Alex as Well (15 page)

DOWNSTAIRS I TELL Dad that I need to go to rehearsal. He mumbles something about having to go back to the hospital anyway, and asks if I can help him pack a bag for my mother.

He drags a suitcase out of the hall cupboard. It’s a big suitcase, as if he expects her to be in there for a year.

I open the cupboard drawers, selecting things that might be useful for her, and stack them on the end of their bed. Three pairs of pyjamas. Some trackpants. A few T-shirts. My mother’s walk-in wardrobe smells like her—that slightly sour tinge to her breath, and a little musty, like an old lady. It’s not a fresh smell, or a clean smell. She smells unwell. She has for a long time.

It occurs to me that she might have a tumour or early onset dementia—some disease making her the way that she is. Would it make any difference to the way I feel?

If a husband bashes his wife because he has depression,
does that make it ok? Alex asks.

I leave my father to pick out underwear, and go into the en suite to get some toiletries.

She probably won’t need much makeup, but I put in some mascara and a kohl pencil, some tinted moisturiser, and a ChapStick—enough to make her feel made up if that’s what she wants.

This is good—taking these things of hers and packing them in a bag, as if I am taking memories and packing them in the back of my mind.

I’m angry now, but maybe eventually I won’t be. One day I will just be sad for her. It could be some time before I will even think of her fondly. I can’t imagine that right now, but I can imagine imagining it.

WE PULL UP out the front of the school. My dad asks if I want him to come in with me. I would like him to, but I decide to go in by myself.

I’m sweating. I stand outside the door for a minute, taking deep breaths. Then I open the door. Everybody turns to look at me. I pull my shoulders back and walk in like a model. Not sexy, just long strides, as if I am going somewhere.

Lien is pleased to see me. ‘My home girl is here,’ she says.

Somebody snorts.

I can see Amina now. She is looking straight at me. I can’t tell what she’s thinking. I don’t know if we’re still friends.

But Lien is leading me away now, to get dressed. There is a rack of clothes they have chosen for me. I will wait for Amina to come up to me. Julia is getting
dressed. She’s not looking at me.

They’ve made up a practice runway. It looks like trestle tables stacked together. Some of the other girls are walking up and down in their outfits.

When I get up there, they all move to the side.

I’m standing on the runway, and Lien is talking me up to her client.

Julia has this furious expression on her face. Finally she calls out to them, ‘You know she’s a dude, right?’

A few of the other girls giggle.

Amina shoots her a look.

I swallow, but I try to steel my face, because this is a job, and it could be a really good job. A ticket to freedom.

The door opens at the back of the room. My dad stands there, against the wall, watching.

Amina pauses. ‘Sierra is really upset,’ she says to me.

‘Yeah, I guessed that.’

‘But I understand why you wouldn’t tell something like that,’ she continues.

Lien calls out to me. ‘Chop, chop, Miss Thing.’

I drag the next set of pants up my legs, and do them up under the skirt.

‘I think you are courageous,’ Amina whispers, and then she smiles at me.

It’s just a little quiet smile, but it’s the best smile in the world. It doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks.
Afterwards I ask Dad to take me to the coffee shop near Crockett’s office. I order some scones with jam, but when they come I can’t eat them because my guts are twisted. I am picking them to pieces on the plate.

Dad has two cappuccinos in quick succession. He’s looking at the wine list, and then he turns it upside down and puts the salt and pepper shakers on it, as if it needs to be held down or some hard liquor is going to jump up and order itself.

I squint up at the window that faces the street above Crockett’s office. There’s a little alcove where I can put a clothes rack and dry my smalls. I could plant some flowers in pots. Maybe hang a hammock.

‘I have found a place to live,’ I say.

Dad rubs his eyes with the heels of his hands. ‘Alex, you have no idea. There are bills—responsibilities. You don’t even have a driver’s license. How are you going to get power connected? You can’t just decide to live somewhere.’

I interrupt. ‘When I need your help I will ask for it.’

