#12: Child's Play
Trixie was never more exhausted than when she agreed to spend time with Natalie’s son, Olly. Even when she ran – and Trixie never ran – in the vain hope that just a tiny amount of exercise would keep her fit (rather than the regular exercise she knew she should be practicing), none of it was quite like spending time with a small child.
In actual fact, Olly was adorable. The only children Trixie ever spent any significant length of time with – ever – aside from kids in the shop, were her stepmother’s nieces and nephews. Four siblings, all of them sickly, their noses constantly seemed to be running and they often gave Sandra stomach bugs when she spent time looking after then while her brother and sister-in-law worked. Odo had once admitted he thought they were rather cute, but Trixie despised them, for they were always asking tactless questions or pointing out pimples on Trixie’s face just when she wished to hide them.
Olly was nothing like the step-cousins at all. He was reserved, thoughtful, and had none of that child’s impishness, which many called “precociousness” but which Trixie preferred to think of as pretension. Together, Nat, Trixie and Olly would play games like “shop”, “market” (very different from shop, though Trixie wasn’t sure she could explain to an outsider how) and “library”. They baked together on rainy days and when the sun was out they all trundled together down to the local playground, to spin Olly on the large, round mega-swing.
Trixie didn’t ask Nat what had made her change her mind about reintroducing Trixie to Olly, but there was a large segment of her heart that was very glad Nat had changed her mind. The rest of Trixie was terrified – of what Olly signified about Nat’s feelings, of what his presence in their relationship demanded of Trixie. Mostly she tried to just push down the terror and keep playing.
It was a Thursday morning, Trixie’s day off, and she was playing libraries with Olly in the warm, bright Kensington flat. Everything about it screamed “Natalie”: it was impeccably decorated in a sleek mid-century style, with little hints of contemporaneity in every room. Cool blues in sofas and chair upholsteries meshed against buttery yellow and burnt orange cushions, throw rugs and rattan baskets absolutely everywhere, to catch the clutter that followed Nat around. Trixie knew by now that Nat was a kind of pedantic slob: everything had a place, an order, but Nat was terrible at upholding the strict code she had set for how own spaces. So, each room had its own basket to fill with clutter (kicked-off shoes, discarded cardigans, separated Duplo pieces) that Natalie would reorganise back into their designated areas when the mood struck. It was a batshit system, to be sure, but it was a system.
This morning, the floor of the living room was covered with just about every book the family owned: Olly’s treasured picture books, the tome-like cooking volumes and Nat’s Nordic crime paperbacks. Olly was installed behind the coffee table, with a thin exercise book, a Texta and an old date stamp Trixie had found at the shop. He sat imperiously, looking at Trixie. Trixie stared back. Time seemed to inch past. Then: “Yes, the next one please. Here.”
Trixie shuffled forward on her knees, feeling her jeans drag against the carpet. Olly pointed at a spot right in front of him, on the other side of the table, and Trixie hauled herself into it. “Hi there, Olly.”
Olly frowned, dropping his hands from where they were placed on his hips. “Trixie! My name isn’t Olly.”
“Oh! Sorry.” Trixie leaned in over the table and whispered. “Er, what’s your name?”
“Mr Library.”
“Ah.” She settled back into her spot, then gave Olly a reassuring grin, before proceeding. “Hello, there, Mr Library. How are you?”
“I’m good Mrs Trixie, thanks.” Olly replied, in a voice much deeper than his own.
“That’s good. Lovely weather we’re having.”
“No! Trixie!”
“Sorry!” Trixie looked around and picked up a copy of Rosie Sips Spiders from where it had been arranged artfully between a Kylie Kwong cookbook and a Ruth Rendell murder mystery. “I’d like to borrow this book, Mr. Library.”
“Yes, that’s very good, thanks, Mrs Trixie. Please put it on my desk,” Olly said.
Trix wondered from what television program or overheard phone conversation he’d concocted this script. “Ah, yes, all right.” Trixie put the book on the coffee table and sat back in her designated spot, peering at Olly. He peered right back, blinking through his plastic Harry Potter spectacle frames. “What next?” Trixie whispered.
“You need to pick another book,” Olly whispered back.
