Inbetween Days (10 page)

‘Called in sick,' Trudy said, and mimicked my dry cough perfectly.

‘Let's move,' I blurted. ‘Let's go and live somewhere else.'

‘Uh-oh,' she said, gently tracing the pouches under my eyes. She held her cool palms against my heated cheeks.

My face crumpled and I thought,
Why can't I control my own face
?

Trudy led me into the dining room and patted a spare chair. ‘It's time.'

‘Time for what?' I sniffed and sat.

‘Initiation into The Sisterhood of the Cask.'

‘You sound like you started quite a while ago.'

Trudy mock-frowned. ‘I'm as jober as a sudge. I'm not as thissed as many thinkle peep I am. The drunker I sit here, the longer I get, and get my mords all wuddled up and fool feelish.'

‘I'm not up to it. I'm going to bed.'

‘Oh no, you're not! We're going to cheer you up.' She squirted wine into a glass, right up to the rim.

I threw it back to keep her happy but she immediately topped it up from the sweating cask on the table. ‘This is disgusting.'

Mads and Trudy dragged their chairs and boxed me in like two concerned bookends.

‘Mother's milk,' Mads said. ‘It'll put hair on your chest.'

‘What happened?' Trudy asked, and leaned so close I could count her pores. ‘Maybe we should talk about break-up etiquette before you make a complete fool of yourself.'

‘I didn't say we broke up. He just didn't turn up.'

‘Same difference.'

‘Oh, honey,' said Mads, wet-eyed. ‘Love is a splinter. It'll fester for a while, but eventually it'll work itself out.'

‘Love is a splinter,' I repeated.

‘Nice,' Trudy said. ‘But you're wrong. Love is a pie.'

‘How is love a pie?' Mads scoffed.

Trudy stood up and held her wine glass as if she was making a toast. ‘It's something you put your whole heart into. You stand on his doorstep and you offer him this pie that you have baked tenderly, and he picks at the crust, maybe takes a bite, then he gives you back the pie and says, “I don't like this pie. I don't want your pie.” And you're left with a pie that will never be perfect again. The next time you offer your pie to someone, they know someone else has already taken a bite. Maybe all the filling is gone and you only have soggy pastry to offer. In return, all you get is someone else's half-eaten pie because that's all you deserve when that's all you have to trade. Or you get someone else's perfect pie but, by then, you're partial to half-eaten pie, so you fuck up their pie and move on. First love is a show pie. Every love after it is a reheated delicatessen pie and it tastes like shit, because you remember what first pie tastes like and it'll never be the same again. So, now you've learned to protect your pie and you'll never make the mistake of holding it out with both hands again—now you'll offer your half-eaten pie with one hand, while the other hand will stay behind your back, holding a fork.'

‘What's the fork for?' Mads asked.

Trudy made a stabbing motion, then slapped her forehead. ‘My point is, Mads, never ever show both hands.'

I laughed. ‘Love is not a pie. That makes no sense.'

‘It will some day.'

‘You're a freak,' I said.

‘Freaks like us,' Trudy said triumphantly, ‘don't get our hearts broken.'

Trudy and Mads got steadily more drunk. I was only a couple of glasses behind. I lit a cigarette and smoked half of it expertly but without enjoyment, before Trudy snatched it away and ground it out. I kept whining. I blamed our possible break-up on distance, then on Luke, and finally on myself for not being older and more…just more. Trudy said letting go was classy and hanging on was undignified. Mads confessed she once drove past her ex's house thirty times in one night and for six months she'd gone to sleep wearing one of his shirts that she'd stolen from his washing line.

‘This almost makes up for a very ordinary day. I love you, Gertrude,' I said, goofily.

Trudy smiled and mock-dabbed the corner of her eye. ‘Wanna play cards?'

The cask emptied. This was how I had imagined every night would be, plus or minus Mads: our own place, our secrets and dreams spilled across the table. Ma would have loved to see her girls together like this. I'd caught up. My vision blurred and glittered; my elbows got sticky. We ate cheese without biscuits and licked onion dip from a spoon.

‘I've changed my mind,' Trudy announced.

‘Oh, God. What is love now?' Mads groaned.

