by Andrew Daddo
Mum was a statue: mouth open, arms folded, head leaning forward on the anxious stalk of her neck. She was white and not even Candy’s magic tan could cover it.
‘You didn’t get the message, did you!’ Now it was Leroy’s turn to look shocked. This was like a game of shock tennis. Fifteen all.
Mum shook her head.
‘I called you on Monday. Actually, I called you every day.’
‘Uh-huh!’ cracked Mum. And then, ‘There goes my feature. All that work, everything. It’s all gone.’
I didn’t know whether I was happy or sad.
‘Oh, no!’ said Dad a bit too quickly. ‘This is terrible.’
‘No, it’s not. We can salvage it,’ said Leroy. ‘We’ll do the “after” shots now, and then we’ll do the “before"s. It’s no big thing. Probably better, in fact.’
‘Better? How could it be?’
‘I dunno,’ he said. ‘But it couldn’t be worse, could it?’
Mum started breathing rapidly through her nose. I didn’t recognise it as any of the breathing techniques we’d learnt at the wellness centre. It might have been a bit like the Aztec priests, but then, they breathed a lot deeper than that because the air up there was so thin. She was sucking up little breaths and turning red. I backed away. So did Kylie. There was no way I was going to get caught in this eruption.
25
‘So, Leroy Stretch, Mr Please-use-me-as-your-photographer-I’ve-been-dying-to-do-a-makeover-forever, how do you intend to make this work? We’ve been away, in the Spiritual Health and Wellness Centre for a week.’ Mum had her fists clenched by her sides, left foot forward and her chin out. She was spoiling for a bit of biffo.
‘You don’t look any different,’ said Leroy.
Dumb move, I thought.
‘I don’t look any different?’
‘Not really,’ he said. He pointed the camera at her and fired a shot. Blap! Then he looked at his light meter and nodded. ‘You’ve been gone less than a week.’
Dumber.
‘You’re telling me that I don’t look any different?’
‘Well, you do look better, much healthier. You all do. Your eyes are in the front of your heads, no black rings. You’ve got a bit of that vego glow going on. Apart from that – nup. What’d you expect?’
Very very dumb.
Mum’s breathing got faster and dangerously shallow. ‘What did I expect? Oh, I don’t know. I’ve lived on beans and grass, I’ve turned myself inside out, beaten drums, meditated, sung, howled, screamed and cried. I’ve sweated. I’ve been pummelled and pushed and prodded and – and I have had my hair cut, straightened and blow-dried this MORNING and you are telling me I don’t look any different! Are you the world’s only working blind photographer?’
Leroy took a step back, then a couple more. ‘No, Marnie. I didn’t mean that. I don’t know what I meant. Ah, Candy? What did I mean? It’s hot in here, huh? I’ll turn on the air con.’
Then he ran off and Mum dissolved.
Candy seemed to materialise out of nowhere with tissues and a string of it’s-all-rights and please-don’t-cries. Mum nodded and tried to smile, but it was hopeless.
‘You have to stop.’ Candy stroked Mum’s shoulder. ‘You’re going to spoil the photos. These are the afters. Stop right now, please – you look great. Doing it this way’s going to work better anyway, I promise, darling. You’ll see. But you’ll have to stop crying.’
Through sobs, Mum asked me to get her Rescue Remedy from her bag. I hated getting anything from that bag. It was like a black hole: things went in and were never seen again. Most times if she asked me to get something for her I couldn’t find it, then she’d snap, ‘Bring it here,’ and she’d look and always find whatever it was. I don’t know how she did that. I figured this was not the time to argue with her, so I went and got her bag and started the search.
I found heaps of other stuff: bus tickets, her mobile phone, spare house keys, car keys, surfboard wax, nail scissors, tweezers, the polaroid of the ‘before’ photo… I had a good look at it. The picture was funny, but dumb funny – like an Adam Sandler movie.
