All This Could End

by Steph Bowe

  ‘Yeah,’ Tom mutters from the back.

  ‘See, if this was one of your friends asking you to do this, it’d all be a lot of fun, wouldn’t it? The reason you’re rebelling against me is because I’m your mother. You wouldn’t have a problem with it otherwise.’

  ‘I would have problem with it, trust me.’

  ‘Well, that’s good then. I don’t want you trusting some kid you go to school with over your mum.’

  ‘Fine,’ says Nina. ‘This is so totally unnecessary.’ She takes the coat hanger, twists it open and tucks it into her school blazer. She smiles tightly at her mother, steps out of the car and crosses the road.

  She picks an older car—a dirty sedan that’s probably as old as she is—with manual locks. She doesn’t want to set off an alarm. When there’s no one walking past, she slides the coat hanger between the door and the frame on the driver’s side, trying to catch the lock.

  Her heart is thrumming in her throat. She doesn’t look over to their car Her mother is like a fourteen-year-old..

  Nina gets her wish of seeing Spencer again before she leaves. He walks around the corner and sees her immediately. He grins.

  ‘I am the unluckiest person in the whole goddamn world,’ she mutters.

  ‘Nina! Hey! What’s going on? I heard you left early. Are you all right?’

  He’s gorgeous. His bag is looped over one shoulder, he needs a haircut, and she saw him this morning but it feels too long ago.

  ‘Hey. Yeah, I’m fine. Had a bit of an afternoon out with my mum.’

  ‘I’d like to meet her, you know, properly,’ he says. ‘But I’d probably make the worst impression. You’re keeping me away from your parents on purpose, aren’t you? Worried I’ll be incredibly embarrassing?’ He’s making a joke, but she can feel his insecurity.

  ‘Nah, they’re just busy. What are you up to?’

  ‘I went back to Bridie’s to help her with Maths. I’m on my way home now. Whose car?’ He glances at the coat hanger, obviously baffled.

  ‘A friend of mine locked her keys in her car.’ She points vaguely inside. She also manages to persuade the lock open at that moment. ‘There we go.’ She smiles.

  ‘Anyone I know?’ He looks confused.

  ‘No one you know. Mate of my parents. She’s shopping.’ She’s still smiling. She opens the door, sits and fiddles around in the centre console. ‘Keys must be here somewhere.’ Nina is a good liar—well practised—but she’s feeling so guilty. She needs to get Spencer out of there. She needs to get herself out of there, in case the owner turns up. Her mother wants her to do this to prove her loyalty. She could never explain that to Spencer, or to anybody.

  ‘So, there’s no real-world Grand Theft Auto going on?’ He smiles.

  It takes a lot of effort for Nina to keep smiling. ‘No.’

  ‘You’re coming out with Bridie and me on Friday, right?’ he asks. ‘I mean, you’re coming out with me, and Bridie’s going to abandon us for a bassist but we’re going to have a way better time anyway?’

  ‘Yeah, of course,’ she says. ‘I have…stuff, to sort out right now, for this friend of my mum’s—I’ll call you later.’

  ‘Absolutely,’ he says. He looks confused now. She wants to hug him, say goodbye. He lingers for a moment. But she stays half inside the car. ‘Okay. I have to get home. Yeah. I’ll…see you later.’ He shuffles off.

  As soon as Spencer has disappeared around another corner, Nina gets out of the car, shuts the door behind her, and hurries back across the street. She doesn’t bother to lock the car—there’s nothing worth stealing, and it was easy enough to get into, anyone could have done it. Her breathing has not returned to normal. She feels terrible for how coldly she treated Spencer.

  ‘Oh, Nina,’ says her mother. She’s moved to the driver’s seat. She watched the encounter but she is faking ignorance. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Let’s just go.’ Nina gets in the passenger side.

  ‘You’ve left my coat hanger in their car. And you didn’t even move it. What happens if you need to start a car in an emergency? You need to practise.’

  ‘I can’t imagine there are many emergencies that require me to steal a car.’

  ‘Did they have any CDs worth nicking?’ asks Tom.

  ‘Shut up, Tom,’ says Nina.

