Carrie ignored her, not looking up as her grandmother came closer.
“Carrie, are you ignoring me?”
The younger woman kept her head down.
“That’s fine, but don’t frown like that, darling. It’s very bad for the skin. If you’re going to sulk, at least do it with a smile on your face. Or try doing those exercises I showed you, the ones that firm your chin. See, like this.” Lola started grimacing, stretching her lips sideways, then into a tight pout; out, then in again. “Twenty of those a day and it’s like a gym workout for your face, so I read. A little alarming for any passersby, but that’s the price we pay for endless beauty, isn’t it?”
Carrie started to smile.
“That’s more like it,” Lola said. “And I know what you’re thinking, and, yes, I am a wizened interfering old bag of bones and quite happy to be like that.” She leaned over and kissed her granddaughter on the top of the head. At five feet nine inches, her posture still excellent, Lola towered over Carrie. “But I still love you, you know.”
“If you really loved me, you wouldn’t have—”
“Yes, I would have.” Lola collected her handbag. “Will you be staying on for dinner tonight? Thursday, schnitzel night.”
“No, I’ll go home, I think.”
“How are those renovations going?”
Carrie and her husband had bought an old farmhouse several kilometers south of the Valley View Motel the year before. “Fine. Slowly.”
Lola was watching her. “And how is Matthew, Carrie?”
Carrie turned back to the serviettes. “He’s fine. Up to his eyes in sheep manure and vet magazines as usual. You know the sort of thing.”
“You’re getting on all right, are you?”
“Yes, thanks.”
“Really?”
Lola was like a human sniffer dog, Carrie thought, still not looking up. Line up a row of people and she’d sniff out each of their problems instantly. Not this time, though, Carrie decided. The days of confiding in her grandmother were well and truly over. “Really. It’s a bed of roses, in fact.”
“Rubbish. No marriage is a bed of roses. That at least was one of the positive things about Edward dying so young. We might have missed out on the good times, but we missed out on some of the bad, boring times as well.” Lola was amazed, as always, at how easily the lies about her husband tripped off her tongue. “Tell me, do you ever get bored with Matthew, Carrie?”
“Tell me, do you ever think you’re overstepping the mark with your questions, Lola?”
“Oh, good Lord, yes. But people are usually so shocked, they’ve answered me before they’ve had time to think twice. Do you know what I found out this morning? That Mrs. Kennedy is stepping out with her son-in-law’s father at the moment. Talk about keeping it in the family. Having a grand old time, she told me.”
Carrie felt a rush of combined affection and annoyance, her usual reaction to Lola’s behavior. “That’s the only reason you’re still working in that charity shop, isn’t it? It’s nothing to do with helping the poor or keeping yourself busy.”
Lola made an elegant gesture with her hand. “If people choose to tell me things, there’s nothing I can do about it. I see it as my gift to society: helping people unburden themselves of their problems.”
“Digging the dirt on them, you mean.”
“I noticed you changed the subject, by the way. Don’t think that’s the end of it.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, I think you do. Now, then, I must be off. I’m going to call on your mother in the kitchen and beg some afternoon tea. I really do have the perfect setup for an old lady, don’t I? A son and daughter-in-law with their own motel and restaurant and a granddaughter who is the sweetest in the world.” Lola gave Carrie another kiss, then swept out of the room, leaving a faint trace of expensive perfume behind her.
Alone in the dining room once again, Carrie worked quietly until she had folded the last of the serviettes. With a loud sigh, she leaned back in her chair. One hundred paper swans surrounded her. This time in two days the room would be transformed for a wedding reception, the paper swans swimming elegantly up and down the rows of long tables. She’d already strung up the fairy lights the bride had requested. She’d ordered the special candles from Adelaide, and they were due to arrive any moment. The bridal arch had proved tricky for a week or so. It would all come together, though. She’d done it enough times to be sure of that.
