I Have a Bed Made of Buttermilk Pancakes

by Jaclyn Moriarty

  She looked again for Listen in the crowd but could not see her. She was turning, then, about to head to the teachers’ car park, but something caught her eye.

  Listen Taylor was slinking towards the school’s front lawn – and had just ducked underneath the fence.

  From her hiding spot on the 2nd grade balcony, underneath the bag rack, Cassie watched the Year 7 girls for a moment. Dressed in jeans, they were kicking pillows at each other.

  Then she turned back to Ms Murphy.

  Ms Murphy was gone from her seat. She was running through the front school gate. Trying to escape!

  Cassie clambered out from beneath the bag rack and rushed down the 2nd grade stairs.

  Stop it! Fancy thought. Stop with these childish games and rules! You can’t wait for permission to have an affair! You can’t wait for permission to leave! You have to be grown up and make things happen on your own. You have to face the truth: there is no love left.

  Now, trembling on the front porch, Fancy struggled to argue back, setting up the cue cards of her love for Radcliffe. But all she could see were squabbling seagulls, the inside of a hotel lobby and the neat italic typeset of that recurring sentence: how is your ocean bream, my love? How is your ocean bream?

  Marbie, pressing the phone to her ear, waited through a malted milkshake transaction. She heard a brief exchange about cricket and the jangling of cash register and change.

  ‘Marbie?’ Vernon’s voice was there again, and she could hardly breathe. ‘Marbie,’ he said. ‘So, this sounds bad, but you know, she’s at the school camp so . . . Could you post me that paper she wrote?’

  ‘Okay,’ whispered Marbie. His voice had turned cold and final again.

  ‘Anyway,’ he said, even colder. ‘Why so interested in Listen? You haven’t exactly been thinking of her up to now.’

  She tried to hold on to her tears.

  ‘Marbie?’ he said, now sounding almost rough.

  ‘Vernon, I’ve thought of Listen constantly through all of this.’ She made herself speak, and as she did, her voice began to build. ‘I hate myself for what I did to you, but I wanted to be like a mother to Listen and look what I’ve done. Haven’t you noticed that I love your little sister as much as I love you?’

  Now Vernon was silent, breathing quietly. ‘You know, Marbie,’ he said eventually, ‘I’d have forgiven you almost right away if it hadn’t been for Listen.’

  There was the distant sound of a jangling door and Vernon shouted, ‘WE’RE NOT OPEN.’ His voice returned to the phone, softer and quieter. ‘See,’ he said, ‘I’d have given you years to make up your mind about me, and to have affairs, if it wasn’t for Listen. I can’t put her through that uncertainty.’

  ‘But I’ve made up my mind,’ said Marbie breathlessly. ‘I know it didn’t seem like it, but I didn’t want to have an affair, I was always sure of you. If I could see you, I could try to explain how it happened. But I would never never do it again. Never. I can’t believe how much I miss you.’

  ‘Are you sure you should be going away this weekend?’ said Vernon. ‘You sound like you’ve got a cold.’

  ‘I know,’ said Marbie. ‘But I told Mum I would go to this festival, and she loves it when we show an interest in balloons. I think you should come too.’

  Vernon was silent. ‘So you met this guy at the Night Owl Pub?’ he said, eventually.

  ‘He asked me to play a game of tennis.’

  ‘Tennis. How was he?’

  ‘Well, pretty good, a lot better than me. He said he played C-grade competition. But you played A-grade, didn’t you?’

  There was a strange clanging noise, which could have been Vernon stacking and unstacking silver cups.

  After a while he said, ‘You think there’s a tennis court someplace near your mother’s festival?’

  Cath thought of calling out to Listen Taylor, but it seemed the wrong thing. Somehow, it seemed more professional to take the entry gate of the school and follow at a lurking crouch.

  The girl darted across the street, and Cath darted not far behind her.

  Now she walked fast along the footpath, turned down a side street and stopped at a bus stop.

  Cath stepped back behind a hedge.

  When she thought of squabbling seagulls, Fancy thought of Radcliffe being childish and greedy.

  When she thought of hotel lobbies, she thought of herself, running from Radcliffe, checking in to glamorous hotels.

