The Peacock Detectives

by Carly Nugent

  Now that it’s November the weather is almost warm enough for swimming. Jonas and I walk down to the river every day after school and stick our toes in.

  ‘Almost,’ I say.

  ‘But not quite,’ Jonas replies.

  We still haven’t found Virginia’s nest, but we’re not really trying that hard. We don’t want to scare Virginia while she has eggs to sit on, and it’s kind of fun chasing William Shakespeare all over town. I’m also busy with my decoy egg. Jonas read on the Internet that peacock eggs need humidity to hatch, so we made an incubator out of some heat lamps and a box and a container of water. I sat it on my cupboard, and it’s a lot of work rotating the egg and filling up the water when it evaporates.

  After she humphed and left in October, Diana started living at Tom Golding’s house. I know this because I see them walking to school together, and sometimes I see Mrs Golding picking them up in the afternoons. Diana comes to see me in the primary school at lunchtimes. She gives me sandwiches and fruit and a juice box. ‘Go and stay at Mum’s,’ she says, every day. Mum says this, too, when she comes over in the evenings with Tupperware containers of shepherd’s pie and pumpkin soup. But I don’t want to stay at Mum’s. Partly because of Roger, but mostly because I can’t imagine leaving Dad with only ornaments for company. I’ve tried, but I really can’t imagine it.

  For a while Dad and I didn’t see each other very much. Dad was still in bed when I went to school in the mornings, and at night (after I heated up Mum’s Tupperware dinner in the microwave) Dad went to his study and I went to my room to read or write. This worked because Dad didn’t want to talk to me, and I had no idea what to say to Dad.

  But then this morning I got chickenpox.

  I used to not mind being sick—getting a bad cold, or a tummy bug, and not having to go to school. I like school most of the time, but I also like the way being sick makes things a little bit different for a while. Like when you change the furniture around in your room, or start wearing new socks.

  But getting chickenpox meant being home. All day. With Dad. When I realised this I minded being sick. I minded a lot.

  When I woke up this morning I knew something wasn’t right. All my blankets and stuffed animals were on the floor, and usually they are snuggled around me until seven-thirty. There were some strange grumblings in my stomach, but they weren’t hunger-grumblings. I knew this was the start of being sick, but I pretended it wasn’t. I got up and had a shower, even though the water felt like little needles going into my skin. I got dressed and put my school books in my bag, even though each time I moved, my stomach lurched like a boat in a bad storm.

  I made some toast and put Vegemite on it, but no butter. I cut it into soldiers instead of triangles to delay the moment when I would have to put it in my mouth. When I picked up the first soldier my hand was shaking. I tried to talk myself into eating it:

  ‘Wow, Cassie, this toast looks really delicious!’

  ‘Bet you can’t wait to take a bite!’

  ‘Yum, toast! Just a few pieces and then off to school. I’m feeling great!’

  And so on. I talked to myself until the toast went cold and the microwave clock said 8:45. I was about to be late. I took a big bite of the piece with the littlest scraping of Vegemite. I chewed. And swallowed. And ran to the toilet to throw up.

  When Dad found me I was sitting-lying on the couch staring at my cold toast. The microwave clock said 9:36. Dad was still wearing his pyjamas.

  ‘School?’ he asked when he saw me.

  I swallowed some bad-tasting saliva and hugged my stomach, hoping I could push the urge to throw up again somewhere else. I couldn’t.

  ‘Going,’ I said, in one quick breath because breathing and talking at the same time was not good.

  ‘Are you sick?’

  ‘No,’ I breathed.

  ‘Is it your tummy?’

  ‘No.’ Speaking felt like trying to read a whole chapter book on a very bumpy bus ride up a very steep mountain.

  ‘If you say so,’ Dad said. ‘Finish your breakfast, then, and I’ll drive you.’ As soon as Dad pushed the toast towards me I lost all the control I had left. I threw up on the floor, and a little bit on Dad’s slippers.

  Dad carried me to my room. He put me in bed and picked up all my blankets and teddy bears. Then he went out and closed the door softly behind him. I fell asleep. Partly because there was nothing else to do, but mostly because I just couldn’t help it.

  When I woke up Dad was standing next to my bed. In one hand he had some flat lemonade and in the other he had a book.

