I glanced back at her. ‘What? Did he reply?’
‘No. I spelt a word wrong.’
‘What word? Actually, no, don’t tell me. Is it embarrassing?’
She scowled. ‘A little bit. Not the word, but the whole sentence now is a bit . . . Yes, it’s embarrassing.’
I passed Mum’s bedroom on the way to brush my teeth. She was sitting on the edge of her bed. I contemplated moving on – the less involved I was, I figured, the better – but she looked upset.
‘Did he reply?’
‘No.’ Her shoulders dropped forward and both hands fell between her thighs. It was like she was collapsing in on herself out of shyness.
‘What’s up?’
‘I sent him a message afterwards, to tell him I had typed that word wrong,’ she said.
‘Right.’
‘And he didn’t send anything back, so I thought maybe I’d been too forward, so I sent another message.’
‘Okay.’
‘But I accidentally hit Send before I was finished and I . . .’ She trailed off.
If there’s one sure-fire way to set off alarm bells, it was trailing off.
‘How many did you send?’
‘It wasn’t that many. He didn’t reply and I –’
‘How many, Mum?’
If she had a shell, she’d have retreated into it. ‘Sixteen.’
It was worse than I’d thought. Much worse. I’d feared eight.
‘You sent sixteen messages without him sending one back?’
She nodded meekly.
‘How is that even possible?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know, it just kept happening.’
I should’ve expected it. She’d been thrust back into the dating game on the other side of forty. Since she was last in it, technology had happened. And there were rules.
‘You can’t just bombard him with messages.’
‘It was hardly bombarding. Most of the time, I was just correcting typos.’
‘Mum!’
‘I know.’
She had her head in her hands. All hopes of not being too involved were lost. I walked over and sat beside her. I put one arm around her shoulders.
‘He’s not going to message, is he?’ she asked into her palms.
‘Probably not.’ Definitely not. ‘On the upside, you didn’t remember him.’
‘No, I didn’t, but,’ Mum pulled her head up out of her hands, ‘he was the only one who used my number.’
‘There’ll be other speed-dating nights and other guys,’ I assured her.
‘I don’t want there to be other guys and other speed-dating nights,’ she said, resting her head on my shoulder. ‘I just want this part to be over.’
With any luck, it would be soon.
Every morning Peter slammed the front door at half-past six. On Wednesday my alarm went off at six. I would be ready for him.
I stumbled across my room and opened my wardrobe. The closest thing I had to athletics gear was the Buckley’s PE uniform I hadn’t worn since Year Ten.
I had never been sporty. In the hotter months I did Drama for extra-curricular credit instead of a sport, and in the colder months I did winter tennis. They didn’t call it winter football or winter rugby, but they added the ‘winter’ to tennis to remind people who signed up that it wasn’t actually tennis.
It was more like day care for teenagers on a tennis court for two hours on a Saturday.
If I was going to fix Peter, I needed to find out what was wrong with him first. That meant waking up eye-burningly early and pretending to be sporty.
It was pouring outside – the rain pounded my window. But if it didn’t stop Peter, it wouldn’t stop me.
His jogs lasted anywhere between thirty minutes and an hour. My muscles ached in anticipation.
I was half-dressed when I heard stomps down the hall. Peter tended to assert his dominance on the bluegum-timber flooring.
I pulled down my shirt. It ended a full centimetre above my shorts. I shimmied them up a fraction and stepped into a pair of sneakers. I didn’t have time to consider a tracksuit. I got to the front door just before it slammed shut and closed it gently behind myself.
The cold pinched at my skin.
There were a couple of perfectly synchronised steps before Peter realised I was jogging beside him. His eyes went wild. I knew he would be resistant to the idea initially, so I decided to say something. ‘Weather’s a bit dodgy, isn’t it?’
He deftly performed a U-turn and jogged right back into the house.
The door slammed shut.
