Good Oil (13 page)

MATURITY

It’s seven o’clock. I am showered, dressed in my school uniform and in Jess’s bedroom beginning the process of getting her up.

‘Come on!’ I clap my hands. ‘Let’s get this show on the road!’

She frowns without opening her eyes, makes noncompliant sounds and tightens her grip on Prize Teddy.

I open the curtains so the sun streams onto her face. ‘Jess, you’re going to make Mum stressed and late for work. We don’t want that.’

No response.

‘I’m gonna pull the doona off in a minute!’

‘Nooooooo.’

I look at my watch. I don’t have time for this. I have to get Jess dressed
now
so I can have Mum’s tea and toast ready by the time she comes downstairs. I go to the foot of the bed, grab hold of the doona and pull it off in one swift movement.

Jess makes more non-compliant noises.

I pull her up into a sitting position. She makes herself a deadweight. I turn to ferret her preschool clothes out of the chest of drawers.When I turn around she has collapsed back onto the bed.

I grab hold of her arm quite roughly and hiss, ‘Jess, you’re getting up NOW! Right now or Teddy is going to hang out the window!’

That does the trick. She stands up on the bed and lifts her arms over her head for me remove her pyjama top. I feel bad, but what else could I do? Anyways, that’s lightweight stuff compared to some of the stunts that Liza used to pull on me. Like convincing me that on my sixth birthday Mum and Dad were going to give me to an orphanage.

I help Jess on with her tracksuit and socks. Her sneakers have Velcro straps (
very
exciting) so I leave her to put them on herself. Mum is blow-drying her hair in the bathroom as I go downstairs.

I am first into the kitchen. I pull open the venetian blinds and the sun streams in, highlighting the dust that has just been knocked off the wooden slats. I put the kettle on and place two slices of soy and linseed bread in the toaster. I get out a cup, a tea bag, a plate, a knife, margarine, Vegemite, jam and milk. I spread Vegemite on one slice of toast and jam on the other.
Savoury first
, I think,
then sweet
. Mum likes her tea strong, with a splash of milk and between a quarter and half a teaspoon of sugar. Not everyone can pull it off.

I hear Mum and Jess fighting on the way down the stairs.

‘I want to watch TV!’ Jess is whining.

‘No. No TV in the morning.’

‘Yes! Watch TV!’

‘No. I said no.’

Jess’s high-pitched yell gets louder and louder until it ceases and I hear the
Sesame Street
music wafting down the hall.

Mum appears in the kitchen, defeated. She bangs a few things around in the sink, then sits down to her tea and toast.

‘I’ll be a bit late home this afternoon,’ she says. ‘Staff meeting after school.’

One of Mum’s colleagues – and her closest friend at work – was threatened by a student with a knife earlier in the week. I’d come home to find Mum smoking in the backyard at 4 p.m. She only ever does that when something horrible has happened at school. For years there’s been talk of Riley Street High being closed down because there are so many problems with it. Whenever an incident happens – like the massive brawl with Enmore High at a basketball match – the state leader of the Opposition goes on TV and says, ‘Riley Street High School is a blight on the face of Sydney and it should be bulldozed!’

He loves that word, ‘bulldozed’. He reckons a lot of things should be bulldozed. Aboriginal housing projects. Youth drop-in centres. Safe injecting rooms. Lots of public high schools.

It’s as clear this morning as it is every other morning that my carefully considered savoury-then-sweet toast selection and my painstakingly concocted cup of tea have not had the desired effect. That is, they have not in any way shifted the despair from Mum’s existence.
It wouldn’t matter what I made her for breakfast
.
I could serve up blueberry and ricotta pancakes with freshly brewed coffee and she’d still be miserable.
I hover about the kitchen helplessly.

‘Do you want me to put Jess’s milk on?’ I venture.

Jess refuses to eat breakfast – she will, however, accept a cup of hot Milo. The milk has to be warmed in a saucepan on our stove. I have suggested the purchase of a microwave oven to warm up the milk in 20 seconds, among other uses, but this seems to provoke arguments with and between my parents.

