Hindsight Read online

The thought of hot water hosing off the stress of today, creamy soapsuds caressing my body and driving out the foul odours is almost orgasmic, but my filthy spirit is crushed to find that all the hot water has been used with the extra washing and showers. Oh, the irony.

  Sleep takes me before my head hits the pillow. My last thought is that today is the second day in a row that Callum hasn’t had a midday sleep. It should mean that he has a really good sleep tonight. Tomorrow I promise not to wake up smug about my mothering skills. The universe has put me back very firmly in my box today.

  Chapter 16

  Woken from my catatonic state by Chris nudging me in the side, my first instinct is to swing first and ask questions later.

  “What?” I mumble.

  “It’s Cal, he’s crying.”

  “Isn’t it your turn?”

  “It’s never my turn Jules. You’re the Mum,” and he rolls over and goes back to sleep.

  What the hell? Urrrggghhhh! Incredibly annoyed and beyond exhausted, I throw the blanket back and off Chris at the same time, just so he knows that his attitude doesn’t please me. Getting out of bed as loudly as possible and thundering my way across the hall to Cal’s room, he is standing up in his cot crying. I move to pick him up but he just screams louder and pushes my hands away. He takes the dummy out of my hand and launches it across the room, same with his drink. He doesn’t smell of poo, so there’s no need to change the nappy. A quick check confirms my thoughts, he’s dry. Going through a mental checklist in my head: nappy, drink, dummy, too warm, too cold, sore teeth, still leaves me clueless as to what’s bothering him at midnight. Whatever it is, it would be great if he could resolve it himself, because all energy left me after Ethan threw up everywhere.

  Eventually he lets me pick him up and we cuddle. He falls asleep on my shoulder after almost twenty minutes of swaying from side to side. Gently placing him back in his cot he starts screaming again just as he gets horizontal. So I pick him up and we sway again, repeating the process twice more, both with the same result.

  Finally, Mummy-magic works, or exhaustion wears him out, and he stays asleep in a horizontal position. Hovering out of his room, fearing a creaky floorboard could wake him again, my body floats back to my bed and crashes into the haven of the mattress.

  Not too long after, there’s another nudge in my ribs.

  “Jules, it’s Cal again.”

  “Hmmm, Cal who?”

  “Your youngest son, remember? He needs you again.”

  “Why don’t you go?”

  “Because I’m the Dad, we don’t come equipped with mothering skills,” he says as he rolls over again and goes back to sleep.

  What the hell kind of world is this where a man just lets a woman do all the mothering? Just because he works six days a week, ten hours a day doesn’t mean that he can just roll over and go back to sleep when his children need him. Does it? Chris usually gets up if anyone wakes up because my working hours are so crazy and lack of sleep turns me into Jule-zilla.

  Sweeping out of bed, with accompanying crack of thunder and lightning strike, I go into Cal’s room again. It’s now two-thirty and my patience is lower than a temperature gauge in Antarctica. We sway for another hour and then move to the rocking chair, which seems to keep him happy. Eventually I am able to get him into his cot, creep back into bed and wrap myself up under the blanket where even Chris’ snoring doesn’t keep me awake.

  Ninety minutes later the alarm goes off and my day starts all over again.

  “Chris, can you turn it off please?” The words fall from the side of my mouth; exhaustion prevents me from opening it fully.

  Mustering the energy to lift my head off the pillow is akin to lifting a semi-trailer with one finger. But it doesn’t matter anyway, because my eyes are glued shut, literally. I feel them with my hands and they are completely crusted over, like deep-fried breadcrumbs. Conjunctivitis, wonderful. Please don’t let today be a different kind of yesterday.

  Eyes closed, lurching around the house like a zombie, I bathe my eyes in the bathroom sink, feeling Chris watching me.

  “Are you infectious?” he asks.

  “Highly. Why do you ask?” Sleep deprivation has made me a bit snappy.

  “Maybe I’ll get my own breakfast. You should go back to bed, get some more sleep.”

  “Are you telling me to go back to sleep because you know that I was up most of the night with Cal, or because you’re afraid I’ll infect you?”

