Push Me, Pull Me

by Vanessa Garden

  I winced at the sight of him. Grief had beaten him over the head with a baseball bat and shattered his insides hollow.

  “We’ll do this together,” I said, linking my arm through his to steady his wobbly feet. He smelt of rum and Coke and cigarettes. Dad didn’t smoke and he normally didn’t drink. His own dad had been an alcoholic so he tended to steer clear of it with the exception of his birthday and Christmas.

  “You can help me think about music, Ruby. And I know you were funny with him at the door, but I think Derek could be of use too. Your mum was always borrowing his CDs.”

  I disentangled my arm and stepped back.

  “Please tell me you didn’t invite him.” I groaned inwardly, hating myself for being so short with him. Since the day I was born Dad and I had been close—maybe it was because I’d inherited his every feature, including the flashing green eyes and the fiery hair—and I couldn’t recall a single moment in all of those years where we’d shared harsh words.

  He rubbed his lined face with both hands and sighed as though he hadn’t slept in a hundred years.

  “I’ve already called him. He’ll be here in a sec, along with some of your mother’s friends.” He spread his hands out and shrugged. “We don’t have any family to come help us, Rubes. The people of Donny Vale are all we have and Derek was one of your mum’s closest mates.”

  Little Jay, who started shrieking from his cot, saved me from hurting Dad with the volcanic words that nearly spewed from my lips. The only trouble was, I didn’t know how long I could hold back the truth.

  We parted ways—Dad went in to soothe Jay and I went to find Martin.

  Just as I entered the kitchen, Derek and a few of Mum’s friends walked in, looking like a pack of condolence zombies, their faces pale with shock and their arms rising to greet me. I ducked out of their reach and mumbled that I had to see Martin out and would be back soon. Derek hung back in the shadows, looking like a complete wreck with red eyes and a tearstained face. I was secretly glad he looked so broken, even though part of me felt bad for thinking it.

  A woman dressed in a navy blue pant suit placed some information leaflets on our dining table before sitting down and opening her laptop. Another person, a sharply dressed man, possibly Mrs. Simich’s nephew, stood by the kettle waiting for it to boil. The funeral home people hadn’t wasted time in making themselves at home. It was business as usual—just another death to take care of.

  “You want me to stay?” Martin asked, even though I could tell he didn’t by the way his hands were shaking and his eyebrows were twitching. Being in the same room as funeral directors was about as appealing as sitting at a dinner table with a bunch of dead bodies.

  “I’ll be fine. But come again tomorrow first thing.”

  He nodded and swung open the front door but stopped himself mid-step.

  “Shit, I nearly stepped on these flowers.”

  “What flowers?” I ducked around his muscular body until I could see.

  He bent down to pick up a small bunch of mismatched flowers tied together with a shoelace before glancing up at the street. “Hey, that dude must have left them.”

  I brushed past Martin and stood on the doormat, my eyes adjusting to the dusky light, watching the back of a tall boy, dressed in black, as he disappeared around the bend. Something about his walk was awkward. He wasn’t quite limping or anything—just walking as though he was hurting somewhere.

  “You know him?” Martin handed me the flowers. The stems were still warm from being held. The warmth travelled up my arm and eased the tightness in my chest for just a moment.

  I shook my head, not really lying, because though I remembered him from earlier at the Tea ‘n’ Tale, I didn’t really know who he was.

  “Fauxhawks are so lame,” said Martin. “And these flowers are lame. I bet he picked them on his way here.”

  I nodded my head, not really listening to Martin. I was too busy trying to work out why the scar-faced guy with the striking blue eyes from the poetry section had left flowers on my doorstep when he didn’t even know me.

  Chapter 3

  Two Months Later

  I still hadn’t told Dad the truth about Mum and Derek. I still hadn’t cried about Mum either. Not even at the funeral. Maybe because every time I thought about Mum I couldn’t see past her choice. Then I spent so much time hating myself for being angry at her that I didn’t have any energy left to cry.

