“Has it ever occurred to you that your perspective on the past might be faulty, Calma? That not everything is either black or white?”
“I know what I know, Mum. He walked out on us.”
“It was all a long time ago, Calma.” Her voice was quiet and infused with weariness.
“So what?” I said, my voice getting shriller. “What difference does that make? By that argument, if Adolf Hitler returned, we would all be going, ‘Hey, don’t worry. You might have exterminated six million Jews in the gas chambers, but it was all a long time ago. Have a cup of tea and a Fig Newton.’”
“Your father is not Hitler, Calma. You’re overreacting again.”
“No, Mum. You are underreacting. Look what’s happened to us. Here we are having a bloody argument, and over what? Him. He’s been back five minutes and we are fighting. Doesn’t that tell you something?”
“It tells me you like to argue.”
I stopped my pacing.
“What? You’re saying this is my fault? Oh, I see. Well, it’s pretty obvious when you think about it. Here’s me angry and upset because your low-life ex-husband is trying to worm his way back into our lives, and it’s all my fault. I tell you what, Mum—you start baking a cake and I’ll work on a big banner we can drape over the front door: WELCOME HOME, SHITHEAD. FEEL FREE TO FUCK US OVER AGAIN.”
I never swear in front of my mother. Her eyes hardened and her hands clenched into fists. I could see tendons bunch in her lower arms. Then she relaxed and rubbed her fingers over her brow, a gesture that seemed to take enormous effort. She was exhausted.
“I don’t want to argue with you,” she said in a quiet, reasonable voice that only served to make me angrier. “But you need to understand that it’s not all about you, Calma. When I make a decision, I take your views into consideration. But the decision has to be mine. I will not be bullied. By him, by you, by anyone.”
She pushed her coffee cup away and picked up the car keys.
“I’m off to work.”
I had my back to her as she left the house. I didn’t trust myself to keep my mouth shut, and saying anything else wasn’t going to help. I heard the car start up and the crunch of tires on the gravel as she reversed out. Only when silence settled over the house did I go into the front room and sit down. I tried reading Emma for a while but couldn’t concentrate.
Mum was right. It wasn’t fair of me to use anger to influence her. If my feelings were worked up by the return of my father, then hers must have been in turmoil. The last thing she needed was me churning them up further.
Nonetheless, I couldn’t ignore my own emotions. There was trouble ahead. I could only hope we would both be strong enough to deal with it.
Chapter 4
Peace offering
Dear Fridge,
I’m sorry. I was wrong.
Not as wrong as you, but a lot sorrier.
I want to apologize also for using the word “F***.” I know you don’t like it. I admit it. I fucked up.
Love,
Calma
Chapter 5
All about relationships
I got the job!
It was sooo easy. I took along a résumé, filled out a form, and had a short interview with a balding bloke who smelled of tobacco smoke and essence-of-dead-dog cologne.
I nearly choked when he told me the pay rate. I was under the impression child slavery had been abolished. A sudden vision came to me—a muscled manager in a loincloth whipping cowering employees for not keeping up with the rhythm of beating drums. I didn’t say anything, though. I even tried to manufacture an expression of unbridled joy at the prospect of working for an hourly sum you’d expect to find down the back of a sofa.
I was due to start on Saturday. Late shift. I’d get a uniform and after three months I would be entitled to a staff discount of 5 percent. Riches beyond my wildest dreams.
I was excited and a little nervous.
English continued to be great. I’d done some serious thinking about Miss Moss. I’m not sure how accurate a picture you might have of my personality yet, but I’ll let you in on a secret. I’m not the sort of person to take criticism very well, particularly if it’s criticism of my intellect. Miss Moss had been hurtful. But no matter how hard I tried to feed resentment, I couldn’t get over the fact that she was right. The poem I had written was awful. It occurred to me that I had two options—curl my lip whenever she was around and rag on her to other students, or talk to her about how to improve.
Mature, or what?
