Sunny Side Up

by Marion Roberts

  I bought an orange candle and a yellow one, and went over to where Granny Carmelene was flicking through a book.

  ‘You know, Sunday,’ she said, ‘the women in our family have a lot of intuition. It’s in the blood line.’

  ‘Is that like being psychic?’

  ‘It can be, but not always. You should listen to your intuition though, Sunday. The more you listen, the more it guides you,’ she said, putting the book back on the shelf. ‘And it’s very rarely wrong.’

  I was worried Granny Carmelene was going to launch into one of her talks again, about things I didn’t really understand. But I did understand what she meant about intuition, ’cos I get strong feelings about things, and sometimes it helps me make decisions. Like when Uncle Quinny ordered pizzas for his card game that night. I had a big bad feeling about the whole thing, and not just because we’d seen Buster down by the canal. It’s pretty hard to listen to your intuition, though, with somebody like Claud around, who just says yes to everything, and a double yes to dangerous things that turn out to be a bad idea (even if they are profitable).

  Granny Carmelene didn’t take me to the Hotel Windsor for lunch. We went to the Hopetoun Tea Rooms in the Block Arcade instead, and we walked over thousands and thousands of miniscule tiles which made up the mosaic floor. The window of the Hopetoun Tea Rooms was full of old-fashioned cakes – like pavlovas and lamingtons – and inside there were tea sets for sale in all shapes and sizes, even one in the shape of a cat. There was a strange cash register that swivelled around. A waiter showed us over to a marble-topped table near the wall.

  ‘On the topic of mosaics,’ said Granny Carmelene as we sat down, ‘I went to the most wonderful cathedral once. It was in Sicily, and the whole of the interior was covered in mosaic tiles depicting the stories of the Old Testament. The floors, the walls, even the ceiling. It was just marvellous! If you ever get a chance to go, Sunday . . . Are you hungry?’

  ‘Very,’ I said, even though it wasn’t really true because I’d already eaten my lunch for breakfast. I had a look at the menu.

  ‘What’s Welsh rarebit?’ I asked. ‘Is it really rabbit?’

  ‘No, no,’ Granny Carmelene chuckled, ‘it’s a type of mustardy cheese on toast.’

  They had other strange things on the menu, like pinwheels, which sounded sharp as if they might get stuck in my throat. So, because the waiter was standing there and looking impatient, I quickly ordered some chicken sandwiches with crispy bacon and mango mayonnaise. Granny Carmelene chose a sandwich with red salmon and cucumber, as well as a pot of tea.

  There were a lot of grannies at the Hopetoun Tea Rooms, as if it was the cool spot for grannies to go. Most of them had blue hair and wore pastel blue and pink, like babies’ clothes. I was glad my Granny Carmelene didn’t dress like a baby; she looked more like someone all dressed up for the Melbourne Cup.

  ‘You know, Sunny,’ she said, after the waiter delivered our sandwiches, ‘there is something important I need to tell you, but you must promise me to keep it to yourself. I’ve not told anyone at all.’

  Like I needed another secret! The Stash-O-Matic started humming even before Granny Carmelene told me her secret, because it has sensors that tell when a new one is hovering about.

  Granny poured her tea slowly through the strainer and stirred in some milk. I didn’t tell her about all the other secrets I was keeping, or how I’d had to invent the Stash-O-Matic to manage them all, because even if you are completely full of secrets it’s still very exciting when someone gives you one more – especially one that absolutely nobody else knows about, and even more especially if you think it might be the big big secret about Mum and Granny Carmelene’s divorce.

  ‘I’m good at keeping secrets,’ I said, as I bit into my sandwich, which was cold, obviously from having spent time pre-prepared in a fridge.

  ‘Well, dear, I don’t want you to get upset,’ she said, placing the tea spoon carefully on her saucer. ‘This is very difficult to say . . . It’s about my health. I have, what you might call a condition.’

  ‘Like a disease?’ I asked, feeling my stomach tighten. ‘It’s called CLL, Sunday. Chronic lymphocytic leukaemia. It’s a cancer of the blood.’

  ‘But . . . can’t you get better? Claud’s auntie had cancer and got skinny and bald and everything, but now she’s fine and the cancer’s gone away. Can’t there be a cure?’

