Like she’d been spying on me.
‘I still can’t believe she would do this,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘We should put a spy app on her phone. See how she likes it.’
Harley laughed. ‘What? And watch her go where?’
Tinder dates, for one, I wanted to say. But somehow it seemed mean to tell him. Like I’d be betraying Mum.
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘The supermarket?’
Harley laughed again and started backing up my phone onto the computer.
‘So what about the other thing?’ I said over his shoulder, the two of us facing my computer as the bar ran across the screen, backing up my photos, my music, my address book, everything. ‘This guy? Do you think I should text him? Because maybe he tried to call me and I never called him back because Mum put a spy app on my phone and it hasn’t been working properly and now I’ve hurt his feelings and that’s why I haven’t heard from him?’
Harley kept his eyes computer-side as he said, ‘The thing is, if he tried to call and you didn’t reply, he’d try again. Guys aren’t put off that easy. Unless he’s a real timid type. Is he timid?’
I thought about the carrot-fish trick; the dog-talking invitation; the way Jed had been straight onto the idea of going swimming with me and Anouk.
I sighed. ‘No,’ I said.
‘Well,’ Harley said, ‘I hate to break it to you, sister, but he’s just not that into you.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Just calling it as I see it.’
For someone who hadn’t been doing much talking around the house these past few months, he really knew how to string a sentence together for maximum effect.
He’s just not that into you. Right. Thanks for that.
Harley finished downloading all my stuff, factory-reset my phone, then downloaded all my stuff back onto it.
Then he turned around and looked at me.
‘Sorry about the guy,’ he said.
‘I don’t care,’ I said. ‘Doesn’t matter.’
‘Guys can be arseholes. You sure you’re okay? I feel bad leaving you here on your own,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you call Dad and see if you can go round to his place instead?’
It sounded strange, hearing the word ‘Dad’ coming out of Harley’s mouth. Ever since Dad had moved out, Mum had only ever called him Your Father, and Harley hadn’t bothered mentioning him at all.
It was nice to hear Dad’s name. Like it was just an everyday thing.
So I called him.
I knew there was a chance, a good chance, a huge probability, that Tosca would be there with him. But sitting with the two of them was definitely a better option than sitting at home, perhaps hiding under the couch if anyone else knocked on the door.
‘You there?’ I asked when he answered. ‘I thought I might come over.’
‘Great. We’d love it.’
We.
Whatever.
#
Slowly, slowly, Dad was dropping the pretense of Tosca just happening to be there.
He had an apron tied around his waist as he opened the oven and took the frittata out. Tosca sat at the bench and chopped parsley and made a salad. Her hair corkscrewed all over the kitchen, like it was looking for a bottle of wine to open. A glass of wine sat on Dad’s side of the bench, and a bottle of water on Tosca’s side.
Welcome to domesticity, new-Dad style.
Dad talked about Brexit and America and blah blah blah who cares, and Tosca added bits and pieces about Australian politics and more blah blah who cares, and the two of them chatted like it was truly awesome to be at home sitting in the kitchen eating dinner together on a Saturday night.
I forked food into my mouth as I scrolled through Snapchat, clicking on all my oldest and most favourite friends’ stories about the party I wasn’t invited to.
Liv and Yumi with their arms around each other’s shoulders, their heads tilted towards each other.
A photo Hattie had taken of Anouk in the middle of a bunch of people, her arms up, grinning at the camera, a flannelette shirt tied around her waist.
‘I think you can put that away while we’re having dinner,’ Dad said.
I ignored him. Scrolled through more photos.
‘MC,’ he said.
I pushed the phone away from me. Not because he’d asked me to, but because I knew that going on social media was self-destructive and wallowing.
Then again, I was in the mood to wallow, so why shouldn’t I?
Dad had Tosca; Mum had Maude and Prue – and Tinder; Harley was meeting people in the city; Grandpa was out; Liv and Yumi and everyone were at an enormous party.
I had no one.
