Morning in Melbourne Read online

“I don’t have any more money to do anything to the house,” said Louise. “It is functional and will have to stay as it is.”

  “Then I suppose it will be up to me to replace it, won’t it?” Jeff looked pleased to be able to identify a mess Louise had created and which he alone could rectify. “I’m leaving on the 18th of February, so that gives me about 6 weeks to rebuild the kitchen. I’ll put in an Ikea kitchen. As soon as I find a job, we can get a place in the States and you can bring the kids over.” Louise listened as Jeff related his plan for their future. “Ikea kitchens are pretty good – you can choose whichever one you like best and I will put it in. It will be fine for a rental property, which is what this place will be.”

  Oh – is that what it will be? Louise thought.

  And Jeff had set to work. He measured the space and drew plans and wrote down figures and made 400 trips to the Richmond Ikea store. It was quite exciting actually. The new kitchen was beautiful and, as soon as they removed the old cupboards and counters, it became apparent that the kitchen floor area was quite large. Not only that, but the removal of the over-hanging cupboards allowed the matching double windows to dominate the room. Suddenly the gloomy, over-built, overly black-and-brown room was awake and alive and alight with sunshine and white enamelled wood with glass front cupboards. Even the floor was a pearly cream-and-grey lino rendition of ceramic tiles.

  And then Jeff had packed his bags and booked his flight.

  “You don’t seem sorry to see me go,” he remarked as he got out of the car at the airport. He had said goodbye to the kids that morning, insisting that they not miss school; and insisted also that Louise drop him off at the airport door, and not park the car.

  “I’m just so relieved that I’m not going too,” answered Louise.

  Jeff looked surprised and disappointed. Louise had spoken without thinking, and while she was sorry her words were so blunt, she had to own them. She hadn’t meant to sound selfish but she couldn’t think of how to soften the message without disowning the sentiment, and it was definitely time to let Jeff see that she had an opinion, and she definitely had a preference for staying – anywhere. Somewhere. Here.

  *

  They’d married in what was to become known as the first year of the drought that plagued Australia for more than a decade. El Nino was named as the culprit, and it was generally regarded as an unusual event, but Louise had spent time in the outback a quarter of a century earlier; had seen the huge, earth-splitting cracks in the land that could only be attributed to unabating dry heat. She remembered the words to a song they’d sung in primary school: “I love a sunburnt country/a land of sweeping plains/of rugged mountain ranges/ of droughts, and flooding rains”. The drought was lauded as the ‘worst on record’; but since the records only went back less than 200 years and the land was three billion years old, that wasn’t saying very much, really.

  Their marriage had shown stress cracks before they moved to Melbourne from Sydney, where they’d been living happily for more than 3 years. Jeff left them in June, the middle of the school year, to take up the new position in Melbourne. Louise and the kids remained in Sydney, in their beautiful home, in their lovely street of familiar neighbours, in their established schools. They were an hour’s drive from Louise’s youngest sister, who lived on the NSW central coast, and just 3 hour’s drive from the rest of Louise’s family in Canberra.

  But Jeff had hated his job in Sydney. He arrived home each day, silent and ashen-faced. Louise became concerned for his health, and when he was offered the job in Melbourne with another company, she wasn’t surprised that he accepted it. Her own part-time job, though professional, didn’t contribute much to the family funds, and they dutifully followed Jeff wherever he decided to go. And he decided to go, on average, every 22 months.

  Jeff had insisted that they sell the home she loved in Braeside St, Wahroonga. He said they couldn’t buy a home in Melbourne until they’d sold the Sydney house. Louise saw the sense in this, but hadn’t anticipated her husband’s ultimate plan: to avoid purchasing a home and just settle the family in a rented house.

  Perhaps it was he who had anticipated the end of the marriage.

  So, they’d sold their gorgeous home in one of the best streets in beautiful Wahroonga for over a million dollars, and moved to Melbourne. It was Christmas, 2003.

