I had plans for my Jazzi-free weekend. The first thing Dad and I did was go to the pool and he held the hoop for me to dive through. We had pies for lunch, which we never had when Jazzi was around. And in the afternoon we played games. I beat him four out of nine games of advanced connectors. He played randomly, whereas I had real strategy.
We were to go to Bella Mama’s for pizza and then to the movies but the phone rang.
‘If that’s Jazzi,’ I hissed at him, but he silenced me with a warning look.
‘Hello? No, of course not, darling. What’s wrong?’
It was Jazzi. I didn’t want to hear anything more, but I didn’t want to let him talk to her in private either, so I poured myself a glass of juice and sat down at the kitchen table. Served him right for not having a cordless phone like everyone else.
‘Darling, that’s terrible. No ... well, I don’t know. You’ve got notice, at least. Maybe the son will want to keep tenants ... Oh, that complicates things, doesn’t it. Still I’m sure we can find you somewhere ... Of course I’ll help. More than happy, darling, after all the things you do for me. No, it won’t be any trouble ... Don’t you worry about anything, darling. Maybe you’d like ... Just a minute, I’ll check something...’
I knew what was coming. I wanted to put my fingers in my ears but I couldn’t because Dad had his best puppy dog look on.
‘Bee, sweetheart, Jazzi’s upset. The old lady who owned her flat has died and the son’s given her notice. I know we’ve organised this weekend together but she is terribly upset. Would it be okay with you if she joined us for dinner and the movies? Please?’
Somehow Dad made his brown eyes all soft and then he ducked his head the way he does when he really wants something, like the last piece of chocolate. I can’t say no when he looks like that.
‘You’ll just talk about the flat and everything.’
‘Not until you go to bed, I promise.’
‘I’m staying up late tonight, remember.’
‘We still won’t talk about it. Well, at least not after Jazzi’s told us the whole story, okay?’
‘The whole story will take hours. It will be boring.’
‘She’s upset, sweetie. If one of your friends was upset, you’d want to help.’
‘Not if it was going to be boring and take forever.’
‘Bee, please?’
‘Tell her she can only talk about the flat for five minutes, okay?’
‘It’s a deal.’
I timed her and she talked for fifteen minutes and thirty seconds exactly before the pizza arrived. But she did apologise for interrupting my weekend with Dad and she looked pretty terrible, as though she hadn’t slept much, so I sort of forgave her. Also I had pizza and tiramisu which is just the best thing you can eat, and I had a choc top at the movies, too, and neither Jazzi nor Dad said anything, although ordinarily the rule is that you can have dessert and no choc top or a choc top and no dessert.
But the next morning, of course, she was there and Dad wouldn’t do anything with me, as he was too busy looking up flats for rent online. We didn’t even have the breakfast I wanted – pancakes and maple syrup. There were no eggs and Dad wouldn’t go to the supermarket because Jazzi wanted to start looking that very morning, and ‘No, Bee, it couldn’t wait’. I had toast with the last of the jam, the awful last bits that everyone else leaves because there are bits of butter in them and even an ant or two. Dad claimed that the ants were toast crumbs and washed them quickly down the sink before I had a chance to point out the little legs to him.
It was shortly after that that Jazzi burst into tears. I’d never seen her cry before, not really cry out loud. It was interesting. Her mascara smudged all over her face and she bit her lipstick off so her lips went totally pale. She put her hands over her face as though she didn’t want us to see her, but all that did was mess up her hair.
‘Everything is so expensive,’ she said. ‘I can’t believe it. I’ll never find anywhere.’
‘Maybe you have to move to a slightly different area,’ Dad said, patting her awkwardly. ‘I’m sure we can find somewhere, Jazzi.’
‘I was so happy there,’ she sobbed. ‘I was just so happy.’
It sounded to me as though she didn’t think she could ever be happy again. I’d only been to her flat a few times. It wasn’t child-friendly so Jazzi tended to come to our place unless I stayed with Nanna or Uncle Rob and Aunty Maree. It didn’t look unfriendly to me, but it was pretty small and there were a lot of things in it. It wasn’t a place you could stretch out in. Even the kitchen was tiny. If you had dinner there, you had to clear the table in Jazzi’s study or else sit on the floor in the lounge room and eat from the coffee table, which I quite enjoyed doing. It was very Japanese. We’d learnt about that at school. Dad said it gave him cramp, though.
