CHAPTER 19 #2
I falter a little when I talk to Brian about breaking the lease.
He tells me he’ll have to be in touch with Bee to see if she wants to renew on her own or with someone else.
He assures me she’ll be able to stay. It does still remind me that I’m saddling her with the entirety of the rent, forcing her to either getin some creep off a flatmate finder or move out elsewhere.
And then I remember she told everyone at school about my mum’s gambling problems, and I don’t feel quite so bad.
The night before the move, I panic. The heart-palpitating, hands-shaking, uncontrollable-crying, shortness-of-breath kind of panic.
My fingers don’t feel like my own; I can’t clench them and I definitely can’t keep my phone still enough to open one of those calming meditation apps Bee told me to download.
I wish I could call Arthur. But even if that were an option, it’s probably better that I don’t. I need to learn how to deal with me by myself without my emotional-support hot man, and now’s as good a time as any.
It takes about four hours, but I exhaust myself to sleep with the light still on, surrounded by my little box city—an entire life tucked away into twelve little cubes.
When I dream, I’m transported back to my childhood home.
Except I’m barricaded inside, and a swarm of zombies (no clue where this comes from) are trying to fight their way in.
Modern houses are not made to withstand this kind of assault, and I’ve been cornered into the upstairs toilet, the only room without windows…
and then I hear groaning on the other side of the door.
It probably would have been better to just not sleep.
‘Why are you yawning so much?’ Stewart asks as we stand behind his ute, looking at my cubed life and dismantled bed. He has agreed to transport all my stuff to the new house in exchange for a bottle of mid-priced bourbon.
‘No reason,’ I reply.
I ask him to give me a minute, and I go back up the stairs for the last time. My room looks so much bigger now that it’s empty. Even after a good vacuum, the carpet that was once covered by my bed is darker than the rest.
The rest of the house looks the same. I don’t know how that makes me feel.
I take the key off my keyring and place it on the kitchen bench, then take a note out of my pocket and unfold it so it’s impossible to miss. I spent probably two hours writing it, starting at around five-thirty once I managed to shake off the zombies and gave up all hope of actual rest.
It’s very short given the length of time I worked on it. It is very intentionally neutral and unemotional. Or in other words it makes me sound like a cold-hearted bitch.
Bee,
First, I want you to know that I am truly sorry for the way I have chosen to do this.
I am not blind to the fact that this will be a massive inconvenience for you.
But I just couldn’t face you. That might make me pathetic—it probably makes me a lot of things.
I just know I had to do what was best for me.
I have found alternative housing. I have spoken with Brian and paid him directly for next month’s rent. He will be in touch with you this week to discuss your options but is aware and sympathetic of the difficult situation I may have left you in.
I have taken only the possessions I brought with me and gave my room a thorough clean, so it is prepared for another housemate should you take that route.
If you choose to move out as well, I will split the cost of a vacate clean, which Brian will coordinate.
The key left with this note is my only copy.
I want you to know, Bee, that despite everything I truly wish you the very best that life has to offer.
Lots of love,
Gertie
It hurts my heart that things have ended this way—in secret notes and stealth escapes.
I nearly have another panic attack watching Stewart try to park the ute on a narrow Hawthorn street.
There’s not a lot of parking around, and none in front of the house.
I stand on the footpath next to my own car watching him execute a seventeen-point turn and narrowly avoid five fender benders with stationary vehicles.
My new home is long and narrow, crafted from dark brick. Looking at the windows, I quietly ponder the airflow, natural light and consequent mould potential. The front doesn’t look promising.
Then the horn honks a few times in a jaunty tune. ‘Stewart! Think of the neighbours!’
My new housemates have answered the call and spill out the front door.
The six people who follow Nicole, Brooke and, I assume, the third housemate, Nari, are three sets of parents.
I feel a twinge, and it’s kind of like every grandparents (and friends) day at school, when everyone else had someone in the audience of the stupid little concert we subjected them to.
Not that I’d want my parents’ input on the decoration of my house even if given the option. That might involve giving them my address. And listening to my mother’s suggestions on the number of throw pillows required for a bed. (Sixteen, last time I was aware of it.)
One look at Brooke’s parents and I’m no longer worried about mould.
