Cash caught my eye and patted the carpet next to him. ‘Sit down, Jez,’ he urged, smiling.
‘Oh, that’s okay, maybe I should get going . . .’ I was smug in my knowledge that somebody would urge me to stay. And I wanted to stay. The Hollands role-playing a family unit was something I could participate in. If they had been a genuinely tight family, I might have felt more weird about it.
‘Yes, for goodness sake, stop hovering over there.’ Mrs Holland nodded reprovingly. ‘Come and have something to eat.’ She held out a bowl of rice crackers.
I gave Mrs Holland a smile, which she returned with a quick nod.
‘What are you guys watching?’ I asked, as I crossed the room and knelt on the carpet next to Cash, my hand already in the cracker bowl.
FIFTEEN
The next few days dragged oooon and oooon and it became too hot to even consider going outside in the daytime. Heatwave. Like, forty fucking degrees or something. I spent hours at a time lazing on my bed in front of the fan with a wet tea towel over my head, surfing the net on Mum’s laptop, checking Facebook every half an hour and staring at my mobile phone, willing it to ring. I wanted Lukey to ring, but he didn’t. He wasn’t even posting on Facebook, and I should know because I was lurking his page, looking through his photos, a lot of them of him and me, identical in our long black fringes and silver-studded faces, mouths drawn into little pouts. ’Cos I was, like, sooo experienced at sex by then (sargasm) I even started fantasising about what it might be like to have sex with Lukey. But then I’d think of fat Laura and it really killed the buzz.
When I wasn’t Facestalking Lukey I thought about Cash, and how it had been THREE WHOLE DAYS (six hours, seventeen minutes) since the night in the tent and he hadn’t so much as fanged me a text or anything. Even though it was scorching, I pulled on some shorts and a singlet and sat on the porch hoping to catch a glimpse of Cash over the fence. I didn’t see him.
I went back to my room and flopped onto the bed. The place smelled stale from the cups of half-drunken instant coffee that were growing awesome little mould gardens and there were crumbs between the sheets from all the biscuits I’d been nibbling over Mum’s laptop, too hot and lazy to fix myself something proper to eat. I flopped my legs open and kind of played with myself a bit, buzzing again on the sex thing, this time picturing Cash’s face, body, smile . . . the smell of petrol and dry sweat. It was like when you’re a kid and you discover a new game on the Playstation and you just have to play it, like, twelve hours a day. I’d discovered my vagina and I wanted to use it.
I didn’t want to call Cash. I was too nervous about sounding desperate. So I rang Casey and the call went to voicemail.
‘Hey, Case, where are you guys? I’m bored shitless. Call me back.’
‘Jez?’ Mum’s head peeking around the edge of my bedroom door made me bolt upright and clamp my legs together.
‘What?!’ I snapped, hurriedly pulling the bed sheet up around my waist.
‘Mail for you.’ Mum held up a postcard. From across the room I could see a white sand beach dotted with palm trees.
‘Mail?’
I never got mail. Who sent mail these days? Only old people. My nan used to mail me a birthday card with ten bucks enclosed every year before she died, and she only lived a few streets over.
‘Can I come in?’ Mum had her sad-sack head on, and I knew straightaway it wasn’t good news.
I sighed and sat upright. ‘Can you pass me a t-shirt?’
Mum picked a t-shirt off the floor and tossed it into my lap.
I pulled it over my head as she perched on the end of my bed picking at the postage stamp on the corner of the card.
I put my hand out and Mum placed the card in my palm, sort of reluctantly, I thought. I turned the card over and recognised my dad’s handwriting, bending back and forth across the page like a drunkard trying to walk home from a big night at the pub.
‘Did you read this?’ I demanded.
‘I couldn’t help it, Jez,’ Mum said defensively. ‘I saw it was from Paulie.’
Annoyed at her, I turned the card over and began to read.
Hey Jezza,
Sorry I didn’t have time to call before we left, a bit of a Christmas present to ourselves, me and Tanya are enjoying a bit of a break in Phuket! It was a last-minute deal. You’d love it here. Lots of cheap shopping, nice beaches, too—almost as good as Batemans Bay! Another bit of good news, we are now husband and wife! Amazing what a few cocktails in the sun will do to you. Wired a fifty to your mum’s bank account for your Chrissie present, don’t spend it all at once!
