Chapter 3
CHAPTER 3
‘ G reat news,’ I said to Matthew when he phoned after Mum left. ‘Remember Fern, my friend at Image Ink? I saw her at Angus’s swimming class today and she’s hired me to do some photography on one of her titles in the lead up to Christmas. Starting tomorrow.’ Breath steady. Voice upbeat. Positive. ‘How about dinner out tonight to celebrate?’
Pause.
‘Tonight’s tricky, hon, with the Americans in town. I was hoping you might?—’
‘Matthew!’
‘Just informal Aussie home-cooking, easy wining and dining. Don’t go to any trouble… but they need to eat. I promise we’ll celebrate your new job another night.’
A simple dinner party for six. Sure, no trouble.
I bundled Angus into the car and drove to the local shops to pick up a few extras, like a main course, then rushed home and set about creating the perfect dinner for guests from overseas, who were expecting a home-cooked Australian meal. I marinated a whole snapper in white wine with ginger and garlic, baked a pavlova with a Cointreau sauce and created a blender full of sublime mango cocktails. Perfect.
I set the dining table and even managed a passable festive theme: green-and-white crockery, sage candles, and a centrepiece of red holly sprigs and miniature pine cones. With these organisational skills, maybe I’d manage my return to working life after all.
I was in control and on schedule. In fact, so ahead of schedule, I picked up my phone to play Wordle. And then Lexi bowled into the kitchen.
I stood, open-mouthed. ‘Your hair…’ Honey-blonde since birth, Lexi’s hair was now blue-black.
She brushed past, ignoring my horror, and opened the fridge door. ‘There’s nothing to eat,’ she moaned, despite me having spent several hundred dollars at the supermarket that afternoon. She slammed the door and began rummaging in the pantry.
‘Lexi…’ I bit my tongue and busied myself at the kitchen sink, studying the label on the dishwashing powder. Hmm. Lemon fresh. Fabulous.
She ripped open a packet of double-coated Tim Tams. The top two buttons of her white school shirt were undone, and I swear I could see her rapidly developing breasts swelling before my eyes. Though Lexi has lovely cotton bras, today, for some reason, she was bra-less. And then there was her barely-there skirt, which rode up around her backside.
‘Want to talk about it?’
She rolled her eyes. ‘Mum! Blonde hair is so yesterday. Have you seen Billie? Her hair’s awesome.’
‘I don’t care about the other girls in your class…’
She dismissed me with a laugh. ‘Billie Eilish’s a singer!’
‘Lexi—’
‘It’s my hair. Anyway, it’s done now. ’
‘Don’t speak to me like that,’ I said, voice loud and sharp. ‘And why aren’t you wearing your retainer? We didn’t spend six thousand dollars on braces to have you?—’
She held up half a biscuit. ‘Eating!’
‘Ahem.’ Matthew and the Americans had arrived.
Immediately, I framed them, taking a mental snapshot: two fresh-faced women, one brunette, one flaxen, both wearing twinsets and elegant jewellery as if they’d stepped out of Ladies’ Home Journal , circa 1965; and two overweight middle-aged men wearing baggy stone-washed denim jeans, white sandshoes and matching Utah baseball caps. I was also wearing jeans, but at least they weren’t stone-washed.
I switched to hostess mode. ‘Lovely to meet you.’
Lexi disappeared upstairs without another word, but within seconds, angry music (I guessed Billie) was blaring from her bedroom.
While Matthew settled everyone into the lounge room and calmly asked Lexi to turn her music down, I busied myself in the kitchen, pouring chilled mango cocktails. I sipped one to test it.
I’d really outdone myself. They were magnificent.
I walked in with the drinks, and everyone took one. Smiling, one of the men asked what was in them.
‘Summer mangoes.’ I grinned. ‘And champagne.’
They put their glasses down in unison as if I’d said the drinks contained rat poison.
Matthew ushered me into the kitchen. ‘What’s wrong with you?’ he demanded through gritted teeth. ‘They’re Mormons. They don’t drink alcohol.’
I gulped some mango mix. ‘Pardon?’
‘I said, They. Are. Mormons. No. Alcohol.’
‘Matthew, you said you were bringing home colleagues from America for an Australian home-cooked meal. Easy wining and dining, you said. So, naturally I thought we’d be wining and dining .’
The shock of Matthew telling me our guests didn’t drink alcohol, at all – never ever – sent me into a spin. My wine-marinated fish, my Cointreau-soaked pav. Tia Maria Tim Tams!
He squeezed my shoulder and pulled a face. ‘My bad. I’ll fix it.’
When he walked back into the living room, I heard him apologise about the liquor misstep, and ask our guests what they’d like to drink instead. The women opted for club soda, and the men – diet Pepsi, please .
Pulling several lamb cutlets from the fridge, I threw them on a plate, then gave the appetisers the once-over. I crossed my fingers our guests wouldn’t be offended by Kangaroo Island brie and kalamata olives.
