Things Could Be Worse Read online

  Lola didn’t feel like going to school today. Bruce Matthews had been bothering her in class. Although he was in grade six, he was six feet tall. He had moved into the desk behind Lola. He stuck rude signs on her back, and he looked menacing.

  Mrs Bensky was still fussing around Lina. ‘Watch her carefully on the way to school, Lola,’ she said. ‘She can’t go without a cardigan.’

  ‘I don’t feel well, Mum,’ said Lola.

  Mrs Bensky looked startled. Lola never got sick. ‘You’ll feel better after you have something to eat. Your breakfast is on the table,’ she said.

  Lola knew she would have to try harder if she wanted to stay at home today. ‘I feel too sick to eat,’ she said.

  Mrs Bensky stopped buttoning Lina’s cardigan. ‘What is wrong with you?’ she asked Lola.

  ‘I’ve got a stomach ache,’ Lola said.

  Mrs Bensky did look worried now, thought Lola. And no wonder. Lola was always eating. She ate everything that Mrs Bensky fed her and more. She ate so much that Mrs Bensky had to keep all her biscuits, cakes and chocolates locked in the kitchen cupboard.

  But Lola knew where the key was. She was an expert at biting off both ends of the walnut horseshoes until they formed smaller horseshoes. She licked the middle of plump, chocolate-filled macaroons, and left them marginally slimmer. She could pick the sultanas and poppyseed out of the strudel and leave it looking untouched.

  ‘Have a nice piece of cantaloupe, darling. A piece of fresh cantaloupe will make you feel better,’ said Mrs Bensky.

  This is not working, thought Lola. Maybe Mrs Bensky knew she was lying? Mrs Bensky always said that mothers and policemen could read the truth in children’s eyes. Lola kept her eyes averted.

  ‘I think I’m going to vomit,’ she said. Nothing happened. Mrs Bensky didn’t move. Lola opened her mouth, clutched her stomach, and screamed. Lina started crying. Mrs Bensky rushed to comfort Lina. ‘Get into bed, Lola,’ she said.

  When Lina had calmed down, Mrs Bensky came and sat on Lola’s bed. She took Lola’s temperature. ‘You haven’t got a temperature, darling,’ she said. ‘Maybe it was something that you ate that is giving you the upset stomach? I will take Lina to school and if you are still not feeling well when I come back I will ring Dr Stone.’

  Lola was happy. She would spend the day in bed, reading. Mrs Bensky got ready to leave with Lina. Every now and then Lola let out a small groan or a loud whine. Lola felt pleased with herself. Mrs Bensky was starting to look really worried. Lola remembered that there were some fresh almond slices in the cake cupboard. This was going to be a good day.

  Mrs Bensky and Lina finally left. Lola leapt out of bed and ran into the kitchen. She had a good fifteen minutes before Mrs Bensky returned. She grabbed three slices of honey cake, which she had neatly sheared off the sides of larger slices. She took half of a wedge of cheesecake, and boy, was she in luck, there were loose scorched almonds. Her mother would never miss a few handfuls, thought Lola.

  Lola hopped back into bed. She ate quickly. That breakfast would have to do her until three o’clock when Mrs Bensky went to pick up Lina.

  Lola was swallowing the last scorched almond when Mrs Bensky arrived back.

  ‘Darling, you look a bit red and hot. Where is the pain?’ she asked. Lola pointed to the lower part of her stomach.

  ‘Is it still as bad as it was this morning?’ said Mrs Bensky.

  ‘It’s worse,’ said Lola.

  ‘I think I will call Dr Stone,’ said Mrs Bensky.

  Lola liked Dr Stone. She often chatted to him while he pressed tongue depressants down Lina’s throat.

  ‘Dr Stone will be here as soon as he has finished in the surgery,’ said Mrs Bensky. She tucked Lola into her bed. ‘Are you sure you don’t want some cantaloupe?’ she said.

  ‘No thanks,’ said Lola.

  ‘What about an orange juice, freshly squeezed?’

  ‘No thanks, Mum,’ said Lola.

  Mrs Bensky started to clean the house. Lola settled down with a book under the sheets. From time to time she remembered to moan.

  Dr Stone arrived just after lunchtime. Lola had refused to eat any lunch. She was starving. It hadn’t been easy to say no to lunch. Mrs Bensky had offered her some apple compote, and some chicken soup with rice. Lola loved chicken soup with rice.

