The Household Guide to Dying

When Nancy began the household guides I wasn’t her first choice of author. That was a man by the name of Wesley Andrews, an enterprising person who was known as a bright spark, someone who had great contacts, who got things done. Who seemed to have a hand in all sorts of books and literary ventures. Who’d written perfectly competent novels as well as ghostwritten mediocre but bestselling memoirs of sporting personalities. He had seemed in every way the right person to put his name and imprimatur on the inaugural guide: The Household Guide to Home Maintenance. Correctly understanding that the first book in the series should capture both male and female readers, Nancy felt a male author was necessary. But until the writing ground to a halt somewhere between chapter eight (Roofing and Guttering) and chapter nine (Windows and Flyscreens), no one had any idea that Wesley’s chief literary driving force, if not navigator and mechanic, had been his wife – who, by chapter seven (Patching and Painting) had left him for good. Which perhaps explained why the opinions and recommendations on Simple Plumbing Repairs and Basic Electrics in chapters five and six were so very simple and basic. That is where I came in.

I had already been working for Nancy, first as a casual proofreader, then writing the advice column that appeared in her free publication – advertisements and advertorials disguised as a magazine – which she called Household Words, a joke that I suspected only she and I shared. Her idea for the column had arrived one afternoon when she was looking at a blank space on page five of Household Words and facing a deadline the next day. She phoned me, interrupting a dull editing job, or whatever it was I did then as a freelancer fitting in work between supermarket visits and nappy changes.

I need a dummy column for this issue, then we’ll get real letters. Can you knock something up quickly, on polishing silver, or whatever?

Nancy, no one polishes silver these days. They don’t even use it.

What about stains, then? You’ve got two kids, you’d know a lot about stains.

I guess I do.

I’ll set up the layout now, she said, and you can email me the copy later. I’ll call it Dear Delia. Lucky you’ve got the right name for it.

Nancy paid promptly and generously for a few hundred words of tame advice which I extracted from my non-creative side between the hours of nine and eleven on a Sunday evening while Archie was watching the Channel Ten movie and the girls were in bed. For months I doubted anyone read it, as Household Words was pushed into letter-boxes all over the suburbs along with advertising brochures for Coles Liquor, Woolworths supermarket specials and the Good Guys Electrics catalogue and was hardly distinguishable in content from them anyway. But evidence of its readership emerged when my advice column started to receive more and more emails.

They came regularly, forwarded to me by Nancy’s assistant, and for a while I responded easily enough. Nancy seemed happy, and the extra income helped with the mortgage. But then one day, bored for some reason, I amused myself by winding up the reader. It was such fun, I did it again, then again, never intending to send the replies off, until accidentally and in haste (a dish overcooking? a child left too long in the bath?) I attached the wrong file, hit the send key. If I’d assumed my copy was checked, I was proven wrong a week or two later when my mother rang to say she’d been amused by my unusual responses in that week’s issue. I sat around waiting for Nancy to phone and complain. Instead I was flooded with letters, and more requests than I could deal with. Nancy congratulated me on the initiative, and insisted I go in a bit harder. As a result the advice column developed a cult following.

Dear Delia was only a version of me, a slightly feral one. A more fearless one. But readers seemed to like being insulted, treated with disdain or having their requests dismissed, and so the column continued.

Dear Delia

Last night I had several people over to dinner, including my old friend who is still single despite her divorce coming through a good year ago, and my husband’s new assistant. During the dinner my husband managed to fling his arm across the table and knock over a carafe of red wine onto my best cotton lace tablecloth. He was arguing with Don, our neighbour, and they both got a bit carried away. If I bleach it, it might fall apart, or go white or patchy. What should I do?

Uncertain.

Dear Uncertain

What I will advise you, Uncertain, is to examine your guilt about your relationship with Don. Are you sure your feelings for him are as hidden as you believe? For you can be sure if I worked it out from just one letter, your unnamed husband will have worked it out by now too. Don’t fool yourself for a minute that your attempt to introduce Don to your divorced and still-single friend will work as a cover for your real feelings about him and the relationship you two are conducting on the sly. In fact this will almost certainly backfire: your friend and Don will end up hitting it off in all sorts of ways. They might even be out at a matinee screening of the latest Hugh Grant movie right now. I’d suggest that next time you want to have dinners where arguments occur you use a more appropriate tablecloth. Perhaps seersucker. Or one of those wipe-down vinyl ones.

