by Andrew Daddo
We all nodded, but no one answered.
‘Like babies, I know. It’s so peaceful up here, isn’t it? And do we look as if we’ve been in the sun – or was that the yoga? Hard work, right?’ For the first time I had a proper look at Mum and Dad and Kylie. They were all red from the effort. ‘We love this,’ he said and started clipping the grass from the bowl. Then he dropped it into the blender. ‘It gets us going. Happening, you know? And makes us so, so regular.’
‘What is that?’ said Dad.
‘Wheatgrass,’ said Zac. His teeth glowed. ‘This is nature’s elixir–’
‘Nature’s what?’ said Kylie.
‘Elixir. It’s like magic. It’s to cleanse our body, like a luscious natural scrub, but from the inside. It’s the first step in saying ta-ta to handlebars and muffin tops. Saddlebags and flippy flops. Flabby guts and droopy bits. Rolling necks and saggy – oops! Not a rhyme for the kids, yah?’
‘I’m not drinking grass,’ I said. ‘Can’t I have what they’re having?’ I pointed at the table next to us. They had orange juice. At least, that was what it looked like. And white scrambled eggs on toast. And little squares of ham in brown sauce.
‘I’m sorry.’ He tilted his head to one side. ‘We’ve got a bit of a flush to do, yet. We can’t have the scrambled egg-whites with mushroom and eggplant puree until we finish our liver flush. We all need a bit of a pull-through once in a while, don’t we?’ He mowed the rest of the grass and sprinkled it into the blender. ‘We’re going to add a little honey to make it sweeter, but at lunch time it’s just the juice.’ He made it sound like he was doing us the biggest favour in the world.
The blender was surprisingly quiet. The whole place smelt like a lawn.
Zac poured four glasses, bowed slightly, winked and left.
‘Oh, cool. I’ve always wondered what this would taste like,’ said Mum. ‘Isn’t this great? We’re going to be so healthy.’ We watched as she got into it, but by the end of the glass (which wasn’t very big) her face was all screwed up. I think she was straining it through her teeth.
She let out this big, exaggerated man-on-a-hot-day-drinking-beer-after-mowing-the-real-lawn ‘Aaaaaaaaaaaaah!’ when it was done. ‘That really hit the spot!’
‘As if.’ Dad pushed his juice to the middle of the table. ‘I’d rather a Bloody Mary,’ he said. ‘This stuff’s down there with prune juice.’
‘No. It’s great.’ Mum’s eyes were squinty and her voice was really high. Then she hit us with a big green smile.
‘Pants on fire,’ said Dad, as he tipped the juice back into the planter.
‘Just try it, kids,’ Mum said. But I couldn’t get it past my lips. I did try. ‘Do you want to be muffin tops forever?’
Kylie managed to get most of hers down, but when Dad poked his knife into the lawn and said, ‘Weevils’, she started to gag.
Mum and Kylie had porridge and fruit. I had two bananas. Dad said he’d get something later. ‘I could murder a pie,’ he said. ‘In faaaaaaact, I might duck down the street after breakfast and grab one. Or a bacon and egg roll with sauce. And salt. And a strong latte with fat milk – not that watery stuff you’ve got on your porridge. It doesn’t even look like milk.’ Dad flicked his tongue in and out of his mouth and pushed himself up from the table. ‘Any takers?’
I wanted to join him, but Mum looked crushed. She hated it when Dad carried on like Homer Simpson. She gave Kylie and me the look and a short, sharp headshake. We weren’t going anywhere.
‘Last chance?’ Dad squatted down between the two of us. ‘Lashings of bacon. Mmmmmm.’ In my ear. ‘Hot chocolate. Pancakes with ice-cream and maple syrup. Mmmmmm!’ In Kylie’s. ‘Sugaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar!’ At Mum. She waved him away as if he was a fly.
He shrugged and grinned. ‘I’ll bring something back for you.’
I tried some porridge. It wasn’t nearly as bad as I’d remembered, or maybe I was just super-hungry.
Zac brought a pot of green tea to the table and cleared away all the food. ‘We can stay for as long as we like for some family time, because that’s important to our wellness. Breakfast is over. Our next meal is lunch. Sorry if we get a little hungry, but we’ve begun cleansing now and it’s very exciting. No snacks, but lots of herbal tea. Have a great morning. There’s free colonic irrigation at eleven if anyone’s interested.’