‘No, I’ll do it,’ Mum replies. She stands up and bangs the saucepan down on the hotplate. Mum’s despair usually swings between two ends of a spectrum – Sad, and Wordlessly Shitty. This morning it’s definitely swinging towards Wordlessly Shitty. There’s nothing for me to do but go to school. So I go.

After dinner that evening, I take the phone into my room, place it in front of me on the bed and regard it for several minutes. I’ve never rung Chris at home, never had the nerve. But I
have
to talk to him tonight. I count to three and dial the number. Blood is thudding in my ears and all the muscles in my abdomen twist uncomfortably.

‘Hello?’ answers a young woman.

‘Hi! Ah, could I please speak to Chris, please.’ One please would have been enough.

‘Certainly. Who’s calling?’

‘Amelia Hayes.’

‘Just a moment.’

There’s some scrabbling around and I hear her saying, ‘Chris, it’s for you. Amelia Hayes.’

I think there’s some mockery in the way she said my name.
Why the hell didn’t I just say Amelia? Think Street-cred Donna. Imagine you’ve got a stud through your bottom lip and a tattoo on your bicep.

‘Good evening, youngster.’ Chris’s blessed tones.

‘Hi Chris. What . . . what are you up to?’

‘My sister and I are watching
Media Watch
.’

‘Oh . . . should I call back?’

‘Nah, it’s almost finished. What’s up?’

‘Well I was wondering, I . . . needed to run something by you . . . cause I don’t get it . . . ’ ‘What up, youngster?’ It’s his Patient Tone. He often adopts the Patient Tone when talking to me.

Here goes ...

‘What the HELL is up with the ending of
Great Expectations?’

Backing up a tiny bit, at lunch that day I’d been sitting with Penny in our usual spot. The lunch period goes from 12.40 p.m. to 1.20 p.m. Right on cue at 12.55 p.m., the boys that have been blessing us with their company of late come ambling across the grass. They are led by that dreadful Scott, who is way keener on himself than he has reason to be. He’s taken to parking himself next to Penny, reclining with legs outstretched, propping himself up on one elbow like Caecilius, the Pompeii dude from our Year Seven Ancient Rome textbooks, and regaling her with his wit. He never, ever acknowledges me, even though I’m always sitting next to Penny when he levers himself in. I keep expecting Penny to tell him he’s a tool and to get lost, but she doesn’t. So, lately, I’ve taken to reading at lunchtime. Surrounded by the forced laughter and novice flirtation of my peers, I bury my head in a book, signalling to all that I strongly disapprove.

I wonder if anyone even notices. Today I read the last five pages of
Great Expectations
. And I need to call Chris.

‘Uh-oh,’ says Chris.

‘What the hell!’

‘Now steady on—’ ‘
I saw no shadow of another parting from her!
What does that mean? It
can’t
mean that they’re going to get together. Tell me that’s not what it means.’

‘That’s what it means.’

‘Then what was the point of any of it? What’s the lesson that Pip learns, that
we
learn from him?’

‘Well—’

‘For 493 pages I put up with Pip’s shit, put up with him being cruel to the people who loved him and continuing to run around after those who didn’t. Put up with all the ridiculous ‘smoke and mirrors’, the illusions, the false conclusions, the “Ooh, So-and-so is really So-and-so’s father; So-and-So is really Miss Havisham’s jilting fiancé; So-and-so was Pip’s true benefactor; So-and-so was actually the one who made Mrs Gargery into a vegetable.” I put up with it all in the hope that at the end the bullshit would be debunked and the characters would see things as they are. Pip would finally see Estella and Miss Havisham for the cruel bitches they were. He would learn to accept his defeat gracefully – unlike Gatsby with the shotgun – and decide to get on with his life. We don’t always get what we want, do we? Especially with, you know, wanting other people. But it’s worth something to finally see clearly isn’t it?’

‘Well,
I
think so.’

‘Then what was Dickens thinking?What was the point of the whole series of events if not for the hero to mature?’

‘Well—’

‘
I saw no shadow of another parting from her!
What he should have said was
I see plenty of shadows of another parting from her, because I choose it to be so. I have lingered long enough in this great ruined place, emotionally and physically, and it’s time for me to move on.

