So it was kind of weird when I got home from school yesterday and there she was, sitting at our kitchen table drinking a cup of hot, milky tea. I’d spent the entire day trying to avoid George and I wasn’t in the mood for chitchat, especially not with Grandma Joan, who made me uncomfortable. But it’s not like I had a choice.
‘Sit down,’ Grandma Joan said when I walked into the kitchen. ‘Sienna. Make your daughter a coffee.’
I could see Mum tense up.
‘How have you been, Grandma?’ I asked.
She had her hair set in a mass of grey curls on the top of her head and she was fatter than ever, wearing some kind of navy kaftan muumuu dress with small yellow roses printed on it. She was the complete opposite of Mum, who was wearing black faux leather leggings and a metallic-grey tank top that draped effortlessly over her super slim torso. On Mum, this looked like a completely appropriate outfit to wear while hanging around the house on a Thursday afternoon.
‘I’m all right for an old girl,’ Grandma Joan said. ‘I was just telling your mother here that I’m selling the house and moving into a retirement village. I’ll be joining all the other old fogies.’
‘It will be good for you,’ Mum said. ‘I think you’ll really like it.’
‘Yeah,’ I agreed. ‘Don’t those places have heaps of activities and cafés?’
‘Well,’ Grandma Joan replied, ‘God’s waiting room requires entertainment.’
‘Mum,’ Mum said.
Mum was trying hard to be polite but it was obvious she was struggling. She came and sat at the table with us, her body visibly on edge, her cup of Matcha green tea held firmly. I could tell she was dying for Grandma Joan to leave, but she didn’t say anything. When it came to Grandma Joan, Mum was like a totally different person. Meek and kind of downtrodden.
‘You’re skin and bone, Sienna,’ Grandma Joan said. ‘What is that horrible drink?’ She turned to me. ‘Your mother eats like a bird. You’d never know she was as plump as a jam donut until she got to about your age, Winter. Like a cherub she was. Only fatter.’
I looked at Mum.
‘I wonder if the same thing will happen to you, Winter,’ Grandma Joan continued. ‘Though it looks like you’ve still got plenty of meat on your bones.’
‘What did the doctor say about your diabetes?’ Mum asked, changing the subject.
‘Oh, I check my sugar every day and it’s fine. I can’t eat sweets you know. And I’m on so much medication.’ She stopped to rummage through her old black vinyl handbag, pulling out one of those day-of-the-week pill dispensers that old people seem to love. ‘Look at this. Blood pressure, heart, sugar, it’s all in here. Dr Grayson tells me I’ve got too much fat on me but I say to him, “I hardly eat anything. I just retain so much fluid”. He’s such a nice man. So handsome.’
‘Well, as long as you’re feeling okay,’ Mum said lamely.
I looked down at my thighs, the way they spread out like pizza dough.
‘Well I don’t want to take up your day.’ Grandma Joan struggled to stand. Even though I was feeling super self-conscious about the ‘meat on my bones’ comment I helped her up as she panted and puffed. Then she did something very, very odd. She gave Mum a hug and said, ‘I love you,’ before letting herself out the front door.
Mum stood stunned.
‘You know,’ Mum said. ‘She has never, ever said that to me in my whole entire life.’
‘That’s strange,’ I said. ‘For a mum.’
‘You don’t pick your family,’ Mum muttered before telling me she was off to Aunt Maggie’s for some more kale and coconut water.
Chapter 12: George Really Is Gay
‘What the hell is going on with you two?’ Melody said. ‘You’ve barely spoken all week.’
‘Should we tell her?’ George looked at me.
‘Look, it’s no big deal,’ I lied. ‘So George and I pashed. Whatever.’
‘You what!?’
You know how in cartoons a character’s eyes literally pop out of their head when something shocks them? Well, that’s kind of what Melody looked like just then.
‘You’re gay!’ she said, turning to George. ‘We’ve been listening to you go on about bloody James Lewis like he’s Ryan Gosling or something.’
‘It was a mistake,’ George said. ‘No big deal.’
‘Yeah,’ I agreed.
