Six Impossible Things (8 page)

Howard breaks free as a woman comes out from the back of the shop. He jumps all over her, tail in propeller mode. She rubs his ears in exactly the way he loves.

‘And who’s your friend, Howard?’ she asks him, smiling at me. ‘Are you the nephew, young man?’

‘I’m Dan. I think it’s great-nephew, or something.’

‘Good to meet you, Dan. I’m Mary Da Silva. Wait right here,’ she says.

She comes back out in a minute or two and hands me a lumpy paper bag.

I notice the humungous diamond earrings she’s wearing. She’s the one who got the rocks. They look kind of awful but great with her bright pink sari and red polar fleece hoodie.

‘Bones,’ she says, nodding at the bag. ‘Give him one once or twice a week. Good for his teeth. I used to feed the gang each night when I brought Adelaide’s dinner. These three moved in here when home delivery stopped. You can take them back, if you want.’

I shake my head. ‘My mother’s allergic. And she’s running a food business. We don’t even know if we’re allowed to have Howard.’ I realise I’m blabbing private stuff and for all I know her husband’s the council health inspector. ‘But please don’t mention that to anyone. I couldn’t stand it if we had to get rid of him.’

She taps the side of her nose. ‘I’m a tomb, Dan. Is that the correct idiom? Or do I mean a grave?’

‘Like, “your secret will go with me to the grave”?’

‘Just so!’

‘Thanks for that.’

‘Your mother never stopped coming by to visit, but Adelaide wouldn’t see her towards the end. I tried to get cleaners in, too, but all to no avail. She said she’d seen enough people, and done enough talking.’

Howard is looking up at her with his tail down, as though he understands what she’s saying.

‘You don’t need anyone to work in your shop, do you?’

‘No. You could try Phrenology, though. Speak to Ali, the tall bald man. He uses casual staff.’

I get into a bit of trouble at home for lurking too close to the inspection zone, but it’s not severe. My mother’s got the official green light for the kitchen to operate commercially. You would think she’d be happy but after dinner she’s just sitting with the missing-in-action face listening to Radiohead, so I leave her communing with her sadness and her favourite band, and go upstairs for my first weights session.

Lying down flat on my back, my arms stretched out in a T, I can see two things that make me uncomfortable. The first is dust balls that have been mating in captivity under my bed. Nestled in the herd’s midst is an unopened present from my dad.

It seems that getting used to my dad being gay would be a lot easier if he’d bothered hanging around so I could talk to him about it. But I straightaway know that’s not exactly fair. He’s been ringing me since he left. So technically, it’s me not being available to talk.

Howard is the only one I can discuss it with. I’m beginning to think that getting used to my dad being gay is something like going into the ocean. It’s freezing to an unbearable level for a while, then once you’re in it feels fine and you wonder what the problem was. Unfortunately, I’m still only in up to my ankles taking chicken-shit steps.

Lifting the two weights is a gut-straining debacle. As much as I heave, I can barely get them off the floor. Lifting one, with both hands, at chest level is more manageable.

The second thing I cannot avoid seeing as I lie here is the ceiling. Straight through that ceiling is the attic, and next to that attic is Estelle’s attic.

I’m obsessing about Estelle. It’s killing me knowing how much we have in common but being unable to convey this burning fact due to severe social disability. (
How
I know we have so much in common is in a category of worry I can’t even discuss with Howard.)

When I think about the gaffes-to-date list, it seems unlikely I’ll ever be friends with Estelle, let alone even approaching a romance.

Estelle has seen me:

1 Answer to ‘dickhead’ – whale of a first impression.

2 Forget to bring Howard home.

3 Fail to answer a simple maths question.

4 Nearly vomit in class.

5 Faint in class.

6 Act like a prize idiot in the laneway.

Could I be making a worse impression?

When is the tide going to turn?

In my churning inadequacy I lose count of the reps and accidentally let the weight crash into my face.

M
Y MOTHER OBVIOUSLY DOESN’T
hear my agonised moaning over Radiohead’s agonised moaning or I’m sure she would have been upstairs in a flash. As it is, I self-administer first aid. It’s easy to make a cold compress when the water comes out of the taps like ice. I think I’ve done a good job, so it’s surprising to see how swollen my nose and left eye are in the morning. I look like I’ve been on the receiving end of a serious thumping.

While I’m doing some tough-guy gangster talk into the mirror – you ought to see the other guy, etc – I notice that I really need a shave. Like really overdue need. Exactly how to go about that is the sort of thing I would have asked my dad if I’d had a clue he was going to leave us. Even though everything else on the bathroom shelf, from paracetamol to tampons, has detailed instructions and warnings, razors don’t. I don’t want to risk slicing off my top lip, but there’s no way I can ask my mother, that’d just be rubbing salt into the absent-father wound. Maybe there’s a product along the lines of ‘my sucky little first razor’ with step-by-step illustrations for klutzes. Or maybe not. I’ll just add straggly, raised-by-wolves facial hair to my long list of charms.