‘You think we’re just going to give you money when you ask for it? Alex, honey, you can’t move out. It’s not going to happen. Can we stop this? Please? Just come home. Your mum will come around. Trust me. This is just a rough patch. You should have seen her before the wedding. Granted, she gets hysterical. She doesn’t cope well with change.’

I’m turning the scones into dust. ‘See, you think
I’m being a brat, and I think I am escaping an abusive relationship.’

I flick my eyes up to him and back down at my plate.

Dad’s face is going red. He’s going to start a rant but he stops himself. We sit in silence for a moment. He’s jiggling his knee.

I’m twisting the jam pot around in my hands. ‘You can still be in my family, but…’

His mouth drops open, so I talk really quickly, trying to get out what I need to say. ‘Instead of always saying I’m wrong, or automatically telling me that I’m hurtful, or childish, or rude, or whatever, you could try to actually help me.’

He throws his hands up. ‘And now an ultimatum. Is that what this is? We have to do it your way or else we can’t be your
family
? This is you not being a brat?’

I have to concentrate on the plate and not look at him while I’m talking. ‘It hasn’t even got anything to do with you. You could, like, be constructive. Because what I’m saying is that I can’t be with people who are trying as hard as they can to…to wreck my life.’

His face is red. His leg jiggles so hard that the table wobbles.

‘Can you see that? How hard it is already? Without someone coming in and being’—I hold my fingers up like quotation marks—‘hysterical?’

He’s considering it. He really is.

Remind him that he wanted this, Alex whispers in my ear.

‘But I’m doing what you asked me to do,’ I say. ‘I’m talking. We’re having proper grown up conversation.’

Dad sighs. ‘I guess. But the conversations I have with you are never the ones I’m expecting to have. Every one is a friggen ambush.’

‘Maybe you could think of them as a surprise party instead?’

His lip quivers. ‘A surprise party.’ He nods slowly. ‘I can try.’ He leans forward. ‘In return you have to try not to see your mother as the enemy. Can you try?’

Can we try that? Alex asks me.

I don’t think so, but Alex says that we can tell him that we can try.

We can definitely do that.

LIVING WITH NATALIE is nothing like I pictured in my head. Not that I’m complaining, because it’s a million times better than living with my parents, but I think I have seen too many episodes of
Friends
. A share house is nothing like that.

I have a mattress on the floor in my room, and a bag of clothes in the corner, and that’s about it. The room is so empty there’s an echo. The first time I went grocery shopping I didn’t know what to buy. I bought soap and other cleaning things, two-minute noodles, and some hot chocolate, and even that was nearly fifty bucks.

Lien said she has work coming up for me, so that’s good.

This evening I told Natalie I was going to order a pizza, and she looked at me and said, ‘That’s nice.’ She went into her room and shut the door. She does that a lot. I guess she is used to living in hotel rooms.

Natalie has a television in there, and a laptop. I can hear it going. And she talks on her mobile phone. There’s nothing in the lounge room. I went to the second-hand bookshop and bought all their Sweet Valley High books. They gave me ten for five dollars.

When the pizza came I knocked on the door to offer her some, but she looked surprised.

‘Oh, no, sorry, I’m going to the pub with some friends.’

She does that a lot too. I don’t think Natalie wants to be my friend. Secretly, I don’t even think she wants me to be here.

Not much of a secret, Alex notes.

She’s used to having this place to herself, but at least she’s not telling me what to do.

I will work on her. I can be lovable. I’ll show her my fast clapping. Who can resist that?

At school Ty has started calling me Lola, after that song by the Kinks. He thinks it’s hilarious. I don’t mind it. Lola’s quite a nice name.

Ty still sits next to me in art metal. He doesn’t hate me; he’s just embarrassed for liking me in the first place. He still stares at me, but now it’s all curious and confused, like a puppy with its head tilted. I think he will come around eventually.

He’s helping me with my letterbox, because I’m no good, and he is. It’s going to be great. It will be a keepsake for this time in my life.

