Clancy of the Undertow (15 page)

‘This is lovely,' says Mum, for the fortieth time. I guess it's a rarity for her as well, having someone to talk to.

‘It'll be nice when we get our own place, though. Won't it, sweetie?' Carla puts her arm around Nancy. ‘Be a bit more like home.'

‘Yeah,' says Nancy. ‘Definitely.'

‘Not that this place is
too
bad,' says Carla, looking at me for some reason. ‘It's nice Danny gave us the adjoining rooms.'

‘Oh man,' Nancy says to me. ‘There's this portrait opposite Mum's bed. I swear Danny's cut out the eyeholes.'

‘Nancy. Please.' Carla has her own teacher voice, which is kind of chilling.

Nancy lowers her voice. ‘One time, with breakfast, there was this rose in a vase.'

‘His mother grows roses,' says Carla, ignoring her. ‘It was very pretty.'

‘Country hospitality,' Mum says. ‘Lovely.'

‘I miss my mirror, mainly,' Carla says. ‘There's no full-length here, just the little one in the bathroom.' She stirs a sweetener into her coffee. ‘A girl gets to know her mirror, you know? You trust it, after a while. Or at least you know the best way to look good in it.'

Mum giggles, and the need to escape rises in me like bile. We're sailing dangerously close to a moment where Mum suggests we all form a bookclub. She once used the phrase
Stitch 'n' Bitch
in my presence, and I made it quickly and violently clear she never should again.

‘I could never give up my mirror,' Mum says.

I say, ‘A full-length mirror is literally my worst enemy. I spend so much of my day trying to forget what I look like. Why do I need something whose job it is to remind me?'

‘Agreed,' says Nancy.

Mum looks at me with a mixture of confusion and, strangely, admiration. Like
my daughter is still strange, but is she at the same time contributing to a conversation?

‘You're beautiful, Clancy,' says Carla. ‘Now where did your name come from, anyway? I love it.'

‘I am a product of an inexplicable love of bush poetry,' I say, which is the line I always use.

‘
Clancy of the Overflow
,' says Mum. ‘Bob's favourite poem. I think it's kind of sweet.'

‘And yet he failed to name either
boy
in our family the boy's name.'

‘It fits you though, darling.'

‘Wow. Thanks.'

Nancy goes, ‘I got my name cause Mum liked Nancy Sinatra.'

‘Hmm,' I say. ‘Only two letters different, and suddenly it's a normal name.' I give Mum a glare, but she continues to be immune to embarrassment. Her and Carla share a look.
Our daughters are so individual and amazing and aren't we blessed their screwed-up lives make ours look more normal?

Mum takes a look at her watch. ‘This is so lovely, but we've really got to go. I've got to get to work.'

‘Thanks for coming out here,' says Carla. ‘It wasn't under the best circumstances, but I think it's turned out well.'

‘I do hope we'll do it again,' says Mum. Then she raises her index finger, as if struck by divine inspiration. ‘Sunday!' she says. ‘Come over for lunch. Sunday lunch is something of a tradition in the Underhill household.'

This is news to me.

‘If we're not imposing,' says Carla.

‘Not at all. The more the merrier.'

Good luck to you, lady, I think. Try getting our family to be in one place for more than five minutes.
Something of a tradition
, indeed.

‘Lovely,' says Carla.

‘Lovely,' says Mum.

Nancy and just look at each other, like
yep
.

29

Carla and Mum talk by the car, tapping each other's number into their phones. I don't think I've ever seen my mother so excited.

Nancy and I say goodbye, and we even go to hug, which is awkward because we're leaning towards each other like a bridge, trying to keep our bodies apart. We laugh at this, knowing it means we're really alike. Just two modern ladies bonding over debilitating intimacy and trust issues.

‘Can I text you later?' she says.

‘No phone, remember?'

‘Really?'

‘I wasn't joking.'

‘This must be what it's like to be friends with a Mormon.'

‘You won't be complaining when I churn us up some fresh butter.'

‘You got email? I'm not allowed on Facebook or anything. Not that I'd want it again.'

