by Kate Gordon
‘My parents are happy,’ Roz says, and we both look at her in shock. The last thing we would ever imagine Roz’s parents being is happy. ‘What?’ she asks, looking between us. ‘They are happy with each other. It’s only me who disappoints them.’
‘How could you disappoint anyone?’ I ask, as Melody says, ‘They’re only happy with each other because they’re both so anal and dysfunctional. And because they’ve bought into the patriarchal concept of marriage for life. Which is so outdated, it’s not even funny.’
‘Well—’ Roz begins. Melody cuts her off.
‘And as for Resey and her irrational fixation on Nick Wallace, well, it has to stop. Life is short, Therese. Now, what you should do is …’
As Melody goes on and on, picking apart my choices, my mistakes, my life, I watch Wally walk towards the exit.
He looks up, sort of in my direction, but past me, as if the two of us are in completely different realities—parallel planes of existence.
I wonder what he sees.
Dear Dad,
Have you ever noticed that
You can smell the rain before it falls?
Do you think it’s like that with people?
Do you think you can smell it on them
Before they fall?
Chapter Five
Auntie Kath drives me to work in her tiny, semi-vintage (we’re talking noughties vintage) Beetle car. The fake gerbera wobbles in its little holder, as we bump along the road.
‘Why don’t you get rid of that thing?’ I ask Kath, not for the first time. ‘You hate gerberas.’
‘It came with the car,’ is Kath’s customary answer. ‘It feels wrong to get rid of it. Mabel might get sad.’
‘Mabel is inanimate.’
‘Don’t listen to her, old girl.’ Auntie Kath peers over to me, one eyebrow cocked. ‘You know she’s older than you are. Show her some respect.’
‘Weirdo artist woman.’
Auntie Kath throws her head back and lets out a throaty laugh. ‘Not weird,’ she says, wiping at the edges of her black-lined eyes. ‘Geez, kid. If you could see some of the jerks I went to uni with. Then you’ll know weird.’
‘I wonder if any of them can cook …’ I say, wistfully.
‘Most of them can barely remember their own names.’ Kath puts two fingers up to her lips and blows out with a wink at me. I get the idea.
She turns into the Woolies car park and pulls to a smooth stop in one of the allocated pram spots. Auntie Kath’s car might be slightly eccentric, but her driving is never less than perfect.
‘Off you trot,’ she says, reaching over to open my door. ‘Scan those Tim Tams and mini hot dogs like your life depends on it. Make this family proud.’
‘Thanks for the lift, Auntie Kath.’
‘Bring me home some Tim Tams? I shouldn’t have mentioned them. Now my belly requires them.’
‘Done.’ I shut the passenger door. The gerbera wobbles and sags sideways like a tired old lady.
I watch Auntie Kath through the rear-view mirror as she sets it right again and pats Mabel’s dashboard tenderly. She gives me two toots and glides off into the night.
***
Rhino is already in the staff room, eating a reheated steak-and-mushroom pie from the deli.
‘Rhino,’ I say, nodding. ‘Changing it up. You haven’t had steak and mushroom before.’
He looks up. His dark eyes sparkle as he grins at me. ‘I’m trying all of them. I’m living dangerously. It’s a little pastry-based adventure, Tiger!’
Rhino is one of the few people outside my family who calls me by my proper name. It’s one of our things. His real name is Ryan, but I never call him that either.
‘Hey, what do you get if you cross a tiger with a kangaroo?’ he asks. I roll my eyes. Rhino has made it his vocation in life to Google the entirety of the world’s tiger jokes and enrich my life by reciting them all to me.
They’re getting progressively worse.
‘I don’t know, Rhino,’ I answer. ‘What do you get if you cross a tiger with a kangaroo?’
‘A stripy jumper.’
I laugh despite myself. ‘Actually terrible, Rhino. So, how’s tricks?’ I ask. It’s another one of our things.
He gives his traditional reply. ‘Oh, you know, Tiges. Just chillin’. Killin’.’