The room cleared quickly. Busy, busy.
Suddenly the door smacked open. Dad was back and he looked shifty, as if he had a secret that no one would ever know. He came straight to the table and sat down. With steepled fingers in front of his mouth he started grumbling. He probably swore, but I couldn’t catch the words.
‘That was quick,’ chirped Mum.
‘Didn’t go, did I!’
‘I knew you’d think better of it, Len. It’s not as if it’s that big a sacrifice. Just a few days, really. It’s a cleanse, right? We were only saying how good we felt, weren’t we, kids?’
‘You were,’ I said.
‘But I’m feeling good, too. It’s not just Mum.’ Kylie did have a bit of glow on, but that might have been a hangover from the yoga.
‘You look great, babe.’ Mum gave her a back rub that worked its way right down. ‘Gone, already. Almost. You’re tight as.’
Dad glared at Mum. With one long look he’d mixed, baked and iced her. ‘They won’t give me the keys.’
‘I’ve got them,’ she said. She dug in her bag and pulled out the room keys.
‘Not the room keys, you blonde. The car keys. The big fat flower won’t hand them over. “Not for at least two days,” she said to me with that toothless grin on her face. Then she said to me as if I was an eleven-year-old – no offence, pal – “This happens a lot. It’s normal. First day freak out, and all that. Everyone wants a cappuccino and an egg and bacon roll. It passes. You’ll live to thank me later.” That’s what she said. So I said to her, “Well, stuff you, then. I don’t need the car. I’ll walk!” And she said to me, “You’ll find it very difficult to leave, Mr Limpid.” “Difficult to leave?” I said. “Difficult to leave, as if we’re prisoners or something?” That’s what I said to her.’
Mum was trying to get Dad to keep his voice down, but he was wound up like a top and having none of it.
‘Then she gave me this wobbly laugh that made all her bits dance. Even her ears wobbled. “Of course you’re not a prisoner, Mr Limpid. That would be against the laws of Wellness, and other places.” She giggled. “It’s just that we know what’s, well, good for you – better than you do.” That’s what she said. So I said to her, “Give me my keys. Please!” And she said, “It’s just for a couple of days; until you are totally cleansed. It is for you. Not us. We don’t love having people mope around the place. But we do like the letters and smiles and tips from people when they leave happy, refreshed and a bit more the way they’d like to look. Like they used to look, maybe, a few years ago. Before they fed the spread? Then they thank us for helping them. It’s not quite an intervention, but it’s not far off it.” I could have slimed her.’
Mum looked a bit surprised. I was, too. Huuuuuuurp! ‘We can’t leave?’ she said.
‘Apparently not.’
14
I let my breath go before the lady up the front of the class in the lycra suit – the g-stringed lycra suit – said I should. So that when everyone was blowing air out, I was sucking it in.
I couldn’t get it right. But I found it hard to take the process seriously, too.
Mum and Kylie were right into it. They were in the front row, stretching this way, then that. When the teacher told us to lie down, close our eyes and imagine our happy place, they did as they were told and actually closed their eyes.
I tried to think of somewhere, but the teacher wouldn’t stop talking, so I couldn’t concentrate. She had a terrible lisp, and she’d say things like, ‘Ith it thunny in your happy plathe? Can you thee the birdth in the treeth ath they thing their thongth of thummer? Are they thparrowth?’ She got up and started
walking around the room, so I closed my eyes and pretended to find my happy place. I couldn’t do it. I tried – at least, I pretended to try, but it didn’t exitht. Because, ‘ath the thoundth thwing through the air, imagine the thea. A thea tho thtill, so thtunning –’ just wasn’t doing it for me.
And then I heard a clicking noise as well. ‘In the thea,’ click, ‘you might notithe,’ click, ‘thome fish. Or,’ click, ‘ith that a theal?’ click. I couldn’t stand it. I had to know what that clicking was, but I didn’t want to get busted for being away from my happy place. I opened one eye carefully to see what she was doing.
