New Australian Stories 2

by Aviva Tuffield

  Men’s collections shimmered with mirrors. My reflection had a reflection of its reflection. We knew how we looked from vistas supernatural. And if now and then I was oblivious to myself and the soaring expectations, the other girls would let me know: sweeping gazes, harsh as steel brooms. And then I’d be bent over the Country Road rollneck display table, breathing fast and hard, my palm buried in navy blue lambswool, wondering what the hell I’d been thinking, leaving the house dressed like this. Then I’d be dreaming of my apron and my cakes and a quiet place where I could work with jam smeared along a cheek and flour in my hair and no one would give a damn.

  But I rode the elevator each day and stood folding and hemming, hanging and fetching — stabbing the floorboards with my stilettos — as I waited in that infinity of mirrors, smiling like my teeth would suffocate if I accidentally closed my lips.

  I didn’t want to be a front-girl in a department store. I wanted to hide away in the back of a boutique bakery that specialised in cupcakes displayed on gilded plates and old-fashioned lace. I’d even bought the parchment cards on which I’d write their names in black ink. Like:

  Interpretation Of Dreams

  I had no one else to cook for so I carted the cakes to work. Set them out on the tearoom laminex table every Friday morning to see if they passed the test.

  Tonight’s composition was a study in tart mashed berries and chocolate ooze I’d named Manhattan Murder Mystery. I slid butter and cream from the fridge and frozen blackberries and cherries from the freezer. The bittersweet chocolate was in my handbag. The sweet vermouth under the sink.

  Friday morning, 9.36 a.m. and in waddled Claire. She always could smell a cupcake at three hundred miles. She was my most dedicated fan despite her ‘diabetic diet’ but she’d never meet my eye: she’d talk to me, and her eyes would roll around their sockets and then flee up behind her forehead, leaving me staring at the membranous whites. So, in rollicked Claire and she started swallowing cupcakes, throwing them down onto god knows what else she already had in there, while she flicked through an old Women’s Weekly. I stood and watched, feeling a strange mix of satisfaction and despair.

  ‘Manhattan Murder Mystery,’ I said when she looked up from the mag.

  She showed me the whites of her eyes, slick as boiled eggs. ‘What?’

  ‘It’s the name of the cakes.’

  ‘Oh … they’re divine,’ she said in a distracted kind of way, as if what she really wanted to say was: Cakes? What cakes? And who the heck are you?

  The real test was whether or not I could get the other girls to eat them, ascetic congregation that they were. It was like tempting a pack of monks: bit of cleavage, bit of ankle, stroke their forearm gently and maybe they’ll start imagining, maybe they’ll take a lick.

  One cake for morning tea once — that’s all it took — and they hurled austerity out the window permanently. The first cakes I ever got them to eat were a batch of Breakfast at Tiffany’s: savoury semolina cupcakes flecked with spinach, corn and ricotta. I sold it to them as a high-protein, low-carb breakfast, and for once Claire didn’t get to take home a plate full of her own leftovers.

  ‘Oh god,’ they’d usually say, ‘my hips, my gut, my bum.’ But then they’d say ‘Oooo!’ and ‘Cindy!’ and take a cake straight to their tongue.

  The successes: Strawberry Fields Forever (fresh strawberries and cream-cheese folded through vanilla cake), Nuts about You (caramel cake with pecan butter praline) and Don’t Blame It on the Sunshine (pineapple and passionfruit upside-down cupcakes). If they were gone by morning tea, I knew they’d been a success; any left by four, Claire took them home ‘for her demented mother’, and I’d scrap the recipe. Notable failures: Your Place or Mine (it was the jaw-shattering chopped dates), Grandma Takes a Trip (a cupcake filled with rainbow-coloured whipped cream that leached out into unappealing puddles of food dye and grease).

  There were three other full-timers besides Claire and me: Sue, Tara and Ange. Sue had been on the cover of a magazine for Losing Half Her Weight AND Her Husband! For that headline they gave her five thousand. For three years she drank black coffee and only ate her fingernails. She’d remarried and now supplemented the coffee and nails with three protein bars a week and a Friday carb-loading cupcake: ‘I have to keep up my strength,’ she explained.

