Spinning Around (10 page)

Then I caught sight of myself in a mirror, as I wiped down the shower stall, and something clicked. The hair. The droop. The unplucked eyebrows.

By the time Matt returned with Emily and Jonah, I had put on lipstick, mascara, eyeshadow, earrings, perfume, pantyhose, my Italian slingbacks and my Lisa Ho cream chiffon dress.

Matt stared at me in a startled fashion.

‘You look nice,' he said, sounding surprised. I didn't know whether to be flattered or resentful. I didn't really have time to be either, because Jonah launched himself at me, his face besmeared with ice-cream, and I had to duck behind a chair.

That's the trouble with dressing up to go out. These days, I'm always torn between wanting to look nice and not wanting to get any of my remaining good clothes (that still fit me) irretrievably soiled by small, grubby fingers. The Lisa Ho dress, up till now, has fallen into the category of ‘wedding receptions without kids' or even ‘if I ever appear on TV/meet Ralph Fiennes/get invited to a Royal garden party'. But you have to be realistic, don't you? You have to bite the bullet and take a few risks, if you want to keep your husband.

That's what I told myself, anyway.

‘Ice-cream?' I said. ‘At this hour?' And Matt instantly went on the defensive.

‘There was a Mr Whippy,' he explained. ‘Jonah hurt himself.'

‘What did you do to your face, Mummy?' Emily asked. But I ignored her.

‘Will you wipe him down, Matt? Please? I'm wearing my good dress.'

‘Yeah. Sure,' said Matt. ‘Maybe I should change. Do you reckon?'

‘Better make it quick. We're already late.'

So Matt took off his T-shirt and put on a shirt. He's come a long way since I first met him; he'll wear colours now, and tops that button down the front. The result is that he's looking better than ever (despite a certain coarsening of the skin and a very slight—almost undetectable—thinning of the hair) while I'm rapidly coming apart. The hands. The stretch marks. The cellulite.

What if I haven't held together enough for Matt? What if that's the trouble? Could it really be that banal?

Looking at him as he slapped on his sunglasses, I asked myself: suppose he went bald? Would I still love him then?

Actually, I almost wish he would go bald. At least if he was bald, my cellulite wouldn't matter so much.

The trip to Tamarama was accomplished without excessive drama. As usual, there was tension over who got to play what music, with Matt and Emily competing stubbornly for control of the CD player. Having been forced to shelve all songs featuring certain four-letter words and references to guns, butts, sex, whores, drugs and pussies (I'd hate to tell you what Emily started singing in the car one day, on the subject of pussies), Matt's decided that he should be given at least some opportunity to play those songs which haven't been consigned to the ‘headphones only' basket. It's a matter of principle, with him. Emily, on the other hand, has her own taste in music. She likes the Wiggles, Sesame Street, Christmas carols and certain Disney favourites, over and over again.

Personally, I'd willingly endure ‘Santa Claus is Coming to Town' twenty-seven times in a row if it meant that I didn't have to play one round of ‘What animal am I thinking of?', but Matt feels differently. It's a battle of wills, every time he starts the engine. I don't know why he bothers. How can anyone enjoy Counting Crows while Emily is whining and groaning and asking questions in the background? What's the point? And Matt's choice of music seems so inappropriate, somehow. Fatboy Slim. Pearl Jam. Sloane. This isn't music for people with booster seats and wet wipes in the car. This is music for raging young dudes in combi vans, or slick eastern-suburbs types in linen and Ray-Bans and red convertibles. All I feel, when I listen to Matt's music, is deprived.

Maybe that's how he's been feeling, too. Maybe therein lies the problem.

Fortunately, it was a beautiful day. A real beach day. The sky was blue, the air was fresh, and the sea was sparkling. Even Jonah seemed quite satisfied with life, singing along to the Wiggles with cheerful concentration. As for me, I was so beguiled by the cosy family atmosphere that I began to unwind a bit. The knot in my stomach started to unravel. I shoved on a pair of sunglasses, wound down the window and enjoyed that indefinable atmosphere that Sydney always lays on, when the weekend weather's fine—a kind of laid-back carnival atmosphere, it is— until Emily suddenly threw up. Emily always throws up. She pukes at the drop of a hat: when she's overtired, when she's overexcited, when she eats too much, when she eats too little, when she eats grapes or doughnuts or avocado, when she's been swimming, when she gets her shots, when she's got a cough or a cold, when it's been too long since breakfast . . . all the time. She has a very strong ‘gag reflex'. That's what the doctors told me, after she'd been through a battery of tests because I'd started to worry, and was beginning to wonder if maybe she had something really wrong with her. I mean, when she hadn't outgrown this rampant spewing by the age of two, I started to get concerned. Though it turned out just to be Emily. Emily's stomach. She'd get carsick on her tricycle, given the chance.

