One Whole and Perfect Day

by Judith Clarke

  Across the aisle Dawnie and her mate were clucking at the noise.

  ‘Can’t you see the poor kid’s deaf and dumb?’ he shouted. ‘Can’t you understand?’

  The train had stopped; she was on the platform now, her dusty black skirt spotted by the rain. For some reason he thought of Mum’s old wedding dress, hanging safely in the hall cupboard up there in the hills. He thought of its colour, that buttery gold which reminded you of kindness, and the way, when you looked at it, the dress seemed to shed a light: it was as far from that girl’s dusty black as anything on earth could ever be.

  Stan scrambled to his feet and headed for the doors. He was too late. With a snap and a jerk they closed right in his face and the train began to move away. Anyway, what had he thought he was going to do? Take her home to May? Or to Marigold? He stumbled back down the rocking corridor and sat down again.

  Where would a girl like that live? In some kind of hostel? In a squat? For a little while, until they’d found out about the boarding house, May and Marigold had worried that Lonnie might be living in a squat; and the word always made Stan think of stink and toilets filled in with cement, of scurrying scabby rats and broken glass scattered on the floor. Lonnie was all right. Lonnie lived at 5 Firth Street, Toongabbie, and he had a family. If things went wrong he knew they were there; he knew, whatever the quarrels, that they’d help him out. Sure he knew. He should know, anyway. If he had any sense at all.

  It was that poor girl who probably lived in a squat. Or in a cardboard box down some dangerous back alley. He thought of the big black spots the rain had made on her dress, and an old phrase of his mum’s darted into his mind: ‘It shouldn’t be allowed!’ No, it shouldn’t, thought Stan. He closed his eyes but the image of sodden cardboard wouldn’t go away, and all the way to Penrith, across the river, up into the hills, the wheels beneath him rang and chuckled, sounding out his mum’s old protest: ‘It shouldn’t be allowed!’

  27

  SEVENTEEN PAIRS

  OF SCISSORS

  A week passed and the weather grew warmer; up in the hills the blossom fell from the apple trees, showering Stan’s new-mown lawn with small pink petals like confetti.

  Jessaline and Mrs Murphy made frangipani tart in Mrs Murphy’s kitchen: Bake a puff-paste crust in a square cake tin . . .

  Clara and Lonnie took the ferry out to Manly and walked along the beach to Queenscliff, then over the cliff to Harbord. It was brilliant.

  Clara’s mother resolved that if she hadn’t heard from Clara by next week, she would go quite uninvited to visit her daughter’s room.

  Wednesday came round and brought Lily’s second visit to the Drama Society and the school production.

  She almost didn’t go. That morning she’d encountered Daniel Steadman walking slowly across the upper playground towards the library; she’d glanced at him as they passed each other, and he’d actually shivered. Or had it been a shudder?

  A shudder, decided Lily. Because in the washroom at lunchtime, Tracy Gilman had said to her, ‘You smell really funny today. You know?’

  ‘Funny?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Tracy came closer, sniffing at the air round Lily. ‘It’s like – pooh! Yuk! – like the water vegetables get boiled in? You know?’

  Lily did know. It was her turn to make dinner tonight, and realising she’d be late home because of the rehearsal, she’d got up early and made a stew. She’d boiled vegetables . . .

  When the bell went at 3 pm she rushed to the showers and scrubbed herself all over. Then she smelled rankly of school soap, and her hair had frizzed out from the steam. She looked a fright, and so she almost didn’t go. Then she realised how the tiny cave of the prompter’s box would hide her from Daniel’s sight. And his sense of smell.

  Daniel hadn’t been there.

  ‘Daniel Steadman!’ Mr Corcoran had yelled out from the stage. ‘Daniel Steadman!’ And then, looking round at them all, ‘Does anyone know what’s happened to Daniel today?’ There weren’t many Year 11s in the school production, only Daniel and the skinny girl who played Ophelia, and a few minor characters, two soldiers and a gentleman. Ophelia told Mr Corcoran she didn’t share any of Daniel’s classes on a Wednesday, while the soldiers and the gentleman had been off at the football match against St Xavier’s all day.

