Those Pleasant Girls

by Lia Weston

  Nathan shifted on the railing. ‘Actually –’

  ‘Yoo-hoo!’

  Nathan shut his mouth again.

  Evie leaned sideways to see past him. Barrelling through the front gate, still wearing flesh-toned stockings despite the fact it was forty degrees, was Joy Piece of Piece Real Estate.

  ‘Ms Bouvier,’ Joy came wiggling up the garden path, ‘thought I’d pop in between tenant inspections, hope you don’t mind, my, you’re rather flushed, it is warm, isn’t it? We Pinkies almost missed our morning walk but we soldiered on. Been to see Marie yet? She’s just received a shipment of lovely Juicy bottoms in our signature colour and I saw one which looked just your size.’

  ‘This is great timing, actually,’ said Nathan. ‘I was about to ask Evie to join the church committee.’

  ‘Huh?’ said Evie.

  ‘Come again?’ said Joy, halting at the veranda steps.

  One of the ravens gave a loud squawk.

  ‘She’s a touch-typist,’ said Nathan, gesturing at Evie as if she was the grand prize on a gameshow. ‘You’ve been saying for a while that the paperwork is a burden. Well, here’s your answer. Evie could be our parish secretary.’

  Joy’s eyebrows puckered as much as her forehead would allow. ‘I’m sure Ms Bouvier has many talents – what a lovely skirt, Evie, I forgot to say earlier – but, Nathan, the Committee for the Betterment of the Church of Saint Sebastian the Meek is for established members of the Sweet Meadow community.’ She gave Evie a smile that was all tooth.

  ‘But Evie’s back now,’ said Nathan, then, turning to Evie, ‘You’re staying, aren’t you?’

  ‘I’m not going anywhere.’ Evie gave Joy a toothy smile in return.

  Joy’s welcoming expression was fighting to stay on her face. ‘With all due respect, Nathan, Evie may not want to join our little team. After all, she’s got a daughter to think of, and . . . er . . .’ Joy ran out of material at this point.

  ‘Do you want to?’ said Nathan to Evie. ‘Join us, I mean?’

  ‘I do,’ said Evie.

  Taylor Swift’s shrill tones interrupted. Joy reached for her phone. ‘I see, well, we’ll have to vote on it, of course, as you know, can’t just bring people on board willy-nilly, do excuse me, client calling from Hong Kong, can’t keep him waiting, lovely to see you both, néih hóu ma,’ she finished into the phone, and bustled back down the path again. Even her NASA hair looked annoyed.

  ‘I don’t think she likes me,’ said Evie, watching her go.

  ‘Everybody likes you,’ said Nathan kindly.

  ‘You’re very sweet,’ said Evie. And a bad liar. That’s a nice change. You’d never tell me that you were attending an awards night when you were actually out dogging with your secretary.

  ‘So you’ll come to the committee meeting? Sunday fortnight at six.’

  ‘I will,’ said Evie.

  They exchanged a slightly awkward kiss on the cheek – they had never done that before – and stood back to look at each other again.

  ‘Well, welcome home,’ Nathan said, and smiled his beautiful smile before departing. Evie allowed herself twenty seconds to admire his rear view as a reward.

  Walking inside, she pressed the daisies to her cheek. He had made a special visit. They still had a bond. Her plan to capture him, to rebuild her family, could actually work. Mary would love him, too. There was no point if Mary didn’t like him.

  Checking the hall mirror to see just how awful she looked, Evie realised she’d been chatting to Nathan and Joy with her buttercup-yellow chest smeared with Belgian cooking chocolate.

  ‘Son of a bitch.’

  ‘We’re out of milk.’

  Evie, who had changed into a polka-dot dress, stopped daydreaming about hot local priests and reversed along the hallway to the bathroom.

  Mary was lying in the empty tub fully clothed, one long arm hanging over the side like an overdosed junkie. The ancient airconditioner was on temporary strike. The bath was the least warm spot in the house. Even the birds outside were now too hot to chirp.

  ‘You need to do a supermarket run. There’s no bread left. I had to put Vegemite on a tortilla.’

  Evie pressed the backs of her hands against the tiles on the wall, searching for a cool section. ‘Can’t you go? I’ll fry. I’ll look like a bacon rasher.’

  The arm twitched. ‘You told me to finish unpacking.’

