The weekend stain

                                                                                                                                 
                                   
                                                                                                                                                                           7/5/04 ©

   I’m too tired to concentrate on the road anymore. The rings under my eyes are swallowing me whole. The lines in the center of the road are running the divide of my mind with a rhythmic hum. That’s why there is a collision on the intersection of Betty’s street and the highway. But the collision is unimportant, just a clip on the way to our destination. Two cars, a row of tea-trees, a pregnant woman driver caressing her belly in defiance, a thousand swarming wasps in my head and a broken indicator lense. Still, it might have been a sign, a warning from God, not to have sex in Betty’s son’s bed.

   Betty had said that if we came down to stay by the beach with her for a weekend, we would have to sleep in separate beds.

   “Oh dear,” she had knotted her fingers into balls. “Maybe I should put Robby in with old Joan. You can’t be having hanky panky in my son’s bed. You’ll have to take that stuff down to the rocks if you want to do it.”

   ‘You’re on the bottom if we go down to the rocks,” I whispered.

   “No no no, you are!”

   “Oh uh uh, I don’t want points up my arse… you are.”

   “Whose Joan? Please, please don’t let her make me sleep with Joan, I’m not going if I have to sleep with Joan.”

   “You don’t know what Joan looks like do you?” I’d said with a grin. “I’m going to make her put you in with Joan.”

   “Well I’m not going if she does.”

   “It’s just like Withnail and I,” I had tried to appease him. “When the young writer has to spend the entire country weekend escaping fat gay Uncle Monty. It’ll be our ‘Withnail and I,’ we have to go.”

   I saw visions of Rob lying face to the wall, recycling his breath through tremoring lips as she lowered her heavy body in next to him, slobbering, sucking her moist  lips, revealing her calf-like tongue upon the pillow and farting doleful bellows out to the other cows in the field.

   I want Betty to put Rob in with Joan.

   In the car on the way down, before the accident, I had enlightened him some more on the situation.

   “Betty’s changed her mind, she says we get the bunks in the spare room.”

   “The BUNKS!”

   “It must be a deterrent, to stop us having…‘hanky panky.”

   “But why? It’s normal.”

   “But it’s not polite to be doing it in someone else’s bed. Anyway, bunks have got to be better than you sleeping with Joan.”

   “But two days, how will we abstain for two whole days?”

   I pat his arm sympathetically. “I’m sure we’ll manage.” He rolls his head and pulls the face of a puppy on the wrong side of the door.
  
   Betty greets us at the gate with a painted sign. WELCOME MEL AND ROBBY. Her son’s house is a tidy little weatherboard with everything meticulously in place, surrounded by acres of long grass swimming in the afternoon green. Cream and brown luxurious pedigree cats browse through every room.

   And there she finally is. Joan.

   She stands at the kitchen bench, her tongue lolling from the side of her mouth like a walrus in labor. I nudge Rob under the table with my knee to look at that tongue.

   “What?” She screeches when she catches us staring. “Ooohhhhhhhh my tongue, my tonnnggguue!” She flicks it lizard like back into her face. “Ahhhhh ha ha he he he haaaaahhhaaaaaaaaaa.”

   After lunch Betty informs us that we’re to spend the rest of the day sight seeing at the beach and browsing the local shops. Before we go she surveys my outfit.

   “Oh my Gawd, look at the waist on that girl Joan. I cannot believe they wear their pants so low down these days. Your poor kidneys Mel. Oh wait, just a second I have an idea.”

   Betty shuffles out of the room and comes back in with a roll of Gladwrap. My waist is processed and packaged, round and round in layers. She stops to survey her handiwork.

   “Ah I feel better now.” She pats my tummy. “Now I don’t have to worry about my little Pochahontas. Wait…your neck.”

   She wraps a purple and green scarf around my neck.

   “Betty, what does it say on it?” I turn it up to my face. “Fred? Whose Fred?”

