Extension - by Anthony Lynch
ISLAND | ISSUE 159
I shadowed my neighbour Craig Wilson down the entrance hall. Past three bedrooms – one, his son’s, with a Bullet for My Valentine poster on the closed door. Past the study I never saw used.
I felt Craig’s boyish anticipation.
At the end of the hall we stepped around the kitty litter, through temporary doors and into sudden daylight where the Wilsons’ kitchen, laundry, bathroom and utility room had once stood. The foundations of the rooms remained intact – an archaeological dig where evidence of 1960s life had been unearthed.
‘A bobcat’s coming in the morning. When it’s cleared, we’ll dig new foundations.’
I had liked the old kitchen. Last week I sat on a bar stool before the island bench, sipping orange juice while Craig relieved the fridge of beer and his wife Estelle blended celery and carrot. But for five years the Wilsons had plotted a replacement. When Estelle’s late mother left a sum, they decided not only on a new kitchen but a living room of tennis court proportions.
Craig picked up a slip of broken plaster, fingered it, then flung the piece toward a mound of rubble.
‘Where will the extension run to?’ I asked. Numbed by demolition, I felt a rare need to speak.
He stepped between piles of debris, crossed where a wall between the kitchen and laundry had stood. He continued into the garden – strange in its order, framing walls no longer there. He made toward the back fence, each step measured. He stopped and turned.
‘Here. Once the bobcat’s been through, we’ll peg it out.’
He spoke as if he and Estelle were the builders. He walked ten metres to his left, stopped again and faced me. A kind of absurdist performance piece.
‘Outdoor spa here. First we’ll run the plumbing underground.’
I did not know what Craig Wilson saw in me. We had little in common, and to him I must have seemed quiet, diffident. I found him boisterous, and sometimes boorish. I did my best to stonewall his advances when he, Estelle and their son, Kade, moved into number 28. He would ask me over for a beer, and I’d tell him I didn’t drink. He’d ask what team I followed, and I would tell him none.
I knew he thought our neighbours aloof, and most likely he numbered me among them. He was probably lonely, and when he persevered I found no cause to be uncivil. He’d see me trimming lavender or repotting an orchid, cross the road to tell me I had a green thumb. He would recount his failed gardening efforts and, on his prompting, I’d offer remedies. The most basic advice – lime for roses, leaf mulch for hellebores – left him impressed.
But seeing his ground zero front yard, I knew he never acted on a single suggestion.
Yet somehow I amused him. One evening he insisted I sit with him through a game of football. I sensed he thought this would do us both good, and I found myself on a shapeless couch before an endless screen. Craig caressed a stubbie on his belly, which was large and tested the buttons of his shirt. Grown men ran back and forth. I coped by memorising the statistics flashed on the screen, which I noticed the commentators were unable to interpret.
By half-time I had failed to evince a trace of enthusiasm or vocalise a thought on the game. To compensate, I volunteered that the team winning was doing so thanks to its superior goal-to-inside-50 ratio, particularly in the second quarter, when it improved to 33 per cent from 12.5 per cent in the first. And that, based on the data provided, and contrary to the urgings of the crowd and commentators, the losing team might improve its chances by handballing more and kicking less.
‘Genius!’ Craig said, and beamed.
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I get stuck with numbers in my head.’
I was adept at numbers. Gifted, some said. But lesser skills in social interaction and decision-making promised me a record-breaking career as a junior accountant.
‘Sorry nothing!’ Craig said, and when Estelle came in with her carrot juice to check on ‘the boys’ (us and her team), he said, ‘Get this man in the coach’s box!’
Thereafter Craig, like a paunchy, balding Tom Cruise, had coveted me as an idiot savant. His very own Rain Man.
When Craig next invited me over, the old foundations were gone and the new laid down. Rivers of concrete ran in trenches from the existing house, and metal pegs capped with yellow plastic rose like daffodils in a war zone. Plumb- ing for the kitchen, laundry, bathroom, spa and dedicated powder room for Estelle, a part-time beauty therapist who required such a utility, grew in white protrusions from the earth. It still looked like an archaeological site, but from a later epoch.
‘Not even a wall yet, and it’s cost us a bomb.’
In excavating for the foundations and plumbing for the spa, large rocks embedded in the earth were removed at great expense.
‘It was like we’d hit Stonehenge. They got this supercharged jackhammer to split the rocks, then a crane to extract the bastards. One of nature’s little tricks, the earthmover said when he handed me the bill.’
