Tiddas (6 page)

‘Yeah, it's my home. I love the river; it reminds me of the Cudgegong back home, only it's five million times the size, of course. But I used to find so much peace there under the
gum trees when I was young. I feel at peace being near the Brisbane River somehow too, if that makes sense at all.'

Ellen regularly took the ferry from Thornton Street to Eagle Street Pier and then the City Cat down to Bretts Wharf and back. If she was in the mood she'd get off at New Farm Park, walk the three minutes to the Powerhouse, and have a beer and listen to music. Sunday was ‘Ellen time'. She didn't need company to be entertained. She liked being alone. She needed time alone. She couldn't imagine ever living with anyone. A legacy of having too many siblings, some she never heard from, even on birthdays. She wondered if removing herself from Mudgee had pissed them all off. She didn't care at this point. If they didn't need her, she didn't need them either.

The river was the most important thing in Ellen's day; in her life. She ran and walked beside it. She lost herself looking into it. She rode it to work, to Izzy's, to the city. The only thing she was grateful to Campbell Newman for was introducing the public bike system when he was Brisbane City Mayor. She'd often grab a bike from CT White Park and leave it at any number of designated spots around town, depending on what was on her schedule. On days when she had to visit a bereaved family or do a service that was too far to get a cab she'd book a share car. It was still cheaper and better for the environment than buying her own car.

But it was the City Cat rides Ellen liked most. She shamelessly enjoyed perving on the ferrymen in their Hard Yakka shorts minus the bum crack made famous by tradies. She'd give each guy a score out of ten for their ‘arse shape', and then check to see whether they wore a wedding ring or not.
That flirting option was not open to her, men who had wives or partners.

‘I completely understand. Walking along the river at West End totally centres me,' Izzy nodded, knowing exactly the power of water and the calming way it affected her. It was why she got the City Cat to work each day too, because the physical motion – prior to morning sickness – and the breeze on her face made her feel alive and rejuvenated.

‘And now that I'm turning forty I feel better having a place that's all mine. In some ways the flood kicked me into gear on that front. And I'd been meaning to clear out my place for a while; the flood just did it for me.' Ellen smiled a painful smile, because in reality she'd lost a lot of things she loved, including a box of thank-you cards from families she'd helped farewell their loved ones. She tried not to get too personal or connected to the families she worked with, but that was near impossible, meeting people at the most traumatic times of their lives.

Nadine started laughing hysterically, slamming her glass on the table.

‘What's so funny?' Veronica asked. Her lack of self-esteem meant she was often paranoid that the joke might be on her.

‘I remember driving with Richard to pick Ellen up when her place was flooded, and she was walking towards us holding her crocodile boots in the air. Funniest fucken thing I'd ever seen.' Nadine slapped her linen-covered legs in hysterics.

They all laughed at the memory of the photo Nadine took on her iPhone and sent them all immediately. Of course it wasn't funny at the time.

‘Hey, those boots are important to me, and they were the only things that I could carry, given my backpack was full of photos.'

‘Oh the boots, the boots,' Nadine kept laughing.

Ellen smiled, but the truth was she was depressed for a long time after the floods, having lost most of her books as well, and she had always been an avid reader.

‘The only reason I come to book club is so I can build up my library again. You know that, right?' She refilled her glass and her plate almost simultaneously. ‘It's not so I can be trashed by the comedic lush!'

‘I'd have to say, Vee, this was a great choice for us to read,' Nadine said, pushing her copy of
The Old School
towards the middle of the table. ‘I loved it. Inter-racial relationships, female lead detective, and do you know I hadn't even tried pho before reading this book?'

‘Were you living under a rock?' Izzy joked.

‘Obviously!' Ellen put a humus-covered cracker in her mouth.

‘I thought incorporating the Aboriginal Legal Service was brave myself, but it needed to be done. I was impressed with the whole storyline. It'd be great as a telemovie,' Xanthe said, having also discussed the novel with Spencer.

‘Who'd play the character called Mabo? Wayne Blair?' Veronica asked, knowing there was a strong pool of Indigenous actors ready and capable of taking on such a role.

Izzy, Ellen and Xanthe all thought back to when they'd got together to watch
Redfern Now
on TV. They had talked about it for weeks afterwards.

‘I think Jack Charles would be perfect!'

Veronica was spot on. She knew a lot about the arts sector and attended many Murri cultural events around Brisbane. She was the perfect example of reconciliation at work: the appreciation of and respect for Indigenous Australian cultures.

Izzy had read this month's book as an escape from thinking about her own situation, and she too liked the storyline. ‘This Newton woman has done a deadly job incorporating Aboriginal characters and issues into the story, I reckon. I've never read an Aussie novel like that.'

Nadine felt a pang of guilt and wondered if her sister-in-law was having a dig at her for never including Kooris – or Murris, as Blackfellas called themselves in Brisbane – in her own novels, but she never really knew how to, and Richard wasn't big on talking about books. But even in her drunken haze she felt compelled to say something. ‘I really like Pam's work too, we've done a few festivals together. She makes me want to lift my game.'

‘I thought it was interesting she was a detective before becoming an author. All those details, I knew she had to have inside information somehow,' Veronica added.

‘Turns out she was her own insider.' Nadine slugged back another cocktail. She needed an insider to help her write the next book, even though she didn't know what it was going to be.
This Newton woman might tip me off the bestseller list
, she thought to herself.

‘We need some Black crime novelists too,' Izzy added.