Six

But before I reached Amethyst there was the Garnet turnoff. And this took me back to where it all started. Back to McDonald’s. How appropriate. McDonald’s, that temple which was the meeting point of modern consumerism, efficiency and cleanliness. Those cold disinfected surfaces, those quickly dispensed drinks, those tightly wrapped parcels of burgers and cardboard-clad chips (for Australians still, after thirty years’ indoctrination, called them chips, not ‘fries’). All that order and control, all those precisely measured, weighed and timed burgers, buns, nuggets, fillets. All those smug rows of junior burgers, Big Macs and apple pies, slipping hygienically down their stainless steel chutes. All those obligingly happy Happy Meals.

The McDonald’s in Garnet had changed. The playground had been rebuilt, and was bigger, brighter. There was now a drive-through facility. The palms were taller but still didn’t obscure the all-important signs. After I parked I thought about going in, but then I might have had to eat something, and even for Sonny’s sake I couldn’t do that. It was enough just to sit in the car, thinking.

When I was last here, Sonny was eight. I thought he would have grown out of the place. But eight was a deceptive age, especially for a boy who also happened to be tall. Eight was past little-kid stage. Eight was when you attained a certain level of coolness, when style began to assert itself. You were no longer in the infants’ department at school, you did Real Sport (in Sonny’s case, soccer), and you were allowed the heady freedom of using a pen instead of a pencil in class.

Eight was the beginning of the end of things like favourite cuddly toys at night, ritual comfort foods like hot chocolate before bed, special plastic cartoon cups, flotation aids in the swimming pool (becoming contemptible) or vests (despicable, even in the middle of winter, none of your friends wore them…). But eight was also, still, a McDonald’s Happy Meal.

There was no McDonald’s in Amethyst. For some reason the town had banned all chain stores, franchises and commercial fast food outlets. But there was television. And therefore advertisements. And a neighbouring town twenty minutes away by bus, less if we got a lift with someone. I was a young single mother, equal parts guilt and indulgence, prepared to stand on my principles for only so long. So there we were, sitting over our Happy Meal. And Sonny was happy – I admit it – happy fiddling with the purple and green toy monster. Happy chewing his cardboard chips. Happy alternately sucking then blowing into his Coke, with furtive glances at me.

It was possible that within three or four years he’d come either to hate the food or be bored by it. By the age of twelve he’d probably be into something cool and trendy, like only eating at places offering noisy electronic games, places with names like Radical Zone or the Shooting Arrow. Or he’d simply be able to go out on his own, or with friends. That is, without me. Without his mother. And at twelve, he could be left safely at home for hours at a time. Then I could consider Going Out. Like a date, a real date, as opposed to spending the odd evening after work at Mitchell’s bar, listening to the drifters and dreamers sucking up the oxygen while I parried their vague boozy requests for sex.

Sonny looked up at me, cutting into my thoughts. He dropped the goofy toy, frowned, and asked me what was wrong.

Nothing, I said. Why?

You look sad.

Sad?

Or angry. This last was in a plaintive sort of tone. Maybe I was still angry, maybe just a bit resentful, after what had happened earlier.

My heart twisted. Vital to bury your frustration, to put it behind you, to live in the moment, which is what children generally did. I told him I wasn’t angry, or sad, patted his free hand, the one that wasn’t now fiddling with the toy again, then took it in mine. A bold move. Eight was also when holding hands with your mother in a public place became pretty well verboten.

Then it was my turn to pay attention. He looked pale. Was I just imagining a touch of grey under his eyes? Then I noticed he hadn’t eaten his burger, apart from one bite, and was only halfway through the chips.

Hey, I said, are you feeling okay?

