New Australian Stories 2 (42 page)

‘But I'd
like
to do it.'

‘So would I, doll, and I, as I said, need to practise
'.
‘Girls, girls,' said Tara. ‘Don't fight over making cake, for god's sake. Both of youse can make one. We'll take any leftovers down to Dawn in lingerie … then maybe she'll start giving us the heads up on their sales!'

‘So,' I said. Ange and I were dressing the dummy we all called Max. ‘What do you reckon about Claire entering
Masterchef
?'

‘What? Oh well, she's not exactly … she basically hasn't got a hope in hell of getting on.' Ange dropped Max's cuff and rolled her eyes back, and we both laughed. ‘And besides, they reckon twenty-five thousand people are going to audition for the next series.'

I swallowed. ‘Twenty-five thousand?'

‘Yeah, it's the housewife's new lotto. Win the jackpot and all your dreams will come true.'

‘Except lotto is about luck, and
Masterchef
is about skill.'

‘Is it?'

‘Of course! I'd love to go on that show … The contestants are all talented, and they all have a true passion for food.'

‘Well, Cindy, why don't those twenty-five thousand passionistas go do their chef apprenticeship if they really want to cook?' She raised her eyebrows at me. ‘Why don't they work for what they want?'

I tightened the tie so tight around Max's neck that I heard stitches snap.
What would you know, puker
, I suddenly wanted to hiss.

I let go of the tie. ‘I'm going to the loo.'

On Thursday night, feeling competitive and resentful, I assembled my ingredients. A cheesecake is a complex beast, and I wanted to turn it into a cupcake.

I stared at my materials and gently settled into the zone where there was no Claire, no girls, no me and no men's collections. And there I came across
Blackbirds Singing in the
Dead of Night
: a thin disc of pastry, purple with blueberry juice reduction, supporting a buttermilk cupcake strewn with blueberries, frosted with a tower of whipped vanilla cream cheese. On top I set an orb of blueberry jelly in which a single blueberry was suspended.
Blackbirds
was a stunner.

Friday morning I walk in and all the girls are in the tearoom drinking green tea. In the middle of the table is a massive hulk of a cheesecake with an inch-thick biscuit base, blueberry gunk running down the sides and a dozen crooked candles. I set my
Birds
on a plate and slide it beside this wretched beast.

‘Pretty!' says Tara.

At morning-tea time Claire volunteers to man the floor while we sing an ironic sort of happy birthday for Ange and eat cake. They all look at me apologetically and take a hunk of Claire's. Ange, though, takes both; eats mine then Claire's. She eats as she always does, just like a squirrel: fine fingers to tiny mouth, disassembling the food bit by little bit until it's no longer on the plate, but you aren't entirely sure if it's inside her body or has turned into thin air. Then she usually excuses herself and is gone for quite a while, during which time we'd all avoid the loos.

And so the cakes disappear from her plate — we all try not to watch — then she stands up from the table and smiles like an angel.

‘I think both of the cakes are gorgeous. Thank you, Cindy. And now I will go and thank Claire.' She opens the door.

I follow her — the door swings closed behind us — and I grab her by the forearm. ‘Ange,' I say.

She stops, looks down at my hand and sets her calm eyes upon me.

‘Please don't spew.'

She looks at me for what seems like a long time, and I don't let go of her forearm though I feel nervous and a bit sick. You see, we all know each other's secrets, but we aren't supposed to interfere. We ignore Tara's soliciting and don't suggest Sue should eat; we pretend Claire really is following her diabetic diet and leave Ange alone in the loos.

And now there's a hard thing on Ange's face that I haven't seen before and her arm's still stuck out and in my hand and she says to me, sweet as sugar, ‘I really liked the name of your cupcakes, Cindy, that Beatles song about the blackbirds waiting? I think it's really fitting … under the circumstances.' She wrenches her arm free. ‘After all,
Cinders
, who knows? Wait long enough and someone might walk in that door, lead you to a shop full of ingredients and
beg
you to turn them into cake.' And she slaps me with her pity-smile then spins from me, towards the bathroom.

