by C. J. Duggan
The Best Western was not situated in the most prestigious of locations; a fence line of skip bins sat right outside our motel room, and there was an angry dog barking constantly in one of the suburban backyards we so charmingly overlooked. Still, it was the budget-savvy thing to do, even if there were probably chalked outlines of bodies on the pavement around the corner and yellow police tape cordoning off a part of the neighbourhood.
I watched on as Mum pumped hand sanitiser liberally in her palm for the hundredth time that day, and it didn’t escape my attention that Dad was clicking the central locking on our doors every time we hopped in the car.
I knew Mum and Dad were massively out of their comfort zone, and I had to admit this wasn’t exactly what I had envisioned as Dad cruised past the fibro-sheeted houses and another laneway, thick with coloured graffiti. It was gritty and lively, for sure, but seeing piled-up mattresses and TV sets on the nature strips for hard rubbish collection day – oh God, at least I hoped that’s what it was for – didn’t exactly scream Paradise. I quickly wiped the thought from my mind. This wasn’t Paradise City, this wasn’t the hub of my dreams, this was merely a suburb of the city itself: an unfortunate introduction because my parents were always a little tight with the purse strings.
I stretched forward from the back seat. ‘Tell me again, why aren’t we staying at Aunty Karen and Uncle Peter’s?’
‘There’s just not enough room for us all to stay there,’ insisted Mum, massaging the disinfectant into the back of her hands.
It was so great to finally be here, and to actually step foot in what was to be my school, but I was saving most of my excitement for seeing my cousin Amanda again. She was only a few months older than me, but I always had this kind of worshipping thing about Amanda. Before they moved to Paradise City, they only lived a three-hour drive from Red Hill in Sunnyvale, where we used to share birthdays and Christmas holidays. We would play Barbies, bruise our ribs sliding along the slip ’n’ slide in our backyard, become death-defying stuntmen by tipping our trampoline on its side before charging from across the yard, latching onto it and pushing it over to slam to the ground again. We used to host our own radio station by recording our voices on cassette tapes, or freak each other out by telling ghost stories with torches pressed up against our chins under the blankets. Amanda was the sister I never had. When her family moved away, it was like they had taken a piece of my childhood with them, and Red Hill suddenly became unbearable with no option of an escape. Aside from that first postcard she had sent and a few phone calls, Amanda had slowly drifted away from me. She was busy with her new friends in her new life, and why wouldn’t she be? I mean, they lived in Paradise, literally. I would often comment on her Myspace page, a window into her amazing existence of linked arms around friends and pouty pictures at the beach with heart-shaped glasses on. Long gone were the Barbie dolls and afternoons spent swooning over pictures of Jonathan Taylor Thomas. Amanda had moved on. Whereas I was just the same old Lexie. Until now.
‘So, how much longer?’ My insides flipped with giddy excitement.
‘Are you so eager to be rid of us?’ My mum looked at me pointedly in the rearview mirror.
‘Of course not,’ I lied. ‘But I start school on Monday and I need to get my bearings.’
As in, I needed to grill Amanda about who’s who and the dos and don’ts of real high school society. Having her as my wing woman would be an invaluable asset if I was going to fit in and furthermore convince my parents that I could live out my final high school year here.
‘You’ll have plenty of time,’ Mum said.
‘Time for what?’ asked Dad, as usual, coming in on the end of a conversation, while he tuned into the cricket on the radio.
‘Lexie’s worried her life is flashing before her eyes.’
‘Every day is a wasted day,’ I groaned, flinging myself back into my seat.
‘Don’t wish your life away, Lexie.’
Pfft, what life?
‘Well, I wouldn’t say today was a waste; you got to look around the school at least,’ said Mum.
I cringed at the memory.
My dad winking and jovially saying g’day to each student he passed in the corridor. More often than not, people would snigger with their friends or look back at him as if he was a mutant, or more accurately, some kind of country bumpkin. He might as well have been wearing a cowboy hat, chewing on a piece of straw. Disguising my mortification as starvation I cut the walk-around short, insisting that we please go . . . now!
Orientation: disaster.