She was leaning against the wall and cutting her fingernails with one of those little clippers. ‘Are there waveth on the thea?’ Click. ‘Ith it foaming now, thwishing and thwashing?’ Bits of nail fell to the carpet.
This was not my happy place.
Dad didn’t want to come to the relaxation class. That was when Mum cranked up at him.
She told him to get over himself and not do anything to embarrass her. Like escaping – or worse, getting caught bringing food back into the wellness centre. Mum had a head of steam up.
Dad promised he wouldn’t do anything stupid. He was just too fired up to relax, and too hungry. He said he was going to sniff about and find some food. ‘Real food.’ So that’s what I supposed he did while we were ‘thwithing about in the thea ath it thlopped up the beach.’
So I was surprised to see him turn up to the relaxation class at all. He was wearing shorts, a t-shirt and a smile that went from here to there. It was huge. The teacher fumbled with her clippers as Dad sneaked into the room.
‘G’day, Ash,’ he whispered as he laid his towel out next to mine.
I hoped he could lip-read. ‘Hi, Dad.’
After the class everyone seemed kind of dopy, as if they’d been asleep. Mum was rapt to see Dad. ‘I knew you’d join us,’ she said, giving him a squeeze.
‘I didn’t even hear you come in,’ said Kylie. ‘I was either asleep, or in my happy place where everything was soft and smooth. It was great.’
‘Or thoft and thmooth,’ I said.
‘Mine was a bit like that, too.’ Mum frowned slightly. ‘Didn’t work, Ash?’
‘Me and my happy place didn’t seem to click,’ I said.
‘I found mine,’ said Dad.
‘Oh, honey.’ Mum was at Dad now with a full squeeze. ‘I knew you wouldn’t disappoint me. It’s important we all have this experience together, and it’s not that bad, is it? Don’t you feel better?’
‘I do,’ said Dad. ‘Really.’
We were out in the yard now. The sun seemed brighter than it actually was and I was starving.
‘You see,’ laughed Mum. ‘It didn’t take long, did it?’ Dad let himself be cuddled. He threw an arm over Kylie, and Mum looped me in with her free arm. We walked like that almost all the way to lunch.
There was a mung bean salad without dressing, a fat-free cottage cheese salad – also without dressing – and a tofu and bean soup without salt. There was no toast to dip into it; only rice crisps. One rice crisp each. I picked my way through the salads and had all of my soup. It wasn’t that bad. That doesn’t mean it was good, though. But I was starving.
Dad ate almost nothing: a couple of gobs of cheese and some lettuce. He said he wasn’t hungry. He pressed his palms together and bowed his head. ‘My body is my temple. We are one and we are many, and I wish I could remember the rest of this song–’ he sang. We all laughed and none of us could remember the lyrics either.
Kylie and I split Dad’s soup. His wasn’t any better than mine, but I don’t think either of us cared. It was something to do.
After lunch there was a choice between quiet time or a lesson on the digestive system and how to get it moving. That was with Lotus, and Mum went to it. Kylie, Dad and I spent the afternoon just hanging. It was fun to do nothing and not be told how to do it. Dad started a game called ‘Grandma’s green undies’.
We had to answer every question with ‘Grandma’s green undies’, but we weren’t allowed to laugh.
I was hopeless at it.
‘What are you wearing today?’ Dad said.
And I laughed before I said, ‘Grandma’s green undies.’
‘What is your favourite school uniform?’
‘Grandma’s green undies.’
‘If you could eat anything in the world, what would it be?’
‘Grandma’s green undies.’
‘What do you brush your teeth with?’
Kylie didn’t even try to answer that one.
Then we went for a walk.
The wellness centre was pretty big. There was grass everywhere and there were lots of trees. It was like a big old rambling house: the kind you see on old TV shows that are set in the country, where girls wear singlets under flannel shirts and guys don’t wear much at all. Most of the action happened in the main building, which had a massive verandah round the outside with a few swinging seats. And there was another building that seemed to be used mainly for classes like yoga and relaxation. It took a bit of a walk to get there, but it was through a nice garden. And then, even further away from the main house along a path of concrete slabs, masked by a bunch of trees and a hedge was a smaller house.
That’s where we were heading now.
