Coasting

by Ben Karwan

  So we strap Luke into his pram and walk down the driveway. A few clouds float around in the clear sky. The sun warms my face the way a kiss on the cheek might. After about ten minutes, we end up at the local park. We let Luke out of his pram and he runs around on the grass. And by ‘runs’ I mean that he starts walking, then tries to speed up until he falls over. I laugh every time.

  I almost explode from his cuteness when I start running after him and he laughs maniacally as he tries to escape. I tackle him around the waist and lie on my back, my outstretched arms holding him above me.

  ‘Super Luke!’ I say, waving him around as though he were flying. ‘He’s coming to save the day!’

  He shrieks with laughter.

  ‘God, I could use some of your energy,’ says Sophie from the bench she’s sitting on.

  ‘Come on,’ I say, sitting up in the grass. ‘His energy is infectious.’

  I reach over and pluck an action figure from the bottom of Luke’s pram. Luke takes it and tries to dig a hole with its feet.

  ‘Yeah, but do you know how long it’s been since I’ve had a day to relax?’ Sophie says. ‘Kids aren’t all cuteness and smiles, you know.’

  I lift myself up onto the bench next to her. Luke is now repeatedly hitting the action figure headfirst into the ground like a hammer.

  ‘I know that,’ I say softly. ‘You’re a trooper. I honestly don’t know how you do it.’

  Sophie meets my eyes. ‘Sometimes I don’t know either.’

  I put my arm around her and squeeze but I don’t say anything. I’m not sure I have anything I could say. Usually Sophie is really positive but every now and then she gets a bit down about the whole thing. She loves Luke, there’s no question about it, but being a single teen mother isn’t exactly easy. I hate seeing her upset.

  Luke starts crying and throws his toy as far as he can. It lands about a metre away. Sophie takes a deep breath and stands up. While she reaches for the toy, I pick up Luke and bounce him on my hip to calm him down a bit.

  ‘I think he’s tired,’ Sophie says to me. ‘Give him here and I’ll strap him in.’

  She takes Luke from my arms and bends over the pram.

  ‘Hey Soph,’ I say. She looks up. ‘You’re a really good mum, you know. Luke’s a lucky kid.’

  She gives me a little smile. ‘Thanks.’ She fiddles with Luke’s straps a little more and stands up straight. ‘I should probably get him home.’

  I walk with her. Luke is fast asleep before we even leave the park.

  When I get home, Aaron is painting on a canvas set up on the easel in his bedroom with these expensive-looking paints. He has his door and window open so he doesn’t die from the fumes, but an unfortunate side effect of his survival plan is the odour of paint spreading through the entire house.

  I stick my head into his bedroom. ‘Your paint stinks.’

  ‘Dad and Mum wouldn’t let me paint the walls and I already bought the paint. I didn’t want to waste it so I’m painting something else here,’ he says without looking up.

  I laugh and head into my bedroom, closing the door behind me. Sometimes Aaron really gets ahead of himself.

  I open the window and turn on the fan to air the room a bit. I should probably call Dylan … I don’t really have anything to say to him, though. A few weeks into our relationship, I realised that our phone calls were often him ranting and me listening. At first I didn’t really mind but now it really bugs me.

  There’s another thing that really bugs me about Dylan: when we’re around adults (my mother, for example), he’s particularly careful about his choice of words. When we aren’t, he uses a certain amount of bad language – and I don’t mean dangling participles. I have no problem with swearing but four times a sentence is a little excessive. For the sake of decency, I’ll replace the more severe curse words he uses with the names of Oscar-winning films.

  ‘Hello?’ says Dylan when he answers the phone.

  ‘Hey, what’s up?’

  ‘I’m so glad you called. I’ve had the worst Forrest Gump-ing day of my whole The Godfather-ing life and it’s not even three o’Casablanca-ing clock.’

  ‘Why? What happened?’

  ‘My Rocky of a boss cut my hours at work, my mother upped my board by twenty bucks a week and I didn’t Titanic-ing get to see you. Seriously, Terms of Endearment my life.’

  Ugh.

