Magenta McPhee (8 page)

I lowered the menu. ‘It was me,' I said. ‘The whole idea was mine. I even wrote the emails. But only because I
wanted Dad to meet someone. You sounded really nice and I thought you both might get along. I didn't want to mislead you. I just wanted Dad to be happy.'

Spooky looked confused so I started again and even Cal put down his PSP to listen. By the third time it was all clear and Spooky had grabbed my hand and told me what a wonderful daughter I was, Cal was nodding and even Dad was harrumphing in a way that meant he wasn't going to admit it but he was proud of me.

‘You wrote all those emails yourself?' Spooky said. ‘I'm amazed. Cal, you'd better pay more attention in English – they were really mature.'

‘That's not English, Mum,' Cal said. ‘In English all we get to do is answer these dumb questions. We don't get to pretend to be someone else. That's more like drama.'

‘Well, she certainly has a flair for whatever it is. You must be so proud, Max!'

‘Just embarrassed, really,' Dad said. ‘Though your graciousness is heart-warming, Lianna.'

‘It's just so wonderful witnessing a strong father-and-daughter bond,' Lianna said, patting my father's hand, ‘You've no idea how many dysfunctional single-parent families there are out there. But here you two are, really trying to help each other.'

Her eyes looked suspiciously moist, but before she had a chance to cry our coffees and hot chocolates arrived with the famous chocolate muffins.

‘It doesn't mean that we can't all be friends,' Spooky said, stirring sugar in her coffee and making little patterns in the cappuccino foam. ‘I do understand, Max, that this puts you in an awkward position, but friendship?' Her voice tilted up at the end of this sentence hopefully and seemed to hang in the air for a second too long.

‘Of course,' my father said heartily. ‘We all need friends! Particularly single parents. The number of times I've wished I could call someone to help with some problem I've had with Magenta!'

‘Or just to eat pizza with in front of the television!' Spooky said, still stirring her coffee.

‘Or to go for a Sunday stroll after the changeover shift,' Dad said. ‘You know, when you get home and the house seems too quiet.'

‘That doesn't happen regularly with us,' Spooky admitted, ‘because Cal's Dad lives in Queensland now, but Cal goes there for holidays, don't you, darling? So I know what you mean.'

Cal had gone back to his game but he was also listening, unusual for a boy. He nodded at the mention of his name, and his thick fringe of dark hair kind of bounced once. I wished that he would look up again because I'd been so preoccupied with my confession that I hadn't taken in any of his features. Spooky seemed to read my mind.

‘Do put that thing away, Cal,' she said. My mother would have sounded grumpy but Spooky sounded as though she was asking for a favour, rather than being stern. ‘I want us all to get to know each other, and that includes you, Cal. Max and Magenta do lots of great things together. Cal and I,' she turned to me and Dad, ‘feel that we've got a bit stuck in a rut, you know. It seems like there's never quite enough money to do what we'd really like to do ... Not that I'm complaining, I know there are people worse off than us. But still. We'd thought of going to Tasmania. Just by ourselves. A kind of chill-out time. I checked the Internet but everything was just a little expensive. Except if you camped. I don't feel confident about camping, really. It was something Cal's dad and I were always going to do when Cal got a bit older. By the time that happened we'd split up.'

‘Camping's pretty easy,' I said, ‘isn't it, Dad? We do it all through the summer holidays. It's not a big deal. You just need good equipment.'

‘It's all in the equipment,' Dad said. ‘Luckily we have good stuff. It's no fun camping with holey tents or a faulty stove. I used to do that when I was younger, of course, and didn't even notice. But kids these days – raised with five-star expectations!'

‘I know what you mean.' Spooky shot Cal a look.

He stared back at her, the corners of his mouth twitching slightly into the smallest of smiles. He had
a thin face, like Spooky's, but his eyes were long and darkly fringed. Why do boys always have good eyelashes? His mouth curled up at the edges as though he spent a lot of the time doing his little twitchy smile. He didn't look like a five-star kid. He looked like the kind of boy who'd try to be cheerful under most circumstances. I thought Spooky was being mean. Dad must have agreed with me.

