Six Impossible Things (11 page)

Mrs Da Silva is not surprised when I tell her about my mother’s latest losses.

‘Marriage is the problem, Dan. And there’s no getting around it if your business is wedding cakes. Perhaps we can move her gently into some other special occasion cakes.’

‘Do you think you could mention it? She’s a bit sick of me trying to tell her stuff like that.’

‘Certainly,’ she nods. ‘Look after the shop while I get Howard some bones?’

I stand behind the counter, staring into space. If my mother can’t make a go of the business, what does that mean for us? My job at Phrenology isn’t a sure thing yet. But even if it happens, it’s not going to be enough to kick a hole in things like power bills, which now come twice, the second time on red stationery.

Mrs Da Silva comes out with the bones and gives me a bag of mixed lollies – she makes them up herself and sells them for fifty cents – for minding the shop. I protest, but she’s a determined woman.

When I get home, finishing the last lolly, a musk stick, my mother is sitting at the kitchen table crying. Big, snotty, gasping crying. She’s been at it for a while, judging by her blotchy swollen face.

‘I thought you were working,’ she says.

‘I’ve finished. It’s dinnertime.’

‘I haven’t made anything.’

I’m starving. I know I should be offering sympathy and comfort. I know she’s going through a hard time. I feel sorry, but not for her. For myself. I’m working hard. I’m copping shit about her business at school, while all she does is send customers away. I understand about post-traumatic stress disorder in theory, but all I can think is that I want my easy life and my happy mother back. And dinner.

So like a prize brat I say, ‘That’d be right.’

It’s like I’ve slapped her.

‘What did you say?
What
did you just say?’

At least I recognise that it’s time to shut up. A sudden, white-hot fury replaces her tears. She is shouting through the sobs and hiccups.

‘Do you realise what utter complete
shit
my life is at the moment? Do you know we could be living on the
streets
if we didn’t have the use of this house? Because we have no
savings
, if I get sick we’re . . . and this place is a
pigsty
. I keep the kitchen clean, but you haven’t lifted a
finger
to help.’

‘You haven’t asked.’

‘Because I expect someone who is
nearly fifteen
to have half a clue about things and to be able to put dirty clothes in the laundry and not leave a trail of his belongings around the house, and just
be here
occasionally to help out.’

‘I’m only out because I’m trying to make some
money
. Because I have to save up to go to my own social and even buy some clothes that actually
fit
me.’

Shit. Why did I mention the social? I’m not even going to the stupid thing. But she’s in a frenzy, and nothing I’m saying is sinking in anyway.

‘Don’t you dare shout at me. I’m trying to make some money, too. And it’s bloody hard.’

‘It wouldn’t be so “bloody hard” if you stopped sending customers away.’

‘I don’t! They just change their mind about getting married.’

‘Or maybe they recognise a crazy psycho when they meet one, and go somewhere else for their stupid cake!’

I walk out. I can’t handle it. I stamp through the house, longing to smash something up, but contain myself to banging my door, opening it again and banging it again. A patch of plaster from above the door falls, settling on the large pile of recycled socks and boxers I’ve been dressing from lately. I lie down and pick up the weights. I’m doing them twice a day and can lift them easily now. Adrenalin pumps through my system; I’ve never managed so many repetitions before.

My mother knocks on my door.

‘Dan?’ She tries the handle. It’s locked.

‘Go away.’

‘I’ve made you a sandwich.’

‘I don’t want it.’ What am I, five? She must know it’s a lie, anyway.

I hear her putting a plate down outside the door, with a huge sigh. I’m still burning with self-righteous rage and a petty impulse tells me not to eat it. My mother doesn’t seem to realise that things are every bit as bad for me as they are for her. Does she even know or ask how I’m going? Is it fun for me being pulled out of my life and dumped in this cold, dreary museum?

I’d always assumed that me being around means my mother has to cope, and she has to think her life’s okay. That is clearly not the case. It makes me feel hollow and hopeless.

‘Thom Yorke and I obviously aren’t enough, Howard.’

He gives me the inscrutable psychotherapist look: you figure it out.

‘Well, I can’t. That’s why I’m talking to a dog. And imagining a dog is talking to me.’

He turns away, huffy. Now the whole world is against me.

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to disparage your species.’

He comes back over and settles himself next to me. You could interpret that as him wanting some physical warmth, but it feels more like being forgiven. I don’t know exactly when it happened, but he’s my dog and I’m his human.

There’s a bump from above. The unattainable one. So close, but never further away . . .

R
EVISITING THE LIST
:

1 Kiss Estelle.
Okay, at least I’ve met her. She thinks I’m a creep. And that’s without her knowing I’ve read her diaries. Unless we somehow fall over, exactly aligned, lip to lip, and gravity causes the pressure, or we find ourselves in a darkened room and through a series of Shakespearean ID muddles she thinks she’s kissing someone else, I can’t see how this is ever going to happen.