  ‘All right,’ concedes Sophia. She starts the car. ‘By the way, I ran into young Bridie over at this very shopping centre the other day. She’s such a lovely girl. I worry about you, Nina. I so want you to feel like you can share things with me.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asks Nina. ‘I do.’

  ‘She told me you have a boyfriend.’ There’s a humorous tone to her voice, but Nina can tell how serious she is being. How concerned she is. ‘And I did not know about this. Those sorts of things.’

  ‘Oh my God,’ says Tom. ‘I am going to have so much fun teasing you. This is the best thing ever.’

  Bridie, I hate you, thinks Nina. Her heart races. She continues to breathe as normally as she can. Her mother will believe her over Bridie.

  ‘I do not,’ says Nina, laughing it off. ‘As if. Don’t take her seriously. She always exaggerates.’

  ‘Oh,’ says her mother. ‘Right.’

  Tom sighs as if genuinely disappointed. ‘I didn’t even get to say “Nina’s got a boyfriend” in my mocking singing voice. Or that “sitting in a tree” song. So devastated.’

  ‘I had a few boyfriends in my time,’ her mother says, her voice light. She’s moved on from the topic, just like that. Nina doesn’t trust it. ‘Of course I married your father for his surname. Although he never lets anyone call him by it. Appears to be the hip teacher, lets the students call him by his first name. Imagine if he introduced himself as Mr Pretty.’

  ‘Sounds like a Mr Men character,’ says Nina.

  ‘It’s so ridiculous! No one at school ever shuts up about it. Could’ve married someone with a normal name, couldn’t you, Mum? I’m legally changing it as soon as I’m eighteen,’ says Tom.

  ‘Are you now, Tom?’ says Sophia. ‘What’s the new surname going to be?’

  ‘I’m still thinking about it… it’s definitely going to be something awesome, though. Like “Dragon”.’

  ‘Dragon. Thomas Dragon,’ she says, as if seriously considering it. ‘That’s much less weird. Lucky you’ve got six years to think it over.’

  Spencer

  Spencer wakes up to the sound of shouting, a slamming door. Their house is usually deathly quiet, apart from Chance’s occasional barking, the babbling TV and a few hushed words over the dinner table.

  Spencer thinks of that kids’ song: One of these things is not like the others. One of these things just doesn’t belong. He remembers being really young, watching Humphrey B. Bear, and hearing that song. The theme song to his life: being the odd sock.

  He lies in bed, staring at the ceiling, listening to his mother’s roaring voice in the next room. He can’t understand a word. The clock on his phone beams 6:15. He can see through his blinds that the light outside is lacklustre—an overcast winter day.

  He sits up in bed, rubs his eyes and pushes the doona aside. His head aching, he stands up too quickly and the room spins for a moment. In his pyjama pants and old T-shirt, he stretches, yawning, and walks around his school books and clothes strewn across the floor.

  He steps into the hallway. The shouting has moved to the living room. Spencer walks down the stairs, his hand on the banister to reassure himself that it’s not a dream, and that he’s in his own home. His head feels foggy, heavy, and everything he sees is diaphanous. His messy room, the beige hallway, the staircase, all seem the same as always. But what’s happening downstairs doesn’t fit into that reality.

  Monica is sitting at the kitchen bench, pouring herself a bowl of cereal, as if nothing out of the ordinary is occurring. The front door is open, cold air is rushing in, and out on the porch stands a tall, broad man, who looks scared out of his wits. He also looks like he’s spent to
o long working on his tan. Spencer imagines he’s a vampire waiting to be asked in. That seems logical, the way everything seems logical when you’re still half-asleep and, for no reason you can fathom, there’s a body builder outside your front door. Beside him is a pile of bags, his mother’s luggage.

  Spencer stands in the entrance hall, watching through the archway into the living room. His mother is snatching ornaments from the mantelpiece and shoving them into her overnight bag. His father is just behind her, his hands clasped, and he looks like he is begging her. She is wailing. Spencer still can’t make out a word.

  ‘Mum?’ says Spencer. ‘Dad?’

  Neither of them responds. Has he died without knowing and is actually a ghost? Maybe that archway is a portal into another reality, and he’s seeing an alternative version of his parents? Or did he accidentally drink an invisibility potion?

  But if he were invisible, they’d still be able to hear him speak, wouldn’t they?

