Night Swimming Page 9
Grandad has a roast chicken ready-meal for dinner in his spot in front of the TV. I give him his medication, the tiny little pill that’s supposed to slow his cognitive decline. Who knows if it makes any difference? The rest of us have reheated short soup from Purple Emperor.
After dinner, Nathan drives Claire home. She’d already told them about my accident and Mum didn’t ask anything more about it. Nathan grinned like a loon, but resisted the urge to comment, once he’d seen my bandaged hand. I can’t tell whether Mum is exhausted from the day’s work, and all the work before then, or just not interested.
I make a pot of tea for Mum and me, one-handed, while I talk myself into bringing up her not-so-secret date.
‘I saw your father in the paper,’ says Mum, catching me off-guard. She flips through a stack of papers on the table and fishes out a newspaper clipping, which she holds out to me between two fingers. The same one I saw in April. ‘I know you’ve been curious. Up to you what you do with it.’ The unspoken addendum: if you want to write to him, see him, or pretend he never existed.
My heart pounds so loudly I don’t hear what I say in response.
‘It’s fine,’ she replies.
‘Do you think I should?’ I ask. ‘Do something? Write?’
Mum gives a noncommittal shrug. ‘Up to you,’ she repeats.
I’m frustrated by how unhelpful she’s being. She doesn’t seem like someone in the glow of new love, but I’m not experienced enough to know. I decide not to bring up the gossip about her and Nick until she’s in a better mood. Besides, my brain is still swimming with what the hell to do about my father, especially when I have no idea what Mum really thinks I should do.
Sleeping on it seems like the best solution. I pour the tea and take mine up to my room, ready for a nap.
I am woken by the bleating of my phone. I paw at it, disoriented, totally unable to grasp it. Once I remember my hand is bandaged, I grab it with my other hand.
‘I heard you were involved in a life-threatening electric saw–related incident,’ says Clancy, his voice several decibels too loud, ‘and frankly I’m disappointed I wasn’t there to see it.’
‘Glad to hear you’re concerned for my welfare,’ I mumble, wiping drool from the side of my mouth. ‘You’re a true friend.’
‘Iris told me,’ he says. He pauses for a second. Since he talks like we’re in a play, he treats every line with significance. ‘I reckon I might have fabricated her with my mind. She is a perfect human being.’ He’s not wrong. ‘I’m feeling really good about our group, too. We’re like Destiny’s Child. Obviously I’m Beyoncé. That’s what the theatre does, you know, bonds people. We’re like The Beatles but with a goat instead of Ringo Starr. I’m John, you’re Paul…’
If I don’t stop him, he’ll ramble all night. ‘We’re like musketeers. Or we’re the Powerpuff Girls, whatever. I understand. Did you get the money?’
‘Yeah, thanks for that. Mrs Hunter was surprised we coughed up the cash. She has to let us go through with it now, otherwise she’ll never hear the end of it from Judy. We’ve just got to sort out props and costumes. Any ideas for a person-eating plant?’
Absolutely none. None that are good, anyway. ‘You’re the ideas man. Paint Stanley green?’
‘Hmm. Perhaps. Mrs Hunter implied, by the way, that I was making crop circles as a publicity stunt for the play, since it’s a play about an alien space plant. It’s not a bad idea, really. Is it you trying to promote our play, Kirby?’
‘Given the crop circles started before we decided to have the play, how could it possibly be me trying to promote the play? That’s a very tenuous connection, anyway. You’d be better off putting up posters.’
‘Huh. Maybe it’s me from the future. Maybe it all means something.’
He sounds like he’s going off on a ridiculous tangent so I try to intervene.
‘How’s Year Twelve going?’ I ask. The question every Year Twelve student despises, except Clancy, who for some reason seems inordinately confident.
‘Considering I’m not going to become a mathematician, the agony of Maths Extension 1 seems a waste, but apart from that it’s all right. Though I do keep putting everything off until the day it’s due, then working like a madman to send it in on time. Then I promise myself I’ll never do it again.’ He sighs. ‘Then I do it again. I guess I’m hooked on the adrenalin high.’
