Samantha is already at the top landing. Anna is behind me. I am behind Nanna in case she slips backwards. I wait and wait as she wobbles onto every step. She is so SLOW. I want to shout at her to MOVE, but I just grit my teeth. She holds on to the handrail like glue. At last she makes it.
‘Let’s go in, Nanna. Let’s go in.’ Nanna raises her hand, gulping small puffs of air. Her face crinkles like a bulldog’s. Her pink tongue flickers between her teeth. (Dog joke.) She looks funny, snatching short breaths. I start laughing until Anna elbows me in the back. We wait, wait, then wait some more.
At last Nanna is on the move again. She shuffles forward and nearly trips. As I grab her arm, I look down at her black lace-up orthopaedic shoes. I shudder. They must be hot. Nanna used to wear sandals. She could run in them. I liked it when Nanna could run. Run? Even walking would be great. I take her knobby hand. She squeezes my fingers softly. Suddenly a throb pounds through my head. When did Nanna get so old?
Her bum wobbles as she shuffles excitedly towards the front door. She is desperate to show Mum her super bargain — four pairs of purple fluorescent underpants.
Mum has left the door open for us. She isn’t star jumping any more. No, she is waving her old wooden spoon in the air like she is conducting a symphony orchestra. Music from the radio is blaring through the lounge room and Mum is singing. She sounds awful. ‘Mum, stop,’ I call out. Anna is too polite to say anything. Mum shouldn’t sing. It is like nails scraping down a blackboard, but Mum doesn’t GET IT. Nanna thinks Mum sounds lovely because Mum used to sing in the children’s choir. That was a LONG time ago. Also Nanna is half-deaf.
Mum just laughs. She thinks we are kidding. ‘We’re having my famous quiche today.’ Mum is very proud of her famous ‘melt-in-your-mouth’ tomato, cheese, bacon and egg quiche. ‘It’s for lunch.’ Mum twirls around to the music.
I snatch an apple from the fruit bowl. That should stop my stomach’s hunger growls. ‘Come on,’ I say to Anna, pointing to my room. ‘Before Mum starts star jumping again.’ I grab Samantha’s long black checked sausage-dog door stopper on the way.
‘Hey, what are you doing with my sausage dog?’ Samantha is very protective about her super-tidy room.
‘Need it to stop Mum’s voice sneaking under the door and blasting into my bedroom.’
Samantha starts to object until Mum begins singing ‘Help’. The Beatles didn’t realise the damage they were doing when they wrote that song. Help is right. We need it. Anna and Samantha run after me into my room, then I wedge the sausage dog against the door. I turn on the radio. Relief.
Everyone says hello to Hector, my experimental white rat. I got him last birthday after two weeks of begging. Mum doesn’t like rats — not that she would hurt them, but she didn’t want Hector. It was desperate. A life and death situation. The pet shop owner said that no one wanted Hector and that he was too old to sell. I could have Hector for FREE, otherwise he was going to flush Hector down the drain. When I told Mum, she took the daisy from her hair and smelt it, but I saw her bottom lip trembling. So Hector moved in.
Samantha opens the cage. ‘You’re cute, Hector.’ She crouches down to pat him.
‘He’s not a dog, Samantha. Ha, ha.’ As she gets up she bumps my collection of snakes and bugs. ‘Watch out, Clumsy.’
‘I’m not clumsy.’ She turns up her nose at me. ‘What do you expect? Your room is a mess.’
‘Yeah, right.’ I shove my books about scorpions to the side of my desk. I will need them tonight to finish my homework. Why do teachers have to ruin your life with homework? I look at Anna. ‘Hey, make yourself at home.’
Anna is shaking her head. She starts to huff and puff and her lips pucker into a whinge. ‘How can you live like this?’ She picks up some of my clothes from the floor.
‘Hey, leave my stuff alone. That’s for the washing basket.’
‘Well, why don’t you put it INSIDE the basket?’
Samantha is laughing. Anna’s chocolate drop eyes have changed to bullet-size ammunition. She is firing at me. ‘I can’t sit anywhere.’ She shoves my clothes off my bed. They flop onto the carpet and land on my camera.
‘Watch out.’ I grab my camera. I need it to record developments in my important experiments.
Anna just ignores me. ‘Now I have somewhere to sit.’
Samantha has this grin on her face as she plunks herself next to Anna. They are staring at each other, nodding in agreement. I hate that. As if tidying my bedroom matters. Did they ever make a ponto? My famous half-onion, half-potato vegetable? (I’ve been trying to make another ponto ever since my first success, but no luck yet.) Can they make an edible daisy? (Or a nearly edible daisy, anyway.) No way. I look at Anna. Her nose is squished into this disgusted look. It’s only the smell of the fungus.
I feel my prickly hair get pricklier. I am getting angry. This is MY room. I start telling them to get out, when I notice Anna’s cute dimples. She hates her dimples, but I don’t. ‘Jack, you should tidy your …’
What? I shake my head hard. Anna is talking about emptying the waste paper basket and putting away my clothes. Then she points to my fungus. This is moving towards a disaster. I have no choice but to fight back, even if Anna has cute dimples. Think, Jack, think. I need ammunition. A joke, a joke.
