The Year Nick McGowan Came to Stay

by Rebecca Sparrow

‘The head of Curriculum and Studies, you idiot.’

  Then I remember the brochures in my bag. The career brochures that I picked up for Nick McGowan last week. It’s now or never. And maybe now is the perfect time.

  ‘Frankly, Nick, I don’t think you’ve thought this through. All this talk about wanting to go back to Middlemount. Okay, so you don’t want to be a doctor, but that doesn’t mean you’re not going to change your mind again. Or you might find another career that still requires you to have done Advanced Maths. You know there are a lot more jobs out there other than just mining and medicine. I was in the Careers Room the other day with Zoë and I found . . .’

  I fumble around in my bag, which is on my lap, and produce the fifteen brochures. I know my pitch is sounding dodgy, overly rehearsed, a little wooden. I sound like I’m trying to sell Nick McGowan a set of encyclopaedias or something.

  ‘I found some really interesting brochures on different jobs and I was thinking . . .’

  ‘You’ve got to be joking.’ He glances down at the brochures. ‘Medical researcher? Dentist?’

  ‘Well . . .’

  ‘Town planner?’

  ‘I just thought—’

  ‘You just thought what? That my life was your business? Well, it’s not.’

  I lean over, grab his school bag and start to shove the brochures inside. Nick yanks his school bag away from me but in doing so a small blue book falls out. I pick it up. On the front cover in red print it says: The I Hate To Cook Book – More Than 180 Quick And Easy Recipes. Underneath the titles there’s a cartoon picture of a rather stunned woman wearing a chef’s hat.

  ‘Why on earth have you got a cookbook in your bag?’

  Nick snatches the book from me and before I can say anything else is already up and moving to another seat. A seat that’s further down the bus. I look over my shoulder at him but he’s staring out the window with an expression that tells me exactly how he’s feeling: Pissed off. And as we drive along Moggill Road, I think about how nine days ago Nick McGowan just thought I was uptight; now, he hates my guts.

  As I turn back around I notice Cello Girl, her back to me, standing in the open middle section of the bus. I watch her holding on to the back of a seat to keep her balance. She’s put her silver rings back on. So I get up, move down the bus, tap her on the shoulder. She turns, and an annoyed expression passes over her face until she realises that it’s me. That prefect.

  ‘Nice jewellery,’ I say. ‘Consider yourself on detention tomorrow.’

  I can see in her eyes that she now thinks I’m a bitch. But I don’t care. I move back to my seat. Then I realise that if I’d caught her early this morning Nick and I would have been on detention with her. Oh God.

  When we get to our stop, which also happens to be outside the restaurant where I work, Cello Girl is long gone. I grab my bag and push through some sweaty BBC boys who are playing some hand-held video game. But before I’m even off the bus I see Nick is already walking ahead, up the hill to home.

  Fiona Curtis is letting the kids make their own sundaes.

  I contemplate this information as I shove my bag into one of the lockers and readjust my red wig in front of the crew-room mirror. Then I turn to Vivian Woo and ask her how she knows. Vivian leans back into the doorway. Ankles crossed, she spins her Brigidine College hat on her finger and says that Susie P told her. And that Susie was working front counter yesterday when Fiona brought through her birthday party group and allowed them all – one by one – to make their own sundaes.

  Traditionally this is something that is reserved only for the birthday child. It’s a special treat – something to set them apart from their friends. Not anymore, apparently.

  I must look shocked. Or pissed off. Or both, because Viv looks at me with sympathy and says, ‘I know. And apparently she scored really well.’

  I freeze for a moment, slowly put down my red lipstick and turn to face Vivian.

  ‘I thought scoring wasn’t starting until next week?’

  ‘Yeah, I dunno. But they scored her yesterday. I heard they brought it forward because Simon or Chris is going on holidays.’

  ‘What’d she get?’

  ‘Seventeen out of twenty.’

  ‘Who scored her?’

  ‘Simon.’

  We both roll our eyes. I go back to applying my clown mouth. Of course it was Simon, since Fiona has always been one of Simon’s favourites.

