Vicky’s mum drops us outside the zoo with the double stroller, a picnic lunch so large it takes two backpacks to hold it and the instruction to meet her at the same spot at one-thirty. The twins are in one of their I’m-two-and-I-can-walk-by-myself moods so we chuck the backpacks into the stroller. I offer to push so that Vicky has her hands free for the twins, but Tina insists that she has to hold my hand or she won’t go anywhere. Vicky apologises eleventy times as she expertly steers the stroller with one hand and Billy with the other, but I don’t mind. It’s nice to feel wanted.
After we get our tickets, I’m as keen as Tina to head straight to the nearest exhibit, but Vicky insists that we stop and get a map and plan our route, including regular toilet stops, which she says are inevitable since the twins have started potty-training and think that using public loos is one of life’s great adventures. Tina and I cheer when Vicky finally says, “We’ll start at the meerkats.”
The meerkats are at their best, chasing each other and chirruping and sitting on their back legs with their bellies exposed to the morning sun. On top of the tallest rock the sentinel keeps watch, twitching its head from side to side vigilantly. Last time I was here was with Dan, about a month after we started going out. It was a cold, drizzly day in early spring, but we’d run out of places to go to get away from our families and the zoo had a free entry day in the school holidays. The rain set in about an hour after we got there and we spent most of the afternoon sheltering in a warm, secluded corner of the butterfly house, talking and … other stuff. Holding hands on the tram back to the city, I remember thinking that it had been one of the most perfect days of my life.
“You okay?” Vicky looks concerned.
“Sorry, I was just thinking.”
“About your mum?” She pulls Billy from the wall that he’s about to leap off, into the meerkat pit, and we walk on, Tina’s slightly sticky little hand still clutching tightly onto mine.
“Yeah, about Mum.” That’s who I should’ve been thinking about. I bet if Mrs Soong was in hospital, Vicky wouldn’t leave her bedside.
“How is she? She’ll be home soon, right? I mean, everything I’ve read about breast cancer surgery says that most people only need a few days in hospital afterwards.”
Vicky’s been reading up on breast cancer. Why hadn’t I thought of that?
“Her surgeon says she should be home tomorrow.”
We pull up at the baboons and Tina lets go of my hand to join Billy in pointing and laughing at their colourful bottoms.
“Has she said anything about post-operative treatment yet?” asks Vicky.
“Ummm, no. I don’t think so.”
“Well, do you know if she’s going to need chemo? Or radiotherapy? Both?”
“Hey, check out that baboon making the other one pick fleas off her – it’s like watching Belinda and Bethanee in monkey form.”
Vicky glances at the pair I’m pointing to but barely smiles. I know that once she gets a topic in her head she won’t stop talking about it until she’s satisfied that it’s been thoroughly discussed (this is true of everything from which Ramones album is the best to the moon-landing conspiracy theory), so I’m kind of pleased when Billy yells, “Toilet time!” and we have to hotfoot it to the nearest loos.
When we start on our way again I keep up a steady stream of chatter with Tina to avoid Vicky asking any more questions that I should know the answers to, if I was paying attention. My ploy works until we sit down for lunch.
“You know, your mum has a really good chance of making a full recovery,” says Vicky, handing each twin a quarter of a sandwich before offering the other half to me. “In women her age, breast cancers tend to be slow growing. In fact, the five-year survival rate for women with tumours under twenty millimetres in size is over ninety per cent. Your mum’s tumour was smaller than that, right?”
“I’m not sure.”
Vicky looks surprised. “Well, do you know if she has one of the breast cancer genes?”
My sandwich sticks in my throat when I swallow. I take a large swig of juice to try to push it down. “There’s a gene for it?”
“Yeah, a couple. If you’ve got a family history of breast cancer, you might want to get tested yourself so you can … you know, make an informed decision about preventative surgery or whatever.”
I pick up the map that’s lying on the picnic rug. “So, reptile house next?”
The twins are tired by the time we reach the Australian animal exhibit. Tina doesn’t even want to get out of the stroller to help me spot the wombat.
“You have to be very lucky to see one,” I explain to the twins as I scan the enclosure. “They’re nocturnal, which means they usually hide in their burrow during the day, but sometimes …”
“You know, I’ve never thought of it before,” says Vicky, “but you remind me of a wombat.”
Relieved to be talking about anything other than breast cancer, I joke, “Because I’m short and hairy?”
“No, because you retreat into your burrow when you’re scared or you don’t know how to deal with something.”
I know she couldn’t possibly have meant to sound so harsh, but that doesn’t make me feel any less insulted.
We get back to the entrance gates before Mrs Soong arrives, having spent the last half-hour in virtual silence. From the hopeful little smile Vicky gives me every time she catches my eye, I can’t tell whether she understands why her remark has upset me so much, but I don’t have the energy to explain myself to her. It hasn’t helped that the butterfly house was the last stop on our tour, and all I could think about while Tina and Billy were trying to trap the poor creatures between their hands was being there with Dan, and how precious our time together felt back then.
At home, there’s a note from Dad saying that he and Gran have gone to the hospital and will be back around seven, and that Dan called. It finishes with a PS: Don’t let Rocky out of his cage unless you want to clean the floor again. As if on cue, Rocky lets out an almighty screech from the corner. I give him the death stare and go to use the phone in the hall.
“Do you think I’m a wombat?” I ask when Dan answers.
“Sorry, what? This is Freia, right?”
“Vicky said I’m a wombat. She reckons I go into my burrow and hide when things get tough.”
Dan laughs. “I thought you liked wombats.”
“That doesn’t mean I want to be one! I know I’m not the most upfront person in the world but, come on, a wombat! She made it sound like I don’t care about Mum’s … situation.”