  When she thought ‘how is your ocean bream, my love?’, she pictured, suddenly, an ageing couple in a restaurant. The man was asking his wife, in a loving, interested voice: how is your bream?

  And Fancy understood. She herself would never be part of such a couple, because Radcliffe would never care about her ocean bream.

  Panicked, she reminded herself of Radcliffe’s wedding proposal: the shoe polish mud, the winding trees, and Radcliffe clicking a photo of her: ‘I would like to marry you and everything about you.’ She waited for the usual rush of contentment – her husband loved her and everything about her! – but instead was amazed. Why had she never thought of this before?

  I would like to marry you and everything about you.

  He meant the Zing Family Secret.

  He meant the Friday night meetings, the hidden cameras, the network of suburban spies. He meant the edicts from Nikolai Valerio, the labyrinthine corporate structure, and the romantic ideal of Cath: a more beautiful, meticulously sculpted version of Fancy herself. He loved the Secret more than he loved her. He loved it more than his own daughter. He was so overcome with the thrill of meeting Cath he hardly gave a thought to Cassie’s bee sting.

  It was settled. Fancy was going to have to leave him.

  The 382 pulled up and Listen climbed aboard. Cath leapt from behind the hedge and knocked on the closing bus door, which reluctantly opened to let her aboard. She slipped into the front seat and bowed her head.

  Cassie skidded through the gates of the school in time to see Ms Murphy hop on to a bus. The bus pulled away at high speed.

  Nice try, she thought, with a grim little nod, and began to run.

  It was the Olympic run. It was the run she had started on the iced-over playground, and now she was going to finish it. She would run as fast as that bus.

  She pounded the footpath ferociously, her eye always on the bus. Sometimes, she had to run across three lanes of traffic as a shortcut.

  When Listen got off the bus, Cath got off behind her. Listen skittered around a corner. Cath stopped at a real estate agent to smile at the pictures in the windows, but after an agonising moment, she gave chase again.

  Listen, she saw, had arrived at a blond-brick house, alongside a local high school. But the girl did not go to the front door. She lowered herself to a crouch and darted around the back of the house. From further along the pathway, Cath waited for a few minutes. Then she also lowered herself and darted to the back of a house.

  There was a large back yard lined with a wire fence through which you could see the empty grounds of the school next door. In one corner of the yard there was a tall gum tree with a swing. A few metres away there was a large timber shed, painted olive-green. The yard was empty. The girl must have gone into the shed.

  Cath ran across the lawn. She stopped, looked around embarrassed, and knocked on the door.

  There was no reply, so she opened the door. She wiped her feet on the ‘WELCOME’ mat and walked into the Zing Garden Shed.

  THE GARDEN SHED

  ‘But I just got to work,’ said Radcliffe, reasonably.

  Fancy, however, was insistent. She needed to meet him right away, at the Muffin Break in Castle Hill. He eventually agreed.

  ‘I asked you to meet me,’ said Fancy, taking a deep breath, ‘because I want to talk about us.’ She stirred her cappuccino into chocolate swirls. At a table nearby, two young women were looking through a pile of photos.

  ‘They’ve been to Fiji,’ Radcliffe said, nodding at the women’s table. ‘Lots of tropical isla
nd shots.’

  ‘How do you know it’s Fiji? It could be Tahiti.’

  Radcliffe turned back to Fancy, and assumed a concerned expression. ‘This is about the Parent-teacher night, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘I thought you were a bit too quick to get over that this morning. But seriously, Fance, I’ll do whatever I can to make it up to you.’

  ‘This is not about the Parent-teacher night. This is not about Cath.’

  ‘See that?’ said Radcliffe. ‘They’ve taken some panorama shots. Doesn’t Fiji look great?’

  Vernon drove while Marbie curled in the passenger seat with a fresh box of tissues. They followed Marbie’s parents, and at every set of traffic lights, her mother waved excitedly in the rear-vision mirror.

