Chay stays for an easy dinner of mac and cheese, and after that I plead homework, so it’s breakfast before I have to face the questions I knew would come from Mum.
‘What happened with Joel?’ she asks, sipping the coffee – white with eight grains of sugar – I’d made her when I made my own tea.
I duck my head, slurping at my cereal to give me time to compose an answer.
Has she heard the full story from a client already? Is she just waiting for me to tell her the details or does she actually not know? It’s hard to tell in this town. Mum’s salon is one of the first places to hear the latest gossip, and while high school stuff usually stays on campus, the scene by the soccer pitch might just make it old-lady worthy.
I try to guess how much she already knows from her expression, but with her work-mum make-up on she’s harder to read. The listening face she uses for her clients softens her mouth and eyes, expressing an interest that hovers just this side of straight out sympathy. It’s almost impossible to resist that look. I’ve watched people reveal their souls to my mum over a shampoo and set.
She’s leaning against the other side of the counter, wrapped in the deep burgundy, velvety dressing gown she’s worn for as long as I can remember. It’s one of the few things she brought with her from the ‘Beige Life’ – as she calls it.
Our old house was decorated in all neutral colours. I can’t imagine how Mum survived without the splashes of red and blue and green that liven up our walls here. I can’t imagine what it would have been like to grow up there. With no colour, but with a father.
‘Not worth it.’
Her hand clasps mine from across the bench. Warm and soft with the permanent black stains around the nails from the bleach and the dye she mixes every day. ‘Joel?’
I swallow. I didn’t mean to speak aloud. Because Joel Moss is worth it. He’s so sweet and kind and funny. Well, if you don’t count the small detail of not letting me know I was uninvited to be his date. My eyes sting and for the first time I think of the boy I’ve lost as well as the dignity.
We were never really together but I dreamed of him for so long that every look we shared and stray touch is engraved on my brain. An image of his perfect smile fills my mind and then … it morphs … becomes the genuine concern in Sebastian’s eyes when I bumped into him. Goosebumps skitter across my skin where he held me upright.
I shake the thoughts away. Joel’s the only boy I’ve ever wanted.
Mum’s waiting. She’s patient because she knows I’ll spill eventually. We don’t keep secrets in our house. Since my father’s spectacular betrayal we’ve had an unspoken agreement to be truthful.
When it matters.
But I don’t want to worry her. Or let slip something about the fake guy.
I lift the china teacup to my mouth and speak into the milky sweet liquid. ‘We’re not going to the disco.’
I focus on the tea, noticing the small waves set off by the tremble in my hands, not wanting to see any pity in her eyes.
‘At all?’
‘Together.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Her simple but heartfelt words are like a hug. I’m tempted to rush around and bury my head in her warmth like I did so many times when we first moved here. Usually after I’d asked when Daddy was coming home and she’d looked me in the eye, sad but not broken, and answered ‘Never.’
‘It’s okay.’ The stretch of the truth falls from my mouth and mixes with the steam still rising from the cup. I rationalise my attempt to keep some of my pride intact with the fact that someday when I look back on this it will be okay.
I hope.
There’s a long silence and I dare to steal a glance at Mum. My gaze snags hers and I can’t look away. We’ve been a team of two for too long. I couldn’t hide my pain if I wanted to. And I really do. After what happened in the city, Mum kept it together for the both of us.
I want to be that strong.
‘Are you sure?’ There’s doubt in her voice.
I lift my chin and curve my lips into what I hope comes out as a smile. ‘I’ll be fine.’
She nods. She gets it. Understands everything I’m not saying.
Don’t get me wrong, we fight all the time – about my room and not being allowed out after nine on a school night, and whether my attitude grades in gym class really have to be that bad – but most days I count her as my friend.
Unlike my father.
The toast pops up. She moves to pull it out and then spreads the low fat margarine she’s always whining tastes nothing like butter. Not today though. Her attention is fixed on her laptop, open on the other side of the kitchen.
My belly tightens.
I kind of expected a little more in-depth quizzing. Just to make sure I wasn’t about to spiral into a deep depression because the boy I adore has dumped me and left me in agony.
I’m tempted to wave. Hello, broken-hearted daughter here. But I don’t.
She’s let it go. I’m relieved. It’s what I wanted. Any more questions and I might reveal that I’m okay because I’m going to make sure the girl who engineered my humiliation gets what’s coming to her.
I try to make out the title of the webpage that has her so fascinated, but I don’t need to read it to guess. The pale, sad blue and pure white colours, the angel in the top corner and the many lines WRITTEN IN ALL CAPITALS give it away.
My mum reads death blogs. Grief sites. Pain portals. Over the last few years I’ve developed a number of nicknames for them. She reads updates of people’s lives as they work their way through incredible pain, loss and sorrow. A cancer battler, someone whose partner took their own life, a mother who lost a child. She reads about people who have had death or illness crush their life like it’s some kind of real life soap opera.
