Truly Madly Guilty(61)

‘What are you doing here?’ said her mother. ‘I thought this was against the “rules”.’ She made quotation marks with her fingers around the word ‘rules’. It made Erika think of Holly.

‘Mum, what are you wearing?’ sighed Erika. She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

Her mother wore what appeared to be a brand new blue sequinned flapper-style dress that was too big for her thin frame and a feathered headband that sat low on her forehead, so that she had to peer up to keep it from slipping into her eyes. She posed like a star on the red carpet, one hand on her thrust-forward hip. ‘Isn’t it beautiful? I got it online, you’d be proud of me, it was on special! I’ve been invited to a party. A Great Gatsby party!’

‘What party?’ Erika walked down the hallway towards the living room, studying the house. No worse than usual. The normal fire hazards everywhere, but she couldn’t smell anything rotten or decaying. Perhaps if she concentrated on the front yard today? If the rain slowed to a drizzle?

‘It’s a sixtieth birthday party,’ said her mother. ‘I’m so looking forward to it! How are you, darling? You look a bit washed out. I wish you wouldn’t turn up with equipment as if I were a job you had to do.’

‘You are a job I have to do,’ said Erika.

‘Well, that’s just silly. I’d rather just have a chat with you and hear what you’ve been up to. If only I’d known you were coming I would have baked something from that new recipe book, the one I was telling you about when you got so grumpy the other day –’

‘Yes, but who is turning sixty?’ asked Erika. It seemed unlikely that her mother would be invited to a party. Since she’d retired from her job at the nursing home, she’d lost touch with her friends, even the most determined, patient ones, or else she’d discarded them. Her mother didn’t hoard friends.

Erika walked into the kitchen and her heart sank. The front yard would have to wait. It had to be the kitchen today. There were paper plates sitting on top of the hotplates. Half-empty food containers with green mould. She wasn’t meant to be here for another two weeks, and if it wasn’t for the problem with the front yard, she wouldn’t be seeing this, but now that she had seen it, it was impossible to walk away. It was a health hazard. It was an affront to human decency. She put down her buckets and pulled out the packet of disposable gloves.

‘Felicity Hogan is turning sixty,’ sighed her mother, with a little flare of the nostrils on the word ‘Felicity’ as though Erika was spoiling her pleasure in the party by reminding her who was hosting it. ‘Oh, look at you, now you’re putting on gloves as if you’re about to do an operation.’

‘Mum,’ said Erika. ‘Felicity turned sixty last year. No, actually, it was the year before. You didn’t go to the party. I remember you said it was tacky having a Great Gatsby party.’

‘What?’ Her mother’s face fell, and she pushed the headband further up her forehead so that her hair stuck up around it, making her look like an unhinged tennis player. ‘You think you’re always so clever and right but you’re wrong, Erika!’ The disappointment turned her voice strident. Those jagged edges were always there beneath the fluffy blanket of her maternal love. ‘Let me get the invitation for you! Why would I have an invitation for a party that happened two years ago, answer me that, Miss Smarty-pants?’

Erika laughed bitterly. ‘Are you joking? Are you serious? Because, Mum, you don’t throw anything out!’

Her mother tore off her headband and dropped it. Her tone changed. ‘I am aware that I have a problem, Erika, do you think I’m not aware of it? I’m not stupid. Do you think I wouldn’t like a bigger, nicer house with enough storage and linen cupboards and things so I could get on top of things? If your father hadn’t left us, I could have stayed at home all day and kept house, like your precious Clementine’s mother, like Pam, oh-I’m-such-a-perfect-mother Pam, with my rich husband and my perfect house.’

‘Pam worked,’ said Erika shortly. She tore a rubbish bag off the roll and began to dump plastic food containers inside it. ‘She was a social worker, remember?’

‘A part-time social worker. And of course I remember. How could I forget? You were her little social work project on the side. She made Clementine be your friend. She probably gave her a little gold star sticker each time you came to play.’

It didn’t even hurt. Did her mother think it was an earth-shattering revelation?

‘Yep,’ said Erika. ‘Pam knew my home situation was not ideal.’

‘Your home situation wasn’t “ideal”. How melodramatic. I tried my best! I put food on the table! Clothes on your back!’

‘We didn’t have hot water for a year,’ said Erika. ‘Not because we couldn’t afford it but because you were too ashamed to let anyone in to repair the water heater.’

‘I was not ashamed!’ her mother yelled with such force the tendons on her neck stood out and her face turned blood-red.

‘You should have been,’ said Erika evenly. At times like this she felt herself become eerily calm; it would be hours or even days later, when she was alone, in the car or the shower, that she’d find herself screaming back something in response.

‘I will admit that I sometimes got a teeny bit paranoid that they might take you away,’ said her mother. She blinked pitifully at Erika. ‘I always thought that Pam might get it into that do-gooder, lefty head of hers to complain to the Department of Community Services that I wasn’t polishing my skirting boards or whatever.’