Sunny Side Up

by Marion Roberts

  ‘Sunny, can we just finish up before Claud gets here?’

  ‘I think it was Alfred. No that’s right, Albert. It’s Albert.’

  ‘Sunny?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Maybe you need time to think about it? Carl, I mean, and all of us living together?’

  ‘I dunno. I’ve told you – I like Carl, but his kids are . . . well, they’re annoying.’

  ‘Come on, don’t forget you have a lot of fun together too.’

  ‘When? When would it happen?’

  ‘Well, we thought before you all went back to school.’

  ‘Mum, that’s, like, practically next week! Italian singer Luciano Pavarotti was one of the three what: basses, tenors or baritones? Oh, that’s so easy, tenors, der!’

  ‘Sunny!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mum.

  ‘Yes what?’

  ‘Say yes, not what.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Sunny!’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can we have this conversation, please?’

  ‘Okay. What if I said no?’

  ‘That would be a natural response, sometimes big changes can feel threatening—’

  ‘But would it not happen if I said no? Would it actually change anything?’

  ‘Well, not necessarily. Sometimes the adults have to make the decisions, but that doesn’t mean that how you feel isn’t—’

  ‘Would I have to do all the washing up?’

  ‘Of course not, darling. We’d have to sort out a roster, you’d even have nights with no washing up.’ And she kissed me on the side of my forehead. ‘We’ll talk about it more tonight. Carl’s coming over with Lyall and Saskia for dinner.’

  ‘But Claud’s staying over. We’re making pizzas. We’ve got orders and deliveries.’

  ‘That can all still happen, Sunny. We’ll make a night of it. How does that sound?’

  ‘Map.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Two down: Atlas, three letters. It’s map,’ I said, passing Mum my glass. I was starting to feel a bit weird and in need of a little spell in the air in seat 44K to try to get some perspective.

  I pressed my forehead against the coldness of the imaginary window. In seat 44K, the fact that life as you know it is about to end doesn’t matter one iota. All the worry just buzzes off into the atmosphere and becomes a cloud. I imagined my thoughts being sucked into the jet engines and getting shredded into scattered solitary ideas. Up in seat 44K I get to have imaginary aeroplane food, which may not be made with love (according to Mum), but which is one of my favourite things on account of it all being stacked on trays in little surprise packages, like Christmas.

  Willow leapt off the couch, which she wasn’t meant to be on, and ran at full speed down the side of the house like a mini racehorse. She must have heard the gate open, or maybe she smelt Claud arriving (because dogs have supersonic noses). She ran back into the shed and hid sneakily in a corner so that when Claud came in she could pounce out and sniff her bum.

  ‘Okay, Sunny,’ said Mum. ‘I’ve got to go, but I just need to say one more thing.’

  ‘Yep?’

  ‘It’s about Carl’s cat, Boris. He’s going to be moving in as well.’

  Claud parked her bike near the doorway of the shed.

  ‘Hi, Alex,’ said Claud, propping her bike up on its stand.

  ‘Morning, Claud,’ Mum said, grabbing her bag. ‘I’m just leaving. Make sure you two drink lots of water today, okay?’ And she gave me another kiss goodbye.

  ‘Hey, Claud,’ I said. ‘Which pungent edible plant is most likely to ward off a vampire?’

  ‘Garlic!’ said Claud.

  ‘Correct. The next one’s easy too. Want a juice? How many lines are there in a limerick?’

  ‘Ah, lets see . . .,’ said Claud getting herself a glass. ‘A limerick? Is that like:

  Dictation dictation dictation

  Three sausages went to the station,

  one got lost,

  and one got squashed,

  and one had a big operation?

  That’s five, five lines,’ she said, counting on her fingers.

  I checked the answers and started clapping, ‘Five is correct. Claud! Just look at her form ladies and gentlemen. What a star!’

  And Claud did a bow, until Willow stuck her snout fair and square up her bum.

  4 .

  Buster Conroy is someone you’re meant to feel sorry for on account of his dad being in jail and his mum having run off to Queensland to live with some man she met on the internet. It’s not like Buster’s an orphan though, because he lives with his Uncle Quinny. Uncle Quinny is bald and scary looking, but he must be sort of okay because I see him around the neighbourhood pushing a pram. I know you’re meant to have compassion for people like Buster Conroy, who had to repeat prep twice and who can’t actually read. But it’s probably a good thing he doesn’t read much, because otherwise he might end up being a bookish sort of person who might read this one day, and then I’d be dead meat.