  ‘There’s treatment, Sunday, but no cure I’m afraid. Besides, I’m not interested in becoming skinny and bald. There’s no dignity in that at all.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Sunday, I know you might not understand, but it’s my choice to accept my time when it comes and pass gracefully when I’m called to go. It’s a decision I’ve made. Now you must promise not to breathe a word of this, especially not to your mother.’

  I didn’t feel like the rest of my sandwich. All I could think about was Mum, and how if she knew Granny Carmelene was sick and dying she mightn’t be so stubborn and angry towards her, and how the hugeness of Granny’s secret was causing the Stash-O-Matic to ping loudly. I thought of Claud, and I suddenly realised I wasn’t angry anymore, or even jealous. It was like the news about Granny Carmelene’s illness had broken the curse. I could feel my eyes welling up and wanting to cry, so I looked down at the curly parsley on my plate, hoping that if I concentrated really hard, I could make the crying stop. Let’s face it, breaking into a blub in front of someone you’ve only met once before would be dead embarrassing.

  ‘Come now, Sunny,’ said Granny Carmelene reaching over to hold my hand. ‘I’ve lived with this for many years now, and I intend to keep on living for as long as I can. Life is so precious – sometimes it’s only when you know it might be taken away that you can begin to really appreciate it. I feel quite liberated, to be honest. There’s nothing at all to fear, don’t you worry.’

  ‘Aren’t you scared, Granny?’

  ‘Of dying? Not at all. I’m more scared of not living. I intend to live and live, until I’m asked to let living go. And now that you’re here to share some of my living, Sunday, I feel happier than ever. It’s all just perfectly marvellous.’

  It didn’t feel so marvellous to me. I mean, you wouldn’t read about it (except that you are): you find your long lost blood relative, only to discover she’s got cancer of the blood. It was enough to put me off having any pavlova, even though I knew I’d be missing out on a chance to sneak some sugar without Mum telling me it’s bad, or Dad and Steph reminding me it’s banned. Then I thought of that old lady and the snake again and wondered whether, if it was your turn to die, it might be better to just pop off with a bite to the hand while picking a passionfruit.

  ‘Sunny?’ said Granny Carmelene, who must have sensed I was off on a tangent. ‘You know those caves I told you about, in Tasmania?’

  ‘King—?’

  ‘Yes, those are the ones. King Solomon’s Caves. I went there once as a girl, and I’ve never forgotten. For some reason, I just have to go back. It’s my intuition, Sunday. Have you ever been inside a cave? This one is over twenty million years old. Can you believe it?’

  ‘I find caves a bit freaky, actually,’ I said, happy that the topic change had made my tears go away.

  ‘Well I think you’d be surprised at just how majestic a cave can be. Will you come with me to Tasmania? We’ll go for a weekend and I’ll show you. Do tell me you’ll come, Sunday.’

  16 .

  It was a bit tense that night at dinner. Carl and Lyall had been arguing about Lyall forgetting to put the bins out that morning, and when people argue it makes me feel uneasy, as if it might all be my fault, even though I know it isn’t.

  ‘It was up on the whiteboard, Lyall, there’s no excuse,’ said Carl. ‘Now we’re going to have stinking rubbish hanging around all week long.’

  ‘Yeah, Lyall,’ said Saskia, ‘You should have to do the dishes tonight all by yourself. Shouldn’t he, Dad?’

  ‘That’s enough from you, miss,’ Carl said, spo
oning some brussels sprouts onto Saskia’s plate.

  ‘Dad-duh! You know I hate brussels sprouts, they look like green sparrows with no heads and legs-uh!’

  ‘Please stop whining, Saskia,’ said Carl.

  ‘Yeah, Saskia,’ said Lyall, and he punched her arm.

  Mum had the look she gets when her nerves are jangled – her lips were all thin. She was probably having a craving because she’d started hypnosis and hadn’t had a cigarette in three days.

  ‘Come on, everyone.’ she said, ‘Let’s just enjoy our meal. Sunny, would you pass the salad please?’

  And I said, ‘Sure.’ But what I really wanted to say was Sure, and if you care at all, your mother’s dying and I said I’d go to Tasmania with her for a weekend, if that’s okay with you.