  ‘What’d she get? How many kids?’ I try to ask this nonchalantly, not taking my eyes from the mirror, as though I don’t really care what the answer is. The truth is that I care. Boy, do I care. But I can’t let Viv know this since – as much as I like her – she’s a well-known blab.

  ‘Ten ten-year-olds.’

  Ten-year-olds? Talk about easy. But before I can say anything more than ‘Pffft,’ Viv says, ‘Plus Fiona is Mrs Westacott’s niece. So as if that’s not going to go in her favour.’

  I turn around – my jaw hanging open in shock. But Viv says she has to go. She just came in to check her roster and her mum’s waiting for her out in the car.

  With Vivian gone, I think about Fiona Curtis. About the Party Hostess competition. It’s a masterstroke, that sundae idea. How could I not have thought of it? I haven’t been concentrating, that’s why. I’ve slackened off. It’s my own fault. I bite down on my lip, and begin to realise now that I had just assumed that I would win this Party Hostess of the Year competition, hadn’t ever seen Fiona Curtis as a serious rival. I just lumped her in with the rest of the hostesses whose idea of a party is playing a forty-minute game of Eye Spy. But clearly Fiona Curtis is taking this seriously. She’s strategising at home. She’s upping the ante. I’m going to have to pick up my game. And she’s related to the owner.

  Shit. But I can do this. If I put my mind to this I can beat her. I have to beat her. And I don’t need a gimmick – like Fiona Curtis – to win this thing. Nobody can do a birthday party like me.

  I walk into the storeroom and grab the party box. Mrs Westacott, who owns the Kenmore restaurant with her husband, prepares the boxes at home on the weekends. They’re millionaires, apparently. I’ve never actually seen Mrs Westacott, but in my head she looks like Mrs Howell from ‘Gilligan’s Island’. I’ve always imagined her as a haughty woman with a poodle face wearing a fur coat and pearls, who sits at a dining table and prepares our weekly birthday party boxes. I figure she’d be the type of person who says Dah-ling a lot. My eyes skim the contents of the box and see the usual balloons, birthday cake candles, party bags. I peel my party profile off the side of the box. Six kids. Five-year-old girls. Birthday girl’s name is Sally. My confidence rises. Five-year-olds love me. Let’s just see Fiona Curtis try and beat me at this. Nepotism be damned, I’m going to win this. I head off into the restaurant thinking, Party Hostess of the Year? Piece of cake.

  Piece of shit cake, more like it.

  At first everything goes like clockwork. We play Simon Says, we do some colouring-in, we tour the restaurant. Chris, the manager on duty, is standing in the corner with a clipboard and a pen. He even gives me two thumbs up – that’s how well it’s going. Until I send the kids out into the restaurant playground. A playground that usually only features monkey bars. Swings. A slippery dip. But today what I don’t know is that it also features a poo. Monkey bars, swings, a slippery dip and a poo. One minute I’m sending Sally and her friends outside to play. The next minute the little girls are tearing back inside. Screaming. Screaming about poo.

  ‘There’s a poo!’ They scream hysterically, over and over, waving their little arms in the air like Muppets on speed.

  A quick investigation reveals that Sally’s three-year-old little brother has crept into the playground, pulled down his pants and done an enormous shit on the AstroTurf. On the bright side – if there can be a bright side to poos in playgrounds – the poo looks easy to clean up. Sort of. O
n the not so bright side he did it at the bottom of the slippery dip. A slippery dip that just minutes ago Sally and two of her friends slid down headfirst. Headfirst into turdsville.

  I try to stay calm amidst the hysteria. I look around at the little girls. Screaming and crying seems reasonable when some of their heads have passed through the poo of a three-year-old. There’s poo in hair. On plaits. In hair ribbons. The other three just seem mildly traumatised by the afternoon’s events. I look at Sally’s mum, who is saying, ‘This has got to stop,’ in a rather fierce voice to Sally’s smug-looking little brother. Then I look at Chris, who is pacing back and forth, and talking into a headset. When he eventually starts writing on the clipboard again, he’s shaking his head in a way that tells me that poo has no part in this restaurant’s mission statement. And that I’m being marked down. This is an Act of God, I want to say. It shouldn’t count against my score. That poo was beyond my control. But nobody’s listening. Chris motions for me to come over. In a weary tone, he says that I should keep going with the party ‘as best I can’, and that he’s organised for another crew member to help me clean up. As I usher the five-year-olds into the toilets, Fiona Curtis rounds the corner with a mop and bucket.

