Leaving Jetty Road (5 page)

I swallow. “So what happened?”

“She got married again when I was thirteen,” he says flatly. “She’s been with Greg ever since.”

I hesitate, not knowing what to say. “Is he nice, your stepdad?”

He frowns. “He’s
stable.
He loves her. He has a
mortgage.
That’s all my mother wants now. I don’t think she actually loves him; she just tells herself she does.”

He falls quiet then, moving restlessly out of the pool of orange light from the streetlamp to lean his back against the cement wall of the tram shelter. His long legs stretch out in front of him, and his face is suddenly obscured by darkness.

“The best thing I ever did,” he says, “was leave home. Move out into my home by the beach. Get my own life.”

He shifts again, moving his weight from one foot to the other. I think about saying something, decide against it. There’s something in his face that tells me, just for now, to keep quiet.

“My mother is a weak, stupid woman, Nat,” he says at last, shrugging. “She’s too scared to find out the truth, so she lies to herself. I
despise
people who lie to themselves.”

Something about his words shocks me. It’s not
what
he’s saying, exactly; it’s more, I think, the way he says it. There’s this note of real withering scorn in his voice, his eyes, when he talks about his mother. I have to admit, I don’t like it. It’s like the stuff he said to Sofia earlier, the impatient way he dismissed her beliefs. He’s so passionate about his own convictions, it’s like there’s no room for anyone else’s; no room for anything other than black and white.

But I think what strikes me most is his
bitterness.
Listening to him at moments like this, you don’t get any sense of optimism. Me, I like to look at the bright side of things. In that way—in that one way, at least—I’m totally my mother’s daughter. I mean, you can hate life or you can love it, you know? So you might as well love it.

Then again, maybe if I’d had parents like Josh’s . . .

The tram, waiting silently on the tracks next to us, shudders suddenly into life, its engine warming up for the trip back to the city. The driver climbs out for one last cigarette, leaving the engine running. Behind us, beyond the tram stop, lies the beach. The sea is slick and silvery in the moonlight.

Josh pushes himself away from the wall of the shelter, turns to me.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get so heavy.” His voice is husky and quiet. He puts a hand on my shoulder, his thumb stroking my collarbone. “I’m not always like that.”

When he touches me, I forget everything else. My whole body buzzes and hums. If you attached a battery to me, I’d send out sparks, switch on lights.

“Sweet Nat,” says Josh softly, and cups my chin with his hand.

The tram engine throbs. Josh kisses me, and his lips taste faintly of salt carried in on the sea air. We move in toward each other, shutting out the cool evening breeze between us. I can feel his warmth, his urgency, and I like it. I lap it up—all that color, that energy of his; all the strength of his feelings. Good
and
bad.

The tram driver throws his cigarette away, gets into the tram. We break apart.

“I’ll call you,” Josh says to me as I climb into the tram.

All the way home, I lean my head against the smeared window, close my eyes, taste him on my lips.

The thing about Josh: he makes me feel so
—alive.

PART II

Lise

chapter seven

“Crybaby”

O
ne thing you need to know about me: I never cry. Not at sad movies, not at sad books, not at TV; not even when I feel sick, or premenstrual, or down. I just
don’t cry.

When I was little, I cried all the time. My sister Terri was always teasing me about being a crybaby, and the name sort of stuck; sometimes, when I screwed up my face after my father had told me off, he’d say, with an impatience that was unusual for him, “
Christ,
Lise, don’t be such a crybaby.”

Crybaby
Lise.
I hated that name, hated what it represented.
Weak,
that’s what I was. A
sniveler.
So finally, in Year 7, I made a New Year’s resolution not to cry anymore. And, just like that—overnight—I stopped. I don’t think I’ve cried again since.

Except once. A couple of years ago, on my fourteenth birthday, my parents gave me a portable CD player. It was a Sony, with double CD deck, radio, detachable speakers, remote control, the works.

“It’s fantastic,” Nat said enviously when she came over later that day.

I sat on my bed, back against the wall, knees to my chest, watching her fiddle around with all the knobs. I couldn’t bear to join in; I hadn’t yet touched it myself.

“It cost heaps,” I told Nat. “I saw it in an ad on TV last week.”

“It leaves my Walkman for
dead.
”

I said nothing to this. I turned my face to the wall, rested my cheek on my knee. My throat burned with shame.

“Have you listened to it yet, Lise?”

“No.”

“Can I try it out?”