  I mean, the thing is, I really did want to go to King Solomon’s Caves with Granny Carmelene, even though I didn’t like the idea of being underground. I’d even done some research on the net and read about how a farmer had discovered the caves back in the nineteen twenties when his dog was chasing a wallaby. The wallaby disappeared down a hole, which turned out to be an entrance dropping nine metres below the surface to the caves. I also looked up CLL, which was totally depressing because there’s not much hope for you if you’re an old lady with cancer of the blood. Especially when you’re the sort of old lady who thinks medical treatment is undignified and doesn’t believe in drugs.

  ‘What is it, Sunny? You look miles away,’ said Mum, ‘And you haven’t touched your chicken.’

  ‘I’m just not that hungry, thanks, Mum.’ I said, pushing the food around my plate.

  ‘Did you hear the one about the cat who swallowed the ball of wool?’ said Carl, trying to improve the mood. Lyall and Saskia rolled their eyes.

  ‘She had mittens!’ said Carl. ‘Or how about this one? Why don’t cannibals like eating comedians?’

  ‘Daad-uh!’ squealed Saskia ‘Would you just stop?’

  ‘Because they taste funny!’ giggled Carl.

  We all laughed too, except for Lyall who said, with a deadpan face, ‘Dad, that’s not funny, that’s just lame,’ and he started clearing the plates so that we could wash up.

  Just then there was a sudden yelp from Willow and she ran into the shed with her tail between her legs and Boris chasing close behind. Boris was all puffed up with his ears down flat. Willow cowered in a corner as Boris growled and closed in on her with sideways steps. Then Boris flung himself at Willow – just like one of those gliding marsupials. Willow let out another yelp as Boris hissed and scratched her on the face three times, then Boris bolted outside and jumped up onto the fence. Willow burrowed into the couch and curled into a ball with her head hidden between the cushions.

  ‘Did you see that?’ laughed Lyall, ‘Go, Boris!’

  ‘Yay, Boris!’ shrieked Saskia, ‘You show ’em, Boris!’

  Mum and Carl looked around in a daze. ‘Can I get you a vodka, darl?’ Carl asked.

  ‘Perhaps a peppermint tea,’ said Mum, tight lipped.

  I gave Willow a big hug. She had a deep scratch right across the end of her nose. There was even blood. She was shaking and crying in a dog way, which doesn’t involve tears or making noises, but just looking up sorrowfully and showing the whites of her eyes.

  ‘Poor Willow,’ I whispered in her ear. ‘Boris is a mean, mean cat, and we’re going to make him pay.’

  While we were washing up, Saskia told me that she had put a Pizza-A-Go-Girl poster up at her school and that she was pretty sure one of their teachers would be putting in an order for Friday night.

  ‘It’s Father Kenny,’ she said. ‘He’s our parish priest. He loves pizza.’

  ‘Aren’t priests meant to eat fish on Fridays?’ I asked.

  ‘That’s only in Lent,’ said Lyall, wiping down the sink.

  ‘Okay, bring it on,’ I said. ‘We’ll deliver to anyone: criminals, priests, who’s next?’

  Willow slept in my room that night so that she could stay well clear of Boris. I thought about Granny Carmelene all alone in her big old white-and-black house. Maybe if Mum gave her another chance, she’d find that Granny Carmelene had changed. People do you know. They call it mellowing. And anyway, what was there not to like about Granny Carmelene? Even though I’d promised that I wouldn’t tell anyone about her illness, I couldn’t help thinking that if Mum knew it might make her forget about whatever went on in the past. And how could I go away for a whole weekend without Mum knowing where I was going? I guess I could just let Mum think I was at Dads, and let Dad think I was at Mums. I mean, there have to be some advantages to having divorced parents. I could become invisible and slip off to Tasmania without anybody noticing. I’d have to hope like crazy that neither of my parents called the other one to talk about anything normal, like basketball. I’d be living a double lie, with double secrets on top. Imagine what that would do to the Stash-O-Matic! It would probably blow the whole thing up.

  But I had to go to Tasmania with Granny Carmelene, not just because she was dying, but because I wanted to live and have adventures and get out of doing the dishes, as well as have a big dose of good, old-fashioned one-on-one. I wanted to see King Solomon’s caves with my own blood relative, even if her blood was faulty. I just had to go, my intuition told me. Surely I could live a double lie (and possibly break a perfectly good Stash-O-Matic) . . . just once?