‘Don’t you get enough of other people’s problems in the salon?’ I ask.
I flush a little as the cattiness in my tone seems to echo off the blood-red painting on the far wall. It isn’t because I’m jealous or want her pity for myself. I meant what I said about being fine. I’ve always teased her about her fascination but today it seems more annoying than anything. I mean, why be so publicly broken? Why would anyone want to feel these people’s pain?
But she does – it’s impossible not to. I challenge anyone to read some of these stories without a tear. I’ve caught Mum sobbing her guts out before.
Usually she’s kind of embarrassed, kind of defensive. Today she’s pissed. Her head jerks up, her lips thin. ‘Colin is my friend.’
‘He has a name instead of a diagnosis?’
She snaps the laptop closed. ‘I would have thought you might have a little more empathy for a person’s suffering. Obviously I thought wrong.’
The tight feeling in my belly becomes a hard ball of why-the-crap-did-I-open-my-mouth. I grip the bench top to stop myself pressing my palms to my cheeks to ease the heat there. She’s great at making me feel about as big as a grain of sand when I’ve said something mean.
I shrug. Something I know drives her mental.
Whatever Colin’s problems are, I’m sure they are real and much bigger than mine, but I just don’t have room in my head for some anonymous man on the net.
I lean over and dump my dishes in the sink with more force than is necessary. Just to remind Mum I’m actually here in the flesh. But she’s gazing out the window. Her mind is clearly still on her blog of the moment.
I’m nearly out the door when she calls softly, ‘Wait.’
I turn. The quiet word would have reached me even in my bedroom because there’s something vital about it. Mum’s voice has a wobble.
She’s not looking at me though. Her attention is focused down, at her hands. There’s something gripped between them and it takes me three steps back into the kitchen until I can make it out.
A perfectly crisp, white envelope.
The ball in my belly expands to fill my chest and constrict my lungs. Breathing takes a monumental effort. My knees turn to mush.
She holds it out to me and her hand is steady. Her brown eyes are all on me now. ‘This came for you.’
From here I can see the bold, tight handwriting, soldier-upright on the front. ‘It’s not my birthday.’
I feel dumb as soon as I say the words and scan Mum’s face for hurt that I’ve recognised who it’s from so quickly. I have nine matching envelopes in my room. One for each year since we left the Beige Life.
She doesn’t react. ‘I didn’t know whether to wait a few days – after what happened with Joel – but since you said you were fine …’
‘I didn’t mean it.’ I blurt the admission.
Both brows go up in her forehead. ‘You said …’
I fight a laugh. ‘Not fine enough for this.’
She should have known I wasn’t fine enough for this. My father tried to call a few times after we left. He came by once, nominally to see me for some kind of visitation. We went out for cardboard-tasting ice-cream and I didn’t say a word. All I remember him saying was that the dumbest thing he ever did was lose Mum. I wanted to shout that she wasn’t some kind of possession he misplaced.
And I wanted to scream, ‘What about me?’ But even at eight, I refused to play the clichéd child from a broken home.
Mum never made me see him again, but she faithfully delivered the letters on every birthday. I didn’t open them but I couldn’t quite bring myself to ditch them. I told myself at least for the two minutes it took him to write me the card that he’d have to remember I exist. He’d be reminded of what he’d done.
And the envelopes kept coming. Envelopes just like this one. But this one is different. He’s never just written to me before. It’s not my birthday and I don’t want to play this game. ‘You can keep it.’
Her smile holds the sympathy I wanted earlier and perhaps explains her distraction. ‘It’s not addressed to me.’
‘I don’t want it,’ I yell. And even as I run down the short hall to my bedroom, I hate that he’s made me into the stereotypical melodramatic teenager I don’t want to be.
With shaking hands I catch myself before slamming the door – that would top it off – but I can’t help burrowing my head into my pillow so my tears have some semblance of privacy. My feet burrow beneath the heavy orange throw rug I that I picked up three Choose-Days ago because of the un-matching red square down the bottom. Someone hand stitched the piece into place, preferring to mend it despite the glaring evidence there was once a sizeable hole.
Today the story implicit in the blanket doesn’t help. No scenes appear in my head with heroines muttering perfect dialogue. I cry until thoughts of drawing more attention to myself walking into school late with red-rimmed eyes take over from the piles of hurt inside. I sit up and message Chay.
Cure for red eyes?
I know she’ll assume it’s over Joel and that is superfine by me. I don’t want to talk about my father. We’ve never talked much about him before and I’m not going to start now.
Cucumbers. Seriously
The response comes in less than a minute. She’s probably already at school since her house is a less than fun place to be most mornings.