  No one knew what had become of Daniel, except perhaps for Lily, who felt uneasily that he might have stayed away because of her. He might have noticed how she had this stupid crush on him: seen her walking past the senior common room, taken in the way her eyes always flickered towards him – and was keeping out of her way.

  Like Simon Leslie kept away from poor jogging Lizzie.

  He might even have asked someone about her. Someone like Tracy Gilman. ‘Lily?’ Tracy would have exclaimed incredulously, rolling her boiled blue eyes. ‘Lily Samson, do you mean? Lily Samson’s weird. Her whole family’s weird – what there is of it – you know her dad ran away? You don’t? Well, he ran away before she was even born. There used to be a loony sort of brother, but now he’s run away as well, and they live in this awful old dump down the street from us; it looks just like the Witch’s Cottage, honest! You should see the grass in their front yard, it’s up to their knees; my mum says she’s going to call the council if they don’t take care of it soon. Then there’s all these gross old people her mum keeps bringing home . . . funny old people.’ Lily could just see Tracy’s plump finger twirling at her forehead. ‘I reckon Lily Samson’s mum works in a loony bin.’

  ‘???’

  ‘You bet.’ Lily could almost hear Tracy chuckle fatly. Then she’d dig Daniel in the ribs; Tracy was a rib-digging kind of girl. ‘She does all this grotty housework, too,’ she’d go on.

  ‘????’

  ‘Yukky old cooking and cleaning and stuff. Haven’t you noticed how she smells of stale dishwater, and onions and boiled cabbage? If Lily Samson gets keen on you, do this!’ Here Tracy would hold her nose. ‘And then, start running!’

  No, of course they hadn’t been talking about her. Of course they hadn’t. Daniel wouldn’t ask Tracy Gilman or anyone else about her, because he wasn’t interested enough (except to shudder when he passed her in the quad). And that shudder had probably been about something else entirely – like a Maths test he’d forgotten, or an appointment at the dentist’s first thing tomorrow morning. As for Tracy, she was always talking to boys. ‘Chatting them up’ she called it, and sometimes, ‘Trying out my hand’. Mostly, the boys walked away.

  But what if Daniel –

  No, stop, Lily told herself sharply. Stop right there. Of course Daniel hadn’t stayed away from the Drama Society because of her! How stupid could she be to even think so! What a long way she’d come since that morning in the kitchen when she’d decided it might be a good idea to fall in love with someone! What a long way, and all of it downhill.

  Peter Pianka had taken Daniel’s part that afternoon. He’d made a rotten Prince of Denmark, curly-haired and chubby and cheerful, which wasn’t how you thought of Hamlet at all. Peter hadn’t known the lines, and Lily had to prompt till she was hoarse; he’d kept standing near her trapdoor and her eyes had fixed on his feet. He wore runners without socks, and his ankles were white and chubby, like a little kid’s.

  Because of all the prompting the rehearsal had ended late, and it was almost dark by the time Lily reached her front gate. A single glance at the lightless house told her Mum was late as well. She mounted the shaky steps of their porch, swung open the rusty screen door, twisted her key in the lock, walked inside, and then, with a sickening lurch, was jerked straight back again. The strap of her schoolbag had caught in the handle of the screen door, and struggling to free herself, Lily tore two fingernails. They looked so ragged and disgusting she almost sobbed aloud. Right! Slinging her bag down she headed for her room, grabbed her nail scissors from the tray on the dressing table and sat down on the bed. The moment she opened the tiny silver scissors they fell apart. She flung the two halves on the floor. Right! It didn�
�t matter; they had plenty of other scissors in the house.

  Seventeen pairs, in fact. The last time scissors had gone missing (back when Lonnie lived at home and never put anything in its proper place) Lily had made her mother sit down at the kitchen table and count up all the scissors that they should have had.

  Two pairs of nail scissors

  Mum’s good sewing scissors

  Mum’s ordinary sewing scissors

  Two pairs of kitchen scissors

  The economy pack of cheapos they’d bought

  last time scissors had disappeared

  A second economy pack

  It had added up to seventeen; eighteen if you counted the pinking shears. Seventeen pairs of scissors! So where were they, now that Lonnie wasn’t here and everything should be in its proper place? Nowhere, it seemed, neither in the drawers and cabinets and boxes where they should have been, nor the places where they shouldn’t, like underneath the sofa cushions or up on top of the fridge.