  Actually, I think it kind of makes Buster more interesting to have a dad who is a criminal, because I’ve got a fascination with gangsters. Not many parents at school seem to think the Conroys are so fascinating though. No one is ever allowed to go around there for a sleepover, which probably explains why Buster hasn’t got any friends, another reason I should feel sorry for him. But it’s hard to have compassion for Buster when all he does is make me feel bad with his meanness. Not only that, Buster Conroy has a stash of BB guns that he keeps on top of the air-conditioning unit at the back of Foodworks. I know because Claud and I found them.

  Claud and Willow and I were coping well with the impossibly hot weather on our early morning walk, but we didn’t count on having to deal with Buster Conroy and a stolen supermarket trolley down by the canal.

  ‘Funny lookin’ skinny dog. What’s its name, Santa’s Little Helper?’ sneered Buster.

  I rolled my eyes backwards till it hurt and said,‘Yeah, good one, Buster – You’re the first person to ever say that – Not !’

  Willow wagged her tail and pulled hard on the leash towards Buster, because she doesn’t know there are mean people in the world. She probably just wanted to sniff Buster’s bum, and, let’s face it, Buster’s bum probably smelt extra good to Willow ’cos he probably didn’t wash it much. I held Willow back and tried to just walk on past, because it’s best to ignore people you sense badness from, avoid eye contact, and walk on by with dignity. According to Auntie Guff, my Dad’s sister, it also helps to imagine you’re zipping all your power around yourself like an invisible fluorescent-blue sleeping bag of self-protection. She says that taking notice of mean people invites their tainted energy into your auric field. It sure would have been easier if you weren’t down by the canal with your best friend Claud, who happened to be an extrovert and love an argument.

  Buster pushed the shopping trolley purposefully across our path.

  ‘What’s with the trolley, Buster?’ Claud said. ‘Got a new shipment of BB guns?’

  ‘Two words, Claud,’ said Buster holding up two fingers. ‘Finders keepers, losers weepers.’

  We both laughed and Claud said, ‘Ah, Buster . . . that’s four words, doofus.’ We laughed some more, but I got nervous because if Claud kept going, Buster might get violent. When Buster gets really mad he finds it hard to control his temper, on account of not really understanding the use your words, not your fists rule that most of us learnt in crèche. Seriously, Buster goes completely nuts.

  ‘Come on, Claud,’ I said quietly, starting to walk away.

  ‘Wait,’ said Claud. ‘Hey, Buster, you would have loved it at Seaworld, there was a big bald seal that looked just like you. I thought maybe you were related.’ Claud laughed to herself (in a fake-sounding way) and Buster pushed the shopping trolley as hard as he could towards us and let go. Luckily, shopping trolleys always have dodgy wheels. It swerved straight past and hurtled into the canal, which
was low in water but high in stinky mud. Then he turned and bolted down a blue-stone laneway at the back of Ruskin Street. The very laneway where a dead body was found last winter. Mum tried to keep it all hush-hush, but everybody at school was talking about the dead woman and how she could have been murdered . . . Sorry . . . Tangent! But no wonder a violent tangent came up with Buster around.

  All we could see was Buster’s peroxide blonde mohawk bobbing up and down like a bunny’s tail before he turned around briefly to give us the finger. Claud shouted something about Buster being in for it with the Chinese lady who owns Foodworks. Then she said something even dumber along the lines of, ‘We’ll get you, Buster. We know where you live!’

  Claud was all puffed up and exhilarated as though she’d just come off a ride at Luna Park. I was just relieved that none of Buster Conroy’s badness had tainted my aura and that my sleeping bag of self-protection still seemed to be intact. It was making me way too hot though, even if it was imaginary, so I unzipped it and let it fall away.

  ‘We’ve got three orders tonight,’ I said, changing the topic to Pizza-A-Go-Girl.

  ‘Yeah? Who?’ asked Claud, still panting.

  ‘The Ferdinands, the Larkins and a new lady from around the corner, Mrs Wolverine. She saw our poster down at the school. Carl and his kids are also coming over but you can still stay the night if you want to.’