  ‘Anyway, what’s up?’ he says.

  ‘Nothing much, just checking in. Why’d your boss cut your hours?’

  For the next ten minutes, I get to hear all about how unfair it is that he’s losing shifts so the Christmas casuals can get more hours when they know Braveheart-all about selling music. I sit nodding, momentarily forgetting he can’t see me, and murmuring my sympathies in the appropriate pauses.

  ‘Anyway, sorry for being a girl and unloading on you.’ Sexism truly is the way to my heart. ‘I’ll talk to you soon. I love you.’

  ‘Love you too.’

  Then I hang up the phone.

  That’s been my send-off recently. ‘Love you too.’ I always omit the ‘I’, which is some small comfort. Perhaps I mean ‘Love you to,’ as in ‘Love you to talk to me soon’. I mean, it’s not like he can hear whether the second ‘o’ in ‘too’ is present. It’s kind of stupid that I say it at all when I don’t feel it. I don’t know, I guess I’d feel bad if I didn’t say it. But my way is basically lying, so I feel bad anyway.

  To distract myself, I go to watch Aaron paint in his room, which is – get this – about as fun as watching paint dry. So I go to find some food to eat but the pantry is emptier than a nightclub at eleven in the morning. Mum tells me to go and tidy my room, so I move a skirt and a couple of shirts from the floor to the wardrobe. My room doesn’t even get that messy – in fact, it’s quite tidy by most standards – so it only takes me a few minutes to clear the ‘mess’.

  Dad honks his horn twice from the driveway, so I trudge back down the stairs and head out the front to help him bring in the groceries.

  ‘Could you be any louder if you tried?’ I ask. ‘Sure,’ he says. ‘I could’ve honked three times.’ He opens the rear door of his Captiva. It’s so tightly packed with shopping bags that it looks as though somebody has played Tetris to fit it all in.

  ‘Hungry, are you?’ I hook my hands through a few bags and hoist them out.

  Dad shushes me. ‘You’re the one who’s always complaining about the lack of food in the house.’

  ‘Fair call.’

  Aaron is conveniently in the bathroom – funny how he always needs to go to the bathroom, with his iPad, when there’s work to be done – so I bring in all the bags and dump them on the kitchen floor, while Dad puts everything where it belongs. Mum is hard at work preparing a roast.

  ‘Excuse me, hon,’ says Dad, reaching across in front of Mum to put a box of tissues on the bench.

  She shifts across so she’s not in his way – but she was never in the way to begin with.

  Dad slowly becomes more ridiculous with his asking her to move.

  ‘Whoops, can I just …’ He reaches around Mum and passes a can of tuna from his left hand to his right, directly in front of her face.

  Mum turns and points her knife at him. ‘Just remember that I cut people open for a living. Without anaesthetic, I could really make it hurt.’

  I laugh and Dad kisses her on the cheek. It’s really cute when they do stuff like this. They started dating when they were both twenty and I imagine that at the time they were the cutest couple in existence. All they would’ve done is tease each other. Mum often pretends that Dad gets under her skin – probably so Aaron and I don’t decide that annoying her is fun – but the lines in her face soften and she gets this little glow when he does stuff like this.

  ‘Seriously,’ she says. ‘If this were your thorax …’ She buries her knife deep into the pumpkin.

  Dad chuckles to himself and carries a few bottles of shampoo and conditioner up to the bathrooms. Aaron and I share
a bathroom but we need separate hair-care products. He uses shampoo in a black bottle with ‘For Men’ printed on the side, like it makes a difference.

  ‘You need me to help, Mum?’

  She looks around the kitchen. ‘You could oil up a tray for me, if you wanted to.’

  ‘Sure. Where are the trays?’

  ‘Cupboard under the stove. Same place they’ve been for the last eight years.’

  ‘Right …’ Five trays are stacked one on top of the other. ‘Is this one okay?’ I ask, pulling out the top one.

  ‘Yeah, it’s fine.’

  ‘Which oil do I use?’

  ‘Seriously, Jen.’ The spark in her voice is gone. ‘The one in the pantry.’

