by Scot Gardner
Luce came back from the toilets and hugged me like her mum (but Luce’s face isn’t prickly), then we worked and talked and laughed like we always did. She’s twenty-six. She always seems younger than me. I’m a bit taller than her. Her boobs are bigger. My hair is longer. I’ve seen so much more of life than she has.
We only have one topic. Boys. She’s sweet twenty-six and never been kissed and I’m seventeen and not so sweet. She went to a Catholic girls’ school. You’d reckon that’d be education enough. She has beautiful dark eyes and dark hair and dark skin. She went straight from school into the family business.
If I was a guy, I reckon I’d go for her. (On second thoughts my imagination isn’t that good. I can’t imagine lusting after anything that hasn’t got a six pack so if I was a guy I’d have to be gay.) Some of the guys that came into the pizzeria couldn’t take their eyes off her but she was never interested in those guys. She went for the gods. One came in that Friday night.
‘Gawd, I think I’m going to die,’ she growled in my ear and I looked around the restaurant for an Adonis. I can usually pick them. They’re the ones dressed in leather, neatly shaven, eyebrow rings and beautiful hair. Yeah, I picked him. He was a hottie with a mop of curly blond hair. Unfortunately, the studs that Luce goes for are also the ones that come in with their boyfriends.
‘Luce, I’d hate to be the bearer of sad news but those guys are a couple.’
‘Nah, they’re just good mates.’
I watched her shake and fumble at the cash register when they came to pay, with a manic smile cramped on her face. As they stepped onto Sydney Road, Adonis took his friend’s hand. They looked at each other, smiled a god-it’s-good-to-be-with-you smile and disappeared into the night.
Lucia sighed, then pretended to sob. ‘Just really, really good friends.’
Pepe bolted the doors and turned off the lights at midnight. We slumped into chairs around table number four. Paolo made a garlic pizza and killed the oven. It smelled like toasted heaven. My mouth started watering and I chewed my barbell. Then Paolo kicked his runners off at the table and the smell of garlic pizza was massacred by the stink of sock-cheese. I couldn’t eat. Could hardly breathe. Luce made cappuccinos. Bruna counted the dockets. Pepe counted the cash. We’d made eighty-seven pizzas. It had been a big night. Pepe never talks about money but he always pays me cash. I’ve seen the insides of the till though and I know that eighty-seven pizzas add up to about two thousand dollars when you include drinks and pasta and salad from the kitchen. Good business. Good family business.
Angelina shuffled from the kitchen and took her cappuccino from Luce. While Bruna glowed with love and gold jewellery, Angelina stooped with pale skin and sad eyes. She was the Yang to Bruna’s Yin. One of my assignments for Society and Environment in year ten was on the religions of the world and I realised that there was a Zen sort of balance in the kitchen at Pepe’s. Happy and sad. Bruna bursting with life. Angelina the living dead. Perhaps it wasn’t just in the kitchen – Pepe DiFresco and his son were poles apart, too. If Pepe ever heard the things that Paolo said when he wasn’t around, he’d be shattered. He’d probably shatter Paolo. Pepe was living in a dream. Paolo was living a lie.
So that left Lucia and me. The girls.
‘Are you going to be okay walking home, Maddie?’ Luce asked. I think she’s scared of the dark.
I told her I’d be fine and she shivered. ‘I don’t know how you do it.’
‘What? Walk home in my own neighbourhood? Scary . . . whooo.’
‘Yeah but what if . . .?’
I shrugged and stood up. Pulled my apron off. ‘I know all the junkies, they live on the block. And who’d want to rape me?’
Paolo laughed. He nodded his head.
Bruna barked something at her son in Italian. I don’t think it was ‘Pass the sugar please, darling’.
Paolo threw his hands up in the air. ‘I wasn’t having a go at her, Mum. It’s just that . . . Madonna’s tough. Aren’t you, Maddie? And anyone who wanted to rape her would be in for a bit of a shock, you know?’
Bruna nodded slowly.
Paolo looked at me and I felt like showing him how tough I was. Scratching the sleazy half smile off his face.
‘See you all tomorrow,’ I sighed, and headed for the door.