It wasn’t the result I’d wanted, but honestly I was relieved that I wouldn’t have to go through with the whole jogging thing. Two reasons. One, the torrential rain and two, fitness. I went to follow Peter back inside, then I stopped myself.
I couldn’t.
If I ditched the jog immediately after he did, he’d figure out that it had something to do with him. He’d know I had an ulterior motive. And if he knew I was up to something it’d probably make it harder for him to warm to me, and in turn harder for me to fix him.
So, I had to actually go for a jog.
The thought was horrifying, but thankfully, fleeting. All I really had to do was go to Macca’s and have breakfast, then come back and limp through the front door, feigning a shortness of breath and a tight hamstring.
Fitness.
Re-connecting with my older brother was proving just as difficult.
He was one of three people left in the world with an active voicemail account. I was trying to pry into his life and find a way to woo him back to Sydney, but I couldn’t exactly say that in a message, could I?
I rang him on Tuesday, while Sticks was setting up Mum’s eSingles profile. When the call sent me to voicemail, I hung up.
The next eight times I called, I was sent to voicemail.
The next eight times, I hung up before the tone.
It was frustrating. I had spread them out over almost twenty-four hours, so even if he was busy every time I called, he would have seen I’d attempted to reach him nine times. What if it had been urgent? What if Yiayia had taken a turn for the worse? I knew he was living the rock-star barista lifestyle, but surely it wasn’t too much to expect him to call? Or to send a text? Something?
He was in Brisbane, not Siberia.
On Wednesday afternoon, sitting on a bench in the hospital lobby, I made my tenth call. When it transferred me to his voicemail service I didn’t hang up.
‘Hey, Simon, it’s Bill. Hope all is well in Brissie . . . It was nice seeing you on Sunday and I was thinking we should try harder to talk more, you know? You’ve got my number, so give me a buzz when you have the chance . . . Okay, that’s it.’
It was all I could do short of sending a barbershop quartet to his café. If I knew where it was, or what it was called, I would have considered that too.
I pocketed my phone and returned my attention to the laptop. I hadn’t heard from Sticks all day, so I thought I’d navigate the awkward eSingles waters myself. Mum had three new messages. I opened the first from FinanceGuruJace optimistically. He wanted to know if Mum had any other pics. He didn’t have any.
I deleted the message.
Next, Ready4U asked how she –
‘Ew.’
Deleted.
I didn’t bother opening the message from Hot_Sex_Hunk before deleting it.
‘Looking for love?’ a familiar voice asked.
I looked up from the screen. Hayley was standing in front of me, her hip popped to one side and her head tilted to the other. She was wearing a blue T-shirt with a faded Superman print.
My chest was squashed in an imaginary vice. It was the first time I’d seen her since my grandmother’s plan had become apparent. We weren’t just two teenagers, we were predestined.
‘I’m finding Mum a husband,’ I said.
‘How’s that going for you?’
‘She’s not married yet.’
Hayley
laughed and I imagined Yiayia cheering me on from the sidelines.
I shifted over so she’d have more room to sit, and she did. I told her about Patrick, and Mum bombarding him with text messages. When I was done, Hayley said it was my fault.
If I remembered correctly, I hadn’t been the one who sent sixteen texts in the space of a couple of hours.
‘Do you want my advice?’ she asked.
I was uneasy about cheating on Sticks’ advice with someone else’s, but curious to know what she would have done differently.
‘Sure.’
‘You gave her too much to do,’ Hayley said. ‘You’ve got to limit what can go wrong. You risked that Patrick dude saying he was from eSingles and her saying she didn’t know who he was. You should have just organised the date and dropped her right in it.’
‘That seems a bit extreme.’
‘I prefer to think of it as exciting,’ Hayley said. ‘Romantic, even. I say, do that next time.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Think about it, nothing can go wrong. She doesn’t have to text someone she doesn’t know and you don’t have to keep it a secret. You lay your cards out on the table, say, “Mum, I’ve set you up on a blind date,” and leave. But you can only really do it once, so you have to be sure he’s a top bloke.’