  Nearly the whole town had turned up for the burial at the Donny Vale cemetery, even Mrs. Patfield and, weirdly enough, the guy with the fauxhawk who’d left flowers on my doorstep. He’d kept to himself and stood beneath an old Moreton Bay fig tree three grave-rows back. I’d only spotted him when I cast my gaze over my shoulder while they lowered Mum’s shiny chestnut coffin into the earth.

  Jay had been squirming in my arms, crying, and I had been trying to distract him—with a bag of jelly snakes—from the fact that our mother was in that box. Not that he could have known, being so little. Maybe I’d been trying to distract myself from the fact.

  But the guy left after Mrs. Patfield approached him—probably to let him know that he was an indigo child or a resurrected angel or some kind of new age being—so I hadn’t gotten the chance to thank him for the flowers.

  November had begun with an odd heatwave, the first of its kind in the history of the South-Western pocket of Western Australia. The news reporters were wetting themselves with excitement about it. Whether on television or the papers, all they talked about was the heat and how freakish it was to have gone from a particularly cold winter to a hellish early summer. The more alternative presses hinted at the ‘changes’ coming, at the great ‘shift’ in the world’s ‘collective consciousness,’ as though they were channelling Mrs. Patfield.

  I did agree on one thing, though, it was hot, turn-crazy-and-become-an-axe-murderer hot. And the sudden heat was doing things to everyone’s brains, especially mine.

  It started to make me hallucinate.

  I began seeing old Mrs. Patfield everywhere I went, on street corners and whizzing down the slide at the local park, her rainbow scarf flapping against her wrinkled face. And more than once I’d taken a box of laundry detergent or cereal from the shelf at the supermarket to find a pale eye blinking back at me from the neighbouring aisle.

  The hallucinations started to turn me off going out altogether. I was becoming a seventeen-year-old hermit and Dad had noticed, hence the throwing me out of the house one Saturday afternoon.

  “Just go, Ruby. You’re letting the heat in,” Dad grumbled.

  I hovered halfway between the welcome mat and the dim interior of our creaky, old house, my sweaty hand sliding over the brass doorknob. “When Jay wakes up, there’s some cold apple juice in the fridge. He’s gone off milk for some reason. I think it’s this weather.”

  Dad groaned and rubbed at the perspiration beading up on his forehead. “Ruby, I’m pretty sure the little man and I can survive without you for an hour. Now go.”

  “All right, I’m gone,” I said, shrugging, pretending I wasn’t completely stressing inside. It wasn’t just the hallucinations keeping me home all the time. It was Jay. He needed me and maybe I needed him just as much. Truthfully, he was the only reason I rolled out of bed every day.

  I closed the door behind me, extra careful to ensure the screen didn’t smack shut and wake my little brother. Before Mum had died he had been a heavy sleeper, but now he stirred at the sound of dust settling. Fifteen minutes was in no way enough sleep for a toddler and if Jay woke up now, Dad would have to deal with an hour of epic crankiness.

  Dad will manage. Dad’s been dry for a whole month. He loves Jay and would never—has never—put him in danger.

  Resting my back against the door, I paused, waiting for the wails of protest. But none came. A puff of relief spluttered from my lips. Knowing that my little brother was asleep somehow lessened the guilt chewing away at my insides. Plus, it was only an hour.

  One foot after the othe
r I forced myself down the veranda steps and across the yard. The breezeless air was thick with the sweet scent of Mrs. Simich’s early frangipanis. Heat shimmered off every surface; the road, the rooves of houses, the cars. The street was empty. Like the world after an apocalypse. That’s what too much sun does to people, sends them indoors into hiding. I pictured them all inside, glued to their air conditioners, saying the same things over and over again, like, ‘it was never this hot when I was a kid,’ or, ‘it’s a different kind of heat nowadays,’ or maybe even, ‘this is why I like winter, at least you can put on clothes if you’re cold. But you can’t exactly take your skin off in summer, can you?’

