The Best Thing (6 page)

Lunch at Pug’s parents’ place. Two short bundles, one of loud anger, one of smiling serenity, plus three tall children—snappy Lu, understated Dino and exotic Oriana, a big exclamation mark pining for an exciting sentence to justify its existence. That’s the Magninis, and as a combo they’re pretty hair-raising for someone from a single-child Anglo family. Where’s the volume control? Where’s the OFF switch? Even when they’re just having normal conversations they sound as if they’re fighting; when they’re fighting, they make enough noise for ten people. All of a sudden I get an inkling of why Pug took up boxing—the blissful quiet of fighting without words.

It’s a three-way conflict between Oriana, Mr Magnini and Pug’s older brother Luciano. Mrs Magnini throws in the odd placating remark, trying to draw attention back to the enormous, rich lunch she’s cooked, and Pug rolls his eyes at all the noise and provides brief translations for me. Towards dessert he starts getting fed up with them.

‘Basta, basta!’
he yells over the three of them, so suddenly I jump. The noise stops, the room rings. He scowls from father to brother to sister, then goes on to say something very emphatic, with a lot of arm-waving, indicating me with his hands, indicating them, himself. When he stops, his father looks at me, waves his fork at Luciano. ‘Sorry. My son can’t help, he is an idiot.’ Oriana hoots and Luciano laughs and retorts something.

‘Shut up, Lu,’ says Pug.

‘Sorry.’ Luciano pretends to be ashamed of himself, then winks across at me.

We get through to coffee before the next eruption. For a while Mr Magnini puts up with Luciano’s goading, greeting it with a haughty look, a puff of air, a wave of a large hand. Then Luciano hits some sore spot and he can’t stay silent any more. Back and forth they go; it’s like watching a tennis match.

Pug reaches across and picks up my coffee in its little gilt cup and saucer. ‘Come on, Mel, let’s leave ’em to it.’

I follow him onto the patio, which is pebblecreted with a white
balustrade and two ornate concrete pots spilling red geraniums. A vegetable garden marches away down the yard, and a tiny white concrete fountain in the shape of a semi-nude goddess spills into its bowl on the strip of left-over lawn.

It’s a relief to see sky instead of black flock curlicues on a gold paper background, instead of fancy-cut crystal glass and gold cutlery and lace tablecloth. It’s great to breathe air instead of pasta-steam and chicken-steam and garlic-onion-and-rosemary steam, to feel the nausea-block in my throat easing back in the eerie quietness.

I steady my saucer on the iron-lace table. ‘Is it always this bad?’

‘Oh, yeah, about. Usually I haven’t got any excuse to dip out, but.’ Pug smiles at me, shamefaced. ‘Yeah. Sometimes it can get heavy, you know, Dad laying down the law and Lu and Oriana just blowing up. Once he decides on something, he won’t bloody shift.’

‘And what about you? Don’t you ever blow up at him?’

‘Well, just then was about … yeah, that’d be about the most noise I ever make.’

‘What were you saying to them? I was impressed.’

Pug looks at his runners tapping on the terracotta tiles. ‘I told them they should be ashamed of’mselves. I said, “I’ve brung this girl along specially to meet you. What’s she going to think? What’s she going to tell her parents? That we’re a bunch of crazy wogs who can’t control their tempers? She’ll leave me, listening to you lot. She won’t want to have anything to do with me.”’

‘You idiot.’

‘Well, at least they’ll get off my back now, about meeting you. Aah, they’re all right. Take ’em one by one and they’re fine. It’s just in a group they start actin’ like animals.’

Among the photos on top of the television, an old one of Luciano, Dino and Oriana in a row. ‘Oh, this’s
you!
’ I say, grabbing it up.

‘Yeah, in the middle.’ Pug’s arms go around my waist, his chin onto my shoulder.

‘Oh well, I knew
that
!’ Putting him down is a way to cover up the sudden—oof! What is it? A throb of anguish, a knot tightening, a terrible
reaction.
His younger sister is just plain innocent, a happy little kid, nothing to worry about; Luciano is cocky and self-important in his little brown suit. Between them my crew-cut, big-eared Pug seems to beam out sweetness; it’s his wide eyes, and his being just a
tiny
bit self-conscious, not hugely, like his brother, or completely unaware like Oriana. That smile: sort of I-know-I-ought-to-smile, sort of I’m-just-enjoying-myself-anyway. Part of me wants to kidnap this photo, take it off public view, keep it all to myself; part of me wants never to have seen it. Because I can see how Pug was wide open for the world to blunder into, and it did, and I’m going to get flashes of this face (I’ve already had them!) as long as ever I know him, and with every flash this twist inside.