  I’m in the mother of all bad moods when I get home. I’ve literally had a shit day. I’ve been given my first-ever detention. Nick McGowan is finally talking to me again but only because he wants me to sign some stupid form. There was the whole poo thing at work. Worse, Fiona Curtis was unspeakably friendly to me as she mopped poo on the AstroTurf. I’m tired. And grumpy. And fed up with everybody and everything. And to top it all off, as soon as I walk into the kitchen I see that Mum has cooked apricot chicken for dinner. I hate apricot chicken. Fruit and poultry have no place together.

  During the meal itself there’s an added level of tension. Nick and I sit in frosty silence with the haunted look of hostages. Not that my parents seem to notice – they’re too busy discussing Caitlin’s latest financial dilemma in Paris, and remain oblivious to the cold war being waged around them. My mood is not helped when my mother finally turns her attention to me and orders me to stop slouching. She then tells me that my fringe needs a cut, and offers to cut it for me after dinner. I remind her that the last time I let her cut my hair she gave me an ‘economy fringe’. It was so short that I looked like a chipmunk. She rolls her eyes as though I am exaggerating. I remind her that even Dad started calling me Alvin. She says, ‘Well just push it out of your eyes’ and then leans over and does it for me, brutally pushing my fringe and a fair amount of my skin across my forehead. I respond by saying, ‘Ow!’ even though it doesn’t hurt.

  And then, in what can only be considered a blatant move to antagonise me, Nick McGowan for the second time offers to do the washing-up. Knowing that my parents will make me do it with him. Knowing that this is completely throwing my study timetable out of whack. And my parents, rather than insisting that as a guest he do no chores, revel in it. My mother, in particular, seems to be enjoying this new world order. Her response to my protests is to pour herself a sherry and say, ‘It’ll take you no time at all, Rach. Nick’s helping you.’

  So I reluctantly get up from the table, start clearing the plates and contemplate the effectiveness of stabbing myself to death with a butter knife.

  ‘I cannot belieeeve you’ve done this again.’ I start to scrub burnt apricot chicken from the casserole dish.

  He nods. It is the nod of someone who couldn’t care less.

  ‘Aren’t you going to say anything?’

  ‘You missed a bit.’

  I turn and glare at Nick McGowan who is pointing with a deadpan expression to some cheese still on a fork.

  ‘Fine.’ I snatch the fork back from him and scrub it so hard I half expect the prongs to snap.

  ‘There.’ I thrust it back at him. ‘You’re pathetic, by the way.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, I’d rather be pathetic than what you are.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Spoilt. I’ve watched you for a week and your mum does everything for you. You don’t even appreciate it.’

  I turn and stare at him. ‘No she doesn’t.’

  He rolls his eyes and says, ‘Yeah, right. She makes your lunch every day. Does all your washing and ironing. Cooks your dinner. She’s like that butler on TV – Benson.’

  ‘Yeah? And you’re like the poster boy for Benson & Hedges. At least I’m doing something with my spare time. Like studying. All you seem to do is suck up to my parents, eat our food, smoke cigarettes and play crap music way too loud. Last night I could barely concentrate on my English oral because you were playing some absolute crap music so loud it was coming through the floorboards.’

  He looks up at me with a combined look of horror and disdain. ‘I was playing the Ramones.’

  ‘Whatever. We have exams in a few weeks. Exams that count towards our leaving scores. I mean, your parents—’

  ‘Parent. Single. My mum died. So it’s just me and my dad.’

  I stare back at Nick, unsure how to continue.

  ‘When I was two. She died when I was two. So your point is?’

  ‘Well,’ I struggle to remember the point I was trying to make. ‘Well, your dad would be paying a fortune for you to be at this school, and your biggest concern is whether or not I do the washing-up.’

