The Grass Castle (6 page)

They could both remember when nobody wore the pants and it was all about harmony and survival, keeping their mother afloat. ‘Maybe she was the best on offer,’ Abby suggests. ‘I mean, after Mum.’

Matt’s mouth is hard and straight. ‘Brenda just spread her legs the furthest.’

They swing into the farm driveway and jolt up the rutted drive. ‘How long since they had the grader in?’ Abby asks.

‘Who knows.’ Matt’s face shines green in the dashboard light. ‘I try not to come here. Only emergencies, like now.’

‘You coming inside?’

He shakes his head. ‘I’ll leave it to you.’

‘Thanks. Such a kind brother.’

He chuckles, pulling up in front of the house.

The movement of the car trips the sensors and the outside lights flare suddenly, flooding the house, the yard and the turning circle. Even in the dark, the sight of home tugs at Abby. There’s something reassuring about returning to the place of your roots—a sweet twist of nostalgia tangled with good memories. Your mind blanks out the bad. And it’s just as well.

She lingers for a moment in the car with Matt, psyching herself up to face Brenda. The familiarity of the house steadies her. It snuggles in its hillside nest, somehow solid and unchanging. The oaks reach their leafy arms over the roof as if in a protective embrace, and around the house, the garden rambles and leaps in its usual chaos. Brenda has tried to alter the rustic look of the place, but even her gargantuan efforts can’t contain the garden. The veranda remains cluttered with chairs and gumboots, brooms and rakes, just as it was in Abby’s childhood. Brenda has managed to subdue the mess inside the house, but out here, Abby’s father remains in charge. The past continues to hover, and this is reassuring.

Abby opens the car door. ‘Thanks for the lift,’ she says to Matt.

He nods. ‘When are you heading back?’

‘Hopefully tomorrow or the next day. I’ll see how things go. I have an open ticket.’

‘Give me a call. I’ll take you to the bus.’

She gets out, hoicks her case from the back seat.

‘Good luck,’ he says. ‘Hope Brenda doesn’t cut your throat.’ He chuckles. ‘Reckon she’d like to.’

Abby slams the car door, and Matt takes off, spinning his car too fast around the turning circle and deliberately spitting up gravel to leave his signature on the driveway. The headlights roll crazily off the walls of the machinery shed. Then he’s gone, a set of lights bobbing down the driveway.

The front door of the house opens, spilling light.

‘That you out there, Abby?’ Brenda’s thready voice echoes.

Abby turns towards the house. ‘Yeah, it’s me.’

‘Well, don’t just stand out there in the cold. Come on in and have a cuppa.’

Abby steps from the floodlit driveway into the entrance hall of the farmhouse and leaves her luggage by the door before following Brenda into the kitchen. She has never enjoyed Brenda’s company and tonight is no exception. The two of them don’t even pretend at niceties. Step-mothers, Abby tells herself, haven’t changed since Cinderella’s time.

Brenda is a short, rounded woman with a glowing ruddy face and small eyes which glare out at Abby from puffy cheeks criss-crossed by fine broken blood vessels. She’s fat from eating too many of the cakes and desserts she bakes for Steve—at least that’s her excuse. In the kitchen, she folds her arms across her generous bosom and sets her stout legs wide, proclaiming ownership of the house. ‘Did you hear what your father’s been up to?’ she barks.

‘Matt gave me a brief summary,’ Abby says.

‘Sounds like Matt.’ Brenda juts her chin. ‘Brief.’

Abby allows herself a smile. ‘He’s not a man of many words.’

‘Shame I can’t say the same for your father,’ Brenda huffs, filling the kettle. ‘There’s at least one word I’d like to delete from his vocabulary, and that’s your mother’s name. He doesn’t mention it for months then gets drunk and sings it all over town.’

‘You shouldn’t let him go out on the anniversary,’ Abby says. ‘That date just brings everything up again.’

‘Don’t I know it! Though God knows why he’d want to sing about her. She wasn’t much of a wife or mother, from what I hear.’

‘Don’t talk about things you don’t know,’ Abby says stiffly, suppressing a flash of anger and refusing to give Brenda the satisfaction of a response. They’ve been through this before and it gets them nowhere. ‘Where’s Dad?’ she asks.

Brenda sets the kettle on the stove and nods towards the hallway. ‘He’s licking his wounds in the spare room. Not allowed out till he’s made a full apology.’

Abby ignores this last part. ‘Think I’ll go and see him.’

Brenda raises supercilious eyebrows. ‘You don’t want a cuppa first?’

Abby shakes her head. ‘Maybe later.’ Maybe
never
with you, she thinks. How has her father fallen so low?

She wanders down the hall to Matt’s old bedroom. Her father is lying on the bed, hands behind his head, staring at the ceiling, just as her mother used to in times of illness. Brenda’s cooking has thickened his waistline and he’s no longer as thin and wiry as he used to be. ‘Hey,’ she says, shutting the door and sitting on the edge of the bed.

He looks at her without smiling and she notices the silver hair multiplying at his temples, invading the thick crop of black that springs from his scalp. The frown lines between his eyes are deeper than she remembers. ‘Where did you come from?’ he mumbles.

‘Came to dig you out of trouble.’

He winces. ‘Got an excavator?’

‘It’s hard to organise one at this time of night.’

‘No doubt she’s told you what happened.’

‘You’re supposed to serenade people when they’re
alive
,’ Abby says. ‘How much did you have to drink?’

He shrugs. ‘Lost count.’

‘Great.’

He frowns. ‘Don’t judge me. The drinking only started when your mother died.’

‘So it’s her fault now, is it? The way you’ve ended up?’

He glares at her.

‘How are you going to make it up with Brenda?’

He scowls. ‘Can’t bring myself to do it.’

‘She’s hurting. You’ve humiliated her.’