  Bathroom! Surely there’d be scissors there. Lily hurried down the hallway and flicked on the switch at the bathroom door: there was a brief blare of light, a small ‘pop’ and darkness followed. The bulb had gone. Halfway across the room she trod on something soft and sodden which drew from her a little scream of fright. Seely? No, of course it wasn’t! Shifting her foot, Lily closed her eyes and worked it out: wet towels, that was all.

  Only how could there be wet towels? Weren’t wet towels Lonnie’s speciality? Hadn’t she gone on at him about them, over and over again? And if he hadn’t been to blame for them, if it was Mum who had left them lying there, or even Lily herself, then why hadn’t he said? Why hadn’t he? Instead of leaving her feeling guiltily that she’d accused him wrongly? Abruptly, she remembered how he used to do her homework when she’d been in primary school. He never did his own, of course, but he’d done hers. Lily sat down on the damp towels and burst into noisy tears.

  Now the phone began to ring. She leapt to her feet and ran blindly through the door; she knew it wouldn’t be Daniel, of course it wouldn’t be, yet all the same she ran, her heart thumping hard and fast, a quivery expectation jumping in her veins. The ringing ceased as she was halfway down the hall. The answering machine switched on, and Lily stopped dead as she heard her Nan’s small voice: Marigold! Lily! Are you there? No? Oh how I hate these things, hate them! Was that the beep?

  ‘Yes!’ muttered Lily furiously, through clenched teeth. Why couldn’t Nan, and Mum too, ever learn how stuff worked? Mum wouldn’t turn her computer on or off at work unless her assistant, Leonie, was actually in the room.

  Can you pass on a message to Lonnie for me? Nan’s little voice went on. Can you tell him that silly old axe has gone? Your pop’s axe? And remind him about the party, again – tell him it will be all right to come. I’m sure we’re going to have a perfect, lovely day – the voice cut out.

  Lily stood there in the cold silent darkness of the hall. ‘One perfect, lovely day,’ she whispered. She didn’t know exactly when Nan’s party had become important to her, only that it had. She kept dreaming of Nan’s garden, of flowers and streamers and fairy lights twinkling in the trees. And whenever she passed a house with balloons fluttering at the gate, her heart gave a tiny, aching lurch. Why shouldn’t their family have one brilliant, perfect day? Wasn’t such a day something everyone had a right to, a day you could always remember, no matter what happened to you, ever after in your life? A whole perfect day?

  Because that was the problem with the Samson family celebrations: they were never whole. They might begin well – that day when Pop and Lonnie had quarrelled had begun hopefully, with fine summer weather and the pleasure of seeing Nan again, and the beautiful house and garden, and even (for a few moments anyway) Pop. But always, midway through the afternoon, there’d be raised voices, tears, and, worst of all thought Lily with a tiny shiver, that sudden small indrawn gasp from someone who’d discovered a secret it was better they’d never known.

  She walked down the hall and picked up the phone. She dialled the number of Lonnie’s boarding house and then listened to the ringing go on and on and on. No one was at home, obviously; Lonnie was out with Clara, and all the other boarders would be out with their girlfriends, and the landlady would be out with the person Lily’s nan would call her ‘gentleman friend’. Lily was the only one who could always be found at home.

  She slammed down the receiver, turned away, and as she did so, caught a sudden shocking glimpse of her face in the mirror on the wall. Oh – oh, God! Her cheeks were bright red, her eyes had gone small from crying, small as black buttons, gleaming crazily. Her face had always reminded her of some other person’s, someone she couldn’t quite put a name to, whose identity was like a word caught on the tip of her tongue. Now she knew who it was.

  Pop. She looked like Pop! Pop in a rage, red-faced, button-eyed – all she needed was the crewcut.

  No wonder Daniel Steadman wasn’t interested.

  ‘I can’t bear it!’ cried Lily, and as if in sympathy, her knee began to itch, she bent and scratched, forgetting all about her jagged nails. They snagged, she felt a ladder running in her tights, her best ones that she’d worn specially for the Drama Society, for Daniel Steadman, just in case he happened to notice her on her way to the prompter’s box.

  And he hadn’t been there! Lily sank down on the floor and began to sob again.

