Those Pleasant Girls

by Lia Weston

  Her mother would have despaired. Thomasina Bouvier had spent several fruitless afternoons trying to teach Evie to sew. It was an exercise in futility; Evie far preferred ripping holes in things to stitching them back together.

  She steeled herself. The next step of the project could not be put off, or else she had just wasted two hours making a large white coaster. The box of photos lurked on the counter, swimming with memories she didn’t want to dive into. Evie flipped off the lid as if it would bite her and plunged a hand inside.

  It was an unlucky dip with far too many photos of Gabe. She tossed them on the floor, lost in the glimpses into her old life, pictures with long-forgotten friends, snaps from juggling a social life with the workload that architectural studies demanded. There she was in a favourite band T-shirt her mother had claimed had been eaten by the washing machine, along with several others. Funny how the machine had exactly the same taste as her mother.

  Mary’s baby pictures were adorable. She was all eyes and limbs, all smiles. At the time, Evie’s girlfriends used to joke that it wasn’t fair to have both a handsome husband and a well-behaved baby. Even then, Evie could sense the steel core of resentment behind their comments. No wonder they had been so quick to abandon her as Gabe pulled the curtains tighter around her life.

  Her fingers lingered on a black and white portrait from when Gabe still used to photograph her. She wore no makeup, the bridge of her nose pencilled with freckles from a summer spent outside. Her hair twisted in a rope over one shoulder. She met the camera’s gaze openly, nothing to hide. Unlike the person on the other side of the lens. But maybe this had been before Gabe had started cheating.

  Underneath her portrait was a snap from a party where Gabe was giving a speech. Evie was smiling at him, a drink in her hand. That was the year his photographic agency had really hit its stride, pulling in larger and larger accounts. Gabe was barely home. Evie diluted the boredom of being a friendless work widow by experimenting with the enormous Italian oven in the enormous house that Gabe’s travel bought them. Determined to prove herself useful – Thomasina had once made a comment about Evie having no marketable skills, which she could never quite shake – she would greet him upon each return with tartlets or puddings, graduating through pavlovas to mille-feuilles, until the day she proudly presented him with a croquembouche and he told her she had too much time on her hands.

  Behind her in the photo, she realised, was Aimee, one of Gabe’s many assistants. She also realised that she and Aimee wore mirroring expressions as they watched him. Strange that she had only just noticed it. No wonder he had hinted several times that she might prefer to stay home that evening. Aimee’s party outfit was more strapping than fabric. Evie was in a screen-printed tunic dress that she realised now Gabe loathed. ‘You look like such a mum,’ Gabe had said to her afterwards, in a way that was so disparaging that Evie went straight to the bathroom and spent two fruitless hours scrubbing, cleansing and primping herself. Nothing had helped.

  Evie touched a finger to the edge of her lipstick. Surprise, Gabriel. She had armour now.

  There was a familiar snort from behind her. ‘What are you wearing?’

  Evie turned and held her arms out so the filmy pale-blue material fell like wings. ‘A peignoir. It’s like a dressing gown but much nicer.’ It was so nice, she’d even taken a few selfies in the bathroom, revelling in the prettiness, before realising she had no one to send them to.

  ‘Don’t go near any open flames.’

  Evie pushed up the feather-trimmed sleeves. ‘Good advice.’

  Mary hung on to the doorframe and tilted forward onto her toes. ‘Can I have some friends over for dinner?’

  ‘Some . . .’ For a moment, Evie thought she’d heard wrong.

  ‘Friends.’ Mary dropped her gaze to the floor.

  ‘Of course! Oh, how nice. When are they coming?’

  ‘Now.’ Mary turned on her heel and shouted down the hall. ‘She says it’s okay!’

  Evie tightened the peignoir’s belt and wished she’d remembered to put on a bra.

  ‘I can’t believe you haven’t heard of Abbe May,’ said Mary, turning up the music. The trio had been banished from the kitchen. The incense in Mary’s bedroom was fighting with the scent of garlic, warm and heady, that was drifting up the stairs.

  Travis examined Mary’s bookshelf and hugged his bag over his growling stomach. Again, his mum had forgotten to go grocery shopping. Ms Bouvier’s slices and biscuits had been all he’d had for the past week. Now he couldn’t stop worrying about developing diabetes.