I stared around the kitchen, desperate to find something to do – anything to delay the inevitable. But given I’d prepared the salads, and the garlic and rosemary potatoes were baking in the oven, I could procrastinate no longer.
I hadn’t taken my seat with the group when Angus and Rupert came barrelling into the lounge room, followed by Lexi shouting, ‘Freak! I’m going to kill you.’
I assume she meant her brother, not the labradoodle.
After dragging them out, all the while smiling at our guests, I threatened them (again, not Rupert) with ongoing pain and torture for the rest of their lives if they didn’t behave.
‘Only the two children?’ Ruth, the brunette, asked after I’d re-joined them.
‘Yes, thankfully. More and I’d kill myself.’
‘We have six,’ Ruth chirped, before smiling at one of the cap-wearers seated to her left.
‘Six!’ I spluttered.
‘We have seven,’ Sandi chimed in .
They both looked too neat to have given birth to any children.
‘And you don’t drink alcohol? You don’t ever feel the urge to scoff liquor-filled chocolates?’
The evening remained a tragedy. While the men busied themselves at the barbecue cooking lamb cutlets and plain beef sausages (thin), I attempted to find some common ground with the women. But all my standard conversation starters were stoppers at this particular dinner party. I asked if they skied. They lived in Utah after all. No. ‘Been to the Sundance Film Festival?’ Nada. New York? Los Angeles? San Francisco? Nope. Maybe scrapbooking and needlepoint were more their thing. Although with so many children between them, maybe all their energy went into keeping house, as Blanche, no doubt, would have recommended.
I had to keep pinching myself to stay awake and animated, especially after Matthew gave me the sly thumbs up and took the men into the games room to play pool. I almost wished Lexi would have one of her meltdowns so I could be excused, but she remained curiously silent.
I contemplated bringing out the Family Conversation Starters cards, a Mother’s Day gift from Matthew – an implication that familial relations needed improvement? I don’t think the cards had quite the effect on the family he’d been hoping for; whenever the cards surfaced, bickering ensued, resulting in food fights and at least one of us stomping off to bed. We’d had some terrific fights over those cards. As recently as two weeks ago, I’d pulled them out during a lacklustre Sunday evening roast.
‘ I would love my family to…? ’ I asked Lexi.
‘Fuck off,’ she’d replied. Even Lexi seemed surprised when that answer popped out of her mouth. We promptly confiscated her phone.
But I persevered .
With half an eye on The Great British Bake Off , Matthew pulled out the next card and groaned before reading it aloud. ‘ The family member with the most annoying habit is… ’
Lexi jumped in quickly with, ‘I absolutely know the answer to this one. Please! It’s Angus because he’s?—’
‘Don’t say it,’ I warned. Too late.
Lexi shouted over my words. ‘A fuckwit.’
That night, she also lost her non-essential computer privileges for the week.
Okay, so maybe it was best not to drag those cards out tonight.
Over peppermint tea, I talked about how I used to be a mildly successful photographer. ‘But about the only thing I’ve taken photographs of lately is my pregnant sister’s belly, which is getting increasingly enormous every day.’
‘I refuse to take snaps of the actual birth,’ I soldiered on after Sandi showed a flicker of interest. ‘Too much blood, and as for the greasy mucus and the placenta – well, you both know how gruesome that is.’ I took a breath, then babbled, ‘But she’s a crazy influencer. May insist on me filming the whole thing.’
Somebody shoot me.
It was well past midnight by the time I’d finished clearing up after the disastrous dinner. Before heading to bed, I made the school lunches, put on a load of washing, fed the pets and put out the garbage.
Cleo sat with me as I wrote an extensive to-do list for Matthew for the following day. He’d offered to get the children off to school. I kissed her nose. ‘Yeah, we’ll see how it goes.’
Upstairs, I peered in at Lexi. She looked almost angelic, curled up asleep. Normally, she hid her cuddly toys in the cupboard but tonight she’d surrounded herself with them. It was too dark to see her hair colour, so I walked out of her room pretending she was still a honey-blonde. I loved her, but sometimes…
I was greeted in the master bedroom by a snoring husband. Several lights were on. Clothes were strewn across the floor, and he’d left the drawers open. I climbed in next to him and flicked on my computer to watch the news with the sound down low.
A young man with a huge smile and tidy hair had been arrested for his mother’s murder. I wondered what her crime had been. Perhaps making him do his homework when he was a child or forcing him to eat carrots? I’d given up trying to make Angus and Lexi eat vegetables. I knew I’d never win any Mother of the Year awards but hopefully my behaviour wasn’t so appalling that years down the track my children would conspire to kill me.
After I finally switched off the light, I lay awake worrying I’d forgotten an after-school activity, money for an excursion, cat food or something. Then I agonised over what to wear for my first day. I was scared that after years away from real photography work, I’d have lost the spark, the gift I once had for knowing the exact second to click the shutter to capture the perfect poignant moment.