Not Your Ordinary Housewife

16





The phone’s persistent ring roused me from my morning slumber. It was Dory’s personal physician, who was also a friend of hers. I instantly guessed the reason for his call. She had died during the night.

I slumped to the floor as I tried to comprehend his words. When he had stopped by her house on his daily visit, there had been no answer, so he used his key to get in. He found her lying on the bathroom floor; she had suffered a coronary. But he assured me she had died quickly and painlessly.

I sat motionless; I was in shock. I told him I would come to Melbourne immediately.

Paul emerged from the spare room, having been woken by the phone. ‘Dory’s dead.’ I was in disbelief.

He paused a moment. ‘I guess we’ll have to go down for the funeral.’

‘I was only talking to her the other day. I think she died from all the stress we caused her.’

‘Hey, don’t blame me for this,’ he said angrily.

‘I’m not blaming you—I’m blaming both of us. You know how stressed she was—it killed her.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

‘But I should have been there for her. You could at least ask me how I’m feeling. I know you didn’t give a shit about her, but it’s polite to express sympathy when a loved one dies,’ I said sarcastically.

‘But she wasn’t really your mother.’

I had always been puzzled by Paul’s inability to grasp that, psychologically and emotionally, she was. How could it be otherwise? She was the only maternal figure I’d had. I was finding his lack of empathy disturbing. I knew he had detested her, but his callousness was disquieting.

I went to tell Shoshanna, who was inconsolable. She had never known anyone who’d died, and her five-year-old brain was having trouble absorbing the information.

I spent the day on the phone, booking flights and calling people. Friends in Melbourne were already organising the funeral. Despite my obvious distress, Paul broached the topic of Dory’s will. ‘Have you thought how you’ll feel when you realise she’s left everything to Francine?’ he suddenly asked me.

‘Don’t be crazy,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to discuss it.’ He didn’t seem to understand how upset I was.

‘Well, we’ll see,’ he said ominously, ‘but don’t be surprised if you don’t get a cent.’ He was convinced that, besides the two houses, she had piles of cash squirrelled away. ‘You’ll be lucky if you get anything.’

I was furious. I couldn’t believe he was saying such things at a time like this. I decided that I didn’t want him at the funeral—it somehow didn’t seem appropriate.

But he insisted. ‘I’m coming—for you and Shoshanna,’ he assured me.



We arrived in Melbourne that evening. After stopping by the doctor’s to get further details about Dory’s death, we went over to the house. Going in there, it looked so eerily empty and forlorn without her. It took all my courage to enter the bathroom where she’d lain dead just hours before.

But Paul was walking around the house, agitated. ‘Where’s the will?’ he asked, as he marched into Dory’s study. ‘We have to find it. I bet it’s in her filing cabinet, under “W”.’ At this, he pulled on its handle. ‘That f*cking bitch has locked it.’

‘Stop talking like that!’

‘Where’s she hidden the key?’ he asked angrily.

‘I don’t know and I don’t want to discuss it. My mother has just died and all you care about is her will.’

‘It’ll be inside the piano—that’s where she normally hides stuff, isn’t it?’ he conjectured.

‘I don’t know. Just stop all this. I can’t deal with it now. I just want to be in her house in peace.’

But there was no stopping Paul. He was removing the piles of music and ornaments from on top of the piano in the lounge room, so he could open the lid. In his impetuosity and carelessness, he nearly knocked over Beethoven’s death mask.

‘Bingo!’ He held up the key to Dory’s filing cabinet. I looked at him in disbelief—he was possessed by an unmitigated greed.

He returned to the study, opened the cabinet and began searching through files.

‘Bingo again! I’ve found it,’ he called out to me.

‘Put it away,’ I begged him. ‘I don’t want to read it.’

But he was reading aloud now. ‘“I appoint the Public Trustee as Executor and Trustee of this, my will, and I give, devise and bequeath the residue of my personal estate and the whole of my real estate to my trustee . . . ”’ He frowned at this. ‘She’s left it all to the Public Trustee! I was right: she’s really f*cked you over—she’s left it all to a bunch of f*cking public servants! That f*cking bitch . . .’

‘I can’t deal with this right now,’ I said, glancing at the document. ‘Please, put it away. I know she will have done right by me. You’re not a lawyer . . . you’re probably misconstruing everything.’

