The Whole of My World

by Nicole Hayes

  I brush the excess water off my bag and blazer, the droplets freezing against my numb fingers. Then I get inside and sink into the warm seat. It feels so good to be inside his Holden that I almost start to cry. There is so much I don’t understand right now – things I can’t seem to fix or change or even face. The one thing I’ve held onto – that’s kept me sane – is the grand final. And all he’s worried about is whether I make his car wet. ‘Well?’ I say, daring him to say a word about the crack in my voice.

  He studies me, and for a second I think he’s about to touch me. His hand rests on the headrest behind me, so close to my cheek that if I moved, even the tiniest bit, we’d make contact. ‘You’re soaked,’ he says again, making that clucking sound parents make, before starting the engine and twisting around to make sure the path is clear. He backs the Holden out and steers it through the car park, his eyes focused straight ahead.

  We’re a block from Stonnington Station before he speaks again. ‘Yeah,’ he says, as though I’ve only just asked the question. ‘I made it.’

  But he’s not exhilarated like he should be. Like I am. ‘But that’s great! That’s it! It’s all you need,’ I gush, relieved.

  ‘Of course it is,’ he says quietly.

  ‘What then?’ I lean forward, trying to get him to look at me.

  ‘Shelley . . .’ he begins. He’s using that voice adults use when they think we know what they want to say, like they’ve said it a hundred times before.

  ‘I don’t understand. You’re in. We’re in. And we’re going to win.’

  Mick looks at me carefully, turning back to the road too soon for me to work out what he’s thinking. Or maybe I’ll never work that out. Maybe there’s never enough time to look at someone long enough to understand them. ‘You must be freezing,’ he says again, and I know that’s all I’m going to get out of him.

  He pulls up to the train station, and I wish it was further away. Whatever is going on, I need to know now. I don’t care that it’s late and that Dad will know where I’ve been. I don’t care that I’m cold and wet and a long way from home. I just need to know that it’s going to be okay. ‘Tell me,’ I plead in the dark silence.

  Mick sighs long and hard. He leans back in his seat, letting his hands fall by the side of the steering wheel. If I move my right hand to rest beside my leg, the backs of our hands would be touching. I look at my hand and his, picturing that moment, knowing it won’t happen.

  ‘It’s now or never, Shell,’ he says quietly, his voice faint and uneven.

  ‘It’s the grand final. Of course it’s now or never.’

  ‘I mean, for me.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I’m shivering again, but I don’t think it’s from the cold.

  He turns to look at me, finally letting me see his face properly, or as properly as I can under the faint glow of the station lamps. ‘You should go, it’s late.’

  It feels like I’m losing something, like it’s all disappearing before my eyes. ‘You’re going to blitz on Saturday, Mick,’ I say, my voice strained with the beginnings of panic. ‘It’ll be a whole new start. Everything good that you want to happen will happen. I know it. I can feel it.’ I ignore how empty those words sound, how wrong I’ve been about this in the past. This is it. It has to be.

  Mick chuckles. ‘You never give up, do you?’

  ‘No,’ I say simply, because I don’t. I can’t. ‘It’s all about to happen for you – for us.’

  Mick looks at me oddly then and I realise my mistake. ‘I mean for the Falcons. You’re the best full forward in the competition. Everyone knows that. Everyone.’ And I lean in towards him and kiss him lightly on the cheek.

  Mick stares at me in shock but doesn’t pull away. He stays there, his face near mine.

  I don’t know what’s happening. My lungs feel tight and I can barely see. I have no idea what I want him to do next, what I want to happen. Except it feels like he is really seeing me, all of me, and I’ve never felt more important in my whole life.

  ‘Shelley.’ He says my name like a caress. He touches my face with his long, strong fingers, holding my chin in their tips. We don’t move for a long time.

  A train toots in the distance and it startles us both out of the moment.

  He sucks in air, his breath ragged. ‘You’d better go,’ he whispers, before touching his lips to my cheek. Then he sits back, gently pushing me away. But he smiles to soften it, and I know it’s okay. ‘You’ll miss your train.’