  I scrunched up my eyes against the harsh glare, wishing I’d worn shades. Noon on the hottest day of the heatwave was definitely not the time to be going out for a stroll. But Dad was scared I was becoming depressed like Mum, and I was in major need of some new books to read so it had to be done. Plus the bookstore had air-conditioning, way better than a stick-fan that only works after you’ve given it several hard whacks with a wooden spoon while simultaneously flicking the on/off switch until it goes. So there was a plus side to my little jaunt, as long as I didn’t starting seeing six-foot tall old ladies again.

  Five minutes later, the little bell above the door of the Tea ‘n’ Tale tinkled, heralding my grand entrance. I’d forgotten all about that noisy thing. Quickly I pulled the door shut and took a moment outside to collect myself. The last time I was at the Tea ‘n’ Tale was the day Mum had died.

  I’d spoken to Graham a few times on the phone, and once when I ran into him at the supermarket, but I could never give him a definite answer as to when I was returning to my part-time job, or if I ever would. No matter what, looking after Jay came first.

  Through the window I could see that the place was crammed with customers escaping the heat. Sweat dampened my brow. I wiped it off with the back of my fraying, cloth purse that used to be sunburnt orange with mini smilies all over it—a gift from my one time Japanese pen pal, Leiko, to whom I’d sent snail-mail letters when I was going through my Japanese phase. Now it was grey all over, minus the smilies.

  Butterflies tickled my belly with the tips of their wings. This was stupid. The bookstore was my second home. I shouldn’t feel this nervous. I wrapped my hand around the brass doorknob.

  Breathe in.

  With my head bent, I stepped inside.

  Cool, recycled air blew down at me from the ceiling vents, tickling my hair and sending an icy shiver down my back. After walking the heat-shimmering streets, it was a welcomed relief.

  Breathe out.

  There. I was inside. And it wasn’t nearly as scary as I’d imagined. The freshly ground coffee beans and used-book mustiness smelt good, real good, making me glad that I’d finally decided to bite the bullet and show my face around here.

  Several heads swung my way. A few met my gaze with the usual pity in their eyes and offered weak, quivering smiles, but most pretended that their coffees and muffins were really, really interesting.

  It was nothing new. Though it had been two months, people still acted funny around me or avoided me altogether, as though Mum’s death was somehow contagious. The only exception was Mrs. Patfield—or my hallucinations of Mrs. Patfield—because she couldn’t really have been following me about like that. That would be stalking.

  Despite the place being jammed with potential sun-stroke victims, luck would have it that my favourite table at the far left-hand corner of the room was the only one empty. I half ran to it in my excitement, but when I scraped one of the chairs back the excitement dissipated. There was a faded black hessian bag on the seat and, upon further inspection, a battered guitar case leaning against a nearby wall, and a half-drunk cup of what appeared to be green tea. A neat little stack of five cent coins sat beside it.

  I scoped the area for the one who’d stolen my spot, but nobody was returning to their seat, or glaring at me for being at their table, so maybe he or she was roaming the bookshelves. It didn’t matter, really. I was here for books anyway, and the idea of coffee-to-go was becoming more appealing by the second. Plus, the quicker I was, the less likely it was that Graham would spot me and pester me about returning to work.

  Just as I was deciding which aisle to scope first, somebody with very sharp fingernails poked my arm. I spun around, getting a strong whiff of lavender up my nose.

  “Mrs. Patfield,” I said, surprise making my voice a little higher pitched than it usually was. I shouldn’t have really been too surprised to see her. I should be expecting it by now.

  “Hello, Ruby,” she said, her voice raspy and low, her small watery eyes unblinking as she stared me down.

  Goosebumps prickled my arms. I needed to get a grip. She was just an old lady in a bookstore. She probably just needed directions to the New Age section.

  From out of nowhere came a meow and I jumped. I’d forgotten that sometimes Mrs. Patfield liked to tote her beret-wearing cat. Eustace, I think its name was. It was wearing red this time, the knitted cap tilted just so.

  The old woman stood fanning herself with the same dog-eared pamphlet she’d been carrying around for months now. It had a picture of a radiant angel on the cover. It didn’t go with the Iron Maiden t-shirt she wore, the one with the gruesome Eddie skeleton giving me the middle finger.