  ‘You’re not done? Mary, for Christ’s –’

  ‘I’ll finish it if you get some more bread.’

  ‘We’ll both go,’ said Evie. ‘Come on, you need to meet your new neighbourhood.’

  ‘We’ve already met,’ said Mary flatly.

  ‘I bet you didn’t look at it properly. We’ll go to the bakery and get some lunch.’

  As Evie knew she would, Mary levered herself out of the bath. The prospect of food was the only consistent teenage Achilles heel.

  The streets shimmered in the morning heat. Evie trotted quickly across driveways, sticking to scraps of shade, Mary glumly following.

  Mrs Vogel’s house was just ahead, with its little red steamtrain postbox. Nathan used to be obsessed with that postbox. Evie smiled. Mrs Vogel was one of the few residents who hadn’t threatened to throttle her. She used to keep strange foreign lollies wrapped in foil in an old tin under her sink, and she taught Evie how to make a proper cup of tea.

  On her approach, Evie noticed that the tree in front of the Vogels’ was gone. In fact, the whole house was gone. The empty space looked like a missing tooth. In front of the space was an enormous billboard: Joy Piece, Piece Real Estate. Joy’s photo – pearly whites gleaming, jowls discreetly airbrushed, hair at full throttle – dwarfed the property plans. They were going to put four houses on the block. Crammed in there, jammed in like four pillows in one pillowcase. It was ridiculous.

  Evie pulled her hat further down against the sun’s whiplash sting and crossed the road. ‘This way. It’ll be fun.’

  ‘You keep saying that, and yet fun does not happen.’ Mary hung back from the kerb, her hand shielding her eyes.

  ‘Look how huge that place is,’ said Evie, pointing at a house set so far back from the road that it was barely visible. ‘You don’t get blocks this size in the city any more.’

  ‘Mmmph,’ said Mary, raising an eyebrow the barest amount.

  ‘And look!’ said Evie, gesturing to a tree covered in brilliant scarlet flowers. ‘A . . . It’s a . . .’

  ‘Crepe myrtle,’ said Mary. ‘Lagerstroemia. Gran really didn’t teach you anything, did she?’

  ‘We didn’t have that kind of relationship,’ said Evie.

  They stopped in front of a tiny cottage whose apricot trees seemed to be moving but were in fact riddled with parrots, stripping the fruit like tiny fructose-addled Visigoths.

  ‘What’s the Latin name for those?’ shouted Evie over the Visigoths’ shrieking.

  ‘Prunus armeniaca,’ shouted back Mary. ‘But I don’t know about the parrots.’

  ‘It’s amazing how you can do that. You’re like one of those people who can do the square root of numbers in their heads.’

  ‘I’m an idiot savant, but for plants,’ said Mary gloomily, moving on.

  The next house had weatherboards which sagged at the corners and an empty paddock behind. ‘This was your great-grandpa’s house,’ said Evie, speaking at normal volume now they were past the birds. ‘He had a horse called Tuppence. Horrible old thing. Once when no one was home I snuck over to ride him.’

  ‘How did that work out?’

  ‘He threw me off and then tried to step on my head.’

  Mary pointed at an overgrown lump at the far end of the paddock, chunks of stone breaking through the grass like giant teeth through green gums. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘The stable. It burned down. Without Tuppence in it, before you ask.’

  The occasional fibro house broke up the rows of neat workers’ cottages, agapanthus with heavy purple heads napping over the fences.


  A cow stood by the latticed fence of an empty block, staring blankly into the road. They both made kissy noises at it. There was no response from the cow.

  Evie pointed at the house next door. ‘Mr Acker lives there. He runs the bakery. Best meat pies you’ve ever had.’

  ‘Don’t listen to her,’ said Mary to the cow.

  There was a similar broken-teeth mound behind the baker’s house.

  ‘Another stable fire?’ said Mary.

  ‘Uh, yes, I think so.’

  ‘I’m sensing a theme here,’ said Mary.

  ‘Oh, look, more cows,’ said Evie, walking on.

  The tour of Sweet Meadow and Evie’s embedded history continued. The oak tree she had fallen out of and broken her arm. The war memorial she had pushed Nathan off, which broke his arm. By the time Evie had shown Mary the high school, the graveyard in which she and Nathan used to make grenades, and several other stables that Evie had managed not to set fire to, the bakery beckoned like an oasis. Evie crossed her fingers that Mr Acker firstly needed an assistant and secondly wouldn’t recognise her.