Sierra and Julia don’t sit with us anymore. It’s just me and Amina. We spend quite a lot of time down at the oval. I’ve been doing the timekeeping for the athletics team. It’s a very serious business. All the runners have told me their best times, and the times they are hoping for. I love it when they finish running; they spin around and look up at me, because they want to know how they have gone.

They’re on the track together, but they’re not racing each other at all, they’ve each got their own thing going on.

Today a boy that I’d never seen before slammed me into the wall when I was on the stairwell. ‘Lola the molar,’ he said. Which doesn’t make any sense. I figured that he thinks my name is actually Lola, and the moll part is just a generic insult.

When he pushed me, I hit my head against the wall, and it hurt, but it won’t kill me.

Another boy, who I also didn’t know, shoved him in the chest.

‘You’re such a dick, don’t you know she’s a retard?’ he said.

I laughed. It was a high-pitched, squeally kind of laugh so I can see how the second guy might have made the mistake.

I laughed because people are always going to give me a hard time. I might even get beaten up now and again.
But there are worse things than people you don’t care about not liking you.

I laughed because out the front of this school is a giant billboard. It’s me up there, arching my eyebrow, in a bowler hat, with the drawn-on moustache, blowing a kiss.

It’s me up there, dressed like a girl dressed like a boy.

Lines from the following songs used with permission: ‘Halo’, EVAN BOGART, BEYONCE KNOWLES, RYAN TEDDER, © Copyright Kobalt Music Publishing Australia Pty Ltd on behalf of Write 2 Live Publishing, and © Copyright 2008 B Day Publishing, EMI April Music Inc, EMI Music Publishing Australia Pty Ltd; ‘I Gotta Feeling’, WILLIAM ADAMS, STACY FERGUSON, JAIME GOMEZ, DAVID GUETTA, ALLAN APLL PINEDA, FREDERIC JEAN RIESTERER, © Copyright What A Publishing Ltd and Rister Editions administered by J Albert & Son Pty Ltd, and © Copyright 2009 Headphone Junkie Publishing LLC, EMI April Music Inc, EMI Music Publishing Australia Pty Ltd; ‘Party in the USA’, JESSICA CORNISH, LUKASZ GOTTWALD, CLAUDE KELLY, © Copyright Kobalt Music Publishing Australia Pty Ltd on behalf of Kasz Money Publishing; ‘Price Tag’, JESSICA CORNISH, LUKASZ GOTTWALD, CLAUDE KELLY, BOBBY RAY SIMMONS, © Copyright Kobalt Music Publishing Australia Pty Ltd on behalf of Prescription Songs and Kasz Money Publishing, and © Copyright Songs Of Universal, Inc. /Ham Squad Music, administered by Universal Music Publishing Pty Ltd; ‘So What’, MAX MARTIN, ALICIA MOORE, JOHAN SCHUSTER, © Copyright Kobalt Music Publishing Australia Pty Ltd on behalf of MXM Music AB, and © Copyright 2008 Pink Inside Publishing, EMI Blackwood Music Inc, EMI Music Publishing Australia Pty Ltd; ‘What Ya Want From Me’, MAX MARTIN, ALICIA MOORE, JOHAN SCHUSTER, © Copyright Kobalt Music Publishing Australia Pty Ltd on behalf of MXM Music AB, and © Copyright 2009 EMI Music Publishing, EMI Music Publishing Australia Pty Ltd; ‘My Humps’, David Payton, William Adams, © Copyright Jimi Mac Music, administered by Universal Music Publishing Pty Ltd; ‘Single Ladies’, EVAN BOGART, BEYONCE KNOWLES, RYAN TEDDER, © Copyright 2008 B Day Publishing, EMI April Music Inc, EMI Music Publishing Australia Pty Ltd; ‘Don’t Stop the Music’, T. HERMANSEN, M. ERIKSEN, F. STORM, M. JACKSON, © Copyright 2006 EMI Music Publishing, EMI Music Publishing Australia Pty Ltd.