He shrugged. That could mean anything in eight-year-old code. Really good or exceptionally bad. I already knew that kids weren’t always aware of feeling sick, somehow just didn’t have the words to articulate what, exactly, was wrong. Could be nearly comatose with something or other but drive their mothers up the wall with unrelieved whingeing or, even more bizarrely, excessive hyperactivity.

Do you feel sick?

No.

Open your mouth and stick out your tongue.

He snatched his hand back. No way!

Go on, open your mouth, I’ll see if your tonsils are up.

He folded his arms and sat back, glancing around as if every single member of his class was waiting to leap from the corners and tease him. Being sick was not cool. Being seen to be sick, less cool. Being seen to submit to a mother’s ministrations, downright fiery.

I asked what was wrong then. That shrug again. I asked if he wasn’t hungry after all. He shook his head, pushed the food aside, looked at me, then away, then said,

Are you sure Archie isn’t my dad? Can’t he be?

Oh, that. That little big question. Guilt. Dismay. Bitterness. Helplessness. And the thousand other negative emotions the single mother was so familiar with, the reason she gave in and took her kid to McDonald’s, though it went against every principle she had.

I risked a prod at his burger. It didn’t respond. Typical. It sulked dumpily on the tray, not a bit happy. The bright orange cheese that dribbled out one side had already set into a hard blob. Just out of spite, since I was wound up and guilty over Sonny’s undeniable lack of a father, I decided to mutilate it.

He got into the spirit of the act. Children are great like that, adaptable, prone to quick changes in mood. Together we poured scorn on the thing, prising apart the dry yoyo halves of the bun, extracting the lone slice of pickled cucumber to deride it in the time-honoured tradition of every single Australian child – perhaps every child on the planet – and sniffing with exaggerated suspicion at the remaining contents, which by now bore less resemblance to a real burger than the gimmicky magnet I used to attach his latest drawings to the fridge. He suggested we take it home and glue a magnet to it and use that instead. I agreed. And it wouldn’t go mouldy, not with all the preservatives.

Our laughter lightened things, but by the time Sonny picked up the burger between thumb and forefinger and minced over to the bin with his other hand holding his nose, we were attracting dark looks from the staff, and I knew it was time to leave.

But there are worse things than McDonald’s. Had I known what was to come I would have stayed. I would have eaten there every day. I would have turned away from the dusty afternoon light in my eyes as we pushed through the door onto the highway, as sluggishly crowded as it got at what passed for peak hour in these parts, and marched straight back to the counter and ordered dozens of Big Macs, litres of Coke. And ten kilos of cardboard chips.

Seven

Dear Delia

I’ve consulted numerous cookbooks but despite many attempts I still can’t manage to boil a soft egg. Can you help? I wonder if I should Google it?

A Bachelor.

Dear A Bachelor

You are asking me to impart one of my best secrets. Go Google all you like. I worked it out, I’m sure you can too.

I’d started another list. I should have been concentrating on the real work, but I felt an irrational urgency about this. I would finish it then put it in one of the boxes I was preparing for the girls.

Guests (needs separate list: obviously can’t be done now)

Invitations: suggest professional printers

Cake: refer to recipe (but maybe Jean?)

Dress: David Jones’s best?

Photographer: god knows. Maybe digital cameras will be obsolete by now?

Catering: Benny’s the obvious choice. But Cater Queen if not poss.

Venue: depends on time of year. Back garden perfect if summer/spring.

Musicians: string trio (students from college?)

Ideally this list wouldn’t be needed for another twenty years. Ideally, if it were entirely up to me, it would never be needed, since I was beginning to sense the redundancy of marriage. But as I didn’t feel it was right to impose my views on anyone else, even my own daughters – especially my own daughters – then it would be better than no list.

Along with everything else it offers (a chance for relatives to catch up, a good excuse for a booze-up), a wedding is a means for a certain level of bonding between mother and daughter. Fraught bonding at times (I remembered it well), but a rite of passage that should not be denied at any cost, no matter the jaded views of the older generation. No matter that the mother would not be there.

That my daughters would not need this list for many years was irrelevant. All that mattered was that they’d know I’d made the effort. And if by then they happened to be capable of organising a wedding without my assistance, then even better. In fact, I’d regard it as a significant sign that the mothering I’d managed to squeeze into the years available was successful.

