Naive Psychologist

Adelaide went to town.

She hopped on the tram with her youngest child, had coffee with her corporate happily-salaried husband (his shout) then picked up the fringe tickets she had booked for the excellent array of children’s shows.

It was not a cool day, and her little boy fell asleep as she wheeled the pusher from Rundle Street and back towards the Mall.

Adelaide crossed at the Hungry Jack’s lights, walked past the man still singing how much is that doggy in the window, past the balloon sculptor, past the woman painted in white doing that statue trick, the man playing the didgeridoo, the dudes playing footbag, the south americans offering to paint your name on a grain of rice, and bumped into Pluck.

They made her think of her mother and cry in the way that the sound of violins often did.

And still, her little boy slept.

Adelaide turned the pram around, walked back the way she had come, turned down that small dark street and waited at the lights.

She watched the students crossing towards her, but she felt no nostalgic pang, no twitch of I wish that were me. She crossed North Terrace and pushed her little boy up the Art Gallery ramp. The blast of conditioned air reminded her of the days when this had been her refuge, when she had hidden in here between lectures not wanting to go to the refectory on her own, afraid of what she might find in the undergraduate reading room.

Adelaide knew the painting she was looking for.

She did not mind that before she could reach it, she had bumped into one of those people she had not seen for years, but would still call on as a friend. He was there with his mother, just back in the city for the night. She did not mind that the conversation was stilted, that she still had nothing to say when people asked ‘so what do you do?’. She did not mind that he was not the only person who had stopped ringing whenever he came back to Adelaide.

They said goodbye, and Adelaide reached the soft, circular seat. She sat and looked around at the paintings from ‘victoria 1890s’ for 45 minutes. Every now and then she lifted the hood of the pusher and watched her little boy sleep and it was all she could do to stop herself texting everyone she knew to describe her day and to tell them that life was ace.

‘Look at this,’ Adelaide’s husband said quite late on Sunday night when the light had no right still being on. They had stayed up too late watching that lovely Alisa Camplin on the tele, and it was Monday tomorrow with business shirts to iron and school lunches to be made. ‘Phillip Adams telling the world he was Kerry Packer’s long-time confidant.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Is there anyone in the world that man hasn’t had a close encounter with?’ He cleared his throat again. ‘Except me of course.’

‘And me,’ Adelaide said, but her husband didn’t reply.

Adelaide’s husband – an increasingly bitter man – threw the magazine to the end of the bed then picked up his copy of BRW.

Sometimes, Adelaide worried that she didn’t understand her husband anymore.

She leaned down, picked up the magazine and skimmed the article. It really was getting late so she read just the first few paragraphs, then skipped to the last.

‘Look,’ she said. ‘Phillip Adams reckons Jamie and Gretel are polite, delightful kids.’ She smiled. ‘I think that’s nice,’ she said. ‘I think that’s a nice way to end.’

Her husband just coughed, then turned out the light.

‘Is this your Mum?’ Adelaide asked the girl who had stuffed the pamphlet into Adelaide’s letterbox.

The girl stopped, turned, looked at Adelaide. She squinted, then nodded at Adelaide in a what’s-it-to-you kind of way. She took a jelly snake – an orange one – from the bag in her pocket, wrapped it around her pointer finger then sucked it off her finger with a loud and squelchy pop.

‘D’you have to stuff these envelopes last week?’ Adelaide asked. Her own fingers pulsed with the paper cuts of elections past.

The girl nodded again. There was a small piece of orange snake stuck to the front of her tooth.

‘Has your Mum promised you a sleepover when the election’s over?’ Adelaide asked.

Another nod.

‘Three friends?’

‘Four,’ the girl said. ‘And boys until midnight.’

Adelaide had never thought to ask for boys.

‘How much you getting for election day? For handing out the how-to-votes?’

‘Thirty bucks.’

Adelaide smiled.

‘Tell your Mum my Dad promised me twenty five in 1983.’

The girl squinted again. She bit at her top lip, then her bottom.

‘D’you ever get paid?’ the girl asked.