‘Hey, I’ve got a gag.’ Anna stops her ‘helpful’ advice. Samantha wants to hear the gag. She loves my humour, except when it’s about her. ‘Why did the sausage dog wear sunglasses?’
Samantha’s cheeks go red, which means she is thinking. ‘The sausage dog wore sunglasses because … hmm …’
I look at them. They shake their heads. ‘Okay, give up?’ They think for a bit longer.
‘What’s the answer?’ Samantha twirls her pigtails.
‘So as not to be recognised.’
Samantha sniffs. ‘That’s a bit funny.’
Anna tosses a pillow at me. ‘Funny.’
I toss the pillow back at her. Then Samantha throws a pillow and it’s on. Blankets, pillows, sheets fly through the air, dropping like nose-diving pigeons. Anna flings a sheet over my head and sits on me. Samantha copies her until I’m lying in a heap on the floor laughing. ‘Enough, enough,’ I splutter.
‘Any more jokes?’ Anna’s dark curls ripple over me and a tingle spreads through me like bubbles up my nose.
‘No, no, no more.’ Not for now, anyway.
I help Anna and Samantha make my bed. Crinkle-free blankets. It is the best I have ever seen it, except when Mum does one of her rare mega-cleans. ‘Great job,’ I tell them.
‘You should always keep your bed like this.’
No lectures. I think fast and sidetrack Anna, pointing to my scientific work. She is interested. There is research about sharks and cane toads spread out on my desk. I really want to bring back a cane toad from the Gold Coast. There is a plague of them up there. Interesting stuff. Anna is looking at my jars and beakers. I have had plenty of disappointments. Dead daisies. Dead tomato vines. Dead pontos. Decaying life forms. But that is the way it is with scientists. You have to keep working on new methods and techniques.
Samantha is scrunching up her lips at the dead life forms when Mum opens my bedroom door. ‘Rob’s here and it’s lunch time. Well, quiche time.’ Mum laughs because she thinks she is hilarious. Mum will never make a great comedian, but I can’t tell her that. It would hurt her feelings.
Rob. I need to ask him if he can get some big bolts, so that I can screw two brackets under my window sill. There is not enough space for all my bottles on the sill any more.
Rob is giving Mum a hug. ‘Rob,’ I call out. He is carrying two shelves and bolts. ‘For me? Are those for me?’
Rob smiles. ‘Yes, for you. These should be the right size.’
‘How did you know that I needed them? I really do.’
‘A scientist has to have room for his work.’ He pretends to thump my arm. ‘We’ll put it up together after lunch. All right?’
Rob has his tools all organised in neat rows in the garage. ‘Will we use your hammer drill with a masonry bit?’
‘Sounds right, Jack.’
This is so good. I take the shelves and bolts into my room. By the time I am back in the lounge room, everyone is crammed around the dining table. I squish in next to Anna. She smells like peppermint. I like peppermint.
Quiche arrives on the table. Nanna is only having a small piece because she brought cookies and doesn’t want to spoil her appetite. Rob and I have the biggest slices. Anna says that she really likes the quiche. Mum beams, because she loves compliments.
The phone rings. It keeps ringing and ringing. Anna raises her eyebrows at me. Conversation stops dead. No one dares pick it up because of Mum’s law — her the-phone-is-never-to-disturb-the-family-meal law. Once I picked up the phone in the middle of spaghetti bolognaise. Mum went bright red. Steam looked like it was coming out of her ears. It was horrible. ‘They’ll phone back if they really want to talk to you,’ she said to me. ‘This is family time.’ Mum is so serious about this rule. There could be an earthquake or a tidal wave, or a giant octopus could be taking over the world, but no, we can never, ever, pick up that receiver.
We are sitting like stuffed dummies waiting for the phone to stop when Rob gets up. ‘Could be Leo,’ he mumbles. ‘Exception. You understand,’ he apologises to Mum, then takes the handset into the bedroom.
Mum doesn’t explode. She doesn’t even get a tiny bit angry. ‘Why?’ I mouth to Samantha. She shakes her head and pulls one pigtail hard. But NO ONE I have ever known has broken the phone rule. Nanna stops eating her cookie for a second. Anna shakes her head, because she knows Mum’s rule too. This is BIG.
Suddenly Rob sticks his head out of the room. ‘Leo wants to say hello to Jack and Samantha.’
‘Mum?’ I look at her.
‘Please, Jack,’ she says under her breath. ‘It’s a special situation.’
Special? Unfair, more like it. Is Leo that important? I push back my chair. What am I supposed to talk about anyway? The weather? ‘Right, okay. I’ve got the phone, Rob. Hi, Leo. Yes, it’s sunny down here.’ Phew. Who can believe this? Saved by the weather. ‘Sunny at Port too? That’s good.’ Hmmm. ‘It’ll be great to meet when we’re up there.’ Don’t know about that. ‘Here, Samantha.’ I hand her the receiver. That was so boring.
