Laurinda (17 page)

Chelsea and Brodie had headed straight for Amber. They stood to one side of the granite bench that floated in the middle of the large kitchen, while the mothers stood on the other side. I stood at the end.

“So, we finally get to meet your little Pygmalion project at last,” Brodie’s mum, Mrs Newberry, said to Mrs Leslie. I had no idea what a Pygmalion was but it had the word “pig” in it so I was sure it was not flattering. She turned to me. “How do you do, Dianne’s fair lady?” She extended her hand, heavy with rings, expecting me to shake it, so I did.

“Dianne, she is just as darling as you said she would be,” proclaimed Chelsea’s mum.

“Do you know who clamoured to be Lucy’s mentor at the start of the year, Gloria?” Mrs Leslie asked Brodie’s mum.

“Who?”

“Gracey Gladrock’s daughter.”

“Oh my god!”

“Deliver us from evil, and forgive us our trespasses,” muttered Chelsea’s mum, snorting with laughter.

Before I arrived, Mrs Leslie had cooked some prawns and stir-fried some beef with sesame seeds, garlic and oyster sauce. Now she set everything out like a production line, and we were ready to roll.

I had no idea how Brodie’s mother was going to do anything because she had long fingernails with white tips. So I got her to dip the rice paper into the plate of boiling water; I figured it would not hurt her fingers as much as it would any of ours. As I showed her how it was done, she remarked, “Well, would you look at those dexterous Asian fingers. So fast!”

“Yes, Asians do seem to have more nimble fingers,” said Mrs Leslie. “When I was in Suzhou” – she pronounced it Shoo-zhoo, trying to make it sound more exotic, I suppose – “I visited a silk factory, and there were girls around Lucy’s age, all with such small and delicate hands, embroidering silks. The owner told me that it was a four-thousand-year-old tradition, that sort of handicraft.”

“How delightful!” exclaimed Mrs White. “We’ve never been to China.”

“You know which other people have nimble fingers?” asked Chelsea. “South Americans.”

“Oh?” Mrs Leslie loved stories about different cultures.

“Yeah, when we went to Venezuela two years ago, they stole my camera! Remember that, Mum? Those filthy, monobrowed pickpockets . . .”

Chelsea’s mother’s laughter stopped like the last sputters from a faulty tap.

“Oh, yeah, I remember you telling us about that, Chelsea!” piped Amber. “And how that hot waiter, Javier, was actually so gay on his day off, wearing a black singlet and cut-off jeans.”

“Don’t you remember, Mum?” Chelsea insisted. “And how you said—”

“Well, I have to say, this is a real treat, Lucy,” said her mother, cutting her off.

We finally sat down to lunch one and a half hours later.

“When Don was returning from Europe, something quite funny happened,” Mrs Newberry said to the other mothers when she had poured herself a glass of wine. “Would you like to hear it?”

“Oh, yes, please!” said Mrs White. She clapped her hands twice. “Is Don back from Europe already?”

“Yes. He came back last week. Anyhow, on the flight, he was put next to this garrulous, obese loudmouth in a navy polyester suit, who just wouldn’t shut up.”

“Oh, I can see Don loving that,” commented Mrs Leslie.

“The man kept talking about how he was doing international business and opening up an import and export business in Asia,
that
kind of man.”

What kind of man? I wondered. A businessman was a businessman, someone who owned his own business. According to my parents, they were all to be respected – unless they were in a crooked business like dealing drugs.

“I can just imagine the poor man,” commented Mrs Leslie. “From somewhere in Queensland. Ipswich, most probably.”

“Yes, yes, yes!” Mrs Newberry was stabbing the air with her rice paper roll, but miraculously no prawn fell out. “Then the flight attendants come with drinks, and Don thinks, thank god, I do
not
want to hear about shoe manufacturing in the recently established economic zone of the New Territories. Jesus!”

“Naturally, the Good Lord did not come and save Dad,” said Brodie wryly; she knew how this tale ended.

“Anyhow, Don was leaning back in his chair, enjoying the wine – as much as you can enjoy the abysmal wine they serve in business class these days – when all of a sudden the man next to him started to cough and clutch his arm—”

“Oh, I know where this is going,” said Chelsea.

“Yes, and would you believe it, in less than two minutes the first-time business-class flyer next to him had a
heart attack
and
died
!”

“Oh. Oh, how dreadful.” Mrs Leslie put her roll down on her plate.

