Miss Understood (13 page)

‘Sometimes,’ she said. ‘They don’t like their clothes any more, or they’re cleaning out their house and figure they could just donate all their books, for example.’

‘Or their souvenirs? Why would someone give away their souvenirs?’

‘Maybe they want to forget they ever went to those places,’ she suggested. ‘Now, we’ve had a whole lot of clean laundry just come back. When you’ve had your cup of tea, how do you feel about sorting some clothes?’

‘I can do that,’ I said, because I could.

I spent the rest of the morning taking clothes out of cardboard boxes and sorting them into different piles: ladies’ clothes, men’s clothes, children’s clothes. A few bits of underwear had slipped in there by accident (I didn’t really like handling those) but everything else was all right, and I only had to ask for help a couple of times, with cardigans that looked like they should have been ladies’ cardigans, but were actually for men.

A few more people came in to help part-way through the morning – a lady called Pat whose nose whistled while she breathed, as well as a man and his wife – their names were Mr and Mrs Stirling. Mr Stirling had a terrible cough that was so loud and violent that I thought he was going to blow his entire face right off, while Mrs Stirling was almost completely deaf, and I couldn’t work out whether she’d gone deaf because of his cough, or if she was just plain lucky.

It did feel a bit weird, hanging out with only old people, but it was fun helping customers in the front part of the shop. Sometimes people would ask if we had this or that or something else, like jeans in a certain size, or any straw gardening hats, or a certain kind of jug, and I would have to go out the back through the
STAFF ONLY
curtain (I liked that bit – it made me feel important) and look through all the stuff we were sorting.

Around the middle of the day, Mrs Gardiner came over to where I was tidying up the puzzles and games in the kids’ corner. ‘I suppose you’ll be going home now?’ she said. ‘It’s after twelve-thirty.’

‘Is it? I guess I will, then,’ I replied.

‘Do you need to call your parents?’ she asked. ‘You can use the phone out the back.’

‘It’s okay,’ I told her. ‘I have my own phone.’ And just to prove that I was telling her the truth, I pulled my phone out of my pocket and showed it to her.

And that was when she kind of rolled her eyes and said something about me being too young to have a mobile phone.

‘It’s for emergencies,’ I said, which was half-true, since I’ve never had a proper emergency to call anyone about on my phone, and I also use it to call people like Jenni just so I can have a chat.

‘Very well,’ she said, looking past me at one of the customers. ‘So, when are you back?’

‘When do you want me to come back?’ I asked her.

‘Ivy Huntley is here again on Saturday. You could do another morning then, if you like.’

‘Thanks, I’ll check with Mum, but I don’t do school on Saturday anyway, so it should be fine,’ I said. ‘Oh, can I ask you something, Mrs Gardiner?’

‘Of course,’ she said, but she still seemed distracted.

‘Did I do an okay job today?’

‘No,’ she replied, looking right at me while she said it, which made me feel really self-conscious.

‘I didn’t?’

‘No, you did a
great
job. See you Saturday?’

‘I’m looking forward to it,’ I said, because then I was.

W
hile I was waiting out the front of the shop for Dad to come and pick me up, I saw something that was kind of weird.

It was a man.

Now, I know that’s not weird, because you see men all the time. And sometimes you see men wearing ties, sometimes you see men with moustaches, and sometimes you see men carrying stuff around in big black garbage bags. But I reckon it’s a bit unusual to see a man in a tie – a gold tie – and a moustache carrying one of those big black garbage bags down the footpath.

I stared at him. He looked very familiar to me, although I couldn’t remember where I recognised him from. And when I saw the way he was staring at me, I decided that I must have been familiar to him too. Unless he thought that I was weird as well. Or he might have thought that I was rude, just staring at him. Which I guess I was, except I didn’t mean to stare – I was only looking. And there is a difference.

But then something else happened. The bag began to split. You know how they say that things sometimes feel like they’re happening in slow motion? Well, this actually
was
in slow motion, because as I watched, I saw the side of the bag start to go all tight and shiny, as if something hard and a bit pointy was pressing against it, and then it got even shinier and tighter, and then the plastic popped and began to tear, but slowly, as the pointy corner of a box of some kind made the hole wide, and then the clothes inside the bag made the hole even wider. And then, because the man hadn’t noticed yet, the hole just kept stretching (still in slow motion) until a box of laundry detergent (the same brand that my mum uses) and a whole bunch of clothes pushed all the way through and flopped out onto the footpath.