‘Not about that. I've been thinking. You're right,' she said to me. ‘You should be able to invite your boyfriend over. Ma doesn't live here and we do. So, it's decided. He can stay over if that's what you want.'

Mads nodded and patted Trudy on the back.

Trudy waited, bright-eyed, for my reaction.

The alcoholic daze lifted. I was left with clear, painful perception. Trudy wasn't given to performing random acts of kindness; she wouldn't do anything for anyone if it didn't suit her. ‘You're seeing somebody.'

She drew back as if I'd spat, but Mads's expression gave Trudy away. ‘What's that got to do with anything?'

‘Don't even try to pretend you're doing this for me.'

Trudy looked uneasy, angry.

‘You are, aren't you? You want to play sleepovers with your new boyfriend and you don't want to look like a hypocrite.'

Gypsy—who could always sense when we were about to boil over—pressed her body against my leg beneath the table. She shook.

‘You're only seventeen. You could get me into a whole lot of trouble with Ma,' Trudy said. ‘I thought you'd be happy.'

‘You went overseas when you weren't much older than I am,' I yelled. ‘I know it's not for me—I'm not stupid. Thanks a lot. You're about two weeks too late. Luke and I never had a chance.'

Gypsy moved away and my leg went cold. Mads was already stuffing her things into her bag.

‘Don't leave,' Trudy said. ‘Sleep it off on the couch.
She
can leave.
We
were having a good time.' She slammed the dining-room door.

A violent draft blew my hair back. I stabbed my middle finger into the hole in the veneer.

I found Gypsy lying on my bed. She huffed and moved over.

‘I hate her,' I whispered, wiping her chin. ‘And I'm sick of carrying on better conversations with old people who drool and can't talk back.' I stared into her beloved face.

She gazed back quizzically.

‘You are my people,' I said.

CHAPTER NINE

On Monday, I went across to Mrs Gates's salon during my lunchbreak, but not before I'd eaten Astrid's salad sandwich. She'd brought Adam with her and let him play shopkeeper on my checkout; he'd filled a trolley with stock and stacked it all on my counter. Astrid had been scrubbing surfaces so diligently that Bent Bowl Spoon was in danger of coming apart; I had hardly anything to do, apart from cleaning up Adam's mess.

‘I don't know. I just need a change,' I told Mrs Gates. I sat in front of one of her mirrors, turning my face from side to side.

‘How much of a change?' She parted my long hair and flipped it, feathering out pieces around my chin. ‘I've been cutting your hair since you were halfway up my shinbone, Jack Bates, and not once have you ever told me anything other than “Half an inch”.'

‘Make it red. And cut it up to my shoulders.'

‘Red? That's a bit radical for you. And you don't have the complexion for it.'

I stared at her black frizz and her lightning stripe and tried not to laugh. ‘I want something new.'

Not like me. Not like Trudy.

‘Your mother will have me strung up.' Mrs Gates shook her head and checked her watch. ‘She has her appointment in half an hour.'

Ma's weekly treatment and blow-dry—in all her years she'd never come out looking much different, just freshly sprayed and stiff with Mrs Gates's signature hairspray, The Black Death, which gave off an odour that made me worry she'd go off like a cracker if she strayed too close to fire.

‘I forgot about that,' I said. ‘Okay, just the usual. Half an inch.'

‘I can do you both at the same time,' Mrs Gates said, warming to the idea now that it was hers. ‘Colour's going to take a while. We have to block out this blonde with brown, and then put on a tint.'

‘I've changed my mind.' I was not in the mood for Ma. ‘I have to get back to work.'

‘Alby won't even notice you're missing. Besides, it seems like Wrong Turn Astrid is looking for things to do.' She gestured across the street. Astrid was cleaning the front windows. Adam was with her, whizzing a trolley up and down the footpath. ‘She's turned out to be rather…industrious after all, hasn't she?'

‘Yeah, she's a real treasure.' I glared at Astrid through the glass—all legs and ridiculous hair—and the force of it made her turn around. ‘I really should go. I'll book in another time.' I unsnapped the cape.

Mrs Gates pressed down on my shoulders. ‘Sit. Now what's that sister of yours up to? Nobody could work out how to change the keg last night.'

‘She's sick.'

Mrs Gates sighed. ‘Tell her that ranger guy came in moping after her again.'