I’m possibly more worried about the quantity of spare keys to this home.
Brooke’s mum is wearing a tweed blazer, a set of pearls around her freckled neck and hot-pink lipstick.
Her hair is perfectly shaped into a very expensively blonde bob.
Her dad is wearing golf gear in clashing patterns that suggest an explosion at the knitting factory.
I’m quickly enveloped into a group hug, then another with Nicole’s parents, who have heard so much about me. And then I’m introduced to Nari and her parents, who display a much more normal level of affection towards their daughter’s new housemate: they wave.
‘No, that’s fine,’ Stewart calls from the back of the ute, where he’s starting to unload everything onto the footpath. ‘I can do this myself.’
‘Is he your boyfriend, love?’ Brooke’s dad asks.
‘No,’ Stewart says. ‘I’m the underpaid help.’
Nicole’s mum claps her hands together. ‘Yes, let’s get all of Gertie’s things inside. Many hands make light work!’ I do note as we all walk towards the car that Brooke and Nicole’s mums hang back and don’t actually use their hands to carry anything inside. I guess we have enough hands without them.
I’m unpacking cutlery (an old set originally bound for Nicole’s parents’ holiday house) with Brooke’s mum (Kate. Her name is Kate, Gertie. Or is that Nicole’s mum?) in the kitchen.
‘So, Gertie, darling, you work at the catering company with the lovely Nic?’ Possibly-Kate is inspecting each knife as she places it in the drawer. Two have been removed from contention for having scratches.
‘Yes, I do,’ I answer.
‘And are you studying as well?’
‘No. I finished my undergrad a few years ago. I’m actually twenty-eight.’
‘Oh!’ Maybe-Kate is shocked but is doing a very good job of schooling her face into a polite smile. ‘Then I must know just what you’re using on your face, Gertie.’
‘Something with vitamin E in it.’ I know she’s not really asking, but I can’t resist. ‘It’s like fifteen bucks a litre from the chemist.’
To Potentially-Kate’s credit, she pretends to search my budget moisturiser on her phone for a minute before we turn the topic other ways. I put away matte black forks one by one, wondering what exactly a twenty-eight-year-old woman is supposed to look like.
Word has clearly spread throughout the house about my age.
Nicole’s dad (John, I’m getting better at this…
only because I heard his wife say it before) uses his drill to speed up the reassembly of my bed.
He’s in construction, although given what I’ve seen of Nicole’s house I feel like it’s more his name on the scaffolding outside of a building site than putting on high-vis and steelcaps every day.
But John’s telling me all of the little projects he wants to do around the house.
A shelf here, some work on the fence. He has talked about it with Brooke’s parents, but apparently he’ll coordinate with me about convenient times to come.
He says I’m more likely to answer his texts than Nicole is.
Whatever has been brought into the house has been assembled, positioned, put away or stored. That leaves us without a couch, TV or entertainment unit and means we have bowls but not plates, spatulas but not whisks, dining chairs but no table. There’s some work to do.
We now have three young women eagerly trying to shuffle lead-footed parents out the door.
Leave us to our independence! Go away! All ten of us are huddled in the entranceway.
Nicole is to call if she needs help using the washing machine for the first time.
And Nari needs to remember to stock the toilet paper in her bathroom.
Brooke needs to understand how much the new carpets cost.
I thought Nari’s parents were the normal ones, but apparently they were just warming up because now her mother has clasped my face between her two hands, and I can smell her breath. ‘We’re so glad you’ll be here looking out for our girls, Gertie. It makes me feel so much better about leaving them!’
‘Not that we’re expecting you to mother them!’ Definitely-Kate says.
‘She should be joining in on whatever trouble they get into!’ John says, nudging me.
‘Please don’t start talking about trouble or I might never leave and end up living on their couch,’ Nicole’s mum (Angela?) cries.
‘Please, Dad,’ Nicole steps between her parents, grabbing each of them by the arm. ‘Stop talking and take Mum home before she follows through on that.’
‘Gertie might want to have her own fun! She’s twenty-eight, John. Not forty,’ Kate says.
‘Of course,’ he replies, nodding furiously. ‘We’d never want to suggest otherwise.’