  I can’t speak or object. All I can do is grab my bag and slam the door behind me. I run from the car, through the cold, hard rain, arriving at the platform just in time to see the headlights of my train approach from Yarra Station. I don’t look back. I can’t stand the idea of hearing him take back what he did. Right now, all I feel is magic and light. Like I’m flying. Like I’m free.

  As I step onto the train, my blazer no longer feels damp and uncomfortable, and my feet tread lighter than they ever have. Suddenly I don’t care if the whole of St Mary’s is onboard, ready to judge and condemn. They can’t hurt me. They don’t matter.

  No one can touch me now.

  Dad doesn’t say anything when I walk in and he doesn’t argue or complain when he sees how sodden I am. ‘Have a shower,’ he says, not asking for an explanation. ‘You’ll freeze like that.’

  ‘Missed the bus. I stayed back to help Tara with her book review,’ I say into the silence, his back already turned away, the TV doing an excellent job of providing the distraction we both count on. His eyes are trained on a brief recap of the swimming from the Friendship Games that nobody seems to care about except for Dad. ‘She’s pretty hopeless at English,’ I add lamely.

  Dad drags his gaze from the screen and eyes me tiredly. ‘Next time, call from the station.’

  He knows I’m lying. He knows but doesn’t care. ‘I will,’ I say, telling myself that this will make the whole weekend much easier to get away with.

  When I get in the shower, I stand there for so long that my fingers shrivel to prunes. I don’t get out until the hot water runs cold.

  When I finally get to bed, the sheets warmed by my electric blanket, I feel completely drained of energy. Drained of everything. Despite the confusion of thoughts clouding my mind, I won’t have any problems sleeping. One more day of school and then I’ll know.

  If it’s all been worth it.

  ‘We need to get our stuff from the warehouse first,’ Tara reminds me, as we head out the school gates, past the six-foot fence. Tara told me it was only three-feet high when she first came to St Mary’s, but the nuns were always shooing the St Ignatius boys away from the front gate. She came back to school in Year 8 after the summer holidays to see the fence had been raised to twice its previous height. ‘Next it’ll be razor wire,’ she’d joked. That’s probably why Dad was so keen on me coming here.

  The party-supplies warehouse is a few blocks from school. We’ve already bought coloured hairspray and theatre make-up in gold and brown, but we still have to get balloons and crepe paper for the mini floggers. We walk the first block, keen to put distance between school and the weekend, then we break into a jog for the next kilometre. Like everyone, I love Fridays, but the day before the grand final is magic. I start laughing for no reason and Tara joins in. It feels like summer, even though it’s barely twenty degrees in the sun.

  We buy the last bits and pieces we need for our costumes then catch the tram back to Tara’s house. We’ve almost finished the floggers and have laid out our costumes neatly when her bedroom door opens. A dark-haired, thickly built man stands in the doorway. He looks younger than my dad, although on closer inspection, I realise it’s his hair that makes the difference. It isn’t grey, while Dad’s is. But his eyes have that same crinkled unevenness at the edges, and the five o’clock shadow on his chin is speckled with grey. I wonder if he dyes his hair to keep it that smooth brown colour. It doesn’t look real, and doesn’t match his whiskers at all.

  Tara’s face li
ghts up. ‘Daddy!’ she says, leaping at her father with an animation and excitement I’ve never seen before. She suddenly looks like a little girl, the worldliness all gone.

  ‘Tara,’ he says, without any of his daughter’s animation. He nods curtly at me, but doesn’t ask my name.

  ‘How long are you back?’ Tara asks, her fingers still twisted in her father’s. For the moment, I don’t exist.

  ‘I’m not. The car’s waiting outside. Next week, though. We’ll have a special lunch.’ It’s a kind of apology, one that seems to come easily.

  Tara’s face does something remarkable then. First, it collapses in despair, which turns into something resembling rage, with a glimmer of grief, and then her features reshape themselves into her usual cool detachment. These shifts happen so abruptly, so intensely, that it’s almost comical.