I much preferred my chances with Amanda. I mean, I had to remain the mysterious new girl. I wanted my entrance to be, like my dad would say, bigger than Ben Hur. I sat in the back seat dreaming of slow-motion entrances, whispers and stares from hot surfer boys.
‘So, is Aunty Karen going to be home by the time we get there?’ I asked.
‘Ah, yes, she took the day off for us.’
‘Bloody hell, we’ll never hear the end of that,’ Dad said, rolling his eyes.
The fact that Mum and Dad had pulled the ‘we need our own space’ card when checking into our motel was not lost on me. And the fact they thought I was immune to their grown-up politics was, well, insulting. I’d innocently earwigged on enough conversations between Mum and Dad to know that there was a definite divide between Mum and her younger sister.
Nothing more telling than Mum’s admission. ‘They’re just trying to keep up with the Joneses.’
‘Joneses? They think they are the bloody Joneses,’ said Dad, laughing.
The differences were pretty clear.
Mum married a country boy.
Aunty Karen married a city boy.
Mum was asset rich but cash poor.
Aunty Karen was just rich.
Mum drove a Patrol.
Aunty Karen drove a Volvo.
Mum’s fingernails were chipped, broken from helping Dad on the farm.
Aunty Karen’s French-tipped nails dialled for a cleaner to clean her two-storey house.
Worlds apart and none of it had seemed so obvious until their big move to the coast.
‘Doesn’t Aunty Karen have some big high-flying government job?’ I asked with interest, causing Dad to nearly spit out his drink over the steering wheel as he looked at Mum.
‘Where did you hear that?’ Mum’s brows creased.
‘I heard Nan telling Mrs Muir at the supermarket.’
‘Oh, bloody hell.’ Dad shook his head.
‘Rick!’ Mum warned.
‘No, Jen. If Lexie is going to be immersed in this world she needs to know the truth. Aunty Karen works at the local shire council as a glorified receptionist answering phones and taking rates payments. She lives purely on credit that her long-suffering husband has to work seven days a week to pay for.’
Whoa, go Dad!
All this I had kind of gathered, but still, Dad always liked to tell it like it was, while Mum chose to live in the ‘if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all’ category.
I was somewhere in between, myself.
Mum sighed, clenching the bridge of her nose as if warding off a migraine. ‘I’m not doing this now, Rick,’ Mum warned.
And when Dad didn’t let it go, I took it as a sign to dig out my ear plugs, wedging one in each ear and pressing play, spinning one of my Triple J’s Hottest 100 CDs, circa 1995, to life. It was a wonder it still played at all considering the number of times I had listened to it over and over again. The chilling waves of Natalie Merchant’s ‘Carnival’ washed over me, just as the flashes of light from the setting sun over the city blinded me in patches through the buildings. Graffiti-clad fences morphed into bustling streets of Chinese takeaway and two-dollar shops, divided up with traffic lights on every block. The animated gestures of my parents as they continued to argue seemed to play out in slow motion compared to the fast-moving surrounds at peak hour. I pressed my temple against the window, gazing up at some palm trees, a long str
etch of them dotted along a concrete jungle. Were we getting nearer to the ocean, I wondered? If we turned a corner would it suddenly be there on the horizon? With no real idea where we were headed or how far away we were, the city scene soon blended into a long stretch of industrial building sites. Long gone were the mystical, towering palm trees, and hello, Bunnings and tyre wholesalers.
The car interior smelt like Colonel Sanders and his secret herbs and spices, which were probably cementing their stench into my hair and clothes. I sniffed the fabric of my top. Impossible to tell. I wasn’t sure why a part of me was suddenly so nervous. This was family and we were going over for dinner, just like we had when I was little. But I was always amazed how quickly things changed, how people got older and time moved on, almost as fast as the ever-changing neighbourhoods we drove through. I straightened with interest, noting the very obvious differences and feel of the area we were heading into.
Money.
Single fibro housing commission shacks were exchanged for actual bricks and mortar – some with their own strategically placed palm trees. A good test of wealth, it seemed, was whether you had an impressive concrete driveway and a remote-controlled garage door. We had definitely entered into that territory. A far cry from Red Hill, where fortune was dependent on how many acres you had or how large your rented TV was. This was more like the Paradise I had envisioned: kids playing cricket on the street; a group of women power walking in their three-quarter lycra pants and sun-visor caps; a man hand-mowing his minuscule front yard with earmuffs on.
