House of Sticks Read online

  ‘What’s with the microphone?’ Mel whispered.

  ‘God knows.’ Bonnie put her chin in her hand and her fingers over her mouth. Don’t laugh.

  The librarian held up the book to show the cover. ‘Can anyone guess what this book is called?’ The speakers crackled, and there was a faint whine of feedback.

  ‘Why is it so loud?’ whispered Mel.

  Bonnie couldn’t answer. She was trying to hold it back, but the laugh was coming over her like something involuntary. Don’t laugh, don’t laugh. But it was like a sneeze, a building urge, tickling up between her ribs and towards her throat.

  ‘That’s right!’ boomed the librarian. ‘It’s The Three Little Pigs!’ On the hiss at the end of pigs the feedback took off properly, in a slashing shriek that sent one little girl crying to her mother. The rest of the children sat as though stunned.

  ‘Jesus,’ muttered Mel.

  Bonnie, tears in her eyes, tried to clear her throat, but it didn’t work — the laugh took hold. She tried to disguise it as a cough, but it broke through, shook its way out in a series of breathy, strangled sounds. ‘Excuse me.’ She got up and shuffled, bent over, past the row of other parents perched on tiny chairs, to the shelter of the nearest shelves, where she turned her back and tried to smother with both hands great shuddering gusts of laughter that racked her like sobs.

  ‘Once upon a time …’ thundered the voice behind her. Bonnie buried her face in the crook of her arm and braced her other hand on her knees. She hadn’t laughed like this since the last time she was stoned, however long ago that was.

  ‘You okay?’ She felt Mel beside her, touching her arm.

  ‘Yeah,’ she said, straightening and wiping her eyes. ‘Sorry. I just couldn’t stop laughing.’ She peered between the shelves. ‘The kids okay?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Mel, peering too. ‘I’m so paranoid now at this library.’

  ‘Me too.’ Bonnie watched Edie and Louie sitting together, mouths agape, eyes scanning as the librarian turned the pages. She felt the last of the laugh go out of her like the final zip of air from a let-go balloon. ‘How long ago was that now?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Mel. ‘Must be a while. A year?’

  ‘Yeah. Still freaks me out though.’ She glanced from the twins to the pram parked behind the row of parents. The mound of blankets was peacefully still, one tiny hand just visible, loosely curled. ‘Was it … was it actually a … rape?’ Her stomach twisted as she said the word. ‘Or was it just an … assault?’

  ‘I think it was a rape. Well, that’s what was in the papers anyway.’

  ‘God. That poor child. And her parents. I mean, obviously it would be just completely devastating for something like that to happen anywhere, but I guess you think … well, the library’s always felt like such a safe place.’

  ‘I know. I used to leave Freddie in the kids’ area while I went off to get my own books.’ Mel made a face. ‘Josh’d kill me if he knew.’ She sighed. ‘Oh well. Not any more.’

  ‘No way.’

  ‘And now,’ the librarian was saying, disentangling herself at last from the headset, ‘we’re going to make some pigs of our own. We’re each going to get one paper plate …’

  ‘Do you think we’re too paranoid?’ Bonnie said, as she and Mel went back over to the children.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Nobody worried about stuff like that when we were kids. I can remember sitting in the car for ages outside the shops waiting for my dad. And I reckon I was going to the milk bar by myself when I was not much older than these guys. Okay, maybe more like seven — but still, I can’t imagine letting Edie or Lou, even in another couple of years …’

  ‘Yeah, but …’ Mel looked up from where she was crouched beside Freddie, a pink pipe-cleaner between her fingers. ‘Just because our parents didn’t worry about it doesn’t mean bad things didn’t happen. It’s just not worth the risk, is it? That’s what it comes down to.’

  Outside the cafe around the corner Bonnie opened her coat, lifted her jumper and latched Jess on. Her exposed skin tightened with the cold. ‘God,’ she said, ‘it’s freezing.’

  ‘Sure is. Here.’ Mel scooted her seat closer and grabbed the edge of Bonnie’s coat, pulling it around and tucking it into the top of her jeans. ‘How’s that?’

  ‘Better. Thanks.’

  ‘No worries.’ Mel glanced over to the three older children, who were on a bench with their paper-plate pigs. ‘Freddie,’ she called, ‘if you sit like that you’re very likely to fall over backwards.’ She resettled in her seat. ‘So, what else is news?’

