by J. C. Burke
On Sunday afternoon, Mum and Billy did that thing they always did. They chatted to each other like I wasn’t even in the same room, like it didn’t matter if I was there or not. But today it did matter and they still talked like I was invisible.
It began with Billy saying, ‘I’d better start getting ready for Vanessa.’
That name got my attention.
‘What time’s she coming over?’ Mum asked.
‘Ten minutes ago,’ Billy replied. ‘Models are never on time.’
Vanessa? Model? How many models called Vanessa did Billy know?
‘Are you going to cut her hair in the kitchen, Billy?’ Mum even asked this while leaning over me to get to the sink. ‘Or the bathroom?’
‘Kitchen,’ he answered. ‘The light’s not good enough in the bathroom. At least, not for her hair.’
Part of me wanted to interrupt with, Isn’t cutting hair in the kitchen against all the new hygiene laws? My mother had enforced spraying and wiping down counters even after buttering a piece of bread. But there was more pressing business to attend to.
‘Hold it right there!’ I finally made my presence felt. ‘Are you talking about Vanessa Vanessa? Vanessa Harding, the girl who goes to my school?’ I stepped in front of my brother. ‘Hello?’
Mum piped up. ‘What’s the drama?’
‘I would just like to know if someone from my school is planning on knocking on our door in a few minutes. It is past three o’clock and I’m still in my pyjamas.’
‘So – change,’ Billy said.
‘Isn’t she in your year?’ Mum asked.
‘Her twin brother is,’ I mumbled. ‘Vanessa’s repeating Year 10.’
‘Ralph’s the twin brother, Mum,’ Billy told her. ‘You know, Ralph? The one Gem thinks is Mr Spunky Monkey.’
‘No, I don’t!’ I blurted.
‘You do so!’
I was about to whack Billy over the head with Mum’s bag of fabric offcuts when there was a quick little tap on the front door.
‘Can you get it?’ Billy and Mum sang out to me at the same time.
A second later I was opening the door and then Vanessa was standing in our kitchen hugging my brother.
I’ve never taken drugs but I reckon this was what it’d feel like. I was almost having one of those out-of-body experiences that I’d read about in the Reader’s Digest at the dentist. You know you’re in the room and you can hear everybody talking, but it all feels too weird to be really happening.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Vanessa was saying. ‘I knew Saul was sick but I only heard that he’d passed away the other day. I’m so, so sorry.’
I opened my mouth but closed it straight away. I wanted to ask Vanessa when she had heard. But there was no place for my question.
Billy and Vanessa were facing each other and holding hands like no one else was in the room.
‘How are you?’ Vanessa asked my brother.
‘One day at a time.’
I couldn’t tear my eyes away from them.
‘Thanks so much for saying you’d do this, Billy. I know it’s such a big ask and I feel so bad. But I don’t trust anyone else to cut my hair and I couldn’t believe you were actually here – just down the road!’
‘Stop it! It’s my pleasure. I’m super excited for you, Vanessa.’ Then Billy turned to me and said, ‘Vanessa’s scored an audition for the new Pantene ad.’
Vanessa was grinning and I wondered if there’d ever been a Pantene girl with a big gap between her teeth. She had the hair though. Long, flowing dark locks that shone so much you needed sunnies to look at them without your eyes stinging. Ralph’s hair was even darker, almost jet black, and had a way of falling over his eyes that was quite possibly the hottest thing I had ever seen apart from Johnny Depp.
‘Getting a big contract at home and not having to travel for a while would be the ultimate,’ she said. ‘On the way here I was telling my brother that I’d trade a Vogue cover for this.’
‘Where’s your brother?’ my mother asked. Of course she did. She had to open her big mouth. ‘It’s Ralph, isn’t it?’
‘Yes. He’s waiting in the car. He drove me here.’
‘Tell him to come in.’ Now I really was having an out-of-body experience. But a bad one where it suddenly felt like everyone was staring at me. Probably since they were, because my mother was saying, ‘Go and get Ralph, Gemma. He’s not a chauffeur. We can’t let him sit in the car all afternoon.’