Trixie spent the morning picking books and putting them on Olly’s makeshift counter until, at last, he announced. “That’s enough, Mrs Trixie. Are you ready to buy these?”
Trixie smiled. “In a library we borrow books, Olly, remember?”
“Yes. Are you ready?”
Olly picked up his exercise book and the stamp Trixie had found at the shop, opened the front page of Rosie Sips Spiders, then closed it. Then he stamped a page of the exercise book with excessive force. It had taken lots of explaining for Trixie and Nat to convince Olly that in the home library they didn’t stamp the books themselves, but the special exercise book full of information only the librarian was allowed to see. Trixie watched him stamp with a grin as keys rattled in the door.
“How many books are we borrowing today?” Nat said, as she surveyed the living room scene.
“Lots!” Olly said. He didn’t lose his enthusiasm for flipping pages and stamping, but he let his mother grab his face and kiss his cheek. Nat dropped her handbag on the sofa, then flopped down beside Trixie, letting her head rest across Trixie’s shoulder. Her orange ponytail tumbled down Trixie’s back, tickling her neck a little.
“Hello, lovely woman,”
“Hello back to you,” Trixie said, planting a kiss on Nat’s forehead.
“How’s my wicked son?”
Trixie grinned. “Perfect, as usual. But very bossy today.”
Olly laughed delightedly. “I am not, Trixie!”
“No, I guess you’re not,” Trixie replied, surveying him. “Are my books ready.”
“Nearly.”
Trixie let Nat snuggle into her and tell her about the awful morning coffee meeting she’d had with a loud-voiced man who’d used lots of hand gestures when he spoke and made a point of telling Nat he didn’t like to hire women because of the whole “baby” thing, before chortling with a great, honking laugh and saying, “But you can’t say these things anymore, can you, Natalie?” – as if unaware he just had.
“That’s just like this guy who tried to sort of mime to Stef about whether or not she planned to get married, because he wanted to find out if she was going to have a baby. He knew he couldn’t really ask her, so it was like industrial relations charades.”
Natalie peered intensely at Trixie as Olly began to stack books onto the coffee table, counting from one to five again and again. “Trix? Am I ever going to get to meet any of these people?”
Trixie blushed deeply. Yes, she was aware it was bizarre that Natalie hadn’t even met her flatmate in all the time they’d spent together dating. Especially now Trixie was doing days looking after Olly, it felt strange that Nat was so cut off from all of Trixie’s life – especially her friends.
“I want you to meet them,” Trixie said, “I do. We just – we have this thing. It’s stupid. You’re going to think it’s the stupidest thing in the world, Nat.”
“Try me.”
So Trixie explained about Lukas and the Broken-Heart Pact the gang had made together. “So I’m supposed to be out just casually dating but now I’ve met you.”
“I can date,” Nat said. “I can casually date.”
Trixie dipped her head to one side, grinning at Nat. “You can, can you?”
“I may look like a serial monogamist, Beatrix,” Nat insisted, “but I’ll have you know I have . . . looked at people in the street while we’ve been dating.”
Trixie sighed. She knew this was a conversation she and Nat needed to have, but there had been a large part of her hoping the words would never have to be said. “I am dating, you know. Nat, I’m seeing other people.”
“Oh, I know,” Nat replied, sounding a little to Trixie like she didn’t know at all. “I know, Trix. It’s fine.”
“It’s fine?”
“Sure.” Nat smiled reassuringly. “I don’t want to get married, Trix. I just want to meet, like, a single other person in your life. It doesn’t have to be the whole Broken-Hearted Brigade, or whatever.”
“Well—”
“Okay, Mummy!” Olly announced, interrupting Trixie. “You have to come to the library now!”
Nat gave Trixie an apologetic look. “Okay, darling,” she said to Olly. “Let me just finish this conversation with Trix and I’ll—”
“Oh, no,” Trixie said. “You’re next in line, Nat. Hurry along.”
Trixie had never been this terrified to have someone in her home before. Not even when her father and Sandra had come to Melbourne to visit her first mouldy flat in Flemington – the very first time her father had been on an airplane since her mother had died.