Dad said, ‘God, remember how nice this street used to be?’ We were driving to Grandma’s, I remember. I looked out the window. It looked okay to me. Just houses, quite neat. Someone had a pair of small concrete lions either side of their gate, which I thought was a cool idea.

‘All the big trees are gone,’ said Mum.

‘Well, you wouldn’t want roots buggering up your pebblecrete, would you? Look at it, it’s been woggified to death.’

‘Da-ave!’

‘Well, it has—look, colonnades everywhere! Statues, aluminium windows.’ He shuddered. ‘Used to be nice old cottages all along here.’

‘People have different tastes, that’s all. Give ’em a break.’

At four and a half weeks the embryo looks like a prehistoric animal. Rudimentary heart and eyes have formed, as has a tail,
which will disappear within weeks, leaving shrunken tail-bones as a permanent reminder of humankind’s animal past.

Nobody brought Pug and me together, like Lisa engineering a whole bunch of matches at that party (me and Brenner, Kerry and Cory Worth, Anna and Toby) just to see if she could do it. It just happened. When I think how easily Pug could’ve just walked on past it’s really a bit scary.

It was a week or so after the miscarriage. I went up to Newtown to look for Christmas presents because I wanted to enjoy myself, but I couldn’t find anything, and halfway through looking I had a weird attack of … I don’t know. The bottom dropped out of my emotions and I fell through. Everything looked
bad
—Newtown grungy and full of nightmare people, all
weird
one way or another, no-one smiling, the shops pathetic little temples of greed, the humidity pressing in, the traffic a herd of mad animals funnelling between the buildings. Worst of all was my life. I hadn’t heard from Brenner all week. It was the day after I’d told Lisa, and I
knew
that was a
bad
stuff-up. I was floundering, horrified at her having wormed most of my story out of me—I could hear her sweet, calculating voice in my head and my own confiding one, see her eyes swivelling away from me. I’d gone too far and I was petrified of what she was going to do. I stood outside Coles Fosseys looking in at the bundles of tinsel, sweating embarrassment and fear.

I struggled on for a bit, but then I thought,
Stuff it, I’ll go home, go to bed and sleep this off.
So I turned down Mary Street.

And almost straight away I regretted it, but not quite soon enough to retreat. Four guys straggled across the path and the road, all in top spirits, yelling and pushing at each other. I tried to look invisible and not-caring at the same time.

But—clunk!—they saw me.

One whistled and shouted ‘G’day, gorgeous!’ at me. I crossed to the other footpath and he crossed too. He was grinning and glancing at his mates.

‘Keep out of my way,’ I said, really
severe.

He dodged about in front of me, wouldn’t let me pass. ‘Can’t take a compliment, this one. Come on, gorgeous, loosen up. What’s your name, love?’

‘Get away!’ I sort of choked. I saw his hand come out.
’Don’t
you touch me!’

He patted me on the shoulder and let his hand drop. ‘Look me in the face, love. Ask me nicely.’ A real soft, nasty voice.

‘Lay off, Ed,’ one of the mates said warningly—that was Pug.

‘Just want her to be polite to a guy, mate.’

I hissed through my teeth at him. ‘Get out of my way,
shithead.
’ Any second I was going to attack him!

He dropped his jaw. ‘Now, that’s not very nice, is it?’

‘E-ed.’ His mate was a step closer, the other two hanging back and watching.

I felt myself going off my brain. ‘Did I ask for your stupid whistling, your
“compliments”?
I was just walking down the
street,
for God’s sake. You guys all think you’re God’s bloody gift, don’t you? Think every girl’s just
hanging out
for compliments! Well, we’re not! We couldn’t give a
stuff
what jerks like you think!’

‘It’s okay,’ said the other guy at my shoulder. ‘Ed, fuck off now, hey?’ But I was just as angry at him! I didn’t want his stupid
protection!

‘What’s
she
getting so upset about? She’s not so great-looking anyway. No tits, no nothing.’ Ed started sidling off.

I yelled at him, ‘Who
cares,
you moron? Better than having no
brain!
’ My knees were shaking with rage, and I had to
charge
past him up the street so he wouldn’t see.