Well used to my clumsiness, my mother gives an absentminded, ‘Oh, darling’ when she sees me. She guesses – ‘tripped over your pants’, ‘fell out of bed’, ‘opened the window in your face’ – and nods when I tell her what happened. ‘Full marks for originality there,’ she says, ruffling my hair on her way out.

When I arrive at school Mr Pittney takes one look at me and asks me to follow him. After I finally convince him that I’m not being bullied, he assumes a more gentle expression and starts asking me how things are at home. I tell him the truth: as well as can be expected in the pretty dire circumstances, which include our sudden loss of fortune, my mother’s growing Radiohead habit . . . But he cuts me short. Ushering me out, he assures me that listening to the radio is quite safe, and that his door is always open. He closes it on me while I’m still wondering if I can ask such a moustached person about shaving without it seeming like I’m having a go. ‘Do you know how to use a razor, Mr Pittney?’, ‘Got any tips on shaving, Mr Pittney?’

Nah, it’d never work.

In the classroom corridor at the end of the day there’s a new mad energy zipping around like a snitch. People are yapping, whooping, laughing, yelling. Talking about limos and dresses and dates. A notice about the Year Nine social has just gone up. I search the crowd for another unexcited face: Lou. Thank you. She comes over.

‘It’s the first school dance for two years. Thus the hysteria level,’ she says. ‘The last one got busted when someone tipped off the police about drug use in the school.’

‘What did they find?’

‘Not much, but we got a dodgy rep anyway. And the local paper ran an “underage drug-fuelled orgy” sort of headline, so that was pretty funny.’

‘Will you go?’ I ask.

‘Not unless they make it compulsory,’ she says.

‘Same,’ I say. But I’m thinking, not unless I can go with Estelle.

And tickets are twenty bucks – another reminder that I need a job, in case I do end up going.

My locker has been tagged again. That’s another group I’m growing to know and love: the would-be homies who never have a fat texta far from their grimy paws. But it’s just about impossible to get mad with people dumb enough to leave their brand name at the crime scene. The ‘FBK’ crew guy gives me a reserved nod. I reserve-nod him back.

Reaching into my locker there’s an alarming amount of wrist and forearm emerging from my grey shirtsleeves and jumper. I could do with a couple of sizes up, but when we bought this in the holidays it fitted fine, with room for growing. I look down. Pants much too short as well. This is good. Facial hair, swollen nose, black eye, clothes that don’t fit – the whole cool thing is coming along nicely.

When I let myself in the front door, I can hear muffled shouting coming from the back of the house. I drop my bag and head for the kitchen. As I open the door ready to spring into attack, if necessary, my mother holds up her hand in a ‘wait there’ sign.
Amnesiac
is playing in the background and a young woman is pointing at an empty kitchen chair, sobbing ‘. . . and this wedding is
not
just about me, and my dress, and my cake, and my mother. Thank God I found out what a petty monster you are before it was too late.’ She glances up at my mother, who is nodding her calm approval. Then the woman stands up and kicks the chair over. ‘Bastard!’

I gather the empty chair is her soon-to-be-ex-fiancé. She bursts into tears and flings her arms around my mother.

Another one bites the dust.

Howard and I turn into the Edinburgh Gardens for a few laps of the big oval. He’s dragging his paws a bit but managing to keep up.

We’ve been running for nearly an hour and I still can’t figure out how to persuade my mother to stop putting her clients off the idea of marriage. She’s shooting herself in the foot but who am I to lay down the law? Isn’t it obvious that people have to go through with a wedding in order to need a wedding cake?

When I get home, my mother is happily singing along to ‘No Surprises’, possibly her favourite Radiohead song.

‘Did she change her mind? Is she ordering the cake?’

‘Oh, no,’ she replies vaguely.

‘Then how come you’re singing? Haven’t you just lost another customer?’

‘Yes, but she was going to order the Rambling Rose.’

The Rambling Rose is the most expensive cake in the range. Three tiers, covered in hand-made pink chocolate roses and marzipan ribbons.

‘But not any more?’

‘But only because she’s not getting married any more. She loved it!’

‘That’s . . . great.’

I go upstairs for a shower. She’s deluded, maybe in need of professional counselling. What should I do? My dad would know what to do. But if he were here, she wouldn’t be having the meltdown. And he’s not, so it’s up to me. I don’t want to go back down there and be the grown-up. I prefer being the kid with parents doing the hard stuff.

Stirring the stew, I try to channel my dad’s tone: firm but humorous. I take a deep breath of the tomato-y, garlicky steam, and leap in.

‘You can’t keep talking people out of getting married.’

‘I just want them to consider the pros and cons.’

‘You’re going overboard on the cons. It’s not your job. Your job is the cake.’

‘I need to get to know them so I can plan the right cake. And then how can I give them an ethical cake if I think they’re making a huge mistake?’

‘You’re dumping a whole anti-marriage thing on them.’

‘No, I’m not.’

‘All you need is the date of the wedding, the number of guests, and get them to choose from the cake pictures which one they like.’

I’m speaking to her back.

‘And that chair business – give me a break – you’re not some daytime TV shrink.’