  ‘I can’t believe you haven’t heard of My Bitter Tears of Darkness,’ said Mini D, standing on the window seat and fiddling with the window latch.

  ‘Who?’ said Mary.

  ‘Zach’s band,’ said Travis. ‘They’re inexplicably popular.’

  ‘They’re incredibly shit,’ said Mini D, bouncing on the cushion. ‘He’s even got his own stage in Sturn’s orchard so he can torture the trees.’

  ‘His dad’s on the school board, so Sweet Meadow High is subjected to My Bitter Tears of Disappointment at least once a semester,’ said Travis. ‘I’m fairly sure it’s to prepare us for failures in life.’

  ‘Is dinner ready yet?’ said Mini D. ‘The last thing I ate was that rocky road square and a blueberry muffin and a snack pack of Twisties, and that was almost an hour ago.’

  There was another bedroom across the landing. Travis caught a glimpse of something pale blue and feathery fluttering by the window and would have stopped to investigate if he wasn’t so hungry. Mary and Mini D bumped each other down the stairs with their knees and elbows.

  Warmth beckoned them along the hallway. When Mary pushed the kitchen door open, the light was dazzling.

  White candlesticks lined the long wooden table. The mantelpiece above the fireplace held coloured vases of purple flowers, and the air was thick with sweet onions. In the middle of it all, holding a tray of glasses, stood an angelic vision, bathed in the sunlight from the windows behind her. She wore a pink dress, a white apron, and a surprised expression when she saw the boys.

  Mini D immediately barrelled over to the photos on the bench. He wolf-whistled and held up a picture of Mary with an unfortunate pudding bowl haircut. Mary shrieked and lunged for the photo. As they wrestled, Travis and the angel turned to each other.

  ‘I’m Evie,’ she said, clearly deciding to ignore the fact that Mary now had Mini D in a headlock. ‘Please, make yourself at home.’

  ‘Thank you very much,’ said Travis, following her lead.

  ‘Mum,’ said Mary, ‘that’s Travis. This is Dean.’

  ‘Hi,’ said Mini D, muffled by Mary’s forearm, before trying to bite her.

  By the time order was restored, Travis had been given a drink which contained ice cubes with mint leaves frozen inside and was eating chips from a silver bowl. He had never seen a kitchen so tidy. His father was in charge of the Tuellers’ housework, which mostly consisted of yelling at the vacuum cleaner.

  Evie refilled Travis’s drink and gave him a sweet smile when he thanked her. She and Mary had the same pale blue eyes, like huskies.

  Mini D and Mary were examining the picture board again.

  ‘It’s too white,’ grumbled Mary, tapping the edge of the board on the counter. ‘I don’t like white.’

  ‘White offsets the photos, dumbass,’ said Mini D, earning a look from Evie over her shoulder as she clamped a lid on the pan on the stove.

  Besides their eyes, it was hard to believe she and Mary were related. Mary was built like a ruler. Evie, with her doll-like perfection, looked like she’d stepped out of a 1950s movie.

  ‘Is that blood?’ said Mini D, peering at the board.

  Travis took another sip from his glass. He had no idea what it was – something lemony Mary said Evie made. He had known in theory that some drinks didn’t come out of a can or bottle, and now here was proof.

  ‘Earth to Travis, come in Travis,’ said Mini D, miming a walki
e-talkie. ‘Kssssh! Houston, we have a moron.’

  Mary giggled.

  Evie gave Mini D another ice-blue side-eye.

  Travis took another chip, ignored Mini D, and wondered if he were very, very good what the chances were that he could stay here forever.

  Evie had always thought the appetite of a teenage boy was a myth, but dinner put paid to that. For a tiny person, Mini D ate as if he was storing nuts for winter. Travis had better manners, but clearly made an effort not to wolf down his pasta. Evie managed to get him to take thirds, noting the worrying slenderness of his frame underneath his threadbare shirt.

  Mini D and Mary acted like siblings. Now Mary was punching him in the arm, another trait Evie had hoped her daughter wouldn’t inherit from her.

  ‘What do your parents do, Dean?’ said Evie in an effort to bring some civility back to the table with good old-fashioned conversation.