Craig shook his head and looked at me. He would often pause and stare at his listener as if to reinforce the import of what he’d said. It seemed also a way of inducing response, which in my case left him waiting a long time.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said finally. To my knowledge no one had ever jackhammered Stonehenge, but to say so seemed pedantic.
‘Then they had to fill the space where the rocks had been. Fill the space where the rocks had been! And I’m like, Why didn’t you just leave the rocks in the dirt in the first place?’
I moaned in sympathy.
‘One of mother nature’s little pricks, that earthmover.’
We had tea and packet biscuits in the Wilsons’ improvised kitchen. To reduce costs, the family were staying throughout the renovations. The former study now housed the fridge and a portable gas stove. The microwave, kettle and blender sat on a bookshelf. The third bedroom had become a storeroom.
The current bathroom was a tiny ensuite off Craig and Estelle’s bedroom. If Kade needed to relieve himself in the night, he had to skirt the end of their bed.
‘Pays to temper one’s passions,’ Craig said. He bent to pick up one of his cats, the ginger one called Ginger that had wandered in. He was surprisingly attached to the pair of them. He would say coo coo, there’s my baby. I was struck by how they infantilised him.
Estelle sighed, turned her back and funnelled carrot, celery and apple into a blender. She was in her third week of a liver cleansing diet, and did pilates four days a week. For a woman nearing 50 she was in good shape, putting aside an orange pallor I associated with the carrots but could have been fake tan. Craig simply looked a man nearing 50. The kitchen stool where he sat did his paunch no favours.
I mentally calculated the saving of remaining in their home instead of renting a three-bedroom in a nearby suburb. Based on $775 per week over four months, I figured $13 434 saved.
Estelle thrust a half-moon of watermelon in the blender.
‘I suppose compromises must be made,’ I said above the noise, before sneezing from cat hair.
‘Plenty of those,’ yelled Estelle.
Kade slouched in, bit into an apple and arranged his long frame on another stool. He always moved with a stagger, as if he had difficulty transporting himself from one space to another. He rarely spoke, but would occasionally unplug his headphones to offer a comment unrelated to the conversation, like ‘I just can’t believe there are people out there who don’t like Futurama’, or ‘Anthrax are shit’. Of the Wilsons, I liked him best.
‘If there’s anything I can help with,’ I said to Estelle, hoping there was nothing.
‘Your banking password, for Dad,’ said Kade, and took another bite of his apple.
*
Three days later Craig knocked on my door and asked if he could use the loo. I took a moment to realise he needed my toilet. I thought of a small boy grasping his crotch and asking to be excused.
‘A little plumbing problem,’ he said. ‘With the house, not me, ha ha.’
In the following days Craig, Estelle and Kade came regularly to use my bathroom. A lack of running water had left their ensuite unusable. A dispute had arisen over whether the cause was the new plumbing, of which the Wilsons were convinced, or old pipes giving out, of which the plumber was equally insistent. Solitary by nature, I was unused to intrusions in my house, let alone my bathroom. But I could not deny the Wilsons in their hour, indeed their many days, of need. They knocked, apologised, took the well-trodden path to my bathroom, towel and toiletries in hand. I never relaxed when one of them was in my house, only feigning interest in the book, music or figures in which I’d been absorbed.
I placed a can of air freshener prominently on the toilet cistern after a loud and energetic voiding by Craig on the second day.
Kade’s visits were fewest and briefest. When I opened the door he would grunt an apology, and incline his head and left hand ever so slightly in the direction of the bathroom. When done, he’d leave the house with a thumbs up as if to pronounce his visit a success. I’d nod and wave.
Craig liked to chat at the end of each visit. He called me mate, and if not heading to the superstore chain where he managed pet supplies would ask what I was reading or listening to. He would pick up my book or a Mahler CD. ‘Perched way above the old brow for me, mate.’ I supposed he was trying to be friendly, but I wore my headphones at every opportunity.
Each morning, after he left, I washed away evidence of his shave that graced the sides of the basin.
Estelle took longest. Her position as a beauty therapist required the highest levels of personal presentation. She washed her hair every day, which, shoulder length, took some time. By the third day she determined it best to also dry her hair and ‘do’ her face in my bathroom.
‘You don’t mind, do you? Your bathroom is so well appointed and neat. I hope Craig takes note.’ Through my trousers I would agitate a small wart on my left knee until she’d gone.
The only members of the Wilson household never to visit were the cats, and for this I was grateful.
Construction began on the extension’s timber framework. As with most frames it rose with speed. On the advice of a friend, Craig and Estelle had chosen dressed timber for the frame, invisible as it would be with the extension complete. A more stable construction would result. Craig said this justified the extra expense.
