Am I Right or Am I Right? (11 page)

Chapter 18

The seal on the Fridge comes unstuck

Dear Calma,

I’m sorry. You’re right. I can’t complain about a lack of communication when I’m rarely around. Things are difficult at the moment. There’s a lot going on. I’ll tell you about it soon. Just give me time, please, and don’t judge me too harshly. I love you, you know. I might not show it too often, but I do.

Keep Wednesday evening free, if you can (or you want). Birthday girl! I thought I’d take you and Jason for a meal. Invite Vanessa, if you like.

Love,

Mum

P.S. What do you want for a present?

Dear Fridge,

It’s funny, isn’t it? You want so badly to stay mad at someone, but as soon as they apologize, all those resolutions evaporate. I would love to have a birthday meal with you. Particularly at your expense. I’ll ask Vanessa, and Jason if the bastard ever deigns to call me.

There’s only one thing I want from you for my birthday. More time. More conversation. More honesty. Sorry, I guess that’s three things. I know I sound corny, but it’s true.

Love,

Calma

From:
Miss Moss

To:
Calma Harrison

Subject:
Free verse

Calma,

As you know, free verse poetry follows no set rhythmical pattern. The writer uses her judgment to establish a pattern on the page. It is not an easy form to get right! You must be aware of the sound quality of individual words and how they can be put together to create music. And sense, of course.

Take a memory from childhood—any memory—and write a free verse poem that captures that memory and shows its effect upon you now.

Miss Moss

The night my father left

The night my father left, he cried;

So Mother says—I don’t recall.

The memory I possess predates that time—

A holiday, the three of us in snow,

Happy and powdered in laughter.

I lay on a bed of winter and watched

As, far above, a snowflake

(Individual as a poem in the oneness of its pattern)

Was minted, pressed from water and cold

In the stillness of the sky.

It crowded toward the gathering white below

Where, settling on the landscape of my face,

It fell in upon itself, shrank to a drop

I wiped away with my hand.

It is intensely sad,

The ease with which we brush aside

Something that can never be again,

With the semblance of a tear.

Chapter 19

Vanessa and the stars

Vanessa sat next to me in English, but we didn’t get a chance to talk. Miss Moss set a close reading to do under timed conditions and it was a tricky little beggar. In fact, once I got into it, I forgot everything else. It’s what athletes call “the zone”—an area of such concentration that a small incendiary device could be detonated next to you and you wouldn’t blink. That’s how I was with this piece of writing—totally absorbed by the ways the writer created atmosphere.

All right. You can smirk. Some people get fascinated with Justin Timberlake’s facial hair, others with the relationship between sentence structure and characterization. Hey, everyone’s different. So shoot me!

Anyway, the time flew and then it was math. Vanessa isn’t in my math class, so I didn’t catch up with her until lunch. I went down to our stamping ground by the canteen and there she was, gazing into the distance and nibbling another banana. I plopped myself beside her and followed her line of vision. As far as I could tell, she was staring at a trash bin on the edge of the oval. Even by the general standards of trash bins, this wasn’t a particularly interesting one, but everyone has their personal “zone.” We sat in companionable silence for a minute or two while I thought about the best way of broaching the subject of Friday night. Unfortunately, my thoughts were interrupted by Jamie Gallagher passing by and making an observation about my head, which was gloriously and unashamedly bare.

“Hey, Calma,” he said. “Love the head. You know what would look good on it? A cue stick.”

“Thanks, Jamie,” I replied. “Do you know what would look good on your head? A pit bull terrier.”

His eyes took on that pained glaze of concentration people get when they’re searching for a clever response but can’t find it. He scurried off, still thinking, and I turned to Vanessa.

“What did you think of the film on Friday?”

She turned her head so slowly I wondered if her neck mechanism was in need of service.

“Okay,” she said finally, investing the judgment with no emotion whatsoever.

“Johnny Depp was hot, hey?”

“Okay, I guess.”

“The parrot was the best actor of the lot of them, mind.”

“Yeah.”

“How was the weekend with your dad?”

“Okay.”

I was used to Vanessa’s monosyllabic style of communication, but this was ludicrously unforthcoming, even by her own standards. Under other circumstances, I would have poked her in the eye with the nonmushy end of her own banana, but I was considerate.

“Did your mum give you my message?”

“Oh, yeah. Too late to call, though. Sorry. I was really tired.”

I decided a change of topic might loosen her up—you know, the stars on the periphery of your vision and all that—so I told her about the incident at Crazi-Cheep on Saturday night. I tried to make it as funny as possible. I guess, in a way, it
was
funny, but I really hammed it up, exaggerating it to bring out all the comic details. I was pleased with the way I told it. Vanessa even laughed at one stage, though I got the impression the laugh escaped unwillingly. But at least I broke through her reserve, the barrier she constructed without even being aware of it. By the time I finished, she had relaxed slightly. Physically, she was carved from a single piece of mahogany, but I could tell that emotionally she wasn’t as inflexible.