She sat back and flicked at one of the paper swans with her finger. It toppled, falling against the swan beside it, which also toppled. Within moments a whole row of them had fallen, domino-style. She could have jumped up and stopped them but instead watched idly as the last dozen or so flipped and rolled onto the unswept floor.
She didn’t care. At that moment she was sick of it all. She was sick of her job. She was sick of the motel. She was sick of the fact people made such a mess while they were eating that they needed serviettes in the first place. She was feeling especially sick about her grandmother wanting to throw a birthday party for herself and insisting that Bett and Anna attend.
“But why, Lola? Why now? It’ll ruin everything,” Carrie had said that morning, hoping she wasn’t giving too much away. “All that tension.”
“I’ve given you all three years to sort it out, and you haven’t even got to the starting gate. So I’m taking charge once and for all. I’ve written to both of them as well. Insisted they come or else. So they will, I know.”
Carrie opened her mouth to protest, but one of Lola’s quelling looks had blasted her way and she shut it again.
Scooping up the paper swans now and ignoring the state of some of their wings, Carrie replayed the conversation yet again. If only Lola had turned eighty a few months ago. A year ago, even. But no, it had to be now. And she had to insist on throwing a party. A huge party.
“You wouldn’t be happy with a nice family dinner, you and me and Mum and Dad?” Carrie had suggested hopefully.
“Of course not. I could die any day, and I want to go out with a bang. And I want Anna and Bett to see the explosion. Besides, I’ve got something very important I want the three of you to do for me.”
“Important? What’s wrong? Lola, you’re not sick, are you?”
“Don’t pry, Caroline. I said I want to talk to the three of you about it. Once I have the three of you in the same room together again.”
The three of them. The three of them who hadn’t spoken to each other for years, let alone been in the same room. Or the same town. Or the same country even. And whose fault was it?
Hers.
Who did everyone blame?
Her.
But now it had all changed, hadn’t it? The reason none of them had spoken to each other in that time no longer existed. Which would make this reunion of Lola’s even more hideous and humiliating and horrible than it would normally have been.
Carrie took her anger out on the last of the paper swans, crumpling it up in her hand and then immediately feeling guilty. “Sorry, swannie,” she said out loud, smoothing the serviette and readjusting the little paper beak. It now looked like it had been in a washing machine. She tucked it away in her pocket. The way her luck was going this one would end up on the bride’s place mat and she’d cause a scene. Carrie had already spent enough hours calming the young woman, as she’d fretted about everything from the number of prawns to be served in the prawn cocktails to the mathematical probabilities of it raining on her wedding day.
Carrie had wanted to snap at her more than once. “You think the wedding day is stressful? Try getting through the marriage.”
She jumped as the bell at reception rang once, twice, a third time. Right now she’d had enough of guests, too—especially guests who rang the bell more than once. She walked out, plastering a smile onto her face, knowing it was just several teeth short of a grimace. At least she was exercising her facial muscles. Lola would be pleased.
“Good af
ternoon,” she said to the waiting couple, her voice sickly sweet. “I’m very sorry to have kept you.”
Read on for an excerpt from
Greetings from
Somewhere
Else
a novel
by Monica McInerney
Published by Ballantine Books
CHAPTER 1
Stop the music please!” Lainey Byrne shouted, waving her arms as though she was fighting off a swarm of bees. The background music stopped with a screech. On the stage the ten dancers dressed in giant sausage costumes came to a wobbly halt.
Lainey quickly climbed the steps, looking for the lead dancer. It was hard to tell who was who when the entire troupe was dressed from head to toe in pink foam. “They look more like hot dogs than sausages,” the sound technician had muttered unkindly that morning. Or something ruder, Lainey had thought privately. But it was too late to get new costumes and she could hardly scorch each of them with a cigarette lighter to get authentic grill marks. The fabric was far too flammable.
She spoke loudly, hoping they could all hear her clearly through the foam. “Can I just remind you again how it’s supposed to go? You run on after the barbecue’s been lowered, not before. Otherwise half of you will get squashed, which isn’t exactly the look our client wants for his big event.”