Archie had recently called me a control freak. I think it was the day after I’d written that late-night list to help him get the girls to school. As I sat at my desk with the preliminary list for the wedding of my youngest daughter, who was just eight, a wedding that might never occur, and which I certainly wouldn’t be attending, I confronted this accusation. If all this wasn’t the work of a control freak, then what was? I tapped my lips with the pen and gazed out the window at the wisteria. I decided that Estelle was probably in no need of any such list, being supremely organised herself. Also of firm opinions, already, regarding matrimony. It was Daisy I was planning for, though with built-in flexibility if Estelle should turn out to surprise us all.

Them all.

I wondered if these lists said more about me or Archie. I’d spent too many mornings, more than I cared to remember, explaining to him what needed to be done: instructing, directing, losing my temper, becoming impatient, before finally doing it all myself. As if I’d been at the control centre of a military exercise, a full-scale war, instead of a partner in a marriage that included two young children. Occasionally, the children had been dressed and fed (if you counted crisps as food) and otherwise organised out of the house and off to childcare, lately school, without my help. But the fallout had never been worth it:

Daisy: I didn’t get a merit star today because I forgot my home reader.

Estelle: Miss Blake says if I don’t take my permission note back I won’t get to see the

Dreamtime storyteller.

D: I was cold, why didn’t you pack my jumper?

E: You know I hate blueberry muffins!

And so on. I tried every method available to the reasonable woman. Pointing out the lapses in a kind way (‘Darling, don’t you think Daisy should have her shoelaces tied?’). Barking out orders like a sergeant-major (‘If you don’t take them NOW they’ll be marked late!’). Saying nothing. Saying everything. Standing by pretending to be preoccupied with another task but internally writhing as Archie tried to brush hair that was still plaited or failed to understand that children needed reminding to wear sweaters even in the middle of winter. Writing lists. Not writing lists. Doing none of the tasks. Doing half the tasks, like lining up the contents of a lunchbox so that he only had to place them inside, close the lid and grab the juice bottle from the fridge. Daddy packed my lunch today.

Nothing worked. Now I was playing my very last card. It was a mean trick, I knew. I felt its meanness myself. How cruel, how unfair, how totally unsporting, how unlike the stout mothers of public life, the mothers of fiction. You could never imagine Mrs Gandhi or Mrs Micawber or Mrs Thatcher or Mrs Weasley dying before their time and leaving their children unmothered. The prime minister’s wife – any prime minister’s wife – Nicole Kidman’s mother, Mrs Jellyby, Angelina Jolie, the Queen, Lady Jane Franklin, Mrs George Bush senior and junior…they would never have died young and left motherless children. They might have been doubtful, dominating or dysfunctional – all Dickens’ mothers were – but they stayed around. Even Lady Dedlock hung in there. Jane Austen’s Mrs Bennet would never have left five young daughters weeping over a coffin. The mother dying was a disgraceful breaking of every single rule and if I were Archie, I would have been outraged too. But that wasn’t going to change, and it certainly wasn’t my idea.

I wondered if my absence would make any real difference to the running of the household. As with the commander of an army, or the leader of any enterprise, so it is with the mistress of a house. Like Mrs Isabella Beeton I had applied a strategic approach to the household, its contents, its routines, and its warm and breathing occupants. And how had I forgotten that Isabella Beeton, that wise, visionary, wellread, innovative woman, that young woman, had died far too early? Isabella Beeton had left her two children – one just a baby – motherless. She ought always to remember that she is the first and the last, the Alpha and the Omega in the government of her establishment.

But what once infuriated me about Archie I now admired. It hadn’t been his tendency to dally in flirtatious territory at dinners or parties featuring women with more impressive cleavage than I – and of course, more recently, with cleavage at all. Nor had it been his need to bond with members of the same gender and subspecies (semi-professional, rugby-loving) at the pub once a week. Nor his regular forgetting of birthdays and anniversaries. If this marriage were to have unravelled it would have been over something as trivial and tangible as a misplaced sock, or a forgotten school lunchbox. That indifference to the knitted fabric of the household. It might have been misshapen over time and ill-fitting but still, thanks to the one thread that was me, it all held together: the shopping, the bill-paying, the girls’ activities, their dental appointments, their swimming lessons, their need to dawdle in the park doing nothing at all.