And I did. Kind of. I knew that what happened with George and me was weird and awkward and ridiculous and that as much as I loved him, I didn’t love love him. Of course I knew all that. But that didn’t mean that when George said that what had happened between us was a mistake, I didn’t feel like I’d been stabbed with a mean and twisted knife of, well, rejection.
A mistake. He’d just called me a mistake.
‘Well, I’m pissed off,’ Melody said. ‘This could change the whole dynamic of our group. Do I have to choose sides now?’
‘No!’ George and I said in unison.
‘You two had better sort it out, that’s all I’m saying,’ Melody said before stomping off to see the Year 12 maths teacher who was helping her get the perfect grades she needed to get into medicine.
‘What’s wrong?’ George asked.
‘You called me a mistake!’
‘No I didn’t. I said us kissing was a mistake.’
We sat in silence.
‘Wasn’t it?’ George looked at me quizzically.
‘Yes, but still …’ I couldn’t help myself, tears started falling down my cheeks. ‘It’s because I’m fat, isn’t it?’
‘What are you talking about?’ George put his arm around my shoulders.
‘You think I’m fat and ugly.’ I was bawling by now. I couldn’t help it. Nobody would love me and it was all my fault.
‘Winter,’ George stated firmly, ‘I think you’re beautiful, but I’m gay. I’ve always been gay. I love you but I know for a fact that I will never, ever, be with a woman. Not in that way.’
‘I know,’ I muttered.
‘But if I was, it would be you. For sure.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes, you idiot!’ Then he started singing ‘Sorry’.
‘Please tell me you are not apologising via Justin Bieber.’
‘I know that …’
‘This is a new low,’ I scoffed.
I thought about Oliver. Would he be jealous if he knew about George and me? Or would he not even care?
‘Okay, okay. If you promise to stop singing I’ll forgive you.’
George grinned.
‘Wanna wag the last two periods and go check out Savers?’ George asked. ‘I need a break.’
‘Me too,’ I said. ‘Let’s go.’
Chapter 13: The Phone Call
‘Where are you?’
I knew it wasn’t good as soon as I looked at my phone and saw that the caller was my dad. He never called.
‘I rang the school and they couldn’t find you.’
‘Oh, I decided to head to the library for a study break,’ I lied. But Dad was too preoccupied to care.
‘Wherever you are you’ve got to come home,’ Dad said. ‘Right now.’
‘What’s going on?’
I could hear my heartbeat, loud and anxious. There was a time, a few years ago, when Dad lost his job. It was a really big deal for our family. Eavesdropping on my parents’ conversation when they thought I was asleep told me that they were seriously panicking about what to do. Dad’s mega-wage was what kept our family afloat and his job was everything to him. My parents tried to play it down, of course, telling Spencer and me that it was nothing to worry about and that it was easy for people like my dad to find work because of his skills and connections. But my brother and I both knew the truth.
Mum and Dad were packing it.
Even so, it’s not like I got pulled out of school on the day it happened. I just came home one day and found my dad pale and shaky. I’d never seen him like that before. In fact, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen him home at
four in the afternoon. Mum was comforting him and there was an air of shock and bewilderment, a lack of confidence that doesn’t usually reside amongst Mum’s witty designer pieces.
‘I don’t want to get into it over the phone. Just come home now. Please, Winter.’
I began to feel panicked. Something bad had happened. ‘Is it Mum?’
‘No. She’s fine. Just get here as soon as you can.’
‘Okay.’
I found George looking at men’s jackets, rows and rows of rejected pieces that had found their way to Savers. It always made me sad, the way clothing was so easily discarded and disposable.
‘What do you think of this?’ George asked, holding up a suede bomber jacket, complete with fringing.
‘Hideous,’ I replied.
‘Perfect.’ George grinned. ‘Come to me, baby.’
When I didn’t laugh he said, ‘What’s wrong?’
‘I’ve gotta go. Dad just called. Something’s up.’
‘Want me to come with you?’
‘No, I’ll be fine. I’ll text you later.’
‘Winter,’ George said. Then he gave me a hug, right there in the middle of all those smelly old jackets. ‘Whatever it is, it will be all right.’
