by Lia Weston
‘What does Barnaby think?’
Joy gave a dismissive wave. ‘Barnaby’s uncomfortable with emotion as it is, let alone teenage girls. Every time there’s even a hint that someone may have to have what we term “a discussion”, he makes himself scarce. You can barely see him for dust on the road.’ Joy took a slug of coffee. ‘Honestly. People say that women need protecting, but you know who the big babies are? Men.’
‘Damned straight,’ said Evie, and found herself almost liking Joy at that moment.
‘Well, I’m so looking forward to the party,’ said Joy, her heels rapping up the hallway. ‘Nathan’s very excited about the cake, he can’t stop mentioning it.’
Evie, passing the mirror, saw that she was the same colour as ivory fondant.
‘And I do hope you’ll consider coming back to the committee soon.’ Joy buttoned her diamante buttons. ‘David keeps complaining about the Yoyos.’
After she left, Evie stood in the corridor and looked at the door to the dining room. The whole town was going to be at the party. The whole town would be judging her. She cradled her useless hand. Time to get back to work.
Mary placed knife after knife in a row, nudging the edges until they were perfectly aligned. The glassware sparkled. The napkins sat in origami shapes. The bonbonnières were stuffed with sugar almonds.
Her last few exams had not gone well, Mary sweating over the gaps in her knowledge, trying to forget the reason she was doing so badly and the fact that she had no one to blame but herself. Travis had not contacted her. She had not seen Mini D since the final test, and he was not at the Holy Father either. In his absence, Mary took any shift on offer, so she was rarely home. When she did venture into the house, she moved silently around the edges of rooms, avoiding her mother. There were some things she was not ready to talk about. She wanted to stay in hibernation for a while.
The only good thing that had happened was that her father had called, full of apologies, falling on his sword, telling her how much he missed her. When she hung up, she saw Evie fade away down the stairs and knew she’d been listening.
The hot scoring pain of losing Zach had faded to a slow ache. He would be doing the nativity tomorrow, a reluctant Joseph to Ebony’s Holy Virgin. Another Mary to spurn.
She also admitted to herself that she missed Travis and Mini D far more than Zach.
‘Well done,’ said Clayton, looking over her shoulder. ‘Good work.’ He left behind a trail of burnt spice aftershave on his way to the kitchen.
‘Has Clayton got a thing for you now?’
Mary spun around. Mini D was standing by the door, even browner than before. The rest of his greeting was lost as she flung herself at him.
‘Can’t breathe. Can’t breathe!’ said Mini D before she detached herself. ‘Jesus, you’re strong. Mrs B must have you lifting logs.’
‘Where’ve you been?’
He repositioned his T-shirt. ‘Visiting a friend. Remember the fairy floss vendor from the carnival?’
‘No.’
‘Her name is Marce. She’s a welder. She also makes pickles,’ he added as an afterthought.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘I think we were fighting at the time.’
‘Oh. Are we still fighting?’
‘I don’t think so.’ Mini D twitched two of the glasses out of place and appropriated one of the bonbonnières. ‘So what’s been happening? Zach got you pregnant yet?’
Mary immediately burst into tears.
‘Oh no. Are you serious?’ Mini D wrapped his arms around her and patted as high as he could reach. ‘Don’t cry, please, Mares. He’s a tool. He’s a fucking arsehole. I’ll be the adoptive dad. We can live in Marce’s studio, teach the baby metalworking.’
‘I’m not pregnant,’ Mary managed to choke out.
‘Pardon me for interrupting this charming reunion,’ drawled Clayton from the doorway, ‘but you both have work to do. Miss Pleasant, do you need a moment?’
‘No,’ said Mary, wiping her eyes with her hands. ‘I’m fine.’
Clayton withdrew with a whoosh of the swinging door.
‘Don’t you worry about Zach,’ said Mini D, handing her an origami napkin. ‘I’ll deal with him.’
Mary blew her nose. ‘You’re not going to fight him, are you?’ Mini D would need a stepladder.
Mini D popped a handful of sugared almonds in his mouth and gave her a pastel grin. ‘Oh, no. Something much more interesting.’