  ‘Mum?’ he says again, louder.

  His mother turns and looks at him, her face distorted. ‘I’m going,’ she says under her breath, but he doesn’t know whether she’s speaking to his father or to him. She brushes past Spencer without a glance and heads outside.

  Spencer stays in the living room, staring at his father, who is also frozen to the spot. He’s wearing his shabby grey dressing gown and an expression Spencer can’t place, one that’s like grief and something else. One that must be like when your heart is being ripped out.

  ‘What?’ asks Spencer. ‘Where?’

  His father is staring into the space where his mother had been standing seconds before.

  Spencer turns and walks outside. The air is frigid, but he doesn’t register that, or the cloudy air, or the wet grass under his bare feet.

  The bodybuilding vampire and his mother are loading her bags into a car that does not belong to Spencer’s mother or father.

  ‘Where are you going?’ asks Spencer, walking across the lawn to the kerb, where the vampire’s black car is parked.

  ‘Does it really matter, Spencer?’ His mother doesn’t turn to face him, but he can hear in her voice that she’s crying.

  ‘It does. You can’t just up and leave like this, and not even tell us where you’re going. Or how long you’ll be gone.’

  ‘I’m going on a holiday and I don’t know how long, okay?’

  ‘Could you have given us a bit of warning?’

  ‘It would have only made it more difficult,’ she says.

  ‘We need you, Mum,’ Spencer pleads. ‘Fair enough if you don’t love Dad anymore, I get that people divorce, but we need a mother. Monica especially. How will we even function without you?’

  ‘You’ll have to figure something out,’ she stammers. ‘You’re better off without me, Spencer. In case you haven’t noticed, we haven’t been functioning for months. I need to be on my own. I can’t possibly be anyone’s mother the way I am right now.’ She looks him in the eye now, and he believes her.

  ‘This isn’t fair.’

  ‘Neither is me staying.’

  He gets a feeling in his chest like he’s hollow, like he’s being sucked into a black hole from the inside, like he’s imploding. His mother is in front of him, shaking. She’s leaving her husband, her family, for an indefinite holiday with a bodybuilding vampire, and only allows a thirty-second conversation to explain it. How can she do that? How can she live with herself?

  ‘Goodbye, Spencer. I’ll call.’ Is she trying to sound emotionless? Her voice cracks and gives her away.

  Then she’s gone. Spencer catches the vampire’s gaze, and he looks apologetic, or at least Spencer convinces himself that he does, as the bloodsucking monster and his mother drive off into the dreary sunrise. He sits down on the nature strip in his pyjamas and attempts breathing, even though it feels like his lungs are gone, along with every other internal organ.

  The front door is still open and Chance pads out and sits beside Spencer, licking his arm, prompting him to get ready for school. Does the dog know what’s going on? Is he trying to comfort Spencer, let him know that it’ll all be okay? Spencer thinks he does; he’s a smart dog, after all. But if he thinks everything will be okay, he’s obviously either extremely optimistic or not that smart at all.

  His dad has disappeared into his room. Spencer doesn’t know what to do except go to school. He’ll see Nina on the bus anyway, and he can’t bring himself to eat or watch TV or do anything he’d normally do to pass the time. So he gets dressed and walks to the bus stop with Monica in silence.

  ‘Are you sure you’re okay to go to school?’ he asks her. ‘We can wag, if you’d like.’

  Monica digs through the pocket of her school dress, and produces a packet of Conversation Hearts. She peels off the top, and shows him one. Stay cool it reads. Her face is blank. Is she in shock? He hopes his own emotions don’t show on his face.

  Spencer nods. ‘Right.’

  He leans against the side of the bus stop and calms himself with the thought that he’ll be seeing Nina in a few minutes’ time. And Bridie will be there when he gets to school, and she’ll be so loud and crazy that everything else will be erased for the time being.

  But when the bus arrives, Nina isn’t on it. Maybe she’s sick, or her parents are giving her a lift to school? He takes out his phone—for once he’s not pretending to text—and taps Where are you? Out in full, because he’s never really got the hang of text talk. He presses ‘send’, then puts the phone back in his pocket and tries to think about something that isn’t his mother leaving, his dad at home on his own, his sister totally emotionless, Nina absent. He stares out the window at everything moving past and thinks about how swiftly things can change, as much as he wishes they wouldn’t.