I drew my phone back in towards me and started scrolling through more pics.
Eliza from the year above at school, sitting on the kitchen bench with Jed’s friend Finn leaning in towards her.
Jed, looking handsome, standing out the back with Leo and Bronte and Jack and a couple of the other people who’d turned up at my place.
Nique and Harry and Charlie W in the hallway, cheers-ing the world with beers. Della and Audrey laughing their heads off.
‘MC,’ Dad said. ‘I said to put that away.’
‘I just need to look at this one thing,’ I said, trying to find more shots of Jed. This wasn’t a case of FOMO. This was a case of KIMO – Knowing I’d Missed Out.
Angus and Hugo and Henry and Charlie L, not even realising their photo was being taken as they talked about something intense. Probably footy.
Maddie and Bryce and Bianca and Holly, hugging in close to each other and grinning at the camera, looking vague and heavy-lidded as usual.
Tom and Greta and Pia and Charlie G and Will, all scrunched together to fit in the photo, Will’s surfie hair giving him a just-off-the-wave look.
Emile with his arm around Yumi, looking like life couldn’t get any better.
Hattie. Liv. Anouk. Yumi. Everyone. Laughing. Drinking. Hugging. Friends. Together.
Biggest party of the year.
‘MC,’ Dad said, ‘that’s it. While we’re having dinner, I don’t want your phone at the table.’
I glared at him, then pushed my phone away from me, sliding it over the bench too quickly. Dad reached out his hand and stopped it from toppling over the edge and smashing.
‘Why, thank you,’ he said, ‘you’re too kind,’ and he pocketed it.
Because sarcasm – in case you’re wondering – isn’t dead.
#
Later that evening, the three of us were watching some boring movie from the eighties about vampires that Dad had – wrongly – told me I’d love while I scrolled through my phone again.
There weren’t many stories being posted at this time of night.
There was too much fun being had for people to bother fishing their phones out of their pockets to take photos.
I went to the toilet, more for something to do than because I was really busting. You really know your Saturday night has hit an all-time low when going to the toilet is the highlight.
It was as I was washing my hands that I noticed something in the wastebasket – a box, with pink lettering saying ‘Predict’ running across the baby-blue background, standing right out among all the white tissues and cottonwool balls in the bin.
Predict.
I frowned and reached into the rubbish, picked out that pink-and-blue cardboard box.
I turned it over and read the writing on the back.
‘This home pregnancy testing kit,’ it said, ‘works by detecting the presence of the hormone hCG (human chorionic gonadotropin) in a woman’s urine. Known as the pregnancy hormone, hCG is only found in pregnant women. For instructions on how to use this kit, please read the instruction sheet inside.’
My heart stilled. My breathing stilled. Everything stilled. It was like the entire world had been switched to silent.
I’d been over here all night, and Dad hadn’t even bothered to mention the little fact of a brand-new brother or sister to me.<
br />
I didn’t want to be here.
I didn’t want to stay the night anymore.
Not when the fact of brand-new baby wasn’t being mentioned.
I went back out to the two of them. Tosca looked up at me from where she lay with her feet propped up on Dad’s lap, and a look skittered across her face, like she’d just remembered she’d left the iron on or something. She got up and went into the kitchen. I heard her filling the kettle with water, putting it on the stovetop.
They were having a baby.
If someone had poked me at that moment – and I’m not talking Facebook here, I’m talking a little prod in my arm or my stomach or my back with their actual finger – I’d have crumbled like a shell of meringue, and everything would have come spilling out of the hole they’d just made in me.
I’d been sitting there all night, and they hadn’t bothered to tell me.
‘I just remembered,’ I said to Dad, standing beside the couch, looking down at him, ‘I have to get up early tomorrow morning. I have to go home …’
‘But you said you’d stay,’ he said, looking up at me, remaining on the couch. ‘It’s your first night in our new place.’
‘Yeah, but I’ve got something on tomorrow, early, so yeah.’