’ ‘Maybe Dickens was worried that his readers would revolt if they didn’t get a happy ending for Pip and Estella,’ Chris offers, finally getting a sentence in edgewise.

‘Then he should have had more respect for his readers,’ I splutter. ‘If I want a happy ending I’ll watch
Pretty Woman.
Bloody Pip! He should have married Biddy when he had the chance, gotten a
job
and s
hut up
. Sure, we all want Estella, but we don’t always get what we want, do we?’

‘No,’ says Chris, with a hint of Gutted Tone. ‘We do not.’

‘
I
had great expectations. Of that book.’

‘Do you know that Dickens originally wrote a different ending for the book? One where they don’t get together?’

‘No way.’

‘Yes way. Pip and Estella go their separate ways. Pip goes off to work in various places. Estella gets beaten to a pulp by her brute of a husband who eventually gets killed by a horse he is mistreating. Then she marries a doctor, who looked after her after one of the beatings. Pip and Estella run into each other in the street some years later and exchange civilities. Pip is satisfied that she has seen enough suffering to understand what he went through for all those years, but what he really means is – he’s satisfied that she’s had her comeuppance.’

‘That’s a much better ending. What happened to that one?’

‘He got persuaded out of it by Edward Bulwer-Lytton.’

‘Who is Edward Bulwer-Lytton?’

‘He’s the genius that originally came up with
It was a dark and stormy night
.’

‘No!’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s depressing.’

‘Yeah.’ I hear him stretch and yawn. ‘So you had your heart set on Pip growing up, huh?’

‘I wanted him to get
his
comeuppance. To realise he’s let himself be had all these years.’

‘But he never got over his fear of Virginia Woolf.’

‘He what?’

‘Never mind. It’s from – well I won’t tell you what it’s from.You’ll stumble upon it one day and think “Ah! That’s what Chris meant when he said . . . ”’

Brief silence. I get my breath back. I wish Chris would come and live with me in my little bedroom.

‘Well, youngster, I must go. Try sticking to twentieth-century texts. Lots of confronting reality there.’

‘See you at work.’

‘Ah.’ He yawns again. ‘Yes.’

I hang up and ponder on my bed for a few minutes.

Then I get to my feet and descend the stairs, clutching my copy of
Great Expectations
. I pause in the downstairs hallway, craning my head toward the back steps leading down to Dad’s study. Sibelius’s Fifth Symphony wafts from underneath the closed study door. I am heartened – Sibelius’s Fifth means he’s in a good mood. It could make the stoniest of hearts tremble.

I knock softly on the door.

‘Come in.’

And I do. He’s sitting in the big chair by the window, cigarette in one hand, a copy of
Spectator
in the other. I turn the volume down a touch.

‘Dad.’

‘Yes, darling.’ He ashes the cigarette with a delicate forefinger.

‘What does it mean to be afraid of Virginia Woolf?’

He frowns. ‘What?’

I wave my copy of
G.E.
in the air.

‘If I said, “Well clearly Pip is afraid of Virginia Woolf ”,

what does that mean?’

He smiles. Then he puts his cigarette to rest on the ashtray, lays the
Spectator
on the arm of the chair, stands up and scans one of his bookshelves. He takes down a slim paperback, browned with age, and hands it to me.
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
by Edward Albee.

‘Read it and see,’ he says, returning to his chair.

B
ATHURST

For the first time in ages I am not working on the weekend. I’m going to Bathurst on the train to visit Lizey. I’ve wanted to go all year, but have been too afraid to ask Bianca, who does the roster, if I could have a weekend off. When I told Chris he frogmarched me down to the service desk and stood beside me as I asked Bianca. She said yes.

Behind her, Jeremy was sitting on the glass counter, all boredom and carefully contrived sangfroid. His red bow tie was missing and his name badge askew. I was directly in his line of vision, but he managed to look right past me. I thought how funny it would be if the glass counter he was sitting on should break.Then he might have to have a facial expression.

‘When do you leave, youngster?’ Chris asks as we walk toward the staff exit at the end of the night.

‘Tomorrow morning. I catch the early train from Central.’