She was terrific when I approached her. She gave up a free period to go over the basic principles of poetry writing. And the more she talked, the more excited I got. I wanted to write proper poetry, to express ideas and emotions in powerful and concise language. Miss Moss made it clear this would require work because writing poetry was a frustrating process that involved grappling with words in ways I hadn’t yet considered.
The more difficult she made it sound, the more determined I was to succeed. She said she would be delighted to provide constructive comments about anything I wrote.
I tell you, Miss Moss was so good I was terrified she would wake up one morning and wonder what she was doing in a school where students copying out of textbooks was considered state-of-the-art educational practice. It was only a matter of time before she took her skills elsewhere, so I had to take advantage while I could.
It wasn’t just Miss Moss who made English enjoyable, though.
You see, I have a new friend.
Now, for most of you, having a friend is probably not an earth-shattering event. You’re undoubtedly the sort of person who gets invited to sleep-overs with thirty-eight other people and buys birthday presents at least twice a week. Well, I’ve always been a loner. I don’t make friends easily. Maybe the Fridge is right—perhaps I put people off with sarcasm and what she calls my “love affair with my own intellect.” Who knows?
(Roll intro music)
Presenter: Good evening. This is the six o’clock news and I’m Anton Enus. In breaking news tonight, Calma Harrison has found a friend. Details from our correspondent in northern Australia, Penny Forum. Hello, Penny, are you there?
Penny: Good evening, Anton.
Anton: What’s the latest, Penny?
Penny: Well, Anton, as you can see, I’m outside Calma Harrison’s house. I must stress we have no official confirmation as yet, but all the indicators are that the rumors sweeping the nation have some basis in fact. Calma Harrison, loner, total loser in the friendship stakes, seems finally to have found someone willing to be her buddy.
Anton: Do we know who this mysterious friend might be, Penny?
Penny: The name Vanessa Aldrick keeps cropping up, Anton. A girl in Calma’s Year 11 English class.
Anton: And what do we know about her?
Penny: A picture is emerging. Vanessa is tall, willowy, and, according to reliable sources, a genetic throwback to the 1960s. She wears paisley caftans and beads and her hair is long, limp, and features a severe middle parting. I cannot as yet confirm that she also wears a peace symbol around her neck. Indications are she spends most of her time on a different level of existence than the rest of us, making only brief appearances on the planet Earth.
Anton: So, in short, a dysfunctional adolescent?
Penny: Exactly.
Anton: Has Calma made any comment yet? Can we expect a press conference in the near future?
Penny: Well, as you can see, Anton, representatives from all the world’s major media are camped outside Calma’s house. We have CNN, ABC, BBC, Sky, newspaper reporters from the Age, the Australian, the Financial Review, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Guardian, le Monde, and Skateboarders Weekly. As yet, there has been no sign of Calma, but she is definitely inside her home and we expect a statement shortly.
Anton: We’ll return to that story as soon as there are new developments. Meanwhile, in other news, an intergalactic war craft from a small planet in the constellation Ur
sa Minor landed today in Sydney, crushing the Opera House and threatening the destruction of the Earth within the next twenty-four hours….
If I’m going to be strictly accurate, I should say I’ve got two friends. You see, we signed up for cable.
I have no idea why. I mean, the Fridge never watches television. She just dusts the screen occasionally. But I was excited. We couldn’t afford the movie channels, but even so, my viewing options had increased enormously. The first night, I sat down with the remote control and two pounds of popcorn. It was terrific. It was hypnotic. Four hours of surfing later, I knew that instead of four channels of undiluted sewage, I had thirty-five to choose from. There was a documentary on the history of lead miners’ wives in the early twentieth century, an American soap opera in which no one could act but everyone’s hair was immaculate, a sports channel featuring international synchronized tiddlywinks, and a shopping channel where, apparently, viewers were scrambling for their credit cards to buy ghastly jewelry at inflated prices.