‘I want you to call Lloyd,’ he said, convinced that Dory had ‘shafted’ me and Lloyd would know what to do. ‘You’ll have to contest it.’ But I told him Lloyd was the last person I felt like speaking to.

‘Well, I’m gonna call him.’

Paul went through to the bedroom to make the call. When he returned, he told me, ‘Lloyd’s coming over after dinner.’

I didn’t want to see Lloyd. I still had to go through Dory’s phone book. There were many people I needed to call. As it was, they’d only have a day’s notice to come to the funeral.

‘Please, cancel Lloyd,’ I pleaded.

But Paul told me it was too late. ‘He’ll be here soon.’

Later, as I opened the door to Lloyd, I felt only contempt for him. Although I’d always respected his legal acumen, he was more Paul’s friend than mine. He’d also become insufferably lascivious, forever wanting to talk about sex and porn.

Paul rummaged through Dory’s financial papers and found her bank books, which he presented with the will for Lloyd’s perusal. Even before Lloyd had finished reading the will, Paul was badgering him insistently. ‘So, what’s the bitch gone and done? She’s f*cked Nikki over, hasn’t she?’

Lloyd told Paul to be patient, saying it was a complex document and describing it as ‘a very well drawn-up testament’.

‘But she’s left everything to a bunch of public servants,’ said Paul.

Lloyd finished reading the papers with Paul restlessly looking over his shoulder. Then he turned to me. ‘Okay, your mother was a very wise and worldly woman, and she’s obviously had some expert legal advice.’


I smiled, because I suspected what was coming next.

‘What she’s done,’ continued Lloyd, ‘is to put everything in a testamentary trust.’ I had what was called a ‘life interest’. He thought it exceedingly smart, because it meant I’d never get the principal, only the income. I would receive the benefits of her estate, without it ever being in my name. I could live in either of her houses, but I could never access the proceeds if I should decide to sell. ‘Obviously, she’s done this to protect you—from Paul, presumably.’

I looked at Paul. He was livid. ‘See, she’s ruling from the grave.’

Lloyd turned to me again. ‘You’re a very wealthy woman.’

I was in shock. Dory had far more investments than even Paul had calculated.

‘See how wrong you were about Francine,’ I said to Paul. ‘I never doubted she’d do right by me.’

‘So, Nikki never gets the money?’ Paul clarified.

‘That’s right,’ said Lloyd. ‘Very clever of her.’

‘Well, obviously we’ll have to contest it,’ said Paul.

‘Now, why would I want to do that?’ I asked angrily. ‘So you can fritter it away?’

Lloyd furrowed his brow, saying that we’d have a hard time overturning it. We’d have to go to court and prove she was of unsound mind, which clearly she wasn’t.

At that point I announced I was going to bed. ‘I’ve had a helluva day and I just can’t cope with this any more.’

Shoshanna and I snuggled up in Dory’s bed, where we performed our nightly ritual of reading books and singing songs. I didn’t want to be anywhere near Paul.

After Shoshanna fell asleep, I started reading Dory’s pocket notebook that she had left on her desk in plain view. There were notes about how she would like her funeral conducted, as well as contact addresses for her lawyer and accountant. There was also a recent receipt for ‘Alterations to Will’ from her Bourke Street legal firm. I gathered she had known her time was near and had been fine-tuning the document just days before her demise. There was also a note in large capitals in Dory’s shaky hand. It read: You know why I have done things this way. Indeed I did, and I cried inside with gratitude.



In the morning, Paul greeted me with unexpected charm.

‘You’ll never guess what happened last night after you went to bed. Lloyd and I were chatting away over a glass of whisky . . .’

‘Oh, I see—you’ve already raided Dory’s liquor cabinet,’ I said cynically. Paul’s purloining of Dory’s alcohol had been an issue since his first days in Australia. She had kept it only for visitors and he’d embarrassed her on several occasions by sneakily stealing her spirits and covering the loss by topping them up with tap water.

‘Well, she won’t be needing it any more,’ he retorted callously; Paul could be ruthless. ‘Anyway Lloyd asked me if I’d suck him off. I always thought he fancied you more, but apparently not.’