Spiked into florists’ foam, the undersides of the lilies stretched out in front of her. It was like being in an iced forest. Evie sat with her head on the edge of the table and looked through the thicket of stems, checking for errors. There could not be a single thumb print or mark to mar them. Evie spied one with a tiny crease near the base, where the flower met its wire. She reached over and pulled it out, tossing it to the floor.
Even the easy parts of the decorations had taken longer than they should have. Her schedule was off. Her cut hand stayed uselessly in her lap. The creeping puffiness glowed like a ruby.
But she was nearly done. There were no more flowers to mould, no more leaves to press. The figures, panels and ribbons were safe in their boxes. The icing sat in blocks. Everything was ready for the cake itself.
She could bake it early and freeze it, but that would be cheating. The cake had to be fresh. It had to be perfect, her gift to Nathan, her final submission to the town of Sweet Meadow, atonement for everything she’d done.
If this whole gamble took her down with it, at least no one could say that she hadn’t tried.
Mrs Beadles was asleep in her usual chair. Alasdair was awake for once. He thumped his tail as Mary came up the veranda stairs.
The garden had morphed yet again. The potted blackberries were sprinkled with fruit. The espaliered apple trees were resting, their work finished, while the crab apples bloomed. Pineapple lilies poked their heads above the white stars of the tuberoses. Mary tried to remember how many weeks it had been since she visited and could only conclude, guiltily, that it was too many.
Alasdair had forgiven her, though; when she sat down on the boards, he lolled over with a groan and put his head on her legs, trapping her in place.
‘Ah,’ said Mrs Beadles, lifting her hat. ‘Wondered if that was you. Don’t suppose you brought gloves?’
Mary shook her head.
Mrs Beadles grunted and levered herself to her feet, waving away Mary’s offer of help. ‘I don’t think he’s in any hurry to let you get up.’ She was walking more stiffly than usual. Mary felt even worse. Alasdair huffed until she rubbed him behind the ears, her hand disappearing into his fur.
Mrs Beadles returned with a red box. ‘It’s either a late birthday present or an early Christmas present, take your pick.’
Mary opened it to find a set of grey suede gardening gloves with red leather palms and knuckle guards. The cuffs ran up over her elbows. On the back of each hand was an embroidered red ‘M’.
‘If you’d like to try them out, there’s a yukka that needs removing. Shovels and hoes are in the usual place.’
The hoe thudded into the root base and barely made a dent. Mary swung and struck again. The muscles in her shoulder began to remember the movement as she repeatedly drove into the earth. Something started to roll up inside her – not tears, because she was sick of crying. She imagined Therese lying at her feet, the other students who treated Mary as if she were wallpaper, and finally Zach, who had made everything worse by not being brave enough to choose her. Under her blade, the ground spat dirt. The bodies shook apart and crumbled.
Mary gave a particularly vicious strike, lodging the hoe hard in the yukka. She tried to lever it out, but it only gave a millimetre.
‘Oh, come on.’
She put her whole weight on the handle, her feet almost leaving the ground, waiting for it to snap. She jumped off and pushed up instead of down, booting the base in frustration. Finally the yukka released its hold. As a reward, Mary pick
ed up the hoe and hurled it as far as she could.
Some time later, she climbed the stairs, streaked with earth and dried salt. The palm lay obliterated in her wake.
Mrs Beadles closed Andronikos’ study of the royal tombs at Vergina, snapped her reading glasses into their case, and pushed a jug of water towards her.
Mary pulled the gloves off. ‘These are brilliant. Look – no blisters.’ She held up her palms.
They sat there for another minute, the delphiniums nodding in the rolling breeze.
‘Feel better?’ said Mrs Beadles finally.
‘You didn’t actually need that yukka removed, did you?’ said Mary.
Mrs Beadles gave her a grin which made her look rather like Mini D. ‘Not really.’
The Tueller family had embarked upon one of their Christmas traditions – picking up a tree from the local forestry department’s pine plantation. It usually took all six of them to get it over the fence. Travis, who was not required because of his noodle arms, was instead suffering through an iced chocolate at How Sweet It Is.