  ‘Trust me, I have bigger concerns in my life than—’

  ‘Oh that’s right. Like forging my parents’ signatures. Just in case I didn’t make myself one hundred per cent clear on the bus this afternoon, I’m not helping you. I’m not helping you drop down into my maths class.’

  The phone starts to ring. Elbow deep in suds, I holler, ‘Can somebody get that, please?’

  ‘Coming, coming.’ Dad appears round the corner and grabs the phone. ‘It’s probably your sister.’

  ‘Asking for more money for the third time in a week.’

  ‘Just one moment,’ says my father to the caller. Then he turns around and says, ‘Nick, it’s Sam Wilks for you.’

  I look at Nick. But unlike last time, his face doesn’t go pale. Instead he just turns to my dad and says in a guarded tone, ‘Would you mind if I took it downstairs?’

  Mum walks in, picks up the tea towel and takes over the drying up. As I pass her the plates we talk about my upcoming English assignment. About what we’re doing in French. About Zoë’s latest run-in with Mrs Finemore. And through it all she laughs and says, ‘You girls,’ the way she does when she catches Caitlin and I plotting some ridiculous scheme. When the last plate has been dried and put away, she says, ‘Darling, will you bring Gipper in from the verandah for me?’

  ‘Sure.’ I head out to the verandah to fetch our ten-year-old canary.

  ‘You know Nick helped me prepare tonight’s dinner. And this afternoon he completely cleaned out Gipper’s cage for me.’

  ‘Fabulous,’ I say. Crawler, I think.

  I look out to the back garden. I spot Nick’s outline down by the pool. He’s out there now resting his head in his hands, his phone call long finished. I stand there and wonder what is really going on in Nick McGowan’s life. I think about his decision to drop down to Maths in Society, and wonder if I’m doing the right thing by refusing to help him forge Mum and Dad’s signatures on the consent form. I look up at the stars and say, ‘Please don’t let the rest of the year be like today.’

  I turn around to Gipper and grab the cage handle.

  ‘Come on, Gip. Time for you to go to bed.’

  When I look down into the cage I see bright blue paper with the words Town planner and Dentist and Psychiatrist – all sprinkled with bird poo and feathers and husks. He’s lined the floor of Gipper’s cage with the career brochures I gave him.

  I venture out of my bedroom at eight o’clock to give myself a five-minute break before I start on Biology.
I bump into Mum in the hallway.

  ‘I’m about to dish up some ice-cream. Do you want some?’

  ‘Nah.’

  ‘Well do me a favour—’

  ‘And ask Nick?’

  She nods.

  I roll my eyes.

  ‘And remind him’ – she hands me the cordless phone – ‘that it’s Tuesday, and he’s supposed to call his dad.’

  It’s a while before he notices me standing there, in the shadows, watching him smoke. When he finally turns and sees me, he seems neither surprised nor annoyed by my presence. Instead he just taps his cigarette into the mug, off-loads some ash and says, ‘You again,’ before turning back to look at the moon.

  ‘Benson wants to know if you want some ice-cream.’

  Nick McGowan turns his head and looks at me. His eyes narrow, but his lips form a wry smile. He’s looking at me differently now, as though I’ve surprised him by making a joke.

  ‘No, thanks.’

  An awkward silence descends.

  ‘Mum said to remind you to call your dad.’

  I hold the phone out to him. He stares at it as though what I’m offering him is a gun. So I lay the phone down on the box beside him and turn to leave in a sudden hurry to get away.

  ‘I do all the cooking at home.’

  I stop. Turn back around.

  ‘That’s why I had a recipe book in my bag. I’m on a mission to find a good lasagne recipe.’

  I don’t know what to say. So I just sort of stare at Nick McGowan.

  ‘It’s all about the bechamel sauce. And the layering,’ he says, nodding his head, not even looking at me. ‘Yep.’

  ‘Right,’ I say.

  ‘My dad likes lasagne,’ he says, picking up the cordless phone and bouncing it up and down in his hand. ‘So at least I’ll have something to say to my dad tonight. I can say, “Hey Dad, got another lasagne recipe for us to try”.’

  His tone is sarcastic.

  I start to make a move to leave.