Shauna's Great Expectations

by Kathleen Loughnan

  All he had to do was slam the door or start swearing or punching the wall and my parents would throw their hands in the air and give in. It seemed like nothing was more important to them than keeping the peace and being liked, no matter what the price. My parents both had the crap beaten out of them as children, and they wanted Jamie and me to grow up without violence. We had happy childhoods and they never hit us, but they never really confronted us either. The boundaries got hazier the older and mouthier we got.

  When Dad was away on the road and Mum was on her own with us, it was much worse. She could never get Jamie out of bed in the morning, or into bed at night, not even when he was quite young. Rather than have a fight with him, she let him stay up late watching TV or roaming the streets with his friends. It sounds so silly, but I think that’s where Jamie’s problems started – bed, and my parents’ inability to get him into one. Once they lost control of that, they lost control over other areas, too.

  Before he hit puberty, Jamie was a beautiful kid. He was fun and bubbly, and I looked up to him like he was Jesus. He was everyone’s favourite – lively, funny and sweet. I was always a serious child and people didn’t take to me the way they took to my brother. I never envied him, though, because he didn’t seem like a child to me. To me, seven years his junior, he was a grown-up. There are photos of him carrying me on his hip when I was baby. According to Mum, he used to carry me around like that all day. When I was on his hip or in his lap, I was always happy. As early as I can remember, I was caught up in his charisma and had a huge appetite for his attention. He was my world, right up until he started to be a man.

  I was flattened by Jamie’s death, but I wasn’t broken by it the way my parents were. I think it was because I’d already lost him a few years before he died. It’s hard to say exactly when it happened. I think that the rock incident made me realise that he was making fun of me all the time. I’ve always hated being laughed at and I think that’s where it comes from. At the beginning I did my best to laugh along with him and make out that the horrible pranks he played didn’t hurt my feelings, but eventually I gave up. He became a first-class dickhead, and I say that not because of the thieving or the vandalism, but because he treated me like dirt.

  In the end Jamie had no respect for my feelings or belongings. On the night of his death, he’d just stolen my computer after returning from a two-month stint in juvenile detention for burglary. Dad refused to confront him about it, but I had the nous to do it. Jamie called me a bitch and a slut and told me to rack off, before retrieving the laptop, throwing it at me, and then driving off in Dad’s car. Dad gave him the keys.

  Jamie had received counselling in juvy as part of his sentence, so my parents had some faith that he’d return to us in better shape. That’s the only explanation I can think of for Dad letting him have the keys. It’s a decision he’s been punishing himself for ever since. Mum blames him a bit, too, but if it was his fault, then it was as much her fault. I wish they’d been stricter with both of us.

  After all that’s happened I still love Mum and Dad to bits. I see no point in giving them a hard time because they do a good enough job of that themselves. I try to be kind to them always, even when they drive me up the wall with their feebleness and ignorance. Even if you only have one smile, you’ve got to give it to the people you love, right?

  After I get off the phone, I go back downstairs and look for Jenny. In her upbeat, love-struck mood, I’m hoping to find a different reality. Though she knows all about my brother’s death, she doesn’t know that today is the anniversary. I’d never burden her with that. I wouldn’t even dump it on Lou-Anne’s strong shoulders.

  The Oakholme minibus hits the road later that afternoon, practically trembling with the anticipation of its occupants.

  ‘It’s the nerds’ day out,’ I joke to Jenny, and we both crack up. One of the science teachers, Miss Pemberton, is chaperoning us, and Mr Tizic, the school groundskeeper and handyman and apparently the only employee with a minibus licence, is driving. I really do feel sorry for him, getting unwanted, behind-the-scenes insights into the behaviour of overexcited teenage girls.

  ‘Crank up the radio, Miss P,’ someone shouts from the back of the bus.

  Miss Pemberton, who, in spite of her youthful title, is a little old lady, does as she’s told and we all sing along to some unspeakably lame chart-topper until we arrive at St Augustine’s.