‘I bet you're more of a stars-for-your-roof than spa-in-your-room kind of guy,' Dad said. I hadn't heard him this cheerful for ages. My spirits lifted. Maybe he would fall in love with Spooky after all. Maybe he already had.

‘I'm adaptable,' Cal said. He gave me a sideways look as though he was checking me out, but not so obviously that I'd be offended. ‘I think that's the saving grace of humanity, our adaptability. Don't you, sir?'

‘You don't need to call me sir,' Dad said, raising his eyebrows, ‘Max is fine. And yes, I agree with you. Particularly in a world that's changing so rapidly. Adaptability might save us.'

‘Dad thinks the world is doomed,' I told Cal just so he'd look at me properly. He had a high forehead. I'd read somewhere this was a mark of intelligence. ‘But he also thinks we need to keep doing our little bit. That's why we grow our own vegies and I walk to school, mostly, and we don't have any electrical equipment at all – not even an old PlayStation.'

‘My dad gave me this,' Cal told me, ‘to keep me quiet last holidays. It's more guilt than goodness.'

‘Oh Cal, I'm sure he thought it would make you happy,' Spooky said anxiously. ‘It does, doesn't it, darling?'

Cal ignored her. ‘You can have a go if you want,' he said and handed it over to me.

‘I'm not very good at these,' I said apologetically, ‘never having had the experience.' I glared at Dad who was too busy doing his global warming rant at Spooky to take any notice.

‘Here, it's easy – you just shoot at those little dudes when they poke their heads up. See?'

I tried but they kept coming at me too quickly and I got my left and right hands mixed up. ‘I'm not very good,' I said.

‘No,' he agreed – but without sounding mean about it. ‘You don't seem to have got the hang of it yet. Do you want to go for a walk instead? There's a skate park up the road. We could just hang out there for a while and watch them? Leave these two getting to know each other better.'

‘That'd be great!'

I'd never walked to a skate park to
just hang out
with a guy before. But Cal seemed to take it in his stride.

‘That was pretty cool,' he said, ‘what you did for your dad. What exactly made you do it?'

‘I thought he was depressed,' I said. ‘I got worried, you know. You read about middle-aged men who have lost everything, doing something stupid.'

‘But he's got a vegie garden,' Cal pointed out. ‘Gardeners don't tend to be stupid people. They like seeing their crops come up, or planning for next season's planting.'

‘I should have thought of that,' I said.

‘Oh well, you're probably younger than I am.'

It turned out I was only just two years younger than Cal. The perfect age gap according to some magazine I'd read. He didn't even have much acne. Of course, he wasn't Richard. He seemed much more serious and didn't joke around like Richard. But that also meant that he didn't tease me the way Richard did. He listened to me talk about the Chronicles and then he told me who his favourite fantasy writer was and he didn't call me Magwheels once.

We hung out for so long that Dad and Spooky came to find us.

‘We thought you'd run away with the circus,' Dad said. ‘Time to go now, Magenta. I've invited Lianna back for some cold chicken and salad – the tomatoes this season have been sensational, Lianna – and you should taste these heirloom ones I've planted. They are the best, aren't they, Magenta.'

‘They're really sweet,' I agreed. Spooky was coming for dinner, which meant Cal was coming for dinner.
That was a step in exactly the right direction. I beamed at Dad but he just smiled blandly back at me.

Spooky took off her high-heeled sandals so she could march out to the backyard where she oohed and ahhed over our vegie patch.

‘And you dug it up from scratch, Max. That's amazing. I wouldn't know where to put something like that.'

‘You just watch the sun,' Dad explained, ‘You pick the sunniest spot. It's pretty easy, Lianna. If you wanted to do something like this, I'd be happy to help.'

‘It's just a wasted effort in a rental,' Spooky said, ‘you never know when you might have to move. That's the only thing I hate. The last place? We were there for two years, really settled. Then the landlady's daughter came back from overseas. It was awful, wasn't it, Cal?'

Cal shrugged and stubbed the ground with his foot. ‘It wasn't that bad,' he said.

‘Some suburbs have community allotments,' Dad said. ‘I've been hassling the council about doing something like that here. It would bring the community together more. Particularly now that so many people, like yourself, are forced to rent.'

