lou.' She lowered her voice. ‘The thing is, Mel, I think' — she dropped it to a whisper — ‘I think it was Doug.'

‘What?'

Bonnie kept whispering. ‘I think it was Doug. He's been acting weird. Apparently he was upset we didn't invite him to the kids' birthday party, which he found out about because he just happened to drive past our house on the day, which is weird and creepy in itself, because he'd have no reason to drive past on the weekend —'

‘Mu-um!'

Bonnie edged away from Louie, closer to Mel. She had an image of herself, her bloodshot eyes staring wildly, her urgent whisper, her hand on Mel's arm, holding her there.
I must look crazy
, she thought.
She probably thinks I've gone mad, that it's all in my head
. But still she kept going, the tense words rapping out. ‘And then he didn't turn up for work for a while, well, pretty much all of last week, since the party, and he didn't go to this reunion thing last night with Pete and his old mates from uni. And then yesterday I noticed the pot was gone, and then this morning he just turned up as if nothing had happened. Except …' She wiped her nose. Wound her whisper even smaller, tighter. ‘I don't know — I mean, I've always thought he had it in for me, that all his jokes were really just a way to get at me. But now I'm wondering. I mean, I could be imagining this whole thing, but I really feel like he's giving me these knowing looks, and —'

‘Mu-UM!' Louie tugged at her hand. ‘Edie says —'

‘Let's GO, Mum!' said Freddie at the same time.

‘I really have to go,' said Mel. She leaned over and hugged Bonnie, squeezed her arm. ‘Sorry, Bon. I'll call you, okay? Later tonight.'

‘Okay. Thanks, Mel. Sorry for …'

‘No, no. It's fine.' Mel waved as she followed Freddie back into the building.

Louie yanked her arm. ‘Mum! Edie says she's the princess and I can't go in her castle unless I be a guard and I don't want to be a guard, I want …' His voice twined on.

She stood in the middle of the tanbark, her arm limp as he pulled at it. She put her nose to Jess's hat again, but the smell of the wool brought the crying feeling back so she lifted her head instead, shook her hair out of her eyes, stared up into the leaves of the small gum tree that shaded the sandpit. The way they raked and shook, their neat, clean spear-like shapes.

In the car she called Pete. ‘Hi,' she said, hearing her words come out weak and teary.

‘What's wrong?' The concern in his voice almost made her cry again. She was overwhelmed by a desire to be lying in bed with him, between warm, clean sheets, everything else, all concerns and responsibilities, simply removed, eliminated, dissolved. She could feel the tension between her shoulder blades, and her throat hurt.

‘Nothing,' she said, forcing her voice to sound stronger. ‘I'm, ah, I'm in the car with the kids, so …'

‘Oh.'

‘I just wanted to ask you: is Doug still there?'

She wasn't sure if she imagined it but she thought she heard a sigh.

‘No,' he said. ‘He actually left a bit early today. Think he had something on with his racing buddies.' There was a moment's pause, and then he added, ‘Why do you ask?'

She slumped in shaky relief. ‘I'll explain later.' She turned the key in the ignition. ‘Okay, thanks. I'll see you soon.'

‘Don't you dare say we can't prove it was him.' Bonnie put her palms flat on the surface of the kitchen bench.

Pete set a load of dirty plates beside the sink. She saw him pull back his shoulders before he spoke. ‘But why would he do that, Bon?'

‘Because he hates me?'

‘Shh — you'll wake the kids.'

She lowered her voice. ‘Well, I think he does. Sometimes I think he does. The things he says …'

Pete came up beside her, put his arms around her. ‘Come on. I really don't think he hates you. I mean, forget about the pot-plant thing for a moment. We really don't know anything about that. But the things he says, he's just — he needs to get a reaction out of people. That's just what he's like, you know. You shouldn't even listen to him.'

She leaned into him, breathed his smells of sweat and wood. ‘But I can't help it.' She pulled back and looked up at his face. ‘And it's not just what he says, it's what he does. Like today. When I got back from the supermarket, while you were at the meeting with Grant, I came in and he was sitting at the table here eating a sandwich he'd made with the last of our bread, and he didn't even say anything. He just sat there eating our food and reading the paper while I brought all the shopping in. It's like he — I don't know — he can tell I feel uncomfortable when he's around and he's rubbing my nose in it, in the fact that he's here, you know, invading my territory, and I can't do anything about it.'

Pete touched her hair. ‘I don't know about that. He was probably just embarrassed that you caught him eating our food. He was probably hoping he'd get away with it. I mean, it's pretty sad — a grown man who can't even afford to buy his own lunch. That's the only reason he'd be doing it. I'm sure he hates eating our food. But he's — well, he's got a lot of pride, Doug. I've never heard him apologise for anything. Like when he fucked up with that quote that time. He'd lie rather than own up to something.' He frowned. ‘Hang on a sec.' He turned, took the torch from the top of the fridge and went out the back door.

Bonnie followed. She watched as Pete went down the steps, out of reach of the light that spilled from the house, and switched on the torch. He moved it back and forth across the paving, slowly, then stopped and went forward. ‘Here,' he said. ‘Come and look.'

She went down and stood beside him.

Pete squatted. ‘See?' He brushed his fingers over the ground and rubbed them together. ‘Someone's swept up here. Looks like a while ago though, I'd say.'