‘Right. Yeah. I've got an email account, but I usually check it at school. We've only got one computer at home, in the kitchen. So…'

Nancy laughs. ‘So, do I just send up a signal into the sky when I want to contact you?'

‘Yes. Only at night, when there's a bit of cloud around. I'll email you this arvo, though. Promise.' A mobile phone starts to overtake new shoes in my imaginary budget.

‘Cool. Well I guess I'll see you on Sunday, anyway.'

‘For sure.'

‘Okay.'

And then we're attempting another awkward goodbye. I think maybe I should kiss her cheek but then she sort of bows so I end up kissing the top of her head. We pull apart, and the secret look of the terminally awkward passes between us:
Let us never speak of this mortifying moment again, upon pain of death
.

Mum appears next to me and says, ‘Come on, kiddo,' like this is the sort of relationship we have.

‘Okay.' I need to get away before I do anything else embarrassing. A curious mix of shame and elation fills me as I get into the car, and we drive away, waving.

‘That went very well, I thought,' says Mum.

‘Have you always called me
kiddo
and I've only now just noticed?'

She ignores this. ‘So you've made up with Nancy, obviously.'

‘Yeah.'

‘It's good to have friends,' she says. This is where I would normally accuse her of speaking like a
Sesame Street
segment, but today I hold my tongue. She might be talking about me and Nancy, or her and Carla, but either way it seems actually true.

‘You've never had that…experience, though?'

‘What experience?'

‘Like Nancy had. She told you about that? The reason they had to move?'

‘Yeah, she told me.'

‘You'd tell me if that happened to you?'

‘Sure.'

‘Okay. It's just that what happened to Nancy was so awful and I'd never want any of my children going through it.'

‘Yep.' My fingers ache for the familiar shape of my iPod. I need its weight in my hand. I need a pair of headphones to block everything out.

‘I know you don't like talking about this stuff, but I worry.'

‘I know you do. But I'm fine.'

‘I'm not talking about psychologists or interventions. I just want to know that you'd come to me if you ever felt bullied or having…dark thoughts.'

‘
Dark thoughts
? Jesus, Mum.' My face flushes as I think about the night before, holding the pillow over my face, willing my body to override its safety controls.

‘Don't be flippant, Clancy. What Nancy went through…That's why she tells someone when she has a problem, and it gets sorted out. Like a trust bridge.'

Oh God,
trust bridge
. This so-called child psychologist came to our school at the start of the year, part of some government program to help struggling TV personalities sell more copies of their books to desperate parents. Mum went to the seminar and came back with nothing more useful than new buzzwords to torment me with.
Trust bridge
, needless to say, was one of them.

‘I'm really fine,' I say. ‘Really.'

‘It's just that you never have any friends over, anything like that.'

‘I don't need to have…I've got plenty of friends.' I'm a good enough liar if I keep my voice quiet.

‘Anyway, I just want you to know that I'm always here. Whatever's going on. I can listen, or talk, or anything.'

‘Thanks. I'll keep it in mind.'

I've had
friends
before, obviously. They were the sort of bright and short primary school allegiances that meant everything in the moment, but not much beyond. And it's all supposed to transform when you get to high school. You're expected to put
play
and
fun
behind you and enter a world where friendship means an intense, hormone-fuelled
connection
. My former friends became all too quickly exactly the type of people I liked the least. It wasn't their shallowness or selfishness exactly, nor their vanity and desperation. It was their acceptance that there was only allowed to be a single type of person, and any variation was something to fear or hate.

‘We could invite Reeve over on Sunday,' says Mum.

‘For our
traditional
Sunday lunch?'

‘It could be nice for you, that's all.'

‘Not sure if that's his scene, really.'

‘You could invite some of your science friends.'

‘God no.'

‘I think it would be nice to have other people there, so it's not as daunting for the DeRosas.'

I'm about tell Mum to invite her own friends, but manage to stop myself. ‘Fine,' I say. ‘I'll ask Reeve.'

‘You'll ask him today?'