‘I’ll study with you, if that’d help.’
He laughs. ‘I wouldn’t subject you to it.’
‘You hear my mum’s been on a date at the pub?’ I have to get Clancy’s angle on this.
‘Really? But your mum’s so…independent.’
‘I’m glad you said independent,’ I say.
‘Yeah, I know you don’t like it when I say she’s scary. Fierce, I mean.’
‘She’s just serious. Your mum’s fierce. I don’t know the veracity of the rumour. I just heard. From Claire.’
‘So, a secret date at the pub? Whoa. Is that an oxymoron? You can’t have a secret in this town. Here, I’ll ask my mum.’ I hear his muffled voice, speaking to his mum in Cantonese.
A few seconds pass.
‘Your mum’s got herself a Greek boyfriend,’ he confirms. ‘Opa!’
Now I consider telling him about my dad, too, but I decide to keep something to myself for once, to think it over without anyone telling me what to do, which is a foreign experience for me.
‘Kirby?’ says Clancy. ‘You reckon since Irini’s your grandma now, we can get an invite to her place for moussaka and baklava?’
I don’t tell him he’s overstepping the mark. It’s an overwhelming notion that people I only vaguely know could suddenly become part of my family.
‘You ever get tired of the gossip in Alberton?’ I ask.
Clancy laughs. ‘Are you serious? I can’t wait to get out of here. One day I will live somewhere where no one will know my business. And it will be glorious. I will escape this hellhole once and for all.’
‘Hey,’ I mumble into my pillow. ‘You’re overdoing it. It’s not that bad.’
‘Kirby, I’m going to explain this to you with a metaphor you’ll understand. A food metaphor. Your life’s like a lamington without jam in it. And you’ve never had a real lamington, so it seems perfectly fine. But if you knew what you were missing you’d realise how deeply and profoundly lacking it is.’
‘Our town is a jam-less lamington, is that what you’re telling me? And where is the lamington with the jam?’
‘I don’t know yet. That’s the magic. It might be Sydney or it might not be. It could be anywhere and everywhere. But we have to leave here to find it. It’s a quest.’
‘Right. I have to sleep. Recover from my wounds.’
That evening, Grandad suggests I invite Iris over for afternoon tea. Fifteen minutes later, he forgets he did any such thing. I decide to invite her over regardless. I want my family to meet her properly, and I want her to meet my family; they would meet her eventually, in a town the size of ours, but it’s important to me that I convey to them precisely how wonderful she is.
I try to compose a message but it’s disastrous. Formal and unnatural, like we’re in Pride and Prejudice or something. I might as well grab a quill and write her a letter. Dearest Lady Iris, Please join us at the Arrow Estate for a most delightful high tea and perhaps some croquet. Yours Sincerely, Lady Kirby.
I figure I’m significantly less awkward when I’m not using written communication, so I hit the call button before I get a chance to talk myself out of it. Once it’s ringing I realise that I’m not actually any less awkward when speaking. The big difference is that I get a chance to edit myself when the words I intend to use are blinking from the computer at me.
‘Kirby!’ Restaurant noise in the background.
‘Hi! I was wondering if you wanted to come over for afternoon tea, or something? Hang out with my family, meet the goats?’ Meet the goats, brilliant, because everybody loves goats as much as you do, Kirby.
‘You fancy having afternoon tea with my family? Maybe next week? Fine, of course, if you’re busy…’
‘I would love to. I—look, Dad’s hassling me at the moment, he needs my help. Can I call you a bit later? Will you be around?’
‘Yeah. Yeah, sure.’
When she calls me back twenty minutes later, I tell her I considered hand-writing a letter to invite her to tea. She’s very amused. I tell her about my mum seeing a bloke, and everyone knowing about it but me, and my total inability to actually ask her about it. She tells me about how her mum’s going crazy making decorations for the engagement party. When I say, an hour later, that the call is probably costing her a fortune, she tells me she’s making the most of her unlimited minutes. We don’t stop talking till 2 a.m.