That was when the man noticed, and he said a word that I might have heard before (but I wasn’t quite sure) and he crouched down and started trying to stuff the clothes back into the hole. But I knew they wouldn’t stay in there, no matter how hard he stuffed them in, and I guess he must have known that too, because he gave up, and kind of hung his head, and I think if there hadn’t been a girl watching him he might have actually cried.

I put my phone away and went over to help him. I didn’t have a bag to put his clothes in, but I still thought I could help. ‘We’re still open,’ I said.

He looked up at me, all confused. ‘What?’

‘The Helping Hands shop – we’re still open. I work there,’ I said.

‘Why would I want the . . . Oh, I get it,’ he said. Then he smiled, which made two dimples that were kind of hidden under the ends of his piratey moustache. ‘No, I’m not taking these clothes to the charity shop. I’m taking them home. To where I live, I mean.’

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘I thought you were . . .’ And I pointed at the shop.

‘Oh, no, I’ve just come back from the coin laundry.’ Then he sighed. ‘You know that shop you work in?’

I nodded. ‘Helping Hands.’

‘Right, Helping Hands. You wouldn’t have a spare plastic bag in there, would you? You know, a big one, like this. Only it would be good if it was stronger than this.’

‘We have heaps of plastic bags,’ I said, because we did – practically all the clothes and things people brought in to donate came in plastic bags of some kind or another. ‘Would you like me to get one for you?’

‘Yes, please.’

‘Wait here,’ I said, even though it probably wouldn’t have mattered if he had come into the shop with me.

‘I’ll be right here brushing the dirt off my clean laundry,’ he said, laying a pair of jeans over his knee and spanking them.

Mrs Gardiner seemed surprised to see me come in again. ‘You’re back,’ she said, as if I didn’t know.

‘Can I get one of those leftover plastic bags from out the back?’ I asked her.

She gave me this very confused look. ‘What for?’

‘A friend,’ I said, even though he wasn’t really one of those. ‘His bag broke.’

‘Um . . . I suppose that would be all right,’ she said, and she just kind of nodded towards the
STAFF ONLY
curtain.

When I got back outside with the big pink and white stripey bag (the kind you can buy at junk shops), the man with the gold tie was sitting on the bus stop bench near the front door. He had all his clean clothes beside him in two neat piles, and he looked up as I came out of the shop. ‘Oh, you are a superstar,’ he said. ‘Thank you so much.’

‘You’re welcome,’ I said, just as Dad pulled up. ‘Well, this is my ride, so I’ll see you later, I guess.’

‘Who was that you were talking to?’ Dad asked as I buckled up my seatbelt.

‘Oh, just this guy whose bag busted open,’ I answered. ‘I got him a new one. See? Community service.’

‘Nice one,’ he said, nodding. ‘You’re a good kid, Betty.’

Out of the corner of my eye I glimpsed something big and white in the back of the car. I turned and looked, and saw a large box wedged in beside Richie’s car seat. ‘What’s that?’ I asked.

‘That? I bought it.’

This wasn’t really much of a surprise, to be honest. ‘But what is it?’ I asked him again. Then, so I wouldn’t have to wait for him to answer, I reached back and turned it so I could see the printing on the side. ‘An expresso machine?’

He sighed. ‘It’s not “expresso”, it’s “espresso”.’

‘Isn’t that basically just a coffee machine? We’ve already got one of those,’ I said, because we did. It was quite expensive when Mum and Dad first bought it, but I felt pretty sure that it wouldn’t have cost as much as this one. This one looked
ex-pen-sive
!

‘This, my love, is a
better
espresso machine than the one we’ve already got,’ Dad said. ‘
Much
better.’

‘Was it expensive?’

That was when he made a face that said three things, all at once. His expression said, ‘Oh yes, it was very expensive’. It also said, ‘But it was
so
worth it!’ And the third thing it said was, ‘Your mum is going to be pretty mad about how much money I just spent on this thing’.