‘Yes. Today.' Reeve and Nancy would probably get along well, but the thought of everyone I like in my house together is stressing me out. Actually, shouldn't we be home by now? I realise too late that Mum's taken a different turn, leading us back through the quiet wide streets in the old part of town. All the well-kept gardens of old people waiting to die, green blooms of watered lawns among the brown stippled nature strips. The dreaded Long Way Home. Designed to allow more time for an inescapable Proper Talk. I sink lower in my seat, like
just wait till I can drive myself around, lady
.

‘So,' she says. ‘Dad said you talked to him last night.'

‘Yeah.'

‘I'm not having a go. He really appreciated it. You making him dinner.'

‘Oh. Right. Yeah, well I had extra burgers.' I straighten up in my seat. ‘He was doing…legal stuff,' I say. ‘He had all these papers on the bench.'

‘Probably just boring adult paperwork,' Mum says. ‘You'd think it would all be done on computers these days, wouldn't you? But there's still all this paper.' She laughs, but it's not convincing.

‘Is something going to happen to him?'

Mum doesn't say anything, just narrows her eyes like she's driving through pouring rain.

‘Mum?'

‘I'm not sure, sweetie. There's a lot of procedures to go through.'

‘What do the police say?'

‘Not much, to be honest. There's an investigation. They have go through things in a certain way. Nothing to worry about yet.'

Yet.

‘What if something happens to him?'

Mum stops the car at an intersection, checks each side of the road twice. The road's empty, but she doesn't move forward. She lowers her head towards the wheel. ‘He didn't do anything,' she says, ‘so why would anything happen to him?'

‘But you can't—' I'm about to argue with her, but the sight of her knuckles, blanched white with pressure, stops me. ‘I'm sure everything will turn out okay,' I say.

If I keep my voice quiet, I'm a good enough liar.

30

By the time we get home, Mum has scrubbed any trace of emotion from her face and the tiny drops of water on the windscreen have turned to steady rain. She switches off the ignition and smiles at herself in the rearview mirror.

‘Here we are, then.' She keeps staring ahead, until I get out. The rain's pretty heavy, so I run to the porch without looking back.

Angus is lying on the old couch with a crocheted rug across his knees. He's reading a busted-up paperback with pictures of pyramids and galaxies on it. I don't have to read the title to know it contains the word
Conspiracy
or
Secret
or
Prophecy
.

‘Working hard?'

‘Research.' He waves the book at me.
The Hidden Keys of Secret History
. The cover designer clearly fell into a vat of LSD as a child.

‘Is that a
unicorn
?'

‘Unicorns are a powerful sign in some cultures.'

‘They're a powerful sign you're crazy.'

Angus puts the book down. ‘How was the first leg of your apology tour?'

My face goes red, betraying me immediately. ‘What?'

‘Never thought you had the bone density to be a bully.'

‘I honestly don't know what you're talking about.'

‘She dost protest too much.' Angus laughs. I suspect he's already a few beers down. ‘Dad said you had to go and say sorry to some kid you shouted at. Did you really pick on someone at nerd club?'

‘It's
doth
protest,' I say. ‘The lady doth protest.' A weak comeback at best.

‘It's true, isn't it! One day out with Sasha Strickland and you think you're hot shit.'

‘Piss off.'

‘Language, Clancy.' Mum's teacher voice sounds right behind me.

Angus struggles to tamp down a grin.

‘What's going on, then?' says Mum.

‘Nothing.'

She narrows her eyes at Angus. ‘Nothing?'

Angus does another shrug. ‘I was just trying to read.'

‘Yep,' I say. ‘Great. Obviously everything is always my fault, so why bother to think otherwise?'

Angus pretends to cower under his blanket. ‘Don't let her hit me!'

I give it serious consideration. The look of shock on my brother's face would almost be worth it. Instead, I deploy an offended heel-swivel and stalk off.

I'm heading up to my room when I realise I want to email Nancy straight away. Having someone to tell things to is addictive, as it turns out. I go into the kitchen, but of course Titch is on the computer, playing some ridiculous game.