That's why we have plastic sick bags and old towels strategically placed around the back seat of the car. She's old enough now to anticipate trouble, though not necessarily to aim as well as we'd like her to. Poor darling, you could hardly expect it. So I had to change her skirt and her socks, and dispose of the sick bag, and wash her face, and give her a drink, and as a result we were late getting to Tamarama, what with the beach traffic and everything.

Not that it mattered much, because lunch wasn't served until half past two. This meant that I had to make a pest of myself cutting up apple and slicing cheese and buttering biscuits for Emily, or she would have thrown up again. (Too many corn chips on an empty stomach does it to her every time.) I hate that. I hate looking like a neurotic mum, asking if there's anything besides Coke or mineral water or lemon squash or tomato juice or soya milk or green cordial—some Ribena, perhaps? It's not even as if Emily has a respectable
allergy
, for God's sake. Just a stomach like a live volcano.

And Kerry, I could tell, hated having me clutter up her kitchen benchtops with jars of Vegemite and strawberry fruit straps and Jonah's special little tubs of (butterless) popcorn and chopped-up dried apple (he's terribly picky about his food) while she was trying to mix salad dressing. She mixes her own salad dressing. She even has her own yoghurt maker. But don't get me started on Kerry.

It's a shame, because I always want to go to the Irwins'. They live in the most fantastic house, exactly eight minutes' walk from the beach. They have a cat, a dog, and a pool. They also have two children, one five and one seven—so in addition to everything else, they have an unlimited supply of scooters, Barbie dolls, wooden puzzles, Lego bricks,
Madeline
DVDs, computer games, and everything else you need for a leisurely, stress-free lunch on the patio. Plus the two kids are great— especially Zoe. She looks after Jonah as if she were born to it. Reads to him and everything.

The upshot of all this is that we can never get over there fast enough. Whenever I think of that glassy box cantilevered over that tumbling slope, I think of airy blue vistas and strawberry daiquiris and sandy bathrooms and children's laughter and rockpools and barbecued octopus. And then I arrive, and it all starts to go sour in my head.

I've known Paul since university. He is, and always has been, the funniest guy in the world—so sharp, and at the same time so good-natured. A sweetheart, in other words. Maybe a little nervy and high-strung, but nothing you'd need medication for. We didn't go out together (he didn't turn me on, if truth be told), but we were always good friends, even though he was brilliant and I wasn't. Well—brilliant in his chosen field, that is. He's a big-time corporate lawyer now, making stacks of money, but you'd never guess it. Though his sandy hair is thinning on top, and he wears polo shirts and yachting shoes and a big, chunky Rolex, he doesn't behave like your average bigshot. He's one of those people who's always delighted to see you, who thinks that your jokes are funnier than his own, who has a big, toothy grin and a joyous laugh, who tells a terrific story (but rarely at someone else's expense), and who specialises in taking the piss out of himself. You know the sort of thing. The way Paul talks, you'd think that he bluffed his way into his job, and now spends his time screwing up PowerPoint presentations and doing pratfalls at board meetings. But he doesn't, of course. He's just modest. Modest and eager to entertain.

You might be thinking: what's your problem then, Helen? If Paul's so terrific, if his house is so terrific, if his kids are so terrific, then why the long face? Why are you off on one of your rants again, you miserable, long-faced party pooper?

The answer is: Kerry. Kerry and my own flawed nature. Kerry and I don't hit it off, because she's one of those eastern suburbs girls who always struck me as being incredibly blinkered and dense. She's tall and blonde and willowy, with a long face and porcelain skin; she hardly ever speaks, and her face is inscrutable; she has a high, pretty voice, an impeccable wardrobe and expensive tastes. And that, as far as I can see, is all there is to her. It seems extraordinary, when Paul is so funny and smart and (let's face it) rich, but I honestly can't see what else she has to offer. Because if she's not stupid, she's doing a bloody good imitation. What I mean is—she's a trained florist, right? With some kind of florist's certificate? So I ask her things like: ‘Are native flowers selling better than they were ten years ago?' or ‘Do you have to ask a bride if she's allergic to anything, before you make up her bouquet?', and she looks at me as if I'm mad. Honestly. That's the precise expression on her face: a sort of blank-eyed alarm. As if I'd told her that I was planning to donate my womb to the Smith Family.