‘Don’t tell me,’ he says. ‘I don’t want to hear it.’

Abby can’t believe she’s sticking up for that woman. But she knows how hopeless her father is when he’s on his own. He gets lonely, doesn’t eat properly, drinks too much, doesn’t shower often enough. The sad fact is he needs someone to look after him.

‘Did you hear where she made me sleep?’ her father says.

‘What do you mean
made
you? Or were you too drunk to get yourself out of there?’

He closes his eyes. ‘Too drunk.’

Abby shakes her head, disgusted. ‘No wonder she’s pissed off.’

‘But the chook shed,’ he says, with emphasis.

Abby sympathises, but she can just imagine how he must have been the other night, too drunk to walk. She wonders how Brenda got him home, tries to picture her swinging him into the car, pushing him in with her knee. She thinks of them stumbling down to the chook shed: Brenda strengthened by rage, dragging her father along. Abby can see where Brenda’s cruelty might come from—who wants to live in a small town with a drunkard?

‘I’m not always like this,’ her father mumbles, eyes still closed. ‘Just once a year. I miss your mother. Don’t you?’

‘Yes,’ Abby says. ‘I miss her. But she’s not coming back and this doesn’t fix anything. And when you’re ready we’ll practise an apology. I’m not going anywhere till we’ve got this sorted.’

He opens one eye and peers at her. ‘How about I come and live with you?’

She gives him a sharp-edged grin. ‘Not an option. I live in a shoe box. There simply isn’t room.’

‘You’re right,’ he says with a self-deprecating smile. ‘It wouldn’t work. You don’t cook well enough. And how would I survive without my desserts?’

Abby pokes the soft layer of fat over his ribs. ‘A diet might be good for you.’

He chuckles and Abby is pleased to see his sense of humour re-emerging. ‘I’m with Garfield on this one,’ he says. ‘Now that Brenda has converted me to sweets, the word diet has become die with a t.’

5

Abby spends the night in her childhood bedroom . . . although it’s not really hers anymore, Brenda has stamped herself all over the place. That was the hardest thing to accept: Brenda’s efforts to rub out all evidence of Grace’s existence. Matt won’t come here anymore; he doesn’t like Brenda and refuses to pretend. Abby doesn’t like her much either, but she accepts
that Brenda is something they have to endure.

Before Brenda, Abby lost count of the women who passed through her father’s life. She had moved to Melbourne to study science, so she wasn’t around when Brenda began to feature. Matt told her all about it though. He couldn’t believe he was meant to take Brenda seriously. Abby tried to counsel him from afar, which wasn’t easy, given his aversion to chatting on the phone.

Then Brenda moved in to the farmhouse and took over. Next she tried to bulldoze the rest of the family. She had offspring of her own who Abby and Matt were expected to like. Abby recognised that her father had no choice. Brenda’s grown children were in the farmhouse all the time so he had to accept them. But Matt was furious. He resented that Steve saw more of Brenda’s family than he did of his own.

Gatherings were planned, and Abby was expected to come from the city to attend. It annoyed her that she and Matt were supposed to join in and play happy families. They were supposed to stand by and watch Brenda’s kids bagging Steve out. It was humiliating. Brenda and her family laughed at him, denigrated him, made him look small. Abby tried to switch off, and Matt fumed, barely containing a violent eruption, while Steve watched on with a glass of beer in his hand and a detached, bemused smile on his face. Abby concluded that although Brenda’s family was a twisted nasty lot, her father had grown tired of living on his own. It seemed he was prepared to stomach put-downs and derogatory digs as a trade-off for leaving loneliness behind.

Then they were married. Matt refused to go to the wedding and Abby couldn’t blame him. She went only to remind Brenda that Steve had a life and family before her. It was a strangely tragic day: watching her father relinquish his independence and his past for a compromised future.

But despite Brenda’s efforts, there’s obviously a corner of her father’s soul that hasn’t been subdued—he shows it every year on the anniversary of Grace’s death—and this brings Abby a significant degree of smug satisfaction. Brenda has done her utmost to delete Abby’s mother—she’s bought new furniture, new drapes, new carpet, had the kitchen renovated—but Grace is still with them. There’s no escape. While Brenda is living with Steve, Abby’s mother will always be present. This is Abby’s consolation.

Abby’s family has lived in this staid brick farmhouse for twenty-five years. They moved here after Matt was born—at least that’s what Gran said. Before that they were living in the flat suburbs of Melbourne where Abby’s father worked as an accountant and her mother taught at the local primary school.

Abby still remembers the day Gran presented a tray of scones with jam and cream for afternoon tea and sat down to explain how Abby’s family was different. Abby was eight and already aware that her home life wasn’t like everyone else’s. Until then she’d simply accepted it, but Gran said there were things she should know.

Apparently Abby’s parents were ‘normal’ until Matt arrived. Then Grace became depressed like many other first-time mums. Medications prescribed by the doctor didn’t seem to work. Grace tried to care for Matt, but simply couldn’t do it. Gran offered to help, but the family house in Melbourne was small and Abby’s father hadn’t seemed receptive, so Gran had given what support she could from her home in Mansfield—listening to Abby’s dad’s concerns over the phone. It hadn’t been easy for Gran to stay away while her daughter’s life fell apart, yet she had to allow them their independence, at least initially.

As the weeks passed, Steve had become increasingly desperate, living in a filthy house full of flies and dirty nappies and stale milk and food left on the kitchen table. Gran heard about it all. She said Steve had feared for Matt’s safety while he was away during the day. But what could he do? He had to work to bring in money and pay the mortgage. Gran was afraid for Matt too. She was worried Grace might forget the baby when she drifted away—let him drown in the bath. From what Steve had described, Grace was completely disconnected from the baby, unmoved by him.