My heart almost leapt out of my chest when I spotted a surfboard mounted on the wall of an open garage. We had to be close, we just had to be, and as I quickly wound down the window and raised my face up to the sky, the first thing that hit me was the glorious smell of the ocean. Ocean and sunshine, thick in the air that whipped the wisps of hair into my eyes.
Dad turned in to a long sweeping road to the right and just as I was about to announce the assault on my senses to my parents, there it was. There in the distance, as we drove along the winding road, was a deep blue mass of water, cresting up to meet the sand. Just as quickly as it was there it was gone again, as Dad made another sharp right, powering up a ridge of bitumen into another street. I spun around in my seat, grinning like a fool at what was slowly disappearing behind me. Now this was Paradise.
Chapter Three
‘We’re here!’ Dad sighed.
I love it how parents state the obvious, as if pulling into a driveway and turning the engine off wasn’t a giveaway. And of all the houses, in all the streets to pull up in front of, I was oh so happy it was this one. I opened my door, slowly sliding out of the back seat, my eyeline following the impressive Colorbond roofline of the second storey.
Large concrete drive, double automated garage and trees that were actually manicured into balls. Now that was luxurious. Somehow, parking behind Aunty Karen’s shiny Volvo station wagon in our dust-covered Patrol with a bucket of chicken in hand definitely screamed intruder. I would have let the feeling of unease consume me if it wasn’t for the high-pitched screams that were closing in on us.
‘Oh my God. OH MY GOD!’ Aunty Karen charged out of the front door, arms outstretched.
I didn’t have time to process the incoming crazed aunty before I was mooshed with a big set of boobs in my face and engulfed in a backbreaking bear hug. I needn’t have worried about passive KFC fumes, my eyes literally watered from the overpowering scent of Aunty Karen’s expensive perfume, splashed liberally in the abyss of her cleavage, no doubt. Her gold bracelets jangled as she rocked me from side to side.
‘Oh, look how you’ve grown,’ she cried, pulling back only to cup my face and mush my cheeks in between her meticulously manicured hands. ‘Oh, Jen, she could be a model,’ she said, turning to Mum, who managed a pained smile.
Aunty Karen’s eyes fell to the bucket of chicken Mum was holding. ‘Oh, you brought KFC, how hysterical,’ she said, laughing.
I could tell Dad was trying to avoid the theatrics by busying himself with the luggage.
‘Oh, Rick, don’t trouble yourself with that. Peter! Peter, come out here and help Rick,’ Aunty Karen called out.
There were two things I remembered in particular about my Uncle Peter: one, he was very tall; two, he was not a conversationalist. He was kind of like Mr Darcy, without an endearing happily ever after.
My dad, who was equally tortured by Mum’s family, at least had the tact to disguise his sighs and inner burning contempt. Uncle Peter Burnsteen did not. He emerged from his lavish abode with a deep sigh and a weary expression. ‘Hello, Jen.’ He managed a head nod to my mum. ‘Rick.’ Handshake.
I wasn’t exactly a kid anymore, so a hair ruffle would have just been plain awkward, but I would have given anything for that head rub instead of the mis-timed half hug he gave me, only for the button of his sleeve to snag in my hair as he pulled away.
‘Ouch!’
‘Oh, um, it’s, um, stuck, bloody hell, hang on a sec.’ He unravelled my hair and sidestepped away to help Dad with the bags.
Nope. Nothing awkward about that.
Aunty Karen linked her arm through Mum’s. ‘I’m so happy you’re here,’ she beamed.
As if reading my mind, Mum looked around. ‘Where’s Amanda?’
Aunty Karen’s smile dimmed. ‘Oh.’ She turned around, looking up at the top window. I followed her gaze in time to notice there was a slightly parted curtain, which quickly fell back into place as we looked up.
‘She’s on the computer. Peter, did you tell Amanda to come down?’
Uncle Peter merely scoffed in reply as he took a suitcase and walked back into the house.
