Good Oil by Laura Buzo Page B

you know, maybe it’s better for Pip to keep this whole fantasy going in his head. Even being in unrequited love might be better than the cold hard light of day. He probably doesn’t even know who he is without his Estella obsession.’
    The pizza arrives. We load our plates with as many slices as will fit, and Chris opens himself another beer. To my surprise I’ve almost finished mine too.
    ‘So what else do you hate?’ he asks, between chews.
    ‘How come you keep asking me that?’
    ‘I’m interested.You interest me. I endorse your product.’
    No further invitation needed. I launch into my next pet peeve – perhaps a little less inhibited after the beer on an empty stomach.
    ‘Well. I hate – I hate my mum—’ ‘You hate your mum?’
    ‘No, no!’ I say hastily. ‘No way. I hate my mum’s despair.’
    ‘Her despair.’
    ‘Right.’ It’s a struggle to express this one. I lean down to my school bag under the table, haul it up onto my lap and fumble around inside it.
    ‘My mum has this really busy, really full-on job that she does Monday to Friday, plus she’s got Jess to look after, plus my dad, plus all the housework and . . . she’s really unhappy. The air in my home . . . is heavy with my mum’s unhappiness. And her exhaustion. And her sheer dissatisfaction with her life. And I hate it. I can be up in my room when she’s in the kitchen below and I feel her despair seeping up through the floorboards and into my room and throughout the whole house. You can hear her banging pots and pans, or cursing the vacuum cleaner . . .’
    ‘What’s this thankless job that she does?’
    ‘She’s a high school teacher. English and history.’
    ‘Where?’
    ‘Riley Street High.’
    ‘Shit. Tough school.’
    ‘Yeah. But you know I’ve worked out what’s really to blame for my mother’s lot in life.’
    ‘And what’s that?’
    ‘Feminism.’
    ‘Feminism?’ Chris raises one eyebrow. ‘Please explain.’
    I find what I was rummaging for in my bag – a tattered set of photocopied pages – fish them out and slam them down on the table.
    ‘Well, our English teacher, Mrs Cumming, made us read this thing called The Feminine Mystique by some feminist called—’
    ‘Betty Friedan.’
    ‘Yeah, that’s the one. It was published in 1963 and—’
    ‘Sorry, I need a judge’s ruling on this – your teacher gave you The Feminine Mystique for Year Ten English?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘The same teacher that gave you The Bell Jar ?’
    ‘Yes. She’s pretty wacky.’
    ‘I’ll say! Continue.’
    ‘So, yeah, from what I can gather, Betty was writing about how after the Second World War there was this massive campaign to get women—’ ‘Middle-class white women, not “women”,’ Chris interjects. ‘That’s who she was writing about really – she began her research on ex-classmates of hers from college.’
    ‘Whatever,’ I say impatiently. ‘She said women had been kind of herded back into the home and told that femininity equals “stay-at-home” wife and mum. Apparently this lifestyle meant that most of them went insane with misery and developed valium habits. Eventually a backlash movement developed called Second Wave Feminism, which tried to get the women back out into the world and not just be wives and mothers and dependent on men. And thanks to Second Wave Feminism, my mum spends all day getting shoulder-charged by a bunch of delinquent teenagers, picks up Jess from preschool, goes to the supermarket, comes home, cleans up the day’s mess, gets the dinner on, gets Jess in the bath, folds the laundry, gets Jess out of the bath, serves the dinner, clears up after dinner, puts Jess to bed and collapses, waking up to do it all again the next day.’
    I pause for breath. Chris looks thoughtful.
    ‘Well. I guess you have a point,’ he says. ‘It can seem like women like your mum got sold down the river by feminism, or at least in its wake. But really, don’t you think they are getting screwed