On a Saturday night a fortnight later, Mum and Dad were going to have dinner at their friends Brother and Sister Hodges. Caleb had bounced back pretty well, and although Mum was a bit worried about taking him out in the night air, Dad said he was right as rain and that it would do them both good to have a night away from the kids. The Hodges had no children, and what Dad meant by a night away from us was that we would have to stay in the car in the Hodges’ driveway for the whole night.
We, of course, argued to be allowed to come inside because it was pretty boring in the car in the dark. Mum said we were too badly behaved to be allowed to go inside when they went to dinner, and besides, they needed some time for grown-up talking. Dad put down the seats in the station wagon and laid two quilts on top of each other to make a sort of large bed. It still wasn’t very comfortable though, and after a while my hips started to get sore from the metal underneath. Ruthy said to just sleep on my back then, but I couldn’t seem to do that. I took turns of each of my hips hurting instead. I snatched Caleb’s pillow to put under me, but this made him scream blue murder and I was worried it would bring Dad out to see what was going on, so I gave it back to him by hitting him over the head with it. He coughed a bit and Ruthy stuck his asthma spray in his mouth to keep him quiet, as well as to make sure he didn’t have an attack that would be considered my fault again.
On other nights we’d spent like this in people’s driveways, we weren’t allowed to put the car light on, but we were allowed to use one torch in case we got frightened or Caleb needed his Ventolin, but of course we put it on the whole time we were in the back together. We were meant to lie quietly and go to sleep, but as my Aunt Maisie would say, live like a maggot in bacon, which didn’t seem to mean anything sensible, but fit the situation anyway. We took turns telling stories, or sometimes singing songs.
If we were feeling brave, we would make up a reason we had to go inside, and Ruthy and I used to tell Caleb he would have to be the one to go and knock on the door, because he wouldn’t get into anything like the trouble we would, and he wouldn’t get a smack. We tried to convince him to say there was a robber looking in at us, or a robber looking in the windows of the house we were visiting, or a mad dog with rabies circling the car, or a big spider on the ceiling, or a police car going up and down the street possibly looking for the robbers, or even an escaped prisoner, and even once, that there was a pirate planning to steal the boat we saw in the host’s driveway.
The only time Caleb actually went to the front door was when we were having a big fight, and he would get sooky and go and tell on us. We would have fights over anything really: who was over the invisible line we drew to carve up the space, whose turn it was to tell the story or choose the song, who made up the best swear words, or who had the most friends at school. When Caleb climbed out of the car in a huff, Ruthy and I would hold our breath, half in fear and half in hope. What tended to happen is that Dad would come out to the car, fling the doors open and smack us hard on the legs over and over again. Usually they let Caleb stay in the house after that, which wasn’t fair. We would pretend to be fast asleep when they came out carrying him to go home, in the hope the whole thing would be forgotten in the morning.
On this particular Saturday night I might possibly have pinched Caleb quite hard, and even though his chest was still a bit wonky, his screams were very loud, and Dad came out and roughly pulled both Caleb and Ruthy out of the car, slamming it on me before I could get out. Ruthy meanly took the torch in with her, so I was in the dark by myself. Although I think I am quite brave, I was a bit scared, particularly when a strong wind started up and the car rocked a bit. I sat up and checked all the door-locking knobs were down so only Dad could get in with a key and covered my whole head with a blanket. My heart was thumping so hard I could hear it in my ears. I squeezed my eyes tight shut and imagined a new play I would put on at school. It was about knights and in particular a new character called Don Quixote the librarian had told me about she thought I’d like. He was from a picture book that had lots of good illustrations, but he was a funny sort of old knight with a pretty deadbeat horse and a fairly dim friend, so it wasn’t the kind of story I usually liked. However, I did admire the fact he rode off to save people so I wrote a play with him in it but I gave him a girl to be his offsider. She was clever and even braver than he was, and of course I would play that role.
I was actually asleep when they loaded the back seat with the other two, who were also dead to the world. The next morning Caleb said they were allowed to sit in the kitchen and Mum’s friend gave them hot lemon delicious pudding with cream on the top, and paper and pencils to draw with and they were allowed to stay up for ages and ages before Mum put them down on the lady’s bed, which smelled of lavender and oranges. Mum had turned out the lights and closed the door, but the nice lady snuck in and turned the light on and winked at them and said it would be their secret, and brought them each two toffees. She had asked Mum if she wanted to bring me in, or if she should take something out to me, but Mum said no I had to learn. I wasn’t exactly sure what I had to learn, but I think it was about my general naughtiness, because what I had already learned was that Caleb could do no wrong and people liked Ruthy better than me because she was sweet and pretty.
The next morning on the way to school, Ruthy pulled me aside before we got into the building. She said she had important information from the night before, because she had adopted my ploy of sitting near a crack in the bedroom door to find out what the grown-ups were talking about.
It seems a certain conversation started because Sister Hodges asked why I couldn’t be brought inside along with the other two. Mum started to cry and she heard Dad ask her to buck up because they were in company. Mrs Hodges’s voice sounded kind and although Ruthy couldn’t hear everything, she heard Dad say he was worried Mum would have another breakdown if she didn’t pull herself together. From what Ruthy could make out, Mum had come to Australia to do nursing, but when she arrived and found her uncle was dead and she had no one else she knew here, she went to stay in these tin housing things called Nissen huts, which Ruthy was going to look up in the library. They were something soldiers lived in, she thought. Mum started her nursing studies at the Royal Adelaide, but it was all too much for her, and she had to drop out. She heard Sister Hodges ask what Glenside was like, and Ruthy was pretty sure she was talking about Glenside mental home.
We looked at each other with our mouths open for a minute. I asked Ruthy if she thought this was true, and she said yes, she thought our mum used to be a bit mental when she was young, and maybe this was why she had Jesus days and head days and stuff like that. Ruthy took my hand and we just sat together until the bell rang. I had no idea what to do with this information, but I thought I might talk to Maynard about it. Although then I thought Mum might not want anyone to know her big secret, so I thought I might not.
The whole nuthouse story, as Ruthy and I referred to it in whispers, made me feel very worried about ever having to spend a night in a driveway again. I wasn’t sure I wanted to find out more about Mum like this. A couple of weeks later when Mum told us we were going to stay in the car for the evening at Sister Palmer’s, Ruthy and I agreed we would be on our best behaviour so no one would have to go inside and learn more grown-up secret things.
In the Palmers’ driveway I decided to only think about lovely family car stories. Mum and Dad did strange things with us in the car when we went to the drive-in. We didn’t go very often, but every now and again there would be a Disney movie we were allowed to see. Mum would pack dinner for us. Dad was really excellent at parking in exactly the right spot to be able to wind down the window and put the big speaker in it, and then wind it up tight so we could all hear. We always pretended we needed to go to the toilet more than we did, because the toilets were near the big shop that was full of lollies and hot chips, but Mum was never tempted to go in and we would get a smack if we asked more than once.
The strange bit was that when we were queuing up in the car to get into the drive-in, Mum would leave me sitting up in the back but squash Caleb and Ruthy on the floor with a rug over them and tell them to be perfectly still and quiet. When it was our turn, Dad would say, ‘Two adults and one under twelve,’ and pretend Caleb and Ruthy weren’t in the car.
I said, ‘Isn’t that telling a lie and like stealing?’ and Dad said no because we didn’t say they weren’t there, and the person could have checked for themselves, but I think it wasn’t quite right. And given Mum used to constantly look at me and say, ‘Would you have done that if Jesus was standing next to you?’ I wondered what she’d say if I asked her the exact same question. But I never did of course, because I am often naughty, but I’m not stupid.