‘Geez, you’re a dickhead, Ed!’ I heard the mate say.

After a pause to think, Ed yelled back, ‘Geez, you’re a wimp, Dino!’

‘Hey—’ Pug was catching me up.

‘And you can bugger off, too!’ I said to him. I just wanted to get away before the tears started, didn’t want
any
of them to see me crying.

‘It’s okay. I don’t want to hassle you. I just don’t want you to let that fuckwit get to you.’

I couldn’t see him through tears
vrooming
up to my eyes.
’You’re
the fuckwit, hanging out with such a jerk …’ My voice gave out and I had to face the fact that I was crying.

‘Really he’s okay. He just goes stupid when there’s girls around.’

When there
are
girls around, idiot.

I had to wait at the corner of Lennox Street for cars to pass, and the shaking came up from my knees and took over; I gasped and sniffed and wanted to be somewhere all on my own where I could howl as loudly as I wanted. Instead I licked up the tears and slimed the back of my wrist with my nose. ‘Oh, go
away,
’ I told him as he started crossing the road with me. ‘For God’s
sake!
’

‘Hey, sit down for a minute, eh.’ He pointed to a park bench. I nearly tripped over the edge of the path, and he touched my elbow to steady me. ‘Come on, you can’t hardly see where you’re goin’.’

He sat down at the other end of the bench, which I guess was better than standing over me, but I still wished he wasn’t there. I was ashamed of cracking up—I just wanted to get
away.

I was mopping at my face with a been-through-the-wash tissue I’d found in my pocket when he spoke again.

‘You don’t want to take any notice of Ed. He’s a
immature
bastard. Doesn’t know when to stop.’

‘Pretty hard
not
to take notice, when he’s parked right there in your
way,’
I pointed out.

‘Yeah. Sorry. He just goes stupid, like I said.’

He was trying really hard to make things better. I remember thinking what a
serious
person he seemed, in spite of the fact that he could hardly string a sentence together.

I can still call him up from then. He had a neat haircut—neat as in short and neat as in cool, and he
wasn’t
wearing a back-to-front baseball cap like the other three
dudes.
His black hair
gleamed in the sunshine. His face—well, the memory of his face is all mixed up now with seeing his face in other sorts of places and lights and ways, but the eyes stuck with me, so pale, and the lashes and eyebrows so dark. He looked so clean, somehow, and cool, in spite of the steamy weather—I was damp all over, not just around the eyes. I noticed how fit he was, too, not puffed-up muscle like a gym junkie or anything, but I remember staring at his shoulders and arms, following the curves of them.

‘It’s just that I wasn’t expecting it, that’s all,’ I said. ‘And, you know, some days you wake up feeling strong, and some days you just can’t cope with things like that.’

He nodded without looking at me. I saw a little smile on the side of his face. ‘I dunno. You coped okay, I reckon.’

‘Huh. He still didn’t move out of my way, did he?’

‘I thought you were gunna take a swipe at ‘im!’ he laughed.

‘I was! I should’ve! Mind you, he could’ve hit me back harder.’

‘Nah, he’d’ve been too shocked. Anyway, he wouldn’t hit a girl. Even Ed’s not that much of an arsehole.’

I didn’t know what to think of that. It was sexist, but a different kind of sexism from the kind I was used to at school. It was kind of old-fashioned, gentlemanly, kind of a
bearable
sexism. Again, he was perfectly serious about it.

Then he looked at me and we both smiled, and there was a connection there, and as the smiles tailed off I thought,
That’s not all. Something else has to happen yet.

There was a pause. ‘I’d better get on home,’ I said unwillingly, testing the feeling I’d just had.

‘I was hoping you’d let me buy you a coffee, or a cold drink or sumpthink.’

‘What, to help me get over the shock?’ I joked.

‘Nah.’ He looked at me over his shoulder. ‘We could talk some more.’

Suddenly the episode with Ed didn’t matter any more, except that it had led us up to this point, this meeting-point.

‘Okay.’ I kept my voice light, just in case nothing should come of it. But of course, something did. A whole
lot
did.

That meeting-day we were just friendly. He was so
polite,
that was what felt so good. And careful and kind. I wasn’t used to it. I was used to keeping up with Brenner, who sometimes paid compliments just to watch my face go all soft with gratitude, then snatched the compliment back and laughed at me. ‘Just joking! Geez, you’re so
sen
-sitive!’, like it was a major fault in me.