Love and Other Perishable Items Read online

  He gives me a sharp look, and I quickly change the subject.

  “Did Kathy find out, you know, about the poem and flowers?”

  “Don’t know. Don’t care.”

  “It was a great poem.”

  “It was a terrible poem. But I was counting on her not catching on to that. I doubt that textual analysis is her strong suit.”

  “Oh.”

  We’ve reached the bus stop.

  “I knew you’d like Virginia Woolf,” he says.

  “Yeah … well, yeah. I’ll see you later then.”

  “Right. Safe traveling. Lay off the white wine.”

  “Will do.” I turn to cross the street, and then turn back. “Hey, Chris?”

  “Qué?”

  “There are girls who would be really, really nice to you. If you’d, you know, pick them.”

  “Are there? Where?” He makes a show of looking up and down the street and underneath the seats in the bus shelter.

  Say it! hollers inner Amelia. Say, “One is standing right in front of you.”

  I shrug. Not superbly. And I turn and walk home.

  On Saturday, I wake at five to get the bus in to Central. Everyone is asleep when I leave the house toting my Billabong backpack and sporting my Nanna-knitted gray beanie. It’s a chilly morning. I buy a cappuccino, a chocolate iced doughnut, an egg and lettuce sandwich and a bottle of water. I’ve brought a book to read—The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood—but I spend the first hour of the journey looking out the window.

  The train winds its way through Sydney heading west toward the Blue Mountains. We pass through Strathfield, Auburn, Granville, Parramatta, Westmead.

  At Blacktown, a girl gets on the train with a toddler. She looks only a bit older than me. Her hair is greasy, her skin covered in acne, she wears dirty polyester track pants and there is a bruise on her left cheekbone. Her eyes are hard. The toddler sets up a shrill whine and thrashes around in his seat.

  “Shut the fuck up, Cody!” the girl snarls. She fishes a large bag of chips out of her bag, opens them and gives them to the toddler. He sits quietly and eats them.

  As the train pulls out of Mount Druitt, we run parallel to a main road for a few hundred yards. I see a large sign pointing to a turnoff: Morton. Morton! I hear Chris’s voice saying, You don’t have to look very far to see difference.

  The toddler is whining again. His mum gets out a bottle of Coke and gives him a few sips. They get off the train somewhere called Emu Plains.

  For the rest of the journey I read my book and have conversations with Chris inside my head. These conversations have become a favorite, and pretty much compulsive, pastime. In them, I am always witty, sometimes even sassy. In them, I have complete control.

  The train pulls into Bathurst Station at about eleven. The sky is low and gray. Even through the glass, I can feel that it’s much colder than Sydney. I leap out onto the platform and see Lizey down at the other end. There’s a cute-ish guy with her.

  We hurry toward each other and hug tightly, mumbling “Hey” into each other’s hair. It’s so good to see her and have her within my grasp. I don’t want the hug to end yet, but she breaks away.

  She looks essentially the same, but I scan for minute changes. Since moving away she’s gained an almost mythical status at home, especially with Jess. Jess goes crazy with delight when Lizey makes her flying visits. She pulls out all her toys, brings all her little friends in from the street to soak up the glory of the returning big sister, wants only Lizey to push her on the swing and watch her go down the slide. They bake biscuits together in the kitchen. She asks after Lizey all the time—often when we’re doing some quality-time activity like reading her favorite Spot books.

  “ ‘Naughty Spot. It’s dinnertime—’ ”

  “Is Lizey coming over this weekend?”

  Why would Lizey be coming over this weekend?

  “No. ‘Where could he be? Is he out in the flower bed?’ ”

  “When is she coming over?”

  “I don’t know, Jess. But I’m here, okay? I’m here.”

  And so forth.

  “This is my housemate Jonno,” says Lizey, turning to the guy who’s loped up behind her. “He’s got a car, so we won’t have to walk.”

  Jonno tips an imaginary hat with the top of an imaginary walking cane.

  “How come you’re both wearing the same outfit?” I ask as we walk out into the car park. They’re both in jeans, Converse shoes and checked flannel shirts.