“But there were absolutely no spare seats on the flight,” Mrs Newberry went on. “So Don had to sit next to this guy until they reached the Hong Kong stopover and four flight attendants took him away!”

“How horrible!” exclaimed Mrs White, but she couldn’t help laughing.

“How hilarious, you mean!” exclaimed Mrs Newberry. “And this is the funny part – can you imagine Don next to a paunchy dead man in a cheap acrylic suit for that stretch of time? ‘Well, thank God he finally shut up,’ was what Don told me when he got home.”

“Your man has a black sense of humour!” roared Chelsea’s mum.

“Doesn’t he!”

It dawned on me, as I watched the three older women together, that they had known each other since they were at Laurinda – and that perhaps they had even been the Cabinet of their day. There was the uneasy way Mrs Leslie laughed at Brodie’s mum’s jokes, and Chelsea’s mum’s sidekick role – she would turn from one woman to the other, watching their faces very closely, so she could always align herself correctly.

Mrs Leslie must have noticed the look on my face, because she quickly became sensitive and apologetic. “Oh, we should have known better than to talk about such dark things in front of you, Lucy.”

“What the hell, Mum? I doubt Lucy from Stanley is going to be put off by that lame story.”

How did Amber know I was from Stanley? Perhaps mother and daughter talked more than I thought.

“Yes, but Lucy came here
on a boat
.”

“So?”

Mrs Leslie sighed. “Forgive their ignorance.”

“I get it,” said Chelsea. “Those boats are rickety, so you’re implying that Lucy must have seen people die and crap, huh?”

“Chelsea White, watch your language!”

“I am sure people crapped, but I was too young to remember anyone actually carking it,” I replied.

Mrs White’s outrage turned into an enormous, shoulder-shuddering fit of hilarity. “Oh, oh, you! You are just too funny, Lucy.”

It felt good that someone was laughing at my jokes in a mouth-agape-with-enjoyment way. The other two mothers just tittered uncomfortably.

Mrs Leslie looked at me with her enormous brown eyes. She put a hand on one of mine. “You. Are. Such. A. Courageous. Young. Girl.” I was afraid she might burst into tears.

Oh, come off it, I wanted to say, I just taught you all to cook a fake fusion Asian dish that didn’t even involve a flame. But now the other mothers also started to insist politely but firmly that I was brave.

Suddenly all the attention was on me, which I did not like one bit. Yet I knew that their attention had never fully left me: I had been the presence in the room that cut short their frank and funny discussions of culture and criminals.

Out of the blue, Brodie’s mum scoffed. “Ha! Gracey Gladrock’s daughter! Of course she would. Of course.”

“Would what?” I asked.

“Oh, Lucy dear,” cut in Mrs Leslie. “It’s just that you’re so quiet and Katie could talk the ear off an elephant!”

“Lucy, there is something you must understand about the Gladrocks,” began Mrs White. “It’s not that we mean to be cruel to poor Katie, but there’s something not quite right about that family.”

“It’s also hereditary, my darlings, like misshapen heirloom squashes that only a farmer could love.” That was Brodie’s mum.

“Remember when we were at school, how poor gappy-toothed Gracey was always copying us?”

“Oh, Gloria, how do you get your hair so straight and perfectly parted in the middle? Do you iron it?” Mrs White was mimicking Katie’s mum. “That was her in Form Three.”

Mrs Newberry continued, turning towards me now, as if imparting sage advice. “No, I told her, ironing ruins the hair. It leeches the moisture out of it. It is very bad for the ends. I told her that as a filamentous biomaterial primarily composed of keratin protein, the best way to make her long curly hair straight was to give it a reverse perm, a treatment that would relax the protein structure. Two parts conditioner, one part bicarb soda, one part methylated spirits.”

“Mum, you are such a bullshit artist,” said Brodie affectionately.

“It’s perfectly safe, I told her, if you can do the limbo. Preheat your grill to 150 degrees,” Mrs Newberry continued. “Lay your hair out on a baking tray . . .”

My heart started to beat faster.

“Get down on your knees and tilt your head back, then shove the tray into the oven. Have a bowl of water nearby to cool your face. Remember, Gracey, I told her, it is very important to have that bowl of water nearby.”

“Ha! Especially if your hair catches fire!” laughed Mrs White.

“I can’t believe the girl was stupid enough to try it,” concluded Mrs Newberry, while Chelsea’s mum was almost crying from the hilarity of the story. Even Mrs Leslie was laughing.

“Was she okay?” I asked.