‘Is that okay, Gemma?’ Vanessa was asking me.
‘Sure,’ I heard my voice reply. ‘Might just get changed.’
I put on my 501s and my tight black jumper. They were lying on the floor of my room. I’d worn them last night when Billy and I went to pick up pizzas. The waiter with the permanently greasy hair had winked and called me ‘cutie-pie’ when he handed over the pizzas.
Yesterday that wink hadn’t mattered and neither had his lame compliment. But right now it was as though Johnny Depp himself had said it – that’s why I was putting the same clothes back on.
I slunk out of my room as casually as I could, picked up the front door key and asked, as though I didn’t already know, ‘Vanessa, what kind of car does Ralph drive?’ What I really wanted to ask was, Will he know who I am?
‘What?’ She laughed. ‘You mean you haven’t noticed?’
‘Put some shoes on!’ Mum called.
But I pretended I hadn’t heard her because bare feet were an essential part of the casual look I was attempting to pull off.
By the time I was walking down the path, my mouth was dry, I was experiencing intense palpitations and I had a horrible feeling that when I opened my lips, no sound was going to come out. Pathetic, considering I had been seeing this guy almost every day for the last five years. But that was in the classroom or Literature Circle or the quadrangle with hundreds of other kids hanging around. Ralph’s group of friends were intense types who were into music and art and wore all black on the weekends. Come to think of it, they didn’t speak much either, which could account for the lack of words Ralph and I had exchanged. ‘Hi’, ‘Bye’ and ‘Did you hand in your essay?’ weren’t exactly earth-shattering pieces of conversation.
Up ahead I could see the lime-green station wagon that was parked outside school most days.
Andrea had wanted to snoop through the windows because she said that could tell us a lot about who Ralph really was. Every time she suggested it I’d said, ‘No way,’ emphasising my point with a tight, nail-piercing squeeze of her arm.
The idea of Ralph catching us was, in my books, even more embarrassing than him seeing my undies on April Fools’ Day. Everyone saw my undies that day. But what excuse could I possibly give Ralph if he sprung me with my face pasted against his car window, acting like the bunny-boiling stalker lady from Fatal Attraction?
As I got closer to the lime mobile, I could see Ralph in the driver’s seat reading a book. I’d bet it was our history textbook. It had the same dark cover with a large white title and the rumour going around class was that the end-of-term History exam answers were straight out of chapter three. There was a talking point, I told myself. That could be the conversation starter as we began the awkward walk back to our flat.
But barely a metre away, the title became clear. This was no modern history book. It was a folder called Belle Modelling Agency 1989, and whatever Ralph was looking at had him mesmerised. He wasn’t even aware that there was a person, me, almost outside his window, arm raised and about to tap on the glass.
So I didn’t stop. I kept walking. The footpath was cold and up ahead someone’s garbage bin had overturned. Empty cans of cat food, dirty nappies and orange peels were scattered along the pavement. Carefully I stepped around the rubbish and kept walking as though that was what I’d intended to do all along.
My first thought was to walk all the way to Andrea’s. It wasn’t that far but I didn’t fancy the journey in bare feet. Plus I’d been faking a sore throat as I’d supposedly been ‘sick�
� again.
For a stupid split second I wondered if Ralph might see me walking away and call out or toot the horn. As if. There was no way I could compete with a folder of models. I had to be satisfied with a wink from the greasy-haired waiter at the Grazia Pizza Bar.
I kept walking until I reached the park right down the end of our street. It was a safe enough distance between Ralph and me, but not too long of a trudge home where I knew an interrogation from Billy and Mum would be waiting for me.
It was a sad park. Even as a kid I’d thought so. Once upon a time, before they’d filled the pond up with cement and a toilet block, there used to be ducks there. Not the cute white ones that you saw in fairytales. These ducks were mangy, skinny brown things that were always pecking holes into their feathers.