  Mrs Bensky had looked very distressed when Lola said no to the chicken soup. Lola started to feel guilty about her mother. Had she taken things too far by refusing the chicken soup?

  Dr Stone poked and prodded Lola. He told her to lift her right leg and then to bend it as close to her chest as she could. He asked her to pinpoint the pain in each of these positions. Lola was smart. She was consistent about which part of her stomach hurt most.

  When Dr Stone finished, Lola smiled at him, but he wasn’t smiling. Dr Stone and Mrs Bensky went into the kitchen. Lola could hear them talking. She was a bit hungry, but on the whole things were working out quite well, she thought. Maybe she would even get to spend another day in bed.

  Dr Stone and Mrs Bensky came back into Lola’s bedroom. ‘Well, my girl,’ said Dr Stone, ‘I think you have got appendicitis.’ Lola felt proud. She looked up at Dr Stone as he continued, ‘It seems to be in quite an advanced state. I think we might take you to hospital now.’

  Now? Hospital? Lola felt faint. Then she felt sick. Dr Stone helped her to the toilet. She had violent diarrhoea. Dr Stone helped her back to bed. He rang for an ambulance.

  Mrs Bensky was weeping. ‘Oy, my Lolala, my poor Lolala.’

  ‘I’m going to vomit,’ said Lola. Mrs Bensky rushed for a bowl. Lola vomited and vomited.

  Lola was still shaking in the ambulance. The ambulance men were very nice. One of them held her hand all the way to St Andrew’s Hospital. ‘Get a move on,’ he shouted to the driver. ‘She’s in bad shape.’

  The nurses were also sympathetic. ‘Poor kid, have you eaten anything today?’ said a nurse.

  ‘No,’ cried Lola.

  ‘Good,’ said the nurse. ‘Give her a wash,’ she said to another nurse, ‘and we’ll prep her.’

  Prep her? What was that? Lola felt sicker and sicker. Her heart raced and she couldn’t stop crying. What had happened?

  Mr Bensky came rushing in to see his daughter before they wheeled her away. ‘Don’t worry, darling, you will feel so much better after the operation. My poor darling, you look so terrible. Mum is worried out of her mind. Just remember you will feel much better afterwards,’ he said. ‘I love you, darling,’ he added. Tears ran down Mr Bensky’s face as he waved goodbye to Lola.

  Afterwards, Lola felt awful. Her throat hurt. She had a horrible ache in her stomach, and her mouth tasted terrible. She wove in and out of a nightmare in which a young nurse kept telling her it was all over and she was fine.

  Later, Dr Stone came to see her. ‘You have been a very brave girl, Lola,’ he said. ‘The appendix didn’t look too bad. It looked fine actually, but you can never be too safe in these cases. You have got a cut right down the middle of your tummy. We thought we should have a good look around, but all is well in there.’

  Lola looked up at him. She knew that he hadn’t told her parents and never would.

  ‘Don’t worry, you’ll be out of hospital in two weeks and we’ll get you some ice-cream for that sore throat,’ said Dr Stone.

  Mr and Mrs Bensky and Lina came to visit Lola. They looked at her solemnly.

  ‘I heard you have got twenty-two stitches,’ Mr Bensky said to Lola.

  ‘We are so proud of you, darling,’ said Mrs Bensky. ‘Acute appendicitis and she didn’t even complain!’ Mrs Bensky added to a passing nurse.

  Lola tried to listen to Take It From Here on the radio, but it hurt her too much when she laughed. The kids in Lola’s class sent her a big box of chocolates, but she wasn’t hungry.

  Dr Stone smiled reassuringly as he took Lola’s stitches out. ‘Well, you’re right as rain now. Don’t carry anything too heavy for at least two weeks, and be careful
going up and down stairs. You can go home tomorrow,’ he said.

  Lola went back to school on the first day that Dr Stone thought she was well enough.

  In later years, Lola envied people who got bronchitis or chickenpox or ingrown toenails. Anything that wasn’t really serious. Lola had trouble even catching a cold.

  A Drive

  She always called him ‘ma Motl’. They only had each other. He called her ‘ma Nusia’. They were the same size. Both short and round.

  Nusia and Motl lived two doors from the Benskys. Every summer, on the Australia Day weekend, the Benskys took Nusia and Motl to Lorne for four days.

  On the drives to Lorne, Nusia used to wear a pair of underpants on her head. To protect her hair. Lola and Lina had to stuff hankies in their mouths to stop their giggling.