‘Well, you be careful of those uni students. I wouldn’t trust most of ’em with a pretty fifteen-year-old girl.’

Pretty! Me, pretty!Wait – he does mean me right? Or is he just making a general statement?

‘Yes, you,’ he says, reading my mind.

I smile down at the steps. We walk outside and down the street towards Chris’s bus stop, where I’ll leave him and continue my walk home alone.

There is silence. My head fills with the sound of a strange, overpowering ‘inner Amelia’ screaming, ‘I LOVE YOU! I LOVE YOU!’

‘Hey, Chris,’ I say, in an effort to drown it out.

‘Yes, tiger?’

‘Martha is afraid of Virginia Woolf.’

‘Wow, that didn’t take you long. Very impressive.’

‘And probably most people are.’

‘Probably.’

‘You are.’

‘I what?’

We stop walking and face each other. I continue bravely, ‘Well, you won’t give up the ghost. At least in the end George and Martha give up their ghost.’

‘What ghost?’

Careful. Careful.

‘Well, how long have you clung to the Kathy ghost? Any fool could see that she ain’t all that.’

‘What have you got against Kathy?’ he asks, raising one eyebrow.

‘Nothing!’ I say hastily. ‘Nothing. Just, you know, she isn’t nice to you, is she?’

‘No.’

‘Neither was that Michaela chick.’
Daring, Amelia, very daring!

He gives me a sharp look, and I quickly change the subject.

‘Did Kathy find out, you know, about the poem and flowers?’

‘Don’t know. Don’t care.’

‘It was a great poem.’

‘It was a
terrible
poem. But I was counting on her not twigging to that. I doubt that textual analysis is her strong suit.’

‘Oh.’

We’ve reached the bus stop.

‘I knew you’d like
Virginia Woolf
,’ he says.

‘Yeah . . . well, yeah. I’ll see you later then.’

‘Right. Safe travelling. Lay off the white wine.’

‘Will do.’ I turn to cross the street, and then turn back. ‘Hey, Chris?’

‘
Que
?’

‘There
are
girls who would be really really nice to you. If you’d, you know, pick them.’

‘Are there? Where?’ He makes a show of looking up and down the street and underneath the seats in the bus shelter.

Say it!
hollers inner Amelia.
Say ‘One is standing right in front of you
.’

I shrug. Not superbly. And I turn and walk home.

On Saturday I wake at 5 a.m. to get the bus in to Central. Everyone is asleep when I leave the house toting my Billabong backpack and sporting my Nanna-knitted grey beanie. It’s a freezing August morning. I buy a cappuccino, a chocolate iced doughnut, an egg-and-lettuce sandwich and a bottle of water. I’ve brought a book to read –
The Robber Bride
by Margaret Atwood – but I spend the first hour of the journey looking out the window.

The train winds its way through Sydney heading west towards the Blue Mountains. We pass through Strathfield, Auburn, Granville, Parramatta, Westmead.

At Blacktown, a girl gets on the train with a toddler. She looks only a bit older than me. Her hair is greasy, her skin covered in acne, she wears dirty polyester trackpants and there is a bruise on her left cheekbone. Her eyes are hard. The toddler sets up a shrill whine and thrashes around in his seat.

‘Shut the fuck up, Cody!’ the girl snarls. She fishes a large packet of Twisties out of her bag, opens them and gives them to the toddler. He sits quietly and eats them.

As the train pulls out of Mt Druitt, we run parallel to a main road for a few hundred metres. I see a large sign pointing to a turn-off: Morton.
Morton!
I hear Chris’s voice saying,
You don’t have to look very far to see difference.

The toddler is whining again. His mum gets out a bottle of Coke and gives him a few sips. They get off the train somewhere called Emu Plains.

For the rest of the journey I read my book and have conversations with Chris inside my head. These conversations have become a favourite, and pretty much compulsive, pastime. In them, I am always witty, sometimes even sassy. In them I have complete control.

The train pulls in to Bathurst Station at about 11 a.m. The sky is low and grey. Even through the glass I can feel that it’s much colder than Sydney. I leap out onto the platform and see Lizey down the other end. There’s a bloke with her.