It was actually Dad who used to take me to this park on weekends. He’d bought himself a metal detector, so Dad, me and the metal detector would hang out here all afternoon while Billy and Mum were at swimming training. I’d feed the ducks or play on the swings while Dad and the device, which resembled a long pole with a steering wheel on the end of it, would cover every inch of grass. I remembered the beeping of the machine floating along on the air and Dad occasionally calling, ‘I think I’ve got something, Gem’.
Those times with Dad weren’t so bad. As we walked home he’d show me what he’d found. Sometimes we’d take a detour and Dad would buy me an ice-cream with the change he’d dug up.
The toilet block was still standing, except most of the time it was locked to stop the junkies from hitting up in there. This afternoon, the park was empty. It was late autumn and the sun was low in the sky, warning us that the day was nearly over and it was time to go home where it was warm and safe.
Still, I sat there, working on my story about why I didn’t return to the flat with Ralph. I needed to know the reason as much for myself as I did for Billy and Mum.
Ralph was from the arty group; the Fink and Marty Searles were the tough guys; Sonia Darue and her clones were the pretty, oh-so-perfect, prissy girls; Andrea, Justin, now Louise Lovejoy and I belonged to none of them. Nor did we fit into the middle. We were a group of ordinary unremarkables. Not ugly, not beautiful, not arty and not tough.
The only thing that had ever brought me attention at school was last year when the Women’s Weekly did a one-page story on Billy – and everyone had forgotten about that in twenty-four hours. There were photos of him with Cher and Demi Moore and right there in black print it was written that he had one sister called Gemma.
I could say to Mum and Billy, Ralph was looking at a folder full of beautiful girls. And I felt unremarkable. Ordinary. Not quite enough to get his attention.
It wasn’t a great excuse but it was probably as close to the truth as I’d ever get.
It was pitch black in the park now and it wasn’t the sort of place a girl wanted to be on her own. Yet I tucked my feet underneath me, sitting on them to warm up my toes. I could feel the cold night air blowing right through me because I was hollow inside.
I was beyond sad. That was the real truth and it had nothing to do with the darkness or Ralph or who was in which group at school. I was sad because Saul was dead. Because I would never see him again, and I was starting to sense that this sadness was far from over.
10
‘WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN, YOUNG LADY?’ Mum huffed. Billy and Mrs C, who was wearing her black apron, were also gathered by the front door. No doubt they’d all jumped up the second they heard the click of the lock. ‘It’s nearly 6 p.m., Gemma!’
Mum and her support team followed me into the kitchen. ‘You’ve been gone nearly three hours, Gemma. All you were meant to do was get Ralph and bring him back up. Two minutes! So, what the hell happened?’
I was gulping down a second glass of water because I thought that might give me a bit more time before I had to answer my mother’s pretty reasonable question. Not that I had any intention of admitting that.
‘I … I changed my mind,’ I finally answered.
‘You what?’ Mum barked.
‘I changed my mind,’ I repeated. ‘I don’t think Ralph cared about sitting out there in the car. I think he was quite happy to. He had enough to occupy himself with.’
‘That’s not the point! I asked you to go and get him. Instead you disappeared for three hours.’
‘Well, if you wanted Ralph to come up then why didn’t you go down and get him? I’m not your slave!’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Calm down, both of you,’ Billy said.
‘Mamma was just worried,’ Mrs C offered.
‘I was more than worried, Carmella,’ Mum spat. ‘I was confused. I was embarrassed. I was—’
‘Embarrassed?’ I yelled. ‘What was so embarrassing?’
‘You just sneaking out like that and—’
‘I didn’t sneak out!’
‘You just disappeared. How were we expected to know what had happened to you? You could’ve been abducted!’
‘Get real, Mother!’
‘Don’t tell me to get real!’ she shrieked and we all did a little jump. Maybe she noticed because she started speaking in an overly calm way like she’d just remembered she was meant to be giving a relaxation session. ‘I’m not angry, Gemma. I’m upset because I was worried about what had happened to you. Billy went downstairs and spoke to Vanessa’s brother and he said he hadn’t even seen you. So what were we meant to think?’