  “Oh,” says Lizey, laughing, “Big W had a sale on flannels. Nothing like a flannel to keep out the Bathurst chill.”

  “That’s right, ma’am,” Jonno says.

  We pile into Jonno’s early-eighties-model Subaru two-door hatch.

  While we’re driving, Lizey tells me that they’re having a party at their place tonight. I’d envisioned having her to myself so I could debrief at length about our parents and tell her about Chris. Lizey is good with boys. She’s almost never without one. But a party could be good too. It will be good practice for Chris’s world.

  The ancient Subaru pulls up in front of a row of dilapidated terraces.

  “This is us.” Lizey bounds out and puts her seat forward. I struggle out with my backpack.

  It turns out that the whole block is student housing. Lizey takes me out back first and I see that there are no fences dividing the backyards. It’s just one big expanse of overgrown grass, dotted with clusters of upturned milk crates, collapsed clotheslines and a couple of scuzzy-looking barbecues.

  “One big family.” She grins, gesturing to a few people lounging on neighboring back steps, nursing coffee cups or with cigarettes dangling from their fingers.

  We head back inside to meet the other housemates, Guy and Lucy, who are sitting at the kitchen table. They are both in pajamas and bathrobes. Empty toast plates and mugs are in front of them. They smoke languorously, ashing their cigarettes into a round biscuit tin. Then we go upstairs to Lizey’s bedroom.

  She’s never been tidy like me. The bed is unmade, clothes are strewn everywhere and one of her old sarongs is serving as a curtain.

  I put my backpack down and shiver. “It’s freezing in here.”

  “It sure is,” agrees Lizey. “I’ll lend you a flannel shirt and a thermal.”

  “Hey, is that Jonno guy your boyfriend?”

  “Jonno? Nah. He kind of was for a while but … nah.”

  “Oh.”

  “I’ve actually got my eye on a boy from two doors up. Hoping to make some headway tonight.”

  We sit on her unmade bed. It has the same smell as her bed at home did. Essence of Lizey. Maybe that’s a weird thing to notice. I like the smell. It means my sister is close by.

  “So how are the parents?” she asks.

  “Same old. Mum’s miserable most of the time. Jess is cute. Dad is … Dad.”

  Lizey’s flamboyance always seemed to lighten things up at home—even made Mum smile sometimes. Since she’s been gone, there’s been little or no comic relief. God knows there’s none coming from me.

  “I think his show at Brooke Street is going well.”

  Lizey remains quiet.

  “Hey, I kissed a boy,” I volunteer.

  “You what?”

  “I kissed a boy.”

  “When?”

  “Few months ago.”

  “Where?”

  “At a party.”

  “Well, good for you! Who was the lucky guy?”

  “Uh, just some guy from work.”

  “Some Guy from Work. That’s beautiful, that is. And has anything come of it?”

  “Nah. He hasn’t spoken to me since.”

  “Tool.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Want me to see if I can hook something up for you tonight?” she teases.

  “Nooooowah!” I lie back on the pillows.

  “So with the party tonight …”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’ll look after you as much as I can,
but if the chance presents itself for me to have some quality time with Ben, you might have to look after yourself.”

  “Who’s Ben?”

  “The boy from two doors up.”

  “Oh.”

  “You’ll definitely be sleeping in here, but don’t get freaked out if I don’t end up here.”

  “Oh.”

  I must look a bit deflated because Lizey pokes me on the arm.

  “Come on, you’re a big girl now.”

  I prickle. A big girl who got up in the pitch-black this morning and sat on a train for four and a half hours to spend some time with you, I think mutinously. So sue me if I don’t want to spend a night alone in a strange, freezing-cold house with people I don’t know! I hate it when she makes those comments—they are the adult version of her childhood taunt “Don’t be such a baby.”

  She looks out of her bedroom window from underneath the sarong, scanning the backyard below.

  “Let’s go and have a cup of tea in the garden,” she says abruptly.

  “It’s cold out there,” I protest, but she is already halfway to the door.