Aunty Karen laughed as a way to disguise her husband’s lack of social graces. ‘Come on, let’s get you inside.’
Aunty Karen never drew breath as we walked up the curving terracotta-tiled path, past the ball trees, the immaculately kept ankle-high box hedge and manicured lawn. She sported black heels that click-clacked along the walkway and a figure-hugging charcoal dress with a black belt fastened under her ample bosom; her blonde, curly hair was pulled up into a French twist with enough hair lacquer to put a hole in the ozone layer. Her lipstick was bright, bold like her smoky eyeliner and bronzer. Okay, so maybe describing her makes her sound a bit like a circus clown, but Aunty Karen was very glam and I think my mum felt it, too, because she handed me the chicken bucket to carry. I walked behind her as we followed Aunty Karen to the house.
Mum pulled at her cardigan, adjusted it just like she had waiting outside the principal’s office. I felt sad knowing that she was feeling uncomfortable being led into her sister’s home for the first time, wearing a denim skirt and Diana Ferrari sandals.
I looked back at Dad, who was carrying the last of my bags. He shook his head in dismay and I had to look away, fearing I would burst into a fit of giggles and earn not one but two filthy looks from the women in front.
We stepped into an enormous entrance hall, with glossed white tiles that flowed through the entire living space. The first thing that hit me was the huge staircase with its wood and wrought iron banister. The second thing that snapped us to attention was the shrill screaming.
‘Amanda Nicole Burnsteen, get your toosh down here this instant,’ Aunty Karen yelled to the great above.
There was a faint ringing in my ears – my aunty’s voice bounced off the walls of the large space – and I swear I saw the floral arrangement vibrate. Yeah, there was a floral arrangement.
Uncle Peter sat with his arms casually resting on the back of the couch, the king of the castle, as he watched cricket on their humungous flat-screen. He didn’t so much as acknowledge us as he hissed and jeered at the TV, sipping his Crown Lager. It was the most animated I think I had ever seen him.
Mum motioned with a not-too-subtle nod for Dad to go over and do the man thing and bond over sports. Poor Dad. I could see he would have much preferred to hang with us girls, until Aunty Karen clapped her hands together wi
th joy.
‘I’ll give you a tour of the house.’
‘Um, yeah, I think I’ll just check the score.’ Dad rubbed the back of his head, stepping away from the luggage he’d left by the door, and headed for the black leather couch to bond with Uncle Peter.
•
I sipped on my Coke, sitting at the large breakfast bar in the kitchen, finding it hard to imagine that this was going to be my new home, that I, Lexie (no middle name) Atkinson, was going to be chillin’ in a two-storey mansion with its own pool, and sea views from the top floor. Okay, so it was from their master bedroom; still, the views were there and the beach was near, and that was good enough for me. One of the rooms we hadn’t ventured into on our tour was Uncle Peter’s study, and we also skipped the one place I had wanted to go to most of all – to see Amanda. But as Aunty Karen gave my mum the lowdown on the wallpaper they had imported from abroad for the powder room, and the price of the Axminster carpet in the master bedroom (Aunty Karen loved to name-drop price tags), we had simply walked past the one closed door upstairs, the one I lingered near in the hope that maybe Amanda might emerge.
And almost as if my wishful thinking had willed it, Aunty Karen’s voice broke off as we heard the distant thud of footsteps coming down the staircase.
‘Finally,’ she muttered, moving from behind the breakfast bar and out into the lounge. ‘Amanda!’ she called out.
I tried to lean back on my stool, craning my neck to see a figure appear at the bottom of the steps, but Aunty Karen’s body blocked the way.
‘Amanda, come say hello.’ But aside from the footsteps and then the loud slamming of a door, there was going to be no welcome party.
Aunty Karen breathed in deeply, readying herself before she spun around with a brilliant smile.
‘Is she all right?’ Mum asked, her uncertain gaze looking towards the direction of the slam.
‘Oh, yes, she’s just tired.’ Aunty Karen waved her words away before clicking her heels along the tiles and, without skipping a beat, picked up her conversation, explaining to Mum about the marbled bench tops.