   “I don’t know Mel, I asked them in the op-shop but they told me they don’t know either, they just sell it.”

   I take the Gladwrap off before I leave the house for the beach but keep Fred on. When it’s time to go home the next evening, I blow my nose of Fred and consequently get to take him with me.

(Later, on the way back, we will stop at my Father’s house, who will tell me that it doesn’t say Fred, it says Freo, and is short for Freemantle Football Club. At this news I’ll throw Fred to the floor in disgust and never wear him again, but shortly after develop an obsession for a scarf with the word Fred on it. Maybe my mother will knit me one.)

   In the evening we play Trivial pursuit and Scrabble. The two old ladies quibble over what words exist. We find ourselves making allowances for ‘yag,’ ‘oo,’ and ‘twgz.’

   “What’s a yag Mel?” Betty asks.

   “It’s one half of a Russian witch,” I reply, and it seems to satisfy her.

   Betty tells stories about Joan as we play. Joan once put her dog on a diet. A teaspoon of dog food a day, by the end of the week the dog was dead. But before the dog died, it buried Joan’s false teeth in the backyard. Joan once did a two-minute fart in an op-shop.

   Joan’s sawmill screech reverberates through a haze of wine and beer.

   “Ooohh you’re terrriibbblee Bettyyyyyyyyy.”

   Joan embarks on a story of her own, something vaguely about her ex husband. Betty sighs, Betty itches, she looks behind her, rests her head in her hands, yawns, fidgets.

   “Is this going to take long Joan?” Suddenly she jumps up and stands in the center of the room. She spreads her legs jockey style and begins to pump them up and down.

   “I’m trying to move my bowels,” she explains. “It’s like this when you get old.” She farts. “The train has entered the tunnel!” She bellows. “I’ll be right back, I have to relieve myself.”

   After the game we’re shown to our room. We do have bunk beds after all, but the bottom one is a double.

   “Now just make sure you ruffle up the blankets on the top bed, for appearance’s sake," Betty advises.

   She clutches her heart as she shuffles away, saying behind her, “And keep the door shut, that way I won’t know what’s going on.”

   Under the covers I lift my leg up across Rob’s hip and move in close. The forbidden acts are often the most pleasurable, and mastering self-control is the biggest challenge that night.

   “Oh my God Rob, what’s this?” I say the next morning, pulling back the blankets and pointing to a small patch upon the sheets.

   “Look at it, it’s a stain. Where did it come from? Do you remember that stain? I don’t recall making it, do you? Betty’ll never talk to me again!”

   I sneak into the bathroom and wet a towelette with warm water. I scrub away at the stain, it doesn’t budge. It looms conspicuously and rebelliously in my face. I feel the sweat beginning to surface on my neck. I scratch, scrape, scour, but the stain defies me.

   I don’t recall making that stain, but there it is none-the-less, the accumulation of all our weekend sentiments in one spot, and it refuses to be moved. Finally I have to admit defeat. This stain is going nowhere.

   We pack our bags and load up the car.

   “Rob, Rob darling, can you do something for me before you head off? Can you fix up Joan’s bed? I don’t know what she was doing in there but it collapsed in the middle of the night. Must’ve been dreaming she was with Sean Connery or something.”

   “Now check their pants to make sure they aren’t trying to steal any of those kittens Joan.” Betty pads Rob down. “They’re too expensive to lose, my son would kill me, you’d see me charging over those hills there and I’d never be back.” She looks me over. “No need to check her pants, you couldn’t fit anything else in them.”

   Kisses at the car door, hugs, thank you for coming and we’ll miss you. We pile the last of our weekend debris into the car and start the engine.

   “Oh and Betty, there appears to be a stain on the sheet where we slept, but I swear to God it isn’t ours.”
  
   “That’s OK love,” she strokes my arm reassuringly. “It was already there before you came. But thanks for telling me anyway.” We can hear their squawking laughter as we reverse from the driveway.

             
   Melissa Milich © 2004                                                                                        Back to home page