  ‘Is this what you’re reading?’ He asked. He gave the book to me. It was I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith. I nodded. Then Dad gave me the lemonade and watched me drink half of it. I realised I was really thirsty. The lemonade wasn’t as flat as Mum gets it, but it was still good.

  ‘I’ll come back in a little while,’ Dad said, and he turned towards the door.

  ‘Wait!’ I said, because I had just remembered. ‘The egg!’

  Dad went over to my cupboard where the decoy egg was snuggled in its incubator. He picked it up. ‘It’s fine,’ he said, ‘don’t worry.’ He held the incubator carefully in two hands and left. I lay back on my pillows, and before I could wonder if I trusted Dad to keep my egg humid enough, I was asleep.

  The next time I woke up it was late in the afternoon and I had little red chickenpox circles on my face and my tummy. Dad drove me to the doctor and the doctor said, ‘Yup, chickenpox.’

  ‘When can I go back to school?’ I asked.

  The doctor laughed. ‘Not for at least a week,’ she said. The word ‘week’ rolled around in my brain like a ball in a pinball machine. A whole week without Jonas. A whole week without Diana. A whole week with Dad. The doctor must have seen vomit in my eyes, because she gave me a bucket before I could mess up her carpet.

  We went home and I went back to bed. I read my book under the covers and slept. At teatime Dad brought me more flat lemonade and some dry toast. I ate two squares. I was about to fall asleep again when I heard Mum’s voice.

  ‘Possum! How are you feeling?’ She was sitting on the edge of my bed touching my forehead.

  ‘I’m fine, Mum,’ I said, because—apart from having chickenpox—I was.

  ‘She’s had her medicine, and some toast,’ Dad said, from my doorway. ‘She just needs to rest.’

  ‘I’ll sit with her for a minute. Have you got something to read, Cassie?’

  ‘Helen.’

  Mum turned around. Dad was looking at her with a face like a tree trunk—strong and solid. ‘I’ll call you if we need anything,’ he said. Then he softened a bit. ‘I promise.’

  I could tell from the way Mum hugged me that she didn’t want to leave, but she did anyway. I heard Mum and Dad talking in the kitchen for a while, then everything went quiet. Dad turned on the TV. I fell asleep again.

  For two days I didn’t do anything except sleep and drink flat lemonade and read-under-the-covers and try not to scratch myself. Then today, day three of having chickenpox, I started to feel a bit better. I woke up early and went into the kitchen for a change of scenery and maybe some breakfast. I was surprised to see Dad sitting at the kitchen table because he usually doesn’t get up before nine-thirty. He was wearing proper clothes, too: jeans, and a T-shirt that said ‘Surfers Paradise’ and had a picture of a palm tree on the front, which he had bought on our Family Holiday. He even looked like he had had a shower.

  On the table was one of the ornament boxes. Dad was staring into it, and even though he had proper clothes on he was still wearing his pyjamas-face. When he saw me he smiled, but it was a smile that was covering a frown.

  ‘Morning,’ he said. ‘Hungry?’

  ‘A bit,’ I said.

  ‘How about a scrape of jam this time?’

  I nodded, and Dad got up to make my toast. I sat down at the table and looked into the box. The little elephant-without-a-trunk looked back at me.

  When my toast w
as made, Dad sat at the table with me while I ate it. (I managed both pieces without the crusts.) When I was finished, the moment I had been dreading ever since I got chickenpox happened. Dad and I were alone, with no food or medicine or sleep between us. I took a deep breath and got ready for the long silence of Dad not wanting to talk, and me not knowing what to say.

  But the silence didn’t happen. And it didn’t happen because Dad did have something to say, and what he said was: ‘Your grandma would’ve loved these.’

  He was looking into the box, so I knew he was talking about the elephant and the ceramic sandal and the monkey. I didn’t know what to say. My grandma died when I was two years old, and I don’t remember her. In photos she is a woman with curly hair and Dad’s eyes and a nice smile. It didn’t matter that I didn’t say anything, though, because Dad wasn’t finished talking.