I followed the hilarious incident of the runt and the frying pan with the invitation to dinner on Wednesday night and she agreed to come, though not without considerable urging after I told her Jason would probably be there. She trotted out all the reasons about not wanting to be a fifth wheel, but I managed to wear her down.

The conversation went so well I pushed my luck. The bell had rung and we were wandering over to our legal studies class.

“Nessa?” I said. “I saw you Friday night. After the film. You were sitting on a bench by the river and you were upset. I was going to come over, but you took off. Is everything okay?”

As soon as I asked, I knew it was a mistake. I wasn’t looking directly at her but I knew she stiffened. You can tell these things. And the atmosphere—I’m good at atmospheres—suddenly became arctic. It was ninety degrees in the schoolyard, but we were walking in our own refrigerated capsule. I didn’t say anything else. I shoot too often and too wildly from the lip, but even I realized damage control was best achieved through silence. When Vanessa spoke, I knew she was lying. I also knew I couldn’t confront her with it.

“You must have been mistaken, Calma,” she said. “It wasn’t me.”

“Oh? Yeah. I must have been. Sorry,” I replied.

We sat together in legal studies and I worked on defrosting the situation. By the end of the class I’d made some headway. We were only up to cool, but to my mind that was better than frozen.

Jason was waiting for me at the end of the day. He was smiling and leaning up against an old but neat-looking black sports car in the student car park. I couldn’t help it. I gave a loud whoop and ran, dragging Vanessa behind me.

“Cool,” I said, not even bothering how unoriginal I sounded. “Is this yours?”

Jason’s smile broadened. He was beaming so much that if his grin got any wider the top of his head would drop off.

“Like it?” he said.

“It’s great!”

“Got it yesterday. Had to go out of town, down the coast a ways.”

I thumped him on the arm.

“Bastard!” I said. “So that’s why you didn’t come to see me?”

Jason rubbed his arm ruefully.

“God, Calma. For a chick, you pack a hell of a punch. That’ll bruise.”

“Good. You deserve it.”

He put his arm around me.

“I know. I meant to come round. But the motor negotiations took longer than I thought. My dad and I didn’t get back until ten in the evening. I was going to give you a bell, but…here I am. Fancy a spin?”

I’d forgotten Jason and Vanessa didn’t know each other. They’d been briefly introduced at the cinema on Friday, but Vanessa was hanging back now, sidling off into the distance and giving a convincing impression of a fifth wheel. I grabbed her by the sleeve and pulled her back.

“Can Vanessa come? You remember Vanessa, from the cinema?”

Jason smiled again, all flashing white teeth and gleaming olive skin.

“Yeah, of course. There’s room in the back.”

Vanessa went scarlet.

“No. You guys go. I’m fine,” she spluttered.

But I wasn’t letting her get away with that. I had to repair the earlier damage.

“No chance. You’re coming with us, isn’t she, Jason?”

“Sure. Hey, what about going to Waterworld? We could get there in twenty minutes.”

Now this made me more excited, if that was possible. Waterworld had only just opened a week ago, and I wanted to check it out. I’d heard it was brilliant, with scary slides and fountains and waterfalls and everything.

“Fantastic,” I said. “Can we drop into Crazi-Cheep so I can get my pay and then stop off at Vanessa’s place and mine to pick up bathing suits?”

“Sorted.”

Vanessa continued to object, but Jason and I overrode her. The thing was, Vanessa loved swimming. It was the only thing she showed any enthusiasm for. Mention swimming and
both
her eyebrows would lift fractionally—the Vanessa equivalent of screaming “You beauty!” at the top of her lungs. I knew she really wanted to go and it was just a case of applying enough pressure.

I slung her bag into the back of the car and bundled her in after it. Jason helped me into the bucket seat at the front.

What a gentleman.

And then he went around to the driver’s side and slipped into the seat without opening the door.

What a stud.

He turned the ignition key.

“Hey, matey,” I said over the engine noise. “Just so you know. I am not impressed by speed, risk taking, and general dickhead driving behavior. Any of that and I’m out of the car and you’re history. Okay?”

“Anything you say, Calma,” he replied, putting the car in gear, releasing the clutch, and leaving the car park as if from a greased slingshot. But I didn’t have to worry. Jason was a good driver and he didn’t drive fast. There’s something about sports cars, though, particularly convertibles, that gives the impression of speed. Perhaps it’s to do with being close to the ground, but even at 30 mph I felt the exhilaration associated with extreme sports. I missed having hair. It would have been great to have had locks fluttering in the slipstream. I could have tossed my head and laughed, like they do in movies. As it was, small insects kept colliding with my scalp, like asteroids impacting the moon. They bloody hurt too.