At the mention of Mum, Dan stops laughing. “I don’t know Vicky that well but I don’t think she’d hurt your feelings on purpose. Why don’t you ask Siouxsie or Steph what they think? They’ve been friends with her for a long time.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know; I just can’t.” I do know why I can’t talk about it with Steph or Siouxsie (if Sooz is even talking to me – I haven’t heard from her since she stormed out of Switch). I can’t ask them because if I did, they might think I was bitching about Vicky, which is one of the things I’ve vowed not to do, having spent hours listening to the Bs moan behind each other’s backs. Not that I’m bitching to Dan; I’m just venting because I feel bad enough about Mum already without Vicky adding to it. And because I’m not a wombat.
“Would a ride make you feel better?” asks Dan. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to show you.”
We meet at the park ten minutes later. Without saying a word, Dan wraps his arms around me and hugs me to him tightly. If I wasn’t so paranoid about Gran coming home early and spotting us, I’d happily stay there all afternoon.
“Where are we going?” I ask when we finally pull apart.
“All I’ll tell you is that it’s in Brightside. The rest is a surprise.”
I’ve never ridden to Brightside – partly because it’s in the opposite direction from my house to Switch, the Metro, school and anywhere else I have reason to go, and partly because there’s nothing to do there. Brightside’s one of those suburbs that looks like it didn’t exist before the 1980s and was pretty much abandoned before the start of the twenty-first century. I remember going there in primary school for someone’s birthday party at the Best Fun Ever Play Centre (a misnomer, even by Year Four expectations), but I haven’t set foot in it since. By the look of the row of shops with matching For Sale signs and the empty car park outside the supermarket, neither has anyone else.
“Are you sure this is the right direction?” I ask when we pull up at a red light. “The only surprises I can imagine around here are nasty ones.”
Dan grins. “Trust me. All will be revealed very soon.”
He pushes off as soon as the light turns green, giving me no choice but to follow him to this mystery destination. We ride down the four-lane road for a few hundred metres more, my anxiety growing with every truck that rumbles past me. I’m paying so much attention to not getting squashed under the wheels of a big rig that I almost don’t see Dan turn into the driveway of a disused factory.
“Almost there,” he calls over his shoulder, ignoring the huge Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted sign.
At the back of the factory Dan gets off his bike at a missing section of fencing and wheels it between two bushes on the other side. He reappears to take my bike through, holding back the bush with one arm so that I can follow, and we step into a park. It’s nothing like Parkville Park, with its neatly mown grass and big, shady trees and prize-winning rose garden, but it’s definitely a park.
I point to the asphalted cul-de-sac to our right, lined with identical brick bungalows. “We could have come down there.”
“I know, but this way’s more fun.” Dan starts wheeling his bike down the hill. “Come on.”
So far this cheer-up surprise is having entirely the opposite effect on me. I trudge after Dan, avoiding the sharp shards of broken brown and green glass and discarded condoms and other signs that this is one of those places Mum won’t let me come because it’s where young people go to Get Up To No Good. By the time we reach the path that runs along the river, I’m inclined to agree with her.
Dan gets back on his bike and takes off without waiting for me.
“I hope you’re not planning to swim,” I say when I catch up, “because nothing on this Earth would get me into that stinking brown water.”
“No swimming, I promise.” Dan continues down the path.
“Then what are we doing here?”
Dan doesn’t answer until he comes to an abrupt halt next to a willow whose drooping branches brush the ground. “This is it.”
I duck my head to follow him into the depths of the tree’s canopy. The air inside the shaded dome is a few degrees cooler and smells like leaves and fresh dirt; there’s no hint of the sulphurous stench of the river, even though it flows less than two metres in front of us. I glance around, noting the empty orange juice bottles, takeaway containers and cigarette butts scattered carelessly around a bare patch of earth. When Dan pulls a tartan rug from his backpack and sets it in the bald spot, I guess that the rubbish belongs to him.
“Is this some kind of hideaway?”
“You could say that,” says Dan, sitting down and nodding to indicate I should do the same. “I come here when I need some space to think. I found it just after Mum moved out. Hardly anyone ever comes to this part of the river since the only fish in it are floating belly up, and even when they do they can’t see in here.”
“So, is this where you bring all your girlfriends?”
Dan lies on his back and tilts his head to look me in the eyes. “You know I’ve never had another girlfriend, Fray. And I’ve never brought anyone here before. Ever.”
If he’s trying to charm me, it’s worked. I kneel and move towards him until I’m close enough to straddle his hips. Pinning his hands to the rug, I lean over him. His eyes sparkle in the semi-darkness. He smiles. It would be so easy to tell him how I feel about him right now. So, so easy, I think as I kiss his cheek and then his earlobe and then his lips.
When I move towards his neck Dan exhales heavily. “Fray, I’ve got some news.”
Based on recent experience, the word “news” sets off alarm bells in my head. I sit up abruptly and roll off him. Dan sits up, too, and shakes his head sharply so that his fringe flops over his eyes.
“What is it?” I ask, trying to keep my voice steady.
“You know how I told you that Dr Phil’s been hassling me to visit Mum?”
“He’s making you go?”
“I’m taking the train up tomorrow.”
Before I can stop her, Hysterical Girlfriend breaks her shackles and shrieks, “Tomorrow? That’s New Year’s Eve! We’re going to see the fireworks! Can’t you put it off, even for a day?”
Dan picks at the corner of the rug, not making eye contact. “I’m really sorry, Fray, but I have to go. There’ll be other fireworks, I promise.”
Signs Hysterical Girlfriend is on the loose
You can’t stop the thoughts in your head blurting out of your mouth.
The rational side of your brain shuts down and the shrieking/blubbing side takes over.
Any semblance of self-control flies out the window.
No amount of reassurance can make you feel better.