‘What do you think?’ Maxine opened the guest room door onto a scene resembling Pirates of the Caribbean. A stuffed seagull glared from the top of a crow’s nest in the corner. Misshapen and cross-eyed, the bird had to be the work of an enthusiastic amateur. Shelves groaned with seashells enhanced with paint and glitter. Three ships were imprisoned in bottles. Maxine had been to night classes again.
‘Fresh,’ Lisa said, smiling at two single beds with duvet covers featuring flurries of semaphore flags.
‘Bit of fun.’ Maxine tossed a red lifebuoy cushion in the air.
Lisa wheeled her suitcase to rest under a tapestry portrait of a sea captain. She couldn’t help smiling. Maxine’s approach to kitsch was in no way ironic. She’d simply inherited their mother’s appalling taste, along with the MacNally button nose. Yet for all their differences Lisa did love her sister.
‘Come through to the family room,’ Maxine said. ‘We need to chat.’
Lisa’s surge of fondness waned. Maxine’s chats always involved bossiness. Nevertheless, she obediently followed her sister down the hall and settled warily in an armchair smothered with sunflowers. Red poppies clambered across the wallpaper until they ran out of space and fought for survival against giant hydrangeas on the curtains. French provincial, apparently.
‘I’m so pleased you’ve come home for a little holiday,’ Maxine said, flourishing a tray laden with her signature white chocolate and raspberry muffins. ‘After all you’ve been through.’
‘It’s not a holiday.’
‘Oh, you’ll change your mind in a week or two,’ Maxine said, pouring tea into identical Portmeirion cups. Lisa marvelled at her sister’s ability to produce matching crockery. Maxine, on the other hand, was so bemused by Lisa’s love of ethnic masks and brightly woven fabrics she actually gave her a subscription to Home Beautiful one birthday. Lisa tried not to take it personally. If her sister had travelled more widely, read more books and known a few more men when she was younger, she’d understand taste when she saw it.
‘I’m back for good,’ Lisa said, reaching for a muffin and crumbling it on her plate to make it seem less fattening.
Maxine stirred her brew thoughtfully. ‘The thing is you can’t come back,’ she said in her primary school teacher voice. ‘The Australia we grew up in doesn’t exist. It’s not all lamingtons and Hills hoist clotheslines any more. You’ve changed since you moved to the States. Things here have changed, too.’
‘I know.’
‘We’re more sophisticated. We have marvellous cafés in Melbourne now, but we’re not all rich and famous like some people.’
Lisa sighed. There was no point telling Maxine her finances were far from buoyant. Jake’s reckless investments had taken a hammering through the double-dip recession. Now, thanks to Cow Belle, what was left was about to be halved. She had a modest nest egg, but Lisa needed to churn out at least one bestseller a year for the foreseeable future. And while Three Sisters had a Facebook fan page, she was hardly a celebrity.
‘Don’t worry. I’ll find a place of my own in a week or two.’
‘That’s not my point,’ Maxine said, waving her hand to display the coloured flecks in her nail polish. ‘You can stay here as long as you like. Gordon won’t mind.’
It hadn’t occurred to Lisa that Gordon would object to anything that had Maxine’s seal of approval.
‘The thing is, at our age . . .’
Lisa settled back in her chair and let the lecture wash over her. The whole house was a shrine to Maxine-ness. A photo of Maxine as a prefect at Methodist Ladies College took pride of place on the dresser. Everyone in the family had been thrilled when Maxine won a scholarship to such a posh school, largely due to her expertise with a hockey stick. Ruby was always encouraging Maxine to bring friends home, but the doctors’ and lawyers’ daughters avoided the shabby Trumperton house for more genteel company. The school directed Maxine’s pent-up aggression at the netball court. Her Goal Attack terrified teams from public and private schools alike. In her final year she was made captain of the senior team.
Next to the prefect photo was an image of Maxine smiling coyly from under a bridal veil. Maxine met Gordon, a good-looking though slightly plump Scotch College boy, at year-ten dance classes. It was the perfect Melbourne private school love story. They married after her first year out teaching.
Lisa was yin to Maxine’s yang. Traipsing two years’ behind her, she failed everywhere Maxine had triumphed, including getting a scholarship to Methodist Ladies College. Their mother said there was no way they could afford to send her as a fee-paying student. Profoundly relieved, Lisa slouched along to Camberwell Secondary College, where she couldn’t catch a ball of any size or make sense of anything the teachers droned on about, apart from English and art history.