  ‘Sweet,’ said Claud, but she seemed to be thinking about something else.

  Just when I thought our Buster-ness was done for the day, we crossed over Barkly Street and bumped into (not in a shopping trolley sort of way) Buster Conroy’s Uncle Quinny sitting outside Jerry’s Milkbar with his pram.

  ‘Well, well, well,’ said Uncle Quinny. ‘If it isn’t Arthur and Martha. Hot enough for ya, girls?’

  Before I could find my sleeping bag of self-protection again, Claud had started up a chat (extrovert), and was peering inside the pram at Chester, Uncle Quinny’s baby boy.

  ‘We must be crazy,’ said Claud, giving the pram a gentle shake, ’cos we’ll have our heads in the oven later. We’re on pizza duty. Does Chester ever actually wake up?’

  ‘Only all bloody night, the little pest. Yeah, I heard about your pizzas. You girls deliver do ya? Don’t s’pose you could get over our way? Got the boys comin’ round tonight. Bit of a card game. A pizza or two wouldn’t go astray. Heard yours are better than Shaggy’s.’

  ‘That’s ’cos ours are wood-fired, and we don’t use shredded ham,’ said Claud, not picking up on any of my LET’S GET OUT OF HERE vibes that I thought were pretty easy to read. I mean, you’d think after our run-in with Buster, she wouldn’t want to talk pizza with his Uncle Quinny. But no, the more dangerous it was, the more Claud seemed to like it. I think They call it ‘pushing the envelope’.

  ‘Plus,’ said Claud, perching herself on a chair, ‘our pizzas are biodynamic.’

  ‘Listen, love, I couldn’t give a rat’s about biodynamic this and organic-shmorganic that . . . Can I put an order in for tonight or what? I want hot salami, I mean the real hot stuff, and olives and mushroom? Three of ’em. Big ones.’

  Uncle Quinny looked over to where I was standing with Willow in a wedge of shade near the café door.

  ‘What’s your problem, sunshine? We got a deal or haven’t we? It’s not bloody rocket surgery.’

  Uncle Quinny’s head was breaking out into little beads of sweat as he stirred two lumps of sugar into his coffee. Claud was tapping her foot and giving me the eyebrow, looking at me like the whole thing was mine to decide.

  ‘Business is business,’ I said, ‘Three hot salamis with olives and mushrooms,’ and I gave the eyebrow back to Claud. ‘Why not?’

  ‘Eight thirty then,’ said Uncle Quinny, reaching into his shiny track pants for some small change. ‘Hold yer horses, I forgot Buster, better make that four. He’ll have a Hawaiian, bloody wimp can’t handle hot salami.’

  ‘We just saw Buster down at the canal,’ said Claud.

  ‘Oh yeah, causing bloody trouble again was he?’

  ‘Well—’ I said, before Claud interrupted.

  ‘What Sunny’s trying to say is that if Buster gives us any trouble, we’ll spit in his pizza.’ Which really wasn’t what I’d been trying to say at all.

  ‘He being a bloody bully again? Damn kid, I already told him – no more bullying or he’ll get a kick in the pants. Now look, I can’t hang around entertaining you two all day, I got things to do, people to see. You know where we are? It’s flat 77, on the seventh floor. Buzz on the door and I’ll send Buster down with some cash. Got it?’

  ‘Easy,’ said Claud. But I was feeling uneasy on account of Buster maybe getting a kick in the pants from Uncle Quinny because of us saying he’d been a bully. And then us maybe getting a kick in the pants from Buster for dobbing. That’s how it works, you know. They call it pecking order.

  ‘And while you’re at it, have a pizza or two yourself, Sunny. You and that dog of yours both need a damn good feed. Look at your bloody canary legs, jeez!’

  He banged his empty cup down and left some coins on the table then took off down Barkly Street with the pram, making screechy bird noises and laughing to himself.

  The thing is, I do have skinny legs and they’re too long as well. But Uncle Quinny calling me Canary Legs made my throat ache, even though I knew it was meant to be a friendly sort of a joke.

  ‘Well, now what?’ I said to Claud as we were crossing Marine Parade. Willow was pulling hard on the leash, knowing she’d soon be free to run to the beach.

  ‘Now what what?’ said Claud.

