Paint Job (Part 2)

                         Welcome!

Tomato promise

The vegetable garden is looking good but there’s not much produce. I only plant for the summer of the year we stay home for Christmas: tomatoes, basil, chives, and self-sown pumpkin (there’s always some of that going from the compost). We’ve had a few tomatoes, and the basil has been magnificent, but there just hasn’t been enough out of the vegetable garden yet to justify all the water and work that goes into it. Maybe with a few weeks of summer left we’ll start to get the productivity I’d hoped for. But maybe just having a happily growing green patch of garden is worth it anyway.

Here is the second instalment of Paint Job. I hope you enjoy it and look forward to the final part in two weeks’ time.

Paint Job (Part II)

Something wasn't right. Ma wasn't one to back down like that, even though it had her characteristic sarcasm.

            Pete was cutting himself half a loaf. 'Want some, Mattie? There's enough for both of us.' But I wasn't hungry.

            I walked into the lounge room, reaching for the light switch in the dark. The room glowed in its new rich colours, friendly, although it looked unfamiliar with the furniture missing or covered. We'd done a pretty decent job. Okay, we hadn't asked Ma's opinion before we'd launched in but that wouldn't usually send her off the deep end like this. There had to be something I didn't know that would make the equation work.

            And then I saw a piece of paper on the floor where Ma had stood to survey our handiwork. It had fallen, presumably, and had slipped most of the way under the dropsheet. I picked it up, and took it under the light, looking over my shoulder momentarily to be sure I was alone.

On behalf of our client, Mr Roderick Sidney Halston, we are informing you that the property in which you now reside at 14 Delamere Road, Davenlea, and which was solely owned by our client, has now been sold. You received notification, sent from this office on 23 September to the effect that the house was on the market. At your request, no signage was put up at the property, and a buyer was sought and found by a more discreet method. That sale having now been finalised, you have thirty days to take up residence elsewhere. The new owner will shortly contact you to make final arrangements. . .

            I also dropped the letter. It had to be a hoax. Why would my father sell the house from under us? We hadn't even known where he was; he'd never called or written. He might as well have dropped off the edge of the world.

            I couldn't begin to think about what this meant for me and Ma, and Pete. There were no words, so I just watched TV with Pete for the evening and said nothing.

            Ma appeared at breakfast the next morning looking her usual immutable self. She didn't mention the letter so neither did I. Pete and I spent the day on the second coat of paint, putting the furniture back again in the evening. The room looked fresh and warm. I felt I'd been evicted already.

            'He does a good enough paint job, for an electrician,' Ma commented, and Pete beamed. I looked out to the plain, neat front yard, imagining the 'For Sale' sign that had actually existed but been invisible to me and Pete.

            'Good enough to sell,' I mumbled and walked towards the kitchen. I saw the letter where I'd dropped it last night and I kicked it into a corner.

There wasn’t time to fix up more of the house before we had to leave, and why would we want to improve it for the bloody mystery buyer anyway? There was no time for anything except packing up my life into a few battered boxes. Ma wouldn’t let me take half my stuff.

            ‘How big do you think your aunt’s house is, Matthew? You’re lucky you’ll have a room. If Shane hadn’t already left home, you’d be sleeping in the shed with your boxes.’

            I wasn’t looking forward to moving three hours north to Ma’s sister Ruth’s. At least my cousin wasn’t there. Aunty Ruth was all right, but leaving Pete behind in exchange for a second mother wasn’t my idea of a move in the right direction.

            We didn’t see much of Pete in these last weeks. I was trying to work out how I was going to say goodbye to him, daydreaming that he might move somewhere near my aunt’s, knowing that he had no reason to leave this town with all the contract work he was getting. I wished we could have had longer together before life busted us up.

 See you next time!

Claire Belberg

Paint Job (Part I)

                         Welcome!

No place like home

How weird was it to return from tropical (dry season) Cambodia to find that our summer Adelaide Hills garden was green and refreshing! Thanks to our friend watering regularly and some cooler weather, home was truly a sight for weary eyes. This week’s cooler weather is a bit of a shock, with temperatures consistently in the low 20s (Celsius)/low 70s (Fahrenheit), but I’m not complaining. The koala pictured here lives in my neighbourhood, another welcome sight for a travel weary Aussie.

My new story will be rolled out over three posts, so enjoy the first instalment!

Paint Job

Part I

'He's an electrician, for gods' sake! What would he know about interior decorating?' Ma pressed her lips together and strode from the dropcloth-covered lounge room.

            Pete and I shrugged and said nothing. What was there to say? We'd known Ma would react that way – nobody knows anything more than Ma – and we also knew she'd vent her superiority on pastry and there'd be a grand supper tonight. We made ourselves scarce till it was time to eat.