  With such a mammoth build-up, there’s no way the revision session can be anything but an anticlimax. There’s no meet-and-greet, no cordial and Tim Tams, just a bunch of clean-cut boys in blazers sitting on one side of a classroom that has a million-dollar view of the harbour. It’s not that view we’re interested in, though. I can’t help stealing a look at Stephen Agliozzo’s rower’s shoulders as I pass by. Jenny alternates between gaping at his Romanesque curly hair and fiddling with her pencil case.

  ‘There you go,’ she whispers, wriggling and squeezing. ‘There he is! He is smart enough, after all.’

  ‘Paris,’ I remind her in a whisper.

  One of the St Augustine’s teachers, who introduces himself as Dr Peters, hands out a roadmap of Introduction to Legal Systems and Methods and a proposed study timetable, then gets right to the point. He talks about the style of assessment at university and how it differs from the HSC.

  By the end of the hour, my brain’s starting to hurt and Jenny still hasn’t stopped looking at Stephen Agliozzo. Miss Pemberton manages to corral us back into the bus, avoiding even minimal fraternisation with the opposite sex.

  ‘I thought you were wonderful ambassadors of Oakholme College,’ she sighs as she counts heads in the minibus. ‘You comported yourselves with grace, dignity and intelligence.’

  The phrase ‘ambassadors of Oakholme College’ is often bandied around, usually during assemblies and by Mrs Green. It used to irk me that I should be an unwilling representative of a school I didn’t fit into, a school that felt so sorry for people like me that it waived my fees, but now that I’m a seasoned old biddy of seventeen, I’m beginning to see why it matters. Behaviour matters. Manners matter. Even when people who have no manners seem to rise to the top of the pile, it’s about what you do.

  Actually I think that Miss P is just happy to have all of us back on the bus in one piece. The teachers are always so tense at ‘mixed’ events like these, and I’m sure it’s a contributing factor to the rampant boy craziness. The politeness and etiquette have a tension, an edge of danger.

  The excitement in the minibus on the trip back to Oakholme is just as loud and flappy as it was on the trip to St Augustine’s. It’s hard not to get caught up in it, because the trip to St Augustine’s wasn’t just about Year 12 boys in blazers, it was also about our future. A future that’s becoming wider, further-flung and less fathomable. It’s giddy-making.

  As we drive along New South Head Road, I look out onto the harbour, shimmering brilliantly under an early autumn sun. The sun usually shines on the anniversary of Jamie’s death, or something wonderful happens. It’s like the world is mostly cruel, but just kind enough to think of something to stop me losing all faith. If I believed in magic, I’d say that Jamie was trying to cheer me up. Or rub my nose in it.

  On this day and many others each year, I want to forget about Jamie’s anger. I don’t want to think about the three-day benders and the fights in the street and the Children’s Court. One of the reasons I try to invoke good memories on this day is to crowd out the bad ones. My brother was a lovely kid who became an angry young man. My parents didn’t know what to do with his anger, how to channel it or break it down. There was nowhere for his fury to go except around and around our house and finally into a gum tree.

  Even some of the happy memories have angry roots. Why fool a little kid with a box of rocks for Christmas unless you’re mad at the world? He obviously wanted me to taste the disappointment he felt all the time.

  Still, today, the sun is shining. And I will believe that it’s Jamie trying to make it u
p to me.

  Then we get back to Oakholme, and just as I’m powering past the reproving eyes of the Reverend Doctor Sterling McBride, Miss Maroney catches me on the staircase. She’s in her netball gear and seems to be in a rush.

  ‘Phone call for you this afternoon from someone called Nathan O’Brien.’ She can’t help but smirk as she says his name. ‘Number’s on the call register. You can phone him back, but no more than five minutes, okay? The queue’s huge.’

  At times like these it gets up my nose that the girls who can afford their own phones aren’t allowed to use them. I have an important call to make to a cute boy, and I have to wait for everyone else to finish their banal conversations.

  I force myself to go upstairs and unpack my bag before running (almost squealing) back down to Miss Maroney’s office, my friends trailing and teasing me. Like everyone else in the dorm, they know about Nathan’s call.

  Today’s been quite the shit pie. Very high quality pastry. At Oakholme College there is nothing quite so hallowed as getting a phone call from a Real Live Boy. Especially if you’re not around to take it.