‘Maybe you can get somewhere bigger,’ I said, trying to be helpful and positive. ‘You know, a proper place with a kitchen table. That would be good because then you could make stuff in the study and never have to clear it away.’
Jazzi made weird things. She called them dolls but some of them didn’t have any faces and some were kind of spooky. Others didn’t have any clothes on and their rude bits were showing. She gave me one, not one of the rude ones, but one of the faceless ones. I didn’t like it and I kept it up on a shelf in my cupboard so I didn’t have to look at it.
‘I’ll never find anywhere bigger,’ Jazzi sniffed snottily, ‘not for the kind of money I can afford. I’ll end up living in a cupboard somewhere – horrible.’
I gave up then and stomped off to write a note to Fifi and Lulu. I knew it would take ages before Dad found it, but I didn’t care. I had to complain to someone, so this is what I wrote:
Dear Lulu and Fifi
All she’s done is cry all morning, and all Dad’s done is pat her and kept looking for places to rent on the Net. I wanted pancakes but no one would go to the supermarket for eggs. There were ants in the jam. I don’t see why our weekend has to be ruined because some old lady has died and Jazzi has to find another flat. And who heard of a grown-up crying over something like that. My mother wouldn’t have. She was a positive person. Dad always says you shouldn’t be negative, but he didn’t say that to Jazzi. Not once.
Love
Bee
I left the letter in Lulu and Fifi’s letterbox. There wasn’t anything to do, so I made a few fairy houses down near the tree ferns and wondered if the fairies ever used my houses. Once Sally had come over and we’d both made one. It was still there. Sally had put a little pebble fence around it and we’d even made a fairy bird bath from an old shell. It was the best fairy house. The ones I made by myself didn’t look half as good. I stuck a cockatoo feather in the front of one, but it looked too big and I thought it might scare the fairies away, so I put the feather in my ponytail instead. That made me an Indian so I whooped around for a while and pretended to stalk some buffalo, but then Honey, the dog from next door, spotted me, so she stopped being a buffalo and I patted her tummy through the fence for a while. I thought about ringing Sally and seeing if she could come over and play, but then I remembered she wasn’t talking to me.
It wasn’t fair. No one was talking to me.
Inside the house, Dad and Jazzi were still hunched over the computer. Jazzi had the box of tissues on the arm of her chair. They were no longer looking at flats, though. There were all these figures on the screen and Dad was shaking his head at them in a sad kind of way.
‘So much for my Jazzi-free weekend,’ I told him when he came to tuck me in that night.
‘Bee,’ he said, sitting on the end of my bed, ‘I know you and Jazzi have had some differences but basically you’d say you both got along, wouldn’t you? I know she’s very fond of you.’
I shrugged.
‘Because I’m thinking of asking her if she’d like to move in with us.’ Dad spoke very quickly as if he didn’t want to give me a chance to say anything at all. ‘She hasn’t any family, you know, and we
get along so well. She’s really enriched my life, sweetheart. I love her very much. No one, and I mean that, Bee, no one could ever replace your mother, and I don’t expect you to think of Jazzi as your mother at all and Jazzi wouldn’t either. But I think we could all be very happy together.’
I wanted to tell him that Jazzi did have family, that Harley was her brother, but I couldn’t work out what to say, so instead I said, ‘Well, that’s just great. Now I’ll never have any Jazzi-free time. It will always be you, her and me. What was wrong with the way it was?’
‘I was lonely,’ Dad said, ‘and when I saw her that night at Trivia, I knew she was the most interesting woman in the room, but I thought she was bound to have a boyfriend. I was right about the first thing, but, fortunately for me, I was wrong about the second. I really want us all to live together, Bee. She’s smart, she’s pretty, she’s creative and she makes me laugh. We need each other.’
‘What about me?’
‘Sweetheart, you’re my best girl. You always will be. But you’ll get older, and you’ll move out and leave your poor old dad. You’ll fall in love and marry someone and then where will I be?’