In fact, I’d always known Lloyd harboured secret desires for Paul. But surprisingly Paul had rebuffed him, telling him rather sanctimoniously it wasn’t appropriate to be sitting in his late mother-in-law’s lounge room giving him a blow job, when she wasn’t even in her grave yet.

‘Lloyd disgusts me,’ I said. ‘He’s so libidinous—always seeking details of our porn shoots, and he’s getting worse.’

‘Yeah, well for once, he disgusted me too. I mean, if I was gay—which I’m not—he’s just not the type I’d go for, what with his red hair and pasty skin.’

‘You expect me to think you behaved nobly, after your despicable display yesterday, just because you rejected Lloyd?’ I asked angrily. ‘I know you—if it had suited you and you fancied him, you would have sucked him off, or vice versa, whether or not Dory had just died. And you wouldn’t have given a shit about the fact that it was in her lounge room and her body was barely cold.’

‘That’s a bit harsh, don’t you think?’

‘No, not at all. Frankly, you and Lloyd deserve each other. You’re peas in a pod.’

‘Look,’ said Paul, ‘he was telling me how stressed he is—having a loveless marriage where he has to pretend he’s straight, and then running a successful legal practice.’

I said that maybe Lloyd should do the honourable thing by his wife and kids, and come out as the kinky bi transvestite that we knew he was. ‘And maybe you should do the same. No wonder you both get on so well.’ I stormed out, leaving my uneaten breakfast on the bench.



Consistent with Dory’s wishes, I placed a death notice in The Age. It read: Please, no flowers—donations to Amnesty International instead. We did this after Egon’s death, and I knew this cause was close to her heart. I wanted Shoshanna to attend the funeral, but Paul wanted her babysat rather than being ‘traumatised’ by the proceedings.

I went to Dory’s viewing and Paul insisted on accompanying me. He was edgy and impatient, but I wanted to be alone with my mother before the service. My heart broke as I viewed her body, its spent spirit now gone forever.

The funeral was a sombre and dignified affair. Thankfully, Dory’s friends attended to every detail—I was too distraught to deal with undertakers. Nevertheless, the various officials kept on deferring to Paul, which angered me. The chapel was filled with mourners and somehow I got through the day without breaking down completely.

For the service, I chose the famous funeral song from Shakespeare’s Cymbeline—‘Fear no more’. My favourite couplet from it reads:

Golden lads and girls all must,

As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.

In accordance with Dory’s wishes, there was no mention of religion; nor had she wanted to be buried in the Jewish section of the cemetery. Her ashes were to be placed next to those of her beloved Egon with a lawn memorial plaque; I would write the inscription later.

I deeply regretted allowing Paul to attend. He acted the grieving son-in-law with consummate ease. My stomach churned to see in action the very insincerity which Dory had always seen through.

Paul returned to Canberra and I breathed a sigh of relief. I stayed behind, to tie up loose ends. I desperately wanted to remain in Melbourne and live in my childhood home, surrounded by my fond memories and mementoes of a former life.

Now, after witnessing the most loathsome demonstration of avarice I’d ever seen, I could not see how I could continue living with Paul. Because I had now become financially secure, I could retire if I wanted to. I had a choice of houses in which to live and a healthy income. I certainly didn’t need to prostitute myself or sell pornography any more.

Slowly, I formulated a plan: on my return to Canberra I’d tell Paul I was leaving him.



I sorted through Dory’s dearest personal possessions, starting with her boxes of old scrapbooks from her Bodenwieser years. There was a stack of congratulatory letters to Egon from the time when he had received his AO, including Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser’s telegram and letters from various dignitaries and governmental heads. I found Dory’s concert program collection, including some from the Tivoli Theatre, where she had appeared with Chico, one of the legendary Marx Brothers. I even found an autographed photograph of him with a dedication to her. Her life had been extraordinary and I could hardly bear to part with any of it. But I did not have the space for all of it—I’d have to donate some to a library.


The largest problem was the many thousands of books. My parents’ tastes had been eclectic; included were all the autographed books from dear friends, such as author Eleanor Dark, poet Roland Robinson and pianist Alfred Brendel. It was overwhelming. These books were my childhood companions; while I hadn’t read all of them, the covers of most were as familiar to me as old friends. I could not throw them out, or even give them to charity.