  He’s thinking hard. It’s a no-win situation for him — if he says it’s because I’m tired he may have to do this more often when Cal wakes up in the night. If he says it’s due to infection then he comes across as a heartless bastard. I watch him intently, through squinted, pus-y eyes, wondering which way he will go.

  “It’s because I’m afraid you’ll burn my toast again. I’ll let you practice on the kids this morning so you can get back up to your usual standard for tomorrow. I only need so much charcoal in my diet, love.”

  Smart arse.

  Lily takes all the kids to school while Gran bathes my eyes in salted water and then covers them with ointment. Cal is still asleep, lucky him.

  “My girl, you’re a right mess at the moment, aren’t you?” she says.

  “You’re not wrong, Gran. I must look like the walking dead.”

  She laughs. “At least you haven’t lost your sense of humour.”

  Don’t bet on it.

  My appointment with Dr. Hamilton is at ten this morning. The hospital released me into his care, so today will be the first of my Oscar-winning performances to prove to him that my mental health is in top shape. But before that, I’d like to pick up where we left off the other day.

  “Can you tell me the rest of the story, about Dad, please?” I ask.

  It will be interesting to see how it compares with my own history, not that my mother’s story is of any interest. It was a mystery to me why she wasn’t like all the other Mums at school, who hugged their children in public, cheered them on at school sports events, volunteered in the canteen or for reading groups, attended excursions, hosted dress-up birthday parties, made jaw-dropping birthday cakes, were full of encouragement, fun, light and laughter. I can only define my mother by everything she wasn’t.

  She didn’t cope at all after Dad’s death, none of us did. While I cried constantly, she regressed into several casks of wine, wouldn’t return to work, fell behind on the mortgage repayments and subsequently lost our house, our home. Her moods swung between thunderstorm and hurricane. There was no sweet to cut her bitterness.

  Dash and I clung to each other. We had lost our father and our mother was either constantly drunk, morosely depressed or both. I cried every morning at school upon separation from Dash, the fear of something happening to her caused crippling anxiety. At first my teacher handled everything well; she was compassionate, patient and gentle. After a while, however, she grew tired of the constant crying. I must have taken up a lot of her time with my grief, but I didn’t know any better. Eventually, one morning she put me over her knee and spanked me in front of the entire class. Humiliated beyond belief, it only served to upset me further and increase my grief over my father who wasn’t there to comfort me.

  For some reason I told Mum what had happened, which was foolish because she was drunk. Her face greyed and her fists clenched as she spat at me, “Do you think you’re the only one who’s hurting, Juliette? You selfish little girl! You still have your sibling. I…” she said grasping her chest “…have lost everything. Your father was everything to me.”

  Immediately feeling guilty, I reached out to hold her hand and said “But you still have us, we have each other, Mum.”

  She withdrew her hand from my reach and yelled, “I don’t want you, you stupid girl! I’d trade you and your sister in the blink of an eye to get your father back. I wish you’d both been in the car with him, at least then I wouldn’t have to look at you again. You’re nothing to me, nothing to anyone else. You don’t exist!
Stop your crying!” She launched off her feet and backhanded me across the cheek. It cracked like a whip and stung as though her hand was covered in razors. Stars appeared as my head spun. “The next time I see your tears will be the time I send you off to a home for unwanted children, are we clear?”

  My cheek ballooned and my eye blackened over night. It throbbed as though she had hit me with the back of a shovel. Over the next few days the swelling and bruising subsided, but her words were permanent scars.

  Weeks afterwards we were moved into a Housing Commission development in Brownsberg, a far cry from our leafy suburb of Lower Plenty. Dumped cars littered front yards, the sound of domestic disputes filled the night air, pregnant teenagers slothed on the streets, their tobacco-stained fingertips wrapped loosely around prams containing children already lost before their lives had begun. Living there was punishment.

  Surrounded by career criminals, pimps, prostitutes, drug dealers and long-term welfare recipients fired in me a desire to be someone, to leave this place of nothingness behind and never return.