Love, Paulie
Before I finished reading the words I could feel the rage and betrayal rising in my gut.
‘That fucking faggot!’ I screamed, scrunching the postcard in my fist and hurling it across the room. ‘Selfish fucking piece of shit!’
Mum tried to move closer and hug me. ‘I know, honey, I know. I feel so mad, too —’
‘Mum, just . . .’ I wriggled past her. ‘Get off me!’
‘Jez, you’re not the only one —’
‘MUM! That postcard was addressed to ME. I don’t want to hear about how YOU feel. Why do you have to make everything about YOU all the time. Go drink a fucking bottle, booze hag!’
I regretted my words as soon as they left my mouth and Mum’s face twisted like she’d sucked a sour Warhead. I turned my back so I wouldn’t have to see her and tugged on my jeans.
Mum spoke quietly. ‘I know it’s not just about me. He’s an arsehole, Jez. He’s always been selfish, you know that.’
‘Yeah,’ I muttered, searching my shelves for a stashed smoke.
‘Where are you going?’ Mum asked.
‘Outside. For a fag.’ I looked up to see her staring into her lap, looking a bit dazed.
She hoisted herself off my bed. ‘I’ll join you.’
After a cigarette Mum and I sat in the kitchen in front of the fan drinking icy-cold Diet Coke. We bitched about Dad, trying to outdo each other with stories about how much of a selfish dickhead he was and how much he’d fucked us over.
‘Remember the time when I was five and he missed my birthday party for his mate’s housewarming?’
‘I remember when you were still a baby and your dad got so maggot he passed out in the bathroom and got his stupid fat head lodged behind the S-bend of the dunny. I just left him there. Stuff him, I thought.’
I kind of smiled at that story, in spite of myself.
‘C’mon.’ Mum wriggled up out of her chair. ‘No point sitting around here in this hothouse. We need some retail therapy.’
‘Shopping?’ I kind of brightened a little. Mum hardly ever forked out money for new clothes and stuff like that. It never really bothered me ’cos me and Lukey would go ‘clothesline shopping’, hopping back fences and pinching stuff we liked off lines.
‘Yep.’ Mum nodded. ‘Let’s go. At least we’ll be in the air con.’
As we entered the shopping centre, the sight of every store and walkway packed with pine trees and tinsel and baubles, teeming with Christmas shoppers, school holiday crowds of kids and their fat-arsed mums pushing prams kind of put a weird cheer in me. Like, I can be a total cynical bitch about the Valley where I live, and how people buy shit to make their boring shitty dead-end jobs more meaningful, ’cos they can go ‘Oooh, look, I have a nice telly and a shiny car, so it doesn’t suck that much to flip burgers at Hungry Jacks’, but at the end of the day, I guess either I am a total hypocrite or my life is just as fucking boring and dead end, ’cos seriously, put me in a store full of shiny new things and a fat stack of cash in my paw and I’m a happy camper. There’s something really soulless about a shopping centre that I like, ’cos it doesn’t pretend, y’know? The people who live in the suburbs who play happy families and try to pretend they’re something they aren’t, they are the ones that cheese me off. Shopping centres are all just a soulless shiny veneer of promised happiness packaged into a box and labelled ‘Made in China�
��. I dunno why I find that comforting, but I do.
I was also thinking, I really hope nobody from school sees me at the Tuggeranong Hyperdome Shopping Centre with my mum. That sounds mega bitchy, but people who haven’t seen her before always have that ‘That’s your mum?!’ expression on their dial and it really gets my goat because I can tell they are thinking why is she so fat when Jez is such a string-bean. But really, compared to some of the trogs hoofing around Tuggers, Mum wasn’t that fat. She did have a big arse, though. A definite apple.
‘Where to first?’ Mum asked. ‘Kmart? I dunno about you, but I need new undies.’
‘Oh, God,’ I groaned. ‘Please don’t make me come look at undies with you. Please.’
Mum looked distracted. ‘We splitting up, then? You got some cash?’
‘I’d love some cash.’ My mouth kind of slipped into a goofy grin at the thought.