“If you really want to . . .”

She went out to the living room, pinched a CD from my parents’ collection. When she came back and put it on, the air in my bedroom soared instantly with the unbearable, sweet sadness of violins and pianos.

“Wow,”
Nat said simply. “Even Tchai-bloody-kovsky sounds good on this.”

You could hear the timpani in the background, like the roll of a wave in the sea.
Oh, God.
I swallowed, hard.
Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry . . .

“Don’t you like it?” asked Nat.

I lifted my head then, to answer. “I told you. I saw how much it cost.”

“So?”

“So,”
I said throatily. “Nobody
else’s
parents spend that much money on them for their fourteenth birthday.”

Nat looked puzzled. “Well, you’re just lucky, then.”

A tear spilled over my cheek.

“It’s
too much,
” I said, sniffing.

Nat switched the stereo off. The violins stopped indignantly in mid-string.

“
Lise.
They love you. They can afford it. Why
not
?”

“Because . . . ,” I said, my voice cracking. “Because I don’t
want
an expensive present. I don’t want to be the lucky one. I don’t want the
responsibility.
”

Nat tried, bewildered, to hug me, but I pushed her arms away, turned my face once more to the wall. Ashamed, yes—but of what, I don’t know. Of my tears, perhaps, or of the feelings behind them.

It’s the only time I can remember crying since I’ve been in high school. The only time Nat’s ever seen me cry.

Part of me is proud of it, I suppose—the not crying. Of the self-control it takes, the discipline. And of the
strength . . .

chapter eight

In the mirror

A
couple of Saturdays after Easter, it’s Terri’s eighteenth birthday.

She’s bubbling from the moment the doorbell rings and the first of her uni friends arrives, at eight o’clock. She flits around from room to room in her new party dress, dimples dancing in her cheeks, wineglass in hand. She lights candles everywhere and turns up the music on the stereo notch by notch until my father exchanges glances with my mother and says, “I think it’s time we went out for that bite to eat.”

Mum nods. “You coming, Lise?”

Terri wafts into my bedroom as I’m brushing my hair hurriedly, conscious of Dad drumming his fingers in the car. She gives me a pitying look, magnanimous with birthday happiness.

“Why don’t you stay, Lise?” she says. “You don’t
really
want to go out with Mum and Dad, do you?”

She comes over to me in front of the mirror, throws her arms around my shoulders, croons into my ear.

“C’mon, Lisa-lou, stay and have some fun . . .”

I look at her slender, flushed, happy face next to mine in the mirror.
Fun.
Terri always calls me “Lisa-lou” when she’s trying to coax me into being different. Happy, maybe, or
. . . normal.
She doesn’t seem to realize that that’s never going to happen, no matter how much she wants it to. No matter how much
I
want it to.

I shrug my shoulders free of her clasp, scowl at her in the mirror.

“I
am
having fun,” I tell her, and run out to the garage, where the engine is already growling impatiently.

In the restaurant, Mum fusses over the menu (“I’ll have the fish grilled, not fried, please. And just steamed vegetables, thank you. No butter”) while Dad swirls the ice cubes in his Scotch good-humoredly. He’s happy: it’s his weekend off being on call, which means he can drink. The red wine that comes out with the main course is his favorite.

“Dessert, ladies?” he says gallantly as the waitress clears our plates.

Mum shakes her head, already fingering her cigarette lighter underneath the table.
I don’t eat dessert,
she always tells everyone virtuously. (And she doesn’t—not unless you count the chocolate bar she stashes away “for energy” in her handbag, alongside her cigarettes.) She orders a cappuccino, and shoots me a surreptitious disapproving look across the table when I decide on some sticky date pudding.

Dad smiles at me genially. “That’s right, Lisey. You enjoy yourself,” he says, and orders a slice of cheesecake for himself.

She’s right, though, I think guiltily as I spoon up caramel sauce and cream. I’ve kept so well, this week, to the diet I set myself over the Easter break, and now I’m breaking all my rules. It’s just . . . I don’t want to go home yet. I
really
don’t want to go back home.

I should have organized to go and see Nat tonight, slept over at her place. Avoided Terri’s party altogether. And a year ago, that’s exactly what I would have done, but now . . . I don’t know. We went out together to the movies the other night, but before that, it had been
ages
since we did anything outside of school. Sometimes, these days, it’s hard to believe that we even live close to each other.

Besides, let’s face it, I think bitterly: Nat would probably rather spend the time with her boyfriend now than with me.