  Tara was tall and skinny and loud. She’d had a bit of lipo here and there, and two boob jobs (A to C, then C to E) and she’d let us feel them. For a few years now she’d followed the only-one-type-of-food-a-day diet. It was usually apples or chicken breast or low-cal soft serve, and on Fridays it was a cupcake. ‘Being a skinny bitch is no walk in the park,’ she’d say, laughing, then slip off to solicit husbands in the change rooms.

  I mostly spoke with Ange. We’d hide from our reflections in the dim-lit clothes reserve, lying on piles of soft jumpers. When Ange spoke she’d look at the bone of her wrist and take licks of her lip gloss between words. Ange was different, Ange ate anything, Ange ate everything. But then she’d go and spew.

  The week after Manhattan Murder Mystery I invented Cloud Nine One One. It was a complicated cupcake that I knew would be difficult and expensive to produce commercially. The lemon-scented cake was filled with raspberry puree, then coated in meringue and baked until crunchy. A shard of toffee pierced the meringue, allowing dribbles of escaping raspberry to slip down the side. They looked like little bleeding clouds. And they were a triumph at morning tea.

  ‘Ohmygod,’ said Tara, dissolving meringue on her tongue. ‘You should totally go on Masterchef.’

  ‘What’s Masterchef?’ I asked, and everyone turned to me with mouths agape, as if I’d just declared that white carbs make you thin.

  ‘Where have you been?’ said Tara. ‘It’s only like the most popular show in the world or something.’

  Sue nodded, eyes wide.

  ‘It’s not that good,’ said Ange.

  Sue looked at Ange like she was a bag of sick, then looked back at me and said, ‘You audition, you get on the show, and if you can cook really good stuff then you win! You should see what they make … Unbelievable stuff … Stuff just like that.’ She pointed at the Cloud Nine One Ones.

  So I watched the show online in one huge binge, the first episode to the last, and it made me so excited that my lips went numb from the hyperventilation. If I could get onto Masterchef then everyone would see my beautiful cakes, then I’d open my own kitchen and I’d get my recipe book published and — the relief of it — I would get the fuck out of men’s collections.

  I didn’t sleep for a week; I lay awake dreaming up new recipes and cooking them for massive black cameras and awe-struck, salivating studio audiences. Thursday night I assembled the ingredients for Bitter Almonds and Sweet Revenge: an almond-meal cupcake with chips of marzipan and Turkish delight swirled through the batter, and with the palest pink, rose-flavoured frosting. I considered Bitter Almonds and Sweet Revenge a masterpiece, but they didn’t fly in the tearoom. Tara refused to ‘eat flowers’ and everyone — even Claire — claimed that marzipan made them gag.

  ‘How about plain chocolate next week?’ Sue said, with big gaps between each word, as if I was three years old, or retarded.

  Tara gasped. ‘Or even better! White chocolate!’

  ‘Yes!’ squealed Sue. ‘I love white chocolate! I had white-chocolate mud cake for my wedding!’

  ‘That’s what I want too!’ said Tara.

  Meanwhile, my little dream-cakes sat in lonely sophistication, and my heart sank like an amateur soufflé. If I couldn’t entice a tearoom of half-starved shop-Sharons then I had zero chance of getting on TV.

  Sue said, ‘Hey, Ange, isn’t it your birthday next week? You should pick the type of cake!’

  Claire put her hands on her massive hips. ‘I’ll make your birthday cake, Ange. Name the cake. I’ve cooked a few good ’uns in my time and I should practise.’

  ‘Practise?’ I asked. ‘Practise for what?’

  Claire hit me with her rolling eggwhi
tes. ‘Oh, didn’t I mention?’ Her voice had gone all singsong. ‘I sent in my entry for the Masterchef auditions yesterday.’

  This snap-froze my thorax.

  ‘Wow!’ said Tara. ‘That’s awesome!’

  Claire examined her fingernails with feigned nonchalance.

  ‘Blueberry cheesecake,’ whispered Ange.

  Claire and I both turned to Ange and said, ‘Okay!’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry, Claire, I’m more than happy to make it,’ I said.

  ‘Oh no, it’s too much bother. You concentrate on your fancy cupcakes, I’ll do a normal old birthday cheesecake classic.’

  ‘But I’d like to do it.’

  ‘So would I, doll, and I, as I said, need to practise’. ‘Girls, girls,’ said Tara. ‘Don’t fight over making cake, for god’s sake. Both of youse can make one. We’ll take any leftovers down to Dawn in lingerie … then maybe she’ll start giving us the heads up on their sales!’