‘See you, Maddie,’ Paolo sang, after everyone had said goodnight. ‘Ciao. Walk straight home now. Don’t talk to any strangers, orright?’
The night was still unusually warm but I wished I’d grabbed a jacket. Something to pull around me as I walked the gauntlet – a section of Barry Street where the lights are broken and the plane trees’ branches meet over the road. Some nights I’ve heard people coughing and talking in the bushes. The trick is to keep moving. Not think too much, keep my mind occupied with dumb things. Stupid repetitive songs. The solitary pimple on my chin. Steamed-up trains of thought.
That night, that Friday night in July, I thought about my sister. I wondered if Evie and I were like Bruna and Angelina, and if we were, who was black and who was white. Happy, sad. Who was whole and who was broken? Ahh, I wished it was that simple.
My heart was racing as I got into the lift. I’m not afraid of the dark, I thought, only the pricks who hide in it.
The TV was still on in the flat. Evie sat on the opposite end of the couch to Dad and ate something gourmet from a take-away container with a plastic fork.
‘How’s your tongue?’ she asked.
I nodded and poked it at her.
She laughed through her nose.
‘Did you show the Trickster?’ she asked.
I shook my head and she called me a wuss. Dad just stared at the TV.
I brushed my teeth and my tongue. The toothpaste stung and I rinsed and spat until the water tasted metallic. I made Evie’s bed before I made my own and jumped in. I was dozing when the shouting started.
‘It’s not my turn to do the dishes. I did them last week. It’s your turn.’
‘When I tell you to do the bloddy dishes, you do the bloddy dishes. I can’t find me bloddy plate,’ Dad growled.
I hid my head under the pillow. The pillowcase smelled like shampoo.
Silence.
I breathed and put my head on top of the pillow again. I heard a scraping sound then a thunderous crash and tinkle. I sat up and pulled my doona around my chin.
‘There,’ Evie barked. ‘Done. You fucking happy now?’
I could feel Dad’s heavy footfalls and Evie shrieked. I bit my lip.
The slap of flesh on flesh and my sister squealing.
I jumped from my bed and tore open the door.
Dad had Evie by the hair. Evie clawed at his arm and kicked. Dad slapped and punched at her face with his free hand.
Blood and saliva sprayed the kitchen cupboard.
‘Stop it!’ I screamed. ‘No!’
I charged across the room and knocked them both off balance. Dad let go of Evie’s hair and bounced against the cupboard before falling to his knees. Evie let go of him and grabbed my nightie. I dragged her towards the bedroom. She shoved me off and slammed the front door as she left. My pulse galloped in my throat. I stepped into the bedroom and lay on my bed. I listened to Dad sob. There were no tears in me. It wasn’t the first fight they’d had but it was far and away the worst. This time something more than plates was broken. The battle of the drama queens had moved into a new act and I wondered if life would be the same.
three
I woke up at nine on Saturday and I must have spent the night dreaming about Evie. I could hear her talking to Dad through the fog of half sleep and I jumped out of bed to join them. I stood at the door and looked across the flat. No Dad to be seen. No Evie. No mess.
‘Trew, trew. There’s nothing much you can do about that though, is there?’ Dad said, and coughed until he sounded like he’d smelled Paolo’s socks. He was smoking on the balcony – the rectangle of concrete and steel rail that pokes from the window. I think it was designed to make us feel like we
were in a Sydney penthouse but most people on the block hang their washing on their balcony. On a windy day, the underpants flags and stained sheets a’flapping aren’t penthouse.
Dad wasn’t raving with Evie. He was in a deep and meaningful about the weather with our neighbour Rosie – a calm woman in her fifties who dressed in wild colours and sold flowers from a cart in the city. They’d been talking about the weather for almost ten years.
‘Hello, lov,’ Dad said, and kissed my hand.
It was like nothing had happened.
‘Gooood morning, Madonna!’ Rosie sang, and I waved. It’s cruel to be as happy as Rosie that early in the morning.
‘Sunscreen,’ Rosie said.
‘Yeah, sunscreen will stop you and me from getting burnt but it won’t fix the hole in the ozone layer, will it now?’
‘No, you’re right there, Tricky.’