‘You could be like Stan. He’s happy.’
‘Only because he lives next door to your Nanna!’
‘Why can’t you and Jazzi live next door to each other then?’
‘Come on, Bee, look on the positive side. You’ll have someone to take you clothes shopping, someone to teach you how to cook, and someone to do all those girlie things with. You need someone like that.’
‘I don’t care,’ I said. ‘I don’t care if she moves in or if she doesn’t. I couldn’t care less. I’m too tired.’
I rolled over and pretended to go to sleep. Dad stayed on the end of my bed for ages but he didn’t say anything else and neither did I.
Moving in
I didn’t want to tell Sally and Lucy at school that Jazzi was going to be my stepmother, but Jazzi told them herself.
‘Well, here we are,’ she said when she picked me up. ‘Hello, Sally, hello, Lucy. Has Beatrice told you the news?’
‘No,’ Sally said, ‘ Beatrice hasn’t.’
‘I’m moving in with Nick, Beatrice’s father, so the first thing we must do is to celebrate that by you girls coming over for a play as soon as I’ve settled in.’
‘Told you so,’ Lucy hissed behind Jazzi’s back.
‘We’ll make cup-cakes,’ Jazzi continued, ‘with pink icing.’
‘That would be lovely,’ Sally said politely.
‘And you must call me Jazzi, just like Beatrice does. Now, if you could just introduce me to your mothers, I can get your phone numbers.’
She acted just like a real mother and I didn’t like it but there was nothing I could do about it. She wrote their phone numbers down in her little pocket diary and discussed play dates with the other mothers.
The next day at school Sally said, ‘So she is your stepmother now.’
‘She’s pretty cool,’ Lucy said. ‘Cup-cakes sound good. Does she always make yummy things?’
‘Always,’ I said, keeping my fingers crossed behind my back. ‘She makes scones practically every afternoon after school and we eat them with strawberry jam and cream. She’s going to be a great step-mum.’
‘Every afternoon?’ Lucy sounded wistful.
‘Nearly,’ I said. ‘On Fridays she makes chocolate icecream with big lumps of real chocolate in it.’
‘She does not,’ Sally said sharply. ‘No one makes icecream, you have to buy it.’
‘Jazzi makes it,’ I said. ‘And sometimes it’s even got marshmallows in it and hundreds and thousands sprinkled on top.’
Lucy and Sally looked at each other.
‘I think you’re lying, Bee,’ Sally said, ‘because you don’t make ice-cream, you buy it, and anyway you told me once ages ago that she didn’t let you have anything unhealthy.’
‘That was before,’ I said. ‘This is now.’
‘You’re still lying.’
‘Am not.’
‘Her fingers are crossed,’ Lucy said.
‘No, they aren’t.’ I waved my fingers in their faces. ‘See!’
‘They were, though, I saw them.’
‘You two are impossible,’ I said and walked off to play Pick Up Papers. I was beginning to like Pick Up Papers.
At home, all that Dad and Jazzi talked about was The Big Day. Dad had decided to paint the lounge room just for Jazzi moving in, so we all looked at paint strips. I wanted Mountain Mist but they decided on Natural Linen.
‘What’s the point of even painting it, if it’s just going to be the same colour?’ I asked, but they were too busy measuring a space to see if the fold-down desk Jazzi’s mother had left her would fit between Dad’s big bookcase and the fish tank.
‘I’d like my bedroom painted,’ I said. ‘I could have Mountain Mist in my room. I’d like a purple room, particularly if I could have a new doona cover. I’ve had that Teddy Bear one ever since I can remember.’
‘I think my little quilt could go up on that wall. The colours would tone in nicely, don’t you think, Nick?’
‘I think you know much more about that kind of thing than I do,’ Dad said, putting his arm around her, ‘and I’m counting on you getting our house shipshape again.’
‘So painting my room would be a good thing,’ I said, ‘in terms of the shipshapedness of everything.’
But they didn’t hear me, or they weren’t listening.
I cut the Mountain Mist square out from the paint strip and put it on the fridge with a note, ‘For Bee’s room!’, and wrote to the guinea pigs on the rest of the strip.
