Am I Right or Am I Right? (5 page)

Chapter 7

Keeping the Fridge up to speed

Dear Fridge,

I am writing this slowly because I know you can’t read fast.

It is spring and the sap is rising. I am not referring to your ex-husband, incidentally. No, I am merely identifying the season and its signifiers: primal juices are abundant within nature, new shoots appear, blossoms unfurl. So too beats the primeval rhythm within the human breast, a beat to which I am not immune. In short, dear Fridge, this Friday evening I am following the well-trodden path of romance, whereby a young English gentleman, the classically named Jason, with accompanying Greek god looks, will escort me to a place of entertainment and possibly thereafter to realms of amorous bliss.

Thought you should know.

Love,
Calma

Dear Calma,

About time you got a date.

Incidentally, it might be spring where your young man comes from, but in the tropics it’s too bloody hot for rising sap, new shoots, or unfurling blossoms. Sorry to be practical.

Have a great time on Friday. Watch those primal juices. Haven’t they told you about them in Health Education?

Love,
The Fridge

Chapter 8

Finding the Fridge is a fibber

The Fridge was up to no good.

Now, this might be news to you, but I have a reputation as an amateur sleuth. Not an undeserved one either, if you’ll forgive me inserting my own trumpet and giving a resounding rendition. Call it a gift, but I can spot duplicity (what a brilliant word that is) from twenty miles without a road map. I can smell a lie. I can taste a half-truth. I’m allergic to deception. I’m part bloodhound. In fact, only last year I helped solve the mystery of the unmuzzled pit bull…but that’s another story and I don’t want to revisit it.

Anyway, it was but the work of a moment for me to piece the parts of the jigsaw together and come to the conclusion that the Fridge was telling me whoppers. However, the pieces of that jigsaw came in subtle ways. And the problem I’ve got is how best to tell you the details without boring you senseless. You see, if I’m going to be honest, the separate events are not in themselves of stunning dramatic quality. Plus the evidence accumulated gradually, over days.

So…I’ve decided you are going to have to do some work as well. Don’t worry, it’s not physically demanding. All I ask is that when you see the word FastF™ (Calma Harrison, patent pending) on the page, then you mentally press the fast-forward button on an imaginary remote control. Listen, use a real remote control if it makes you feel better, but not much is going to happen unless you’re reading this when the rest of the family is watching a movie, in which case you’ll find your popularity suddenly plummets.

It’s a narrative device I’ve just invented, where we can skip the dull bits of normal existence and focus on the relevant stuff. I can tell you’re dubious, but give it a go. Okay?

Let’s practice.

Well, it’s Sunday night and getting dark. The rain is coming down like stainless-steel rivets and the tree frogs are carrying on like foghorns. I think I’d better do that homework….

FastF™

Slap me round the face with a wet fish! It’s Monday morning and my homework’s done. The sun is boiling the blacktop and…

Get the general idea? Okay. Let’s give it a go with “The Strange Case of the Dissembling Fridge.”

I told you earlier that the Fridge was out when I got back from Vanessa’s on Sunday afternoon. I didn’t give it much thought. She’s always out, doing one of her two jobs. She works in a supermarket in the next suburb. It’s a better one than Crazi-Cheep. They’ve got two Muzak CDs and they can spell the name of the store properly. Positively upmarket. Anyway, she does strange shifts in the supermarket.

When she’s not there, she’s at her other place of employment—the casino on the Esplanade. She used to work in a pub but got tired of the relentless insults and sexual harassment. And that was just from the other employees. So now she deals cards for grim-faced tourists who, even when they win, look as happy as if she was performing a colonic irrigation on them. The hours are weird there too.

Look, all this is just background information. If I was wondering where the Fridge was on that Sunday afternoon, I probably assumed she was at one of those places. Actually, I wouldn’t have given it a moment’s thought. After all, I had arranged a date with Jason. I was basking in a mellow glow, almost certainly humming while skipping blithely through the garden, scattering rose petals. The Fridge was not high on my list of priorities.

There weren’t even alarm bells when Mr. Moyd from the casino called. For a moment I thought it might have been Jason calling back, just to hear my voice, and I got to the phone before it had rung twice. Mr. Moyd, an American with an accent you could sharpen a cutthroat razor on, asked me to pass a message to the Fridge. It went something like: “Tail yer mom that aim shoor sorry thet she’s failing seek too day. Ai hev gotten coveh for hair sheeft tonite, so she musn wurry. Send mah baist re-guards.”