Dad took another drag on his cigarette before stubbing it out with the fifty others in the ashtray at his feet. He looked up at me and whispered that he was sorry. His eyes were bloodshot and the bags that hung under them were a light shade of purple. I could tell he was sorry. He always was. I had a feeling like a rock in my guts that it was too late. He’d gone too far. Our wonky family had finally busted.
The phone rang.
‘Hello?’
‘Madds?’
‘Evie! You okay? Where are you?’
‘I’m at Bianca’s.’ Her voice was gravelly and monotone.
‘Are you okay?’
‘Yeah. Bianca thought I might need some stitches in my lip but it has settled down this morning. How about you?’
‘Fine. Do you want to talk to Dad?’
‘Fuck off!’
I rolled my eyes. It was like standing between growling dogs.
‘How’s the piss head?’ she asked.
‘He’s beside himself,’ I lied. ‘He’s out on the balcony.’
‘Prick.’
‘When are you coming home?’
‘I’m not.’
The phone ticked in my ear. I could imagine her running her fingers through her hair for effect.
‘What, you’re moving out over a fight about the dishes? How stupid is that? What a spoilt brat!’
‘I should have moved out ages ago. The man’s an arsehole.’
‘No he’s not.’
Evie breathed into the mouthpiece. ‘It was bound to happen.’
‘Crap. The two of you made it happen. You treat him like shit,’ I said.
‘I treat him like shit? Ha! Who hit who?’
‘Well, you both treat each other like shit then,’ I said, and the phone went silent. My guts were churning and the hand holding the phone to my ear shook. I shouldn’t have to be the one to patch things up. It’s not my war. I’m not the eldest. I’m not the smartest. I’m not the mother.
‘I’ve had enough,’ Evie eventually said.
‘Yeah . . .’
‘Bianca says it’s okay for me to stay here until I find a place. Might get a townhouse or something closer to work. Philippe’s not back until next month. Bianca’s rapt to have the company.’
What about me? What about my company?
‘Come over,’ Evie said. ‘Bring my stuff. My shoes and my work clothes and that. Some trackies. And everything in my knickers drawer.’
‘Okay. I get the drift. Where to?’
‘Seventeen Brettas Street, North Fitzroy. It’s off Sydney Road, just past the park.’
‘What will I tell Dad?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Nothing?’
‘Yeah, fuck him.’
We’d said our goodbyes and I’d almost hung up when Evie shouted, ‘Rainbow!’
‘Pardon?’
‘Under my pillow.’
I snorted at the thought of Evie’s security blanket. ‘Remember Rainbow.’
I hung up and filled my old school pack with a few of Evie’s things. If she wanted more than a backpack full, she’d have to come and get it herself. I reached under her pillow and found the scrap of dirty fabric she called Rainbow. There was nothing rainbow about it now. It was the cover from Evie’s first pillow – or so the story goes. Mum made it before she died.
As I stepped into our dark bathroom, my floodgates opened. My nose ran, my eyes ran. I sneezed and managed to pee my pants and spray the mirror with snot at the same time. I stood in the shower and cried. I can’t really say why, just cried. I thought about filling the piddly little footbath and soaking until my knees froze but I wanted to see Evie.
four
I took the stairs. They were empty except for the guy with the oily ponytail and tattoos. He sat smoking, like he always did, in an old plastic school chair on the eighth-floor landing. He smiled as he watched me pass and I realised that he was the major reason I took the lift. His skin was sickly and his tattoos homemade. He’d been there forever. Never said hello, just perved.
It was a short walk from the top of Sydney Road to Bianca’s place. Brettas Street was narrow with bluestone gutters and plane trees on the nature strip that were as old and gnarled as some of the houses. Bianca’s place wasn’t gnarled. The brick walls that separated her terrace from her neighbours had been painted white. A glossy white that made number seventeen glow. The cast-iron cobwebs on the second-storey verandah had been painted lavender, as had the window trims and the guttering.
The front gate didn’t squeak. The square front yard was a sea of white pebbles with one small tree standing neat and proud in the centre. Two shiny blue urns filled with little purple flowers sat at either end of the single step that led to the heavy timber front door. A bronze angel hung over the doorbell and seemed to guard the button. Not like she’d bite your hand off if you weren’t welcome, more like she’d come to life and fly through the house calling a warning if the wrong person rang the bell.