  Six years later, our mother finally took her own life by overdosing on sleeping pills and bourbon. Dash found her, spread-eagled and naked, partially wrapped in a dirty sheet on her bed. The sight of her didn’t upset me, nor did her death. It was the fact that I felt nothing that upset me.

  “Are you sure you’re ready to hear it, my darling girl?”

  “Ready as I’ll ever be.”

  Gran exhales loudly, makes herself comfortable on the chair and pauses, as though she is trying to figure out where to begin.

  “Alright,” she nods, “Well, as we’ve already discussed, your father worked in a timber yard. He was out on a delivery and was involved in an accident on the Hume Highway. His truck was struck by another, larger truck, and rolled off the road. He died instantly. It was your tenth birthday.” She pauses, watching me intently as though I am going to fall off the chair in shock. I nod for her to keep going. “Your mother didn’t cope very well, which is understandable. She was very much in love with him, and he was a wonderful husband and father. His passing was a terrible loss.”

  “Yes, it was.” Here my interest starts to wane. The important part of my life is the same: my father died on my tenth birthday. Nothing is different.

  “Your mother,” she continues, “started to…imbibe. One night I heard an argument coming from your house, the house next door to this one. I was concerned, so I came over to see if she needed any help, but instead I found you…” She shifts in her chair. I nod again for her to continue, my heart racing, “I found you on the floor, cowering, bleeding. Dash was struggling with your mother, trying to take something out of her hands, but I couldn’t see what.”

  My heart is pounding, the blood rushing through my veins is deafening. Gran wipes the corner of her mouth with a hanky.

  “Keep going Gran, please.”

  She nods again. “Alright love, if you’re sure? Well, I was able to overpower your mother, only to find that she had a small knife in her hand. John, your Grandpa, came running in and handled Eleanor, taking away the knife and restraining her. I tended to you and could see that you were bleeding from your hand and shoulder. She had stabbed you twice…”

  Swallowing hard, my entire body breaks out in goosebumps as shivers pulse through me one after the other.

  “Oh my God!” This is not the way it happened, she hit me a few times, but never stabbed me.

  “Are you alright, love?” Gran asks, holding my hand across the table. Her large paw covers my mine like a warm glove.

  “Ummm, yes, yes I’m fine. Please, keep going.”

  “Well, we called an ambulance and you were admitted into hospital where they looked after your wounds, which were superficial and healed quickly.”

  “That’s when Dash and I came here to live with you?”

  “No, I had already taken you prior to this event. You were just having a visit with her.”

  “And her? What happened to her?” When did she kill herself in this life? When did she take the easy way out and send the final message that we meant nothing to her?

  “She was committed to psychiatric care until it was deemed that the best place for her to be was the asylum. The doctors diagnosed her as insane following a period of melancholia and numerous small nervous breakdowns. Her condition was not deemed curable.” She looks down at the table, shaking her head, as though ashamed.

  “An asylum? She was put in an asylum?” I start to laugh, because it is a bit funny and a bit surreal and a bit, well, crazy if you’ll pardon the pun. In my own life she drank herself to death under the watchful eye of the Department of Family Services, and here she stabbed me and was committed to a looney bin?

  “Love, what’s so funny?” Gran asks.

  “She was committed to an asylum, locked up with crazy people, eating mincemeat each night because she had a wobbly and stabbed me?” I can’t stop laughing, even though Gran is looking at me like I belong in there with her. Quickly stopping and regaining composure, I say, “I’m sorry Gran, it’s just that…never mind. When did she take her own life in there?”

  “Why would you think that?”

  “Because she died, a few years later. How did it happen?”

  “She didn’t die, love.”

  “What?” The blood pools in the lower half of my body.

  “Your mother didn’t die, Juliette. She’s still alive, in Kew Asylum. She’ll be in there for the rest of her days, but she is certainly not dead.”

  Then it happens. I fall off my chair.

  Gran shoves smelling salts under my nose and applies a cool cloth to my head. Ten minutes later I am propped back up in my chair, sipping a sickly sweet tea and chewing on an apple.