  ‘Nothing much. Doug’s back.’

  ‘Pete’s friend?’

  ‘Yeah. You remember — you met him at that barbeque that time. You said you thought he had, you know, personality border whatsit.’

  ‘Oh yeah, him. I thought they had a falling-out.’

  ‘God, I don’t know.’ Bonnie looked down at Jess. ‘I mean, they did. But now he’s back. I think that’s what Doug does — he goes from friend to friend, sort of insinuating himself, and then because he’s so hard to be around eventually there’s a fight of some sort and he goes off in a huff. And moves on to the next person, I guess.’

  ‘Yeah, right. Must be annoying.’

  ‘The problem is … Well, it’s what you said, really: the boundaries aren’t clear. He’s Pete’s friend but he’s also working for Pete. And Pete’s kind of giving him the work as a favour. I mean, I don’t think he’s really qualified to do what he’s doing. God, he annoys me. He does —’ She found herself glancing around, leaning forward, lowering her voice. ‘He does all this really annoying kind of powerplay stuff, acting like he’s the lackey and we’re high and mighty — you know, calls me Missus Bonnie and stuff like that. Like it’s a joke but sort of actually having a go at me. Know what I mean? And then he’ll have a go at Pete in front of me, I don’t know, criticise his haircut or something, like that’s funny.’

  ‘That sounds really irritating.’

  The man from the cafe came out with a tray.

  ‘Kids!’ called Mel. ‘Babycinos!’

  Bonnie lifted her glass carefully over Jess and sipped. ‘It wasn’t so bad,’ she hissed, as the children ran over and started clambering onto chairs, ‘before we moved, when Pete had his old workshop. But now, because they’re right there in the backyard, Doug’s — well, he’s always hanging around the house, playing with the kids, and — look, I’m sure he’s totally harmless, not, you know, pervey or anything, but I feel like I have to, you know, supervise.’

  ‘Where’s my coffee?’ said Edie.

  ‘I don’t know, darling,’ said Bonnie, lifting Jess to her shoulder and fixing her own clothes. ‘They must’ve forgotten it.’

  ‘But I don’t have a coffee.’

  ‘Hang on, darling.’ She got up. ‘I’ll go and see what’s happened to it.’ She stood for a moment looking at Mel. ‘I mean the whole thing’s just really stressful.’

  Back at the house the twins started up again at the sight of Doug’s van.

  ‘Douggie! Douggie! Douggie!’

  Bonnie parked the car and swung around in her seat. ‘Listen,’ she said. ‘Doug is here to do some work for Dad, okay? He’s not here to play with you guys. I want you to leave him alone, okay?’

  ‘Douggie! Douggie!’

  ‘Edie! Louie!’ They both had that same little knot of resistance between their brows. She raised her own eyebrows. ‘Okay?’

  ‘Okay,’ said Louie.

  ‘But he plays with us,’ said Edie. ‘And he reads us books.’

  ‘I know he does. But the thing is … Look. Doug — he gets distracted. You know, like when I ask you guys to do something, like put your shoes on. And you go to put your shoes on but then you get distracted — you see a boo
k or a toy and you start playing.’ She kept shifting her eyes from Edie’s face to Louie’s and back again. ‘And I know you mean to put your shoes on, it’s just —’

  ‘Can I have my library books?’ said Edie.

  Bonnie sighed.

  ‘Can I have mine too?’ said Louie.

  ‘Please, Mum?’

  ‘Please, Mum?’

  She turned back in her seat, pulled the keys out of the ignition, started gathering up the bags. ‘Just please try to leave Doug alone, you guys, okay?’

  ‘Can we have our library books? Please?’

  ‘When we get inside.’ She opened the car door and tried to heave herself out holding all the bags and a bundle of coats. The nappy bag slid off her shoulder and onto the road. ‘Shit.’

  ‘Oh, can’t we just hold them now?’

  ‘Please, Mum?’

  ‘When we get inside.’ She bent to pick up the nappy bag. The string handles of the two library bags were cutting into her forearm.

  ‘Just one book then.’

  ‘Edie! Louie!’ Bonnie rearranged everything she was holding and leaned back into the car. ‘Sorry, guys, it’s just that your books are inside your library bags and look how much I’m carrying — I just can’t get a book out for you right now, but when we’re inside I’ll get them all out and we’ll read some of them, okay?’ She looked from face to face, the two knotted frowns. ‘Okay?’