In lieu of hanging out at the playground across the road from the Pleasants’ house, he had taken up running, and was pleasantly surprised to find he was a natural. If nothing else, the sensation of burning legs and lungs made it harder to think about Evie.
Online forums told him that chocolate milk was good for runners. Travis abandoned his drink with the clots of cream still in the straw and wondered if all runners were insane.
He headed down Main Street, which was surprisingly busy. The Rose Apothecary was not only open but also having a sale. Past its grimy windows were discounted racks full of china cats, their paws upraised. A white sports car streaked past the shop, sending the purple carpet of jacarandas swirling.
There was a crowd milling in front of Saint Sebastian’s. Nativity Tonite said the sign. Travis wished for a texta to correct the spelling. He passed his eye over the parishioners. No Evie. No Mary. He allowed himself to mourn them both, only for a moment, for very different reasons.
Amy Wei was smoking down the side of the church next to the fire hose. He liked Amy. She was one of the few adults who spoke to him like a regular person, and she paid him properly for tutoring her children, unlike most of the other parents.
‘How did your exams go?’
Travis shrugged. ‘Okay, I guess.’
‘You sound like my eldest.’
‘How did she go?’
It was Amy’s turn to shrug. ‘If she does badly, it won’t be through lack of study. Are you staying for the play? Sarah’s a shepherd. Her beard is so big I won’t recognise her.’
‘She’s a foot taller than everyone else,’ pointed out Travis.
‘I’ll just look for the only Asian kid in the line-up,’ said Amy. ‘At least we’ll be spared Ebony’s interpretive dance this year. She’s been pulled for unknown reasons. We’ve lost our Virgin.’
‘Who’s the stand-in?’
‘Who knows?’ said Amy, grinding her cigarette out with her heel. ‘It’s Quentin’s problem. It may actually end up being Quentin. Zach’d love that.’
Travis stood back to let Amy go in front as people began filing inside. In the car park, Joy was cramming an unwilling child into the back half of a donkey costume.
‘Wake me up when it’s over, will you?’ said Amy over her shoulder.
Several ancient parishioners were indeed nodding off already, and they were only five minutes into it. Instead of a traditional pine Christmas tree, someone had lashed a bunch of eucalyptuses together. They were studded with lopsided decorations made by the Sunday schoolers, and looked combustible. It was a good thing Amy couldn’t smoke in church.
Travis yawned and checked his mobile. At this rate Jesus would be four and a half before the kings arrived.
Zach was tackling the role of Joseph with all the enthusiasm of someone folding laundry. He towered over the Virgin Mary, who fluttered her eyelashes at him over the edge of her veil.
Amy was taking photos of the tallest shepherd, who was scratching at her beard.
‘But hark? I have? Like, glad tidings?’ said the Angel Gabriel, in a very short robe, to the happy couple. ‘Mary? You are, like, pregnant?’
Travis could see Quentin clutching his face off to the side of the stage.
‘Did you hear that, my love?’ trilled Mary the Mother of God. ‘A baby!’
‘It hearkens my heart to hear so,’ said Joseph, doing an excellent impression of a hockey stick.
To the audience’s surprise – and apparently also Joseph’s – the Virgin Mary launched herself at her husband. ‘Kiss me, my beloved!’
‘What the fuck?’ said Joseph, going off-script as he was pulled in for an enthusiastic smooch.
As Mary’s veil fell off, both Joseph and the audience were treated to the sight of Mini D wearing a pound of eyeliner.
Joseph immediately tried to punch the Blessed Virgin.
‘Leave her alone!’ shouted the tallest shepherd, whacking him with her staff.
Within a minute the stage was in pandemonium as the entire cast laid into the father-to-be of God.
‘Now this is more like it,’ said Amy, who had switched to video.
The air seeped into the treehouse windows like mist. Evie lay on the floor, her marriage pledge to Nathan in her pocket, the burnt doll’s skull in her hand. No need to climb over the gate this time. It had given easily, still released by Phil’s grip so many months ago.