And then, like a gold nugget in a bucket of diarrhea, there was Discovery. Did you know the male seahorse gets fertilized, carries the babies to term, and looks after the offspring? The female, I imagine, goes to the pub with her mates to watch football on a plasma screen.
I was hooked.
It would be an exaggeration to say my first evening at work was an unqualified success. But the near-hospitalization of a customer strikes me as an accident that could happen to anyone. Nonetheless, the incident was not one I would have chosen to have witnessed by my supervisor. On the plus side, though, there was Jason….
Okay. I’ll just tell you what happened.
I fronted up to Crazi-Cheep at seven-thirty, half an hour before my shift was due to start. The timing was fortunate because I had to get a uniform and suffer a twenty-minute induction on what the job entailed. This was delivered by my supervisor, who, I was dismayed to learn, was none other than the gum-chewing bump on a log who had ignored me on my first visit. Her name was Candy, which struck me as appropriately lightweight. She ran through the basics in a monotone, her eyes never making contact with mine.
Basically, I wasn’t going to be operating a checkout until I had proved myself stacking shelves. I got the impression that being on a register was considered the dizzying height of career ambition—not something I could even aspire to until I had three degrees and fourteen years’ experience. I tried to look suitably serious, as if being promoted to the checkout was a distant goal, like winning an Oscar for best supporting actress. Not that my expression made any difference—my face was a nonstick surface as far as Candy was concerned.
I was given a checked, sack-like uniform. It hung dispiritedly just below my knees. Then we went to the warehouse area behind the aisles. I must admit I had always wondered what was behind those big plastic curtains, which shows you what a sad life I’ve led. Without wishing to destroy the romantic dreams of those who’ve been similarly curious, the answer is: rows and rows of toilet paper, pasta, and jars of stir-fry paste.
My job for the evening was to check stock on the shelves and replenish any items that were dwindling. I was hoping to get a pricing gun so that I could go around yelling, “Give me all the money from the registers or I’ll mark down everything in the store.” But it seems they don’t use price stickers anymore.
Anyway, I set to with enthusiasm. Before long I discovered the shelves were woefully low on baked beans. I tell you, it was a good job they had employed me. I was right on the case. A woman with a mission. No customer was going to leave Crazi-Cheep with a cold lump of disappointment stemming from a fruitless search for cheddar-flavored baked beans.
I loaded one of those carts that always seem to get in the way when you’re a customer and headed for aisle eight. The front left wheel spun at crazy angles and the whole apparatus had an alarming drift to the right. It was all I could do to avoid crashing into grocery displays just asking for annihilation. Finally, though, I lumbered to a stop halfway along aisle eight and started unpacking and stacking cans of baked beans.
I hadn’t got very far with this fascinating and skilled activity when there was a bronchitic cough behind me and a shopping cart slammed into my ankles. Has that ever happened to you? Trust me, it is the most painful thing in the world. Carts are designed that way. I imagine a mad scientist somewhere saying to a white-coated colleague, Right. We have three standard wheels and the fourth is operated by a microchip programmed to randomly choose directions at right angles to the intended trajectory. We have the child seat that traps your fingers. What else? I know—how about positioning the front bumper bar so it causes permanent disability when rammed into ankles?
I hobbled to my feet, suppressing the temptation to scream a four-letter word beginning with f and ending with uck at the top of my voice.
A little old lady was beaming at me. She was vertically challenged to the extent that her wrinkled face just peeped over the cart’s handle. It was unnerving.
“I’m so sorry, dear,” she said.
“I suspect you are not as sorry as I am,” I replied. “Might I also suggest that penitence is not generally accompanied by a wide grin?”
“Pardon?” she said.
“What can I do for you?” I asked, rubbing my ankles. The pain had subsided, so it only felt like red-hot darning needles were being inserted into my Achilles tendons.
“Where do you keep your condoms?”
I forgot the pain instantly. Who wouldn’t? My jaw dropped, and a range of replies raced through my mind. On my boyfriend’s willie was the best, but I didn’t say it, and not just because I didn’t have a boyfriend. With an effort of will, I cranked my lower jaw back up.