This is what I mean about shops. You can try to be all anti-consumer because you realise western society is, like, brainwashed into needing a whole bunch of shit that apparently makes life easier, but really makes it so complicated. But I like having money and stuff, so sue me.
Mum opened her wallet. ‘That fifty bucks from your dad, and fifty from me, too. An early Chrissie present.’ She pressed it hurriedly into my hand while looking over my shoulder. I turned and followed her line of vision.
‘Ha!’ I snorted. ‘It’s fucking Jeremy.’
Mum and I stood and watched Jeremy the bartender from the club, wearing a Balmain Tigers jersey and carrying a bunch of shopping bags. He lifted one arm full of bags in a wave.
‘He is such a dork.’ I giggled.
‘Jez!’ Mum hissed. ‘Be nice.’
‘Ladies.’ Jeremy nodded self-consciously. ‘Doing your Christmas shopping?’
It was amazing to me that Jeremy was the same age as Cash and that they’d been best mates in high school. Jeremy had two patches of receding hair on either side of his temple that left a small circle-shaped island of hair in the middle of his forehead. He also had the beginnings of a beer gut, terrible dress sense, vaguely smelled of sweaty socks and just generally was a bit of a gronk. Nice guy, though, I guess.
‘Just gunna get a few bits and bobs,’ Mum said, sort of all bashful and hugging her handbag to her belly.
‘Same,’ said Jeremy, holding up his shopping.
There was an awkward silence as Mum and Jeremy shifted their feet and tried to hide the little smiles that were tugging at the corners of their lips. I looked from one to the other, drinking in the body language—the way Mum was clutching and rubbing at her arms as though she was cold, the way Jeremy swapped the bags from one hand to the other to redistribute the weight of his shopping. If somebody had told me this morning that I was going to witness this today I would have laughed and told them to get fucked! But here it was, in front of me, plain as Arrowroots next to Tim Tams! My mother and Jeremy the bartender (who had to be, what, eight years younger than her?!) were fucking.
I looked at Mum, and she looked up and met my eyes and then she knew that I knew, and we both looked at Jeremy and he just stared back with his gob hanging open slightly.
‘So . . . erm . . . Can I buy you a coffee, Helen?’ Jeremy burbled.
‘Yeah,’ I said raising my eyebrows and giving her the hairy eyeball. ‘You should go have a coffee.’
‘Okay then.’ Mum’s eyes flitted to me and then to Jeremy and then to me again, the rounds of her cheeks tinged with pink. ‘Sounds good.’
‘Well, then,’ I said, all cold so my mother could see how mega annoyed I was. ‘I’ll message you for a lift home?’
‘Yep,’ Mum mumbled, unable to meet my eyes.
I turned on my heel and stalked away, past the centre court and vaguely towards the food hall, but sort of stumbling without thinking about any destination, pushing past shoppers and tripping over kids and prams. I felt shocked and disgusted with my mother. How long had she been seeing Jeremy? I tried to think back to all those nights she came in late, drunk, passed out on the couch. Now that I think of it there were some nights when she didn’t come home at all and I’d just assumed she’d crashed at Shaz’s. That sneaky little bitch!
I stumbled into Hungry Jacks and ordered a large fries and a Diet Coke and then sat in one of the booths and nibbled at the end of a chip, but they were all limp and oily and felt gross in my mouth so I pushed the box of fries away and just sat there sipping on my Coke. It was lunchtime and the place was packed with young families, mums who didn’t look much older than me, feeding the faces of toddlers as they squirmed in their chairs and squealed and unwrapped their Happy Meal toys and then roared past me, screeching with joy. Amazing the number of fat arses that waddled past, their trays loaded with burgers and fries and chocolate sundaes. Troglodytes and evolutionary throwbacks. Where did all these breeders even meet each other? I sank lower in my seat and clutched at my head, feeling as energetic as a sack of spuds.
It wasn’t like I was angry that Mum had been fucking (which was icky to think about), it’s more that it was such a shady fuck, a cougar fuck, and that she’d hidden it from me. Mum had never really had boyfriends—scrap that, she had never had a boyfriend, not since she got divorced from Paulie. Turns out, funnily enough, that men don’t go for single mums who list telly, binge eating and getting maggot as their hobbies. Imagine that as an ad on eHarmony.com!