It’s a line from a movie Rhino likes. I can’t remember which one and I can’t remember when I first heard him say it, or why I started saying it too. It’s just one of those silly things you say when you work at the meaningless existence that is Woolworths. It’s just a thing; something to share.
I pull up a chair across from him at the plastic table. ‘So how is steak and mushroom?’
‘Awful, Tiges. Awful. But, as I said, adventurous. How’s Auntie K?’
‘Vehemently insisting on her normalness.’
‘“Normal” is subjective. Your Auntie Kath’s version of normal is pretty awesome, you know.’
‘I know, you know, I know. I’m only teasing her. Her car is pretty bizarre, though.’
‘Her car is for the win.’
‘You totally cannot pull off that saying.’ I swipe a chunk of pastry that’s dislodged itself from the rest of the pie, making a break for freedom from Rhino’s ravenous mouth.
‘I’m aware of that,’ he says. ‘But, to be fair, I don’t think anybody really can.’
‘Greetings, comrades.’ Flo salutes us as she makes a beeline for the fridge.
Flo’s real name is Chloe but somehow, over the year or so we’ve all been working together at Woolies, it’s become Flo. Chloe. Chlo. Chlo-flo. Flo. Now, like Ryan and Therese, Chloe also has been discarded.
‘Anybody left anything good in here?’
Work has this rule that if you leave something behind after your shift and it’s not labelled, it’s fair game. You can get some good stuff, if you work the night shift. Day people often bring dinner leftovers for lunch, and then end up caving for Jointley’s hot chips instead. This place can make hot chips seem like a necessity.
‘Nup.’ Flo sighs, slamming the door. ‘Only some of Grant’s half-eaten korma. And we all know that stuff’s the coconut-flavoured antichrist.’ She shudders. ‘I still bear the emotional scars.’
Flo flops glumly on the chair beside Rhino and ferrets around in her handbag, pulling out a foil-wrapped parcel. ‘Guess it’s Mum’s curried-egg sandwiches then.’
I wrinkle my nose. ‘I can smell them from here.’
‘You could smell them in Siberia,’ Rhino adds.
‘They’re good.’ Flo talks through a mouth of lurid yellow mush. She swallows and grins. ‘And I can breathe really hard at all the men who call me “Darling”. Winning.’
‘Is Eloise on tonight?’ Rhino asks, hopefully.
Eloise is our night manager. She’s doing Early Childhood at uni and she treats us like we’re her baby ducks. Most importantly, she turns a blind eye when we slack off and gossip.
Flo shakes her head. ‘Miserably, tonight we will be subjected to the awesomeness that is—’
‘Chloe Hammersmith, service twenty, register three please. Chloe Hammersmith.’
‘The Jamienator,’ we moan in unison.
Flo looks at her watch and sighs. ‘Seriously? I’m one minute late. Far out, the Jamienator just loves the power, doesn’t he? It’s gone straight to his stupid, pimply propeller-head. See you guys out there.’
Flo shoves the rest of her sandwich in her mouth. ‘I’m not even gunna have a Tic Tac and I’m gunna breathe straight in Jamie’s stupid face.’ She shakes her head. ‘Bloody wanker,’ she mutters as she strides out of the staff room.
Rhino pins his name badge to his tie. ‘Guess we’d better go back out and do some fruit and veg cramming, if we’re going to avoid the wrath of Jamie.’
‘Eloise will sort him out if he has a go at us,’ I say, but I’m standing already. ‘Beurre Bosc pears are back and we have dragon fruit. They’re code two-oh-one-six. Oh, and custard apples have made a reappearance, and Dutch creams, but I’d be double checking with the customers about those because they look exactly like—’
‘Okay, okay, I get it, Tiges.’ Rhino is grinning. ‘You’re a fresh produce Rain Man. Seriously, is there anything you’re not perfect at?’
I sigh. ‘No. Not really. Not that it gets me anywhere.’
‘You mean your el tragico love life?’
I clip on my neck scarf. ‘Among other things.’
I don’t mind talking about love with Rhino. I don’t mind talking about anything with Rhino. We may not talk about clouds and death and the future, but when I talk to Rhino nothing feels serious. Even my non-existent love life seems somehow kind of funny. It feels as if we’re laughing at ourselves. At our misery. We’re in this together.