Mum drives home, her foot jerking on and off the accelerator constantly, the way it always does when she’s stressed—or when, like tonight, she’s annoyed about having to drive home because Dad’s over the limit.

“They’ll have to leave by midnight. You
did
tell Terri everyone would have to leave by midnight, Rob . . .”

In the warm, cushioned darkness of the car, Dad sighs. “Yes, love. I told her.”

“Because I’ve got that open house scheduled for nine tomorrow.” The car rocks forward, pulls back, in sickening tempo with her foot. “It’s the Darleys’ house—the one that’s been on the market for two months now. I really can’t afford a bad night’s sleep.”

Dad fingers the knob on the radio, turning the volume up ever so slightly before he settles back into his seat, head comfortably against the headrest.

“Don’t worry about it, Jen, okay? I’ll remind Terri again when we get back. You go straight to bed.”

But after she has disappeared upstairs into their bedroom, he makes no visible effort to seek my sister out in the crowded living room at the other end of the house. And, like me, he seems unwilling to go to bed yet. He takes off his shoes and putters around the kitchen in his stocking feet, making himself a hot chocolate, smiling amicably at the odd guest passing through on their way to the ice-filled drink bucket in the laundry room. He spoons sugar and cocoa into a mug, adds milk, opens the microwave door.

“You sure you don’t want one of these, Lisey?”

I shake my head quickly. No more sweet things. Got to get back to my diet. Got to get rid of that puppy fat.

On the way out, Dad hesitates in the kitchen doorway, mug in one hand. He glances over at me sitting on a barstool at the kitchen countertop. When I was little, he’d have come over and ruffled my hair, or tickled my tummy to make me laugh.
One step, two step, and a ti-ckle-y under there!

I look away deliberately; pick up one of Mum’s
Vogue
s; start reading it, head down.

“Good night, then, honey,” he says after a moment. His voice has that same wistful, puzzled note it’s had ever since he stopped being able to make Terri and me squeal with delight at his efforts. Sometimes he sounds so disappointed, I feel as if I’ve let him down, somehow, by growing out of his jokes.

When I don’t look up, he pads with soft, sad feet up the stairs to the bedroom.

I flick idly through the glossy pages of the magazine. It’s eleven o’clock; it’ll be close to one, I’d say, before the last of Terri’s friends leaves. The kitchen yawns—empty, silent—in contrast to the cheerful bubble of noise that drifts out from behind the closed living room door. What would it be like to be the kind of person who likes parties? I wonder. The kind of person who likes dancing, knows all the latest hits, doesn’t care about school the next day? Who, like Terri, looks great in hipster jeans and crop tops . . .

On the wall opposite the stainless steel countertop there’s a mirror, large and square-shaped, with a wrought-iron frame. (Mum chose it to match the legs of the barstools.) Out of the corner of my eye, I catch the movement of my reflection as I turn over the pages of the magazine.

“Don’t you
hate
that mirror?” Nat said to me once, a couple of years ago. “I mean, doesn’t it bother you, looking up in the middle of dinner and staring at yourself in the mirror—chewing?”

Now I look up, straight at myself. As always, a pale, blue-eyed face stares back at me, framed with long, messy, uncontrollable brown hair.

Could that ever be the face of someone who likes parties? Could anyone ever be fooled into
thinking
it was the face of someone who likes parties?

But the blue eyes stare back at me, inscrutable, giving away no answers.

And that’s just it. I’ve never been able to read my face the way others read it; never been able to see whatever it is other people see there. That thing they see in my face which makes people like Sofia—people like my sister, people like my
mother—
shrug exasperatedly and walk away.

In my bedroom, I lie down, switch off the light, draw the curtains tightly to shut out the light from the streetlamp outside my window. My room is directly above the living room, and the voices coming from down below sound muffled, almost distant.

Still happy, though, those voices. You can muffle words, but not happiness.

I close my eyes, try to relax, to concentrate. I read this book recently about creative visualization. If you can just visualize what you want to change about yourself, the book said, you can make it happen, no matter what it is or how unattainable it seems. Even something like losing weight, or being happy, or passing your exams.

Ever since I read that book, I’ve been putting it into practice every night before I go to sleep. You’ve got to start somewhere, after all. But the problem is, sometimes I can’t sleep for trying to decide what I should try to visualize that night.

Because that’s the point. There are
so many
things about myself I want to change.

And none of these things seems attainable.