‘MC, just go from here. I can take you in the morning.’
‘No, I’ve left stuff at home. I need to go home. Kind of now.’
He sighed. ‘If I’d known you were going to get me to drive you, I wouldn’t have had that second glass of wine.’
He didn’t actually care that I was leaving; that I wasn’t going to spend my first night in their house. He just didn’t want to drive me home because he’d had two glasses of wine.
‘Forget about it,’ I said, feeling like the world was getting smaller and smaller, suffocating me. I just needed to get out of there. ‘I’ll catch the tram. I’ll walk. I don’t care. You stay where you are.’
‘No, no,’ he said, struggling to get off the couch like an old man, making a show of the fact he was having to get off his arse, ‘I don’t mind taking you; I just wouldn’t have had that … doesn’t matter, I’ve only had two glasses, I’ll be fine, let me get my keys.’
‘Tea?’ Tosca called out from the kitchen.
‘I’ll have one when I get back,’ Dad replied. ‘MC’s just remembered she’s got this stuff she needs to do tomorrow.’
‘Oh, okay,’ Tosca said, coming into the hallway and leaning against the doorjamb, her arms folding in like a barrier over her stomach.
I eyeballed her. Tell me, I felt like saying. Tell me.
She looked away.
Dad grabbed his keys off the hallway table. ‘Ready?’ he asked.
I could feel tears threatening my eyes, but all I wanted was to get home with as little intervention as possible. If I started crying here in the hallway, Dad would be all blah blah what’s wrong, and I didn’t want to discuss it. He didn’t want to tell me he was having a baby – fine. Then I certainly didn’t want to start bubbling over with tears here in front of the two of them.
‘I just have to go to the toilet,’ I said.
‘You just went.’
‘Weak bladder,’ I said, pushing the door shut behind me.
I looked at myself in the mirror. My cheeks were reddening in the corners, like my tear glands were set to explode with the pressure of the tears inside not being released. I ran cold water and splashed my face. It felt like I was doing that a lot this weekend. I put the towel against my face, dried the tears that had snuck out, settled myself down.
It was as I was putting the towel back on its rail that I noticed something. The tissues, the cottonwool balls, everything else in the rubbish bin was still the same. But the ‘Predict’?
It was gone.
Tosca had removed it.
#
When we got out to the car, Dad opened the door for me.
‘I can do that myself,’ I said. ‘I’m perfectly capable of opening my own car door.’
‘I’m just being chivalrous,’ he said, bowing down as he waved me into the seat with a flourish.
‘Chivalry’s sexist,’ I said, grabbing the handle from the inside and slamming it shut myself.
See, perfectly capable.
Dad got into the car, put his keys in the ignition, and looked at me.
‘Chivalry isn’t sexist,’ he said. ‘It’s not about strength or control or anything. It’s about me being nice to you. You’re barking up the wrong tree if you think chivalry’s sexist.’
‘Yeah? Well, you’d know,’ I said. ‘You’d know all about chivalry. Like, it’s so chivalrous, to leave your wife and your kids and start shagging someone else.’
Dad’s face stoned over.
‘Don’t you dare speak to me like that.’
‘What? I’m just stating the obvious,’ I said, my voice rising. And suddenly I made a decision. I opened the car door – all by myself, see that – and got out, then I leant back in so he wouldn’t miss a word I was about to say. ‘I don’t want you driving me home. You’ve been drinking. I can get home myself.’
‘MC, I’ve had two small glasses. Get in the car.’
‘No. I’m not getting in the car. I’m walking home.’
‘It’s raining.’
‘No. You know nothing that’s going on in my life, and you don’t even have the guts to tell me what’s going on in yours. So you should go back inside and have another glass of wine, because I’m going home, and I don’t need your help to get there.’
And I slammed the car door, really made sure it was closed, no doubt about it, then ran off down the street.
Rain tipped over me as I ran, like someone in the sky had a bucket and was targeting me specifically; the type of rain it was hard not to take personally.