  7

  ON SATURDAY AFTER prep. the powers-that-be at Oakholme College release us boarders from captivity and we’re free to hit the mean streets of Sydney in our civvies. All we have to do is sign out and be back by six.

  Lou-Anne, Indu, Bindi and I pile into Bindi’s brother’s Alfa Romeo and hit the road.

  Bindi’s at the wheel. She has her learner’s permit and her brother, James, is helping her notch up some hours. It’s not a relaxing experience for anyone concerned. Bindi’s not one of those calm drivers, and it doesn’t help that James shouts at her while pumping an imaginary brake with his Bruno Magli boot and occasionally grabbing the steering wheel. Lou-Anne, Indu and I sit stiffly in the back seat trying to avoid injury and nausea as the nipple-pink Alfa lurches and swerves, sometimes across more than one lane, around the eastern suburbs of Sydney.

  ‘Why do you keep accelerating to sixty and then braking back down to fifty?’ barks James, his forehead popping sweat. ‘Why not take your foot off the pedal when you hit fifty?’

  ‘I never go past fifty!’ Bindi shrieks in reply. ‘It just looks like I do because you’re seeing the speedo from an angle.’

  James whips around to face us. ‘Did she go past sixty, girls?’

  We all shrug. James rolls his eyes. ‘I’d like to get to Bondi Beach in one piece.’ He turns to face the front again. ‘Bindi! You just ran a stop sign!’

  ‘I did not!’

  ‘There was a stop sign back there. There’s been a stop sign there for the last ten years.’

  ‘Well, they must have moved it,’ hisses Bindi.

  James pumps the imaginary brake again and sulks. ‘Yeah, they must have moved it,’ he mutters sarcastically.

  James and Bindi are the eldest and the youngest of four Coroneos children. James’s a lawyer, and the middle siblings, Anastasia and Nick, are law students. Somehow Bindi’s dad, who works on a strawberry farm in southwestern Sydney, has managed to pay for their education. Bindi’s mum died of pancreatic cancer a few years ago and her father shacked up with a ‘skippy’ woman Bindi refers to as The Skank. That’s why Bindi’s at boarding school. She can’t stand to be under the same roof as The Skank. During school holidays she gets passed between her brothers and sisters. Apparently it’s very normal in Greek families for children to completely reject a step-parent like that. My uncle Mick, Andrew’s father, is Greek, so I understand a bit about their culture.

  I don’t think I’ve ever met siblings as close-knit as the Coroneoses. Bindi talks to all of them every day (frustrating for those behind her in the boarding house phone queue) and even though about half their conversations are fights, they absolutely have each other’s backs. I suppose one disadvantage of being so close to your family is that sometimes it stops you from needing close friends. With Bindi, I always feel that there’s a barrier between us that has less to do with skin colour and more to do with a lack of interest on her part. She prefers, and is more loyal towards, her family, and that’s that. But she’s still great fun to be around, and no fool either.

  We make it to Bondi a little worse for wear. Because there’s never any free parking at the beach, we leave the car in the driveway of a colleague of James’s. Bindi takes out said colleague’s letterbox on the way in, though it’s as much James’s fault because he grabs the wheel while she’s turning.

  ‘That’s the most appalling driving I’ve ever seen!’ roars James while examining the scratch on the bonnet mournfully.

  Bindi, Lou-Anne, Indu and I grab our satchels and hightail it down to the beach.

  ‘You’d better be back here by five,’ James yells after us, ‘or I’m leaving without you!’

  James would never do that.

  ‘And you’d better not be meeting any boys here, or I’ll call all your parents!’

  He’d never do that either.

  ‘God, how does he know?’ I whisper to Bindi.

  ‘He has two sisters and two daughters,’ she explains. ‘He knows everything. He won’t call your parents, Shauna. Don’t worry.’

  The fact is, this whole girls’ day out at the beach is just a big cover for my date with Nathan O’Brien. When I plucked up the courage to call him back earlier in the week, he told me he was coming to Sydney to visit his cousin, who lives in Surry Hills, and suggested that we ‘hook up’.

