grab her and start to strangle her, but she says, “—fool around, aren’t you. You filthy things, you’re going to take off all your—”
“You hold her down,” I say loudly to David, “and I’ll put the pillow over her head till she’s dead.”
“Lively little thing, isn’t she? Maybe we should take off all her—”
Indignant, we both cry, “Day-vid!”
He doesn’t look very ashamed of himself. “Just messin’ with ya. Hey, is there anything to eat around here?” He opens the fridge and finds my last Mars bar.
“Jenny’s been getting these weird phone calls.”
“Oh yeah? Prob’ly creepy Bertram from the chess club, breathing all his snot down the phone—”
Revolted, we both cry, “Er, yuck!”
“We could get a pizza and eat it while we—”
“No pizza,” Maddy says, looking for another CD.
“No eating it,” I add. “I mean, Maddy, shouldn’t you be going home for tea? Your Mum’ll be wondering where you are.”
“No she won’t. I told her I was coming over here to study.”
Davy bugs his eyes. “Dressed like that?”
“What’s wrong with the way I’m dressed, nerd-features? First they tell me to go, then they insult me.”
“It’s usually the other way round, I know. Hey, actually I like your, um, dress. Could we discuss it some other time? Like next winter?”
The poor girl sighs long-sufferingly. “I can take a hint. I know when I’m not wanted. I know blazing passion when I see it. Listen, I read this booklet the other day about safe sex, would you like me to—”
“Let me show you the way to the door, Maddy.”
As she leaves, Madeleine sticks her nose in my ear and whispers, “Is this the night? Are you going to Do It?”
I push her onto the footpath. A kid on a skateboard nearly takes her left ankle with him. “Mad, I’m only fourteen,” I whisper crossly. “You’re only fourteen. Davy is only sixteen. Have you been watching too many episodes of Models, Inc. or what?”
“Well, Julie Blackford’s Done It, and she’s in the—”
“Good night, Maddy. Can I come over to your place tomorrow morning?”
“‘Course ya can. In fact you hafta promise to, especially if you’re gunna—”
“Hey Jenny,” David yells down the stairs, “where’s the Violator CD?”
“Under the bed. I’m sick of Braincase. Listen Mad, I’ve got to go.”
“What will you do about those phone calls?”
“Dunno. Tell the phone people, I suppose. Anyway, he hasn’t rung back so he’s probably got bored. See ya.”
“Bye.” She bops away down Rathdowne Street, in her own instant movie, happy as a tick. I shake my head with admiration and go back inside. That girl and I have been through a lot together.
FLASHBACK
Mum and Poppa split up over a year ago. I’d just turned thirteen, and I didn’t really know what was going on. Mum went to stay with her sister, my aunt Vicky. I told myself it was because something had gone wrong with Vicky’s marriage. I thought Mum had driven up to Ballarat to help her poor older sister Vicky get over some crisis in her life. Ha! Well, anyway, that’s what I wanted to believe, so that’s what I did believe.
Mum and Poppa are great ones for being honest and up front about family matters. Full and frank disclosure and all that. But the truth is: they’re not very good at it.
All that time Mum was at Vicky’s I thought she was going to come back home. I took it for granted. I mean, wouldn’t you? If Mum had gone storming out of the house after a screaming row, if she and Poppa had been throwing plates and glasses at each other, well, then, I’d have had a better idea what was going on. That’s how they’re supposed to do it. That’s what happens on telly. But it was all so civilized that I missed it entirely. Didn’t catch on for ages.
Being split-up isn’t why I feel so awful though. There are stacks of other kids at school from single-parent families. Only it’s mostly their dads who’ve run off, not their mothers. God, you ought to hear their stories, some of them. It’d curl your hair. Actually it hasn’t curled mine, but then nothing ever seems to, despite hours down at the hair dresser three months ago when Mum wanted me to look beautiful for Aunt Vicky’s twenty-fifth wedding anniversary party. Ha!
Mostly kids won’t talk about it, but sometimes, when they know you come from a single-parent family yourself, they talk and talk. Fights, smashed-up furniture, the police at the door so you could die of embarrassment, women’s refuges for the mothers and the kids, court orders, the lot. Even broken bones. Lots of bruises they can’t hide very well.
Well, it wasn’t like that round at our place. No, it was like skating on ice, beautiful and smooth and techno music in the air—and then in one hit you’re flat down on the ice with your head buzzing and a nose full of blood. I got home from school one day and Mum was packing her bags, saying she had to go to stay at Vicky’s for a few days. “To sort things out,” she said. “Marriage is a funny business,” she said. “It has its ups and downs,” she said.
Poor old Aunt Vicky, I thought, she must be having trouble with uncle Bill. Mind you, the way Mum hugged me and kissed me and told me I was the most precious thing in her life.... I should have realized something was going on. It was as if she was heading off to spend a year in Antarctica.
But I thought she must be clinging to me like that because she was upset about her sister and that rotten no-good uncle Bill. Actually Bill is really an old sweetie and always gives good cash presents at Christmas and on my birthday, even if he is amazingly boring. He worked in provisioning for the Air Force or something equally dreary, never went near the jet fighters.
You can be a real dweeb-head when you don’t want to look reality in the face.
But hey, I still don’t want to think about the break-up. Maybe I’m a bit like the other kids at school after all, the ones from single-parent families, I hate thinking about it. Not that there’s that much to think about, it was so boring, all that on-again off-again stuff for a year. All those visits. All that “talking it over.” By the time Maddy and I first saw Mum and this Edward character in Bourke Street, I had come to accept that she and Dad aren’t going to live in the same house any more. After a couple of months Mum had come back from Ballarat and moved into a nasty little brick apartment in North Fitzroy, so at least I could go and see her every week. It might seem unusual for the girl to stay behind with the father while the mother goes off by herself, but I was in the middle of exams and besides Mum said she just needed to be completely alone for a while. We assumed that meant a couple of weeks. Then it was a couple of months, including the Christmas holidays. Then a year had gone by. It wasn’t as if I never saw her, of course. She wasn’t living very far from me and Poppa. All by herself, except when I stayed over for the night. I thought. But I could hardly keep thinking that