My mum was more the type to talk about men to make it seem like she was still in the game. I remember when I was a kid, on Monday nights Mum, Shaz, Linda and Kaye would watch Sex and the City on our sixty-centimetre analogue cube telly. If they drank enough vodka and cranberry mixers they could forget they were four women in a lounge room in Kambah, wearing ripped jeans and Converse sneakers and threadbare cardigans and suddenly, by common bond of being single and fast approaching thirty, they were Carrie, Charlotte, Samantha and Miranda (minus the careers, money, clothes and bodies) when really all they had in common with the characters was that they talked a lot about men and men’s cocks and relationships and drank like desert camels.
Men who they had dumped were ‘immature’ or ‘not ready’. Men who had dumped them were ‘selfish’, ‘shit in bed’. Men they were currently seeing ‘had potential’. Then there were the men about whom they fantasised—their ideal men who were sensitive, considerate, romantic and funny—that none of them seemed to actually know, but were more like mythical creatures they’d heard about from telly or other women. To find one of these men seemed to be the secret quest of the single woman. I also came to understand that to be a single mother, like my mum, meant you had less time to spend pursuing men, or that the ‘good’ men were turned off by the fact that you’d already had a child with another man. As a gangly nine-year-old, with teeth that seemed too large for my mouth and eyes that were set just far enough apart to look a bit weird, I decided that I would never be like my mum and have a kid on my own.
It was around that time that Kaye and Linda both got pregnant within a year of each other. Shaz had announced loudly, pointedly staring at me, that now the party was really over. And she was right. Kaye and Linda stopped coming around to our house for drinks and gossip and dinner parties. And when they showed up months later with softly wrapped bundles in the crooks of their arms, they seemed like different women. They didn’t take their eyes off their bundles, craning their necks and tilting them under their nose for another sniff of the downy tufts on top of their little heads. The conversation with Mum was over a cup of tea, and involved talking about how little sleep they got, but the complaints were always accompanied by smug little smiles, as if to say but I wouldn’t trade sleep for this . . . Linda came accompanied by a large man with the muscles of a rugby player and a big lippy grin, introduced to me as ‘Davo’. He hovered constantly at Linda’s side, a second pair of eyes glued to their newborn boy. I knew it was understood that Linda had special status among the group now. I could also see the envy in my mother’s eyes. She tried not to show it. She would say things like,
You are the love of my life, Jez and Who needs boys when we’ve got each other, hey?, but even as a kid I’d watched enough movies to know that ours wasn’t the model of a perfect family. There was supposed to be some Jerry Maguire moment when, even though my mum was thirty-something, overweight, single, with a kid, ‘Jerry’ came through the door and looked her straight in the eye and said, You complete me. But that never happened.
Maybe I should have been happy for Mum, if rooting Jeremy made her happy, but honestly I couldn’t have felt more sorry for myself at that moment, sitting alone in Hungry Jacks with a box of sodden shoestring fries and a watery Coke. Fuck my life! Fuck the world! The little voice inside my head was seething. And just when I thought my day couldn’t get any worse, I heard a shrill-as-fuck voice calling out my name.
‘Jeeeez!’
SIXTEEN
Get fuuuucked.
I bunched up my mouth into a pained expression of really really obvious get the fuck away from me, but Laura, teetering on kitten heels, carrying a full tray of food, was totally oblivious and plopped herself into the booth seat opposite me.
‘The vegie burgers are so delicious!’ Laura exclaimed, tearing the paper off her burger like a five-year-old opens a Chrissie present. ‘Oh. My.’ Laura took a massive bite. ‘Gaaarsggghssh.’
She chucked her burger back on the tray and took a giant slurp of her drink and a handful of fries with the other hand.
‘How are you, Jez?’ Laura asked as if suddenly remembering that I was there. ‘I’m starving. Dana and Joan have been dragging me around Christmas shopping for, like, hours! My feet actually hurt.’
‘You’re wearing heels,’ I pointed out. ‘To the Tuggeranong Hyperdome,’ I added to stress how ludicrous she looked.
Snake Bite Page 10