  When he gets to school, Nina isn’t there. Bridie is. While they’re waiting for the rest of the class to arrive in Homeroom (Bridie is early for once) she asks him what’s wrong. Apparently it’s obvious.

  ‘Mum left,’ he murmurs.

  ‘What? Where?’ asks Bridie.

  ‘Yeah, that was exactly my response. I don’t know. She drove off with this guy and all her stuff. No one really explained it to me.’

  Bridie is quiet. It’s like she can’t find the right words to use, and when she does speak the words sound as if they feel weird in her mouth. ‘I’m sorry to hear that, Spence.’

  ‘And I’m sorry to live through it,’ he mutters.

  Nina doesn’t arrive for the rest of the day. Spencer manages to survive. He feels constantly on the verge—of tears, of falling apart, of total annihilation. How is his father? His sister? Where is his mother right now? What is the name of her boyfriend? Where did they meet? Does she feel regret over leaving? Will she ever be back? There are too many questions and no answers.

  He makes it through the day. Normally Bridie spreads gossip fast but, thank God, she doesn’t tell anyone about his mother today. She’s not such a terrible friend after all.

  The house is silent when he gets home. But silence is nothing new in his family. Monica dumps her bag in the hallway and heads into the living room, without saying a word. She’s just as blank and emotionless as she was when she left for school in the morning, which, for an over-emotional, intense twelve-year-old, is quite scary. They were never very close siblings. But they should be now, shouldn’t they? They need each other. He wishes there was something he could say to bridge the gap between them.

  He glances into the living room, where Chance is curled up on the couch next to Monica. Their dog usually looks sad and tired so Spencer can’t tell whether he’s upset or not. Through the day, Spencer had hoped that the events of the morning were just a ridiculous dream, the kind you have in that strange limbo between sleeping and waking, and that he’d return home to find everything as it had been the night before. It was too preposterous to be real, wasn’t it?

  Upstairs, he throws his bag onto his bed, and keeps going down the hall to his parents’ room. His father’s room. He presses his
ear against the door, but there’s nothing to be heard. He raps gently.

  ‘Come in.’ His dad’s voice is quiet.

  The room looks different without his mother’s stuff on the dresser. The wardrobe door is hanging open and her clothes are missing. His father is lying on the bed, staring at the ceiling, still wearing his work shirt and pants.

  ‘You’ve been here all day?’ says Spencer, and he almost has to stop himself from laughing—he’s never known his father to miss a day of work. And he’s never known his father to spend time away from work not working on stuff for work. His father is the one behaving like a depressed teenager.

  ‘I looked at photos, too,’ says his dad.

  ‘Are you okay?’ What a stupid question, Spencer, you moron.

  ‘I’m fine. Just needed a mental health day.’ He’s great at bullshitting. Spencer knows very well that he’s falling apart.

  ‘Could I get you anything? Tea? Toast?’ Spencer has never made tea or toast for his parents—that was specifically a Mum thing—so why is he offering now? He sounds like his grandmother. He should call his grandmother. Does she know her daughter left her family this morning?

  His father shakes his head.

  Spencer stands there dumbly. He can’t think of anything else to say, any way to fix this situation, or even soothe his father. He has no one to talk to about Nina, or about his mother leaving, and it wouldn’t be fair to dump his own emotional mess on his father or Monica. Of course he could talk to Bridie, but everything’s too easy, too straightforward with Bridie. Spencer’s sure Bridie hasn’t shed a tear or wasted a moment being sad or angry since primary school. Bridie’s all about the good times and, in her opinion, all of the time should be good.

  ‘I’ve got homework,’ says Spencer, which is true. ‘I’ll go.’ His father doesn’t register him leaving.

  Back in his room, his phone buzzes, the ring tone loud and annoying (a song Bridie installed because, according to a magazine article she read, if you use one of the pre-packaged ringtones that come with the phone, instead of a custom one, ‘you lack personality and are a cookie-cutter person. Totally unacceptable, Spence’). He hopes it’s Nina, but the moment he sees Bridie’s name on the screen, the wind is knocked out of him. He answers. He’d much rather go to sleep and never wake up again. Nina still hasn’t answered his text.