‘Then I probably shouldn’t have deleted that message from Hot_Sex_Hunk, huh?’
She laughed again. The Yiayia cheerleader in my mind was doing somersaults.
‘I was worried when you skipped off yesterday,’ Hayley said. ‘I thought maybe I shouldn’t have told you what I thought the list was.’
‘That? It was nothing. I just remembered I had somewhere to be.’
She most definitely didn’t buy it. ‘I didn’t want to upset you.’
‘You didn’t.’
‘Okay.’
The vice tightened.
‘I’m seventeen, by the way,’ I blurted out. I felt like it was better to get that out of the way early.
She didn’t run away. That was a good sign.
‘I’m nineteen,’ she said. ‘Not quite as eager to tell everyone.’
I smiled. ‘Here for a visit?’
‘I’m supposed to be upstairs force-feeding Pop. I know this sounds bad, but it’s so depressing.’
She was right, it did sound bad.
‘I don’t like that the only time we spend together involves me keeping food from falling out of his mouth,’ she added. ‘If I’m late, one of the nurses does it and I can just slip in afterwards. That way, I get to sit there with him and act like it’s all fine.’
‘What does he . . . ?’
‘Alzheimer’s and heart disease.’
‘That sucks.’
‘Yeah, it does.’
I didn’t know what to say, so I tried a joke. ‘Well, if he ever wants a date . . .’ I tapped the laptop.
‘Please, he’s in a room with Filyo. They’re probably hooking up when nobody’s around,’ Hayley said with a smirk. ‘Nothing too serious, though. He can’t use Viagra or his heart will explode or something.’
I summoned my best Yiayia Filyo impersonation. ‘He no need it!’
Hayley lost it. She laughed in short bursts like a machine gun. When she ran out of ammo, she sighed.
‘How are you getting internet out here?’ she asked.
I waved my mobile.
‘Ah. Geek,’ she said. ‘I have no idea how to do that.’
‘Oh, it’s easy, you just tether your device to . . .’ I caught myself and trailed off.
‘Yeah, geek.’ She was watching the screen. ‘Is that your mum’s profile?’
‘It is.’
‘Can I see?’
I was hesitant to show her, but a female viewpoint couldn’t hurt. I passed her the computer and she gave the profile a look-over.
‘How do I change it?’ she asked.
‘Why? What are you –?’
‘You mention she has kids, for starters,’ Hayley said. ‘No guy wants to know that. Woo him, charm him, move in, put the baggage in the corner when he’s not looking.’
It had gone from a one-off dalliance with somebody else’s advice to a full-blown affair. But she was right.
I reached over and navigated to the Edit menu. Hayley quickly started making alterations.
‘Busy working mum? No, she’s a sexy, mature goddess who works hard and plays harder,’ she said as she typed.
‘But she doesn’t really play hard,’ I said.
‘Buy her a push-up bra, trust me, no guy will be disappointed when he sees her,’ Hayley said. ‘She’s a bit of a MILF.’
I didn’t know how to respond to that. ‘Right, okay.’
‘And this picture’s a bit vanilla.’
It was the only one of Mum I had on my phone. New Year’s Eve, raised champagne flute.
‘Where are her boobs?’ Hayley asked.
‘Attached to her chest?’
‘Yeah, but we can’t see them. Don’t you have a photo that does her a little more justice?’
‘I feared that would attract more Hot_Sex_Hunks than potential husbands,’ I said.
‘Nice guys like boobs too,’ Hayley said. ‘I mean, look.’
She pulled her top down a fraction. My eyes traced a line down her lightly freckled neck to the now-exposed beginning of her cleavage.
‘Can I have your number?’ she asked.
I had forgotten how to breathe. My pulse quickened. And I was staring. Shit. I looked away.
‘Point taken.’
‘Clearly not,’ Hayley said. ‘I asked for your number.’
Before I quite knew what was going on, I was reciting my digits. She punched them into her phone.
‘Bill or Billy?’