Dear Fifi and Lulu
It is all mad in the big house. You are lucky to be here in your own little cubby with no one moving in. In fact, you are lucky to be guinea pigs. If no one paints my room Mountain Mist, which is the colour I would really like it to be, can I come and live with both of you, please? I promise not to fuss or want to put anything big in too small a space.
Love
The girl who feeds you, Bee-the-best
The next morning I got a note back:
Dear Bee-the-best-girl
We both think Mountain Mist sounds like a very romantic colour. Would you get sick of living in a romantic room, though? You could come and live with us, but Fifi has the left-hand side of our hutch and Lulu has the right, so you’d have to squeeze up between us. We’d all be very warm at night.
Love
Fifi and Lulu, the eaters
‘I wouldn’t get sick of Mountain Mist,’ I told Dad as he drove me to school. ‘Honest I wouldn’t, Dad. It’s the colour I really want my room.’
‘Bee, let me just get the lounge room painted first, okay? Then we can discuss your room. First things first. Jazzi has to move in and then we can assess what other changes need to be made.’
Jazzi didn’t seem to have a first things first problem.
‘I’d like to have a dinner party, Nick darling,’ she said, ‘to celebrate my move. Our move.’
‘Of course, darling. I think that’s a great idea. But let’s move first, shall we?’
‘I’d like Sam and Rowena to come, since they were responsible for us meeting, and Ro’s been my best friend for ages, and I’d like your, you know, Lindy’s brother and his wife – it sounds strange to say that. But I’d like us all to get along and I know how important they are in your life and we should meet. It’s strange that we haven’t, really. Patricia, of course, she’ll have to come.’
‘Sure. But, sweetheart, I think we need to get you moved before we start planning dinner parties.’
‘Will I be there?’
‘Of course, Beatrice. You can help me with the preparations. You could ... let me see ... help choose the flowers.’
‘So it won’t be a barbeque?’
‘I suppose we could have something on the back deck. Although there might be mozzies. Also, I think Patricia might prefer to be indoors.’
�
��If you’re going to invite Nanna, you’d better ask Stan as well.’
‘Of course,’ Jazzi said.
‘And what about Harley?’ I said. ‘You’ll have to invite Harley.’
‘Who is Harley?’ asked Dad.
I stared at Jazzi wildly, trying to say sorry without actually saying anything, but she wouldn’t look at me.
‘So,’ Dad said, looking from me to Jazzi, ‘who is Harley?’
‘Harley is my brother,’ Jazzi whispered.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said almost at the same time, ‘I didn’t mean to tell. It just slipped out.’
‘Didn’t mean to tell what, Bee?’
Dad’s voice was his dangerously quiet one. It meant ‘Have a bath or else. Go to bed without arguing now. No, you cannot have any more ice-cream, don’t ask again.’
‘Nothing,’ I said.
‘Jazzi, can you explain this?’
‘Harley is my brother,’ Jazzi whispered again. ‘He’s not ... well. I didn’t tell you. I didn’t want you to think ... I should have said something. I’m sorry.’
‘He’s really nice, Dad. Harley is really nice. You wouldn’t know there was anything wrong with him, really.’
‘What exactly is wrong with Harley and why has Bee met this secret person but I haven’t yet had the pleasure?’
‘He’s not secret,’ Jazzi said. ‘I just don’t like to talk about him. But he’s not secret. If you’d asked me, I would have told you.’
‘I’m sure I did ask if you had any brothers or sisters. I can remember asking, actually. I asked you in front of Rowena and Sam, the first night I met you.’
‘You asked Rowena and she said no. I didn’t say anything.’
‘So your best friend doesn’t know you have a brother?’
‘Not really.’
‘Not really?’
‘I think we should discuss this in private, Nick.’
They discussed it privately for a very long time. I watched three TV programs downstairs while they talked, and we got home-delivered pizza and I was allowed to eat it in front of the TV which was very strange. They discussed it right up to my bedtime, when Dad stopped discussing long enough to tuck me in, but they were still deep in conversation when I wandered out hours later to get a drink of water.
Being Bee Page 5