  The north wind breathed hot air against their backs as they turned into Main Street. Evie spied a house that she and Nathan had egged on a similar forty-degree day but decided not to mention it.

  The bakery window did not inspire confidence. Neither did the blistering paint or the pies slumped under the heat lamp. The back kitchen was dimly lit, one oven door slack-jawed. A woman emerged from the rear of the shop, stowing a magazine under the counter.

  Evie ordered two pies, but skipped the finger buns with their fossilised cream.

  ‘Is Mr Acker still here?’

  The woman seemed surprised at the question. ‘No, he passed away a few years ago.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ said Evie. Damn it. Another job prospect gone.

  ‘Did he die in a stable fire?’ said Mary.

  ‘Excuse us,’ said Evie, towing Mary and the pies outside.

  Sweet Meadow’s oval seemed to be peeling in the sun, the grandstand about to crumble into ash and blow away. The cricket scoreboard showed a motley mix of letters and numbers. Someone had used a backwards 5 for an S.

  Perched on the back of a cracked bench, Mary was an ink blot on the bleached landscape, narrow shoulders pinched under her black T-shirt. Watching her daughter stoically eating a lunch that was more gristle than gravy, Evie wished she could pull her into her lap and sing funny songs to dispel all her problems, like she used to when Mary was little. But Mary was too big to fit in Evie’s lap now, and their problems were too big to be sung away.

  School would be starting shortly. She would be dumped into a classroom of strangers right at the beginning of Year 12, thanks to her father. Evie sincerely hoped that teenagers in Sweet Meadow were more forgiving of outsiders than they used to be. Mary needed girlfriends. Come to think of it, Evie needed girlfriends, too. Her university acquaintances had dropped off after she was pulled into Gabe’s stratosphere. Gabe’s friends, all of whom seemed to be actors or models or musicians or other photographers, saw her as an interesting novelty and were sweet to her, but it wasn’t the same. They lived for spontaneity, couch-surfing and occasional cocaine binges, and none of these things were particularly baby-compatible. Gabe did his best to cope with the changes Mary brought to his life, but sometimes, late at night, Evie could feel the resentment seeping out of him as he slept.

  As Mary grew older, Evie tried to expand her social circle through mothers’ groups and old high-school acquaintances. Gabe, however, would get very moody about it, especially when Evie drank. There was nothing to induce a fit of husbandly sulking like coming home to find Evie and a bunch of girlfriends by the pool, salmon blinis in hand, giddy with champagne cocktails. In the end, it was just easier not to invite people over. She resorted to sneaking out to brunches when Gabe was away, feeling as guilty as if she were meeting an ex in a public toilet instead of eating overpriced bircher muesli that she could have made better herself. Her friends quickly realised that they couldn’t drop in on a whim, drag her out to dinner, or even call for long and pointless chats about the minutiae of life, and eventually Evie’s invitations stopped coming. By the time Mary was a teenager, Evie could count her cohorts on one hand. It suited Gabe. ‘I want you all to myself,’ he would say, leaning over her shoulder while she minced herbs, his fingers tracing her ribs, and for a long time she believed that this was the way that love was supposed to feel. Love was allowed to be greedy.

  No one had called since the move, not even to gloat. Her final few girlfriends had gone silent together, like lights failing on a Christmas tree.

  ‘Have you heard from Amanda-Louise?’

  Amanda-Louise, who insisted on being addressed by her full name at all times, was Mary’s closest – and only – friend. In Mary’s world, this relationship was defined by someone with whom she sat and read books. Evie once managed to roast a lamb shoulder, make chicken consommé, and bake and ice three cakes before Mary and Amanda-Louise, reading at the kitchen table, had said a word to each other.

  Mary shrugged. ‘Not yet. She’s busy.’

  Knowing Amanda-Louise’s misanthropic ways, Evie highly doubted it. ‘You’ll make lots of new friends here.’

  Mary rolled her eyes so hard her kohl disappeared. ‘I didn’t have them before. Why should here be different?’

  ‘It’s a small town. Lots of people here remember your grandparents.’

  ‘Lots of people here remember you, too.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Evie, crumpling up the paper bag, still with half a pie inside, and sighed. ‘I know.’