  ‘Our house was full of things like these, when I was small,’ he said. ‘On the windowsills, on top of the fireplace, even around the bathroom sink.’ Dad stopped for a moment and looked right at me, and in his eyes there wasn’t happiness or sadness, but something in-between. ‘I used to make up stories about them,’ he said.

  I put my hand into the box and pulled out the little elephant. I touched the empty place where her trunk had been. ‘Why do you keep them all in boxes?’ I asked.

  Dad looked surprised. For a moment he didn’t answer, and then he said, ‘It’s a bit weird, I guess.’

  ‘What’s weird?’

  He hesitated, and then pointed at the elephant in my hand. ‘Well, these.’

  I felt kind of insulted on behalf of the elephant, who had no way of sticking up for itself. ‘These aren’t weird,’ I said. ‘Keeping them in the cupboard in boxes. That’s weird.’

  Dad didn’t reply. He wasn’t wearing his pyjamas-face, but he wasn’t smiling, either. After the silence had gone on a bit too long he said, ‘You’d better go back to bed for a while.’

  I went, because I was still itchy and tired and a little bit queasy after the jam. When I got to the doorway and looked back at Dad he was wearing a face that I had never seen him wear. Before I fell asleep I hoped with all the hope in me that I hadn’t said something that had broken him.

  Yesterday—day four of having chickenpox—I was feeling okay enough to have a shower and wash my hair. When I walked into the kitchen with a towel on my head Dad was standing at the bench wearing his glasses and holding the little elephant and a tube of superglue.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I said.

  Dad squirted a dollop of glue onto the elephant’s face. ‘I thought I’d put it back together,’ he said. He placed the trunk carefully against the glue and held it there, firmly, for a minute. Then he put the elephant on top of the microwave. ‘What do you think?’ he said.

  I nodded. ‘It’s happy up there,’ I said.

  Dad poured me a glass of juice and made me toast with jam and butter. While I was eating I thought about the story I had been trying to write. Before I got up to have a shower I had pulled my notebook and pen under the covers. But I was stuck. I only wrote two sentences before I gave up and went to wash my hair. And partly because I felt like the little elephant was telling me to, but mostly because I just really wanted someone to know, I decided to tell Dad the thing I had never told anyone before.

  I pushed my empty plate out of the way and said, ‘Dad, I’m not sure I’m supposed to be a writer.’

  Dad picked up my plate and put it in the sink. ‘Why not?’ he asked.

  ‘Because sometimes writing is really hard.’

  Dad smiled. ‘Of course it is,’ he said.

  ‘No.’ I put my hands flat on the table and made a triangle with my fingers. I didn’t want to look at Dad when I told him this. ‘I mean, it’s really, really hard. And sometimes I don’t want to do it.’

  Dad didn’t say anything for a while. He stared at the elephant on the microwave. Her superglued trunk was pointing straight up in the air. Then he said, ‘So why don’t you stop?’

  I thought about this. I imagined doing other things, instead of writing, like science experiments or cooking or javelin. But I realised none of these things would work. And they wouldn’t work because all the time in the back of my brain a voice is saying WRITING WRITING WRITING. If I try to clean my room: WRITING WRITING WRITING. If I watch TV: WRITING WRITING WRITING. If I go for a walk with Simon each step I take says WRI-TING WRI-TING WRI-TING.

  So I said to Dad, ‘Because I can’t.’

  Dad pulled the monkey out of the box and put it on the windowsill. ‘Exactly,’ he said.

  For the rest of the day each time I went into the kitchen there was another ornament somewhere. When I got up for a glass of water the bear was on the fridge. When I went to get a banana for lunch there was a small cat on the windowsill. And at dinnertime the little man was trimming his little roses on top of the television. Dad was standing in the middle of the kitchen with his hands on his hips. He looked like someone who had just finished writing a really good story.

  Today was the last day of chickenpox (I wasn’t itchy anymore and I could eat normal food in normal amounts). Dad woke me up early.

  ‘Cassie, get up,’ he said. I followed him into the kitchen in my pyjamas. When I had rubbed all the sleep out of my eyes I expected to see more ornaments. But that wasn’t what Dad wanted to show me. He pushed me gently towards the couch. ‘Look,’ he whispered. And I looked.