‘Actually,' Ellen said, pulling a book out of her bag like a magician, ‘I know we're doing crime right now, but can we do
this one in the next few months?' She held up
The Boundary
; there was a blood-red feather on the cover. ‘It's set in West End.' She raised her eyebrows and threw a nod of
interesting, eh
to Izzy.

‘Then we should do it when we have book club at
my
place, that'd make sense,' said Izzy.

The tiddas all nodded in agreement.

‘But what should we read for May?'

Everyone looked at Veronica; she usually made the recommendations based on her being the one with time to suss out the bookshops.

‘Leave it with me,' she said, glassy-eyed and not really listening.

At midnight the tiddas walked outside into the cool night air and said their goodbyes. Richard waited in the car for Nadine; both Cam and Brit were having sleepovers with school friends. Ellen and Izzy climbed into Izzy's convertible, while Veronica slipped into the comfort of her Lexus and burst into tears. She felt a pang of guilt that she'd hated hearing Xanthe talk about her future with Spencer, planning a family and buying their house together. She could see the love they shared, a love she now accepted she had never experienced with Alex. And it was the same with Nadine and Richard. As tears blurred her vision, she tried hard to remember a time when Alex had waited for her
anywhere.
It was always she who
had waited, doted, sacrificed. Alex was emotionally absent even when he was physically there, taking only minor interest when the boys played football on weekends in winter. It was she who went to meetings with teachers and to kids' birthday parties, often making excuses for a father who appeared to be disinterested, a husband who had a take-it-or-leave-it attitude to his wife.

‘Oh God,' Veronica cried out, recalling the last time they'd even made love in a way that wasn't simply about coming, with feeling, with any sense of desire. It had been years. And then it hit her that it had also been years since she'd felt wanted or even appreciated by the man she had devoted her life and her heart to. As rain began to fall, Veronica sobbed uncontrollably in the darkness. ‘Why, why, why?' she moaned, blaming herself, as women often do, for loving an emotionally inept man who couldn't love her back.

Richard being there for Nadine on a daily basis was another painful reminder of the life she
didn't
have with her ex; hers had only ever been a life of washing and cleaning and cooking and being mother and wife. It was a life she'd always been content with because she felt needed, loved, even wanted, by at least one of her sons at any given time. It never bothered her until she wasn't needed or wanted anymore, by anyone. Since Alex and her eldest two sons had left the family home, all that she felt she had was low self-esteem and no sense of identity.

Veronica hadn't signed the divorce papers when the courier delivered them earlier in the day. Instead, she'd just collapsed against the wall and wept, feeling a sense of complete personal
and matrimonial failure. She had convinced herself long ago the divorce would be her penance for getting pregnant to the first man she met and slept with and then had to marry. And although she loved him, and the children she and Alex had together, she still filled her head with a silent conversation that could only cause more harm to her already brutalised heart. As far as Veronica could tell, the other tiddas appeared to have anguish-free lives. They were happy and content; she was the loser of the group. She didn't want to add to her own sense of helplessness by exposing herself in all her woe-is-me misery, but she didn't know how much more sadness she could lug around with her either. Something had to give.

Inside, Xanthe in her organised way tidied up the living room and crawled into bed, aiming to stay awake until Spencer got home from visiting his brother down at Helensvale. She tried to meditate, to stop thinking about anything at all: next week's schedule, Ellen and Izzy's comments about her being ‘upper', how Nadine had managed to spill a drink on her favourite cushion. Admittedly, she'd offered to pay to get it dry-cleaned, but Xanthe just wished her tidda wouldn't get pissed every time they got together. As she tried to block everything from her mind, she ran her hand over her belly and started getting maudlin.

She was thirty-nine; even with IVF she only stood a fifty-five per cent chance of a live birth, not just a pregnancy. Was it even worth the effort? What would Spencer think? Could they afford it? They'd only broached the subject briefly, but this week she'd started researching for the first time. Why couldn't she just fall pregnant like other women did?

I
t was an overcast but warm Easter Saturday. The city was peaceful but the tiddas were all in different states of emotional chaos. Izzy was feeling nauseous; she wasn't sure if it was from being pregnant, or because she'd decided she was finally going to tell her closest friends she was ‘expecting'. She needed support, help and advice, and she needed to be reassured that whatever decision she made would be supported by her friends. She needed wisdom from the women she trusted most, and women who had already had children, or at least thought positively about having children. She hoped she could count on her tiddas, because she would need the courage to tell her mother and advice on whether or not to tell Asher at all. In the meantime, Tracey had left so many messages on her phone, Izzy's voicemail was full.

Veronica was cleaning the house, trying to pass time and not think about the meaningless life she felt she now led.
She had taken her anti-depressants, which helped to a degree, but she often fell back into her negative way of thinking. She hated taking the pills. Being married to a doctor, she'd seen and heard about enough women over the years who got sucked into what they thought was helping them, and in some instances was nothing more than a placebo. She was walking every day to clear her head as much as possible, but she just couldn't stop crying.

Xanthe and Spencer were post-coital, bodies entwined, physically united, but their thoughts couldn't be any further apart. Xanthe wondered why they weren't talking about IVF when she'd broached it a number of times, but knew Spencer was probably more concerned about the next month's State of Origin match. Spencer stroked Xanthe's hair and dozed back to sleep.

Meanwhile Ellen woke up in her new flat with a six-pack lying next to her in bed. His hairless butt faced upwards, the word ‘Rockstar' tattooed in red ink stretched across the biggest bicep she'd ever seen. The electrician, known only to her as ‘The Sparky', had come over on Thursday afternoon to do some wiring in the bathroom, and hadn't left since.
I'm reno-dating
, she thought to herself.