At breakfast Dad was a happy man. “Sky, my girl,” he said, crunching his toast in triumph. “Always remember, if you can get a man talking about the thing he loves, you can make him forget the thing he came for.”
Dad always told the truth. And he always had a way to say it that made it seem less scary than it was. When I asked him what he thought Paul Bean wanted, he said, “Oh. Just to see how you kids are doing. People can get funny when the mother is out of the picture.”
Mum left in the winter, when everything was dull and gray. Gully and I had our breakfast porridge and trotted off to school with our cheese-and-pickle sandwiches in recycled brown paper bags, and the day was the day was the day. When we came home, she was gone. She’d left notes for each of us, pinned them to the mantel like Santa stockings. Mine said this:
Become the change you want to see in the world.
Skylark,
I don’t remember if it was Gandhi who said that or Uma Thurman. I used to think words become yours, ideas become yours, as soon as you use them. Lately I’m thinking about: how it works that Gully’s still wetting the bed; how you’ve turned out to be this dad-happy whirl of a girl and you don’t need me; how your father is. I don’t like his beard, do you? And I never liked Nick Cave. I need you to know that this isn’t good-bye, but I want to live the kind of life where my thoughts and ideas come first so that I know they are truly mine. I am reconciled to the fact that you will hate me. I hope not forever. Hug Gully every day for me. I know he can’t stand it, but do it anyway. There’s a reason I named you two after birds, you know. Tell your father to buck up and stop crying. He was always a better mother than I was.
Love,
Galaxy
Mum’s letter had infinite creases from being folded and refolded and scrunched and pitched and saved. I couldn’t bring myself to throw it away. Mum was glamorous and heartless, but the weird thing was, she was right. We coped. We were okay. Better than okay, we were fine. Dad stopped crying. Gully let me hug him. For a while there I couldn’t stop. He drew a portrait of us that Dad ended up framing: three round heads with smiles that went outside the lines.
RITUAL DAYS
MY BEDROOM WINDOW LOOKED straight into the Conscious Body Yoga Studio, where the lights were always on and the blinds were always up. At night it was like a version of heaven with gleaming floorboards and birds of paradise and the mirror reflecting infinite space, but from six in the morning it was butt row. When I woke up on Sunday morning, the nine-o’clock class was doing the downward dog. I kicked off my covers and copied the moves until my wrists buckled, and then I got dressed.
Sundays were ritual days. Dad opened late so we could have a family breakfast. We’d pick up coffee and toasties and take them down to the gardens near the market. Every week was the same. At a certain point under a certain palm, Dad would fix on the white tents and sigh, “St. Kilda really used to be someplace.”
The market started at the laughing mug of Mr. Moon, the clown-face entrance to Luna Park, and wound upward past art deco flats and the posh hotel and the old Esplanade Hotel, site of untold puke-ups and hook-ups. The tourists came in droves and Birkenstock sandals. They had no sense of personal space; it was as if they were designed to bump breakfast out of you or trip your rhythm by tramping on the backs of your flip-flops. They dawdled and dithered over whether to drop coin for a hand-painted boomerang or a sheet-metal mermaid or a five-minute massage or their name on a grain of rice.
We found our bench opposite the fountain and sat and imbibed. Seagulls squawked and the sun scattered stars on the asphalt. Behind us the Scenic Railway rattled its first go-round, the volley of screams rocketing down. Gully checked his watch. He held his fist as if it was a walkie-talkie and crackled static into it. “Chh.” Then he unhooked his notebook, pushed his snout up to his forehead, and began the meeting:
“Date: November 30. Time: 0947. Location: O’Donnell Gardens. House Meeting actioned.”
Dad and I wore matching flat smiles. The house meetings were Dad’s idea, a way of keeping us in check, but Gully had taken over. Now they were less about us and more about crime-fighting. Gully’s focus was unswerving.
“Item: Does anyone have any questions about my memo?”
“Nope,” Dad said. I shook my head. I had the opera glasses on a string around my neck. I was itching to use them. Past the fountain Ray would be setting up his blanket of books. Some days Nancy sat with him. I kept my eyes open.