There were a few muffled laughs. Lainey turned and nodded at the sound man, and the opening notes of the Beaut Barbecues jingle filled the East Melbourne venue once more. As she moved off the stage and into the middle of the room, Lainey winced again at the lyrics.
Oh, believe me, mate,
Sausages taste great
On a beaut Beaut Barbecue-oo-oo.
She’d tried to gently talk the managing director out of the jingle three months ago, when they’d first met to discuss the gala party celebrating his tenth year in the barbecue business. But it turned out his eight-year-old daughter had written the words and he wasn’t budging. Lainey wondered now if his eight-year-old daughter had come up with the idea of the dancing sausages as well. Or perhaps it had been his four-year-old son. Or his dog. Lainey just hoped none of today’s guests would think it had been Complete Event Management’s idea. Still, it was her job to give her clients what they wanted, and if Mr. Barbecue wanted dancing sausages, he was going to get dancing sausages.
Lainey’s mobile phone rang. She took a few steps back, keeping an eye on the stage. “Complete Event Management, Lainey Byrne speaking.”
“Lainey, have I rung at a bad time?”
It was her mother. “Ma, of course not. Is everything okay? Is Dad all right?” As Lainey spoke, the dancers moved to the front of the stage to pick up the first of their props. Lainey held her breath as one of the fatter sausages teetered a little too close to the edge.
“He’s grand. Well, no, not grand, no change there. This is a brand-new problem.”
“What’s happened?”
“It’s to do with his sister’s will.”
“The will? I thought that had all been sorted out. Don’t tell me she left the B&B to the cats’ home after all?” The sausages were now making waltzing movements, each holding a giant plastic bottle marked Tomato Sauce. At the launch later that day the bottles would be filled with red glitter. For now the sausages were just puffing air at each other.
“No, she did leave the B&B to your father. But we’ve just heard from her solicitor in Ireland. There’s a little bit of a hitch.”
Hitches came in sizes? “What do you mean a little bit?”
“It’s too complicated to talk about on the phone. I think it’s better if we discuss it as a family. Can you call over tonight? If you and Adam don’t have any plans, that is.”
“No, he’s working seven nights a week at the moment. Of course I’ll come over.”
“Thanks, love. I’m asking the boys to drop by as well.”
The boys? Her younger brothers were hardly that. Brendan was nearly thirty, Declan twenty-five and Hugh nineteen. Lainey mentally ran through her appointments for the day. The barbecue party was from noon until three, then she had two meetings and a client briefing back at the office. “Around eight-ish then—sorry, Ma, can you hold on a sec?” She shouted over the music again as the sausages put down their sauce bottles and picked up giant barbecue tongs. “That’s when the managing director comes in and you form a guard of honor with your tongs, okay? That’s it, great. Sorry about that, Ma.”
“I don’t think I’ll ask what you’re up to.”
Lainey laughed. “You wouldn’t believe it if I told you. I’ll see you tonight then. Love to Dad.” She put her mobile away and turned her full attention back to the stage. The sausages were now brandishing the barbecue tongs as though they were samurai swords. It was hard to keep a straight face—she’d been picturing this event in her head for weeks now and it had looked nothing like the chaos in front of her. She stopped the music with another wave of her hands. “All right, from the top again please.”
…
It was past seven by the time Lainey drove out of the office parking lot and through the Melbourne city center streets. Out of habit, she put on the language CD that she kept in the car. She listened to French language CDs while she jogged, and German CDs while she drove. Adam found it very funny. “You do realize you’ll only ever be able to speak German when you’re sitting in a car?” he’d remarked when he first noticed her system.