We hurry towards each other and hug tightly, mumbling ‘hey’ into each other’s hair. It’s so good to see her and have her within my grasp. I don’t want the hug to end yet, but she breaks away.

She looks essentially the same, but I scan for minute changes. Since moving away she’s gained an almost mythical status at home, especially with Jess. Jess goes crazy with delight when Lizey makes her flying visits. She pulls out all her toys, brings all her little friends in from the street to soak up the glory of the returning big sister, wants only Lizey to push her on the swing and watch her go down the slide. They bake biscuits together in the kitchen. She asks after Lizey all the time – often when I am reading her a story or doing some other ‘quality time’ activity.

‘“Naughty Spot. It’s dinner time—”’

‘Is Lizey coming over this weekend?’

Why would Lizey be coming over this weekend?

‘No. “Where could he be? Is he out in the flower bed?”’

‘When is she coming over?’

‘I don’t know, Jess. But I’m here okay? I’m here.’

And so forth.

‘This is my flatmate Jonno,’ says Lizey, turning to the guy who’s loped up behind her. ‘He’s got a car, so we won’t have to walk.’

Jonno tips an imaginary hat with the top of an imaginary walking cane.

‘How come you’re both wearing the same outfit?’ I ask as we walk out into the car park. They’re both in jeans, Converse shoes and checked flannelette shirts.

‘Oh,’ says Lizey, laughing, ‘Big W had a sale on flannies. Nothing like a flannie to keep out the Bathurst chill.’

‘That’s right, ma’am,’ Jonno says.

We pile into Jonno’s early eighties model Subaru two-door hatch.

While we’re driving, Lizey tells me that they’re having 180 a party at their place tonight. I’d envisioned having her to myself, so I could debrief at length about our parents and tell her about Chris. Lizey is good with boys. She’s almost never without one. But a party could be good too. It will be good practice for Chris’s world.

The ancient Subaru pulls up in front of a row of dilapidated terraces.

‘This is us.’ Lizey bounds out and puts her seat forward. I struggle out with my backpack.

It turns out that the whole row of terraces is student housing. Lizey takes me out the back first and I see that there are no fences dividing the backyards. It’s just one big expanse of overgrown grass, dotted with clusters of upturned milk crates, a few Hills hoists and a couple of festy-looking barbecues.

‘One big family.’ She grins, gesturing to a few people lounging on neighbouring back steps, nursing coffee cups or with cigarettes dangling from their fingers.

We head back inside to meet the other flatmates, Guy and Lucy, who are sitting at the kitchen table. They are both in pyjamas and dressing-gowns. Empty toast plates and mugs are in front of them. They smoke languorously, ashing their cigarettes into a round biscuit tin. Then we go upstairs to Lizey’s bedroom.

She’s never been tidy like me. The bed is unmade, clothes are strewn everywhere and one of her old sarongs is serving as a curtain.

I put my backpack down and shiver. ‘It’s freezing in here.’

‘It sure is,’ agrees Lizey. ‘I’ll lend you a flannie and a spencer.’

‘Hey, is that Jonno guy your boyfriend?’

‘Jonno? Nah. He kind of was for a while but . . . nah.’

‘Oh.’

‘I’ve actually got my eye on a boy from two doors up. Hoping to make some headway tonight.’

We sit on her unmade bed. It has the same smell as her bed at home did. Essence of Lizey. Maybe that’s a weird thing to notice. I like the smell. It means my sister is close by.

‘So how are the parents?’ she asks.

‘Same old. Mum’s miserable most of the time. Jess is cute. Dad is . . . Dad.’

Lizey’s flamboyance always seemed to lighten things up at home – even made Mum smile sometimes. Since she’s been gone there’s been little or no comic relief. God knows there’s none coming from me.

‘I think his show at Brooke Street is going well.’

Lizey remains quiet.

‘Hey, I pashed a boy,’ I volunteer.

‘You what?’

‘I pashed a boy.’

‘When?’

‘Few months ago.’

‘Where?’

‘At a party.’

‘Well good for you! Who was the lucky guy?’

