On Saturday morning, Sunny took the kids with her on a garage sale run. Early spring was a classic time of year for a good clear-out, and there were a lot of sales in the area today. Hand-drawn signs had lined the streets all week, with balloons and streamers at traffic lights to garner attention. Anyone who was practised at finding gems and bargains knew they had to be up at dawn, and so she was. She’d put the kids in long-sleeved tops before they went to bed, so they’d get up already dressed. They wouldn’t be in them for long, not once the sun had climbed a few degrees into the sky.
Hudson had no shoes on, which was normal for him—she’d long let go of any idea of trying to keep him shod. Shoes, clothing tags, new clothes, heat, cold, roughness, prickliness, hair-brushing, teeth-cleaning, nail-cutting, hair-washing, bandaid-applying—for Hudson, everything was a challenge. Strangers had told her, ‘Get a jumper on that kid,’ or stared at him and asked her, ‘Why isn’t your son wearing shoes?’ She’d been the recipient of disapproving looks at kindy when he turned up wearing the same paint-spattered t-shirt as the day before because when she’d tried to wrestle him out of it he’d screamed so much that she was terrified someone would call the cops. The most obvious diagnosis, she assumed, would be the same as for Lara and their father, Leonard.
Bipolar affective disorder, though Leonard was type I and Lara type II.
Leonard had tried different medications but none of them seemed to work. Often, he simply refused to take them. In Sunny’s memories he was either non-verbal, not answering when spoken to, or insisting they lock all the doors and close the curtains because The People were following him. Sometimes he was lavishly generous, coming home with flowers and jewellery for Eliza and toys and lollies for the girls, picking them up, whirling them around and talking of holidays on tropical islands. This part of the manic episode was exciting, and Sunny would think that maybe he was better now. But then the crash would come and the three of them tiptoed around him, waiting for him to explode at the smallest thing.
He would disappear for weeks at a time. After years of this, Eliza stopped calling the police to notify them that he was missing. They’d stopped caring long before that anyway. There was nothing they could do, they’d said, to prevent a man from walking out of his house. For many years, Eliza had pretended to her friends that her husband was busy with work, rather than admitting that he would prefer to live a life on the streets. At least, that was where he told her he was. She could never know for sure. She became quite masterful at lying to her co-workers and friends, though the latter diminished in number as she attempted to conceal the chaos in her home.
The two sisters had responded very differently. Lara was the earnest, hardworking, sensitive one, always trying to help, convinced that if she was just good enough, quiet enough and helpful enough then Leonard would be happy. Sunny was the wild one, with no tolerance for Leonard’s behaviour. She used to take off too, from her early teenage years. Maybe her restlessness was something she’d inherited from Leonard. Or maybe it was the only way she could cope. Instead of striving for peace like Lara she embraced instability. Sunny often thought how ironic it was that of the two of them, it was she who was now living the life of responsibility.
Sunny plucked a rubber ball from the garage sale table and clenched it in her fist. She needed to channel her anger at the memories of having to explain her father’s strange behaviour at birthday parties, or walking home from a school dance alone in the cold and dark because he’d forgotten to pick her up, or the time his fist landed on the wall right beside Sunny’s head. She could still remember the puff of air on her cheek as his knuckles broke the plaster. The dent in the wall remained for several years until Eliza got sick of it one day, mad as hell with Leonard, who’d been gone three weeks with no word. Eliza plastered over that dent the way she covered over so many emotions in order to keep their lives going.
Sunny watched her children running wild on a stranger’s lawn. Daisy had put on a pair of fairy wings and was pretending to fly by running in circles, her purple gumboots leaving a trail through the dew on the grass. Sunny watched her daughter, her chest thick with emotion. How she adored that little girl. It was such a privilege, this mothering thing. It wasn’t something she’d ever given much consideration before it happened. It had never been part of her vision. But then it did happen, and the course of her life changed in a moment.
A fellow fossicker reached across Sunny to pick up a battery charger, and accidentally elbowed her in the arm. ‘Oh, sorry,’ the woman said, putting her hand on the spot she’d bumped. ‘Are you okay?’
‘All good,’ Sunny said, with a smile and a wave of her hand. The woman grimaced another apology and wandered away, carrying the charger with her.
Sunny picked over battered board games and one-eyed dolls, frying pans missing handles and rocking chairs that didn’t rock. Next to all the crappy bric-a-brac lay a pile of dusty items that looked as though they must have been stored under the house for decades. Metal tubs and rusted gardening tools. A milking pail. An ancient baby’s cot that wouldn’t pass today’s safety standards. Interesting stuff, but nothing of use to Sunny’s current upcycling venture, and she didn’t have room at home—that was to say, at her mother’s—to store much more stuff.
Hudson tackled the residents’ corgi to the ground, and the small dog growled at him and nipped at his wrist.
‘Baxter! No!’ the girl at the stall yelled. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said to Sunny. ‘He’s never done that before.’
‘It’s fine, really,’ Sunny said.
Her son let the dog go and it ran away. He howled, holding his wrist. Sunny crossed the grass to Hudson, who was half crying and half raging with indignation that the dog had bitten him.
‘It’s okay,’ Sunny said, bending to rub his back and inspecting his wrist. Nothing but red skin and saliva.
‘It bit me!’ he bawled.
‘I know. But I think you squashed him and hurt him. Dogs can’t talk, so he couldn’t say so. He only had his teeth to tell you.’
Just like that, Hudson stopped crying and got up, his attention caught by a balloon that Daisy had taken from somewhere and was bringing to him. ‘Here you go, Hudson,’ Daisy said, handing it over. He ran away with it. Hudson was always moving, unless he was asleep or in front of a screen of some sort. Maybe it wasn’t bipolar. Maybe it was ADHD. Or maybe he was simply five.
Sunny smiled and pulled Daisy in for a hug. At least her daughter liked to be hugged. She knew it wasn’t her fault as a mother that Hudson didn’t much like to be touched, but she craved his body, wanting him to lean into her and cuddle her back, rather than stiffening up, or wriggling away, or becoming completely disengaged and floppy.
Maybe it was autism.
Or maybe he was just five.
‘Thanks, Daisy,’ she said, kissing her daughter’s cheek. It was warm from all her running around. Sunny helped her pull up her long sleeves.
‘Can we call Aunty La La in It-a-ly?’ Daisy said, over-pronouncing the unfamiliar word.
Sunny lifted one of Daisy’s long plaits over her shoulder. Her daughter had incredibly thick hair for one so young—a lot like Lara’s. ‘Well, it’s night-time in Italy. She might be asleep. We don’t want to wake her.’
‘When she’s awake, then? Can we call her then?’
‘Of course,’ Sunny said.
‘I’m going to tell her about my puppet show,’ Daisy said, grinning and jigging up and down. Daisy had already forced Sunny and Eliza to sit through one puppet show with the nightmarish marionettes. It looked like they might be treated to another yet.
Sunny levered herself off the ground. She was somewhat stiff from taking apart a wooden bed frame yesterday, sawing it and sanding it to turn it into a bench seat, then painting it turquoise.
‘Come on, let’s get your brother and go find something fun to do. There’s nothing here for us. I’m in the mood for an adventure.’