She listened for a few moments, repeating the words until the woman’s breathy tones finally got to her. Stopping at the Flinders Street traffic lights, she put in a new CD, a bargain basement KC and the Sunshine Band greatest hits collection. She’d bought it for her brother Declan as a joke and then discovered she liked it too much herself. She wound down the window of the car, the tiny breeze it let in giving her little relief from the muggy late-January heat. The air-conditioning had broken down again and it was like driving around in a portable oven. A portable kettle barbecue, even. She certainly knew enough about barbecues now to understand how being in one would feel. “It was all fabulous, just how I imagined it,” Mr. Beaut Barbecues had gushed as Lainey said goodbye that afternoon. “See you in ten years for our next big anniversary, sweetheart.” Over my dead body, sweetheart, she’d thought as she nodded and smiled and tried to ignore his hand doing its best to grope at her behind. She’d had quite enough of Mr. and Mrs. Barbecue and all the little Barbecues for one lifetime.
She finished singing an enthusiastic, badly out-of-tune version of “Shake Your Booty” just as she came off the freeway. She was the first to admit she had an appalling singing voice. “No offense, Lain,” Declan had said once, “but your singing sounds like a mating cat. Like a cat being slaughtered when it’s mating, in fact.” On the spur-of-the-moment, she made a detour to the local shopping center to pick up a few treats to save her mother having to cook. A proper daughter would bring homemade casseroles, she knew, but her cooking skills were basic and her cooking time nonexistent. She also knew her parents loved these ready-made meals in packs, even if the food inside never looked anything like the picture on the box—restaurant meal on the front, gray splodge on the inside, from what Lainey had seen.
The clock on the dashboard clicked over to 8:00 p.m. as she parked in front of the house. Mr. and Mrs. Byrne’s red brick bungalow in Box Hill was the sixth house the family had lived in since they’d arrived from Ireland seventeen years ago. Of the four children, only her youngest brother Hugh had a bedroom in this house these days and even he was barely there, spending most nights at friends’ houses. She took care not to stop under the jacaranda tree that had burst into bloom just before Christmas and was now showering blue flowers all over the street. There was no sign of her brothers’ cars—she was first, as usual. She walked through the open front door, down the hallway to the kitchen and put the meals away in the fridge.
“Hello, Lainey. Oh, thanks a million, your father loves those. Shut the fridge door, would you? I don’t want the flies getting in there.” Mrs. Byrne speciali
zed in greeting-and-command combinations. “I like your haircut, by the way. I wouldn’t have thought hair that short would work with a biggish nose like yours, but it looks very well.”
Lainey didn’t blink at the mixture of compliment and insult—her mother had long specialized in them too. “Thanks, Ma.” She gave her mother a quick kiss on the cheek. With the same tall, very slim build, the same dark-brown hair, they were sometimes mistaken for sisters. “Where’s Dad?”
“Playing water polo. Where do you think he is? In bed, of course.”
Lainey ignored the sharp tone. “Has he been up today at all?”
“No, for a few minutes yesterday. But the way he carried on about it you’d think he wanted me to hang banners and streamers around the house in celebration. He said he’d get up tonight to see you all, but there’s been no movement yet.”
“I’ll go and say hello.” She walked through the living room to her parents’ bedroom. No, not her parents’ bedroom, she corrected herself. Her father’s bedroom. He had moved into one of the spare bedrooms several months previously, as a trial to see if he could sleep better without her mother beside him. The trial continued, still waiting on positive results, perhaps.
As she walked down the hall, she imagined what she’d like to see in her father’s room.
She knocked softly on the door. “Hi, Dad.”
“Lainey! How are you?” Her father was sitting up on his fully made bed, a book in his hands, newspapers spread all around him. She was delighted to see him taking such an interest in the outside world again.
He smiled at her. “How are you, pet? I love the haircut. Sit down now and tell me, what havoc have you been wreaking out in the world today?”
She knocked softly on the door. “Hi, Dad.”
No answer.
“It’s me, Lainey, your favorite daughter.”
“My only daughter.” His Irish accent was loud in the dark room.
She came in and sat on the edge of the bed, her eyes slowly adjusting to the dim light. The curtains were drawn. She could just make out his face, the bedcovers drawn up to his neck. “Just checking you remembered me. How are you?”
Upside Down Inside Out Page 41