At home, I opened the front door of our house and slammed it behind me.
My house. Not Dad and Tosca’s house. Mine.
I was wet through, not just my skin, but all the way down to my bones.
A text dinged from Dad. ‘Let me know you got home safe. I’ll call you tomorrow. Sorry I opened the car door for you.’ He’d ended it with a smiley face, as if we were all happy families.
I deleted his text with a stab of my finger. The rain pelted against the glass of the windows, like it was banging on the panes in sympathy. Or like it wanted me to come out and play some more. Thanks but no thanks, rain.
I listened to the underlying noise inside the house. The hum of the fridge. The quiet push of the central heating.
There was a stillness that told me I was alone.
I stomped upstairs into the bathroom, looked in the bathroom mirror, and suddenly felt completely drained. Mascara ran the length of my face, creating shadowy, sucked-in hollows. My skin was slick, and I looked wrecked.
Towelling myself off seemed too much like hard work, though, and what was the point anyway? I’d drip-dry eventually.
It was as that thought settled in my mind that a strange man came walking into the bathroom, pulling up short when he saw me.
Reports of the home invasions that had been happening recently around Melbourne flashed through my mind: families hiding in locked bathrooms or bedrooms while gangs rampaged in their homes, taking whatever they wanted – jewellery, computers, the car.
People being hospitalised if they confronted these guys.
I was home all alone. Mum was out with Maude and Prue. Harley was in the city somewhere. Even Liv wasn’t next door, because she was at Anouk’s.
I was completely on my own. Me and this man.
Fight or flight, I thought to myself.
Flight. Definitely flight. But I couldn’t fly, because the man was standing in the doorway, blocking my only escape route.
I was going to have to go the fight option. All those years learning karate back when I was a kid flooded my brain. There was the punch-him-in-the-throat thing that would literally kill him if I pulled it off. Or the slide-foot-down-shin-onto-his-foot slam, to break a fe
w bones.
I wasn’t going down without doing some damage.
‘Shit,’ he said. ‘Sorry. I thought we were here alone.’
Apologising. As if he’d broken into my house accidentally.
‘You’re MC, I guess,’ he went on. ‘I’m Jim.’
I blinked at him.
And then he held up one finger, like he was a teacher, and said, ‘Question: where’s the toilet?’
At that moment, Mum came up behind him. ‘No, next door along.’ She had her dressing-gown on, and her hands slid around his waist. Which was when she saw me – looked at me like I was not supposed to be here.
Don’t worry, I felt like saying to her, I feel exactly the same way.
‘You said you were staying at Dad’s tonight,’ she managed. ‘You texted me.’
I looked from her to this guy, Jim.
‘Omigod, Jesus,’ I yelled at her, ‘I thought you were a home invasion, God!’ And I ran out of the bathroom and locked my bedroom door.
#
I stuffed my headphones into my ears.
I didn’t want to hear a peep, not even a scrap, a whiff, a wafer, of Mum-and-that-guy-ness. I shook my head back and forth, figuring that any further images or thoughts or words or anything to do with Mum and him wouldn’t be able to stick to the wall of my brain if I kept my head moving.
There was a ding from my phone. I looked at my screen to see a text message. From Anouk.
Let me repeat that for you one more time, in case you missed it: a text message from Anouk.
‘Ha ha,’ she’d written, and she’d attached a photo of Jed and some random girl, kissing in the kitchen, the party swirling around them. ‘Looks like he doesn’t want either of us.’
Then another text: ‘Wish you were here,’ with a kissy face.
Jed. And another girl. And Anouk, not even caring about Jed, about Jed and her, about Jed and the other girl – only caring about rubbing it in. To me.
Seriously.
Seri-fucking-ously.
There weren’t even words.
Well, actually, there were words: fuck you, fook Anouk.
I read and re-read her text; stared at the photo of Jed and the girl.
Looks like he doesn’t want either of us, she’d written.
My Life as a Hashtag Page 11