2 Get a job.
Got a job, probably.
Still in financial shit.

3 Cheer my mother up.
Failing. She’s a nutcase.

4 Try not to be a complete loser.
Failing completely. Am a complete loser.

5 Should talk to my father when he calls.
Still can’t face asking him, how could you leave us like this? The other thing that I wake up thinking is, you’re not who I thought you were . . . and did you even love us in the first place?

6 Figure out how to be good.
Failing utterly.

M
Y MOTHER AND
I are mostly skirting around each other. Any time we go beyond talking about food, or what time I’m going to be home, we end up fighting and neither of us wants that. She needs some ‘happy family’ illusion, and I just can’t be bothered fighting.

And I’d like to ask her more about my father, but I can’t. I wish I could talk to her about how I don’t want to see him, and yet equally, I miss him. How I wonder a lot about him being gay. Did he always know it? Or was it unexpected, like a fit of sneezing? Or is there such a thing as sexuality amnesia? It’s so confusing.

Under the weight of everything that remains unspoken, the niggling ‘your father rang’ message surfaces every few days.

‘Tell him to stop calling.’

‘Tell him yourself.’

‘I don’t want to speak to him.’

‘Neither do I particularly. And I don’t want him to think I’m not passing on his messages, so please just call him.’

I’m not budging on this one.

‘He’ll give up eventually.’

‘Don’t forget he’s left that present for your birthday.’

‘I don’t even know where it is.’

Howard looks up from his bed of cardigans, head tilted sceptically to one side.

I scratch Howard’s ears, trying to figure out how the hell he knows I’m lying as I half-listen to my mother.

‘It’s just . . . there’s no cash flow at the moment. I’ve got you something little, but it’s not going to be like other birthdays.’

‘No kidding.’

A disappointed look from Howard.

I know I’m being mean, but I can’t seem to stop it. It’s like the editing equipment on my bile has packed up. It’s better not to talk.

It’s mostly because I’m avoiding my mother that I go to the after-school reading group. That, and I know Estelle goes.

And Lou says, ‘You’ll love it – it’s like English class minus the morons.’

The youngest English teacher, Ms Griffin, runs it. She has red hair, and her ears and cheeks and chin turn pink with enthusiasm.

I glance over at Estelle a few times, and, unnervingly, she looks up each time and sees me looking at her, so I immediately look away. Now I’m vying with Ms Griffin for the pink face prize. But it’s like Estelle’s a magnet and I’m metal, and the second I stop concentrating on
not
looking, I’m looking at her again. Now Janie and Estelle are both looking at me and I can read Janie’s thought bubble: ‘Stop staring at my friend, you creep.’

Ms Griffin reads aloud from a Raymond Carver short story. It’s clean writing that I like straight away. The story’s called
Nobody Said Anything
; it’s about a kid who lies to his mother, skips school, jerks off, and then what happens when he goes fishing. The discussion is about how some compromises are a mess, and how everyone has to go through problems their own way, and on their own. I don’t say anything, but boy can I relate.

At the end I say goodbye to Lou and walk off in the same direction as Estelle and Janie. It’s the perfect opportunity to walk along with them – just be myself, join in etc – but of course I don’t. They talk quietly as they walk. I feel obliged to clear my throat loudly in case they don’t realise I’m right behind them. When they see I’m there, they stop talking, so I cross the road and walk on the opposite footpath. I feel acutely conspicuous, because we’re taking exactly the same route home, and when we get there I have to cross back over the road.

‘We don’t bite, you know,’ Janie snaps, as they disappear through Estelle’s shiny crimson front door.

In the kitchen Mrs Da Silva and my mother are drinking peppermint tea, and my mother looks a fraction less frazzled than she has been lately. I start getting some food.

‘I’m sorry about the late notice, but the daughter who promised is snowed under . . .’ says Mrs Da Silva.

‘Tomorrow’s fine,’ my mother says. ‘I’ll cook it tonight and ice it first thing in the morning. It’ll be ready to pick up any time from noon.’

Looking at me, she explains, ‘Mary’s asked me to cook a wake cake.’

Mrs Da Silva gives me a little wink. I nearly choke on my banana and peanut butter sandwich. It’s genius – my mother can’t talk a dead person out of dying.

‘The second cousin I told you about,’ Mrs Da Silva says, with a philosophical grimace.

‘Cancer of the liver,’ I remember.

‘Swift. And she was eighty-eight. So . . .’ Mrs Da Silva folds her arms across her chest, satisfied there are worse ways to go. She’s wearing an orange sari today with a purple polar-fleece vest. She’s mad on the polar fleece.

‘Dan, could you please pick some violets?’ my mother asks.

‘Your mother is making a rich chocolate cake with rumsoaked raisins, iced with a chocolate ganache and sprinkled with frosted violets and slivers of gold leaf.’

‘And you’re thinking sixty serves?’ my mother checks.

‘Perhaps we’d better make it eighty,’ says Mrs Da Silva. ‘It’s Russell’s family – they’re a greedy lot.’

My mother starts getting some cake tins down to show Mrs Da Silva the exact size the cake will be and I go out with a bowl to pick the violets.