Even without the benefit of subtitles, I got the gist. The Fridge was crook and had the evening off. Selfish and preoccupied as I was, I forgot about it in an instant….

FastF™

Monday afternoon and Jupiter must be in conjunction with Saturn or something, because when I get home from school, the Fridge is parked in the kitchen. Next to the fridge, actually. We pass a few pleasantries.

“How was school today, Calma?”

“Crap. How was work last night?”

“Ditto.”

“You in again tonight?”

“Leaving in five minutes. There’s a casserole in the oven.”

“I’ll take a shower first.”

FastF™

I’m standing in the shower, trying to cover myself completely in soapsuds, when a small, niggling thought at the back of my mind bursts through to consciousness. Mr. Moyd. The message. What’s going on?

FastF™

It’s late at night and I can’t concentrate on math. Actually, that’s a normal state of affairs for me, but this time I have a reason. The Fridge told me she was at work last night, but Mr. Moyd specifically said she hadn’t been in. If she chucked a sickie, then where did she go?

I call the casino. She isn’t in. Reception tells me she has called in sick again and won’t be in until Friday. I hang up and return to the math problem on my graphics calculator. It has something to do with box plots, statistical functions, and standard deviation distribution graphs. Don’t worry. It doesn’t make any sense to me either. Anyway, the only standard deviation I’m worried about is the one involving the Fridge.

FastF™

It’s late Wednesday afternoon and the Fridge is leaving the house just as I’m coming in from school. She is carrying car keys and a vexed expression. I get between her and the driver’s seat. I was tempted to leave a note but decided against it. If something funny is going on, I don’t want to give her the chance to polish a lie. I want to look her in the eye.

“Where do you think you’ve been, young lady?”

Actually, I don’t say that. I want to, mind. I want to stand there, hands on hips and a pissy look on my face, like I’m getting in serious preparation for parenthood.

“Mr. Moyd from the casino called on Sunday. He said you had called in sick. And you weren’t in Monday night either. What’s going on, Mum?”

The Fridge looks at me and I think I detect a shiftiness in her eyes. It might be annoyance at running late, though. I can’t be sure.

“Caught me ditching, Calma?” She is trying to lighten the tone, but I’m having none of it. I give her my steely gaze.

“Look,” she says, “I had to work at the supermarket on Sunday and Monday. I’d double-booked myself, but I couldn’t tell the casino that, could I? So I called in sick. Shoot me! Now I’m sorry, Calma, but I’m late and unless you get out of my way, I’ll drop you with a karate chop to the neck.”

It sounds reasonable. The explanation, that is, not the threat of mindless violence. I stand aside and she drives off. I feel easier in my mind.

FastF™

It is Friday evening and I am waiting outside the cinema for Jason. I’m tingly with nervousness, scanning the crowds of people, looking for his face. I am thirty minutes early and worried I’ll seem too eager. I tried to be late. My brain had issued firm instructions to the rest of my body that a lateness of at least ten minutes was required, on the grounds that this would ensure Jason would be tingly with anticipation and scanning the crowds of passersby for
my
face. Unfortunately, the rest of my body had performed a bloodless coup and propelled itself to the cinema with unseemly haste.

I see the Fridge.

The cinema is part of a large shopping and entertainment complex. There are many restaurants and bars. I catch a glimpse of a woman’s face as she enters a restaurant. She has her back to me and is partly obscured by passing traffic. But she turns her face briefly to the side and smiles at someone next to her. I can’t see who it is. It is over in a flash, a fraction of a second, a single frame in the spool of time. Too quick to be sure.

But I
am
sure. It’s the Fridge.

I move toward the restaurant, but Jason separates from a crowd and I stop. It wouldn’t take much to go over and check, peer in through the window, but suddenly I’m scared of knowledge and its implications. I smile at Jason and we collect our tickets.

FastF™

“Did you have fun last night?” says the Fridge. “And why are you wearing that towel around your head?”

It is Saturday morning and I’m picking at a round of toast. The Fridge is drinking coffee.

“Yeah, great,” I reply, ignoring her last question. “How was work?”

“Oh, you know. Work is work. Nothing to write home about. Tell me about your evening.”