  It was very weird speaking to him after all that time. He sounded different on the phone, older but less confident. Maybe it was nerves. I was really jumpy, too. My words spilled out fast and loud. I blathered about the HSC, about Paris next year. I didn’t know what else to talk about. All the topics I could think of seemed either too big or too small, considering what we’d already done.

  ‘And what about you?’ I asked finally, almost panting, having spent myself on my own soliloquy.

  ‘Next year?’ he said in his quiet, soft-edged drawl. ‘Next year I’m coming to the city.’

  ‘This city? Sydney, you mean?’

  ‘Yeah. I’m going to study agriculture at Sydney Uni. I’m going to flat with some mates from school.’

  ‘I thought you hated Sydney?’

  ‘I do, but you’ve got to get an education somewhere.’

  ‘And you’re going to go back to your parents’ farm after that?’

  ‘Well, maybe . . . see, Shauna, I want to work in agriculture, but I don’t want to work on a farm all my life. I see the way my parents work, and it’s not what I want.’

  Even though I was so jittery that the receiver was slipping in the sweat from my palm, it was nice to hear a slow country voice. Try as I might, though, I couldn’t moderate my own voice. Afterwards, I thought I’d sounded clipped and snotty. Obviously Nathan didn’t mind too much because he made a date to meet me at the beach. Little does he know that all three of my dorm buddies are coming with me for moral support. I don’t know that I would have had the stones to show up by myself. I mean, Nathan’s a Wrangler-wearing country boy, maybe not of Keli Street-Hughes’s calibre, but he’s reasonably well-off. His type and my type don’t mix. Not often, anyway.

  Whenever I think about the last time I saw him, in his swag, my cheeks get hot. I can’t picture him exactly, but I do remember his light blue eyes and the way his eyelashes and eyebrows matched the sand blondeness of his untidy hair. I remember how big his shoulders seemed when his shirt came off, compared with his waist.

  It’s a beautiful afternoon, maybe one of the last hot afternoons before the weather turns, and the crescent-shaped shoreline is sparkling. Every tourist and their dog are out today, but the girls and I find a patch of hot white sand to lay our beach towels on. As usual, we all spend a moment taking stock of the thin, blonde, bikini-clad women around us before stripping down to our bathers. Of the four of us, Bindi is the only one who can get away with a bikini, mostly because what’s up top comprehensively distracts the eye from any imperfections below. She’s blessed and she
knows it.

  ‘How do they do it?’ Lou-Anne demands of no one in particular as a pair of two blonde beach babes saunter past without an ounce of fat to jiggle. ‘I could starve myself for weeks and still not look like that.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ says Indu. ‘Black don’t crack. In another twenty years we’ll still look like we do now and they’ll be walking melanomas.’

  We all laugh, but we’re a bit envious, too. Feminine beauty in the eastern suburbs of Sydney has startlingly narrow parameters, and all of us, except maybe Bindi, fall well outside them. It seems like every girl who has managed to squeeze herself into conformity is on this very beach right now. After a few minutes of checking out the overwhelming competition, Indu decides it’s snack time and goes off in search of the waffle stand we saw on the beach a couple of weeks ago. Lou-Anne and I decide to brave the cool, busy waves. Bindi stays on the beach to police our satchels.

  Both Lou-Anne and I are strong swimmers. We go out deep and float in the swell, with just our heads bobbing between the waterline and the sunshine.

  ‘I don’t even like the beach that much,’ says Lou-Anne.

  ‘Neither do I. Too much sand.’

  ‘I just like the sea.’

  ‘Me too.’

  Lou-Anne brings her knees to the surface and then stretches out, floating on her back, her full, brown limbs slick with seawater, glinting in the sun like sealskin. She’s the kind of person you have to look at from different angles and in different moods to appreciate. When she’s uptight or defensive she could be mistaken for a Kings Cross bouncer, but when she’s relaxed and unselfconscious she looks like an island princess.

  We float on our backs for a while and then swim all the way out to the shark net, where there aren’t many people. It’s not rough, but there’s still a swell, and by the time we swim the length of the net and then back into the breakers, we’re both breathing hard.