  ‘So,’ I said. Ange and I were dressing the dummy we all called Max. ‘What do you reckon about Claire entering Masterchef ?’

  ‘What? Oh well, she’s not exactly … she basically hasn’t got a hope in hell of getting on.’ Ange dropped Max’s cuff and rolled her eyes back, and we both laughed. ‘And besides, they reckon twenty-five thousand people are going to audition for the next series.’

  I swallowed. ‘Twenty-five thousand?’

  ‘Yeah, it’s the housewife’s new lotto. Win the jackpot and all your dreams will come true.’

  ‘Except lotto is about luck, and Masterchef is about skill.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Of course! I’d love to go on that show … The contestants are all talented, and they all have a true passion for food.’

  ‘Well, Cindy, why don’t those twenty-five thousand passionistas go do their chef apprenticeship if they really want to cook?’ She raised her eyebrows at me. ‘Why don’t they work for what they want?’

  I tightened the tie so tight around Max’s neck that I heard stitches snap. What would you know, puker, I suddenly wanted to hiss.

  I let go of the tie. ‘I’m going to the loo.’

  On Thursday night, feeling competitive and resentful, I assembled my ingredients. A cheesecake is a complex beast, and I wanted to turn it into a cupcake.

  I stared at my materials and gently settled into the zone where there was no Claire, no girls, no me and no men’s collections. And there I came across Blackbirds Singing in the Dead of Night: a thin disc of pastry, purple with blueberry juice reduction, supporting a buttermilk cupcake strewn with blueberries, frosted with a tower of whipped vanilla cream cheese. On top I set an orb of blueberry jelly in which a single blueberry was suspended. Blackbirds was a stunner.

  Friday morning I walk in and all the girls are in the tearoom drinking green tea. In the middle of the table is a massive hulk of a cheesecake with an inch-thick biscuit base, blueberry gunk running down the sides and a dozen crooked candles. I set my Birds on a plate and slide it beside this wretched beast.

  ‘Pretty!’ says Tara.

  At morning-tea time Claire volunteers to man the floor while we sing an ironic sort of happy birthday for Ange and eat cake. They all look at me apologetically and take a hunk of Claire’s. Ange, though, takes both; eats mine then Claire’s. She eats as she always does, just like a squirrel: fine fingers to tiny mouth, disassembling the food bit by little bit until it’s no longer on the plate, but you aren’t entirely sure if it’s inside her body or has turned into thin air. Then she usually excuses herself and is gone for quite a while, during which time we’d all avoid the loos.

  And so the cakes disappear from her plate — we all try not to watch — then she stands up from the table and smiles like an angel.

  ‘I think both of the cakes are gorgeous. Thank you, Cindy. And now I will go and thank Claire.’ She opens the door.

  I follow her — the door swings closed behind us — and I grab her by the forearm. ‘Ange,’ I say.

  She stops, looks down at my hand and sets her calm eyes upon me.

  ‘Please don’t spew.’

  She looks at me for what seems like a long time, and I don’t let go of her forearm though I feel nervous and a bit sick. You see, we all know each other’s secrets, but we aren’t supposed to interfere. We ignore Tara’s soliciting and don’t suggest Sue should eat; we pretend Claire really is following her diabetic diet and leave Ange alone in the loos.

  And now there’s a hard thing on Ange’s face that I haven’t seen before and her arm’s still stuck out and in my hand and she says to me, sweet as sugar, ‘I really liked the name of your cupcakes, Cindy, that Beatles song about the blackbirds waiting? I think it’s really fitting … under the circumstances.’ She wrenches her arm free. ‘After all, Cinders, who knows? Wait long enough and someone might walk in that door, lead you to a shop full of ingredients and beg you to turn them into cake.’ And she slaps me with her pity-smile then spins from me, towards the bathroom.