  Her hand drops from her father’s and dangles awkwardly beside her thigh. I look at her dad and realise he didn’t see any of it. He’s already halfway out the door, glancing down the corridor or into another room. ‘Where’s your mother?’ he asks, turning back to face his daughter.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Tara answers, any hint of her earlier joy obliterated. Whatever she’s feeling, she doesn’t want him to see.

  My heart wrenches as I watch her performance and recognise it as something painfully, unbearably familiar. We have never been more alike, Tara and me, than at this moment.

  ‘Typical,’ he says lightly. But there’s a slight sneer on his lips.

  Tara flinches, just barely, but doesn’t move.

  I want to stand between them to protect Tara.

  ‘Tell her I was here, will you?’ he says, then manages his first real smile. ‘Or don’t and see if she notices.’

  Tara matches his smile, although hers doesn’t have the cruel twist to it that her father’s has. ‘You’d have to empty the liquor cabinet for that to happen,’ Tara says unexpectedly, her voice dry and grating.

  Mr Lester looks up sharply as though ready to rebuke his daughter.

  She stands there defiant, and yet brittle, too.

  A car horn toots outside and the moment passes as he checks his watch. ‘I have to go,’ he says. ‘Are you okay? Do you have money?’ He doesn’t wait for Tara to answer. He’s already pulled out his wallet and is rifling through it, extracting some twenties and fifties and holding them out to her.

  For a long second, Tara doesn’t move.

  He cocks his head, waiting, impatience etched into the line of his mouth. He isn’t going to move closer or meet her halfway. I think of Tara’s coat and my surprise that her father would sew on all those bits and pieces. The idea is suddenly ridiculous.

  Finally, Tara steps forward and takes the money. She doesn’t look at him. The delight at his arrival has been replaced with something I can’t quite name.

  He leans in to kiss her brusquely on the cheek, and I think about Mick’s light, easy kiss the night before. They are nothing alike, and yet . . .

  ‘See you next week, honey,’ he says, without a trace of emotion, and shuts the door behind him.

  Tara returns to our tasks like nothing has happened, laying out our props, straightening our costumes and getting everything ready for our early departure. But where before there was a nervous energy in the activity, now her movements are slow and deliberate. Every action seems to take an enormous effort on her part. And yet she doesn’t skip a beat or ask for help. She doesn’t even look at me.

  There is a long moment of perfect stillness when we hear the front door bang shut, as though time has frozen and no one else exists outside this room, and then Tara steps across to the window beside me. Her dad’s car is shiny and silver – sporty, like something a famous footballer would drive. In the passenger seat is a young woman with dead-straight blonde hair and lips so red I can see the swollen shape of them in profile before she turns towards us. She’s very pretty and young.

  I know better than to look at Tara. We both remain fixated on the vision of this handsome couple disappearing in their shiny car. After a difficult silence, Tara steps away from the window, freeing me to do the same. Without once looking up at me, she whispers flatly, ‘That’s his assistant.’

  Neither of us believes her.

  Tara returns to our arrangements, continuing to collect her things, her back as straight as a rod, her head stiffly turned away from the door and away from me. When she tries to close her backpack, bits of flogger and scarf protruding in all their brown-and-gold glory, I notice her hands shaking so hard that she can’t manoeuvre the zip. I don’t speak as she fumbles with the metal tag – I don’t dare. Instead, I reach in to draw the contents of the bag in tighter for her, pulling the tracks together so she can slide the zip shut. The metallic zing! of the teeth connecting on their tracks cuts through the silence as clearly and as finally as a slamming door, the teeth gleaming like a brand-new sports car.

  Tara is already awake when I open my eyes. Her hair is all mussed-up, her face even paler than its usual pasty white, and her eyes have neat, dark circles under them, stark against the strange blue of her irises. I don’t have to ask her if she slept well.

  ‘Morning!’ I say, forcing a brightness I don’t feel.

  ‘Don’t even talk about it,’ she says.

  Okay. ‘How about breakfast?’ I suggest, ignoring the double-backflip-with-pike my stomach is doing at the idea of food.

  ‘I mean, not at all,’ she says, as though I haven’t spoken.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’ll jinx us.’

  She’s talking about the game. I can’t mention the game – at all. It’s going to be a long day.