‘Uh, just some guy from work.’

‘Some Guy From Work. That’s beautiful, that is. And has anything come of it?’

‘Nah. He hasn’t spoken to me since.’

‘Tool.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Want me to see if I can hook something up for you tonight?’ she teases.

‘Nooooowah!’ I lie back on the pillows.

‘So with the party tonight . . . ’ ‘Yeah?’

‘I’ll look after you as much as I can, but if the chance presents itself for me to have some quality time with Ben, you might have to look after yourself.’

‘Who’s Ben?’

‘The boy from two doors up.’

‘Oh.’

‘You’ll definitely be sleeping in here, but don’t get freaked out if I don’t end up here.’

‘Oh.’

I must look a bit deflated because Lizey pokes me in the arm.

‘Come on, you’re a big girl now.’

I prickle.
A big girl who got up in the pitch black this morning and sat on a train for four-and-a-half hours to spend some time with you,
I think mutinously
. So sue me if I don’t want to spend a night alone in a strange, freezing-cold house with people I don’t know!
I hate it when she makes those comments – they are the adult version of her childhood taunt ‘Don’t be such a baby’.

She looks out of her bedroom window from underneath the sarong, scanning the backyard below.

‘Let’s go and have a cuppa in the garden,’ she says abruptly.

‘It’s
cold
out there,’ I protest, but she is already halfway to the door.

There’s one bathroom in the house and you have to go out the back door to get to it. After sampling the temperature in there and inspecting the shower recess, I’ve decided to wait until I get home tomorrow night to have a shower. It’s about 6 p.m. and I’m sitting on the bed watching Lizey put make-up on in front of her mirror. A sudden, aggressive loneliness takes hold of me. I’m nervous. I don’t know anyone coming to this party. It will probably go for hours. I want Lizey. I want my mother.

‘I miss you,’ I say, and start to cry.

Lizey turns around.

She re-caps the mascara wand she’s holding and sits down beside me.

‘What’s up? What?’

But I don’t even know. ‘I just feel sad,’ I manage, and sob a few times.

‘Why?’ she says. ‘Why?’

‘I don’t know. Everything. I wish you’d come home; I miss you. And I don’t want you to leave me tonight, ’cause I don’t know anyone here. And I wanted to talk to you tonight, not go to a party.’

‘Parties are
fun
, Amelia. I wanted to you to have fun here.’ She shakes her head at me. ‘What did you want to talk to me about?’

My sobs have receded to mild sniffling and slightly laboured breathing.

‘Nothing,’ I say.

‘Nothing?’ she repeats.

She returns to the mirror and uncaps the mascara.

‘When your face dries off I’ll put some of this on you.’

The night passes more or less uneventfully. The party mainly takes place in the communal backyard, although it’s bloody freezing. I borrow one of Lizey’s ‘dress’ beanies. There are loud conversations going on all around about people and events I have no idea of. Some of Lizey’s friends chat to me a little. Dinner is bread and dip. Most people are drinking beer, but I fill a plastic schooner glass from a 4-litre cask of red wine set up on one of the upturned milk crates. By the time I have drunk half of it I feel decidedly less lonely.

Lizey points the Ben boy out to me. He is wearing a soft-looking denim jacket, a grey woollen scarf and a beanie that’s more of a very large skull cap. He is very good-looking, and he knows it. I tend to be quite turned off by people who know that they are good-looking: like that dreadful Scott who’s been sitting with us at school, like Kathy. I think they’re best avoided. I’m lucky I will never be in the thrall of one of them. Although, I think, conjuring up the warmth of Chris’s presence, I’ve not escaped a different kind of thrall.

I last until about 10 p.m., by which time I have consumed one-and-a-half schooners of the cask wine. I find Lizey in a small group of Ben and two other girls.

‘I’m going to bed.’

‘Yeah?’ She puts an arm around me.

‘Yeah. See you . . . ,’ I glance at Ben, ‘whenever . . .’

I clean my teeth in the freezing bathroom with even-more-freezing water. The red goon has stained my tongue a grotesque shade of purple. I scrub at it with my toothbrush and spit out great gobs of purple toothpaste foam.