  Josl Bensky drove like a maniac. He had a need to overtake everyone else on the road. Lola’s job was to look out for the police. She had to take this seriously, as it was her fault each time he was booked for speeding.

  Lola and Lina would glimpse the expressions on people’s faces as they caught sight of Nusia with her pink silk underpants flapping in the wind. The pain of the sisters’ suppressed laughter was agony.

  Every now and then Renia Bensky would turn around and glare at the girls. Before the trip she would tell the girls, yet again, what good people Nusia and Motl were. ‘Look, so they don’t have money. They’ve got big hearts, bigger hearts than all the ones with big money. And they’re poor people, they haven’t got children.’

  This last poignant note never really rang true to the girls, as having children hadn’t seemed to make their mother’s life much happier.

  All the Benskys’ friends had come to this country fresh from Auschwitz or Dachau, or if they had been lucky, a couple of years buried in a bunker. But once here they had made it. They had nice houses, nice cars, big factories that were big business. They built flats that destroyed half of St Kilda and defaced the bayside beauty of Beaconsfield Parade.

  Their kids weren’t much good. Even Renia Bensky, although she tried to deny it, could see that. So what were Nusia and Motl missing?

  Motl sat with his arm around Nusia, next to the girls in the back. They kept smiling. They were enjoying the trip, too. Nusia repeated the same stories of Lola’s childhood. ‘Remember, Motl, when she was a little girl? She would answer the phone: “Hello, this is little Lola. I’ll talk to you.” ’

  Josl, momentarily distracted from his goal of being first in line on the road, would launch into a diatribe about how nothing had changed, how much business he lost because no-one could get through to him on the phone at night. He would rant about the hours that Lola spent talking to girlfriends who, God help him, she’d only just left, after probably having talked to them at school all day. Renia, who didn’t like most of Lola’s friends, nodded in approval.

  This distraction usually occurred on the Great Ocean Road, which curves and bends sharply alongside a drop of 500 feet to the sea. Every Christmas a car goes over the cliff.

  Nusia and Motl smiled warmly. ‘It’s nice to be a good talker.’ Nusia linked arms with Lola. The love flowed from her.

  Nusia had the longest, most beautiful nails. They shone like dark red porcelain. Just as they arrived at the Lorne Hotel, Nusia would adjust the underpants with an elegant movement of the hands, smooth Motl’s collar and sit back with an air of expectant excitement.

  Every year the girls thought that she would take the underpants off before walking into the foyer. They prayed that she would take them off.

  The front driveway of the hotel was full of people unpacking. They walked back and forth carrying fishing equipment, surfboards, rubber dinghies, beach mats, table-tennis bats, fly-spray and suntan lotions.

  Lola and Lina looked at each other. It was one of their rare shared moments. Would she take them off? God, what if there were any boys watching? Could they stay in the car and find their rooms later? Would Renia miraculously understand and save them? How could they not hurt Motl’s and Nusia’s feelings?

  Lina developed delayed car-sickness. Being sick worked miracles in the Bensky family; Lina was allowed to lie wanly on the back seat. Nusia looked at Lola. Through the ribboned pink lace frills, Lola could see the perfectly set blonde waves. ‘Oy, Motl, such a sweet face she has. I baked such a lovely apple cake, no sugar, plenty of apples. Darling, carry it carefully.’

  Lola carried the cake. Nusia and Motl walked either side of her.

  ‘You know, darling,’ Nusia said loudly, ‘I’ve got a little piece of beautiful cheesecake in the bottom of the box. Mummy won’t mind. It doesn’t hurt to have one piece. Too thin doesn’t look nice. Look at that one in her shorts. Looks like her mother doesn’t feed her.’

  Lola and Nusia and Motl stood in the queue checking in. Lola smoothed down her new gingham dress, held her stomach in and tried for her most sophisticated expression. Motl put his arm around Lola. ‘Such a sweet girl.’

  Nusia sighed in reply: ‘Oy, ma Motl, what a lovely holiday we’re going to have.’

  A Family Portrait

  Renia Bensky’s hair was slightly bouffant and stylishly cut short. Blonde, with coppery highlights glinting through – a colour that was very popular in Caulfield that year.

  Laid out on the bed were a grey herringbone light wool tailored suit and a black and white spotted silk blouse with a once-again-fashionable Peter Pan collar. The sheer, fifteen-denier Smoky Nights pantihose screamed: ‘High Leg. Sheer to the Waist.’

  The herringbone suit sat smoothly on Renia. She patted her tummy with pleasure. It was always flat. Even when she sat down there was no bulge. All her friends admired her figure.