A sign hung off the plastic chain barrier: ‘STAFF ONLY’. Dad stepped straight over the top of it.
‘Daaaaaaaaaad,’ said Kylie. ‘What are you doing?’
‘You kids hungry?’ he said.
‘Daaaaaaaaaad!’ It was my turn. ‘You can’t go past there. It says, “STAFF ONLY”.’
‘And the staff aren’t here, are they? They’re out making everyone well.’
‘But, Dad–’
‘But what?’ He left us standing at the sign. I wanted to follow, but Kylie folded her arms across her chest and stuck her chin out. That was her stress face and it was ugly. Dad had his face pressed up against the window with his hands cupped round his eyes as if he was looking through binoculars. ‘Coast’s clear. Let’s go!’
We both shook our heads.
‘Fine. Starve to death,’ he said. ‘Just don’t tell your mother.’
This was a bad idea.
15
I watched Kylie skulk back to the main house. She kept looking at me over her shoulder and I felt guilty about not going with her.
I knew I should follow because whatever Dad was doing was wrong: that was as obvious as his handlebars. But I wanted to know what he could see through the window. And he didn’t seem to be doing anything really bad. He didn’t break in. He knocked on the back door, waited, and after no one came, he let himself in. Through the reflections on the windowpane I could see him waving madly for me to join him. I shook my head. He’d lost it. Hunger had sent Dad psycho.
Kylie was back at the corner of the wellness centre, watching to see what I’d do.
Dad banged on the window and pressed a packet of bacon up against the glass. He flicked his tongue in and out of his mouth and pretended to eat the bacon raw. He’d gone feral. He held up a bread roll. It was white – the sugary kind Mum wouldn’t let us have at home. Then a carton of eggs. A carton of fat, full-cream milk, and then he waved a jar of instant coffee.
Dad had hit paydirt and he was about to start slobbering. He definitely licked the jar of coffee.
With a rolling finger, he beckoned me.
I looked behind at the main building where Kylie was waving for me to come back.
Light side. Dark side.
Mung Beans. Bacon.
Kylie. Dad.
Impossible choice, not.
Dad, of course! I stepped over the plastic chain and headed for the staff house. I didn’t have to get any closer to recognise the message wafting out the kitchen door. I couldn’t quite hear the sizzle and slap of the bacon frying, but the smell was enough. This was paradise. Now I was the one going feral. Dad would have melted some butter in the pan first. He would have swished it aroun
d until it coated the bottom, and waited till it was hot enough to smoke, but not burn. Then he would have laid the bacon in gently, as he always did. That smell was sooooo good. I don’t think I was dribbling, but I knew I would be if I didn’t get some bacon soon.
I glanced back at Kylie. She was leaning against one of the centre’s verandah posts and from the slump of her shoulders I wasn’t sure whether she was disappointed with me, or herself.
I crouched outside the kitchen door. ‘Come on, Dad! You don’t want to get caught,’ I whispered. But it was me I was worried about. Dad was whistling away as if he couldn’t have cared less. I knew that right now he’d be building a bacon and egg roll, with soft white bread, butter, crispy bacon. He’d have ferreted round in the drawers until he found an egg ring, because he reckons if he can control the size of the egg, he can control the whole roll. And he would have fried the egg gently till it was perfect: the frilly white, the yolk runny.
My stomach was screaming at me. I couldn’t leave. It wouldn’t let me.
But I couldn’t quite go through that kitchen door. ‘And cook an extra bit of bacon for Mum and Kyles,’ I hissed through the fly screen. ‘We’ll take it back to them.’
‘Get inside here, Ash,’ said Dad. ‘There’s more chance of us being sprung with you hanging around out there than in here with me. You look a bit creepy.’
‘No chance,’ I said. ‘Just hurry up, will you!’ I slid between the wall of the house and a big daisy bush, where I could be a lookout for Dad and still smell what he was up to.
I heard the clunk of the frying pan in the sink and the hiss of steam as water from the tap hit it. Mum would have been impressed. Dad was cleaning up. The job was done.
As I started to slide out of my hiding place I heard noises coming from somewhere near the wellness centre. I checked my watch; it was after the hour and class would be out. ‘Come on, Dad. Let’s go!’