  Jeff had rented a house for the family months before they even arrived. “Aren’t we buying a house?” asked Lou.

  “Sure,” said Jeff. “This is just somewhere to live while we are looking.”

  So, Louise started to search for a home to buy. After a year, there was little she didn’t know about property values in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne. But no matter what Louise found, Jeff found fault with it.

  “He’s not going to buy you a house,” her mother explained. “It’s obvious. He’s sending you off on a wild goose chase, looking at houses you want to buy; then rejecting everything you come up with. It keeps you busy, and he can blame you for not finding the perfect house for a price he is willing to pay.” Her mother chuckled. “How dumb are you?”

  Louise was horrified. Mum was right! And looking back over Jeff’s history – he didn’t like buying real estate. Even his parents had never bought a home. When Jeff’s father had left his mother after 30 years of marriage, the only asset they had to split was his retirement account. They’d lived all over the world in ambassadorial residences and had seven kids, but didn’t own a home. Louise shuddered to think of ending up like her mother-in-law, who at 55 had had to start from scratch.

  Why did so many women let the man in their life be the decider of their home address and financial status? Why this clinging to what was surely a medieval attitude – and irrelevant, considering that most marriages last for 9 years yet most people these days live to be 90?

  *

  Louise decided that she was only going to be able to cope with her new life if she dealt with it just one day at a time. Anything more would overwhelm her and add to the already mounting pile of issues that needed to be dealt with urgently.

  “Can I have double bunks?” Peter had never been allowed to have double bunks before, and he was wondering if the new regime meant that previously forbidden items were now allowed.

  “I want to paint my room pink!” Camille had wanted to decorate her bedroom walls for a couple of years now but had been fobbed off with the ‘we can’t, we’re only renting’ rebuff.

  “Will we be keeping the cleaner?” James had his eye firmly affixed to the low maintenance aspects of their new home, and didn’t want to downgrade this aspect of things.

  “We won’t need a cleaner!” Louise was relieved to be able to answer at least one question immediately. “It is a 3 up, 3 down house!”

  “A what?” James asked.

  “The whole house is six rooms!” Louise explained. “There are three bedrooms upstairs, and a lounge room, a kitchen and a fourth bedroom downstairs.”

  “What about the bathrooms and toilet rooms and laundry? Don’t you count them?”

  Louise thought for a minute, then answered, “I don’t think so. I think you assume that those rooms are there. Anyway, the point is that it is a small house and we will clean it ourselves. It’s a life skill.” Seeing James throw back his head and groan, she added “Don’t you want to be an independent adult who can cook and clean for himself?”

  “NO!” said James, loudly.

  *

  The house they were leaving was over-large, and that was the main reason Louise had engaged a cleaner when she had returned to the workforce. It had three separate living areas and 6 bedrooms – all enormous rooms, and on two storeys. All the floors were polished wood and required constant mopping for dust and footprints; and the multiple bathrooms were put to good use and had to be cleaned regularly.

  Originally, Louise had called a cleaning agency to find help. “Dolly’s Dailies” said the female voice on the other end of the line when Louise called the first agency.

  �
��Hello,” said Lou. “I am enquiring about a cleaner. I wondered how much it cost an hour to have my house cleaned.”

  “It’s $30 an hour,” answered the woman. “How many rooms?”

  When Louise described the layout of the house, the woman took a moment to make her calculations before she announced “That will cost $150 a week if you have it cleaned weekly, and $180 a week if you have it done fortnightly.”

  “But isn’t it just an hourly rate?”

  “Yes,” said the woman cautiously, “but for a house that size –“

  “But I only want the bathrooms cleaned. I can vacuum myself.”

  “That will be $90 then.”

  “An hour a bathroom?” Louise couldn’t believe her ears. “It only takes me 20 to 30 minutes per bathroom!”

  “Our minimum charge is for three hours,” the woman informed her.

  “Oh, I see,” said Louise. “Thank you.”

