Page 32 of Thursdays at Orange Blossom House
‘Honestly, Patricia, just because you’re an English teacher doesn’t mean you get to play word games with me.’
Annette sounds like the whiny girl she used to be. Maybe still is. Except Patricia knows she’s taken the bait again. Annette loves a passive-aggressive, slightly vague question, and Patricia loves being precise. So when Patricia comes roaring back with precision, Annette always gets to say her sister is trying to make her feel dumb, or just-because-you-have-a-degree-doesn’t-mean-you’re-smarter-than-the-rest-of-us.
Sisters. Who’d have one? Brothers are more straight forward. They use single syllables – when they’re not grunting – and they’re not vaguely interested in parents so there’s never a passive-aggressive conversation to be had. Instead there’s a dull throb of resentment that they get away with being hopeless because they’re male and their lives are expected to be elsewhere. Patricia and Annette were always meant to be the ones who stuck around and helped. Then Annette worked out that she could get away too.
It’s as if their parents are remnants of a life they all used to have, instead of living, breathing people who need the same sort of care and attention they gave their children. Patricia may not be enthralled with her life as it’s currently lived, but she refuses to think that her parents are flotsam and jetsam.
‘Just say what you mean, Annette. I live with Mum so I know what’s going on. But I want to hear what you think is going on.’
She clangs the cutlery into the drying rack and Annette glares at her as if she did it on purpose, when really it’s what Patricia does every night. She loathes washing up. Always has. Always will. She dreams of having a dishwasher but her father won’t countenance the expense.
‘Fine,’ Annette huffs. ‘She’s all over the place. Forgetting things.’
‘Yes, she is.’
‘So what are you doing about it?’
Patricia tries counting to ten but only makes it to four.
‘What amIdoing about it?’ She picks up a glass and tries not to smash it into the sink. ‘Mum has four children. Shouldn’t your question be, “What arewedoing about it?”’
There’s silence as Patricia washes the glass and puts it gently onto the tea towel that she laid out for the purpose. Glasses don’t go anywhere near the cutlery; they always have their own flat area.
‘Look, you’re the one who chose to live here, so I think it’s your responsibility.’ Annette picks up a knife to dry.
There’s so much that Patricia wants to say, but she knows there’s no point. Annette is telling herself a story, the way she always has. It used to be the story that Patricia was more favoured by the teachers, by their brothers, by their parents, even though it was never the case – it just suited Annette’s narrative better. If Patricia was the golden child, Annette could have tantrums about life being so unfair, even though she saw – just as their brothers saw – their mother tearing strips off Patricia fairly regularly.
‘Just because you’re the pretty one and you can play piano – it’s not FAIR!’ Annette would rage, throwing books off shelves, burying dolls in the garden. And this when she was in her teens. The payoff was that people – their grandparents, for example – would tell her that no, it wasn’t true, Patricia wasn’t so special. Annette was lovely and wonderful.
It got worse once it became clear that Patricia was also athletic and good at it, which meant she won prizes and went off to compete in state titles. Annette would also then say that it ‘wasn’t fair’ that Patricia got to be the sporty one.
Patricia, for her part, never said that it wasn’t fair that Annette was the graceful one, because she learnt young that Annette wasn’t saying these things to start a debate but, rather, to end one.
On her wedding day, a giddy Annette drew Patricia aside and said, ‘So I got there first for once!’ She’d laughed, almost jumping up and down.
‘What do you mean?’ Patricia asked, her hair in a ghastly bouffant, her body squeezed into an unflattering blue taffeta number that all the bridesmaids were forced to wear.
‘I got married before you did!’ Annette said in a high-pitched, singsong way. ‘Somebody wanted me before somebody wantedyoooou!’
Patricia was so shocked that her sister’s childhood resentments had clearly been in the pack ice all along, that the thaw that seemed to take place during her adolescence had been a ruse, that she didn’t answer. Just let Annette skip off back to the reception. She’s never forgotten it, although she imagines Annette thinks she has. And her sister hasn’t ever said anything like it again, although when Annette’s husband once said that he couldn’t believe ‘a good-looking sheila like you hasn’t been snapped up, Pat’, Annette’s glare was so fierce that Patricia was surprised her brother-in-law wasn’t knifed in the night.
The thing is: it’s such a ridiculous situation. Annette has always been the literal golden-haired girl. She was the cute one, the sweet one, the one their mother dressed like a doll and paraded around to the admiration of others, until she reached puberty. Patricia was the smart one, the bookish one, the one who was meant to leave Cairns and find her way somewhere that had more universities and better jobs. Now Annette flies overseas for holidays, and Patricia has returned to the family home.
‘The doctor is checking her regularly,’ Patricia says more calmly than she feels, pulling the plug and taking off the rubber gloves. ‘There’s not much else to be done. There’s no cure for dementia.’
‘Dementia!’ Annette almost shouts it.
‘What did you think it was?’
‘I thought maybe she needed to eat some more meat!’ Annette puts down her tea towel, half the dishes not yet dried. ‘God – dementia? So … what do you do?’
‘Nothing. I just told you.’
‘There must besomething.’
In Annette’s world there’s always something: a trip to a specialist in Sydney; or a weekend away in Melbourne for a pick-me-up shopping spree; or a little trip to the Whitsundays to rejuvenate.
She sniffs. ‘It’s Mum. There has to be something. I can’t bear …’