  At the dinner parties she hosted every fifth Sunday night, Renia never sat down. All night she rushed between the dining room and the kitchen. Every fifth Sunday she served gefilte fish that everyone agreed was just right, not too sweet. Then came hot fried flounder in a sauce of onion, tomato and dill, followed by an entree of chopped liver. The secret of Mrs Bensky’s smoother, lighter chopped liver was simply an extra egg. One kilo of chicken livers, two large onions and five boiled eggs was the recipe she guarded with her life. The main course was a roast shoulder of veal with large, hot, boiled potatoes. If she could find a duck lean enough when she went shopping in Acland Street, she served roast duck.

  The meal ended with Mrs Bensky’s sponge cake. Mrs Bensky was famous all over Melbourne for her sponge cake. She told anyone who wanted to hear that her sponge cake was not fattening: it had only a tiny bit of sugar and hardly any flour. No-one was quite sure what held it together, but they ate it in large slices with relish, secure in the knowledge that it wasn’t fattening.

  Later in the evening, when the men settled down to play cards, usually gin rummy, and the women nestled in groups whispering, usually about their husbands and children, Mrs Bensky cleared the table, put out the chocolates and washed the dishes.

  On the other Sunday nights, when it was Mrs Ganz’s or Mrs Small’s or Mrs Zelman’s or Mrs Pekelman’s turn to have dinner, Mrs Bensky helped. They could rely on her to serve the latkes straight from the frying pan, before the grated potato mixture became cold. Mrs Bensky would swiftly spoon out generous portions of cholent and kishke. Before anyone could say they were on a diet, their plates would be full of oxtail, baked for twenty-four hours in a glue of chicken fat, onions, garlic, lima beans, barley and potatoes.

  Very few of the group had ever seen Mrs Bensky have a meal. For that matter, neither had her family. They had watched her chew a crust of toast while she prepared dinner, or have a bowl of semolina to soothe her nerves.

  Six nights a week Mrs Bensky served grilled baby lamb chops with salad, grilled calf’s liver with salad, grilled whiting with salad or a lean roast chicken with salad. The helpings always came in under five hundred calories. Mrs Bensky washed the dishes loudly while her family ate.

  She often told her fat Lola how she herself had no tolerance for sweets. ‘Do you ever see me wit
h a chocolate? I can’t eat them. They taste something terrible to me.’ While she said this she glowed and looked even more beautiful.

  Mr Bensky and the girls were quite self-sufficient. They didn’t really need her meals. Mr Bensky kept a large supply of Toblerone bars in the glovebox of his new Fairlane. He did messages for Mrs Bensky willingly: some minced chicken from Rushinek’s, some challah from Monarch’s. Whenever she said, ‘Josl, can you pick up …?’ he rose from his armchair. ‘No trouble, Renia.’ On the way he stopped at Leo’s for a triple chocolate gelato.

  Lola fed herself at Pellegrini’s in Bourke Street on her way home from school, and Lina had a fast and accurate aim in and out of the fridge. She could remove a cheese blintz and digest it in ten seconds.

  Mrs Bensky stepped into her shoes. Light grey suede, pointy-toed and soaring on six-inch stiletto heels, they were made by Maud Frizon of Paris and bought from Miss Louise of Collins Street, Melbourne. At Miss Louise’s winter sale, Mrs Bensky paid £20 for these £79 shoes.

  Mrs Bensky had a real eye for a bargain. She saved hundreds of pounds a week. Mrs Bensky personally knew every manufacturer of swimwear, evening wear, hosiery, overcoats, underwear, knitwear, furs, suits and sportswear within a ten-mile radius of Flinders Lane.

  She walked briskly into the bathroom, relishing the feeling of power that came with the extra height. Searching in the lipstick drawer, she decided that Unspiced Rose by Estee Lauder was the right shade for today. First she outlined her lips with brown eyeliner pencil. Then she applied a thick, glossy coat of Unspiced Rose. Pleased with the result, she smiled at herself in the mirror.

  The bathroom had sixty feet of mirror attached to sliding doors around three of its walls. These doors concealed endless shelves: shelves crammed with cleansers, toners, exfoliating creams, neck, chin and eye creams, thigh creams, day creams and night creams, clay and mud and apricot masks, ampoules for firming your skin and lifting your breasts, cell extract treatments to remove wrinkles and dimples, and chimiozymolsat of yeast, which favourably affects the oxygen balance of epidermal tissue.