“What?” The women seemed to have forgotten about me, and Mrs Leslie turned my way. “Yes, yes, she was fine. She just got her hair singed at the ends. Her hair was so long that the grill was nowhere near her face. We knew she had attempted it because the next day at school her waist-length hair was gone. She had a Little Orphan Annie perm instead. Very cute.”

But I could tell she meant the opposite.

“If someone tells you to jump off a bridge, Lucy,” instructed Mrs Newberry, seeing the look on my face, “do you do it? Do you understand what we mean by that family being
not quite right
?”

“You’re just saying that because she ended up with Lachie,” laughed Mrs White, but she stopped laughing when Mrs Newberry swivelled and gave her a searing look.

“I thank my lucky stars every day I did not end up with that bastard,” she said, “and I would prefer you never mentioned him again. The only reason she got Lachie was she dropped her pants and I didn’t.”

“No way!” exclaimed Amber with glee. “
Katie’s
mother was a skank?”

“Queen slut of them all,” said Mrs Newberry, “eventually.”

“Unfortunate indeed,” said Mrs Leslie. “But you must never, ever mention this to Katie, because her mother passed away when she was just a toddler.”

“That prank was almost as good as the one we pulled on Mrs May!” laughed Mrs White. “Oh, that was classic. Do you remember that, ladies? Do you know about this one, girls?”

I watched the eager eyes of Amber, Brodie and Chelsea, who were like cats hearing the blade of a tin opener.

“You mean when you hid the oven timers, Mrs Leslie?” I asked.

“Oven timers?” Mrs Newberry turned towards Mrs Leslie. “What did you tell June Moon?”

“Lucy,” Mrs Leslie corrected her.

“Yes, yes,” she murmured. Then she turned to me. “What exactly did Dianne tell you about Mrs May?”

“That, umm . . . that all of you hid your oven timers in different parts of the Home Ec classroom, and that they went off at different times.”

“What? Lame! Lame! You didn’t even tell her the
good
part!” accused Mrs White.

Mrs Leslie shook her head slowly, mortified.

Mrs Newberry turned towards the other girls. “We greased the floor with Vaseline,” she said slowly. “We greased it nice and thick, and we worked our way backwards out of the room. Then we greased the door handle. When it was class time, we said to the old bat, ‘You go in first, Mrs May.’

“‘As I should,’ she retorted and marched in, expecting us to follow. We hadn’t greased the entrance, so it was only when she was halfway into the room and we heard her slip that we shut the door on her. Bang!” Mrs Newberry clapped her hands together like a gunshot. “The oven timers were a sweet enhancement Dianne thought up,” she explained. “Because cowardly Dianne here thought we shouldn’t go through with our Vaseline plan.”

Amber looked at her mother reproachfully, as if her killjoy ways were still evident.

“But you will be pleased to know that we incorporated your mother’s little embellishment as well, so while the old bat was down on the floor, the oven timers were going off, one every two minutes, until they reached a deafening crescendo.”

“Didn’t you all get into deep trouble?” Chelsea asked in awe.

“Of course not. We had a fall girl: Gracey Gladrock!”

Of course, I thought. Who else?

“Fortunately, she was also rather poor at Home Economics, which meant that, more often than not, her pies were the ones dropped on the floor. So she had good reason to pull a prank like that. Also, she was going to have to leave the school at the end of the year anyway. We just helped hurry her along.” Mrs Newberry pondered. “As I recall, I think they were even both at hospital at the same time – Gracey to have her baby, and the old bat recovering from her hip surgery.”

This was shocking to me. I thought that women like this, especially in houses like this, would sit and discuss art history or antiques or literature, Linh. Like my father, I had believed that educated people were gentler and kinder than the uncouth and unlearned masses – but now I wasn’t so sure.

At two-thirty on the dot, the doorbell rang and I knew it was my father. I followed Mrs Leslie to the front door.

Dad was standing there in his work uniform, a frayed shirt and navy overalls with “Victory Carpets” printed across the pocket. “Thank you for letting Lucy come over to study,” he told Mrs Leslie. “We very much appreciate it.”

“Study? Oh, no!” laughed Mrs Leslie. “Oh, no, no, no! Lucy’s been having a little fun. She’s been teaching us how to make your wife’s delicious rice-paper rolls. Come and join us, Mr Lam?”

“No, thank you,” replied my father, looking through to the dining area of the open-plan house, where everything was white and beige. “No, I have to be heading back to work.”