            Pete had been boarding at our place for five months and my life had never been more satisfying. When Dad had shot through two years earlier, I'd been left to defend the reputation of the male of the species. It was a full-time job; senior high school was a breeze by comparison. And then Pete had turned up.

            I'd never quite worked out the pieces of his story – where he'd been before and why he was here now – but one thing was clear: he'd won Ma over, or she wouldn't have let him move in.

            Pete was about three years older than me, the brother I'd alternated between longing for and being grateful I didn't have. If I'd had a brother like Joe's, I'd have left home. But Pete more than matched the other side of my scale. As long as he stayed, I'd stay.

            Pete's electrical skills were a boon in the old house, with its dicky lighting that flashed as if it had ambitions to join the lightning it emulated. The switches sparked when we shifted them, and we never knew if the TV would work. Pete fixed all that in his first three weeks and Ma waived the board money.

            'Why don't you take up a trade, do something useful with your life?' she took to asking whenever I claimed schoolwork as my excuse for copping out of the dishes. Like going to university to study engineering wouldn't be useful.

            In all the time Pete had been with us, Ma had never spoken directly to him. Pete was always 'he', never 'you'. It was kind of freaky, but Pete didn't seem to mind. Pete didn't mind anything much, really, except hunger and police officers. He was adept at steering clear of both.

This particular weekend was the long one in June, the Queen's birthday. The weather was lousy: wet and windy. I was sick of all my computer games, and our internet connection didn't like rain.

            'You up for a bit of useful, Mattie?' Pete asked when we'd been doing nothing for a couple of hours.

            'What kind of useful?' I asked, thinking of the assignments I was avoiding and wishing he'd offered fun instead.

            'How about we fix up this room while Rhoda's busy with the oldies at the nursing home?'

            'Whaddya mean, 'fix it up'? It's okay as it is. Been like this as long as I remember.'

            'That's my point,' he said, slapping my back. 'Don't you reckon your ma would like a fresh coat of paint on it? Look,' he added, pointing at the bare patches around the light switch, 'there's hardly any paint left. What colour was it, d'ya reckon?'

            I looked, probably for the first time in the ten years since I'd scratched my name in the paint behind the sofa. 'Dunno. Can't remember. Maybe cream?'

            'Well, I figure we've got four hours. We can do one coat before she gets back, if we're fast. You in it?'

            Pete was already walking out to the shed as I muttered a half-hearted, 'S'pose so.' He came back with a couple of new tins of paint.

            'Corn chip. It's the latest fashion colour. I saw it in this house I was working on last week, and the woman there showed me one of those home decorator magazines. This colour was the hot favourite.'

            What did I know? I started packing up Ma's knick knacks and photos while Pete shoved the movable furniture into the corridor. We covered the heavy stuff with old sheets, brought in buckets of water and scrubbed the walls with sugar soap. There wasn't much paint anywhere on the wall when we'd finished.

            The time raced as we slapped on paint while the CD player thumped fast music to set our pace. Pete was up on the ladder painting the cornice a tomato-and-milk colour which he reckoned the magazine showed too, and I was tidying the edges and removing drips when we heard the slam of the back door. I turned the CD off and looked up as Ma stood in the doorway from the kitchen.

            'Whose idea?' she said hoarsely. I looked at Pete, who stood on the ladder grinning, his brush poised over the paint tin hanging from its wire handle.

            'Looks like a different place, huh, Rhoda? D'ya like it? We'll finish it off properly, like professionals. It'll be done by the end of the weekend.'

            I groaned – he hadn't told me that part.

            Ma made her comment and left. We cleaned up and spent the time before supper washing out paint-soaked brushes and wiping up all the drips and smudges that seemed to have spread themselves around.

            We sat down at the kitchen table at the usual time for supper, our hands raw from an hour in cold water and turps. There was something in the oven, but no sign of Ma. We waited a few minutes, but then Pete opened the oven.

            'Get the plates, Matt,' he grunted as he pulled out a baking dish. 'Oh-oh,' he added, 'we've got trouble.' He dumped the dish on the stovetop and stood looking at it, absently slapping the worn oven glove from hand to hand.

            I looked too. Corn chips floating in tomato soup. 'I guess she didn't like the colour scheme.'

            'Yeah.'

            Pete went to the fridge to find something more palatable.

            'There's a note,' I said, pulling a sticky note off the fridge door.

            Maybe he knows about cooking too. He's welcome to it.

Ooh, Ma is really riled. I wonder why? Read the second instalment next time.

See you then...

Claire Belberg