“Item: CCTV. I have researched some models, and this is the one we should buy.” Gully flung a piece of paper at Dad, who caught it and frowned.
“Drago says he might have something.”
Gully shook his head. “That means inferior product.”
Drago was a fence. He “acquired” stolen goods and moved them on.
Dad mimicked Gully. “Item: We have a new staff member.”
Gully’s eyes popped and then narrowed.
“Name, rank, serial number,” he demanded breathlessly.
“His name’s Luke. It’s just for Christmas. Don’t get excited.”
But Gully was beside himself. He knee-walked over to Dad and bobbed around him. “Where’s he from? What are his credentials? When’s he starting?”
Dad lifted his hand, spread his fingers, and made a cage over Gully’s face.
“South Australia. None. Soon.” He pushed lightly. Gully sat back down.
“How soon?” I asked.
Dad chewed on his toastie and stared up at the sky as if he was trying to memorize the precise location of clouds. “Next week.”
In front of the fountain the Fugg navigated his shopping trolley with the beer-can train. He positioned the green milk-crate podium and started coughing and gurgling, which was a prelude to poetry. Gully fixed his snout back over his nose. “I’m going to give Ernst a memo.” He scrambled to his feet and raced over to the Fugg.
Dad gazed after him. “I guess House Meeting’s over.”
I didn’t reply. A bud of annoyance was starting to bloom. I had hoped Dad had forgotten about the new recruit, recognized it as a bad idea. I said, “What makes you think this guy’s going to be any different from the last?”
“Just a feeling,” Dad said. “You’ll like him, Sky.”
“I don’t want to like him.” I stood up and made my way to the small gathering at the foot of the Fugg, who was wobbling on his crate and reciting a poem about the moons of Jupiter.
The market was starting to swell. I scanned the crowd through the glasses: the fat girls in skinny jeans, the caftan women and knee-socks men, the backpackers with their morning beers—you could always pick the Poms showing skin at the merest hint of sunshine. I checked Ray’s again and my heart skipped. Nancy was there. She was wearing a burnt-orange pinafore with gladiator sandals and sunglasses that would have put Jackie O. to shame. I ambled over, trying to look casual, feeling anything but.
“Hey, girlfriend. We were just talking about you.”
“No,” Ray corrected her. “We were talking about Mia Casey.”
“Who’s Mia Casey?” I asked.
Nancy winked. “The girl on the poster. Ray knew her.”
I waited for Ray to elaborate, but he sighed and bent over to pick up a book; his jeans dropped, revealing ample crack. I whispered to Nancy, “The moons of Jupiter.”
She giggled. “Let’s walk.”
LIFE LESSONS
WE WOUND UP ON a patch of green on the Lower Esplanade. Across the road sat the Paradise, all peeling walls and potbellied gargoyles and promises forsaken. A man was camped on a fold-up chair out in the front. He had a blanket over his lap, and a hand-painted sign: SAVE THE PARADISE FROM THE GREASY PALMS OF MONSTERS. I figured he was Eli Wallace from Gully’s memo. I went to point him out to Nancy, but she had already started giving me the specs about the mystery girl.
“Ray said she went to a party Christmas Eve. Next day some guy walking his dog found her floating in the canal. She was only seventeen. It was in the papers.
You don’t remember?”
I didn’t want to tell her about Dad and rehab, so I just shook my head.
“Ray said she was a party girl. That’s Ray-speak for hooker.”
Nancy was an authority on prostitutes. She said they charged thirty for a hummer and eighty for a throw, and most of it went up their arms. They were stupid, she said. They should have been playing the stock market. I knew their streets: Vale and Gray and Greeves, the cul-de-sacs around the gardens. The girls I noticed were never as flashy as on TV movies. Some were decrepit, but some looked younger than me. They could have been waiting for a lift home from working a shift at Macca’s. From the tram I’d see my bored expression reflected in their faces, and wonder what set of circumstances meant I was off to school while they were off to do what they were going to do.
Nancy lit a cigarette that turned out to be a joint. The acrid smoke filled the air and made me nervous. I took a drag for show, but my cough gave me away.
“Oops,” Nancy said. “I’m corrupting you again.”
“I don’t mind.”