Harry

EMMA SCHWARCZ

Harry surveyed the breakfast buffet. Tropical fruit manned by an Indian with a cleaver; canned fruit, its pallid cousin, sitting alongside mueslis and yoghurts and, oddly, salad greens and hard cheeses. He turned to his right: lamb sausages, roasted tomatoes, hash browns, bacon crisped to buggery, scrambled, gelatinous eggs, fried rice and onions. To his left, the carbohydrate display: breads, pastries, pancakes, muffins and cereals in small boxes. He and Ruth had once discouraged these miniature cereal boxes in their household. Caitlin pointed to them in the supermarket, and Ruth shook her head, listing the additives that had been shown to mutate cells and cause cancer. In rats, Harry had thought; there was no definite causal link in humans.

He could never keep up with all the perils in his way after they married, perils that changed each week depending on who was finessing the test tubes. One week it was tartrazine, the next saccharine and aspartame. Coffee was banned in January only to be reinstated in June, when its antioxidant properties emerged. Ruth had put him on a Pritikin diet for a few years after the full extent of his family's cardiac history came to light one beach holiday — a father and two brothers with telltale chest scars — but then someone discovered the risk of thyroid malfunction and the diet was turfed. Ruth had panicked, palpating Harry's neck at the breakfast table, looking for signs of a goitre.

When the salt had returned to the table, Ruth decided to cut red meat from their meals. Chicken went swiftly and silently a month later. They were down to fish, which stank out the kitchen and left Harry's wallet lighter. There were days when he would have given his thumb for a nice rib-eye. After that, it was anyone's guess which food was no longer considered ripe for consumption. Families on the breadline were able to dine out on buckets of fried chicken and soft drink, but Harry, who had finally reached a level of fiscal respectability, existed on brown rice and seaweed. His gut, Ruth claimed, would thank him. ‘You watch,' she said, dishing up some mirin-soaked sweet potato and quinoa, ‘while all your friends develop bowel cancer, you will be squeaky clean.'

Now, scanning the acres of food, he felt weak. He could eat any of this, if he wanted. He could pile his plate high with danishes or create a tower of bacon rashers. He could drown everything in maple syrup and cinnamon sugar and fail to brush his teeth. The space left him gasping, and he had to grip the bench for a moment until the room came back into focus.

‘Dad?' Caitlin reached past him for some papaya. ‘Aren't you hungry?'

‘Just struggling to decide, I suppose.'

He looked around. On all sides, young families, retirees, honeymooners — kids so new in their skins and relationships that they were wide-eyed just eating cornflakes together.

It was mostly couples. The resort was made for them, what with all the loveseats on the sand, flaming torches dotting the perimeter and frangipani carried along the warm breeze. He was loath to sit down with Caitlin, the expectation was so great; twice already he'd had to correct the assumption that they were a couple. A couple! She was half his age and could do much better for herself than the grey ghost he had become. He watched her open a tiny box of Coco Pops, spilling the small beans across the table in her haste. She'd lost weight — the result of stress, she said — and while Harry didn't want to encourage any unhealthy habits, he had to acknowledge that the architecture of her face was more readily available to the world now. She was, if not the spitting image of her mother at a young age, then a high-functioning facsimile. He could see his own influence somewhere — the nose was his, and the small ears, which on a woman worked better — but Caitlin was mostly Ruth, at least in appearance. He couldn't work out if this was now a source of pain or consolation.

‘Dad? You sitting down or what?'

He took a seat and picked at his muesli with a spoon. ‘So, what's on for today?'

‘Same as yesterday, I guess. Sit by the pool, read, swim. Not much else, is there?'

‘We could go into town. If that's something that interests you?'