‘Quality,’ he said. Which is what he said also of the jarrah flooring that would stretch the length of the living room, hallway and bedroom.
The plumbing dispute continued. Repairs would cost thousands, and the Wilsons dug their heels in. They took delivery of a bright blue portaloo like the one the builders had, and their visits reduced. But still they came daily to shower, sometimes in the evening to minimise congestion.
After a hint from Estelle, I left a key under a pot of Clivia miniata so that they could enter at will. Estelle began taking baths, sometimes twice per day. ‘Professional imperatives’, she said. If she forgot her towel, I would pass one through the door.
With the framework near complete, large windows arrived installed in their sashes. Vast sheets of glass and sliding doors would face decking that was to run the length of the extension and wrap around the outdoor spa. The Wilsons had arranged for construction of the windows and sliding doors not by their builder, but by a firm specialising in windows and providing the best quality available. Unfortunately the two biggest windows proved too large for the builder’s framework. Forty-two millimetres to be exact. The window framer blamed the builder. The builder blamed the architect, whose drawings, he said, were vague. The architect said the window framer and builder needed to sort the problem between them. The builder said the Wilsons should have commissioned the windows from him and not someone else.
The Wilsons blamed the architect, the builder and the window framer.
One day I returned from work to find Estelle at my dining table, head in hands.
‘Fucking plumbing, fucking windows,’ she sobbed. I sat opposite and murmured a consolation. She flung her arms on the table before her.
‘These things can be resolved,’ I said.
‘Craig couldn’t spell resolve. He threatened to punch the builder out. Now the builder’s gone to another job. We paid that guy a shitload. Lord Jesus save me.’
‘You’re welcome here until it’s sorted,’ I said.
‘Sweet man,’ she said, and took my hand in hers. ‘I’d be brushing my teeth in a portaloo if it wasn’t for you.’
She gripped tighter and looked into my eyes. She was not long out of a bath, her hair loose and tumbling over her cheekbones.
‘Tea?’
‘A drink’d be nice.’
Deep inside a cupboard I found a bottle of red dating from my last visitor, three years earlier.
‘That’s the worst red I’ve ever drunk,’ Estelle said. ‘But hey.’ She emptied the glass, and I refilled it.
Estelle’s visits became frequent and long. Two days later, a Saturday, she arrived with a bottle of wine, lowered herself to my couch and talked for two hours until she’d all but emptied the bottle. She left a dribble with me, saying she’d finish it next day. Which she did before commencing a new bottle.
The following weekend was the same. On weekdays she began dropping by in the late afternoon if she saw me arrive home early. I gave the wart on my knee a thorough working over.
Her visits became part of my home life. She arrived sometimes with a carrot as well as wine, waving it in the air and crunching noisily while making a point. She conflated my interest in mid-twentieth-century speculative fiction, for which I have a weakness, with her fetish for historical fantasies. Talking constantly, listing closer to horizontal on the couch with each sip of wine, she would ask what I thought of this or that, not waiting for an answer before exclaiming ‘I just loved that film!’ Or, rolling her eyes and biting off more carrot, she would tell me how difficult the builder was, how hopeless Craig. Masticating carefully, she would suggest Craig’s ineptitude crossed many domains. (Among other shortcomings, his reading began and ended with the Herald Sun. He was not a book person like us.) After each of her visits I reset the cushions on my couch.
Craig also liked to chew the fat, as he put it. He would land on the couch where Estelle had sprawled, and ruminate on the progress, or more often stagnation, of his extension. The stand-off with the builder had continued. The timber frame was a ghost town at the rear of the Wilsons’, the huge unfitting windows angled up against it, unable to find rest. For a fortnight not a single hammer blow had echoed across the street. I worried how long the Wilsons’ visits would continue. I suddenly missed the whine of power tools, the long, flattened vowels of tradesmen and their radios.
I regretted making my door key available.
Craig alluded to difficulties with finance as well as with his builder, his architect and the firm that made the windows. The cats were flighty. ‘And don’t start me on Estelle,’ he said. He gave me one of his lingering looks. I knew they’d argued bitterly about their current living arrangements. I looked back at him a moment, then said okay.
To reduce my contact hours with the Wilsons, I worked back at the office and dismounted my tram four stops or 1.85 kilometres earlier to delay my homecoming. Of a weekend, I absented myself with long walks, tea in local cafes where I sat completing sudoku puzzles, and visits to gallery exhibitions in which I had only passing interest. Initially spared the salacious details of the Wilsons’ fallings out with their builder and, increasingly, each other, in time my tactic only opened the door, literally, to Estelle, who one day let herself into my house and drank half a bottle of wine by the time I arrived home. Elongated on the couch, she held her glass in the air and said, ‘Can I tempt you?’