  Harry

  EMMA SCHWARCZ

  Harry surveyed the breakfast buffet. Tropical fruit manned by an Indian with a cleaver; canned fruit, its pallid cousin, sitting alongside mueslis and yoghurts and, oddly, salad greens and hard cheeses. He turned to his right: lamb sausages, roasted tomatoes, hash browns, bacon crisped to buggery, scrambled, gelatinous eggs, fried rice and onions. To his left, the carbohydrate display: breads, pastries, pancakes, muffins and cereals in small boxes. He and Ruth had once discouraged these miniature cereal boxes in their household. Caitlin pointed to them in the supermarket, and Ruth shook her head, listing the additives that had been shown to mutate cells and cause cancer. In rats, Harry had thought; there was no definite causal link in humans.

  He could never keep up with all the perils in his way after they married, perils that changed each week depending on who was finessing the test tubes. One week it was tartrazine, the next saccharine and aspartame. Coffee was banned in January only to be reinstated in June, when its antioxidant properties emerged. Ruth had put him on a Pritikin diet for a few years after the full extent of his family’s cardiac history came to light one beach holiday — a father and two brothers with telltale chest scars — but then someone discovered the risk of thyroid malfunction and the diet was turfed. Ruth had panicked, palpating Harry’s neck at the breakfast table, looking for signs of a goitre.

  When the salt had returned to the table, Ruth decided to cut red meat from their meals. Chicken went swiftly and silently a month later. They were down to fish, which stank out the kitchen and left Harry’s wallet lighter. There were days when he would have given his thumb for a nice rib-eye. After that, it was anyone’s guess which food was no longer considered ripe for consumption. Families on the breadline were able to dine out on buckets of fried chicken and soft drink, but Harry, who had finally reached a level of fiscal respectability, existed on brown rice and seaweed. His gut, Ruth claimed, would thank him. ‘You watch,’ she said, dishing up some mirin-soaked sweet potato and quinoa, ‘while all your friends develop bowel cancer, you will be squeaky clean.’

  Now, scanning the acres of food, he felt weak. He could eat any of this, if he wanted. He could pile his plate high with danishes or create a tower of bacon rashers. He could drown everything in maple syrup and cinnamon sugar and fail to brush his teeth. The space left him gasping, and he had to grip the bench for a moment until the room came back into focus.

  ‘Dad?’ Caitlin reached past him for some papaya. ‘Aren’t you hungry?’

  ‘Just struggling to decide, I suppose.’

  He looked around. On all sides, young families, retirees, honeymooners — kids so new in their skins and relationships that they were wide-eyed just eating cornflakes together.

  It was mostly couples. The resort was made for them, what with all the loveseats on the sand, flaming torches dotting the perimeter and frangipani carried along the warm breeze. He was loath to sit down with Caitlin, the expectation was so great; twice already he’d had to correct the as
sumption that they were a couple. A couple! She was half his age and could do much better for herself than the grey ghost he had become. He watched her open a tiny box of Coco Pops, spilling the small beans across the table in her haste. She’d lost weight — the result of stress, she said — and while Harry didn’t want to encourage any unhealthy habits, he had to acknowledge that the architecture of her face was more readily available to the world now. She was, if not the spitting image of her mother at a young age, then a high-functioning facsimile. He could see his own influence somewhere — the nose was his, and the small ears, which on a woman worked better — but Caitlin was mostly Ruth, at least in appearance. He couldn’t work out if this was now a source of pain or consolation.

  ‘Dad? You sitting down or what?’

  He took a seat and picked at his muesli with a spoon. ‘So, what’s on for today?’

  ‘Same as yesterday, I guess. Sit by the pool, read, swim. Not much else, is there?’

  ‘We could go into town. If that’s something that interests you?’

  Caitlin waited until she’d finished her mouthful. Ruth had taught her well. ‘Is that something that interests you?’

  Harry shifted his muesli around in its bowl. He didn’t know why he’d chosen it; of all the options, muesli was the one most likely to cause him to bloat, which was not an attractive thing at the best of times but especially not in Speedos. He never could remember which foods prompted which complaint, but he had never needed to before. He was the caretaker of the banking, the stock market, Medicare and private health insurance; Ruth was the one who knew the ailments. Chickpeas give you gas, boats make you seasick, the rogan josh was too spicy for you last time, don’t you remember?

  Caitlin was staring at him, but he’d forgotten the question. He was too busy registering the sidelong glances from a woman at the next table. She was roughly his age and sitting with a man who was also roughly his age. The look on her face suggested that this, and only this, was a suitable arrangement and that seeking refuge from the instabilities and indignities of age in a younger offer was beneath any respectable citizen.