And I didn’t mind the burning in my throat, or the dizzy hit that followed. I stretched my legs out and we lay down. The sky was vast and blue. The fresh-mowed grass felt yeasty under my thighs. I was thinking about Mia Casey, and then I started thinking about Ray and his kimono. Naked Ray, skin folds and rashes. I started to laugh. I didn’t stop for ages. Nancy joined her hands and flexed her fingers. She rolled her neck like a boxer. “Want to go out Friday night?” She made it sound like a challenge. “I mean out out. You can stay at my place. Ray won’t mind.”
“Dad would never let me stay over.”
“What’s his problem? Ray’s okay.” Her eyes slid sideways, meaning he definitely wasn’t.
“We’ll tell him we’re going to the movies.”
“I’m a bad liar.”
“I’ll lie for you. It’s in the details.” She was silent for a moment. Then: “Your turn.”
The familiar prickle of anxiety soon passed. For once I had news. “Remember that guy you hit with the potato?”
“The pretty one?”
I nodded. “Dad’s hired him. Why, I do not know.”
Nancy scoffed, “Bill the Patriarch. He wants a son to pass his knowledge down to. Gully’s not up to the job. You better keep your eyes open.”
“He always does this and it’s always a mistake.” I told her about the other surrogates: the one who had elaborate phone fights with his mother; the one who smelled like Subway; the one who couldn’t stop staring at Carly Simon’s nipples on the cover of No Secrets.
“At least this guy’s cute,” Nancy offered. She turned on her side. She was sitting so close to me I could see her pores. “You should jump him. It’ll give you the upper hand. And it will piss your dad off.”
I laughed.
“You like that idea?” Nancy squeezed my cheek like an Italian mama. “Monkeyface, what are you gonna do when I’m gone? Who’s going to give you life lessons?”
“I don’t know.” She was looking at me intently, and my face felt hot. I had a shock of yearning, wishing that I was Nancy. The feeling was sharp and it carried a shadow. I was always on the edge of something that was never going to happen.
“Listen,” Nancy went on. “You can get anything you want from a guy. Most guys think about sex ninety-nine percent of the time. It’s like the way the sea is—wave after wave. You don’t have to do anything to make a guy think about sex. He’s already thinking it. The patriarchy, kid. The only thing we’ve got over them is the choocha.” She pointed south with both hands and grinned like a maniac.
“I don’t want anything from Luke,” I said.
“Dollbaby,” Nancy drawled. “You don’t know what you want.”
We meandered back to Dad and Gully. I felt stoned. I couldn’t muster up enough saliva to swallow my smile. I tried to keep a poker face while Nancy told Dad all about the Joan Crawford movie at the Astor on Friday night and how she had to, had to, had to take me. “Really, it’s educational.”
Dad had that look. He liked Nancy, but he didn’t trust her.
I held my breath.
“We’ll see,” he said.
ASK ME ANYTHING
SUMMER ALWAYS KING-HIT me. One minute I’d be fully clothed and comfy; the next I’d have to think about tank tops and body fuzz. I dreamed of cold places: England, Tasmania, Alaska. But I knew they were only dreams. I was not like Nancy. I was a Martin, a resident bird. I barely even left the suburb. If I’d made friends at school, the prospect of Nancy mightn’t have been so alluring. But I didn’t fit in at school; I couldn’t bring potential friends home. My dad was a boozer, my brother was a freak. It was safer to keep to myself.
I sweated through the first week of December. School was hot and noisy and endless. I drifted from class to class like a sea cow. All I wanted to do was lie under a tree or float away in a rubber dinghy. All week I kept seeing posters of Mia Casey. She was on the tram stop, outside the milk bar, on telephone poles. Just her face and nothing else. I had a second dream about her: In the dream she was lying below the surface of the water. Her dark eyes were open. She smiled at me, and a fish swam out of her mouth.
Friday lunchtime I surrendered to the pull of the library, staking my usual computer. I checked my e-mails and Goldmine and ended up on Mum’s website.
Galaxy Strobe is dead!
I gasped. Then recovered. My mother was not dead—the headline was just a teaser for her latest show. A GIF showed a close-up of her face. She had two black eyes. A line of blood crawled down from her right nostril and then crawled back up again.