Oh no, Samantha is talking to Leo about her dog project. BAD NEWS. Rob is smiling. Has he lost his mind? Samantha gives Rob the phone and goes back to the table. The DOG PROJECT.
I shuffle back to the table too. My head is throbbing. I don’t get why the phone rule was broken.
Nanna is already looking at the dog project in between mouthfuls of food. I close my left eye so that I can’t see Nanna’s teeth sliding in and out. Samantha is reading everything aloud. Five whole minutes pass of Samantha’s dog talk and Nanna’s teeth sliding in and out. My stomach is turning. I thump my watch. Nanna gulps and her teeth get stuck inside her mouth. Good. But Samantha doesn’t stop. Bad. I have to do something NOW.
I scrape back my chair with a long screechy tear-your-eardrum-out sound. Samantha keeps reading. I crash my fork on my plate and nearly crack the plate. She keeps reading. I yawn loudly for at least ten seconds. She looks up, then gives me one of her famous don’t-you-dare-disturb-me-again stares. She looks like a zombie. I am not going to get her to shut up. I give up.
Anna is squishing against my arm. Suddenly flushes start to track up the sides of my nose. Anna asks if I’m all right and touches my hand. I feel the red spread out across my face to my ears. My arms are crawly with goosebumps. What is wrong with me? An allergy, probably.
‘The assignment is wonderful, darling,’ Mum says as Samantha finally closes it. Mum is crazy.
Nanna has cookie sludge stuck in the front of her false teeth. It is brown and squelchy. Yuck. I look at Rob finishing his orange juice. He throws the newspaper onto the couch. ‘Terrorist attacks.’ He scratches his prickly head.
‘Terrorism.’ Mum sighs. Oh, I can see her eyes cloud over. It must mean the start of one of Mum’s talks. She picks up a photo from the wobbly coffee table. It is the one I took of her with a ‘Make Love Not War’ poster at last year’s International Women’s Day. Samantha is in the picture too, doing a handstand and eating a drippy meat pie upside down. Great photograph. Next to it, there is a small one of Mum wearing a flower-power dress. My father used to be next to her, but he has been cut away. No one knows where my father is.
‘It’s about hate.’ Oh, is Mum still talking about it? Hate. For ages I hated my father because he left us and because Mum hated him. She changed her mind later because ‘He gave me you kids. Nothing is better than that.’ Mum says that hating eats a hole inside you, so that you always hurt.
Hate? I don’t hate my father now, because he is nobody to me. A sad feeling quickly comes, then goes. I have Rob. I shake my head. I really know what hate is, though. A big picture of George Hamel looms into my head. Dumb idiot. He made my life rotten last year. ‘Bum Head’ is what he called me. I don’t hate George Hamel any more. He can’t hurt me any more. I’ve got friends and other things to think about. Anna flashes into my mind, then Leo. A chill runs down my back.
The terrorism talk is over. I don’t like thinking about it. The world makes me feel unsafe sometimes, but then I have my family. I’m lucky.
Mum is hugging Samantha. Rob stands and stretches his legs. Washing up duty. He always moans when he does the washing up, but he is just faking it. He likes washing up. We have to clear the table or he gets really angry. I sometimes help with the dishes, but it is really Rob territory. He prepares the detergent and scrubbing brush and makes the water HOT. He doesn’t even wear rubber washing-up gloves.
Mum admires the sparkling dishes. The plates are amazing. You need sunglasses to look at them. Mum starts talking about the holiday. I look at Anna. Wish she could come. Then I look at Nanna. Oh, well. Hey, Anna and Nanna rhyme. I never realised that before. I’ll think up a clever joke about that.
‘We’re staying in an apartment on the Gold Coast. Right across from the beach. It’ll be lovely.’ Mum gets this glow over her face. I’m not sure if it’s because of Rob’s washing up or the beach.
I ignore Mum’s gooey-ness. Have to get to the facts. ‘How many bedrooms?’ I cross my fingers. I don’t want to share a room with Nanna. She snores.
‘Everyone will be there.’ Well, I know that already. ‘There will be a room for Nanna.’ Yippee. ‘Another for Rob and me. There is an alcove for Samantha.’ Mum twirls her hair into a knot. ‘And another room for the boys.’
Boys? I laugh. ‘There’s only ONE boy here, Mum.’
Mum hesitates, looks at Rob. He puts his arm around her. ‘We’re collecting Leo at Port Macquarie,’ she says.
Rob smiles. ‘Haven’t seen him for a while. He’ll like a holiday.’
Why is Rob smiling? Leo? What? Rob just announces that Leo is coming with us to the Gold Coast for the whole holiday.
Mum looks at Samantha. ‘We’ll have a bigger family.’
Family? I don’t even know Leo. This is too fast. Samantha is elbowing me. I roll my eyes at her. Rob is watching both of us. I try to smile. How can Leo fit in the car? Nanna will have to stay home after all. Poor Nanna. No holidays for Nanna. This is bad.
I knew Rob shouldn’t have moved in with us.