Rhino—with his big nose and his braces and his wild long black hair—is like me. We’re messy people. Lost people. Rhino understands.
He knows what I’m talking about, when I say that my heart is like a tomato that’s been trampled by a marauding bull in Pamplona (at one of those festivals where dickhead Australians line up to get gored).
Rhino had a girlfriend, a while back. Her name was Aysha. She was horrible to him and broke his poor little rhinoceros heart. There were no tiger jokes for a whole week.
Rhino knows love; the wrong kind. The kind that hurts.
He hasn’t mentioned a girl for a while now. I wonder if he’s got his eye on anyone. I feel bad that I haven’t asked him.
‘What about you?’ I ask. ‘Are you truly, madly, deeply in love with anyone?’
‘Excellent daggy nineties reference, Tiger,’ he says. ‘Savage Garden, I do believe. Whatever happened to them?’
‘You didn’t answer my question, Rhizencrantz.’ I pull his long black ponytail. ‘Are you under love’s heavy burden?’
Rhino gives a small salute. ‘Since you asked so creatively ... I am, in fact, a rhino in love.’
I punch him on the arm. ‘You have a girlfriend? That’s great! But why did I not know this?’
Rhino looks past me. ‘Um, I’m a man of mystery?’ he says. He waggles his eyebrows at me.
I clap my hands. ‘Ee! I must know everything. Tell me all about your girlfriend. What’s her name? What’s she—’
‘No time, Tiger,’ Rhino says. ‘You know the Jamienator waits for no man. Or tiger. Or rhinoceros.’
‘I know,’ I sigh. ‘Remember last time we were late?’
‘Toothbrushes. Potato crates. Scrubbing. I remember.’ He rolls his eyes. ‘The man is a walking bundle of fun. All those hours of World of Warcraft have certainly given our fearless wiener both compassion and a sense of humour. Lucky, we have each other. And Flo.’
‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Thank heavens for that. What would I do without you, Rhino?’
‘Shrivel up like a sultana, I should imagine,’ he replies.
‘My life was a gaping hole before you, my ungulate friend,’ I say, linking my arm through his as we walk towards the service desk.
‘I know it,’ he replies. And then, he begins to hum. I suppress a smile. This is another one of our ‘things’—the humming game. Rhino loves nineties pop music. I know for a fact he knows exactly what Savage Garden are up to these days. And that he knows every word to every one of their songs.
He’s made this one easy for me, because we were just talking about the cheesy Australian duo moments before. ‘“I Knew I Loved You”,’ I tell him, smugly.
‘You know you did,’ he replies, winking.
We raise our voices and sing together.
And it might be sugary and bubblegum and all things bad about music, but it’s a song about missing pieces and soulmates. I can’t help thinking about Wally. And I feel warm inside.
Dear Dad,
There’s a hole in every wall, in every chair,
in every floor,
And when I try to sit, I fall.
When I try to stand, I stumble.
When I try to find something to lean on,
I tumble.
But never all the way back to you.
Which is all I ever want—
To fall all the way back to where you are.
Chapter Six
My mum met my dad at primary school. He liked trucks and she was good at drawing them. She was good at drawing everything, actually (artistic talent runs in our family), but trucks were her speciality. She had him at, ‘So, I drew this Mack Trident, right?’
‘Axle forward or axle back?’ he squeaked, and she knew he was hers for life.
They spent every lunch hour together, drawing and playing with my dad’s Tonkas. He told her he was going to be a truckie when he was big. She knew that his mum and dad would never let him. His parents were fancy people. They lived on College Road; were best friends with Roz’s grandparents. To them, she was Laurel instead of Birdie. They made her take off her shoes before she came inside. They made her wash her hands and her knees before tea (which she thought was bizarre, because she didn’t eat with her knees). They muttered to each other about ‘compost smells’.
Mum knew that my dad would never end up a truckie, and she was right.