She had gone outside to get away from the cake, which had bled into every part of her life now. She felt permanently coated in pearl dust, and dreamed about gum-paste Venus fly-traps that ate her alive.
Phil’s warning about her hand kept playing on her mind. She hadn’t really listened, had she? It had been a month and a half since the puncture; she couldn’t even bend her fingers now. This was her punishment. And although she wanted so badly to win Nathan, she realised now that it was Phil whose absence hurt the most.
Jacaranda flowers floated from their branches, shaken off by the rising wind. Like tiny clouds they drifted inside and collided silently against her. Soon she would be outlined in them, a lilac stencil to mark where the body was found.
Look what I have done for you.
Look what I have become.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
On the first day of summer, honeyeaters fluttered in the banksias below Mary’s window, while sparrows pinged along the bricks in search of seeds.
Mary padded down the stairs. There was no sound from the rest of the house. The dining room doors were open, the room littered with empty boxes.
She stopped in the kitchen doorway and stared.
The cake was finished. Its creator was asleep in a chair next to it, one arm stretched across the table, fingers not quite touching the icing. After doing a lap around the project which had consumed her mother for the past two months, Mary switched the overhead light off, which had been on all night, and rustled in the fridge and pantry as quietly as she could.
She opened the bin to drop in the empty bread bag and saw a card crumpled down among the debris. Mary smoothed it across the bench. The scrawl was almost illegible. Happy birthd– in shaky letters, ending in a smear of ink. Evie had been insisting her hand was okay.
‘Oh, Mum.’
Evie had not yet moved. Mary stood over her, examining the strange sheen on her mother’s skin. The waves of her hair, normally glossier than nail polish, fell in ratty strands across her cheek. She looked like a consumptive Victorian heroine.
Mary brushed the strands carefully back from Evie’s face, put a ham and cheese sandwich on the table next to her, and slipped outside.
On the way to work she made two phone calls.
At first all Travis saw was Evie, asleep and wraith-like at the table. But then he saw what she was sitting next to and felt his jaw slacken.
Vines of ivy and jasmine intertwined to form the base. Coloured ribbons circled up, twisted with irises and lilies, studded with violets.
A waterfall of roses spilled down the tiers, dropping rivers of petals – crimson, pink, blush, apricot. Tiny bees were dotted amongst the flowers, and small figurines. There were gold droplets in the violets’ centres, gold centres on the lily stamens, glimmering among the tiers. At the very top, on a cloud made of stars, was a tiny gold box.
‘Holy shit,’ said Travis.
He walked from one side to the other. It was more a piece of art than a cake. It was magnificent.
It was also seven feet high.
‘Hey,’ Phil knocked at the French doors, and then paused, staring at the table. ‘Wow.’
‘It’s a bit bigger than usual,’ said Travis with glorious understatement. ‘I don’t know how we’ll get it outside.’
‘French doors,’ said Phil, opening the latches. He crouched next to Evie and gently touched her cheek. Evie finally stirred.
‘Mary said you might need a hand,’ said Travis as she looked at them both in bewilderment.
‘Oh,’ said Evie. ‘Yes. Of course. Thank you.’ She sat stiffly upright, like a marionette which had been lying unused for years. ‘Do you . . . I just need to . . . change.’
She climbed the stairs slowly. There was the click of the door and a shower began running.
‘Come on,’ said Phil, indicating their seven-foot-high mission.
Travis supported one end of the cake board but felt like an ant carrying a brick. As Phil was taking most of the weight, Travis navigated their progress through the doors, down the steps and past the elm tree, out to the laneway where Phil’s van sat waiting.
Phil’s shirt was sweat-patched and they had only gone twenty metres. ‘Box’ll have to come off,’ he said, indicating the top.
Travis jumped on the tow ball to prise the gold box from its perch, wincing when he heard something snap. Even de-boxed, the top of the cake only just cleared the van’s interior.
By the time they got back to the kitchen, Evie was still upstairs. ‘Maybe I should go and see –’ said Travis.