  ‘I can’t believe we’ve got to make Buster’s dinner.’

  ‘Look, Sunny, that’s four extra pizzas. Just think of the profits. We’ll make double the dough, and then . . . we’ll make double the dough. Get it?’ said Claud punching my arm. ‘God I’m funny. I’m so hilarious it’s seriously scary!’

  I had to laugh, even though it was a really lame joke. Sometimes they’re the best sort, jokes that aren’t about making fun of people or being mean about their bodies and causing their throat to ache.

  5 .

  Claud and Willow and I made a dash across the sand, which was already too hot to walk on even though it was still early. We found a cooler patch where the tide had just been.

  ‘Race you in!’ said Claud, throwing her bag down and tearing off her shirt. We all pelted into the water, even Willow, who we’ve been teaching to swim. She’s not very good at it though, and never goes any deeper than her neck, even when you’re right there with her. I don’t think greyhounds are designed to swim. She seems to think water is something to sit down in, like an elegant old lady at a hydrotherapy spa. Willow can even make sitting in a muddy puddle look good.

  I duck-dived down where the world was perfect and muffled and quiet and cool. I swam as far as I could, holding my breath with my legs fused together like a dolphin’s tail. They say that a dolphin’s skeleton is very similar to ours. Their tails are made up of two distinct bones, like human legs. Only in a dolphin the two bones become one where the ankles would be, to form the tail. I don’t know whether it’s just that animals seem cuter when they look like they’re doing human things, but we all love dolphins because they look like they’re smiling. It could just be the shape of their mouths though. There might be no happiness behind it at all. No one seems to care about all those poor old tuna fish caught in dolphin-friendly nets and destined for a can on a supermarket shelf. Maybe it’s because tuna fish have down-turned mouths and look slightly grumpy. Maybe I’d even like tubes with fangs if they smiled? But then again, a smiling snake would probably look rather smug, and can we just get off the whole snake topic once and for all now, please?

  I made it thirty metres dolphin-style under water. At least, that’s what Claud said when I came up for air. I wanted to believe her because that would mean I had broken my personal record of twenty-five metres, so I didn’t ask how she worked it out.

  Willow had taken off after a sta
ffy-terrier, which I’ve noticed are a breed of dog that seem to actually enjoy being chewed around the neck and wrestled to the ground. It was lying on its back and wagging its tail so fast it looked like it didn’t have a tail at all.

  The sea was still, like a pond, and silver. I was thinking about how the air was heating up and how we had to go down Carlisle street for pizza ingredients, and maybe even fit in a game of street poetry and another swim before firing up the pizza oven. And, of course, there was also the dinner with Mum and Carl and Lyall and Saskia to talk all about blending, which I was doing my best not to think about. I hadn’t even told Claud.

  ‘We got wood for tonight?’ Claud asked, dog paddling towards me.

  ‘Yep, plenty. Mum’s been dragging home old Christmas trees for kindling too, so we’re all sorted.’

  Mum’s always scavenging for wood and shoving sticks into the back of her car for the oven. Once I even heard some kids at school saying they thought Mum might be a witch, but in a good way.

  I looked over to Willow who was still wrestling with the staffy. The owner looked towards me with an I think your dog might be trying to eat my dog sort of look on her face. Sometimes dog-play can seem violent, but, I tell you, it’s what dogs like to do because they’re dogs. It’s just that greyhounds have a bad reputation on account of what people see them doing to those mechanical rabbits on the racetrack. But really they would have to be one of the sookiest breeds around.

  I skipped out of the water towards Willow. I wanted to avoid a situation like the time when a nosy man with two demon-eyed huskies gave me and Mum a lecture about how greyhounds are meant to be on leashes at all times – even though Willow wasn’t even wrestling his dogs or doing anything wrong.

  ‘And another thing, that dog should be wearing a muzzle,’ the man had said, and Mum replied, ‘Oh really? Perhaps you could do with a muzzle yourself.’

  Claud and I washed the sand off our feet at the tap near the sailing club and made our way home. It was still a couple of degrees cooler inside the house due to it being made of double brick, which takes a long time to heat up. Willow slurped up half a bowl of water then collapsed under the shade of the fig tree. Claud and I put our feet up on opposite ends of the couch in the darkened lounge room.