But I don’t. Not really. My heart isn’t in it.

I want to know why she is lying to me but don’t have the courage to ask. I’m not sure if I can handle the truth.

ReWND™

I forgot to tell you about the rewind function, didn’t I? Well, it’s a logical extension, after all. I’ve skipped over some pretty important stuff, not the least being the big date with Jason, and we’ve got to engage in some literary time travel if we want to get it all in.

Anyway, wait until you get to the ReCRD™ button. Trust me. It’ll blow your mind.

Chapter 9

Just your average week

Actually, when I think about it, I’m not sure I want to go over the events of the week. If I’m honest, it wasn’t the best week I’ve ever experienced. Not that anything went
terminally
wrong, you understand. But not a whole lot went right, either.

You know I said I had missed some important stuff and that’s why we had to go back in time? That’s not strictly true. Sorry. It was a cheap narrative device to keep you focused. Of course, the date with Jason was interesting and I will give you a full run-down later. But the rest of the week was not high on drama, so yes, I misled you. I apologize. Believe me when I say I feel better for having got that off my chest.

I’ll start with Vanessa.

You’ll remember I left Vanessa’s house on Sunday in a state of simmering resentment at her lukewarm reaction to my romantic liaison with Jason. You might also recall that by the time I had finished on the phone with Jason, I had mellowed.

It’s difficult to stay mad at someone when you’re feeling particularly optimistic, and anyway, Vanessa is too calm. She dilutes drama. If she had been the first person on the moon, she’d have yawned through it all. Instead of “This is one small step for a man, but a giant leap for mankind,” we’d have “Like, is there any
point
to mankind?” for posterity to contemplate.

So I went to school prepared, eager even, to forgive and forget. At lunchtime Vanessa was already on the benches outside the canteen when I rocked up. She was chipping away at a banana and staring off into the middle distance, pondering the mysteries of the universe. I plopped myself down beside her.

I’d given this some thought. I wasn’t going to mention Jason. I was going to be completely normal, chatting away as usual. If she had a problem with my love life, and I couldn’t understand why she should, then I wasn’t going to give her any opportunities to articulate it. A good plan, I thought. Unfortunately, it was a doomed one.

“Hey ho, Vanessa,” I said in a frighteningly cheerful voice. “Here we are again. It’s Monday morning and the week stretches before us like a pitted path to nowhere. Tell me, why are two urbane sophisticates like us marking time in this academic wasteland when we could be out in the real world amassing personal fortunes and making indelible marks upon history?”

Not an aggressive opening statement, I think you will admit.

“I’m surprised you bother to talk to me,” Vanessa replied.

“What?” I said. Sometimes I fluctuate wildly between a flood of words and a dribble. This time I was just stunned.

“Nothing,” she said, keeping her head turned from me.

“Hang on,” I said. I wasn’t going to let this go. “What do you mean, bother to talk? Why wouldn’t I talk to you?”

Vanessa squirmed. She kept her head at an angle so I couldn’t make eye contact, shutting me out.

“Now that you’ve got a boyfriend,” she said, “I figured you’d find me dull company.”

I laughed. I couldn’t help it. She sounded so childish, like we were both six years old. Maybe I should have left it at that, possibly put my arm around her shoulders to comfort her. But it was absurd. I’ve never been good at dealing with immaturity and I’ve also got an alarming tendency to speak my mind regardless of the consequences.

I’m not proud of this. It’s just the way it is.

“Have you completely lost it, Vanessa?” I said. “What are you on about? Do you really think that because I’ve got a date with a guy—he’s not even my boyfriend, damn it—it diminishes you as a human being? Are you so insecure you can’t bear for me to have relationships with other people? What do you want me to do? Stop speaking to anyone else, to protect your jealous possessiveness? We are not in preschool, Vanessa. You’re being pathetic.”

She turned toward me and I saw her eyes were filled with tears. Her face crumpled. I was shocked. It was so rare that Vanessa showed any emotion at all and now her whole being was drenched in it. And for what? For nothing.

“Thanks,” she said, her voice strangled and tight with feeling. “Childish? I see. I’ve never been good enough for you and your smart talk. No one is good enough for Calma Harrison. It’s not all about you, bloody big-shot Calma. No one wants to be your friend because you pride yourself on making people feel small and worthless. Didn’t you ever wonder why the only friend you’ve ever managed to keep was a mindless dickhead? That Kiffing boy. He made you feel really superior, didn’t he?”

