Oh, I was so tempted. Jack suggested that I join him and his surfer mates at the pub. As it was just around the corner from my house, I could get him pissed, throw him over my shoulder and carry him home for a night of drunken sex. It was a plan. And even if they talked about surfing all night, a bar full of young, healthy surfers trumped dinner with my mother, but if I didn’t turn up she would set on me a plague of biblical proportions. He would be relaxed and happy with his mates and I’d be having dinner with my crazy mother and her loopy boyfriend.
Dinner with my mother was right up there with mammograms. A birthday dinner with my mother and her latest boyfriend Darren was cruel and extraordinary punishment. He was nuts and she was a squirrel. Darren was just another one of a long line of dysfunctional neurotics who’d crawled into her life, pleading to be saved from their current problems and then developing brand new obsessions as she transferred her hang-ups to them and called it progress. My mother was now a vegan, so the night was going to be a nightmare of bean sprouts and filtered spring water and lectures. The night was going to be hell.
I decided that I’d have a pre-emptive drink and a burger before I went to dinner, and a remedial drink and a block of chocolate when I got home because by then I’d really need it.
What was it with my mother? She is a successful psychologist with a blog and a regular spot on midday television. To people who didn’t know her, she’s a brilliant example of a modern woman. What a crock! My mother is a nightmare.
Mothers are supposed to be sensible. They’re supposed to be rational. Mothers are supposed to be calm and elegant and sit in the corner and knit jumpers and make jam and wear blue floral dresses and turn up at school Open Days sober and know how to make things. They’re supposed to be a lot of things, but she is…not.
My mother has varying explosive degrees of red, blonde or sometimes alarmingly calicocat combinations hair, a Botox and Restylane habit, and if she has another boob job her tits will split. Most of the time, she shops at Supré and Vinnies and then blows the budget on Wheels & Doll Baby. She actually wears gold sparkly leggings and it’s not a pretty sight, even though she goes to Bikram yoga three times a week. She can cook when she feels like it, but she doesn’t like to be limited by an actual recipe so the results can be somewhat surprising.
My mother has embarrassed me for my entire life.
Once, she turned up at school for my Book Week Parade dressed as The Cat in the Hat. All that black lycra with high heels kept the year six boys talking for weeks and permanently traumatised me. She followed up that effort by having an affair with my English teacher, which I must admit helped my results for a while with very little effort on my part, but eventually I was back to sitting at the far end of the classroom with yet another teacher hating me and making my life a misery.
She made appropriate appreciative noises when she unwrapped her present that I’d picked up at the crystal shop at Bondi Junction, where I’d been assured that Cobaltoan Calcite brings the essence of unconditional love. Now all I had to do was wring a hundred dollars each out of my brother and sister, who were too busy to even sign the bloody birthday card and would change the subject when I brought up the subject of money.
The night was a blur of Jaina joy and vegan philosophy and their plans to visit an ashram outside San Francisco to study Tantric yoga and advanced meditation techniques that are usually conducted under the stars in hot tubs. Clothes optional. Darren The Goose just sat cross-legged and cross-eyed, worshipping her, hanging on to her every word. They planned to celebrate his thirtieth birthday there, which I think officially qualified my mother as a cougar. Or just a very dirty old lady.
Over a feast of celery salt-and-pepper tofu, gingered couscous and steamed bok choy washed down with room-temperature filtered water with a daring slice of lime, I was grilled on what had happened to Jimbo.
“I remember when he lived in Caledonia Street. He was with that tall, dark-haired model and he had a Rolls Royce. How that car survived in Paddo was a mystery. Anyway, he used to hang out in the front bar of the Grand National and he’d drink until he fell off the stool. And he’d grope any girl who came near him.”
“Did he ever hit on you, Mum?” I couldn’t resist asking.
“Of course not, darling. I was married to your father and was always faithful,” she lied. I knew she lied. My mother and Jimbo Jameson: it was yet another horrible mental image for me to deal with.
Naturally, she had her theories about Jimbo’s life and death and Darren nodded enthusiastically as she rattled on about false personas, extreme narcissism and exploitation while Darren threw in karma for good measure. Did Jimbo actually deserve to die? Were his lifetime sins actually responsible for his death? Had the universe finally corrected a terrible mistake? The theories bounced back and forth, becoming wilder and weirder and my head started to ache and I fantasised yet again that I was adopted.
Pleading a monstrous headache and a mountain of dirty washing, I left them debating the finer points of Acquired Narcissism and walked home, congratulating myself on my scintillating social life. I considered checking The Royal’s front bar and accidentally joining Jack and his friends, but my mother had put me in such a depressed mood that I couldn’t be bothered. At least my faithful bottleshop was still open and offering uncomplicated, unconditional comfort. The raucous night sounds wafted through my open window as I crawled into my bed to wallow in my misery and aloneness. Again.