  I sigh. Why did I even bother offering to help? I asked because I don’t know whether to use the canola spray, which I use when I’m baking, or the bottle with actual oil, but I don’t want to ask again. I grab the bottle and hope it’s right.

  ‘What now?’

  ‘See that pot on the stove? It’s got chopped potatoes in it. Put those on the tray and roll them around so they’re covered in oil.’

  I do as she says.

  Dad and Aaron come into the kitchen at the same time. Dad puts his hands on Mum’s hips and stands behind her while Aaron sits at the table, tapping away on his iPad.

  ‘Glasses, Aaron,’ Mum says.

  ‘I don’t need them.’

  ‘Oh really? I guess you don’t need your iPad, either. No glasses, no screen.’

  Aaron huffs and storms out of the room. He’s supposed to wear reading glasses but he hates how they look. Apparently they make his eyes look too big for his face.

  I finish oiling the potatoes and Dad oils the pumpkin as Mum cuts it.

  ‘Now what?’ I say.

  Mum shakes salt over the tray. ‘Now we wait.’ She slips it into the oven while I wash my hands. ‘Thanks Jen,’ she says.

  The Strays is calling me, so I read in my room until Aaron comes up to tell me the food is ready.

  ‘Jen, would you like to say grace this evening?’ says my mother before my backside even hits my chair.

  ‘Grace,’ I say immediately.

  ‘Jennifer …’ my mother warns, tightening her scowl. I don’t particularly like saying grace because a) I don’t know if God exists, b) if he does, my decency as a human being seems to be a more pressing issue than thanking him for some food we are about to eat and c) a relationship with God should be private. If people believe in him, that’s fine, and if people don’t, that’s equally fine. You don’t have to shove it down my throat. The concept of saying grace seems like people are flaunting having a ‘connection’ to this omnipotent being. Why draw attention to it? Shouldn’t your relationship be between the two of you?

  Regardless, it’s easier just to please my mother. ‘Dear God, um … thanks for the food. Amen.’

  Everyone keeps their heads bowed and Mother Dearest makes the sign of the cross. ‘Was that so hard, Jennifer?’

  I press my lips together but otherwise ignore her.

  Chapter Three

  Our results are released in the second week of December. On the day of their release, Mum wakes me up at six fifty-six. In the morning.

  ‘Jennifer, get up. It’s nearly time.’

  I ignore her and roll over. I want to sleep. Seven o’clock is way too early to be up in the first place, especially when my results are just going to ruin my day. Mum bounds around my room, turning on the light and opening the curtains. She even opens my laptop, which sits on my desk.

  ‘What’s your password?’

  I swing my legs, which are cocooned in the sheets, off the edge of the bed and key in my password. My desk and my bed are close enough for me to use my bed as a chair.

  I look at the time. Six fifty-eight.

  Once the website loads, I type in my username and password and we sit, Mum on my desk chair, me on my bed, waiting.

  Six fifty-nine.

  ‘Ooh this is so exciting!’ she says.

  ‘Why?’ I say. ‘It’s not going to be anything special. Don’t get your hopes up too high.’

  ‘You never know. Maybe you did better than you expect. Oh it’s seven! Quick, click “Enter”!’

  I do so and wait while the page loads. My heart quickens marginally. I’m not entirely sure how they calculate our final scores because they do all this really complicated maths. All I know is that our individual subject results are normalised and everyone across the entire state is ranked. They turn these rankings into a number between one and one hundred, which universities use to decide who to accept. The whole concept is weird because two people in different years could have exactly the same level of intelligence, approach problems exactly the same way and even give exactly the same answers on their assessment, but whether or not they get into their dream course depends on how well everybody else did in that particular year. It’s disheartening to think your mark is directly related to the marks of others. It’s not really fair. Why can’t they just say ‘You got seventy-six per cent of the marks so your score is seventy-six’?

  My (mother’s) first preference – a medical degree – needs a score of at least ninety-six.

  ‘Oh Jen,’ says my mum quietly as my score flashes on the screen: seventy-two point three five.