  ‘It’s just me and Mum,’ said Mini D, winding so much spaghetti on his spoon that it looked like a fishing reel.

  Mary stopped punching him. ‘What happened to your dad?’

  ‘He died when I was a kid. Fell out of a Ferris wheel.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ said Evie, thinking it explained a lot. ‘And Travis, er . . .’ For a moment she faltered, just in case one or both of Travis’s parents had met a similar carnival-based demise.

  ‘They run a farming supply business. Mostly agricultural – bulldozers and tractors,’ said Travis, eyes hidden behind a curtain of hair.

  ‘Tueller’s Farming Supplies?’ said Evie, thanking whichever deity was responsible that she’d never actually managed to steal one of their scythes, despite several attempts. ‘I didn’t make the connection. Does your mother do the bookwork?’

  ‘Dad does. Mum is the equipment specialist.’

  ‘And a champion woodchopper,’ said Mini D, stuffing the last of the garlic bread in after the spaghetti.

  ‘My grandpa got run over by a tractor,’ announced Mary, apropos of nothing.

  ‘Who was driving?’ said Mini D.

  ‘Probably Mary’s grandmother,’ said Evie.

  *

  Mary hung off the veranda post to give Mini D a final wave as he bellowed a goodnight from down the block. Travis, next to him, hunched his shoulders at the sound, his hair silver in the streetlight.

  ‘Aren’t they awesome?’ Mary pirouetted into the hallway and thundered upstairs. It was amazing that someone who weighed so little could make the staircase shake like that. Evie knew Mary’d be on her mobile in a moment, catching up on whatever had happened in the crucial ninety seconds since the boys left the house. But tonight was the first time she had seen her daughter truly happy since moving to Sweet Meadow. She would hold on to this for as long as she could.

  Evie moved smoothly through the kitchen, collecting plates, wiping the table, removing the evidence of three teenagers rampaging through her pantry. She’d need more notice next time they came over; it was like preparing for locusts. If she put out a Christmas wreath, Mini D would probably eat it.

  One Pleasant was settling in, at least. If all went well at the committee meeting this Sunday, they might both be okay. Evie switched on the dishwasher, added a note to her phone – Butcher: apologise re: cat thing; buy chops – and wandered upstairs to see if she owned an outfit that said both ‘sorry about flooding Main Street’ and ‘suitable for priests’.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  As it was forty degrees, the school naturally decided that it would be an ideal day to hold a fire drill. Mary, Travis and Mini D were forced, blinking like newborns, from the protection of the old library into the blinding brightness of the outdoors and the company of their peers.

  Mini D made a beeline for the cafeteria. Mary, who always got itchy from grass, sat on her textbooks and wished she’d brought sunglasses.

  Skirts hitched up to groin level, folders over their faces, Therese and her posse had staked a spot under the staffroom windows for sunbathing. For once they weren’t surrounded by a cloud of testosterone; the boys had all taken refuge under a giant Moreton Bay fig tree.

  Therese’s boyfriend, Zach, leaned against the trunk. He seemed about a foot taller than the others, with windswept hair and alpha-male shoulders. Mary had noticed him a few times before, amused by the way he was followed by other boys wherever he went, like sucker fish on the underbelly of a shark.

  ‘They move in packs,’ said Mary to Travis. ‘I’ve never been in a pack. I’ve only ever had one friend at a time. Does that make me weird?’

  ‘You’re talking to a guy who alphabetises his desktop folders because it makes him feel better.’

  Zach and his windswept hair surveyed the grounds, his gaze passing over Mary as if she were merely part of the lawn, before turning to his phone. Around him boys kicked at each other – though never at Zach, Mary noticed – and stared at Therese & Co’s row of sunbaked thighs. Therese’s best friend Bianca’s dress was so high Mary could see her neon underwear. Mr Mond, the maths teacher who was supposed to be supervising the drill, spent an awful lot of time parading past the staffroom.

  Dingus, the caretaker’s dog, wandered across the lawn to the boys under the tree, tongue lolling. Zach uncapped his water bottle and poured the contents into his hand to give Dingus a drink. The boys around him watched in respectful silence, as if Zach were turning loaves into fishes.