The image of the moon bothered me. I hoped I wouldn’t get out of the car with craters all over my head.

We stopped at my house first and I grabbed my suit in record time. By an amazing stroke of luck, I found it in the first drawer I opened. Given the mess in my bedroom, this was akin to finding a needle in a whole field of haystacks. Then it was off to Vanessa’s house.

Mrs. Aldrick opened the door, took one look at me and Vanessa, and jumped behind a six-foot wall of sandbags positioned in the center of the living room. Well, actually, she didn’t. But I was amazed, as always, by the air of terror she exuded in the most commonplace of circumstances. I didn’t get time to think about it. Vanessa grabbed her suit and a towel and then it was on to Crazi-Cheep.

Candy was chewing slowly behind the customer service desk. I wondered if she slept there, standing up in an unconscious state like horses are rumored to do, jaws moving in dreamlike rumination. Then I thought,
Who cares?
and got my paycheck. It was pitifully thin but at least it made me feel independent. My first wages! I couldn’t wait to spend the lot, even if that would only take five minutes. Provided I was frugal.

I was approaching the automatic doors when a woman grabbed me by the arm. It took a few seconds to place her. It was my first customer, the woman I had overcharged. I remembered the kindness of her face and the infectious laughter. She wasn’t laughing now. Her face was crinkled into lines of worry and she held on to my arm with a firm, almost desperate grip.

“Oh, Calma,” she said. “How are you feeling?”

I was puzzled and it must have shown on my face because she continued.

“I read about it in the newspaper. How dreadful. And how brave, the way you tackled him, a crazed gunman, with just a frying pan. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” I replied. “We’re trained for this sort of thing. It comes between the session on how to stack spaghetti and the one about mopping up milk spills. ‘Methods of disarming homicidal maniacs with domestic appliances.’”

I regretted the remark as soon as it passed my lips. She was so nice she didn’t deserve sarcasm. But sometimes I can’t help myself. I needn’t have worried, though. Her eyes sparkled with humor and she laughed. The entire store stopped and stared and I noticed some of the customers were laughing too. Even Candy, not known for a well-developed sense of humor—
any
sense of humor, come to think of it—twisted her mouth in a passable imitation of a smile. And
they
didn’t know what they were laughing at.

“I’m so sorry,” I said, “but I’ve got people waiting for me. I must dash.”

The woman wiped her eyes with one hand and waved at me with the other.

“Go on, go on,” she said between gasps of laughter. “I’m just glad you’re all right.”

Just occasionally, you need your faith in human nature restored. I thought as much as I got into the car, still chuckling, and Jason pulled out of the car park. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a small, balding man waving. Then he was gone and in three seconds I had forgotten he was ever there.

We headed off along the coast road. It was one of those days when it felt good to be alive. The sky was powdery blue, with little wisps of cloud arranged artistically for maximum aesthetic effect. The ocean was a glorious green with feathers of white breakers. A warm wind buffeted our faces and my skin tingled in the sun. It was lovely.

Talking was difficult. The wind whipped the words away as soon as they left my mouth. So I leaned close to Jason’s ear and yelled. I could smell his skin, earthy, with the faintest tinge of aftershave, and my blood pumped with dangerous excitement. I asked if he could make it for the meal on Wednesday with me, the Fridge, and Vanessa. He frowned a little, eyes fixed on the road.

“What’s the occasion?” he yelled.

“My birthday,” I screamed back.

“Shite,” he bellowed. “Just my luck to get a girlfriend a few days before her birthday. Bad financial planning, that.”

“Maybe you should dump me on Tuesday and then get back together on Thursday,” I suggested.

“Hey,” he said, “good thinking, Calma. I like the cut of your jib.”

“Course,” I continued, “you’d be financially in the black, but emotionally deep in the brown stuff.”

“Yeah. Point taken.” He took a sharp corner and the muscles in his forearm flexed as he moved the wheel. Back on the straight, he turned his eyes toward me. “I’d love to come. I’m supposed to be working, but I’ll get out of it.”

There was silence for a while and then he spoke again.

“Meeting your mother? It’s not the first step to marriage, is it?”

“I’ve no idea,” I said. “You could
try
proposing to her, but it’s risky on the first date, and anyway, I’m not sure she’s your type.”

I felt happy. I hadn’t felt really happy for a long time and I was enjoying it. I didn’t want the drive to end. I could have stayed there forever, yelling stupid comments into Jason’s ear, the wind against my head, the sun and the clouds and the sea spread before me, as if for my eyes only.