  But I’m not focusing on that score. I’m looking at my English mark. A smile forms across my lips. Surely there’s been a mistake. I’d quietly expected a good English mark. It’s out of fifty and I thought I’d get maybe thirty-five or so, meaning that nothing has prepared me for the number in front of me. The letters flash and dance around on the screen. My English study score is forty-four. My teacher said they use a normal distribution curve for study scores, so only two per cent of us get forty-five or above. That puts me in the top three per cent, right?

  I glance down at my other subjects. I have dismal scores in Chemistry and Physics – no surprises there – but by some miracle I’ve managed an average mark in Mathematical Methods and Biology.

  My fingers feel disconnected from my hand as I scroll up and down the page. My heart jumps up into my throat and decides to beat there for a while. Do unis look at individual subject scores? Or do they take the ATAR as a whole? Maybe I’ll be able to get into an English or literature course – and Mum can’t get mad if it’s because I don’t have the marks for science, so hopefully that means no confrontation. All those late nights of reading and hours of practice essays might finally pay off.

  ‘Well, to get you into a good science course we have several options from here,’ says my mother.

  My smile evaporates.

  ‘You can repeat year twelve and try to get a decent score, or you can try to work through a pathway program, which would only take a few extra years of study.’

  Maybe if I’d worked harder at my other subjects my ATAR would’ve been higher, but then I’m not sure I’d have had the time to do so well in English. Besides, seventy-two is above average and, given the subjects I took, I think it’s a decent effort. Imagine what it could’ve been if I’d done Literature instead of Chemistry! But I guess science isn’t off the table just yet – for Mum, anyway. Of course there’s no mention of my English score. I worked hard for that and I don’t even get a ‘well done’ – just a list of options on how to be better.

  ‘Yeah,’ I say, already worried about the reaction I’ll get. ‘Maybe it’d be better if I change my preferences, though …’

  Mum straightens her back, waiting for me to go on.

  ‘I could get into an arts course with this score. Maybe journalism or something?’

  ‘You don’t have to settle –’

  ‘I’m not settling,’ I say, determined to keep my voice casual, like this is an off-the-cuff suggestion. ‘That stuff makes sense to me and I think I’d be good at it.’

  ‘That’s all very well but you’re an intelligent girl. I don’t want to see that wasted. If you only –’

  ‘I know. If only I applied myself, right?’r />
  ‘You don’t need to say it like that,’ she says, scowling.

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like it’s a ridiculous idea.’

  I sigh and nod. ‘I know. If I spend every waking moment with my nose in a textbook, I probably could understand what’s happening. I might be able to learn about alleles and genetics and stuff.’

  ‘You’re very capable –’

  ‘Maybe I could do it. But that’s not the type of life I want to live. Say I repeat. Say I sacrifice everything to study. Say I get a “decent” score. Then what?’

  ‘Then you could go to university,’ she says, ‘and work towards the bright future you could have.’

  I look down at my toes, which are poking out the end of the sheets wrapping my legs. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Look,’ she continues. ‘I just want what’s best for you. I don’t want all your potential to go to waste and for you to look back on your life and be disappointed. Just … think about it, okay? Don’t make any rash decisions.’

  I pause for a moment. ‘Yeah, okay.’

  She kisses me on the forehead and heads downstairs.

  I don’t really want to hang around the house waiting for mum’s loaded comments about me repeating year twelve. After I shower, I stuff my feet into thongs and go for a walk. I don’t really have a plan for where I’m going; I just need to be out of the house.

  I end up at the cafe where I work. It’s not a great job – customers are usually pretty rude – but it gives me something to do and everyone who works there gets along. We usually bond over the nasty things customers say to us.

  ‘Hey Jen,’ says Brittany as I push open the door. She’s a couple of years older than me and is the youngest of the three managers. ‘You’re not rostered today, are you?’ She fiddles with the knobs on the espresso machine.

  ‘Nah, I was just walking past,’ I say. One of the regulars waves at me from his spot in the corner. Only two other customers are in here. ‘I was going to ask if you needed an extra pair of hands today but it seems pretty quiet.’