Caitlin waited until she'd finished her mouthful. Ruth had taught her well. ‘Is that something that interests
you
?'

Harry shifted his muesli around in its bowl. He didn't know why he'd chosen it; of all the options, muesli was the one most likely to cause him to bloat, which was not an attractive thing at the best of times but especially not in Speedos. He never could remember which foods prompted which complaint, but he had never needed to before. He was the caretaker of the banking, the stock market, Medicare and private health insurance; Ruth was the one who knew the ailments.
Chickpeas give you gas, boats make you seasick, the
rogan josh was too spicy for you last time, don't you remember?

Caitlin was staring at him, but he'd forgotten the question. He was too busy registering the sidelong glances from a woman at the next table. She was roughly his age and sitting with a man who was also roughly his age. The look on her face suggested that this, and only this, was a suitable arrangement and that seeking refuge from the instabilities and indignities of age in a younger offer was beneath any respectable citizen.

He squirmed in his seat. ‘Listen honey, you'll need to call me Dad a bit more often, and probably louder too.'

She glared at the other table. ‘Forget about everyone else, okay? This is not about them.'

This Harry could confirm, but who it
was
about was anyone's guess. Caitlin had suggested the trip. ‘It's your thing, Dad, you do it every year. And this year, well, I think you need it more than ever. I'll come with; it'll be healthy.'

But it wasn't just
his
thing.

‘I can't leave now. What if something changes?'

Caitlin had placed a hand on his. ‘Dad, nothing has changed in ten months.'

‘Yes, but that's not an indication of the next few months.'

But it was, at least according to the doctors. ‘She's stable but non-responsive, Mr Rogers. You go on your holiday.'

He looked at his daughter, now idly dunking a teabag in her cup. Her forehead had a malarial sheen to it, the result of hasty sunscreen application, and her hair had started to frizz from the humidity, expanding and separating in a slow-waking fan. He noticed a few superficial creases in her décolletage, which he'd taken for sleep marks the day before, but here they were again. If he'd stopped to think, he wouldn't have pointed them out to her; he might have instead mentioned the colour of the water or how well she seemed to be doing in her job. As it was, she covered her chest with one hand and muttered something about wrinkles and getting old.

‘You? Old? Ridiculous. You don't even have any greys yet.'

‘Yes, I do.'

‘Where? Show me.'

She placed her fork down and stared. ‘Dad, I dye my hair.'

‘Do you? But it's the same colour as when you were born. Why would you dye your hair the same colour?'

She looked at him as if he were slow, which he was beginning to think might be the case. ‘To cover the greys.'

He never had these sorts of circular conversations with Ruth. They always seemed to travel quite directly from one point to the next, until one of them reached a conclusion and they settled into silence. He wasn't sure he was ready to give that up.

The woman at the next table was shooting daggers at him, and the muesli had lodged in his intestines and would no doubt be looking for an exit strategy before long.

‘Cait, I'll meet you at the pool, okay?'

‘Finished already?'

He motioned in the direction of the hotel rooms. ‘Old-man prostate.'

She shrugged and went back to her breakfast, opening up the local paper.

Caitlin was swimming underwater lengths of the pool when he emerged from his room. Long, powerful strokes that pushed her past the toddlers in inflatable rings and couples in paddling clutches. She was stronger these days, back to her usual self, or at least close. He supposed that he was meant to follow suit.

‘Dad!' She was topside, waving a wild arm like she had as a child, and pointing to the seats she'd saved. He waved back and settled onto the lounge, adjusting it so that he had full sun. He and Ruth had always found seats under the palm trees on previous visits, in the shade so that their gooseflesh didn't crisp and wither. As if it was skin cancer that would get them! Not when arteries thickened like old cream. He lay back and let the warmth wash over him.

By the time Caitlin sat down next to him, Harry was under the umbrella. The sun was unpredictable and, besides, he wasn't suddenly free to do anything he liked.