Chapter 14: A Normal Loving Family
Mum and Dad were sitting at the kitchen table, looking kind of shell-shocked.
‘Did something happen to Spencer?’ I asked, immediately worried that he’d overdosed on some hip – yet dangerous – party drug, or ended up in jail for indecent exposure during one of his under-the-influence nights out in LA.
‘No,’ Mum said, her eyes red, her make-up uncharacteristically smudged.
‘What’s going on then?’ I asked, starting to feel very nervous.
‘It’s your Grandma Joan,’ Dad said. ‘I don’t really know how to say this.’ He looked shocked and sickly.
‘Is it bad?’
‘She’s dead.’
‘She said she was moving to a retirement village and she was fine.’
I wasn’t sure how I felt or how I was supposed to feel. I barely knew Grandma Joan. All I really knew about her was that she was rude and offensive and that she always made Mum stressed out and miserable. She was my grandma, but I wasn’t sure I loved her. Mostly what I felt was guilt. I should have made more of an effort last time she was here. I should have asked her about Mum and why she treated her the way she did. I should have told her that she shouldn’t insult our weight all the time and then maybe she would have said sorry, that she loved us and wanted to be in our lives. Maybe she would have known the right thing to say. Or maybe she wouldn’t.
Now I would never know.
‘We think you’re old enough to know the truth,’ Mum said. ‘My mother, Grandma Joan, committed suicide.’
‘What?’ I was confused. Did old people do that? Why would Grandma Joan do something like that?
‘You saw her, Mum. She didn’t seem sad to me.’
All I could think about was how she did it. And why. It was as though, if I understood the way she chose to die, this whole situation wouldn’t seem so bad. So creepy. I imagined Grandma Joan, sitting alone in one of her floral print muumuus, making the decision that there was no point in staying alive any longer. Maybe if she’d had a more loving family she wouldn’t be dead. Was it our fault?
‘She was very sick,’ Dad said. ‘We didn’t know, but she had pancreatic cancer and it was aggressive. She probably didn’t have more than six weeks left to live.’
‘Then why did she tell us she was moving to that retirement village?’
I was getting angry and shouting. I couldn’t help it. Mum started crying harder.
‘Winter.’ Dad did his best to stay calm. ‘This is a very hard situation for all of us.’
‘It’s okay.’ Mum sighed. ‘I’m angry too. She must have come here to say goodbye. That’s exactly what she’s like. Her final passive-aggressive act and now we’re all left behind feeling angry and guilty and horrible because we didn’t know she was sick and we didn’t help her.’
‘We couldn’t help her,’ Dad stated. ‘How could we have known?’
Shaking, I sat down at the table. Grandma Joan had killed herself. The last time I spoke to her she knew exactly what was going to happen. That I’d never speak to her again. She was probably planning it all out in her head, figuring out the most efficient way to end her life. Maybe she’d even done some research online; she was proud of her ability to navigate the Internet like a teenager. And yet, she acted like everything was completely normal. Like she’d come to visit out of the blue because she realised she didn’t see us enough and she wanted to get to know her family again. Like she wanted us to be a normal loving family.
Yeah, right.
‘How did she do it?’ I couldn’t help it. I waited for Mum and Dad to yell at me, to tell me not to ask questions like that, to have some respect. But they didn’t.
I had never seen Mum looking so beaten down.
‘She took some medicine. It would have been painless, I think. She managed to get her hands on some Benozen, which means she would have just drifted off to sleep and never woken up. She knew what she was doing.’
‘What’s Benozen?’
Mum and Dad looked at each other. ‘It’s an illegal drug,’ Dad said, ‘that some people believe should be available to terminally ill patients who want to end their life.’
‘It’s basically poison,’ Mum explained. ‘They use it to put down animals. She poisoned herself.’
‘But then who found her?’ I couldn’t help myself. I needed to understand what happened.
‘Someone from home help,’ Dad said. ‘She must have planned it so she wouldn’t be left lying there for too long.’
‘Oh my God,’ Mum cried out. ‘I can’t believe this is happening.’