Thanks
Ten minutes later, I’m showered and dressed in my favourite worn jeans, boots and a black tank top. I hesitate in front of my clothes rack. My soft, cosy black woollen jumper calls my name. In it I’ll be comfortable and warm and able to disappear.
My hand is on it when I hesitate.
The envelope, the dumping and the fake guy are enough to carry around with me today. Would skulking through the hallways really be so bad? Surely I deserve a few days of skulking time.
And let Lana see how much you’re hurting?
It’s like I can hear Chay’s voice.
I let the soft material slip through my fingers and pull out the vintage violet jacket I bought from a garage sale. It’s stiff and old and fits way tighter than I’m used to. Still, Chay pronounced it H.O.T. and she’s more into fashion than I am. A dash of coloured gloss on my pale lips and I’m nearly ready.
To complete the outfit, I slide on an old tarnished locket I bought on my first Choose-Day outing back when I started high school. It took all my pocket money and even then I borrowed some cash from Mum, but I needed to have it. The goldy colour is pretty but it’s the inscription on the back that drew me. It’s rough, as though the person wasn’t an experienced engraver and reads simply ‘Always Yours’ with three kisses below. I’ve never been able to open it to see whether there’s a photo inside, but I like to imagine it’s part of a great love story.
Either way it’s pretty sweet.
I creep to my door and ease it open, hoping the old, rusted hinges won’t give away my exit. I’ve always found the dramatic storm to my bedroom kind of hard to come back from. At the time I’m filled with rage or sorrow or something overwhelming and worth creating a scene for, but afterwards, when the rush has faded …
I mean, it’s not as though I can stay in here forever but neither can I wander back out to Mum as though nothing happened.
I freeze. My ear presses against the small gap. Is Mum waiting with the envelope? Busy on her blogs?
Talking to her about it isn’t an option. I don’t want some speech about why I should or shouldn’t open the envelope. There’s nothing she can say I haven’t already thought about. Nine years is a long time to mentally debate what I’d do if my father ever reached out beyond the annual birthday thing and every time I’ve come to the same conclusion.
He can get lost.
My breath is ultra-loud. In and out. Makes it hard to hear anything at all. I hold it, forcing myself to listen until my lungs burn and my head begins to spin.
No sound at all from the kitchen.
I exhale. Good. No mother-daughter chat required. No analysis of my feelings or discussion of what’s going on in my head.
Pipes clunk beneath my feet as I cross the kitchen floor. A sure sign the water in the salon is on full. Mum’s first client must be here. My shoulders relax from the tension of a possible mid-cucumber-swiping meeting. She’ll be busy now until closing.
The cucumber sits wrinkled down the bottom of the crisper underneath the lettuce. It’s a remnant of something Mum threw together for a visit from one of her old friends from the city. Neither one of us eats the stuff.
Instead of the knife making a clean cut, the soft green skin bows and crushes beneath the serrated edge of the blade. I try again, but only manage two slices because the rest is rotten. Back in the safety of my room I sit at my white, wooden, restored desk and lean back before placing one piece of green slime on each eye. A shudder spreads through me. The flesh of the cucumber is cool and soothing but the funky smell makes my nose wrinkle and throat close up.
‘This had better help,’ I growl at my absent friend.
After two minutes, I can’t stand the feeling of being a walking – or more accurately leaning – salad plate any longer. The heat from my eyes is gone but a faint sting has replaced it. I wipe the slime from my eyelids and use a concealer to finish the repair job.
The tiny make-up mirror on my desk magnifies each eye to scary proportions. Neither shows any evidence of the bout of tears or the sleepless night that preceded it. The whites surrounding the ordinary brown colour are clear and the lids not too puffy and swollen.
It’s a win for home remedies and Chay’s beauty expertise.
Now I can face the school halls, my head high. Or at least without feeling like a billboard for heartbreak and humiliation.
With my pack on my shoulder, I intend to head out the back way but the unmistakable sound of the dryer drifts up from the salon below. Mum’s still busy. The laptop in the corner catches my gaze and I stop at the bench.
Mum’s never mentioned any of the writers of her blogs by name before.
Colin.
Nothing about the name is striking or memorable on its own. Yet she spoke it with a hint of possession. A defensive claim of this person quite at odds with the anonymity of the net. Usually if she mentions a tale that’s touched her it’s ‘the poor woman who lost her mother’ or the ‘heartbreaking cancer victim.’
I’ve crossed the kitchen and I’m standing in front of the closed laptop before I make a conscious decision to do so. My fingers grip the cool, black case. She probably didn’t shut it down. All I have to do is lift the lid and I’ll know exactly who this Colin who has her so interested is.
Or I could ask her.
But that would involve talking. And as fast as she was to berate me for my attitude earlier, she wasn’t all that forthcoming with the details.
I pause for a long moment and then spin and descend the stairs at a jog. I don’t have time for snooping.
Nothing will make me late for school today.