‘Oh Max, you're so full of great ideas. I can't understand why someone as creative as you hasn't just walked into a terrific job. The workplace needs people like you.'

Dad shrugged and looked away to the horizon. ‘I've got some ideas,' he said, ‘I'm thinking – but it's a bit
premature to talk about it. I've been doing some research though.'

‘I just don't know how you find the time,' Spooky said, gazing at the vegie garden as though it was some kind of shrine. ‘It seems to me that I scarcely get the place clean, go to the gym – I do believe in keeping up one's physical health – and then Cal's home with his demands and then I cook dinner and that's practically my day. Gone. Oh and on Thursdays and Fridays I help out at my friend's café. I'm also part of a women's ring? We meet every fortnight.'

‘You sound pretty busy to me,' Dad smiled at her, ‘it sounds like a full kind of life.'

‘Well, not completely.' Spooky glanced at him very quickly and then went back to staring at the vegie garden.

‘Come on then,' Dad said, ‘let's pick some of these beautiful tomatoes. Magenta, you grab a lettuce, will you?'

‘I'll make the salad,' Spooky said, once we'd brought it all into the kitchen. ‘Have you any eggs, Max? And olive oil? I'll make a mayonnaise.'

‘We've got some mayo in the fridge,' I told her. ‘That stuff that's 98 per cent fat-free with no added sugar?'

‘That's not mayonnaise.' Spooky smiled at me and patted my arm. ‘That stuff is to real mayonnaise like Mills and Boon is to real passion. You just wait until
you taste my mayo. You won't want that chemically enhanced glue ever again!'

Spooky's mayo took about half an hour to make. She needed an electric blender but of course we didn't have one.

‘That's a shame,' she said, ‘some electrical goods are worth hanging on to, Max. Pumpkin soup is a winter standby for us, isn't it, Cal? No blender, no pumpkin soup!'

‘You can always have lumpy pumpkin soup,' my dad said. He was looking through the bottom drawer, trying to find a whisk. ‘Here, is this what you want?'

‘Hmm. That should do it. It'll be a bit more work, but it will be worth it. Sometimes doing things the old-fashioned way is good for the soul. Perhaps you're right about the soup. You could always use a potato masher, I guess. Here goes. Now the trick is to trickle that oil in so slowly it doesn't have a chance to curdle.'

Spooky's mayo was fine – but it lacked a certain something.

When I told Polly later she knew immediately. ‘Sugar, that's what it was missing. Chemically enhanced glue, as she called it, always has sugar in it. To make you like it. What you had was the proper thing, Magenta. Which, as the daughter of a caterer, I can assure you is better than the pre-made stuff.'

‘Well, I didn't think so.'

‘Anyway, what was she like? Do you think they'll fall in love?'

‘They didn't eat much,' I said. ‘Well, they ate lots of lettuce and cucumber and tomatoes but they didn't want any chicken really, although Cal had a piece and Spooky picked at the stuffing. Dad kept saying it was free-range chicken and Spooky said, “Well, if it's free range...” and put another piece on Cal's plate and frowned at him. Then they talked about grown-up stuff. World issues. Dad talked about world issues and Spooky listened.'

‘What's the boy like?'

‘He's great. He's really cool, actually. He reads a lot, doesn't like sport except for swimming and tennis. I can't play tennis but he offered to teach me one day. He hasn't any acne at all and he has these great, long eyes.'

‘Sounds weird,' Polly said, ‘long eyes?'

‘You know – big eyes but not round. Long big.'

‘Gee, Magenta, you may need to reconsider your chosen career – I don't think much of that description.'

‘He's kind of cute,' I said. I'd saved the best news for last but I was tempted not to tell Polly because she was being so strange.

‘A good practice boy, then,' she said, ‘like Hentley?'

I couldn't keep secrets. I was hopeless. ‘The best thing is that we're all going camping in two weekends' time. Cal will be there because it's partly for him that
we're going. Spooky's got this real thing about male role models. She doesn't want him to miss out on anything just because he's living with her and not his dad.'

‘I'll make a love potion,' Polly said immediately. ‘Everything will be fine.'

‘I don't want a love potion. I mean, I'm not sure that I like him that much and anyway, it feels like cheating.'