The Great Christmas Breakup (10 page)

‘You think you’re a big man because
you’ve got a job that means
we’re holed up in this
pit, bare
ly able to afford food?
In fact, the only reason we
can
afford the food we do have is thanks
to my staff discount at Flindes
.
Harvard bloody graduate indeed.
If I could sue you for misrepresentation, I would.’

He looked me up and down, sky blue eyes blistering with disdain.
‘I think I would probably counterclaim.’

Was he actually alluding to
my
weight?

The bastard!

‘
Right, y
ou can sleep on the sofa from now on,’ I told h
im, trying
to control the urge to thump him
with the fry
ing
pan I was scraping ch
arc
oal from
.

‘Scarlet, come on,
I didn’t mean to upset you. Y
ou don’t understand–‘

‘I understand perfectly, Carson. That’s the problem.’

‘What is it with you? You think you’re so above me that I don
’t even have an o
pinion anymore? I know you assume
my family is
below you, but I didn’t think you viewed me in the same way.
’

I was trembling with rage. ‘Your family has treated me like garbage since I
supposedly
stole you away from the
m. How dare you imply otherwise?
’

Dare, dare, dare. I kept saying it, but it had no impact. He dared, because he didn’t care one jot for me.

Shaking his head
as if he was incredulous at the turn of events, my darling husband predictably gathered up his various folders and tattered briefcase, and told me not to wait up for him.

‘Oh, don’t worry. I won’t.’

A few moments later,
Carson slammed the door
as hard as he could
.

It waited a minute or so
, then
fell out into the hall after him.

The toad
didn’t bother turning back to help me fix it.

Eyes full of tears,
I wondered if
Hammer
tro’s uncle was available again.

Taking the broom I used as a primitive communication tool, I banged on the ceiling.

The gorgeous
young
man appeared moments later.
‘What
s
a
emergency, sexy mo
mma
?’

‘You’re standing on it.’

Frowning,
Hammertro
moved off the door and
picked it up. The hinges and the wood they
had been attached to remained
on the floor. ‘You
gotta
to get a new door
now, dude
tte
.
This can’t be replaced.’

Great.

Terrific.

‘How much is that going to cost, do you think?’

‘U
ncle
Rabbit
will do you a deal. Fifty should cove
r it.’ Hammertro’s eyes shifted
seedily from si
de to side.
‘I’ll call him now.’

I had to wonder whether the whole uncle-helping-gig w
as a scam. They’d probably had a
free
door
from a skip that
they wanted t
o sell on or somethin
g.

Less t
han two hours
later, Uncle Rabbit and his nephew
were hammering a new door into place
in defiance of angry neighbors
– it had glass panels and stickers of naked woman on the inside, but I figured
fifty dollars was
nevertheless a relative bargain, when the labor, su
ch as it was, was factored in.

A
pinch of the industrial strength spirits we used to clean
down
the meat counter at Flindes would remove the x-rated stickers in minutes.

Uncle Rabbit was one of those workers who came prepared. As ugly as his nephew was handsome, he was tiny and squat, and his toolbox contained a mix of foodstuffs, a battered paint-splattered radio, and a tin flask that I suspected did not contain tea or coffee.

Uncle Rabbit’s
sobriety
aside, i
t was all go
ing remarkably well, and then
a
large crashing at the communal entry door below stopped work.

‘Not another ram-raid?’ Hammertro looked
upwards, a
w
orried expression on his face.

What on earth did
he
have worth snatching, I wondered.

The men held thei
r tools
aloft as
the clunking
footsteps made their way d
eterminately up the stone steps towards us.

‘Maybe it’s the cops. Might have been a complaint about the noise we’re making?’ I said.

Hammertro told me to stay back, in case of blood sprays.

A shoot out. With the police. Brilliant way to end a shitty day.

‘Yeah, right,’ I told him. ‘Wouldn’t want to destroy this vintage, Taiwanese-made cotton singlet dress, would I?’

We held our breath
as the sound of footsteps increased again.

Stump, stump, stump.

They were
now
on
the corridor of our floor.

I began to feel
more than
a little uncomfortable, until
I smelled the familiar smell of c
igarettes
mixed with
fake perfume made from illegal
c
arc
inogens
.

Surely not?

Hammertro’s uncle put a hand to h
is nose. ‘They trying to gas us, son.
’

‘Believe me,’ I said
, ‘i
n a moment that will seem like a brilliant option.’

On cue,
Cecily 2 appeared
, preceded by a stream of curse words that left Hammertro enthralled.