  Cath was vaguely surprised at what she saw. She had expected spider webs, rusty nails, mud-encrusted shovels. Also, possibly, red-bellied black snakes curled inside of gumboots. Instead, the shed was a spacious, post-and-beam construction, with a high ceiling and polished floorboards. A cluster of high-backed wooden chairs were set up in the centre of the room and there was a slightly raised platform at the far end. On the platform was a microphone, and a white screen on a stand. The wall stretching away from the entrance was lined with filing cabinets in unexpected colours such as spearmint and lilac. A bank of television monitors was set up along the opposite wall. Also, there were pot plants in corners and vases of yellow tulips scattered about.

  On either side of the doorway where Cath now stood, there were slender, ornate bookshelves, holding rows of photo albums and piles of manila folders. On the top shelf of each bookcase, two white candles stood in saucers, flickering dimly. The candles seemed curiously pointless because the room was lit like a film set with bright track-lighting. There were no windows, although a beam of sun from a single skylight hit the far wall.

  Just below this skylight, and behind the platform, the girl, Listen Taylor, was sitting on the floor and staring at her.

  ‘Hello!’ called Cath, squinting down the room.

  ‘Hello,’ said Listen, shifting slightly so that she was in the shadows.

  She decided she had better approach Listen, but as she made her way across the garden shed she felt oddly foolish, like someone heading up to the spotlight with nothing to perform.

  Cassie ran along calmly. She was several blocks behind the bus but that was not her fault. A car had blocked her path when she tried to cross the highway and she had had to run back to the traffic island.

  Anyway, the bus was no longer important. She had seen it stop a few moments ago, and two people had stepped into the street. One of them was Ms Murphy. Also, she had seen the corner where Ms Murphy turned: it was the road where her grandparents lived.

  Cath saw an overnight bag on the floor by Listen’s feet, and standing neatly alongside the bag: a bottle of wine, a loaf of bread, cheese, olives and chocolate brownies.

  ‘Hello!’ she said again, standing opposite Listen, awkwardly.

  The girl looked up at her.

  ‘Having a party?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘I’m from your school!’ said Cath, suddenly realising that Listen might not know her. ‘I mean from Redwood. I’m Cassie’s teacher, you know Cassie Zing? I’m her teacher, Ms Murphy. And I saw you – I noticed you running away.’

  Listen, she realised, was not looking at her. She was staring just over her shoulder, towards the doorway of the shed. They were both silent.

  After a while, Cath said, ‘Did you light those candles?’

  Listen nodded. ‘I’m not going to drink the wine, you know.’

  ‘Okay. Are you meeting somebody here?’

  Listen shook her head. She was leaning against the wall of the shed, her legs stretched out before her, and now at last she looked Cath in the eye.

  ‘Well,’ began Cath, ‘are you planning to spend the weekend here?’

  ‘No.’ The girl was barely whispering. ‘No, I’m not staying, I’m just – can you please leave me alone?’

  Fancy told Radcliffe she wanted a trial separation. The girls with the Fiji photos raised their eyebrows at one another, and bowed their heads sideways to listen.

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Radcliffe, jocular. ‘I said I was sorry. I’m going to fix it, Fancy. I’ll set up a meeting with your sister somehow.’

  ‘You don’t understand,’ said Fancy, ‘this is not your fault.’

  ‘Well whose fault is it then?’ he said crossly.

  ‘I think we should go home.’ Fancy pushed her chair back.

  ‘I need to go to work.’ Radcliffe looked distracted.

  ‘I’m trying to leave you, Radcliffe.’

  ‘No you’re not.’

  ‘I’m not going anywhere,’ said Cath.

  ‘It’s okay,’ said Listen. ‘I’m allowed to be here. This shed belongs to a family I know called the Zings. They’re Cassie’s grandparents?’ She tried to shrug, casual, but stopped at the sound of a knock at the door.

  A tiny figure stood in the doorway, dark in the sunlight.

  ‘There you are!’ she cried, pointing at Cath, and now they recognised her.

  ‘Cassie! What are you doing here?’

  ‘I didn’t know you were here, Listen. We’re not allowed to be in here, remember?’

  Cassie wandered into the shed. ‘Finally, I get to see it.’ She gazed up at the high ceiling and along the walls. ‘Who’s the girl in that photo? Is that me?’

  ‘Cassie, did you run away from school?’ said Cath. ‘Did anyone see you leave the school? How did you get here?’