Down and up, down and up.
A black box popped up on the screen. Ask Me Anything!
I typed, Do you ever miss your children? And hit return. I imagined Mum reading my message. Her forehead would crumple; her heart would sink like a bag of boulders in a lake. It would dawn on her that her famous life was a crock. Her audience was nothing compared to her flesh and blood. She’d leave Yanni, her Greek collaborator, just as she’d left us. A note on a mantel, an acre of stuff. He would cry hot, salty tears over her abandoned costumes. . . .
I snapped back to reality. It was more likely Mum wouldn’t even get to read my message. Yanni was also Mum’s moderator, protecting her from trolls and spammers. With two clicks on the keyboard he would delete me. Gone.
Quinn Bishop had the computer next to me. She was the year-ten pariah, a surly, goth bitch who’d sooner sit on you than look at you. She was in the gifted stream and was famous for throwing a chair through the science lab window. Quinn was big, both ways, and there was something bulldog-ish in her countenance. From the corner of my eye I checked her out: her hair (blue streaks on black); her Bad Brains T-shirt over her school dress; her spiked metal bracelet that looked like a pigeon deterrent. She swiveled to face me, glaring murderously, but her face changed when she saw what was on my screen.
Quinn drew herself up. “Galaxy Strobe is awesome.”
“She’s not awesome. She’s a bitch.” The words flew from my mouth. “She’s my mother.”
Quinn stared from the screen to me. “I can see how she might be.”
“What—my mother or a bitch?”
Her lips curled into a smile. “Both.”
Feeling brave, I scooted my chair next to Quinn’s and checked out what was on her screen. She kept her finger on the cursor, scrolling a stream of photos of people partying or fighting—it was hard to tell. There were band photos, dizzy lights, mad faces, a naked girl in a horse’s head, a singer bent backward like Iggy Pop. I could feel Quinn watching me, testing to see if I was shockable. I could sense her smiling. I wanted to turn back. Then she shifted, blocking my view, and put her earplugs back in. A lost feeling came over me. Everything went quiet, just the echo of Quinn’s music and the air conditioner groaning like some mythical beast. I minimized my mother, and another face floated up in my mind: dark eyes, dark hair, three black tears . . . My fingers hovered and then, a
s if they had a mind of their own, they typed “Mia Casey” into the search engine.
There was an Associated Press article and a photo. The photo was in color, and color made all the difference. Mia looked real. She was pretty—not crazy-pretty like Nancy, but she looked warm, like you could tell her anything and she wouldn’t laugh. I stared at her image for a long time, and then I printed the page and read it over and over as if that could change the facts:
Teen Drowned After Drinking
St. Kilda, Victoria (AP)
An Adelaide teenager who drowned in the St. Kilda canal had a blood alcohol level twice the legal limit for driving when she died. St. Kilda Police say there’s no evidence of foul play in the death of 17-year-old Mia Casey of Burnside, SA. On the night in question Casey was seen at the Paradise Theater and walking along the Lower Esplanade. Witnesses recalled her uncommon outfit: bare feet, a silver dress, and a crown of flowers. It is believed she became disoriented by alcohol and fell into the canal. Mia Casey had been staying at no fixed address in the St. Kilda area since November. She is survived by her parents and brother, Lucas.
It hit me slowly and spread like fire. I sat staring at the page in a dunce’s trance. Lucas Casey. Luke. Dad’s new employee was Mia Casey’s brother.
The bell rang. Quinn leaned over me; she checked out what I was reading and made a snorting sound.
“She got gypped,” Quinn said.
I looked at her. “What do you mean?”
But it was too late. She’d put her buds back in and had signed off on our sorry excuse for a conversation. Quinn picked up her bag and clomped out of the library in her storm-trooper boots. I followed her out to the bright sunlight. Bodies zombied down the corridors to the next class, but suddenly I couldn’t bear the thought of being indoors. I lay on the scratchy turf with the sunlight bathing my skin. Mia and Luke’s faces floated before me, shimmering like a heat haze. I folded the article into a tiny square and tucked it into my sock, where it chafed for the rest of the day.
Girl Defective Page 3