I was also finding items from my childhood that I had left in Dory’s keeping. Most prized were keepsakes from the ABC’s Children’s Hour: my Argonauts Club badge and book prizes (I once came second for a piano composition). I rediscovered other treasures from my musical youth, including my old recorders and cello music.

The phone rang constantly, with people concerned about my wellbeing. One of Dory’s ex-Bodenwieser friends visited: Moira Claux—who had played Big Rebecca in Mad Max 2—was a remarkable woman whom I’d known since childhood. I found solace in her company as we talked of Dory’s exceptional life. I also received mountains of sympathy mail; I forced myself to write to her numerous overseas friends, including her close confidante, Paddy, the Countess of Harewood.

But several days after the funeral Paul called and told me I had to come home immediately; apparently we were being swamped with requests for freebie photos and stories. ‘The business is going berserk,’ he said.

Then I broke the news to him. ‘I don’t want to go back to all that tackiness.’

‘What are you saying?’ he asked suspiciously.

‘I just can’t deal with all the porn shit right now. I don’t want to do it any more.’

‘We can’t quit now.’

‘Sure we can,’ I countered. I didn’t need the money and we’d had only a small outlay with the printing. ‘We can cut our losses.’

‘But I’ve got boxloads of responses to the mailer. It hit the other day and we’re being flooded. I can’t do this on my own.’

I suggested we should post it all back, return to sender; we could put an apology in the next mailer and explain what had happened. ‘I’ll come back to Canberra when I’m ready—but that won’t be for a while. I’m sorting through Dory’s stuff . . . and we have to talk about things.’ I could feel my blood boil.

‘Your behaviour over Dory’s death has been disgusting. You’re not the person I thought you were—I definitely didn’t sign up to share my life with a materialistic, money-hungry psychopath who takes delight in the death of my mother.’ Expecting the usual tirade of abuse I paused, waiting with my heart in my mouth for his response.

When it came, it was measured and composed. ‘We’ll talk about this when you return.’ He was deliberately frustrating me.

‘Fine.’ I hung up, shaking.



Shoshanna and I returned to Canberra a week later. Paul was in the kitchen reading the paper when I confronted him with my decision. ‘I’m leaving you and I’m taking Shoshanna,’ I announced. ‘And I’m moving back to Dory’s house and quitting porn.’ Like the calm before the storm, he glowered at me as his expression tensed. I continued, ‘You’ve got the choice of staying in Canberra or moving to Melbourne.’

Paul railed at me in anger. He hissed and spat out hateful words, accusing me of lying and setting out to destroy him. I was shocked by the vitriolic viciousness of his attack.

‘I’ve made a huge mistake,’ I admitted. I explained how his manic eagerness to get his hands on Dory’s will and his anger over the trust arrangements had made me sick to the core—not to mention his insincerity at her funeral. ‘You’re one of the most abhorrent people I’ve ever met . . . You’re morally bankrupt.’

‘But Shoshanna needs her father,’ he said. ‘How dare you take her back to Melbourne without me!’

I could sense his fury rising. ‘You’re evil. Just when you finally inherit, you want to leave me with nothing.’ He was screaming now, using his physical dominance to intimidate me. Shoshanna had emerged from her room, crying. I motioned for her to return.

‘But you can come too,’ I suggested to him in a conciliatory tone. ‘I just don’t want to do porn any more; I’m financially secure now, so I don’t have to.’

‘No,’ said Paul emphatically. He refused point-blank to return to Melbourne; he was convinced that the Victorian police would take Shoshanna away again. ‘And besides, I can’t make a living there,’ he yelled. ‘There’s nothing in Melbourne for me. I finally have this chance for success—and you want to deny me that.’

‘What crap!’ I argued. He would just have to get a normal job and work for a living, like everybody else. ‘You’ll have to study at night school while you work, like you should have done years ago.’

‘But the porn has so much potential, and we’re finally where we wanna be,’ he wheedled.

‘Yeah, where you wanna be. Exploiting me—making a living off my face, my body.’ Sure, his marketing of me was incredibly clever, but it was my image that was making the money.