  Edie sighed. ‘All right then.’

  ‘Let’s go outside,’ said Louie to Edie. ‘Let’s play Teacher, Teacher on the trampoline.’

  ‘Have you finished your lunch?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Okay. Hang on a sec and I’ll help you put on some jumpers.’

  Bonnie scraped the plates and stacked them, poured Edie’s half-finished milk into the cup with the rest of Louie’s and put it in the fridge for later.

  She found jumpers and made the twins put them on. Wiped Louie’s nose. Looked out and checked that the workshop doors were shut. Machine noises came from in there, and Doug’s voice, raised in some exclamation or punchline.

  Out the twins ran, overstuffed figures in their warm clothes. She shut the door behind them and stood at the glass pane, nose to the top of Jess’s head. She watched them bounce on the trampoline, round and round in some game of their own invention. ‘Teacher, teacher,’ they chanted. A plastic spade, faded red, lay in the middle of the black mat, bobbling and flipping. There was a moment’s pause while Edie made some adjustment to it, and then they resumed.

  Bonnie let her gaze drift past them, down the side of the workshop to the bare limbs of the back-fence wisteria vine, its knobby grey joints and snaking fingers, and then higher, to the roof of the neighbours’ house with its usual fat pigeon shapes, and the cold sky behind. She breathed Jess’s smell again. Tears came to her eyes. What was wrong with her? Maybe she was going to get her period. She turned and scanned the kitchen. She should do a proper tidy-up before dinner. Finish off the breakfast dishes. And go to the supermarket. She went to the bench and looked at the shopping list. Most of it was in Pete’s writing. She picked up the pen, dashed her eyes around the room, saw the fruit bowl with its two pallid oranges and scribbled fruit. Then she let the pen slip from her fingers, hitched Jess to her shoulder and wandered further into the house.

  She settled Jess on her play mat and opened the laptop. There was an email from Mickey. Recording? read the subject line. Bonnie felt a fizz of happiness, pure and straight. She opened the email.

  Hey Bon, hope all’s well. Got some recording coming up, mid August. Couple of tracks I’d love you to play on if you can. Let me know, Mickey xx

  She felt her face split into a grin. She read the email again. Hope twirled through her. August. A month away. Jess would be just about six months, starting solids, not needing so many breastfeeds. Only a couple of tracks — she could knock it over in an afternoon, if Mickey gave her demos so she could prepare. She shut the computer and got up. Went past Jess kicking on the floor and to the mantelpiece mirror. Lifted her hair, bundled it into a topknot. Let it fall. Tried to close her mouth over that grin. Shook her head. This is nothing, she said to herself. A titbit, a morsel. One little recording session, and she was all atremble. She ducked her head from her own eager reflection.

  But she could feel it still, like it hadn’t been — what? — almost a year. Stepping into the overdub booth and putting on the headphones, her heart in her throat every time. The song beginning, that choking feeling as she laid her fingers on the strings, before the first note sounded. Doubt and nerves always almost swamping her, but then that blank moment of launching into it, the strange lost second as her brain slid into some kind of neutral gear and her hands just took over. The riffs in her headphones merging with the drums and bass and rhythm guitar tracks, moving amongst them and then detaching, rising up and then swooping back down again.

  ‘Mum!’ came a yell from the back door. ‘Louie’s stuck in the apricot tree! And he keeps kicking me when I want to climb!’

  Jess was beginning to whinge. ‘Coming,’ called Bonnie. She picked the baby up and headed for the kitchen.

  At five-thirty Pete came in with Doug. Bonnie, rocking Jess in the pram in the living room, heard the jingle of the back-door bells, and Doug finishing a story.

  ‘… worked with it all his life, and you know what he died of? Heart attack. Must’ve been eighty at least. Strong as an ox.’

  ‘Yeah, right,’ came Pete’s voice, benignly uninterested.

  Doug went on. She could picture him, the way he hovered, talking at you, head angled, as if aiming the words. ‘Anyway, I reckon it’s all a big fucken beat-up by the media. You wait, next they’ll be trying to tell us what sort of paint we can and can’t use —’

  ‘Bon?’ called Pete, talking right over him.

  ‘In here.’