It wasn’t just that she’d given Stef literally zero warning that Nat would be coming over; it was also the state of the house itself. The usually uncannily neat flat had taken a downspin into Trixie territory. She didn’t know how it’d happened – how Stef had let it happen. But somehow things didn’t feel well organised or scrubbed clean as they generally did. Stef wasn’t even taking the dishes out of the dish rack to re-wash them after Trixie’s first attempt.
Trixie tried to remind herself, as Nat’s car zipped down Geelong Rd, that Nat herself was a grot. Nat’s house was rarely ever tidy. Nat never put her dirty socks in the dirty clothes basket. But it was no good; Trixie was still prematurely humiliated by the state of the flat, and the prospect of Nat meeting Stef and the pair of them having a horrific and embarrassing conversation about Trixie right in front of her.
“Are you ever going to say anything to me again?” Nat asked, peering at Trixie in between checks of the rear-vision mirror. “Or is it just silent treatment here on out?”
“Sorry,” Trixie said. “Just mentally going through absolutely everything that’s wrong with my house before you walk into it.”
“Oh, sure.” Nat grinned into the mirror. “Trix, I don’t care. I just want to see . . .” Nat took her hands off the wheel briefly to spread her hands wide. Trixie scrunched her own hands up in terror. Nat’s hands found the wheel again. “. . . your life. You know?”
“Careful what you wish for, Natalie.”
The door stuck as they entered the flat – as it only ever did when Trixie was carrying large bags of shopping or entertaining a paramour at home. Trixie laughed nervously and gave the door of the flat a big kick, unsticking it. Then she ushered Natalie inside.
The sun was setting in the big window, casting the dim living room in a red and purple haze, like being caught in a bruise. There was no Stef. Instead, Trixie’s brother stared back at her, halfway through one of Trixie’s own bananas. “Sorry, mate,” he said through his mouthful. “Figured you wouldn’t mind.”
“How do you even know that’s mine?” Trixie said, tossing her canvas bag at Odo and clipping him on the shoulder. He rubbed where the bag had hit him, folding the banana skin in his other hand.
“Stef hates bananas. Hi,” Odo extended his non-banana-occupied hand out to Nat, who was observing him with a wry grin.
“You must be Odo,” Nat said.
“You must be . . .” Odo cocked his head. “Actually, sorry. I have no idea who you are.”
Trixie was watching Nat closely, and saw a flicker of hurt in her eyes. “I’m Nat, Trixie’s new – friend.”
“Ah,” Odo said. “A – friend.”
They shook hands, smiling knowingly at each other. Trixie wished she could disappear to her bedroom. She wished she’d never brought Natalie. Though, at the same time, she felt a sense of freedom somewhat like a deep breath emptying her lungs.
“Odo, Nat is my—”
“I get it,” Odo said. Then, to Nat, “Lovely to meet you. I’m gonna chuck this in the bin.” Odo shook the banana skin, then trundled off to the kitchen. Trixie heard him whistling, a habit of his she’d always hated. She grimaced.
“Well,” Nat said, hand dropping to her side. “Not who I expected to meet. But that wasn’t too disgraceful, was it?”
“It was scarily normal and free of incident,” Trixie said.
“You should always trust me and my opinion,” Nat went on, “I think that’s the moral of the story here.”
Nat pulled Trixie to her and kissed her, deeply. Trixie’s hands went up to the back of Nat’s neck, fingers tangling into her hair. Nat’s arms slipped around Trixie’s waist.
The door slammed, and Trixie and Nat broke apart. Crowded at the front door, were Stef, Kit, Amal, Jin and David. Trixie didn’t know who to look at. Which was worse, she thought: Jin’s smirk, Amal’s wide-open mouth, or David’s purse-lipped frown.
Stef cleared her throat, trying not to laugh. “Ah,” she said to the others, “guess she is home, then.”
The Broken-Heart Brigade is released via weekly e-newsletter instalments through Substack. It is supported by Matilda’s generous subscribers, Melbourne City of Literature, and the City of Melbourne COVID-19 Arts Grants.
The Broken-Heart Brigade is made in Naarm (Melbourne), on stolen Wurundjeri land that was never ceded. Matilda pays respect to the rightful Aboriginal owners of the land on which she lives and works, and hopes the readers of her writing do too.