“They’re for my grandson,” she continued. “He wants knobbly ones that glow in the dark.”
“Just possibly too much information,” I said, “but if you come with me, we’ll try to find them.”
I knew I was going to love this job. I’d only been working half an hour and it was well worth the forty cents I must have earned. If this was going to happen regularly, I’d have paid them for the opportunity to work here. Imagine the material I would have for my writer’s notebook! If I had one. True, my happiness was dented slightly by the old lady ramming me with the cart again in exactly the same place, but I no longer felt the urge to viciously strike her to the floor.
“I’m so sorry,” she said again.
“If you’re so sorry,” I said, “why do you keep doing it?”
But there was no real anger in my voice. I left her happily poring over the merits of strawberry-flavored Rough Riders and limped back to the baked beans.
I was debating the artistic merits of pyramid displays as opposed to the space-saving yet rather conventional rectangular stack system (who said this job wasn’t going to be stimulating?) when another customer behind me coughed and said, “Excuse me?” I tell you, it’s an occupational hazard when you’re a shelf stacker. People sneak up on you. I got up and turned around.
My father was standing there.
Fact File
Common name: Robert Harrison
Scientific name: Baldus shortarsius
Habitat: This noxious creature is not, as one might reasonably expect, found under slimy stones, but is liable to appear in any environment when you least expect it. Prefers warm climates but is unable to provide for itself and thus attaches itself to any available host body, where it will cling unpleasantly and eventually empty the refrigerator.
Mating habits: Despite its unprepossessing appearance, Baldus shortarsius is apparently sexually attractive to deranged members of its own species. It mates and moves on quickly, effectively diluting its own gene pool. This is worrying since the pool was little more than a puddle in the first place.
Appearance: Short, stumpy, and follicularly challenged.
Toxicity: Close contact is not fatal, though debilitating symptoms might persevere for years. Best avoided unless wearing full body armor.
Status: Unfortu
nately, not extinct.
We eyed each other for what seemed an age. He was trying to smile, but it was more like a smirk. I don’t know what my expression looked like, but I suspect glacial might approximate. The frozen food section was generating more heat than me.
“Hello, Calma,” he said finally.
“What can I do for you, sir?” I said.
His eyes flickered away and he gave a little wave with his hands, a pathetic gesture of helplessness. He tried the smile again.
“Is that all you can say to me?”
“I’m working, sir. If you need help to find products, then I am employed to assist. If not, I must ask that you allow me to return to my task.”
He ran a hand through his thin hair, unconsciously smoothing a few errant strands over his bald patch.
“Aw, come on, Calma. Give me a break. I just need a few words. That’s all. Is that too much to ask? A few words with my own daughter?” He put his hand on my arm and my flesh shrank from his touch.
“Please remove your hand, sir, or I will be forced to call security.”
He let me go and even took a step backward. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Candy standing at the end of the aisle, watching.
“Perhaps we could talk when you’ve finished your shift?” he said. “Please, Calma.”
“I don’t finish work until five in the morning,” I lied. “And then I have to get straight back to my family. Now, if you’ll excuse me…”
I don’t expect you to believe me, but what happened next was a complete accident. I grabbed the rear rail of the cart and swung it around. My intention was to glide effortlessly back into the bowels of the warehouse section. But the front wheel had other ideas. Instead of executing a perfect arc, the cart juddered and slammed into my father’s groin. The sharp metal edge of the front rail landed, with sickening accuracy, on the family jewels. A fleeting, disbelieving look passed over my father’s face and then he doubled up, emitting a high-pitched scream. I have no idea, obviously, what it is like to have your testicles propelled into your throat, but I can’t imagine it’s very pleasant. Certainly the writhing, groaning form in front of me didn’t appear to be having the time of its life. All color flooded from his face and he groped, in a kind of shutting-the-stable-door-after-the-horse-has-bolted fashion, at his nether regions.
Am I Right or Am I Right? Page 3