Free The Fence by Meredith Jaffe Page B

July
    Frankie watches the old lady huff up the driveway flapping her arms as if taking flight. Stupid old biddy, she thinks. Did she really take Francesca for such a fool that they didn’t know those trees were on their property? The plans from the real estate agent had a clear dotted line where the boundary was. At the time, Dave Henshaw had said that the trees had been there since he was a kid and, yes, technically they shouldn’t be, but the neighbours had always been amicable. He had a vague memory, though don’t quote him on it, that the neighbours had agreed on the trees straddling the boundary.
    Frankie hadn’t let it worry her then. After all, the trees were small, it wasn’t like they’d be difficult to remove. Brandy could do it in-between looking after the children.
    That night, she sits at her desk, checking the proofs for the ad campaign for Hush Hush’s new range of baby food. Officially the line follows the corporate formula of rhyming with hush and is called Hungry Hush. Although within the office it’s called Slush Mush, because you can put pictures of cute babies eating spoonfuls of organic lentils and pumpkin on the packaging but however you wrap it, when you unscrew the safety cap and squirt it into a microwave proof bowl, it still looks like baby poo. It’s actually quite tasty. Many’s the night Frankie has come home from work to a house strewn with toys and Brandon playing the Xbox. Too tired to argue about the state of the house or the lack of an adult meal on the table, she often supplements cold half-chewed pieces of organic chicken sausage and peas with a squirt of mashed lentils and pumpkin straight from the tube followed by blueberry and apple custard from another. At least it means she knows her product. No sly jokes like when they talk about the Eco nappy range and some smart alec can’t resist saying, ‘Know how to use one of these, Frankie?’ Laughing away as if it is the best joke in the world.
    Tonight, Frankie wavers between selecting organic free-range chicken and sweet corn or organic beef, macaroni and broccoli. As it heats, she watches Brandon, fingers twitching over the controller, and reflects how little has changed since this move to the suburbs. In the terms and conditions she stipulated as part of Brandon’s return to the family, she had insisted on something other than children’s leftovers for dinner. To start him off, she signed them up to an online store that delivers all the ingredi­ents for a nutritious home-cooked meal with simple to follow recipes. Opening the fridge, she sees that tonight is supposed to be salmon fillets with ginger and shallots cooked en papillote with Asian greens. Grabbing the organic non-homogenised full-cream milk, she finishes off the bottle. It’s a poor substitute for a bottle of white wine but the marketing and product team has agreed to do Dry July to raise funds for the Cancer Council. It’s only the fifth and the effort is killing her. Life is much nicer diffused through the numbing effects of a glass or two of wine.
    Eating her mush, she reads the Gumnut Cottage calendar stuck to the fridge door. The children are making bird scarers this week. They’ve been saving tin cans, washing them out and smoothing off any sharp edges. Tomorrow, parents will be helping the children stick mirrored beads on the cans for eyes and gluing on swishy tails made out of aluminium foil. The bird scarers will be strung up in the kindy’s fruit trees and on poles in the vegetable patches to keep the birds away. Brandon has to take his mother to hospital for a colonoscopy, so she is stepping into the breach.
    Taking a day off work to do stuff with the kids always fills Frankie with anxiety. Oh Klaussman & Sons say all the right things about being a family-friendly company until anyone actually asks for the day off. No matter that she is taking an annual leave day, she still feels as if she