Love and Muddy Puddles

by Cecily Anne Paterson

  Chapter 22

   

   

  Charlie was still mad at me three days later. She would hardly look at me and her answers to my deliberately polite questions were snippy and short. For myself, I had decided to put the fight behind me. If she wanted to be unforgiving, that was her problem. The fact was, I had something much more important on my mind: how to convince Mum to let me go to Saffron’s party.

  For three whole days I gave it my best shot and used every trick in my repertoire. And yes, there are a few different methods I know. I list them here in case someone ever needs them.

  Coco’s definitive list to getting her own way

  Hoping: always try this first. If you can get what you want from simply mentioning it in a positive, hopeful tone of voice, you can save a lot of energy.

  Being nice: doing helpful things, giving back rubs and generally being pleasant to be around can work wonders. Watch for the happy surprised look to come across their faces and then move in with your request.

  Writing convincing letters: if you can show parents all the reasons why they should let you do it and write down effective rebuttals to the reasons why you know they won’t let you do it, they’ll be so impressed at your initiative, education and maturity that they just might say yes anyway.

  Pleading: when positive approaches don’t work, you move on to pleading. This is best done with a plaintive voice and lots of long ‘pleases’. Big eyes are essential but you have to be careful not to bat eyelashes otherwise it looks like obvious manipulation.

  Sobbing: ranges from a subtle, choked up voice through to outright blubbering. Crying real tears if you can possibly swing it looks more realistic.

  Begging: along the same lines as pleading but it has to come from a helpless, hopeless, pathetic mindset.

  Threatening: you have to be careful not to go too far as it may backfire badly, but hinting about how miserable you can make someone else’s life if you don’t get what you want can really be effective.

  Bluffing: the next step along from threatening. You have to be convincing and definite about the fact that you really can carry out the threat you’ve made.

  Mum ignored my hopeful mentions and looked doubtful when I suggested that she sit down and let me wash up for her. When I brought out my page full of arguments as to why I should go, she said, “Could I please read this later? I’m very tired tonight.” She endured two days of pleading and begging and just before I hit threatening and bluff she said these words: “Okay, Coco. You can go if you ask your father.”

  “What?” I spluttered. “Really?”

  “Yes,” she said. She had an annoyingly superior smile on her face. “You’ll actually have to look in his face, use words, ask him a question and then listen for the answer. Do all of this without rudeness or rolling your eyes and you can go.”

  “Okay,” I said, very careful to keep my eyes perfectly still. “Okay. Thanks Mum.”

  I walked down the end of the paddock. Dad was up at the house site. I was torn. And confused. It was a bit like in cartoons where the character has to decide between a good choice and a bad choice. They have an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other and both of them are saying different things. This felt the same except that, oddly, the angel and the devil kept switching sides.

  First, the angel said, “Remember your principle? You’re not talking to him because you promised you wouldn’t. Do you really want to go back on your word for a party? You’ve got no integrity.”

  The devil answered: “Come on, it’s a party. Just say whatever you have to say and you’ll get to go. Who cares about principles and promises and yada yada yada. Just go talk to your dad already.”

  You would think at this point the angel would have argued back to the devil, but to my surprise he (or she—who knew?) actually agreed. “Well, Coco, you know it’s the right thing to go to talk to your dad. You can’t be angry with him forever. Are you going to still not be talking to him when you’re 18? Are you enjoying this? Really? You must be missing him, even just a little bit.”

  Just to make it all more confusing, the devil then disagreed. “No, don’t talk to him. You’re mad. Stay mad. Punish him for wrecking your life.”

  “Shut up already!” I said—out loud. I had a quick look around to make sure no one was looking. “I can’t even think.”

  But then I decided. And it was a decision that was purely based on what was practical. I would ask Dad. I did want to go the party, plus it was kind of annoying not being able to talk to him here and there, especially when Mum was out and I needed to know where the bread was or if the phone was charged or something important like that. As for the principle, well, I’d kept my word for like, nearly nine months, which is pretty impressive when you think about it. The only thing I didn’t want to deal with was the second last reason. “You can’t live angry with him forever.”

  Maybe that’s true, I thought, but I’m not ready to forgive him just yet. I’m just asking to go to a party. How hard can it be?

  It was harder than I thought.

  I walked up to the house site. Dad was kneeling on the concrete slab messing around with some mortar. I stood about two metres from him.

  “Dad,” I said. “Hey, Dad.”

  He looked up and around and when he saw it was me his face looked confused. His eyes shifted from side to side, like he was checking that he’d heard right.

  “Dad,” I said. “Can I talk to you?” Now I suddenly felt nervous. I kicked the toe of my gumboot on the ground and chewed my lips.

  “Hang on,” he said. He put down his trowel and wiped his fingers on his pants. Then he stood up, all the way up. I had forgotten how tall he was.

  He stood there for a minute, just quiet. The silence between us seemed to be swaying, vibrating almost, with its own aliveness. He kept waiting. He didn’t say anything. He just stood and looked at me, but his face wasn’t angry. It wasn’t even impatient, or expectant or needy or anything else you might have thought. He just kind of looked at me like he was seeing me again for the first time. Or maybe it was that he had been seeing me for a long time, but I’d never noticed it. Maybe it was me seeing him seeing me for the first time. Or something. Whatever it was, it was warm. And rich. And full.

  And all of a sudden I could see that inside me was an enormous dark, raging pit and I knew that was the place where I was angry but I also knew that whatever it was I was getting from Dad at that exact minute could help to fill it up and I nearly wanted to cry.

  But I held it together.

  “Um, Dad. I wanted to ask you a question,” I said. I could see the corners of his mouth starting to curl up but he was trying to control it, just like me.

  “Sure,” he said. He waited some more.

  “It’s about a party in Sydney my friends are having. Mum said if I asked you, I could go.”

  He was still looking at me, still warm. Now my mouth was starting to curl into a smile and we were both just kind of half smiling at each other like we both got the hidden joke in all of this but we were going to keep it as our secret.

  “No problem,” he said, finally. “Do you want me to take you up and bring you back again?”

  “If you like,” I said. And then I thought for another minute and spoke again. “Yeah. That would be nice.”

  And I turned and ran back to the shed but as I did, I looked back and I could see that his face was one big grin and then mine was too and it was weird but it felt like my body was actually lighter and I could run quicker because of it and the big black pit of rage inside was slightly smaller and less scary because really, when it comes down to it, if you and your dad are friends again, there’s not that much that can frighten you.