When I head back to work with Mr Pool in mid-May, he has a look of terror in his eyes that wasn’t there before. It’s back-to-normal in that I’m doing everything I was doing before, at much the same rate, but it’s entirely different in that Mr Pool seems worried he’s going to end up with a scene from Texas Chainsaw Massacre, so he watches me like a meerkat. Adorable, but constantly on high alert. He’s supposed to be retired and relaxed, not stressing out.
‘Had a chat with your mum,’ he says, cautious, as if saying the slightest wrong thing might send me shooting a nail gun into my hand for some self-inflicted stigmata.
Everyone sneaking around, chatting behind my back. Why can’t people tell me? ‘You did?’
‘Yeah. Bit worried, after the incident.’
The one where I amputated my finger. ‘Mum was?’
‘I was. Your mum too, most likely.’ Not likely. Mum is remarkably unconcerned about me. ‘She’s not sure this is the right line of work for you.’
‘Are you sacking me because my mum told you to?’ I ask, indignant. I am fully prepared to chain myself to a workbench and remain there until he gives me my job back. I’m only a few months off eighteen, and it’s unfair that Mr Pool is treating me like my mum’s kid when she so rarely treats me like her kid. She’s usually so uninvolved in my life. I’m not upset by that; it’s just part of her personality. Her parenting style is the opposite of helicopter parenting. I’ve always known she loved me. But she didn’t seem worried after I hacked my finger off (in her defence, it was barely a centimetre). So why the worry now?
‘No, no, course not,’ says Mr Pool. He scratches at the grey stubble on his chin, his nose scrunched up. He’s clearly finding this an incredibly uncomfortable conversation. ‘Wanted to let you know, though. Don’t feel like you have to hang about because of me. I do fine on my own. You don’t need to take over. It won’t be a problem to end the contract, I’ll have my second retirement. No need for an heir.’ A little joke, at the end. I give him a smile.
I liked the idea of being the heir, a little bit. But I’d rather be the heir at home, in my own family business. As much as I love Nathan, getting passed over for a cousin and largely ignored at home is beginning to get to me.
*
‘I’m not a fan of op-shopping. This is the only op shop I’ve been in, though, so I’m basing my opinion on a sample of one. Probably unfair. But it is not a very good op shop, apart from being where I got my Harry Potter wallet.’ I’m whispering so that Mrs Jameson, who is sitting behind the till reading a Nicholas Sparks novel, isn’t offended. She’s a volunteer and she’s not responsible for the rubbish people donate, but I still try to avoid her.
Iris and I are on the hunt for costumes for the play. Clancy has given us a an extravagant wish list. As I watch dust motes catch the light and drift through the air, I realise it is unlikely we’ll find a vintage motorcycle jacket and a dentist’s uniform here.
Still. It seems an extraordinary slice of fortune to have an afternoon alone with Iris, while Clancy’s mum has him working lunch-shift at the restaurant. I do get tired of him making eyes at her.
‘You definitely need to extend your sample size to get accurate data,’ says Iris. ‘That said, this op shop is not as bad as you think it is.’
‘Why? Are the ones in Sydney really terrible?’
She shakes her head, dons a green sun hat with a fluffy trim, and strikes a pose. ‘No. But op shops are only as good as your perspective. You need to look at things with fresh eyes. See the possibilities.’
‘It’s difficult. I know or can guess who most of this stuff belonged to. Like, I think that was Mrs Pool’s hat. She died. So that awful hat makes me sad.’
‘Oh. Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. Mr Pool’s wife? But isn’t it wonderful that her things still have a life after her? Think of the adventures you might have wearing Mrs Pool’s hat. Wouldn’t she be happy, if she were here?’ She takes the hat off her head and puts it on mine. I cannot see out from under the brim. I feel like a character on Sesame Street.
Iris runs her hand along racks of clothing like she’s playing the length of a piano. It’s hard not to get swept up by her enthusiasm. She plucks a vest off a hanger and shrugs into it. It is cream-coloured (probably once white), thigh-length and furry. Somehow everything she wears suits her.