I rang the bell. God, even the bell was classy. It didn’t sound like a game-show jackpot. It didn’t sound like you’d got a question wrong. It didn’t torture any classical music. It went ding and then it breathed while the hallway filled with sound and then it went dong. The two sounds flew together like sonic butterflies. If I lived here, I thought, I could stand on the step and ring the doorbell just to make me feel good. Half an hour, every morning.
‘Iiiiiii’ve got iiiiit,’ came a voice. She sang the words and they became the lyric to the music of the doorbell. Bianca, I thought. Bianca the singer stage princess. The door clicked and flew open and Bianca was already smiling. She grabbed me and squeezed and kissed my face and patted my hair and moaned in my ear that it was sooo good to see me. She smelled like a thousand exotic flowers.
She asked if I was okay but didn’t wait for an answer. She took the pack from my back and led me into the hallway. A floor of polished wood. The ceiling was so high that it wouldn’t be visible on an overcast day. Huge oil paintings of flowers owned the pale walls and my runners squeaked as I followed Bianca towards the kitchen at the back.
‘Evie! Your gorgeous sister is here.’
Evie jogged down the stairs and hugged me at the kitchen door. Her lip was swollen, her eyes blank.
She hugged me but she wasn’t there. Her fingers patted my back and her chin stuck into my neck. ‘Thanks for coming over.’
It sounded more like a goodbye than a welcome. She broke away and stepped into the kitchen. ‘Can I get everyone a coffee?’
‘Yes please,’ Bianca said.
‘Cappuccino, Madds?’
I shrugged. ‘If it’s not too much trouble.’
She patted a gleaming silver coffee machine on the kitchen bench. Just like the one at Pepe’s but a third of the size.
I raised my eyebrows and whistled. She began clunking and banging at the machine like a practised waitress, grabbed the milk from the fridge and sloshed some into a stainless-steel jug.
Bianca rested her hand on my shoulder. ‘Sheer poetry, isn’t it? Watch carefully, Maddie; this is the dance of an addict.’
Evie looked up
as the machine farted steam into the milk jug. There was a strained smile on her lips and her eyes were pinched. Evie didn’t drink much coffee at home. She drank Pepsi. Dad drank stout. I drank apple and guava juice in pay week and water when my money ran out. Evie wasn’t moving like an addict, she was thumping and bumping like an employee.
The hallway was filled with sweet sound and I realised that someone had rung the doorbell. It sounded even better from the inside.
‘Iiii’ve got iiiit,’ Bianca sang. I stepped into the hall so she could glide past. Evie was at the hallway door with two cups of coffee. She was trying to see their visitor over Bianca’s shoulder. She handed me my cappuccino and I thanked her. Looked more like a flat white with chocolate sprinkled on top. At last, I thought, something that I can do better than my sister. My time at Pepe’s may not have given me much but it had certainly given me the know-how to make a great cappuccino with a mountain of froth.
Bianca was kissing and hugging a man on the doorstep. Not like tongue down his throat and squeezing his butt sort of thing, just a big hello. She led him inside and I nearly fainted. What a god! Tall and tanned and dark and all muscles under his shirt, like he’d been carved out of some exotic wood and come to life.
Evie handed the other coffee to Bianca and threw her arms around the man’s neck. They kissed and laughed. He lifted her off the floor with one arm, spun her around and dropped her on her feet.
‘Maddie, this is Jerome. Jerome, this is Evie’s sister, Madonna.’
He carried a small folder under his right arm and he put it on the hallstand next to the phone so he could shake my hand. My cup rattled and we both whoopsed and laughed.
‘Yes, same killer looks,’ Jerome said. ‘Nice to meet you, Madonna.’
He looked right in my eyes and I felt all weird. Might have been all the blood rushing to my face and other places. God, how tacky was that? I looked at that man, probably my sister’s boyfriend, and I went all Mills and Boon.
So, I thought, Evie really is a big girl now. I wanted to sneak out the door and never come back. She had absolutely everything! Nice place to stay, friends, a cappuccino machine to use (even if she couldn’t use it properly) and now Jerome.