  “Thank goodness you’ve got a doctor’s appointment this morning,” she says.

  “It’s alright, really Gran. It was just a….a shock.”

  “A shock? Darling girl, you collapsed. That’s not just shock. The doctor will check you out, better to be safe than sorry.”

  It was less of a shock and more of a grenade blast inside my head. How can she still be alive in this life, but dead in my own? It’s then that the fear hits me again — what if the doctor decides it’s time for me to have a little visit at Kew? Wouldn’t that be great — Mrs O’Shane wouldn’t be my roomie, my mother would. God help me!

  Gran talks about Mum, but none of it is sinking in. My mind is stuck on the bit where she’s alive. Does this mean that I will have to go and see her? Because the thought of it sends me into goosebumps. She’s part of the reason I’m in this mess in the first place.

  Up until my father died, my grades were perfectly average. But afterwards, especially when she flipped out and became a self-medicating monster, the seed was planted in me to not be her, to be as opposite from her as was humanly possible. Right now, I would rather poke myself in the eyes with blunt sticks than see her.

  “I’m taking Cal up to Maeve’s. Then we’ll go to the doctor’s, alright?” Gran says.

  “Huh? Um, yes. OK, thanks Gran.”

  Cal gives me a kiss before he is carried off to eat more cake and scones.

  The doctor’s surgery is in a converted house at the end of the street. The waiting room is where the living area would be and the bedrooms act as consulting rooms. A mish-mash of upholstered wooden chairs line the walls with a coffee table in the middle and the walls are lined with a floral wallpaper that adds lightness to a room probably filled with an exotic blend of germs.

  Fortunately the doctor is running on time today, so our wait is only a quick five minutes, because the anticipation is taxing and considering my true mental state at the moment, it’s likely I would disintegrate into a confused mess if the wait were longer.

  Dr. Hamilton looks like a 1960’s doctor — Brylled hair, a white coat with stethoscope around his neck, a shirt and tie, polished black shoes and horn-rimmed glasses. My visit goes well, up until the point where he says:

  “Juliette, I’v
e been your family doctor for thirty years. I’ve treated you for chicken pox, mumps and measles, scrapes and cuts and the birth of your three fine sons. You were a bit older than Callum when you came under my care.”

  “That’s a long time,” I say. He must know me really well.

  “I’m going to be frank with you, Juliette. You just don’t seem to be yourself. Now, I understand that you’ve had a head injury and I hope that it is the cause of this…difference in you. Only time will tell, but I’d like you to feel that you can talk to me about anything that may be bothering you. Don’t be ashamed or embarrassed; there’s nothing I haven’t heard before. Is there anything troubling you, dear?”

  Plenty, but none I can actually talk about. The thought of what Anya is doing with Chris races across my mind, as does the thought of what’s happening with my business. It’s all troubling me. But the aim for today is to be calm and make him believe that there is nothing wrong — that there is no need to send me to Kew for a little R&R.

  “No, doctor, there’s nothing troubling me. The conjunctivitis is a little irritating, and Cal didn’t sleep well last night, so I probably look terrible,” I say, giving my best PR smile. “But other than a little tiredness, and a black eye with yellow goo coming out of it, everything is fine.”

  He doesn’t believe me. It’s written all over his face.

  “If it was anyone else but you Juliette, I would send them off to Kew. But, you’ve got your Gran keeping a hawk’s eye on you as well as Chris and Lily, so I’ll see you back here in four days time and we’ll see how you are then.”

  Shit! There’s still a chance he’ll send me off.

  “Sure, that sounds…good. Thank you, Dr. Hamilton,” I say through gritted teeth.

  “Considering your family history, dear, it might be good for you to go to Kew for assessment. Prevention is better than cure, you know.”

  The short walk back to Aunty Maeve’s is spent worrying about being sent away to Kew. After Will has secured a scholarship, I will be happy to go on my merry way back to my own life, but probably won’t be able to do it from an asylum. Oh my God! If they lock me away, Will’s scholarship will never happen. No matter what, I need to convince everyone that there is nothing wrong with me, because now it’s more important than ever.