  There’s one bathroom in the house and you have to go out the back door to get to it. After sampling the temperature in there and inspecting the shower recess, I’ve decided to wait until I get home tomorrow night to have a shower. It’s about six and I’m sitting on the bed watching Lizey put makeup on in front of her mirror. A sudden, aggressive loneliness takes hold of me. I’m nervous. I don’t know anyone coming to this party. It will probably go for hours. I want Lizey. I want my mother.

  “I miss you,” I say, and start to cry.

  Lizey turns around.

  She re-caps the mascara wand she’s holding and sits down beside me.

  “What’s up? What?”

  But I don’t even know. “I just feel sad,” I manage, and sob a few times.

  “Why?” she says. “Why?”

  “I don’t know. Everything. I wish you’d come home; I miss you. And I don’t want you to leave me tonight, ’cause I don’t know anyone here. And I wanted to talk to you tonight, not go to a party.”

  “Parties are fun, Amelia. I wanted you to have fun here.” She shakes her head at me. “What did you want to talk to me about?”

  My sobs have receded to mild sniffling and slightly labored breathing.

  “Nothing,” I say.

  “Nothing?” she repeats.

  She returns to the mirror and uncaps the mascara. “When your face dries off, I’ll put some of this on you.”

  The night passes more or less uneventfully. The party mainly takes place in the communal backyard, although it’s bloody freezing. I borrow one of Lizey’s “dress” beanies. There are loud conversations going on all around about people and events I have no idea of. Some of Lizey’s friends chat to me a little. Dinner is bread and dip. Most people are drinking beer, but I fill a large plastic cup from a four-liter box of red wine set up on one of the upturned milk crates. By the time I have drunk half of it, I feel decidedly less lonely.

  Lizey points the Ben boy out to me. He is wearing a soft-looking denim jacket, a gray woolen scarf and a beanie that’s more of a very large skullcap. He is very good-looking, and he knows it. I tend to be quite turned off by people who know that they are good-looking: like that dreadful Scott who’s been sitting with us at school, like Kathy. I think they’re best avoided. I’m lucky I will never be in the thrall of one of them. Although, I think, conjuring up the warmth of Chris’s presence, I’ve not escaped a different kind of thrall.

  I last until about ten, by which time I have consumed one and a half glasses of the boxed wine. I find Lizey in a small group of Ben and two other girls.

  “I’m going to bed.”

  “Yeah?” She puts an arm around me.

  “Yeah. See you”—I glance at Ben—“whenever.…”

  I clean my teeth in the freezing bathroom with even-more-freezing water. The red wine has stained my tongue a grotesque shade of purple. I scrub at it with my toothbrush and spit out great gobs of purple toothpaste foam.

  Lizey’s bedroom is so cold that I almost can’t bear to remove my body-warmed clothing and put on my icy pajamas. I’m tired and very fuzzy from the wine. I pull off my clothing as quickly as possible, suck in my breath, yank on my pj’s, snap off the light and dive under the covers.

  Lying alone in the big bed and looking at the dark ceiling, a pang of hunger for Chris twists my insides.

  “Chris!” I say loudly, as if he could hear me. And I cry again, allowing myself a much freer rein this time, as there is no one about and no one can hear me. A wet patch collects on my pillow. I swap it for the other pillow. I think I sleep.

  My train gets in to Central at about six on Sunday. I am stiff, dirty and fantasizing about a hot shower. Mum and Jess wait for me on the platform, holding hands. Mum wears her big dark overcoat, Jess her little blue parka with the fake-fur edging. Jess jumps up and down and then runs toward me. I scoop her up into my arms.

  “Nanna sent a special scarf for Teddy!” she says.

  “Excellent!” I kiss both of her spongy little cheeks and plonk her back down.

  “Hi, Mum.”

  “Hi, darling,” says Mum. And, uncharacteristically, we hug. It feels damn good.

  Fraying Ropes

  When I walk into the Land of Dreams on Tuesday afternoon, Chris is standing at the service desk, studying the roster and fastening his bow tie. My body immediately alters course, and I am at his side.

  “Hello there,” I say. And I smile at him, not unlike how Maria smiles at Captain von Trapp in the gazebo.