We didn’t look like a normal family. It wasn’t us. It was a picture of a family who seemed like they were trying to look bad; as if they were in on some joke or going to a fancy dress party as – well, whatever we were dressed up as, it certainly wasn’t us.
No one wore clothes like that. We were a lot of things, but we weren’t total losers.
Then I found the Rescue Remedy and took it back to Mum. She’d already stopped crying, but gulped down a dropperful.
‘Thanks, darling,’ she said. Then I gave her the ‘before’ photo. ‘Yikes!’ she clucked. ‘That’s awful, isn’t it?’
‘Yep.’
Dad sneaked a look over her shoulder and let out a guffaw. ‘Is it really such a bad thing he can’t use those photos, Marnie?’
‘Oh, my God!’ said Kylie. ‘There’s no way you can use that! I’d never be able to go back to school. That’s the sort of photo they find of celebrities before they were famous. Kind of Where Are They Now? in reverse. Who Were They Then? Or, What Were They? If this got out it’d ruin my career before it even started. I’d never get on a soap. I’d never get on Dancing with the Stars.’
‘How would you describe that picture, honey?’ Dad said to Mum.
She stuffed it into her back pocket. ‘Gone.’
Leroy Stretch stuck his head back into the room – just his head – and asked if everything was cool.
‘Just peachy,’ said Mum. ‘You’re almost forgiven. You can come back now.’
‘Yeah, well, it is my studio. Everyone ready for a go at “after”?’ He waggled his head.
Mum turned around to look at us. For a moment I thought she was going to call for a group hug. Or maybe send me to the car to grab her drum and have us clap along with her mad beatings. But she didn’t. Something happened, though; I’m not sure what, or how, but it was a moment. A Limpid family moment. And it was a good one.
Flash! Flash! Blap! Blap!
We smiled for some of the shots and looked normal for others. Back to back, side to side. ‘Show us your guns, flex your tanks!’ Leroy put Kylie and me in front of Mum and Dad, then Mum and Dad in front of us. That didn’t work too well until he gave us stools to stand on.
Blap! Blap! Flash! Flash!
‘Got it,’ he said. ‘Want to see?’
‘How?’
‘Got the new technology back, kids. So much for top of the range!’
Leroy darted over to the massive plasma TV in the corner, hooked his camera up to some leads behind and told us to get comfortable. ‘Here we go,’ he said.
He scrolled through the pictures.
No one said anything. We didn’t laugh or cry. We couldn’t believe it. We looked good – even Dad in his dopey shorts and Superman t-shirt. A few of the shots were pretty funny: someone would be talking, or have their eyes shut. Dad was flexing in most of them; so was I. Kylie had a better pout than Mum, but Mum had other bits to push out that Kylie didn’t.
‘Stop there,’ said Mum.
In this photo, with Dad on one end, Kylie, me, then Mum on the other end, Dad was giving me bunny ears and really laughing. His eyes were a mess of wrinkles and his smile was so big it was gummy. Mum was looking a bit proper, as if she was halfway to a big laugh, but trying to stop herself. Kylie looked hot. (I can’t believe I’m even saying that.) And I had my fists in balls behind my biceps and a funny kind of frown on my face. I was laughing, but frowning, too.
‘That’s the money shot,’ said Mum. She clapped her hands. ‘We’ve finished.’
‘What about the “befores”?’
‘We’re not doing them. If I’ve learnt one thing from the Spirit of the Ng Ng, or maybe it was Zen and the Art of Imaginary Maintenance, it’s that what was is not important. It’s what’s now. It took me a while to see it.’
‘You’re kidding, right?’ said Dad.
‘I’m really not.’
‘But you can’t write a makeover piece without a “before”. It’ll never work. You are still writing a makeover piece? I mean, did you see the bill from the wellness centre? It was enough to make me feel sick. Please don’t tell me – ’
‘It’s fine,’ said Mum. ‘I’m still writing the article; I’m just not emphasising the before bit. I mean, I’ll show them the polaroid – for a joke – but they won’t be allowed to use it. Won’t be able to anyway. It’s a polaroid. It’s not hi-res. And the story will be better without it. It’ll break new ground in journalism: the first makeover piece with just the “after”. Genius.’