  Cassie had wandered over to a small framed photograph sitting on top of a filing cabinet.

  ‘I don’t think it’s you, Cassie’ said Listen, joining her at the cabinet. ‘It looks a bit like Fancy or Marbie though.’

  ‘Look,’ said Cath, getting up as well, and marching over. ‘Why don’t we all get a tax – who did you say that girl was?’

  In the living room, home again, Fancy tried to convince Radcliffe that she wanted him to move out for a while.

  ‘Like a holiday?’ he said, not taking this seriously, little dimples around his mouth. ‘You want me to take a holiday? Fance, girl, aren’t you the one who needs a break?’

  ‘I need to stay and take care of Cassie!’

  ‘Well . . .’ He put his thumb to his mouth, and played with his lower lip, thoughtfully. ‘I suppose I could go and stay in Vernon’s caravan out the back of the Banana Bar. No! That’s no good. Vernon’s living there, isn’t he? Marbie and Vernon have split up. Marbie had an affair.’

  Fancy realised he was trying to give her a complicated message. ‘I know you didn’t have an affair,’ she said. ‘I know there’s no reason. It’s just something I want you to do.’

  ‘Hey,’ said Marbie. ‘It looks like Mum and Dad are stopping.’

  ‘You sound like a girl with a cold,’ said Vernon, pulling over behind the Zings.

  ‘She’s pointing at that café,’ said Marbie. ‘We’ll have to cross the highway to get to it.’

  ‘Oh well,’ said Vernon.

  Cath was staring fiercely at the photo in the frame when Cassie began opening filing cabinet drawers.

  ‘I had a denim skirt just like that,’ Cath said. ‘And I’m sure I had earrings like – and that background, can you see what that sign says, Listen?’ Politely, Listen examined the photo.

  ‘Pets,’ announced Cassie from the filing cabinet. ‘Knee. Broken here – broken hee-arr. Broken hearts.’

  Cath and Listen looked up from the photo.

  ‘Cassie, are you allowed to be looking at those things?’ Cath said, but as she spoke, she was wandering over to Cassie and the filing cabinet. ‘I mean,’ she said, while she moved her eyes over the files in the drawer, ‘do you know what your grandparents use this place for? I guess it’s probably private!’ She glimpsed two labels as she closed the drawer: ‘Nightmares’ and ‘Potential Recruits’.

  Cassie, undeterred by Cath, opened the next drawer down and pulled
out a handful of papers. ‘Can you read this for me?’ she said, handing a small piece of cardboard to Cath.

  ‘Maybe you shouldn’t,’ murmured Listen.

  ‘It’s some kind of ad,’ said Cath, taking it in a teacherly manner, and beginning to read. ‘Wouldn’t it be better to know what’s going on in your home or office at all times? Now you can! Our top-of-the-range pocket radio receivers provide superb sound sensitivity, so you can listen even to whispers! Range is up to 500 metres.’

  ‘I wonder if we should be looking at this,’ said Listen.

  ‘Are they spies or something?’ Cath said excitedly, opening another cabinet drawer and quickly closing it again. ‘Listen, do you think you could get into the house and phone up Redwood? To tell them that Cassie is here? In case they’re worried.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Listen, ‘but I don’t think we should look at this.’

  ‘Hey,’ called Cassie, who had moved to one of the bookshelves. ‘I just found a whole lot of photos of that girl!’

  Radcliffe yawned, stretched, and said: ‘I suppose I should fetch my toothbrush!’

  He glinted at her, but Fancy said, ‘All right then,’ and they narrowed their eyes at one another for a moment.

  Radcliffe walked down the hallway at the slow, steady pace of a bridesmaid.

  ‘It’s not a joke!’ said Fancy, behind him.

  ‘Of course not!’ agreed Radcliffe, and grinned. ‘It’s a holiday!’

  She watched as he packed his toiletries bag. He packed toothpaste, toothbrush, shaving cream and razors, and three cotton buds from the pack.

  ‘I’ve been using this to paint the wart on the back of my heel,’ said Radcliffe, picking up the nail polish remover. ‘Mind if I take it along?’