It felt, literally, as if someone had smacked me across the face. I don’t know where the tears came from. It’s a cliché, I know, but it was like an internal tap had opened. My chest felt as if a massive weight had me pinned. I couldn’t breathe. For once I could find no words. Even my brain was paralyzed. I watched in a daze as Vanessa threw down the remains of her banana and stormed off. Then, with a dark, malevolent surge, the anger swelled within me and I was on my feet.

I yelled at her retreating back.

“And what the hell do you know, Vanessa? About me, about Kiffo, about anything?” She didn’t stop. “Fuck you, Vanessa.
Fuck you!
”

I can’t stand immaturity in others, but I have a surprisingly high tolerance of it in myself. Strange, isn’t it?

If nothing else, I had the complete attention of every student within a hundred yards. Not that I cared. I also had the undivided attention of Mr. Haubrick, a teacher on yard duty. I spent the rest of the day in the office of the assistant principal for student welfare, where I continued to cry as if I was never going to stop. I refused to talk about Kiffo, though she tried to draw me out. I’m not going to tell you, either. I’m not in the mood. Sorry.

Remember I said earlier that the week wasn’t high on drama? Okay, that was a fib as well. I’ve told you before and I’ll tell you again: all narrators are unreliable, but some are more unreliable than others.

Then again, maybe I’m too smart for my own good.

I worked at Crazi-Cheep on Wednesday evening. It wasn’t my normal shift. In fact, I had told them I could only work weekends because I didn’t want anything that would interfere with schoolwork. I was forceful about that. Under no circumstances could I work Monday to Thursday. Non-negotiable. Set in stone. Don’t even ask.

So they called me late Wednesday afternoon and I said yes.

There was an emergency. Three employees had called in sick with subacute pulmonary carcinoma of the clack, or something. Maybe it was flu. Maybe they wanted to wander around the riverfront and lie to their children about it. Anyway, the store was desperate and would I, just this once…

I wasn’t doing anything anyway. The Fridge was out (who knew where) and I was torn between knocking my head against probability theory or feeling depressed over the things Vanessa had said. Perhaps paid employment would take me out of myself. Perhaps there would just be me and Jason in the store.

He wasn’t in and I worried for a while if he had succumbed to the mystery clack ailment, and if so, whether it would have cleared up by Friday.

Candy was in, though. I got the impression she never took a night off sick, possibly because no self-respecting virus would touch her. She looked at me as if I was something nasty left over in the mother-baby diaper-changing facility (I wanted them to rename it Crazi-Krap but didn’t think it was worth suggesting to management). Or rather, she nearly looked at me. Her eyes slid over the fluorescent lighting as she explained the mysteries of register rolls, scanning procedures, and refund policies.

I was going to work the register!

So much for the theory that operating the checkout was up there with cardiac bypass operations in terms of complexity and experience required. A few people got sick and they threw in a complete novice. I don’t know what they would have done if I hadn’t been able to work—probably kidnapped a toddler from the parking lot and stuck him in a high chair at the register.

Anyway, it didn’t seem complicated. Get the bar code in line with the scanner and away you go. I reckoned I could do that without burning out too many neurons. Candy wandered off to hone her gum-chewing skills at the customer service desk and I was left in charge of checkout six. It was the only one in operation. I had been hoping that all the carts laden with tricky items would miraculously line up at another register and I would be left with the handbaskets containing one item. With one checkout in operation, this seemed an unlikely scenario.

My first customer was all right. She
did
have a handbasket and there were only a few items in it. Now, I hadn’t had any specific training, but I knew what to do. I fixed her with a dazzling smile, like she was a long-lost relative.

“And how are you this fine evening?” I said. It was difficult to enunciate properly while giving her the full range of my teeth, so it might have come out garbled. She certainly seemed startled, possibly at my exuberance, possibly at being confronted by a practicing ventriloquist, but she recovered quickly.

“I’m great, thank you. And you?”

“Couldn’t be better.” Actually, it came out as “Couldn-gee-getta,” but I think she caught my drift. Grinning like a lunatic, I scanned her five items without faltering once, and rang up the total.

“That’ll be four thousand, four hundred, and twenty-five dollars and forty cents, please,” I said happily.