‘Either.’
‘Which do you prefer?’
‘Bill.’ I liked them both, but Billy didn’t exactly scream maturity.
She saved me as a contact and readjusted her top.
‘I would have given you my number even if you hadn’t done that,’ I said.
She licked her lips and narrowed her eyes. ‘Yeah, but you enjoyed that a lot more.’
I couldn’t argue with that.
‘So, moral of the story, find another photo,’ she said. ‘Nobody’s going to read her profile if they don’t like the picture. It’ll be your job to tell the difference between the guys who only look at the image before messaging and the guys who look at the image and read the text before messaging.’
‘Right.’ I yawned.
‘Really? I’m boring you, am I? Should I just . . . ?’
I apologised and explained I’d been up since six. I talked her through my brief and unsuccessful attempt to connect with Peter over a faked mutual interest in sport.
‘I don’t think that’s going to work,’ she said. ‘You need to get him somewhere he can’t get away.’
That sounded suss.
‘Like, kidnap him?’ I asked.
‘He’s the brother with dark hair, isn’t he?’
I nodded.
‘I’ve seen him come in. He seems to have an okay relationship with your gran,’ Hayley said. ‘Does she live alone?’
‘Yeah.’
She smiled. ‘Easy. She’s scared someone will break into her place while she’s not there.’
‘No, she’s not.’
‘Yes, she is,’ Hayley said. ‘You get her to call him in, have her say that she wants him to spend the night at her house, just so people think someone’s actually living there, and then you go too. Say she told you to be there as well.’
‘And he won’t leave because she asked him,’ I said.
Hayley nodded. ‘Exactly. You’ll get a chance to talk.’
Mum had peppered framed photographs throughout the house. Visitors could trace my evolution from a dimple-cheeked, big-eared young boy with wild, curly hair and a gap between his front teeth big enough to slot a two-dollar coin through, to a dimple-cheeked, big-eared young man with wild, curly hair and
an excellent orthodontist. But they’d be hard-pressed to find many pictures of Mum. She wasn’t big on photographs of herself. She rarely posed for them and, even then, she rarely let someone save them after she’d had a look.
Hayley had given Mum’s profile image the thumbs down and I needed to find a more . . . flattering alternative. I found one eventually, in the cabinet upstairs. Mum in a strapless bridesmaid dress at her cousin’s wedding ten years ago. I angled my phone at it and took a shot.
While that was uploading, I updated my status.
BillyTsiolkas
If only you knew what my life has become.
Just now
It didn’t take Sticks long to call.
‘What has your life become?’ he asked. Not even a hello.
‘Nothing, I was just . . . bucket-listing.’
‘Ah. How did yesterday go?’
‘Horribly.’ I told him about the sixteen messages.
He wasn’t too disheartened. We’d try again.
‘Actually, I was thinking of doing something different,’ I said.
I was uneasy about deviating from his plan.
‘Oh?’
I cleared my throat. ‘Yeah. Um. I was thinking, instead of having them text, we just organise a date and then drop her right in it,’ I said.
Sticks was quiet.
‘I dunno, that seems a bit –’
‘Extreme? Nah, I prefer to think of it as exciting,’ I defended. ‘Romantic, even.’ It had sounded more convincing when Hayley had said it.
‘It could work, but it’s risky. We could only do it once.’
‘I know.’
‘And we’d have to keep an eye on her, make sure he isn’t a total nut job.’
I didn’t like the idea of spying on Mum while she was on her date, but I thought of the next best thing. ‘They could have dinner at your brother’s restaurant. He could keep watch.’
‘That works. Anyway, you free tonight? I was thinking, I could get Dad to drive us to the movies.’
I said that I was busy.
He asked what I was doing.
I told him about that morning’s failed jog and about the other new plan – that Yiayia was, as we spoke, tearfully manipulating Peter into spending the night at hers, so he would feel obliged to stay even if I showed up and persistently tried to connect with him.
The First Third Page 8