When we got home, Dad followed me down the hallway to the kitchen carrying the huge box from the back seat of the car. Mum was sitting on the couch folding clothes, and as he came in, she looked up, and a puzzled sort of expression came across her face.

‘What have you got there, Marty?’ she asked him.

I thought about telling her that it was an espresso machine, since it said so right there on the side of the box, but then I figured that she could probably read better than me, so unless she’d forgotten how, she must have had another reason for asking.

‘I’ve wanted one of these for a while,’ Dad said. ‘It was on special.’

‘Seriously, Marty? I thought we talked about this last night.’

‘It wasn’t really this,’ Dad said.

‘No, it was things
like
this. Things
exactly
like this.’

Dad dumped the box on the kitchen counter. ‘Look, I don’t feel like discussing it right now.’

‘No, well, don’t you dare unpack that thing – not until we’ve had a little chat.’

I took a deep breath. I know what it means when Mum says ‘a little chat’, although I doubted that Dad was about to be sent to his room or have his pocket money cut in half.

‘Lizzie . . .’ Mum said.

But I’d already started heading for the stairs. ‘Yeah, yeah, I’m going. I’ll be upstairs practising my spelling words,’ I said.

I don’t want you to think that I’m sneaky, because I’m not, but I have to confess that I didn’t go straight to my room. I stopped for a little while at the top of the stairs. And while I didn’t hear the whole conversation, the bits I heard were these: Mum was saying stuff like, ‘I think it’s symptomatic, Marty,’ and ‘You can’t push that feeling away by buying more
things
,’ and ‘It has to stop, Marty,’ and ‘You need to see someone.’ And Dad was saying stuff like, ‘It’s not a symptom of anything!’ and ‘What? It’s got nothing to do with that!’ and ‘Who are you – my mother?’ and ‘Oh, and what would
they
tell me? That I’m crazy, or nasty, or just pathetic?’

After a while, because I couldn’t make any sense at all out of these different bits of conversation, I did go to my room. But I couldn’t practise my spelling, because I’d left my spelling sheets downstairs, and I wasn’t going to head back down there while such a confusing conversation was going on. So then I thought I would call Jenni, just for a chat, before I remembered that it was early on a Wednesday afternoon, and she would still be at school.

With Amanda Jenkins.

And that just made me cry.

Shortly after that I heard the front door close, and when I looked out my window, I saw Dad driving away, with the big white box in the back seat.

And even though I wasn’t sure why, that made me cry even harder.

A
little while after Dad had left to return the espresso machine – and luckily after my eyes weren’t red from crying any more – Mum came upstairs and told me that I had to catch up on the schoolwork I’d missed while I was away for the morning.

Catch up? Did that mean I was falling behind? How? Hadn’t she noticed that I was the only kid in her class? (Unless you count Richie, that is, who would rather eat a crayon than write with it. And Muppet, who just lay at my feet and snored all day.) But I didn’t want to cause the second fight of the day, so I asked her what she thought I should be doing.

‘Have you decided yet on who you’re going to interview for your project?’ she asked.

‘Maybe. Is Dad okay?’

‘Yes. So, the project –’

‘And are you okay?’

‘Yes, Lizzie, I’m fine.’

‘And how about you
and
Dad – are
you
okay?’

That was when Mum gave me that special ‘we’re not talking about this any more’ stare that she only takes out once in a while. ‘So, who is it you’re doing the project on?’

‘I said I’d “maybe” decided, not “definitely”.’

‘Can you give me a hint? Because if you need me to help set up the interview –’

‘It’s fine,’ I said, because it was. ‘I’ll organise it. Actually, I’ve kind of already started.’ (This was also quite true.)

Mum raised her eyebrows at me. ‘I’m impressed,’ she said. ‘You’ve already organised your interview?’

‘Kind of,’ I answered. ‘So, do you want me to work on it?’

‘Sure,’ she said.

‘But you’re not allowed to look,’ I said.

‘If you want to do it all on your own, that’s entirely up to you,’ Mum said. ‘How about you work on it until three o’clock, then you’re done for the day.’

At ten past three I put my books away and texted Jenni, telling her to call me when she could talk. I really wanted to tell her about my day.

She didn’t reply to the text, so I lay on my bed and played some games for a while, and talked to Muppet, and tried not to get impatient, which is really hard to do.