  She flicked a clump of oily crust off her skirt and fought back the combination of fear and rage that was becoming depressingly familiar when she thought about their situation. The signs were encouraging, though. Nathan had told her she looked wonderful. He’d brought flowers and offered her a secretarial job. Compliments, foliage and unpaid employment: it was the classic country wooing technique. Handsome, sweet, pliable, single Nathan. I remember lots of things. Evie tucked away the look he’d given her, a secret to take out later when she was alone, to be tumbled between her fingers and examined over and over.

  She leaned against Mary. ‘Do you hate me?’

  Mary paused a fraction too long before answering. ‘Depends.’

  ‘On what?’

  Mary finally smiled. ‘Can we have nachos for dinner?’

  ‘If you can tell me what they’re called in Latin.’

  Mary screwed up her face. ‘Cornchipos cheesimus.’

  Evie laughed and threw an arm around her.

  ‘Gah, get off. Too hot,’ grumbled Mary, leaning forward.

  Evie patted her on the back instead and smoothed her hair back into place. They’d be all right. She would fix this. She would fix everything.

  *

  ‘Hello, princess.’

  ‘I’m not a princess.’ But she giggled as she said it, already twisting her toes around each other, hating herself for her vulnerability, desperate for validation anyway.

  ‘How’s Death Valley?’

  ‘Boring.’

  The delay over the phone lent stops and starts to the conversation. It was unsettling, trying not to talk over him.

  From the top of the stairs she could see the dip in the steps, worn away by hundreds of footfalls. A north wind shouted through her mum’s window, pushing past the curtains to roll along the landing and into Mary’s room, sending her papers fluttering.

  ‘How are you doing, though? Really?’

  ‘Okay, I guess. It’s weird being here.’ She couldn’t encapsulate everything she was feeling – it was far too big. She couldn’t even talk about Gran, fearing it would open up some chasm inside her that she didn’t know how to close. In the pause, she registered the chatter on the other end of the line, the distorted call-outs. ‘Um, where are you?’

  ‘Just waiting for the call for my flight.’

  ‘Oh.’ The bubble was instantly punctured. Mary dug a fingernail into
the banister. He had that tone in his voice that meant other people needed his attention. It always happened, no matter where he was. Women drifted by him while men covertly eyed his abdomen or hairline. Mary had inherited Gabe’s height and golden hair. There was nothing she could do about the former, but the latter she smothered in black dye, eager to be less of a beacon than her father who seemed to thrive on it. ‘I just wanted to say hi.’

  ‘I’ll be in New York for a while. You need anything?’

  An exit plan. A call from her friend. Her dad, to rescue her.

  ‘No, it’s okay.’

  ‘You sure, Mare Bear? If not, I’ll have to pick out a present for you by myself, and you know how bad I am at that.’

  She knew he was already on his feet, slinging his camera pack over his shoulder. He would have three magazines in his bag and a pack of chewing gum in his left jean pocket. He would order orange juice and refuse the crackers and cheese. A tightness gripped her throat.

  ‘Have a good trip,’ she managed, fighting off the urge to cry and beg him to take her with him. Stupid; she had regressed to a toddler in less than a minute.

  ‘Look after yourself, okay?’

  The muffled sound she made must have been close to a goodbye, because he had already hung up.

  She was about to call back when Evie walked past the foot of the stairs with a load of laundry blasted dry by the sun.

  ‘Who are you talking to?’

  ‘Wrong number,’ said Mary, pocketing the phone.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Evie’s nails looked like Christmas beetles, resting on the steering wheel.

  ‘You didn’t have to drive me,’ said Mary. ‘It’d be like a ten-minute walk.’

  ‘I couldn’t let you walk in this heat,’ said Evie. She had sweet-talked Felix into borrowing his ancient Volvo.

  ‘We’ll be there before the airconditioner kicks in.’ Mary slumped down further in her seat, feeling her thighs stick to the vinyl.

  They passed students walking in twos and threes, boys with lean hips and features too big for their faces, slim-limbed girls who probably smelled like coconut. Mary knew those kind of girls. In summer they were wet-lipped with vanilla-scented gloss. In winter they were pink-cheeked and wore tight jackets with furry hoods. Mary didn’t seem to suit any kind of weather. Her second-hand uniform was also already too short. Evie, frantically unpicking the hem the night before, asked if she’d been drinking fertiliser.