“Pardon?” she said.

“We take all major credit cards,” I said.

She laughed. “I think you’ve made a mistake.”

I couldn’t fault her logic. I’d hoped she wouldn’t notice, but I guess that was always going to be a long shot. I pressed a buzzer and a red lamp lit up above my checkout—useful if you’ve got twenty registers in operation but a bit redundant in this instance. Not difficult to spot the loser.

Candy meandered over and I explained the slight discrepancy. She tut-tutted without breaking her chewing rhythm and used the key around her neck to open my register.

“I do apologize, madam,” Candy said to the customer. “She’s new.”

“She?”
The woman’s mouth twisted slightly. “You mean Calma? No need to apologize. A small mistake.”

Candy grunted. I could tell she was disappointed. She was clearly hoping the two of them could have a full and frank discussion of my customer-care shortcomings. Instead, she copped a put-down. It’s good to savor moments like those and my smile widened. I could nearly suck my own ears. Candy canceled the transaction and slunk off without another word. I rang up the purchases again.

“You have qualified, madam, for a discount of nearly four and a half thousand dollars,” I said, “for being one of the few people in the world to pronounce my name correctly.” I pointed to the badge on my blouse. “Most say, ‘Kal-ma,’ when of course it’s ‘Kar-mer.’”

She laughed and it lit up her whole face. There are some people who exude an air of good humor, who give the impression that little, if anything, will stop them seeing the funny side of things. She was one of those. I warmed to her instantly.

“Calma,” she said, “thank you. You have brightened my evening.”

I could hear her laughing as she left the store.

The rest of the shift, believe it or not, went by with scarcely a hiccup. Okay, there were one or two small mistakes, but I sorted them out myself. Thankfully we weren’t busy. I don’t know where pensioners go on a Wednesday—bingo? mud wrestling? the over-eighty leapfrog national championships?—but they steered clear of Crazi-Cheep and I was grateful for that. I even managed to get in some thinking about Vanessa.

I knew she was right. Partly, anyway. I can be a smart-arse (does this come as a great shock to you?), but I have never tried to humiliate someone for the hell of it. And Vanessa seemed to be implying that I got a kick out of putting people down. Is that what others thought about me? I’m not a bitch. Honest. Not deliberately. Anyway, should I worry how others perceive me? It was Kiffo who taught me that changing your personality and behavior to suit other people’s perceptions was wrong. But Vanessa worried me.

Why had she reacted so angrily? I couldn’t understand it. She must have been suffering in some way, but the origin of the pain was a mystery. After my raw hurt subsided, I saw Vanessa’s reaction for what it was—a cry for help. She had lashed out blindly and I should have felt angry if she
hadn’t
used me as a target. What are friends for, after all? I made up my mind to go to her house at the earliest opportunity and talk.

She could be noncommunicative and downright strange, but Vanessa was my friend. I’m a little strange myself, if the truth be known.

The only other thing worth mentioning about my shift was that my father turned up at about eleven o’clock. I noticed him out of the corner of my eye, much the way you do when a rodent scuttles out of the wardrobe and disappears under the bed. (Look, it might not have happened to you, but you probably live somewhere where wildlife have the decency to observe negotiated boundaries.)

Anyway, he skittered among the aisles, pausing occasionally to scan the shelves. I wasn’t fooled, though. He was giving me the once-over. Either that or there was something fascinating about the pan scourer section.

I ignored him and he disappeared. If only it could be that easy all the time! Certainly he didn’t buy anything. When you’re the only checkout operator, you notice stuff like that. It made me uneasy, though. When I left the store at midnight and walked the short distance home, I kept glancing over my shoulder. I had a horrible feeling someone was following. Once I thought I saw a shadow move when all the other shadows remained fixed. I stopped in the middle of the street and focused on using my peripheral vision, but I couldn’t see anything.

It must have been my imagination.

I went round to Vanessa’s house straight after school on Thursday. She had been avoiding me during the day and I wanted to defuse the tension.

Mrs. Aldrick opened the door in the manner of one expecting an advance party of invading aliens from Alpha Centauri, showed me into the front room, and disappeared in a flurry of rolling eyeballs. Vanessa was curled up on the sofa, watching something appalling on the TV. It was one of those soap operas where everyone is young, physically irresistible, morally unscrupulous, and emotionally screwed.