‘Stop.’ She snaps her notebook shut.
‘What is it?’ he asks.
‘Haiku,’ she replies. ‘Seventeen syllables and three verses, like the one I gave Mum for Mother’s Day yesterday.’
‘Tricky,’ I observe, taking the oats from the pantry.
Jackson begins fidgeting with the glass cannister containing his bread-clip collection – 387 and counting – watching the coloured tabs slide across each other as he rolls the tube beneath his palms.
‘Want some porridge, Milla?’ I ask. ‘I’m making some for Jackson.’
‘It’s way too early.’ She pulls a face. ‘Can’t I just have breakfast at Nanna Pam’s?’
I think for a moment. Today’s logistics are more complicated than usual, with Andy away. Pamela will arrive at 7.15 to take Milla to her regular gymnastics training, while I take Jackson and Ruby to school, then rush to work by nine.
‘Okay,’ I relent. ‘But promise me you’ll eat something before school.’
‘I’m going outside,’ announces Jackson.
‘What for?’ I tip water from the kettle into the oats. ‘It’s cold out there.’
‘Snickers is going to poop on the rug again.’
‘Wow, how do you know that?’ Milla asks with wonder. ‘You’re, like, the Dog Whisperer, Jackson.’
I glance at Snickers, trying to gauge the urgency of the situation.
Jackson takes Snickers by the collar, guiding him out of the kitchen and into the back yard.
A moment later, I hear Snickers barking and Tom Lovell’s voice drifting over the side fence.
‘That man is always up at unnatural hours,’ I mutter, stirring the porridge.
‘Just like us.’ Milla smiles.
‘Mu-um!’ calls Jackson urgently.
Setting down the spoon, I hurry outside to find Jackson in the herb garden, holding a headstand among the French lavender. He’s chatting amiably to Tom, while Snickers noses around the lemongrass.
‘Morning, Julia.’ Tom grips the top of the palings, peering over them. ‘I was just telling Jackson about those palm berries. Tracey’s not happy about them.’
He points at the culprit palm in our yard. ‘It’s dropping fruit all over our place and attracting bats. Palms are classified as weeds, you know. We could call the Council about it.’
I mime seriousness, trying to ignore the visual and olfactory assault delivered by Snickers’ morning bowel motion dispensed over the rosemary.
‘Snickers, you’re a stinker!’ yells Jackson, still upside down.
‘Can we talk about this… a little later, Tom?’ I ask, wincing at the stench. ‘Breakfast’s on the stove and Andy’s overseas. He won’t be back until Wednesday week, I’m afraid.’
‘He’s away again?’ Tom glances skyward, as if he might spy Andy’s aeroplane returning from New York.
‘It doesn’t make things easy.’ I tug at Jackson’s ankles, but his excellent core control means that forcing him out of a headstand is much harder than it should be.
‘Tracey won’t stand for it,’ Tom warns.
‘I’m so sorry.’
Jackson rights himself at last.
‘Sorry isn’t a substitute for action,’ admonishes Tom.
‘We’ll get onto it,’ I promise. I force a smile at our neighbour, then shepherd Jackson and Snickers back into the house.
‘What was that all about?’ asks Milla, her eyes still trained on her notebook.
‘It was Tom being pedantic. “Tracey won’t stand for it” … Over a few berries on his lawn! How would they cope living with something really challenging?’
My eyes stray to Jackson, now sitting on the rug petting Snickers.
‘Tom Lovell has way too much time on his hands.’
What would life be like if palm berries were my biggest concern?
I resume my position at the stove, checking on the porridge.
Jackson moves back to the island bench, taking Snickers with him. Balancing the dog in his lap, he stares at his hands. ‘Is time… heavy or light?’
‘Whoa, deep question,’ says Milla.
When the porridge is just the right consistency for Jackson’s sensitive palate, I pour some into a bowl and fetch the prune juice from the fridge. As I tip the carton over the bowl, Snickers leaps from Jackson’s lap and slips through my legs, causing me to douse the porridge beneath.
‘Oh, Snickers, naughty!’ I push the bowl in front of Jackson. ‘There’s a little more juice in there than usual, sorry.’
Jackson stares into his bowl, then stoops forward to sniff the contents.
Snickers begins to whimper.
‘Want your breakfast, too?’ I bend down and scratch him behind the ears.
Suddenly Jackson’s bowl of porridge spins wildly across the bench and into Milla’s lap, the contents splattering in all directions.
‘Ouch.’ Milla’s response is remarkably restrained.
I rush to help her, applying an icepack from the freezer to the angry red scald mark appearing on her thigh, then dabbing at her robe with a cloth.
I wheel around to face Jackson.
‘What were you thinking?’ I want to yell.
‘Go to your room,’ I say instead, deploying the calm-but-firm tone that Dr Kelleher claims is most effective. ‘You need some time out.’
Jackson bares his teeth and hisses. White flecks of spittle land on the bench.
Right now, Dr Kelleher would say: ‘Love the boy, not the behaviour’. But psychological truisms can’t rectify the unpredictability of life with Jackson, which I’ve been forced to accept as our version of ‘normal’.
‘Go to your room, please, Jackson.’
‘It’s wrong wrong wrong!’ Jackson shouts, and I can only assume he’s referring to the excessive prune juice I poured across his porridge.
‘Please, Jackson. Ruby’s still asleep.’
At nine years of age, Ruby sleeps soundly through most noises: the garbage trucks and sirens of the street, Andy’s late-night homecomings, Jackson’s tirades.
‘I don’t care about Ruby!’ he bellows, bounding off the stool and booting the flip-top bin across the kitchen. It smashes against the wall, causing our family rules sign to fall, then ricochets away sending eggshells, half-eaten toast and last night’s lasagne across the floor.
Where is the boy I stood arm-in-arm with on the Queenscliff dunes only yesterday, planning a surfing safari for summer?
‘I know for a fact that you care about Ruby,’ I say, manufacturing confidence. ‘You packed her school lunches every day last week, remember? You’re a very caring big brother.’
Jackson sinks down onto a stool, his eyelids twitching.
Milla moves across the room, stooping down to salvage the family rules sign. She brushes off the scraps before refastening it to the wall. ‘I think the rules just got broken all at once, Mum.’
I stare at the sign’s directives. Be Polite. Be Considerate. Gentle Voices. Remember Your Manners. Think First. Five family rules developed years ago, after I’d spent hours in the Emergency Department with Jackson yet again. At Andy’s suggestion, we’d all sat down at the kitchen table with coloured markers, conjuring words and pictures that depicted a calmer family life.