  And there, nestled between cushions and bits of fluff, was a sight so amazing I had to rub my eyes all over again to believe it. It squeaked, and wobbled, and still had bits of browner-than-chicken-eggshell stuck to its feathers. I looked at Dad. He smiled, and scooped the baby peacock carefully into his hand.

  Suddenly it is summer. Summer looks like bright blue skies and sounds like buzzing bees. Summer smells like cut grass, and tastes like icy poles, and feels like swimming in the river.

  Being at home with Dad isn’t so bad in summer. He hasn’t gone back to work, but he has started wearing proper clothes every day, and making breakfast, and once a week he even goes shopping. He doesn’t watch TV so much anymore, mostly because he is busy taking care of Leo (we decided to name the baby peacock after Leo Tolstoy, who is one of Dad’s favourite writers). Leo needs a lot of taking care of. He has to be kept warm, and he has to drink a lot and eat a lot of green leafy things like cabbage and spinach. He also has to be picked up and held a lot so he knows that he is part of our family. Looking after Leo was supposed to be my job, since I had wanted to keep the decoy egg in the first place. But when Dad looks after Leo he has the same face as when he set up all his ornaments, so I decided he needs the job more than I do.

  Every Friday afternoon Dad goes to The Clinic for an hour. When he comes home he is quiet, but not in the same way he is when he has Those Days. After The Clinic, Dad is quiet like Simon when he is sniffing, or like Diana when she is Meditating, or like Mum when she is cooking. It is a busy kind of quiet.

  We go to visit Grandpa every afternoon, and I still have to sit in the hallway because Dad is still respecting-Mum’s-wishes about me not seeing Grandpa Like That. But now instead of staring at the floor I read, or write a story.

  Mum has started coming round more, but I can tell Dad doesn’t really want her to. She isn’t working as many nights at the restaurant anymore, so she has more time to cook us casseroles and lasagne and caramel slice. When she brings Tupperware containers Dad is very polite and says thank you but he doesn’t invite her in for a cuppa.

  In December we found Virginia’s nest. Simon sniffed it out behind the bridge between a clump of blackberries and a wombat hole. There were five empty shells in it, and a lot of fluffy feathers that look exactly like Leo’s. But there was no sign of the babies, or Virginia. Even William Shakespeare has stopped playing chasey with us, although we can still hear him crying in the distance sometimes. His voice seems to be saying, ‘We’re still here.’ But I don’t speak peacock, so he might actually be saying, ‘Merry Christmas.’
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  The beginning of summer means the end of school. We have stopped doing maths and spelling and started making Christmas decorations and watching Christmas movies and practising for the Christmas concert. We are practising the same Christmas carols we sang last year, and the year before that. But this year they sound different because this is the last time we will ever sing them in primary school.

  I think about Rhea a lot. The closer Christmas gets the more I think about Rhea and her house on Lee Street. Then today I had an idea.

  Because Grandpa is in hospital we are having Christmas in our backyard this year, instead of at Aunt Sally’s. Which means Dad and I are in charge of the Christmas list. Dad put on his glasses and I gave him a page from my Notebook for Noticing. First we wrote down Diana and Tom Golding. Then we wrote down Jonas and his parents, since Jonas’s grandparents and aunties and uncles live far away. Then Dad said something that took me by surprise.

  ‘We should invite your mum. And her friend.’

  I didn’t say anything for a moment. Leo—who was standing on the table trying to help—pecked at my little finger. ‘We don’t have to,’ I said. I knew one of the things Dad was doing to feel better was trying not to think about Mum.

  ‘You should have your mum around for Christmas,’ Dad said. ‘I’m inviting them.’ And he wrote ‘Mum and friend’ on the list. I think it was the hardest thing he has ever written.

  Then I had my idea.

  ‘Dad,’ I said. ‘Can I invite Rhea?’

  Now it was Dad’s turn to look surprised. ‘Rhea Grimm?’

  I nodded.

  ‘I didn’t know you were friends with her.’

  ‘I’m not really.’

  Dad looked a little unsure, and maybe even a little scared. But he said, ‘All right, put her on the list.’

  And I wrote Rhea’s name.

  When I told Jonas about inviting Rhea to Christmas he was sceptical. Sceptical means you don’t completely believe in something, like when someone tells you Brussels sprouts are good for you.