‘Well, you couldn’t run the business without me,’ he said smugly. He had completely misunderstood—I didn’t need to any more. ‘I’m warning you,’ continued Paul, suddenly turning nasty, ‘you’ll be sorry if you go. Very sorry—I’ll make sure of it.’

‘Are you threatening me?’ I asked.

‘You’ll see.’ He scowled maliciously. ‘I’ll make you my hobby,’ he hissed. ‘You’ll regret it if you leave.’

Over the next few weeks, Paul and I argued incessantly. He hounded me relentlessly to reconsider. He went from anger to tears, professing his love for me and our daughter. ‘You don’t know how much you and Shoshanna mean to me. I can’t live without both of you. I’ll top myself—you’re all the family I’ve got.’ He had gone from threatening me to threatening suicide, in a kind of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde transformation.

‘Please, I’m begging you. Don’t leave. Don’t desert me. It’s best for Shoshanna to have her father around. And I know what’ll happen if you move back to Melbourne—you’ll get a boyfriend, and before you know it, he’ll have moved in . . . And you know the statistics on child molestation.’

‘You’re crazy. You don’t know me very well if you think I’d move some bloke in.’

I was beginning to fear for Paul’s mental health. However remote the possibility, I did not want to be responsible for him killing himself. How could I ever explain that to Shoshanna? Or live with the guilt? I was torn between wanting to do the right thing by my child and my desperate desire to relocate to Melbourne. I agonised over my decision. Besides Shoshanna, there was the burden of responsibility I felt for Paul: it was true he had no family or friends, and it would be cruel to just cast him adrift. Maybe I was in denial about his psychopathic tendencies, but there were a lot of positives about him as well. I wondered what it was in me that allowed me to focus on the good in him.

‘Okay, here’s the deal,’ I finally told him, after exploring all options. ‘I’ll rent out the Balwyn house—which will break my heart, since it’s my spiritual home. And, because you refuse to move to Melbourne, I’ll stay living with you in Canberra—for Shoshanna’s sake.’


But it wouldn’t be a marriage in the conventional sense. ‘I’d rather be celibate than sleep with you,’ I stated calmly. ‘I don’t think I love you any longer and I know you don’t love me.’

‘But, pet, that’s just not true. I do love you . . . and I promise to reform. I know I’ve let you down before, but this time, I really promise.’

‘Stop with the bullshit,’ I snapped. As I saw it, people who loved each other didn’t get into serious exploitation the way he had with me. ‘You disgust me and I’m not having sex with you. That’s the only condition under which I’ll stay with you.’ I wanted absolutely no miscommunication about my position. Surprisingly, Paul said he could live with that, adding wryly, ‘I’ll just have to wank a lot.’

‘The only exception would be for you to inseminate me so we can have another kid—I’d hate for Shoshanna to be an only child like me.’ I told him that although I could get a sperm donor, I’d prefer all my children to have the same paternity . . . but that was up to him.

I longed for another baby and, but for our tenuous situation, would have become pregnant soon after Shoshanna was born. The urge to create a second biological child—an entire biological family—was stronger than any reservations I had about Paul or his parenting skills. No doubt this was linked to me not knowing my own heritage.

I believed Shoshanna needed a father, and that really was the clincher that overrode all other considerations. I knew she adored Paul—and vice versa—and I couldn’t bear to destroy the bond that the two of them shared. So I agreed to stay, even though I could have moved back to Melbourne and retired.

‘But I’m not making any more movies,’ I said. ‘Our marriage will be a farce, especially as you’re promoting me as this sex-crazed, horny housewife. How ironic.’



A few weeks later I received two letters, both from lifelong friends of Dory’s. One was an emotional letter from the Countess of Harewood; she’d seen Dory in Melbourne shortly before her death and had known before she’d opened my letter the news it would hold.

The other contained a newspaper clipping: accompanied by a Michael Leunig drawing, it was an article from The Age by Martin Flanagan, who had visited Dory just days before her death. He described how, with one night’s warning, she’d fled Austria while her family perished in concentration camps. He wrote of her intellectualism and compassion, describing her mind as ‘bright as sunlight off water’, and of the unfathomable life experience of this ‘brave’ person. She’d played for him with her arthritic hands and he recalled, ‘That afternoon, for the first time, I heard Beethoven live.’

I wept for the loss to humanity of the woman who was my mother.