  “Here, use this to fan yourself before you faint, Ruby. You’re as pale as the moon.” Her mauve lips quivered into a smile, revealing false teeth too large for her mouth. She waved the small magazine in front of my face, sending another strong whiff of lavender and cat food my way. “You can keep it. I have more. It’s an interesting read, actually.”

  I stepped back in decline.

  “No, thanks…I really need to find a book,” I said, casting a longing glance over my shoulder at the awaiting bookshelves before turning back to face Mrs. Patfield.

  The old lady’s glossy, auburn hair, which was at odds with her aged body, bounced when she shook her head from side to side. She took a step closer, invading my personal space with her potent lavender perfume. Even now in her eighties she was formidably tall and it hurt my neck to look up.

  Dad once said that he and his friends had been terrified of her when they were kids. They used to call her Frankenstein’s monster and then run away shrieking whenever she walked through town. I always felt sorry for her whenever I heard stories like that, because I knew how shitty being teased felt.

  There hadn’t been a day in all the years since I’d started school that I wasn’t called either a ‘ranga’ or ‘carrots’ or worse. The weird thing was that I liked my hair, most of the time, but the nicknames had conditioned me to almost hate it.

  “Portia’s Ruby,” she whispered in a voice like cracked glass before seizing my hand. Hers was cool, bony, and felt as though it was encased in silk.

  I tried to wrench my hand away but she kept a firm grip. This was no hallucination.

  “I can help you to heal, Ruby, and help you to forgive your mother.” The old woman’s tiny, drilling eyes widened dramatically, as though she had just glimpsed something frightening deep within my soul. She gasped and dropped my hand. It flopped back to my side like a dead thing.

  A cold chill washed down my back and my heart started to race.

  Eustace, whose beret had slipped off its head, narrowed its little diamond-shaped yellow eyes at me, as if he too could see whatever it was that was freaking Mrs. Patfield out.

  “It’s not too late for you, Ruby,” said Mrs. Patfield, her voice a rough whisper, her eyes wet with tears. “You’ve got a troubled road ahead of you, but I can help you prepare for the grief to come.”

  Grief to come. I did not like the sound of that. At all.

  Feeling majorly rattled, I backed away towards the soothing shadows of the bookshelves, bumping tables, spilling coffees, and muttering apologies as I went, my chest heaving with breath as I attempted to calm down.

  How on earth had she known I’d been feeling guilty about Mum? A s
hiver wracked my body at the idea of Mrs. Patfield snooping inside my head or slinking though my soul. I needed to grab my books and get out of here, pronto.

  After hitting the travel/poetry/art aisle, I dumped my bag onto the ground before closing my eyes and stretching my arms out until my fingers could just brush the book spines on either side of me. This was my favourite way of choosing a book. Of course, if I didn’t like the one I chose, I could always put it back and try again.

  Stepping forward, I tried to ignore Mrs. Patfield’s words and the rampant thudding of my heart, and concentrated on the way my fingers rose and fell from the fat spines onto the skinny ones, waiting for my gut to tell me which book I just had to read. Pausing for a moment, I caressed a long, thin cracked spine, but something made me ignore it and press forward. The right one was coming, I could feel it swirling in the pit of my belly.

  After several more steps, my hand moved over something warm and my eyes shot open.

  It was a hand, attached to the interesting guy with the fauxhawk, the artist’s wet dream. I’d have to stop calling him that. My cheeks burned and my pulse hammered as my eyes skimmed over his perfectly cut cheekbones and jaw, his mouth with the slightly fuller bottom lip, and those deep blue eyes of his that made me forget all about Mrs. Patfield for a second.

  He looked at me, one eyebrow raised and a hint of amusement curving his lips.

  I made a little yelping sound in the back of my throat and slid my hand away before shoving it behind my back, berating myself for having left my hand on his for longer than a reasonable second.

  “Sorry,” I mumbled, stepping back, my hand still tingling. “I was just…looking for a book.”

  The way he kept staring at me without saying a word made me hyper aware of the new pimple on my cheek, my chapped lips, and the frizzy-ness of my hair. So I did the only thing that came naturally to me. Book talk. The book in his hand was well worn, the cover faded.