  Pete came into the living room. ‘Hi.’

  ‘Hi.’ She nodded at the pram and rolled her eyes. ‘I’m just trying to get her to sleep. She’s been up all afternoon.’

  ‘Where’re the others?’

  ‘In the bath.’

  Pete slung an arm around her neck, kissed her cheek. ‘Had a good day?’

  She made a groaning sound. ‘Okay,’ she said, leaning into him. ‘I’m tired. Got up too early. Jess’s been a bit nuts. And the others’ve just been fighting all day. I tried to take them to the shops on their scooters, but Louie fell over and hurt his knee so we came straight back.’

  ‘Is he okay?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, he’s fine — just a scrape. And then I sent them out the back to play, and Edie figured out how to turn the tap on so they got themselves soaked.’ She gave a dry little laugh. ‘I was wondering why they were being so quiet.’

  Pete laughed with her. ‘Little buggers.’

  ‘What’s that?’ It was Doug standing in the doorway. He was drinking one of Pete’s Coronas.

  ‘Oh, nothing,’ said Pete. ‘Just the kids getting into trouble.’

  ‘Well, I remember when we were kids, growing up in Ballarat,’ said Doug, moving into the room. ‘On Sat’dy afternoons me gran used to give me and me brothers and sisters twenty cents each and say, “Go on — bugger off till teatime.”’

  Pete didn’t answer.

  ‘Really?’ said Bonnie unwillingly. She looked down at Jess. The baby’s eyes were closed. She slowed her rocking, then stopped it. Jess’s eyes opened and she squirmed and gave a squawk. ‘God,’ said Bonnie, and started rocking again. The pram creaked rhythmically.

  ‘What’s that you’re doing there?’ Doug stepped closer and craned over the pram. ‘Trying to give the kid brain damage?’

  ‘I’m just trying to get her to go to sleep.’ She felt herself shrinking away from him, lowering her gaze. Pete’s arm still lay acro
ss her shoulders. It felt heavy. He was staring into space, she could tell, not listening to either her or Doug. How did he manage to just switch off like that? She kept her eyes fixed on the pram, on Jess. ‘She seems to like quite big rocking movements.’ Irritation quivered in her throat, tickled her palms. She gripped the handle harder. Just shut up. Stop explaining.

  ‘What’s wrong with a bit of brandy in the milk, eh?’ Doug threw out his elbows and laughed.

  She made a wan ‘Ha’ sound and bent further over Jess to hide how mean and pinched her put-on smile was. ‘Pete?’ She tried to speak as if Doug wasn’t there. ‘Would you mind checking on Edie and Lou?’

  ‘Sure.’ He gave her shoulder a squeeze and went out of the room.

  ‘Ahh,’ said Doug, draining the beer. He tapped himself on the chest with a fist and held the empty bottle up to the light. ‘I do like a beer at the end of a hard day’s work. Especially when it’s someone else’s nice fancy beer.’

  Bonnie looked at him. He gave an exaggerated wink. The irritation rose again. Her fingers felt numb, swollen with it. Tell him to buy his own bloody beer. But all she did was make that stupid little ‘Ha’ sound again, smile that uptight smile.

  Doug continued to hold the bottle level with his face. ‘I notice you’re all out of limes though. To stick in the neck, you know. Like a real wanker.’ He kept his eyes on the bottle.

  Something cold clenched in her stomach. He hates me, she thought. She watched Jess and slowed her rocking. Please don’t wake up. Jess stirred, eyelids fluttering. Bonnie gave the pram a couple of last, slow rocks and then stopped. The baby turned her head to the other side. Her eyelids settled. Carefully Bonnie started wheeling the pram to the doorway. ‘I might just put her in the bedroom,’ she heard herself say to Doug, as if he’d give a fuck. ‘It’s quieter in there.’

  Back in the kitchen Pete was looking in the fridge. He shut the door and turned as she came in.

  ‘Oh god, sorry,’ she said, stopping and putting her hands on the back of a chair. ‘I meant to do the shopping. But Louie hurt his knee and then I kept thinking Jess would go to sleep …’ For the third time that day tears threatened. She rubbed her face, swallowed them back down. ‘Sorry, Pete.’ I think I’m getting my period, she would have said, but she was aware of Doug there somewhere, listening, in the living room still, or in the hallway behind her.