  Louise decided to run an ad of her own in the local paper. It read: “Cleaner wanted to clean 3 bathrooms and vacuum large home, all wooden floors. $50 a week.” She figured that the agency only paid the cleaner a portion of the fee anyway; and she knew she could vacuum and clean the bathrooms in 2 hours herself, so $25 an hour seemed about right. She herself was paid $30 an hour as a tax accountant, which equated to $60,000 a year, so $25 an hour, tax free, wasn’t too bad for cleaning, Louise thought.

  She got a lot of calls, mostly from people with heavy accents and limited English. Louise wondered whether she would be able to adequately communicate with someone when neither of them could speak the other’s language.

  Then she got a call from a young Australian man, and Louise was surprised.

  “Actually, I’m calling for my Mum,” he explained. “She asked me to call you because she had to go out but she wants the job. We live nearby, so it will be handy for her. She will call you tonight.”

  Louise had to ask. “Does your mother speak English?”

  The young man chuckled. “Yeah, don’t worry, she’s Australian.”

  The woman who called later was Australian. “Hi, I’m Diana,” she said, and Louise could hear her smile over the phone. “My son called earlier.”

  They arranged to meet and Diana came by that afternoon. She was about Louise’s age, with glossy blonde hair cut into a perky, layered bob.

  “I have a couple of part-time jobs,” she explained. “But I also have an Arts degree in classical languages, so I’m probably better educated than you!”

  “Oh!” said Louise. “Well, as a matter of fact –“

  But Diana hadn’t finished her declaration. “I just do this because I am trying to rebuild my savings after my divorce,” she said heroically.

  Louise sensed that Diana wanted her to express an interest in this situation, so she asked, “Have you been divorced long?”

  “Seven years,” Diana answered. “But I’ve had to educate my two kids, so I’ve taken whatever work I can get within school hours.”

  “Well, good for you!” Louise thought it best to play it safe. Diana seemed nice, but sensitive, and a bit complicated. She also looked the wrong age to have school-aged boys. But Louise was still figuring out all her new acquaintances and was prepared to take her time. “Mater artium necessitas!”

  Diana looked at her suspiciously. “What?” she said.

  *

  Louise was concerned that the kids would correctly identify the move from the big rented house in Linum St to the smaller townhouse she’d bought in Laburnum St, as a downward cast of their collective fortunes. But kids are funny and they have their own perspective.

  “Mum – this is awesome!” James was triumphant as he inspected the new, compact living arrangements. “Do you realise that it takes one minute to walk to the shops – and just three minutes to walk from our house to the train station now? It was a good eight minutes from the other house!” He continued his inspection of his room.

  Actually, it was the formal dining room of the townhouse, but since the building pre-dated the ‘open-plan’ mandate of anything designed after 1972, this room was completely enclosed in the old style, with walls and doors. It also had a double-door ‘cavity’ which provided access to the ducted heating machine located under the stairs. However, there was enough space remaining for the installation of a closet, directly behind these doors, so it had been deemed the fourth bedroom from the outset, and claimed by James as the largest bedroom after the master.

  “My bedroom has two doors – one to the entrance hall, and one to the kitchen!”

  Louise smiled at his enthusiasm, remembering James’ previous spacious room and ensuite. This new room was half the size, and she loved him for being so excited.

  “You should really block off one of the doors, though James,” she advised. “Then you will have more wall space.”

  But James would have none of it. “No way!” he protested. “This way I have total access to the front door, and total access to the fridge – and the loo!”

  Adjacent to the door from James’ room into the kitchen, another door led the way into a laundry, from which a tiny bathroom could be accessed – James’, now. Louise laughed. “Fair enough,” she said.

  “And there is no yard!” James continued. “I love townhouses – I never want to live in anything but a townhouse again!”

  “I thought you loved having a yard?” Louise was confused. “And actually there is a yard – there is a huge, communal yard at the end of the driveway. It has big trees and grass and everything – it’s quite nice.”