‘Here I
fuckin’
am,’ she yelled, appearing on the landi
ng, yanking down her micro mini.

Cecily 2.

A
whole
day
and a half
day
early.

Uncle Rabbit
dropped his hammer and broke his toe at the shock of it all.

And when Cecily 2 offered to
kiss it better, he began
clutching at his heart.

I offered to call an ambulance, and resisted the temptation to ask if he could
manage to
finish the door before it arrived.

CHAPTER FIVE

Sunday, November 26

‘
The way to a man’s heart is physical; to a woman’s
it is
emotional.

Luckily, these two are eminently compatible.
’

Jocelyn Priestly.

WAS THE WOMAN ON
crack?
Carson couldn’t care less about the physical or the emotional. The last time we’d had sex, I caught him reading some work stuff he’d discarded on the
bed next to us.

Wasn’t watching telly or staring at th
e ceiling a woman’s prerogative?

Anyway, Carson’s banishment to the sof
a was short-
lived thanks to the arrival of Cecily 2.

It was two a
.
m
.
when he came crashing through the door.
In the end, J had helped me finish securing the apartment. H
aving worked out that longer screws might force the damn thing into t
he doorframe and make it more stable
, mother and son were proud of the
ir
joint achievement.

‘What is
she doing here?’ Carson had
whispered, seeing his sister snoring on the couch.

‘Enjoying a few
days before her work begins. That’s
how she put it.’

Technically, she’d said: ‘Got two days to mooch
and enjoy doing nothin’.
Howie and Rufus are enough to ma
ke a woman wanna get sterilized and go live in a gondolier.
’

‘Live in a gondolier?’
I’d asked.

‘Oops,’ she’d corrected. ‘The other way around, I guess.’

Disgusting creature.

It didn’t seem the time to reveal this to Carson, given
that
I wasn’t talking to him.

‘So where am I supposed to sleep now?’

‘Carson
, we’ve got bigger problems than
you and
your slumber status
.
For example, w
hat am I supposed to feed her?
Hammertro kindly took her out so I didn’t need to worry
tonight
, but
the relief is going to be short-
lived.
’

Unless –
and it was almost too
exquisite
to hope for –
Hammertro got Cecily 2 involved in his nocturnal activities and they both ended up in a
police
cell for a week or so.

‘
Well, w
hat were you going to feed us?’

‘
Home brand cornflakes
without milk because we
’d ru
n out
, sandwiches
and t
inned soup
and day old bread from the supermarket
.’

‘Oh.’

The matri
arc
h of the Teeson
s, the original Cecily, would surely hear about it if her only daughter was fed
on
such substandard fare.

Never mind that she fed her own grandchildren s
weets of undeterminable origin.
What was good for Cecily wasn’t what she expected of others. In other words, her standards were high, except in relation to herself.

‘Maybe we can get takeaway?
Or do a stir-fry? Get some icecream in and bake a pie.
’

Who
did
he think he was conversing with, Nigella
flippin’
Lawson?

‘With what? I had to use the grocery money to pay for the new door.’

Carson flinched. ‘You paid money for
that
?
Next you’ll be telling me the nudie stickers were an optional extra.
’

The urge to go mental and tell him I was leaving was so tempting that I turned away to calm down.
There was
Jessie and J to think of.

‘So we’ve got no food,
I’ve got nowhere to sleep and Mom is going to pester me about our treatment of Cecily2?’

‘You got it.’

On the plus side, she’d been whisked off for a tour of Manhattan by Hammertro, whose eyes had locked onto her bare legs in the micro mini and failed to detach.

‘W
hen will Cecily 2 wake up,
’ J
said, still in his day clothes.
‘My friends want to meet her on Skype.’

‘It’s two in the morning,’ I told him. ‘Go to bed.’

‘But there’s no school tomorrow,’ he protested. ‘And Cecily 2 is the type to stay up late, isn’t she?’

I observed my son. He had the b
est combination of all the genes of my side and the only worthwhile ones the
Teesons h
ad to offer: blonde hair,
curly like his dad
’s and
deep blue
eyes
. His
olive skin
was the same shade as mind
, and
to top it off, he had somehow inherited
the blossoming body of a surfer (without ever having been near the ocean).

‘What type, exactly, is she?’

Carson stepped in and surprised me. ‘Come on Scar, we all know about Cecily 2. You can’t blame a boy for wanting to impress his friends.’

Impress
? That wasn’t the word I’d have used, but I let it go.

I was exhausted. So exhausted, in fact, that I let Carson sleep with me.