26
The following Saturday morning, the phone rang early. Several times.
I heard Mum go out the front door and come back inside. It would have been hard not to hear her. ‘I’ve got the paper and we’re on page one. We made the front page! Oh, my GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD!’
‘We’ll look at it together, we’ll look at it together,’ yelled Kylie from somewhere between her bedroom and the bathroom. ‘Don’t peek, Mum. No snooping.’
I was up pretty sharply once I heard the paper was in, but Dad was lagging.
There on the front page of our local paper was a picture of our family.
It wasn’t the picture Mum said she’d let them use. And it wasn’t massive with a caption splashed across the middle of it, or under it saying something like LIMPIDS ARE GIMPIDS: HOW DUMB ARE THESE GUYS?
It was just a little picture of us up the top, under the masthead. It was about three centimetres square. There was a small heading: ‘Makeover Made Good.’ It was the four of us standing there looking normal. No bunny ears, no big laughs; just an ordinary picture from the ‘after’ shoot. It was good. Mum put the paper in the middle of the table. She and Kylie and I crowded in front of it and waited for Dad.
‘Come on, Len,’ Mum yelled. Dad said he was coming. ‘So sad, too bad. Your father’s too slow!’ The phone rang again. ‘Leave it,’ she said.
She flicked through the pages deliberately, as if she didn’t know where her article was. But we all knew it was the middle spread, because she’d told us four gazillion times that week. She was drawing out the enjoyment, the way I did whenever I got near the end of a book. Slowly, slowly. She got to the page before and dragged it half open, but we couldn’t see the whole spread. There was the real picture. Mum stifling her laugh, me with bunny ears, Kylie still looking hot and Dad still laughing.
It was bigger than the one on the masthead, but it wasn’t as big as I expected – or feared.
‘Pooh! It’s not as big as I thought it’d be,’ said Mum.
‘Looks good, though,’ said Kylie.
‘Just open it all the way, Mum,’ I said.
And when she did I heard a shriek. Maybe it was Mum; it could have been me. Dad definitely squealed, because it was right in my ear as he arrived and looked over my shoulder.
‘I’ll nuke them!’ said Mum as she started breathing quickly. ‘We had a deal. They’ll be the ones needing wellness. I’ll never trust an editor again. They promised they wouldn’t use that polaroid! They won’t want to see the “after” once I’m through with them – I’ll finish them all!’
About the Author
Things you don’t need to know about Andrew Daddo
His favourite yoga pose is Downward-facing Dog (but he doesn’t know why).
Yesterday, he had no idea what a verandah bum was.
His last meal would be with his family.
He didn’t get a filling until he was in his twenties (but he’s eaten lollies since he was a kid).
Eating crusts did not make his hair go curly and spinning on his head didn’t wear away his hair.
Andrew could have played AFL for the Melbourne Footy Club.
If he knew when his last meal was going to be, he’d put it off as long as possible.
He doesn’t really have a favourite yoga pose. He’s actually never done yoga.
Andrew likes to tell stories.
And he didn’t play for the Melbourne Footy Club because he was hopeless at footy.
A verandah bum is a muffin top that goes all the way around your body.
Andrew’s next book is going to be called The Hit!—if that’s the next book he writes.
Copyright
The ABC “Wave” device is a trademark of the
Australian Broadcasting Corporation and is used
under licence by HarperCollinsPublishers Australia.
First published in Australia in 2006
This edition published in 2011
by HarperCollinsPublishers Australia Pty Limited
Copyright © Andrew Daddo 2006
The right of Andrew Daddo to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him under the Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act 2000.
This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced, copied, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, recorded, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
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National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication data:
Andrew Daddo
Muffin top / Andrew Daddo.
ISBN: 978-0-7333-1889-4 (pbk.)
ISBN: 978-0-7304-9538-3 (ePub)
For children.
I. Title.
A823.4