Adelaide smiled and wished that a grown woman could ask a fifteen year old to share her jelly snakes.

‘Do you want your Mum to win?’ Adelaide asked.

The girl’s shoulders slumped just a little before she lifted her chin, flicked her hair and took two jelly snakes from the packet. They were both that dark pink – almost maroon – that had always been Adelaide’s favourite.

‘You’d better get going,’ Adelaide said. ‘I bet you’ve got this whole suburb to do.’

The girl sucked off the last jelly snake, then turned and walked away.

Adelaide moved to the front of the letter box, took the texta from her pocket, bent down and added a line to her ‘no junk mail’ sign.

And that includes all material related to the democratic process.

Adelaide stood back and cocked her head to the side as she looked at the letterbox. The words looked a little stark. She moved back in, added another line.

What you tell me now will make no difference to the way I vote.

Then Adelaide got in her car and drove to the shops to buy her own packet of jelly snakes.

‘It’s not so bad sitting home on Saturday night,’ Adelaide thought. She had a leftover birthday box of scorched almonds and a bottle of Coopers pale.

It’s not so bad sitting at home on Saturday night until someone turns the television on.

It’s not so bad sitting at home on Saturday night until someone turns the television on and the winter olympics is showing only the dreadful ballroom dancing on ice (at least that downhill stuff would give you a vicarious rush).

It’s not so bad sitting at home on Saturday night until someone turns the television on and the winter olympics is showing only the dreadful ballroom dancing on ice (at least that downhill stuff would give you a vicarious rush) so you’re forced to watch Parkinson (which is what your parents used to watch when they started staying at home on Saturday night and you went out to drink vodka in unsafe quantities and smoke a packet of cigarettes in a night).

It’s not so bad sitting at home on Saturday night until someone turns the television on and the winter olympics is showing only the dreadful ballroom dancing on ice (at least that downhill stuff would give you a vicarious rush) so you’re forced to watch Parkinson (which is what your parents used to watch when they started staying at home on Saturday night and you went out to drink vodka in unsafe quantities and smoke a packet of cigarettes in a night) and then your husband (gorgeous though he is) starts letting out just the tiniest, teensiest beginnings of snores.

‘I’d better buy him a pair of slippers before winter,’ Adelaide thought.

Adelaide was an excellent and attentive mother whose youngest child had only been to the emergency room three times – or was it four – in the last nine months.

‘So if you are going to swallow something,’ Adelaide told her father, who was getting to the age when the parent became the child, ‘make sure it’s metal, because that way it shows up on the x-ray.’

Adelaide took a sip of the tea she had freshly brewed, then peeked a look at the child who hadn’t choked.

‘And make sure it’s round and small so it doesn’t get caught in your throat.’

She took another sip of her tea.

‘And it is a bonus if it is something which makes a clunking sound against porcelain, because you know for sure it’s come out.’

Adelaide turned her tea cup first one way, then the other and hoped she never needed to fish around in the toilet with a skewer again.

‘If success is the best revenge, it’s lucky I’m not a venge-filled person,’ Adelaide thought.

Adelaide had some thinking to do.

‘She’s being precious,’ KG had said. On city-wide radio, just after six, he had dismissed her worries just like that. Adelaide put the kettle on. She cleared her throat, then swallowed at the memory of it all.

An avid listener of KG and Cornesy, Adelaide had finally decided to interact with 5AA. The phone was hopeless of course with children running around like that, so she composed an email. It took over an hour – what with the interruptions. But hitting the send button had filled her with an overwhelming sense of power and she couldn’t help but think of all the other issues she could raise.

And then there was the giddy moment that Graham read it out.

‘The adelaide crow and some players visited my little boy’s school yesterday. He is five years old and so far I have managed to keep him out of fast/junk food ‘restaurants’, but the crows people were giving out vouchers to a particular junk food place as prizes. And now my little boy is insisting that we go.’

That was the point where KG, usually the first to see the subtle failings of the Adelaide Crows, first began to scoff.