I was about to surrender. I was about to wave my white flag and admit that it had been a pretty random thing to do, disappearing like that. But then my mother said, ‘If you felt shy about going down and getting Ralph, then you should’ve told me.’ She kept on with the annoying voice. ‘You know you can be up-front and honest with me. We’ve always been so open with each other. When did we start hiding things from …’
Suddenly there was an opening and I hadn’t even been aware that I’d been looking for one. This was my moment to say how I felt. I was never going to get it again and I was about to barge through headfirst. I had doubted all my instincts. I had been tight-lipped and well-behaved. I had sucked it all up for the sake of not causing any more upset. That very afternoon, I’d had to stand there without pulling a face or making a noise when I realised that Vanessa had known Saul had been sick way before I had. That little fact alone had run me down like a semitrailer driver on No-Doz.
So I began. ‘When did we start hiding things from each other?’ I repeated. ‘I think you’re the one who should be answering that question, Mum! You’re the one who’s been doing all the hiding. Not me.’
‘And what on earth does that mean?’
‘Have a big guess, why don’t you?’
‘Gemma,’ Billy started. ‘Leave it. She was just worried.’
‘Very, very worry,’ Mrs C chimed in.
I ignored the peanut gallery. Instead I stood firm, kept my eyes on my mother and said, as together as I could muster, ‘You knew Saul was sick. It seems that even Vanessa knew.’
‘Whether Vanessa knew or not has nothing to do with this!’
I took a deep breath because I had to say my piece. ‘Mum, even when Saul was dead you let me believe he wasn’t.’ Mrs C blessed herself but there was no stopping me now. ‘I’d hardly call that being open with each other.’
‘Gem,’ Billy was saying. ‘Come on—’
‘Don’t tell me to come on! It’s more than that. She didn’t even tell me you were coming home,’ I yelled as my fingertip jabbed towards my mother’s chest. ‘She didn’t tell me Saul had AIDS. And then, when she did, she let me go for a whole night still thinking he was alive. I lay in bed all night wondering how he was feeling. If he was scared.’ My breath was rumbling at the back of my throat, my hands were shaking and my legs were too. I had never felt this angry before and it was scaring me. ‘How could you do that?’ I roared at my mother. ‘How? Just tell me that!’ Billy was trying to take my hands in his but I wouldn’t have it. They were now clasped tightly behind my back
, away from temptation to dole out another face-stinging slap. ‘Why did Saul’s death have to be such a huge secret? What’s your excuse for that? Huh? Just tell me the truth! Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘Because I promised!’ Mum hollered. ‘I promised your brother I wouldn’t.’
I had to get out of the kitchen before I tore it to pieces. ‘What sort of a sick promise is that?’ I spun around, and there face-to-face with me was Mr C, standing in the doorway.
He reached out and touched my cheek. ‘Gemma mia,’ he whispered. That was all it took. I was stumbling into his arms while my sobs erupted and the heavens opened with my tears.
‘She sad,’ Mr C was saying, as he rubbed my back. ‘She sad.’
‘I know, Marcello,’ Billy answered. ‘We’re all sad.’
Mr and Mrs C made some tea. Mr C ran upstairs and brought down a plate of freshly made cannoli, which became dinner and dessert. Mr C patted my head. Mrs C gave me one of her epic squeezes and when they thought we were all okay, they said goodbye and went back upstairs to their place.
After we heard the thud of their door closing, Mum said, ‘I’m sorry, Gemma.’
‘I’m sorry too,’ I answered. I meant it. That explosion must’ve been waiting patiently somewhere in my body because I hadn’t seen it coming. But when it came, it erupted like Vesuvius’s big brother.
‘We were just trying to protect you,’ Mum offered.
‘I know. But I’m not an idiot. I knew something was wrong and I would’ve preferred that you’d just told me.’
‘Gem,’ Billy said. ‘I promise you it was Saul who didn’t want you to know until the end. He said, “It’s too much pain and worry for a kid.” Those were his words. So, I made Mum swear she wouldn’t tell you. And at the end, it just all happened so fast.’
‘Okay.’ I swallowed. ‘I accept that. But why wasn’t I told that you were coming home? And all these new rules in the kitchen and the bathroom?’