One of the supposed advantages of Camberwell Secondary College was the presence of boys. Lisa’s handful of male friends turned out camp as Christmas, the beginning of a lifetime trend. The few girls she managed to trick or bribe into alliances were unpopular freaks like her. Prefect status was out of the question.
Lisa’s eyes strayed to the lower shelf where Maxine’s children, Nina and Andrew, drifted from babyhood to goofy adolescence inside a series of elaborate frames. Andrew, a painful introvert, had taken off to Silicon Valley, where, according to Maxine, he was about to shove a rocket up Google’s backside. Nina lived across the bay in Williamstown with her ‘nice little Chinese’ husband Dan and their small kids.
Lisa had no doubt Dan, a colorectal surgeon, had married down. The elder son from a family of Indonesian medical professionals, he had more sophistication inside his left nostril than the Frogget family put together. Maxine still shouted at him in her version of an Asian accent, while his expression settled in Buddha-like calm. The Froggets had never had a doctor in the family before, let alone a surgeon.
When Nina became pregnant the first time, Maxine lay awake at night fretting the child might come out an unacceptable shade of yellow. As it happened, little Peaches was a cherub with almond eyes, olive skin and tawny hair. By the time the other two came along, Maxine could see the bright side. With skin like that they’d get away with SPF15 instead of the standard MacNally SPF50.
Maxine hardly needed photos of her beautiful grandchildren when she saw them several times a week. They were always exquisitely turned out in French designer clothes from Dan’s mother in Jakarta.
As Maxine droned on about the benefits of holidays versus immigration, Lisa felt a stab of envy. Maxine had a husband who brought her tea and toast in bed every morning and grown-up children and grandchildren in the same city. So what if Gordon was a tax accountant who doubled as a doormat? There wasn’t a thing he wouldn’t give Maxine, including the new lime-green Volkswagen Golf sitting in the driveway. Whether he operated from adoration or fear was beside the point. He was devoted. And he was there. Maxine had it all. Yet she’d had the nerve to say Lisa was spoilt.
If Lisa had been their dad William’s favourite it was only by default. They just happened to share the kind of nervous system that imploded when people yelled and threw things. William was the only person who understood Lisa’s inability to tie shoelaces, whereas Ruby had quickly lost patience with her. Friends laughed when her laces collapsed into spaghetti in her hands. She simply couldn’t get the hang of making a bow out of a single loop. Sensing her distress, William took her aside one day and helped her invent a new type of bow using two loops. While it didn’t hold together as well as some people’s bows, it saved Lisa’s dignity. She still used the two-looped bow.
Like all MacNallys, Ruby possessed a wild beast of a temper. She had no qualms about letting the neighbours hear her screeching at William for being a snooty good-for-nothing Trumperton. She let everyone know she’d have been better off marrying Ian Johnston the bricklayer instead of a man fifteen years older who was hardly cutting a dash at the Water Board.
‘Never mind, Panda Bear,’ William would say, running his hand gently through Lisa’s hair after one of Ruby’s tirades. ‘She’ll settle down soon.’ He didn’t have pet names for anyone else. She never found out why he called her Panda Bear. It was long before the debate about whether pandas were actually bears or not.
With his striking blue eyes and eagleish nose, William had once been handsome. Years with Ruby took their toll, however. The thick dark hair faded to silver, his shoulders stooped and the once graceful stride slowed to a limp. After he retired, he took refuge in a fibro shed to make dolls’ houses, most of them in a Georgian style not unlike Trumperton Manor. They were made so exquisitely and with such attention to detail the toyshop on Glenferrie Road couldn’t get enough of them.
When he’d died of a stroke fifteen years ago, Lisa felt part of her soul detach itself and float away. After booking flights for the funeral, she’d wandered around Central Park. The air was suddenly still. The city fell silent. Snowflakes caressed her face. She felt her father’s presence, then, softly encompassing her before spiralling away with the snow. Now all she had left of him was his Aunt Caroline. Lisa reminded herself to spend some time with the old lady.