Adelaide took the milk from the fridge, poured a splash into the bottom of the cup. She had thought she had a valid point. Football clubs, going into schools, giving out fast food vouchers? It isn’t good.

She made herself remember the reaction of Graham Cornes. The lady’s got a point. She smiled to herself. Adelaide had always liked that man. And she wasn’t at all jealous of his wife’s Sunday Mail column. Adelaide was just happy for another woman’s success.

No, KG continued. She’s being precious. Move on, Studley.

PS, she had written Thanks for listening to me. My children don’t.

Well, KG finished. She’s got a problem if her children aren’t listening.

And that’s when Adelaide started to think. Maybe he’s right, she thought, maybe life is as simple as that. Maybe I make everything too complex. Maybe I’m too serious. Maybe I need to lighten up.

‘Here’s your tea, love,’ she said and put her husband’s cup on the occasional table. He grunted without looking up from his new book of Sudoku puzzles.

Adelaide sat, put her feet on the pouf and blew at her tea. Maybe she wouldn’t worry about sending that email on the awkward relationship between the sponsorship deals paid to already-well-paid sports players, sportswear manufacturers and sweatshop workers.

Adelaide finally made it to the SASMEE Millswood train park. She had been watching that train park since she was seven years old, and now, one day after she turned 37, she was finally here.

Adelaide wasn’t sure which best she liked best. Lining up with little boys bouncing with the joy of life. The officious fully enclosed shoes signs. The shade of the trees on a day that was almost too hot. The woman who stopped the trains to hand out cups of sticky orange drinks to the drivers (volunteers all). The old men controlling their boats by remote and happy to give little boys a go. The grey-haired woman with two little boys on the bowling green who couldn’t work out how to get through the fence. Men who were young enough to know better wearing railroad hats covered in gold-coloured stick pins. Groups of men polishing their trains at the end of the day. Walking back to the car with little boys still bouncing with the joy of life.

But by the time she got home, Adelaide knew exactly which bit of the day she liked best. She liked that at the young age of 37, Adelaide had discovered the meaning of life.

It’s trainspotters that make the world go round and there was hope for Adelaide yet.

Adelaide was not invited to the launches of WOMADelaide or the Adelaide Festival of Arts. She was not invited to the opening of the Federal Law Courts (which building, by the way, she quite liked and was willing to give a chance to see how it settled down). She did not get a guernsey to the Jacob’s Creek Tour Down Under corporate tent. She had not even – despite her name – been at the launch of Adelaide Writer’s Week.

But as one of the state’s industry leaders, she did get the nod for the secret meeting with Business SA to discuss the appallingly embarrassing situation of the new Adelaide Airport terminal which was bringing in nothing but international shame. All eyes were on Adelaide. It was front page news – every second day – in the Age, the Sydney Morning Herald and the Courier-Mail. It was on page three of the AFR three times a week plus Saturdays. It was all anyone interstate and overseas was talking about.

The meeting was timely, Adelaide thought. Something needs to be done. Adelaide was very pleased to take advantage of the excellent on-site creche facilities provided by Business SA for not just the duration of the meeting, but also the networking opportunity which followed. It was never too early to get your toddler mixing with the state’s future best.

It was an excellent meeting. One of the best to which Adelaide had ever been, and it certainly suited her outcome-driven style. There was so much this small, but influential group could do, and by the end of the meeting they had identified the key stakeholders with whom they needed to engage and agreed that the engagements would begin next week. The first phone call would be to the agenda-setters over at ABC 891.

‘So who exactly was there?’ her husband asked when they were safe in bed discussing the day they had just spent at the state’s cutting edge. Adelaide could trust her husband, of course she could, but if she were honest with herself (which she could be, because the light was out), she enjoyed the opportunity to have just a little more knowledge than him.

‘I’ll just say this,’ Adelaide told her husband, a curious – but not nosey – man. ‘There was more than one soy chai latte ordered from the Cibo delivery express.’

Adelaide got an iPod for Christmas and now it was February and her life still hadn’t changed.