However, I now saw a quality that I almost craved. Maybe Archie’s indifference to the household was restraint, a capacity for self-control and wide-gazing detachment. Something I couldn’t do, being forever focused on the crumbs on the kitchen bench in front of me, the emptying milk carton in the fridge, the multiplying dirty clothes in the basket.

I once heard a famous actor being interviewed on the radio about the breakdown of her marriage. When pressed to name its cause she replied succinctly: shirts. I knew instantly what she meant. The symbol of a married woman’s unscripted yet unavoidable role in the relationship. No clause in the contract stipulating the care and maintenance of the male shirt, yet somehow they took over, with their demands to be soaked, ironed, fresh and alert on hangers ready for the next excursion into the working world. It took a stout feminist to withstand the onslaught of the shirt.

My particular argument had never been with shirts, since Archie’s work gear was casual. And even if it had been, I would never have left him over a shirt because, despite his domestic blindness, Archie had given me more than I deserved. But there had been times when I could see how it might have been possible to leave. I doubted he had ever understood how tight a thread I had been all these years. And now that one thread was about to be snipped. And if on the very edge of that scission, I was still unable to fall back, stop being the commander of the household, what did that say about me? Control freak, I guessed. Yet I suspected there was something more to it than that. Yet another thing for which I could not find the right words.

I wondered what happened when women disappeared from a family. Another woman enlisted to take their place? A paid housekeeper, or a wife? Despite his occasional flirtatiousness I couldn’t see Archie rushing into anything. That didn’t fit with the father in him. I knew he would be assisted by his mother and my mother, who between them would probably make life easier for him than I ever had. Then, after a while, depending on how Estelle and Daisy reacted, a new partner would come, followed possibly by marriage. Secretly I was hoping for Charlotte, Archie’s part-time bookkeeper, which seemed logical to me, although I’d tried and failed to discuss the subject with him. I liked Charlotte, I admired her. She was a serene young woman who was completing a diploma in business management. She worked with percentages and bottom lines and, I suspected, had never made a sponge cake or done French knitting in her life. She came one day a week and worked in the corner of Archie’s shed which was also his office, sending out invoices and settling accounts with suppliers, decoding then dispensing all the paperwork of the tax system that Archie found so mystifying. Estelle and Daisy adored her and only ever wanted her to mind them if Archie and I went out. If she married Archie it would be almost perfect.

Oh, and it would be cruel. Another woman to usher the girls into their teenage years, into their adulthood. To be there for their first period, to buy the most expensive hair products, to offer advice on skin care, to tolerate teenagegirl cravings for Nutella or obsessions with vegan diets. To pretend to understand how vital MySpace was. To be there when their boyfriends abandoned them. Gasp at their mobile phone bills. Shake a head over their newest piercing. Tell them, every day, how beautiful they were. And how much they were loved.

Cruelty. What exactly did Eliot say again? I found my undergraduate copy of the Selected Poems, and prepared to torment myself further with his gloomy words. But when I read ‘The Wasteland’ again I had to admit that Mr Eliot was right: it was winter that had kept me warm, in a strange sort of way. Muffled me in its state of suspended animation, kept me from the cold steel of memory and desire before they sliced through my soul in the expectant warmth of spring.

An attack of wind shook the wisteria so furiously the petals rained onto the verandah. Opening the office window wide I took in its scent. I heard the clicking of Mr Lambert’s wheelbarrow next door. This time of year, he was more than particular about his garden: he was obsessive. He would be sweeping up the leaves and blown petals as they dropped, cursing my messy flowering vines and clipping every tendril that sneaked its way past the fence. Instead of shaving his front lawn today, he was probably pruning, the mock orange hedge being his chief target. I never smelled the mock orange during the day, but some nights the entire atmosphere was saturated with it. It could not be just from Mr Lambert’s abject specimens, which he trimmed into order every week in the warmer months.