  17 .

  Claud did turn up for Pizza-A-Go-Girl on Friday night, even though I didn’t really want her to. And we did get an order from Father Kenny, as well as two other new customers who were friends of Mrs Wolverine. Saskia was reading the pizza dough recipe and measuring out some yeast into the scales. She’d also been working on some new pizza box labels, which I had to say were better than the ones Claud and I had made, because Saskia was really good at art.

  ‘I can do all the deliveries,’ said Lyall. ‘But can’t we change the business name to something not so girly?’

  Claud must have overheard him from the back yard.

  ‘Sorry Lyall,’ she said as she came through the shed door, ‘Pizza-A-Go-Girl has a solid market reputation. It would be bad for business to change names now.’ She gave me the eyebrow, as if to say Back me up here, Sunny.

  ‘I agree,’ I said flatly, as I put another log on the fire in the pizza oven.

  ‘Me too,’ said Saskia. ‘So you’re outvoted Lyall. Besides, I’ve already designed our Pizza-A-Go-Girl T-shirts.’

  ‘There’s like, no way I’m wearing a Pizza-A-Go-Girl T-shirt,’ said Lyall, just as Mum and Carl came into the shed with herbs from the garden.

  ‘Mmm mm,’ said Carl, ‘fresh basil!’ And then he started dancing around the shed with it, singing that old Dean Martin song about the moon hitting your eye with a big pizza pie. Then he sang his own version – When you eat tuna fish on a big silver dish, that’s a mornay – until Lyall and Saskia begged him to stop.

  ‘Dad, you’re embarrassing us,’ said Saskia under her breath.

  ‘Claud, you’re here. Great! How are things at home?’ asked Mum. ‘Is Buster okay?’

  ‘Pretty good, thanks,’ said Claud. ‘Still no word from his mum, though,’ she said, looking at the list of orders I had made.

  ‘Yeah, well, you would nick off, wouldn’t you? If you ended up with a kid like Buster.’ I said.

  ‘Sunny!’ just about everybody yelled.

  ‘It wouldn’t hurt to have a little more compassion,’ added Mum.

  ‘Yeah, Sunny,’ said Claud. ‘Get over it!’

  ‘You get over it, Claud!’

  ‘Hey, I’ve an idea!’ Lyall interrupted, ‘How ’bout Buster joins the business, too? Then I wouldn’t be so outnumbered by girls.’

  ‘Now there’s a thought,’ said Carl, washing the herbs.

  And Mum said, ‘That’s a good idea, Lyall.’

  Even Saskia said, ‘I don’t mind.’

  I was the only one who said, ‘Noooooooooooo!’

  ‘What is your problem, Sunny?’ said Claud
.

  ‘My problem? My problem? I’m not the one who’s gone weird, Claud. You’re the one who has a complete personality change the minute some boy is around. I’m not the one who pretends to be doing stuff they’re not. I’m not the one who laughs fake. I’m certainly not the one who doesn’t bother to tell important stuff – like Buster joining our basketball team. And I’m not the one who stole the profit jar, Claud, I mean, that’s sinking pretty low!’

  ‘What!’ yelled Claud. ‘How can you say—’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ said Lyall. ‘That was me. I mean, I didn’t steal it. I moved it to inside the piano. I thought it would be safer and then I, like, forgot all about it. Sorry! I’ll grab it,’ he said, running out of the shed.

  ‘Sunny,’ said Mum shaking her head, ‘what’s got into you? You didn’t really think Claud would steal.’ She was frantically looking through a pile of newspapers for the crossword.

  ‘Listen, Sunny,’ said Claud. ‘There’re things you don’t know. I couldn’t say anything about Buster because we were chosen as his foster family and there are privacy rules and all this stuff that you’re not allowed to say. That’s why I couldn’t stop you making up Quinny’s pizza order last week, even though I knew he wouldn’t be there. And as for basketball, it was Mum who suggested that Buster should try out, and I had to take home his homework sheets, ’cos he was staying at our place.’

  ‘Sunny, you didn’t burn today’s paper did you? I can’t find the crossword,’ said Mum.

  ‘Got it!’ puffed Lyall, running in with the profit jar.