Lisa tuned into her sister once again. Maxine’s lecture was far from over. Lisa struggled to keep her mouth shut while she yawned. Admittedly, Maxine was the one who’d been stuck in Melbourne to ride out Ruby’s later years. After a couple of incidents wandering the streets in her nightie, Ruby was deposited in the Camberwell Palace retirement home. Maxine had no hesitation reminding Lisa she was the one who visited every Sunday. And the one they called after Ruby dropped dead clutching the stuffed wombat she’d just won at bingo.
Lisa sighed. ‘I think I’ll have a lie down.’
‘You can’t do that!’ Maxine snapped. ‘The only way to get over jet lag is to stay awake and keep local time.’
‘But I’m exhausted.’
‘Let’s not argue,’ Maxine said, which was her way of issuing a decree. ‘Country Victoria’s beautiful this time of year. Pop in the shower. We’ll get some fresh air in your lungs. I’ll take you down the peninsula.’
Lisa could think of nothing worse than rummaging through the so-called art galleries of Mornington for more nautically themed knickknacks.
‘Wouldn’t you rather go to Castlemaine?’
Maxine’s eyes narrowed. ‘Why would we want to go there?’ Her tone implied she’d been asked to drive overland to Kabul.
‘It’s closer, isn’t it?’
‘Castlemaine’s a good ninety minutes away. With the new motorway we’ll be on the peninsula in an hour.’
‘I’d like to see the ancestral home,’ Lisa said, attempting frivolity.
‘That old dump our grandfather lived in? Even Aunt Caroline refuses to go there.’
‘Trumperton Manor looks lovely in the photos.’
Maxine stared down at her cup.
Their father had been in his fifties when Maxine and Lisa were born. They’d never met their grandfather. ‘Aren’t you curious about the Trumpertons?’
Maxine examined the contents of her cup. ‘Mum never liked them,’ she said before draining her tea.
Maxine always sided with their mother and the MacNallys. Ruby’s tribe were vague about exactly when and how they arrived in Australia. Lisa suspected a prison ship was involved. Regardless, the moment they set foot on the dusty continent, they proceeded to mate like cane toads and punch anyone who looked at them twice.
Lisa had lost count of how many cousins she had, but she could spot the red hair and MacNally freckles anywhere from Antwerp to Alaska. Their alabaster skin forced them to avoid the tropics and beaches in general, unless covered from head to toe like Star Wars characters.
The MacNallys were always squabbling among themselves. The moment anyone outside the family offered a word of criticism—or even a suggestion for improvement—the clan instinct took over and they became a human fortress. You could never argue with a MacNally.
The Trumpertons, on the other hand, were softer and more complex, if their father was anything to go by. He loved classical music and art, and indulged his daughters with books. A gentle man with impeccable manners, he was the last male twig on the Trumperton family tree. The Trumpertons were officially sawdust, although, now Lisa had claimed her name back, a tentative new shoot had sprung from the mulch.
‘They were stuck-up wannabes,’ Maxine muttered.
‘You’re starting to sound like our mother.’
‘She had an awful life married to Dad, you know.’ Maxine gazed melodramatically out the window.
‘I always thought it was the other way round,’ Lisa said after a pause.
Maxine shot her a wounded look.
‘They were poles apart, that’s all,’ Lisa added, trying to smooth things over. ‘I guess these days they would’ve got divorced.’
Maxine swept her hair off her forehead. ‘I don’t see why we should go out there, anyway. Aunt Caroline’s right. What’s the point of wallowing in the past?’
As Maxine packed the cups and plates on the tray, a spear of anger ran through Lisa. What was wrong with Maxine and Aunt Caroline? They were behaving as if they had something to be ashamed of.
‘Why are Australians so phobic about delving into their family histories?’ Lisa said. ‘Are they scared they might find out they’re descended from Jack the Ripper?’
‘He was never caught,’ Maxine said, brushing the crumbs off her poncho.
‘Most of them were hardly criminals, anyway,’ Lisa continued. They were sent out here for next to nothing. I’d be proud if we had a shoe thief in our background.’
‘Speak for yourself,’ replied the former prefect of Methodist Ladies College.
Lisa held her ground. She longed to connect with something tangible, something that wouldn’t run off and sleep with the head of HR. There were no guidebooks for how to live this next phase of life. ‘I hear Castlemaine’s awash with knickknack shops these days,’ she said, having no idea if it was true.
Maxine stopped in the doorway to the kitchen. She could never resist a collectable. ‘Oh well. If you insist.’