‘You look very beautiful for someone who looks like they’re wearing a Muppet.’ I didn’t mean to say that out loud.
She grins. ‘Maybe I’ll buy it then.’
‘Gotta stay on track. We need costumes.’
‘You know what else you need? A dress for the engagement party.’
‘I don’t know. I’m pretty happy with the clothes I’ve got.’ I don’t want to try on clothes in front of Iris because the hand-me-downs of our townsfolk will not look remotely glamorous on me and I am still deluding myself that I can con Iris into thinking I am better-looking than I really am just by standing at flattering angles and not letting her see me unless I look reasonable.
‘What are you planning on wearing?’
‘Haven’t thought about it. Jeans and a top?’
‘Are you opposed to dresses?’
‘No? Are there people who are?’
‘Can I choose something for you?’ She seems genuinely excited about the prospect of finding a dress for me. I am not excited about the prospect of turning up at my cousin’s engagement party wearing something someone’s mum wore to a school formal in the eighties, but I don’t want to disappoint Iris. ‘I promise I’ll find something that makes you look nice,’ says Iris. Pretty daring promise, really, but maybe she doesn’t know me well enough to understand that ‘clothes that make me look nice’ exist only in mythology and magazines.
I find myself saying ‘sure’.
She grins, claps, does a little spin and clutches me in a hug. I get a waft of her perfume; her hair presses against my face and her hands are hot at my back. Then she’s off and appraising every single item on the nearest rack as a potential outfit for me. I feel like this has marked some sort of elevation in our friendship: now I’m letting her choose clothes for me our friendship must be legit. I don’t know whether she’s happy for me or for her. I’m still apprehensive, but it’s reassuring being able to replay in my head the moment of her hugging me.
‘I’ve got so many dresses I’d have given you one of mine,’ she says from two racks away, ‘but I’m a bit slight. And you actually have breasts.’
I’m glad for my perpetually sunburnt skin. It helps conceal the warmth I can feel in my face at her mentioning my breasts.
I hate trying on clothes, especially in front of people. When I was thirteen, my grandmother came home from Peru and insisted that since I was becoming a young lady I needed new clothes. I put on a lot of weight when I was thirteen, which is pretty normal when you’re that age. My body was still weird and unfamiliar, like my ordinary human body had been replaced by that of a dugong overnight. The shopping trip went poorly. I ended up crying with frustration and self-loathing in a change room in a Sydney department store. Now I look back on it, I think my grand
mother was trying to do something nice for me, although at the time I thought she was forcing me into dressing pretty.
I’m more sure of myself now, and I feel better about my body, more accepting, but I still don’t like change rooms, and I don’t generally wear clothes deemed suitable for ‘young ladies’.
‘I’ve found it!’ Iris says, like she’s just struck gold. She holds an ankle-length stretch-velvet burgundy dress in front of her. It’s like something a girl who wanted to be a witch would wear in the 1990s. ‘It’s so you.’
I don’t exactly know how a dress can be so ‘me’ when I only own one (a navy-blue cotton shift, a hand-me-down from my grandmother), which I wear for all weddings and funerals. But this is a nice dress. I duck between two racks in the furthest corner of the store and slip out of my T-shirt, pull the dress over my head, then pull my jeans out from underneath. The dress seems ever so slightly too tight but that might just be because my preference for baggy clothes makes me forget what clothes that actually fit feel like. It feels nice on.
‘Can I see?’ asks Iris.
I move to the mirror that is propped in the corner. I look totally unlike myself. I turn so Iris can see, tugging at the fabric of the dress to make it sit right. I am very conscious of my breasts and my hips and my belly.
‘You look beautiful,’ she says finally, with what I think is tenderness. Her eyes flicker back up to mine and she smiles. I don’t know whether it’s platonic tenderness, because I don’t have many reference points when it comes to female friendship (other than Claire), or if it’s romantic tenderness. I want it to be the latter, but wanting it doesn’t make it so.