I might be giving the impression Estelle drank to excess. But I think she simply preferred drinking in my company, for reasons I can’t fully explain. Boredom with Craig perhaps, and the convenience of a fully appointed bathroom. I am unsure how she reconciled this with her diet and exercise regime, other than her uttering ‘mental health’ and ‘destroy the free radicals’ when she opened another red.
I learnt her clinic was offering colonic irrigation as part of a program for holistic renewal.
She began leaving her toiletries, towel and substantial makeup case in my bathroom, and an entire toothbrush holder was given over to the Wilsons’ dental care. (Craig’s brush evidenced prolonged scrubbing and residues of breakfast and dinner.) Her makeup case annexed my vanity unit. A luminous pink, it bristled and gaped with lipstick and eyeliner. Her wineglass rimmed with lipstick would also be left prominently on the sink or dining table. That Craig might read in these abandoned items an intimacy that had no foundation caused me unease. I would close up the unseemly makeup case, scrub clean the wine glass.
No further work had taken place on the Wilsons’ extension or domestic plumbing. More than want of compromise, I sensed a want of funds. And a moroseness overtaking Craig, who now rarely spoke of his house. When he did, it was no longer ‘we’ or ‘us’ building, but ‘them’ and ‘him’.
Estelle left her cleansers, lipsticks, eyeshadow and compacts on the bench surrounding my basin. Estée Lauder, Elizabeth Arden, Revlon, Chanel, Issey Miyake. Clinique, Dior. I put them back in her makeup case, folded her towel, turned on the ceiling fan and waited for the mirror to clear after her hour-long baths.
‘Do you use any moisturising products?’ she asked. ‘You’re at that age.’
I avoided my own home even more. Colleagues noted my preparedness to work late, and thought me finally determined to advance beyond junior. Fitter from walking, for the first time in my life I bought a pair of runners to spare my feet. Staff at my nearest cafe served Lady Grey the moment I walked in. The owner of a nearby gallery thought me a connoisseur of works by a group of avant-gardistes exploring absence (or ab/sense) in installations that included an analogue TV with blank screen, a careful pile of empty paint cans, a Barbie doll hooked up to a heart–lung monitor, and a panel of binary codes with the ones removed and the zeros remaining.
One day Estelle left a pair of underpants in the bathroom. I stared at the underpants, draped over the side of the bath. To leave them there or pick them up seemed equally unthinkable. Her lipsticks cordoned the basin like beauty contest munitions.
I went to the kitchen, collected dishwashing gloves and returned to the bathroom. I picked up the underpants, put them in the makeup case along with the eyeliner, eyeshadow, face powder and as many of the lipsticks as I could, and zipped the case.
Then I removed the key from under the clivia.
*
I regained my peace. Estelle and Craig knocked at my door next day, individually, to collect their things. I made a polite show of protest to Craig, who said ‘S’alright mate. We’ve taken enough advantage. Ta,’ a distinct note of hurt in his voice. Estelle walked in huffily, mouth drawn tight, shoulders hunched, her skin a heightened orange. It took her two trips to collect her belongings. A quarter bottle of wine still sat on my bench, but offering it back seemed petty. ‘See you ’round,’ she said.
‘Really, any time,’ I said, but she was out the door.
I soon saw the Wilsons make their way of a morning to the Furrugias, who had three bathrooms. I sometimes said hello to Craig as he passed; he would wave but keep walking. Estelle all but ignored me. She made a strange sight, looking neither left nor right as she strutted in a dressing gown down the street, face more orange than ever, framed between her white gown and peroxided hair. A white towel under one arm and pink makeup case under the other as she arrived at the Furrugias’ double-storey, symmetrical house with iceberg roses martialled either side of the path to the door. A curt knock before walking inside.
I felt both sad and relieved not to have their company.
The only Wilson unaffected by this changed routine was Kade. He did not come over either, and I learnt he was spending nights at a friend’s house to study, ablute and avoid his parents’ arguments. But he still gave a breezy wave and called my name when our paths crossed, which had been the extent of our exchanges all along. He had a nonchalant way about him that suggested the ways of his parents were not worth fathoming. His shaggy toothbrush was the only reminder of the Wilsons’ use of my facilities. I did not mind it so much, and I let it sit.