  ‘Silence is golden,’ Tara adds, without even a hint of laughter.

  During the finals, she’s taken her superstitions to a whole other level. The rules are simple enough. I am not to mention winning or losing or the opposition team. All conversation is restricted to the ground where we’re playing, the plan to get there and the chance of rain. More detailed discussions of the weather are okay but not encouraged, while possible food choices at half-time are the best option. That’s until we get there. Once the players run out onto the ground, the rules change and we – I – am free to measure and gauge, criticise and applaud whatever I want to. I just can’t declare us winners, no matter the margin, until after the final siren. That’s the new amendment, in honour of our finals success: even if we’re one hundred points up and there are only a handful of fit players left on the opposing side, no victory cries until the final siren sounds. Given how well we’ve travelled this year under her rules, I’m happy to go with it, just in case.

  Mrs Lester is setting the table for breakfast. It’s the first time I’ve seen her since the afternoon we met and I’m relieved to see that she seems sober. She must have come in some time during the night. Tara and I had picked up some Chinese take-away from around the corner and eaten our dinner alone.

  ‘Hello, dear,’ she says to me like we’re old friends.

  ‘Hi, Mrs Lester. Thanks for inviting me over.’

  She waves this away, a chunky diamond ring flashing in the morning light. ‘No problem. Tara doesn’t ask her friends around much,’ Mrs Lester says. ‘It’s good to finally meet you, Shelley.’

  I look at Tara, wondering if I should correct her mother. But there’s no need, Tara’s on it. ‘She came over weeks ago – remember? After the Redbacks game?’

  Mrs Lester raises an eyebrow at her daughter. ‘Tone, Tara,’ she says. ‘Well, Shelley, I hope you enjoy the game.’

  ‘We’ll be late tonight,’ Tara says, munching on a piece of Vegemite toast. ‘Don’t wait up.’

  I manage half a slice before the salty tang is too much for my dry mouth. I gulp down some orange juice, then try again, with more success.

  Two slices of Vegemite toast and half a litre of orange juice later, we’re ready to go.

  The two-block walk to the train station is uncomfortably warm. It’s going to be a gorgeous day – hot for this time of
year. I’m wearing gold pants several sizes too big that are held up with Dad’s gold suspenders, Glenthorn socks, a brown shirt with a gold spray-painted collar sticking out over my Glenthorn jumper, capped off with Glenthorn beanie, brown jacket (with player badges and name tags, and a huge number 5 on its back) and brown-and-gold spray-painted tennis shoes that, I suddenly discover, are probably a little on the small side. Fifteen minutes later, the train being late and the station seats all taken, I decide they’re a lot on the small side.

  Tara is wearing brown pants in a better, more Glenthorn kind of brown than my shirt. I’d wanted to buy them but she’d spotted them first at the Silverdale Salvos. She has a gold skivvy under her Falcons jumper and scarf. On her feet she’s got Dunlop Volleys that didn’t look all that old before she spray-painted them in brown and gold stripes. The outfit is finished off with her duffle coat, covered with every sewable or pinnable piece of memorabilia available in brown and gold. To top it off, our faces are painted and our hair sprayed gold.

  We catch the 7.12 from Silverdale and sit among the private-school kids, who are all on their way to Saturday sport. I notice a bunch of Celtic boys in their tracksuits, around the same age as Josh, and I wonder what he’s up to now that the junior footy season is over.

  I haven’t spoken to him since the Ginnie incident, although he’s called a few times. He’s probably worked out I’m angry with him by now. But that’s his problem, not mine. I can’t forgive him for telling Ginnie about Angus. He, of all people, should understand that. But I can’t worry about that now. Today is not about Josh McGuire. Today is about Glenthorn and football and Mick. Or, really, today is about me.

  Finally, today, I get to win.

  The MCG almost glows in the light of the bright, sunny day. The light towers glint in the sun and the busy traffic noise fills the air. The mood is electric. The only people around this early are the ground officials, some club people, the police and both cheersquads, but everyone driving past toots their horns or yells out the window, marking the day hours before the real fun begins.