:: glean ::

:: Friday, February 23, 2007 ::

House

They could've chosen something fully renovated, of course. Andy's company was happy to pay the rent on a number of extravagant places in the area that Olivia had decided would be good to live. (Her choice of suburb had been based on such varied sources as Home and Away and Google Earth. Somewhere not too far for Andy's work. Not too far from the city. But close to the beach. Why else would you move to Australia if not to live near the beach, after all?)

The HR head sent a number of web references for houses on for them to peruse. At first they were dazzled by the gleaming chrome, the polished floorboards, the old facades giving way to a completely new, ultra-modern building behind - an airy shout of glass and lofty roofs. But after examining them for a while Olivia started to feel queasy. It seemed deceitful - like wise and weathered faces on nubile bodies. And they all looked the same after a while.

So Olivia did her own research and found an unrenovated house in the same suburb. It was close to a park and the 'village' (which sounded nice, even if it wasn't the sort of village Olivia couldn't help picturing). The thing that really sold it to her was the street name: Spray Street. 'Can't you feel the sand between your toes?' she said enthusiastically, as she showed the images to Andy.

Andy wasn't sure at first. 'It looks decrepit,' he said. 'And it's way less than the company is prepared to pay.'
'It's been allowed to age gracefully,' insisted Olivia. Somehow, that seemed important. Buildings, Olivia decided, needed to be able to do this. It gave them inner grace, just as it did with people.
'Could be cold in winter,' warned Andy. 'Which is ok for me because I'll be away for most of it. Wouldn't you prefer something with central heating? For the baby?'

But Olivia was resolute.
'We'll rug up,' she said. 'We'll fix it up. The way we like it. Before someone else gets it and starts turning it into a greenhouse like all the rest of them.' She felt herself almost becoming teary at the thought of rescuing this poor, noble house.

'Fine,' said Andy. 'I'll let HR know. They'll think we're odd, though, I'm sure of it.'
'We are odd,' said Olivia, giving him a hug. 'That's what I love about us.'

:: Fretting 11:41 AM [+] ::
...

Copies

Olivia has trouble remembering the kids that she and B meet in the park. It's not that Australian children look so very different to English ones, either, although in this suburb they share a similar colour palette. At home she never had this trouble. In fact, she excelled at it, remembering that Ruby had the teething blush and Sebastian had the gleaming white front teeth ('all the better to bite you with, lady!').

But here, they all blend. At first she makes valiant efforts to remember them 'Wow, hasn't Isabelle grown!' and 'I think I saw you and Oliver in the park yesterday,' only to be met with frowns and displeasure. It's never said but she knows that they think she feels above them. It's the accent. It says 'transient.' It says 'this place is ridiculously cheap for us and our English pounds.' Olivia finds herself dragging B to the local park at odd times of the day, purely to avoid them all and their pinched, toothless smiles.

:: Fretting 6:26 PM [+] ::
...

Infested Part 2

And then she discovers the lice. In fact, it's Andy who first spots them, when they're washing B together in the sink. 'Is that something moving?' he asks, and Olivia is ready to mock and deride - he's always finding things that don't exist - but then, she sees it too. Where have they come from? The playpark? Someone on the park? Gymbaroo? She can't help but feel under siege - there seem to be so many bugs and creepy crawlies around and now, even on, her family that she feels that it's deliberate.

Even after she has moussed and combed and rinsed and repeated (not to mention stripped the beds, washed all the towels, washed all their clothes) she still feels them. It's as if her scalp remembers the sensation of the critters moving across it. B scratches her head frequently too. Her scalp hasn't forgotten either.

:: Fretting 6:21 PM [+] ::
...

Infested

It's not long before she feels that they have been infested, outside and in. Firstly, it's the cockroaches that she discovers when she staggers downstairs to use the bathroom in the 'wee small hours'and puts her hand right on one near the light switch. She's horrified by the size of it - it seems so much more monstrously large than the ones she remembers from back home. She finds the spray and kills it. As she watches it writhe she feels the usual pang of guilt that she gets whenever she kills something. It is such an unfair fight. Once she would've let it go and would've steeled herself to co-exist with the bugs. But motherhood has turned her into a killer. She pictures herself looking into B's crib and seeing a cockroach scurrying out from the bunny rug.

She feels something else as she watches the bug die. Later she realises this is the first time she felt horror in the house. The cockroach is so large! Nightmarishly so. She tells herself this must be an abberation - some kind of superhero of the cockie world. Or perhaps it's a trick of her eyes, blurred by sleep. But she sees another one the next evening, while she's cleaning her teeth, just as large. It peeps out from behind the cup she's been keeping their toothbrushes in, waving its feelers around. She can't help but detect a certain air of 'fuck you' about its movements. Especially its proximity to the toothbrushes, and the fact that it waited until she'd commenced brushing before it appeared.

Then, a week later, again in the bathroom (so moist, so rickety that it's an open door to any creature that desires shelter) she sees something else scuttle by. It's very large and very quick. She tells herself it's just an extremely large cockroach although her brain is screaming 'Mouse! Mouse!' It almost makes her laugh, afterwards, that it seemed preferable to have extremely large cockroaches in her house than mice.

Of course, it is a mouse. Like the cockroach, it makes its presence clear.

:: Fretting 8:51 PM [+] ::
...