She behaves, in other words, as if I'm eccentric, as if my kids are underprivileged, and as if we were all living in a fibro housing commission place out in Mount Druitt, or somewhere else equally lacking in cachet. Dulwich Hill just isn't part of her vocabulary. To her, it's ‘out west'. What's more, if we ever finish our renovations and invite her over, it won't change her opinion. She'll cast her vacant gaze over the leadlight windows, the tessellated tiles and the ornate ceilings, and she'll fail to be impressed, because the house is on a quarter-acre block half an hour from the nearest headland, French provincial antique dealer or merchant banker.

That's one reason why I end up feeling very prickly and competitive, when I visit the Irwins. I become grudging and petty-minded; I think to myself, That pool's not so big, but it fills up the whole backyard, or, Imagine how dismal it must be in here on a grey, blustery afternoon, with all this slate floor and minimalist furniture. Kerry's taste is very formal, and much more modern than mine. She likes unusual colour combinations and spiky flower arrangements and vast tracts of polished blond wood. I'm different. I like old things. That's why we bought the house in Dulwich Hill, which is a double-brick Federation place with a slate roof and wooden floors, a lemon tree in the backyard and a detached laundry. I was pregnant with Jonah, at the time, and we had to find something fast because we couldn't stay in our rented flat in Darlinghurst, with its cramped proportions and mouldy bathroom—I was going mad, in that place. So we bought our new house as soon as we'd saved up enough money for a sizeable deposit, not realising what we'd got ourselves into.

Old houses are full of secrets. Not good old secrets, like caches of love letters under the floorboards, or marble mantelpieces concealed behind a sheet of plasterboard—I'm talking about bad old secrets. Our house only had two bedrooms, but we thought that we'd add another when Jonah was eighteen months old and I went back to work. We wanted another bedroom, a larger kitchen, and a laundry with a roof that didn't leak. Little did we know that, on pulling up some of our old linoleum, we would find not only layers of delightful antique newspapers, but termite damage and sewage leaks as well. Pipes had to be dug up, boards had to be replaced, and by the time all that was done our builder was running late; our job was beginning to impinge on another one. So then our builder started to juggle them both, and you can guess what happened. Nothing. Nothing at all, for long stretches of time.

I was such an innocent when I bought our house. I had no idea what it means to own your own real estate. Sure, I knew about mortgages, but I didn't understand about pest inspections, gutter cleaning, electric hot water systems, council rates, plumbing problems, sewage leaks or termite damage. I never imagined that it would all be so
expensive
. God, it's expensive—especially if neither you nor your husband can change a tap washer, or replace a hinge. And it was all made doubly expensive by the fact that I went a bit mad, when Jonah was a baby. What I mean is, I became obsessed with interior design magazines.

You know the type of thing I'm talking about. Those thick, glossy doorstops full of ads for upholstery fabrics and tapware and six-burner cook tops. There's usually a ‘special' feature on beautiful bathrooms (or kitchens), an article on a designer's ‘inner-city' cottage—utterly transformed into a four-storey mansion with guest room and Tuscan courtyard—and another one on a converted coach-house in the southern highlands of New South Wales. Well, I don't need to tell you. You've probably seen about a million of them—or two million, if you're anything like me. I was fixated on our house when Jonah was a baby. I thought about almost nothing else, because it was our first house, because I was stuck in it all day every day, looking at the wood-grain laminex in the kitchen, and because thinking about limestone benchtops or concealed rangehoods took my mind off the awfulness of Jonah. God, he was awful. I know I shouldn't be saying it (most people are really shocked, when a mother comes out and says that her child's being a pain) but some babies are sent to try you. Lisa reckons that when she was pregnant with Liam, and as sick as a dog, the only things that saved her sanity were grisly thriller videos like
Seven
and
The Silence of the Lambs
, from which she could derive the satisfying knowledge that, while things were bad for her, they could be infinitely worse.