Mum has one brother, my Uncle Max, who lives in some compound in Saudi Arabia earning heaps of money doing IT. I’ve seen photos, of course, and we’ve met once or twice, but I wouldn’t recognise Uncle Max if I saw him walking down the street. Poor Mum, I realised. She didn’t have anyone except for us.
Dad held Mum’s hand and gave her a kiss on the head. ‘It’s okay, Sienna.’ His voice was reassuring. ‘I’ll help you. We’ll get through this. Won’t we, Winter?’
‘Yeah, it will be okay, Mum.’ I gave her a hug.
There was this time, back in Year 4, when Molly Johnson told me that her mum said my mum was a bitch after they’d worked together in the school canteen. Of course I knew Mum could be pretty mean sometimes. But that didn’t matter. I was still furious. My eyes burned with tears and I felt so protective, like I wanted to go right up to Molly’s mum and tell her that she was the bitch, not my mum. I continued to hate Molly right through primary school.
This felt a lot like that, only a million times worse. And I couldn’t even tell Grandma Joan off. Maybe Mum was right. Maybe this was her revenge for being ignored by us for all those years. If that was the case, then Grandma Joan sure got the last laugh. Or maybe she was just sad, scared and lonely. Maybe she didn’t want to tell us she was sick because she didn’t trust us to help her. Maybe it was just easier for her to go off and kill herself without bothering any of us with her real troubles.
Chapter 15: Who Needs Chocolate When You Have Praise and Constant External Validation?
It was after Grandma Joan died that my problems really started. Not that they felt like problems. At least not at first. Six weeks after Grandma Joan’s funeral I was lapping up so many compliments I might as well have won a Nobel Peace Prize. Seriously. Who needs chocolate when you have praise and constant external validation?
Of course, before the compliments came the brutal reality of Grandma Joan’s death. Uncle Max flew in for the funeral and so did Spencer. Amanda couldn’t make it because she was auditioning for a modelling gig on the Home Shopping Network. Seeing as she’d never even met Grandma Joan it made sense that she didn’t rock up.
We picked Spencer up f
rom the airport the night before the funeral. He wanted to catch a cab but Mum insisted. She couldn’t wait for his arrival and as soon as she saw my brother walk towards us at the airport, I could see her shoulders relax and her eyes water with happiness. Even Dad smiled uncontrollably as Spencer sauntered over, bleary-eyed and jet-lagged but hotter than ever thanks to his LA tan and pricey dental work that I knew my parents had financed. On the drive home Spencer answered Mum’s questions about life in LA. He showed us pictures on his phone of the tiny apartment he shared with Amanda and told us that he was earning good money as a trainer at an exclusive LA gym. Even though his potential role in Hoochilicious Party Bandits didn’t seem to be happening he insisted that Louisa Bandit was a lovely person and that there was still a chance he’d get a gig with her in the future.
‘Really?’ Mum and I exclaimed simultaneously. ‘You really think Louisa Bandit is lovely?’
‘She’s great,’ Spencer insisted. ‘And hot for her age.’
‘Eeewww,’ I replied.
‘Why do people always say “for her age” about older women? Why can’t she just be hot?’ Mum said.
‘’Cos most old people are ugly,’ Spencer replied.
I could see Mum tense up but she laughed it off.
‘The only way to avoid getting old is to drop dead,’ Dad quipped.
We were all quiet after that.
I wanted to talk to Spencer about Grandma Joan, but he wasn’t that kind of brother. He didn’t like to talk about our family, at least not with me. He was always too busy. But just as I was heading off to bed after brushing my teeth I bumped into him in the hallway. I was wearing my donut-print pyjamas and my hair was pulled back in an unflattering low pony. Spencer looked like he was heading off to a Peter Alexander photo shoot.
‘Is everything all right with you, sis?’
I couldn’t believe it. Spencer was concerned about how I was coping, living with Mum and Dad alone, after everything that had happened with Grandma Joan.
‘I think so. I mean, Grandma Joan was kind of a bitch, but still …’
Pretty Girls Don't Eat Page 6