  “Yes, especially since we don’t have to mow it!” James explained. “No more spending the weekend mowing and weeding and all that.”

  “Mowing and weeding?” Louise was disbelieving. “When did you ever mow or weed? We always had a gardener and you know it!”

  “Yeah, but the threat was always there,” insisted James.

  Louise shook her head. “You are the laziest boy I ever knew.”

  James laughed. “That’s right!” he agreed. “And that is why I will always live in a townhouse close to the shops and the station from now on!”

  Chapter 2 – A new life

  They may have only moved three suburban blocks from Linum Street to Laburnum Street, but the shift in social position was more significant. Once an accepted member of the neighbourhood and local school community, now Louise was openly shunned by people who’d previously visited her home; calling in with social invitations, or just to chat.

  At first she didn’t realise it, and kept leaving telephone messages for women whom she’d regarded as friends – the mothers of her youngest son’s school buddies.

  Then, one day, Delia Crowe and her husband Dan walked straight past her, studiously looking ahead, and not acknowledging Louise. It was the Open Day at the local high school which both their boys would attend next term. Louise smiled and said a bright “Hi!” but was ignored by them both. She stopped still and watched them continue walking steadily away.

  Dan had assisted Jeff when he was building the Ikea kitchen. He came around every day for a week, fitting drawers and discovering that the reason they didn’t shut properly was because they’d attached the frontispiece upside down. And Delia and Louise had waited outside the primary school together with Delia’s pre-school aged daughter each afternoon for years, waiting for the bell and the torrent of school pupils that exploded out into Black’s Walk every afternoon.

  These people weren’t mere acquaintances.

  Louise felt hot tears prick the back of her eyes. She felt as though the wind had been knocked out of her. Once again, and in another way – a new way – Louise felt alone.

  Then she remembered that the Crows were devout members of a local Christian church. Were they expressing their support for Jeff? Or were they simply demonstrating their disapproval of her decision not to follow her husband when he decided to leave?

  Or could it be that in doing what she had done – gone back to work full-time; saved a deposit for a home; ref
used to follow her husband when he left; and then continued to raise her family as though nothing much had happened – perhaps this threatened their view of The World, and Reality, and Family Security. Were single mothers supposed to be impoverished and lonely and living in the outer suburbs, thus punished for flouting the accepted social order; not independent professionals who remained in the leafy environs of the church-going middle classes?

  Perhaps it was Delia who felt annoyed that Louise had blown the cover on how impossible it was to both work full-time and raise a family, since Delia had avoided returning to work as a registered nurse, despite Dan’s urgings. Or was Dan affronted that Louise, a newcomer to the neighbourhood, whom they had taken to their collective bosom, should so wantonly eschew the values he lived by; and, after deserting her husband, continued her life fairly seamlessly. Dan worked at a job he didn’t particularly like so that his wife could stay at home. From Dan’s perspective, Louise could see that Jeff had been a good provider and a good family man – who was Louise to decide that Jeff was no longer necessary to the family?

  Whatever the reason, their behaviour hurt her; and it hurt in a new place - a spot where she’d previously enjoyed the luxury of feeling whole.

  *

  “So, this is what it is like to be a single parent of three kids,” Louise thought. She didn’t find it a huge change. After all, Jeff had worked long hours and travelled a lot during their marriage. Even after he had stopped working, he had spent months away from the family, visiting his brother in the States. And it wasn’t as though the kids were babies. James was now in Year 11; Camille was in Year 5, and Peter, Year 4.

  But still, there was something daunting about actually being single again. Jeff would always be there for the kids, and Louise knew that however else he might have disappointed her, he would never shirk from his financial responsibilities. But the real responsibility was Louise’s now. She had brought that on herself and now she had to face up to it.

  She had to make all the decisions and she had to plan for the future. But how do you plan for a future when you don’t even know what ‘future’ you want? Louise felt abuzz with stress as she contemplated what lay ahead.