  Mary sat up straighter to watch.

  Travis followed her line of sight. ‘Please don’t tell me you’ve got a thing for Zach.’

  Mary snorted. ‘I’m just trying to work out how someone who can’t read can use a phone.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Travis, going back to his book.

  Therese still hadn’t moved from under her folder. She probably couldn’t read, either. She did have amazing hair, though, and popularity at Sweet Meadow High seemed to be largely hair-related. Girls were always brushing, combing and plaiting each other. Therese, of course, never groomed anyone; she just sat while the others fussed over her, like a life-sized doll, or the dominant ape.

  Social success was eighty per cent hair, Mary surmised. The remaining twenty per cent was split into fifteen per cent thinness and five per cent personality. You had to be skinny enough that clothes looked good, but not so thin that you had no boobs. Fatness seemed to be considered worse than death or halitosis. At Mary’s old school, Jemima Patterson had put on ten kilos over summer; none of Jemima’s friends talked to her until she lost the weight through a lemon detox diet that made her skinny but very cranky and prone to passing out during PE.

  Your actual face, however, the part that spoke and smiled and registered emotions, didn’t seem to have anything to do with how much people liked you. Besides Bianca, who had dark hair and skin, the other girls were identically white and blonde. They all had the same haircut. At least three of them were called Brittany.

  Mary did not particularly want to be popular, but it sucked not to be able to make the choice herself.

  She also realised that making percentage splits about how people achieved popularity demonstrated one of the fundamental reasons why she wasn’t.

  Mini D was arguing with a teacher about whether a fire drill necessitated the closing of the cafeteria. Behind them, the cafeteria door opened and a girl of about fourteen slipped outside. She hurried over to the line of thighs and began handing out cans of Diet Coke. Beyond a twitch of their folders, none of the girls bothered to acknowledge her.

  ‘Therese has an assistant?’ said Mary, watching the girl, duty done, scuttle away to a far corner of the yard.

  ‘That’s Ebony, her baby sister. Mrs Piece believes she’s destined for the stage and tries to shoehorn her into public appearances at any opportunity. She did an interpretive dance at my cousin’s baptism.’

  ‘Is she any good?’

  ‘Not particularly. She also doesn’t really seem to enjoy it. As she has suffered through puberty, her audience has suffered right along with her.’

  ‘She’d make th
e good back half of a donkey,’ said Mini D, returning empty-handed.

  ‘That’s mean,’ said Mary.

  ‘How do you know? You’ve never actually talked to Ebony. She could be horrible.’ He lay back with his arms over his face.

  Ebony was slowly edging behind a bush, as if attempting to assimilate with ground cover.

  ‘She doesn’t look it,’ said Mary.

  Travis closed his book. ‘You’re committing a logical fallacy. Therese is beautiful and also awful, correct?’ Mary had told him about the attempted running-over on Main Street. ‘Well, just because Ebony is not considered beautiful doesn’t mean she’s automatically good.’

  ‘In other words,’ said Mini D, ‘regular people can be just as fucked-up as the pretty ones. Anyway, Ebony’s all right. She’d be better if she grew a spine, though.’ He rolled over onto his stomach and moaned. ‘I’m starving.’

  Mary poked through her bag and handed over a lunchbox.

  ‘God, I love your mum,’ said Mini D, cramming a whole apple Danish into his mouth.

  Travis looked as if he was about to say something, but took a Danish instead.

  Mary pretended she wasn’t watching Zach. ‘People automatically love you if you can cook. I don’t get how it’s such a big deal.’

  ‘That’s because you’re used to it. My mum can’t cook.’ Mini D jerked his thumb in Travis’s direction. ‘His mum microwaved a can of soup once. In the can.’

  Mary looked doubtful. ‘Everyone’s mum can cook something.’

  Mini D turned to Travis. ‘I had a packet of marshmallows for dinner last night. What did you have, Trav?’

  Travis swallowed the rest of his Danish before he spoke. ‘Cereal.’

  ‘Therese probably can’t cook,’ said Mary.

  ‘She doesn’t have to,’ said both boys.

  ‘So there are only two ways to get a boyfriend,’ said Mary. ‘One,’ she ticked off her fingers, ‘can cook. Two, giant boobs.’