Less than ten seconds and there it was. I didn't even have to ask. And ten minutes later, there was Ma.

Mrs Gates had tied my hair in a ponytail and cut it off, just below the band. She jammed me into the torture device at the basin with goo on my head and cucumber slices on my eyelids. I heard the jingle-bells over the front door and the s
cuff-scuff
of Ma's shoes.

‘The usual, Moira? Or will you be wanting a change, too?'

The chair next to me squeaked as Ma settled into it.

‘Jack's halfway to making the biggest mistake of her life so far. You've got about nine minutes to talk her out of it,' Mrs Gates said.

Silence for the longest moment. For the first time ever, Mrs Gates had nothing to say. Neither did I. The chair squeaked and the bells jangled.

‘Ma?' I said, and tried to sit up. I peeled off the cucumber slices.

‘She's gone,' Mrs Gates said. ‘Face like a cat's behind. Aren't you two getting along?'

‘Did that just happen?' I sat forward. Dye ran down my neck.

‘It did. Well, you can't live this close without rubbing up some friction, but I won't have you scaring off my regulars,' she said. ‘Let's do this. What's the final decision?'

‘Red as you can make it without giving me a whole new head. '

‘Gotcha.'

‘It'll grow out if I don't like it, right?'

‘Jack, this will be one long, leisurely repentance.'

‘I've made bigger mistakes, Mrs Gates.'

I left Bent Bowl Spoon early, before it got too dark.

I rode from Main Street to the forest without knowing exactly where I was headed until I steered up the dirt road. I'd skipped through a range of emotions and ended up numb, my face stiff with dried tears. I tried to call Luke from the public phone, but the receiver cord had been hacked off. Vandals for sure—not the first time it had happened, but the worst time. My hair was shocking red, razor-cut to just above my chin, shorter than I'd worn it for more than half my life. Astrid had laughed in my face. My belief—that a change was as good as a new personality—dissolved. Mrs Gates was right to warn me: the colour turned my skin yellow. She didn't warn me I'd feel less like a girl.

The forest was steamy after a night of light rain followed by a day of sunshine. The air clotted in my throat. I crept up quietly, tracing the fishing line without touching it. It had become slack in places but I could see where Pope had been treading a new path as he moved up and down the hillside.

When I saw him, I experienced a blood rush that felt a lot like love. He was sitting on a stump just outside the open flap of his tent. I wondered what was inside.

‘I'm still here,' he said, glancing up from the book in his lap. ‘I heard your bike.'

‘What are you reading?' I asked, stepping out from the shadows.

He closed the cover. ‘I'm not reading. What did you do to your hair?'

‘You're looking at words. If that isn't reading, what do you call it?'

‘I'm listening to my thoughts, or I was. Now I can't hear them.'

He didn't seem angry. Did he have any emotion stronger than sadness? The whites of his eyes were red, as if he'd been rubbing them. His hair was still tied back, matted in places.

‘Sorry. I was just checking on you. I'll leave you to it.'

‘I'd appreciate that.'

‘It's your life,' I snapped, and turned to go.

‘Well, it's not really, is it?' he said. ‘Now you're here, our lives have touched each other's, which goes to show, even if you come to a place to be completely alone, you can't be.' He sighed. ‘This is a world where we can't be alone anymore. There are too many of us.'

I snorted. ‘You don't like people much, do you?'

‘I like people fine,' he said, and stood up.

‘You don't have to be by yourself to feel alone.'

‘But you do have to be by yourself to
be
alone. I didn't say I wanted to feel alone. They're two distinct states.'

‘Maybe your misery needs company.'

‘See, these are the conversations I came here hoping to avoid,' he grumbled.

‘Jerk,' I said, and he choked back a laugh, which made me go one better. ‘Prick.' I started to cry.

‘Oh, damn.'

He gestured to the stump and I sat next to him, smearing snot and tears on my T-shirt. ‘Don't,' I said when he offered his own sleeve. ‘I'm fine. I've just had a very bad day.'

‘Clearly. It's getting dark. Won't your parents be missing you?' He peered along the path as if somebody might be coming for me. ‘Look, when you get to my age you'll realise it was nothing. By then you'll have real catastrophes to compare this—whatever this is—with.'