  “Miss Hayes,” he says, emphasizing each word without varying his intonation. The Land of Dreams seems to quieten behind us. “It’s good to see you.”

  Chris is king of winning smiles and witty banter, but thus far there has been neither. There is a smile from him, though—less brilliant than usual but more genuine. It nourishes me.

  A voice breaks through from somewhere above.

  “Are we going to our registers or are we standing around chatting?”

  Bianca. Always there to spoil a moment. I notice on the roster that she has put Chris on register two, near her at the service desk, and me way up the other end on register sixteen.

  The shift drags without Chris on a nearby register to chat to. Between customers I gaze down the other end and watch Chris talking to Bianca and Ed.

  Four till nine is a five-hour shift. A school day is six and a half hours. So the shifts are like another school day, minus lunch or recess, after an actual school day. At ten to nine, I see Ed and Chris conferring and looking at me. Then Ed walks up to register sixteen.

  “Hello, Amelia,” he says, quite formally.

  “Hello, Ed,” I say, following suit.

  “I’m, uh, having a birthday party on Sunday next week.” He fishes a slip of paper out of his pocket and gives it to me. “My parents are away. The plan is to head on back to my place straight from work on Sunday.”

  Chris can be seen holding up both his thumbs at me from register two.

  “Excellent. Thank you. I’ll be there. How old?”

  “Nineteen,” he says. “I better go cash up.” And he’s gone.

  “Sunday next week,” I tell Penny in math the next day.

  “Isn’t that the night before the history exam?” she says.

  “Yeah, I think so. Hey, what do you think I should wear?”

  “Amelia, we both know what you are going to wear.”

  Earlier in the year, Lizey had lent me a skirt and top to wear to a friend’s sixteenth birthday party. Penny and I had gotten ready together at my place. At the last minute I changed back into my jeans and T-shirt and could not be dissuaded.

  The next bell will signal lunchtime. Lunch used to mean forty minutes of chatting with Penny. It now means thirty minutes of the Scott show, which plays a daily matinee to a willing audience consisting of my best friend. I decide to bring it up with Penny. Gently, though, ’cau
se she doesn’t respond well to out-and-out confrontation.

  “Why do you talk to that jerk Scott every day?”

  Whoops. Couldn’t help myself.

  She raises an eyebrow. That’s never a good sign.

  “He’s a tool,” I continue. “He sits there day after day thinking, I am so the Man. And instead of telling him to piss off, you encourage him! Then he just loves himself even more.”

  “You’ve given this a lot of thought,” observes Penny, looking away.

  “Well, yeah. And he’s so rude. Every day he comes to sit with you, and he has never, not once, said hello to me. None of them have.”

  “Well, gee, Amelia.” She looks at me now. “Do you think that could have anything to do with the death stares you sit there and give out? Your eyes could kill a man at ten paces.”

  “They’re not men.”

  “You make it obvious that you think they’re totally beneath you; you sit there on your high horse sending filthy looks or you bury your head in a book. Why would they say anything to you?”

  “They’re jerks.”

  “For God’s sake, they’re not that bad! And in case you haven’t noticed, for some of us they’re all that’s going. We don’t all measure boys against the Chris benchmark. No one else has a Chris. And I guarantee that if you weren’t so bent on comparing every boy in the world to your idol, you might relax about Scott and his friends.”

  I sulk. “You don’t like him, do you?”

  But Penny declines to answer, making a show of continuing with her algebra. I glare down at mine and then out the window.

  “I’ll be home late from work on Sunday,” I say to Mum.

  It’s about five and I am just home from Friday basketball practice. Mum sits at the kitchen table, sipping a cup of tea and listening to Classic FM. Two large, dirty frying pans are sitting on the sink. They are from last night’s dinner and Dad was supposed to wash them up. I glance at them nervously.

  “Oh?” she says.

  “Bit of a birthday party for a guy from work.”

  “The one who gave you the flowers?”

  “What? No, someone else.”

  “Right.” She sips her tea.

  “Don’t you want to know where it is and what time I’ll be back?”