My mum and dad didn’t only share a love of oversized motor vehicles. They had a unicorn, called Fiona, who lived in Grandma T’s chook shed and ate all the square eggs before she and my dad could find them. Fiona laid glittery ones of her own, in exchange for the square ones, with baby unicorns inside. Sometimes Mum and Dad caught a glimpse of them—sparkling in the shards of sunlight that pierced the shed walls—before the elves came to take them away.
She and my dad would lay in wait for the elves. They wanted to follow them to the Otherwhere, where the elves lived, and where Fiona’s family lived, too. And where the sprites ran to, when they were done dancing in the dam.
But the elves were too quick and wily. They knew they were being watched. They paid the chooks in special, chocolate-flavoured feed, to act as diversions, so they could run away unnoticed. And so the chooks would flap their wings, the roosters would crow, and my mum and dad would become distracted, just for a moment, and the elves would be gone.
They’d traipse back to Grandma T’s, disheartened, and tell Auntie Kath all about it—the unicorns and the elves and the glittery eggs and the double-crossing chooks. Auntie Kath would draw pictures of the elves and the eggs—her pictures were beautiful, but Mum told her that they didn’t look right.
So Auntie Kath would tell Mum to draw her own pictures, so she could see where she had gone wrong.
My mum and dad would take out their notebooks and their boxes of pencils to draw Fiona, the elves and sometimes the Otherwhere.
Neither of them could draw like Auntie Kath, but there was no denying that they were committed, wholeheartedly, to their Otherworld vision.
Even if my dad’s drawings always had trucks in them.
Grandma T would bring them glasses of blackcurrant juice and ginger cake, hot from the oven, with butter spread on half-a-centimetre thick.
They’d all sit together—Mum, Dad, Auntie Kath and Grandma T—until the black BMW pulled up on the road (never in the driveway) and honked its horn.
‘And your dad would always say, “Thanks for the cake and thanks for the juice and I’ll be back tomorrow, Birdie. We’ll catch those dorky elves.’’’
Auntie Kath’s eyes look faraway and soft, when she speaks of those times. I know she can see it, inside her head, like a movie that’s always playing; a constant spool of light and sound—and her.
She smiles. ‘And Birdie would say, “Thank you for the drawing,” because he would have given her his picture to keep, like he always did. And your Grandma T wo
uld say, “Look forward to seeing you tomorrow, young man. You have good dreams tonight.” And, I’ll never forget this, your father always looked sad then and said, “I don’t think I dream.’’ The Beemer would honk again—they never came in—and he always walked out so … diminished. When he was hunting elves and drawing trucks, your dad seemed like a tall boy, but when that black car beeped he shrank. We used to watch him walking towards it and wish we could keep him.’
They couldn’t keep him. I couldn’t keep him, either.
Now, Wally and I are the ones sitting together, watching the chook shed. We never see unicorns or the sneaky elves. But with Wally, I can believe that they’re real.
Nick Wallace is the kind of kid who makes you believe in miracles.
‘Your mum was like that, too,’ Auntie Kath tells me.
And she hands me a picture she drew, while we chatted about the olden days.
It’s of an elf, of course, on a unicorn. But it looks just like me. ‘I’m not an elf,’ I tell her. ‘I’m not magical.’
She rolls her eyes and holds out her hand. ‘Dance with me, Tiger.’
‘There’s no music playing,’ I argue. ‘And don’t say something cheesy about dancing to the music inside my head.’
‘Never,’ she growls in reply. ‘Would I ever say something like that? Does anyone ever say something like that, outside of American romcoms?’
‘I don’t think American romcoms have been a thing for at least a decade,’ I point out.
Auntie Kath presses play on the old CD player that sits on top of the fridge. ‘And neither have CDs,’ I add.
She laughs as the first few bars of a song begin to waft out of the dusty speakers. It’s a song I know well, because Auntie Kath plays it all the time. It’s a song from her childhood—a song about magic and miracles from the old hippie band, Fleetwood Mac.
‘Good call,’ I tell her, as she skips with me around the room. ‘Did you have that queued up, ready to go?’
‘Nope,’ she says. ‘It’s just magic.’
‘And there are elves in Grandma T’s shed,’ I drawl.
