Naive Psychologist

Oh. She did, in fact, have somewhere she should have been on Saturday night. And while she could offer all manner of excuses, they would sound undergraduate, and in the end it came down to this:

‘I forgot.’

‘Perhaps,’ the mister said, ‘a little less of the red?’

She was no expert, but she had some advice nonetheless.

Kick it to Cornes.

Do it for your jumper.

And if you can’t think of your jumper, remember your mum is watching.

Update: thrashed. Glad it was the mister’s turn with the season ticket.

The wasabi peas were not what she had expected, but she would be buying more next week.

The desk was positioned so that the fire warmed the back of the chair and for no reason at all (that she could think of) she remembered the smell of perms.

The wine was not her favourite, but it was cheap if you bought it by the case.

The boy who looks nothing like her knows that four plus three equals seven and eats fresh asparagus stalks for tea while the other one plays they might be giants for the millionth time that week and even where do they make balloons has started to give her the shits.

The skeleton pyjamas have not dried in time to be worn tonight and neither have her favourite pillowcases.

But she does all her worrying during the day and thinks she will use the night to sleep. She swigs again at the red just to make sure, and she is sorry that at the very moment she was standing at the cheese counter today she had remembered that she does not want to put on any more weight, so there was no camembert or blue vein to be had for another week.

Apparently, if you google mister dishwasher adelaide, you will be led to this blog (yes, no 1 out of 3740 search results).

That’s the kind of stuff you can’t make up.

PS If you, or someone you know, have swallowed a metal marble, seek urgent medical advice. You will not find such advice here. If you are thinking of doing it: don’t.

The whole family had the kind of legs which meant they were always making, or paying for, cuffs.

When Adelaide were a wee a bit younger than she now is, she had looked at the people sitting in the seats at Hoodoo Gurus concerts and thought to herself why even come if you’re just gonna sit in the seats. What’s the point if you’re not gonna dance?

And now, having spent the night listening to the wondrous, the glorious Ben Harper from the seats, she understood.

There are times when you want the music to keep you still.

There are days when there is nothing you can do but fold the towels, wash the floors and turn the music up.

This morning, at the bottom of the stairs, they bumped into one of Adelaide’s favourite little girls. An intriguing soul she is, with a beautiful coat and a mother who delivers babies or something like that, so quite often at the end of the day, the receptionist calls out you’re going to out of school care, but your mum’s gonna get here as soon as she can.

‘You see this?’ the little girl said. She was wearing her beautiful coat with the buttons all done up, and she was holding a small, shimmery purple ball. She shook it, and the ball made a dull tinkling sound. ‘I found it on the road. It means I win the competition. We said the first one to find one of those on the road wins the competition.’

Her boys looked at Adelaide, because we don’t have competitions and winners in our house

‘One of Santa’s reindeers dropped it,’ the girl said.

Her oldest boy, a Santa Claus agnostic, looked again at Adelaide.

‘Did they?’ Adelaide said. She smiled and wished that she could put her arm around the girl’s shoulders, rub her hands down her hair. ‘We’d better start going up the stairs.’

‘Do you know what I wished for?’ They all walked on the left side and held the rail. There were no parents coming back down. ‘I wished that a reindeer would drop this on the road. And they did.’

Her oldest boy looked around at Adelaide. Adelaide shook her head.

And then, when they got to the top of the stairs, everyone’s favourite school support officer was there.

‘Oh, hello,’ the little girl said to the SSO. She did not look back at Adelaide and her boys. But even as Adelaide took the lunch box out of the bag, held the reader folder while the reader was painstakingly exchanged, Adelaide was watching the little girl.

‘This is from my cat,’ the little girl said showing the SSO the little purple ball. ‘We got her put down, and this is all that’s left.’

‘That’s very sad,’ the SSO said.

‘It was my dad’s cat,’ the little girl said.

‘Oh,’ the SSO said. ‘Do you think you need a hug?’ And that SSO was the kind of friend who could walk into your house at exactly the right time, and do the dishes for you, and you would like that she hadn’t asked, and then you’d let her make you a pot of tomato and lentil soup. And when she left, you’d realise you hadn’t cried for over an hour.

The little girl shook her head, turned and walked towards her classroom.

The SSO caught Adelaide’s eye, smiled.

‘How about those miners?’ she said to Adelaide.

On Saturdays, she thinks of the days when her mother and her brother always slept in.

Dad did the dishes and if they had lived in the city, she would have watched cartoons. When the dishes were done, she followed Dad to the green moke he drove, and they did the shopping down the street.

Her mother and her brother were still asleep.

She wore her netball uniform and Dad knew everyone. She stood nearby while he talked at some, nodded at the words of others. She pushed small stones into small piles with her feet or jumped around cracks or wrote monologues of things she should have said. Later on, she would ask for a dollar and go into the newsagent to buy a new book.

When he is listening to someone, Dad still folds his arms like that.

At Morrell’s, the girls behind the counter stuck pencils behind their ears and Dad said ‘a kilo of unwashed’. They added rows of numbers by whispering under their breath. You could pay by cash or cheque, the new Coles hadn’t opened yet and Tom’s didn’t sell much in the way of fruit and veg.

The butcher gave her fritz and talked to Dad about the pigeons he was racing that week. The butcher mumbled everything. She remembers the silver rail she would lean on and the mirror behind the meat.

By the time they got home, the washing machine was on. Was the laundry floor always flooded with clothes and suds?

They carried the shopping in and put it in the corner, just inside the kitchen door. Every now and then, when no one was looking, the cat got into the meat. Someone had to clean out the fridge every now and then. Their freezer was on the bottom, and it was something that everyone noticed. They said our freezer is on the top.

In the afternoons, she went to netball, her father went to hockey and her brother did whatever it is that younger brothers do. Her mother stayed home to sew houndstooth jackets and plant Chinese money trees.

In those days, they ate tea together every Saturday night and these days, when things go arse-up, it’s the Saturdays she thinks about.