Still no work occurred on the Wilsons’ extension. The dressed timbers of the frame began to grey. The window sashes remained angled to the side, one window broken, a bird’s nest atop it. The concrete spa nursed a puddle of discoloured water. The blue portaloo glimmered at the end of the block.
I felt sorry for the Wilsons, reduced to half a house and the benevolence of neighbours. I read their remoteness as wounded pride, regretted Craig would number me again among the aloof of the neighbourhood. I flirted with inviting him over for beer and football, but one glimpse of a TV promotion for the forthcoming ‘clash’ quickly buried the idea.
I saw no sign of the cats. Perhaps, like Kade, they had sought other options.
One night I answered a knock at the door. Despite the cold, Kade wore only shorts, hoodie and a Slipknot t-shirt. He thrust a thick plastic folder toward me.
‘Could you take a look?’
I thought of his exams.
‘They’re hopeless,’ he said. ‘I know they’ve been pathetic, sorry. And they won’t ask you. But at this rate we’d be better off in Damascus. Thanks.’ He turned and disappeared into the dark.
I spent my night reading the contents of the folder. The Wilsons’ affairs were many and messy. They were massively overstretched. The sum from Estelle’s mother would never cover the extension. Their savings had vanished. I estimated their mortgage at 68 per cent of their property value – before costing the extension. A personal loan four months earlier saw them paying exorbitant interest. In Craig’s name retail shares with poor returns had been long held – perhaps for sentimental reasons, or he’d forgotten he owned them. A larger sum in bonds would mature in twelve months.
Estelle was a business partner in her clinic. Suffice to say, little income resulted. Her expenditure on cosmetics, however, was in full evidence. She kept receipts for tax. Even at wholesale they totalled thousands. What graced my bathroom must have been a fraction of her arsenal.
Craig’s income from managing superstore pet supplies was not so super, but was steady. The ball buster, as he would put it, was payments to the builder after each stage. A statement indicated an unpaid sum due two months earlier. There were no funds to pay anything, let alone fix plumbing.
Their credits cards were bursting. A final notice had been issued on the Wilsons’ electricity bill.
Bills. The bankrupt’s only companion.
When Kade knocked three nights later, I returned the plastic folder along with my recommendations.
‘Say they were yours. A case study for your course.’
He raised his thumb and jigged it briefly in the air, an action I took to be his highest expression of gratitude.
Then I handed him his toothbrush, and tapped the folder in his hands. ‘Tell your mum she’s got enough Revlon.’
*
As the Wilsons’ house neared completion, the Furrugias, the Nortons, the Millars, the Valentis, Francine Armenio and others visited to admire the much-extended residence. Formerly considered snobs by Craig, every weekend their high-pitched exclamations rang out as I completed another sudoku. I was not invited over, but I saw the extension take shape in concert with the song of hammers and power tools that recommenced three weeks after Kade’s visit.
I felt sorry the width of our street cast a distance between us, but could not begrudge the Wilsons their newfound happiness.
The whole street attended their house re-warming, as they called it. My invitation arrived the day prior. Perhaps Kade prompted his parents. Whether my advice had been taken, I had no idea. But the extension was complete.
I attended for an hour. Kade handed me a soft drink and I walked the length of the living room that held thirty-six downlights and the population of our street with metres to spare. The outdoor spa was lit from underneath the water, ceramic dolphins either side. Someone stepped in the kitty litter, to much laughter. Craig slapped my back and told everyone in earshot I was the numbers man. Alex Furrugia insisted I recite pi. (I feigned forgetfulness after forty-three decimals.) Estelle, half-drunk, took my arm and told her friends I had the neatest house she’d ever seen. ‘Every book in alphabetical order!’
A week later I made a renovation of my own.
I returned to the nearby gallery and bought the panel of binary codes with nothing but zeros. The exhibition long finished, the gallerist retrieved the panel from storage. ‘I knew you’d be back!’, she said. The work, at 60 x 90 cm the smallest displayed, was titled universe minus 1. Its strings of minute black zeros promised a comforting silence. I shunted a bookcase one metre left, and hung the work in the middle of my living room wall.
On a whim I found Estelle’s wine, a pinot noir, emptied the remains into a glass and toasted my purchase. I swallowed a mouthful. The wine was acidic and leached into my mouth the way vinegar would. Gazing at the panel, a strange melancholy crept up on me. Whether for the Wilsons, I was not sure. The zeros stared back, mute and indecipherable.
There had to be something more to them. I drained the last of the pinot, and began calculating. ▼
This story appeared in Island 159 in 2020. Order a print issue here.
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