  Someone knocked on the front door.

  28

  DANIEL BURNING

  Daniel Steadman was burning.

  Burning, burning.

  He’d started burning in double Chem this morning. Feeling woozy too, so that he’d wondered for a moment if he’d inhaled something poisonous in the air of Mr Culloch’s lab. But nobody else had seemed affected. All the other kids looked perfectly normal, though oddly separate from Daniel, as if he was standing behind a wall of glass. ‘Are you all right?’ someone had asked, and Daniel couldn’t tell who it was because his eyes had gone all blurry, and anyway the voice sounded a very long way away.

  ‘Yeah, I’m fine,’ he’d answered, because he hated people fussing, and saying you felt funny always caused a fuss.

  ‘You all right?’ someone else had asked, louder, and a face came close to him, a woman’s face, the face of Ms Esterhazy, the school librarian.

  Daniel had stared round blearily. He was in the library, so it must be third period and he was frightened because he had no memory of getting here. ‘I’m fine,’ he’d said again, and Ms Esterhazy had slapped her cool hand against his forehead as if she was his mother, and said, ‘No, you’re not, you’re burning up,’ which was funny because although he’d been burning just a moment ago, now Daniel was shuddering all over with cold. ‘I’m sending you to Mrs Palmer,’ Ms Esterhazy had said.

  Mrs Palmer taught Home Economics in junior school, but she also had a certificate in First Aid and manned the school sickroom, small as a cupboard, underneath the stairs. Mrs Palmer didn’t ask if he was all right; she said, ‘What have we here?’ – the same thing she’d said to Daniel back in Year 7 Home Economics when he’d opened the smoking oven to find his pizza on fire. Then she clapped her palm to his forehead like Ms Esterhazy had done – her hand smelled of warm dough and some kind of spice. Ms Esterhazy’s had smelled of paper and the kind of fishy glue they used in the library; a glue that Daniel’s cat Ernestine loved. Ernestine had eaten the spines of So You Want to be an Actor and Contemporary Australian Drama.

  ‘You’re coming down with something,’ Mrs Palmer had decided. ‘Mum at home?’

  Daniel had nodded. Wednesday was Mum’s half day.

  ‘Lie down for a bit,’ Mrs Palmer had suggested, and Daniel lay down on the short little bed which must have been meant for Year 7s because it didn’t have room for his feet, and the next thing, like magic, he’d been in Mum’s car heading down Millward Street towards Dr Ryla’s surgery.

  ‘Chicken pox!’ Dr Ryla had roared. ‘We don’t often see chicken pox on a strapping lad your age!’
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  Dr Ryla’s voice was so loud it had made Daniel’s ears ring, and it must have penetrated the door of the surgery, because when he and Mum emerged into the waiting room there’d been smiles and giggles all round, and a tiny little kid had pointed at Daniel and bellowed, ‘You’re not allowed to scratch!’

  Mum had said it too. ‘You musn’t scratch,’ she’d warned him the minute they got home. ‘Otherwise you’ll scar.’

  ‘Scar?’ That sounded terrible – like the Middle Ages, like the Black Death. When all he had was a little kids’ disease. ‘Scar?’ he’d asked again.

  Mum had nodded, scarily. ‘It leaves little pits in your skin,’ she’d said.

  But how could you stop from scratching, when your whole skin felt on fire? The itching had eased after Mum dabbed on the lotion, and Daniel had been able to get some sleep, but now, waking, he was on fire again. He raised a hand to scratch, and saw, in the dim half light of the room (he must have been asleep for hours) that his hand had swollen, swollen so monstrously that it looked like a great red club, and his other hand was just the same.

  Daniel screamed.

  Footsteps sounded in the hall; the light flashed on.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  Daniel made choking noises. He tried to point to his hands, but you can’t point when your fingers have gone . . .

  ‘Daniel?’

  He held up the big red hands.

  His mother laughed. Laughed. Had the world gone mad or something? Or was he still asleep and in a nightmare?

  ‘Oh,’ she chuckled. ‘Isn’t that a good idea?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your old boxing gloves. To stop you scratching. I dug them out of the cupboard when you were asleep, and put them on for you!’ She looked really pleased with herself, and though Daniel had never been a violent person, he really felt like killing her.