Paper Alice (2 page)

I looked at my watch. Four o'clock, and I hadn't done a thing. I switched off my phone again and chucked it back on the bed. I picked up a highlighter pen and chewed on it, and stared out through my big back window. The backyards of the houses in the next street stretched away to either side, all much the same size, yet each one so different, containing a separate little world.

I've always loved this bird's-eye view of mine – perving on all the different stuff going on, everyone unaware of what everyone else is doing.

Over our back fence I could see the border collie I've christened Ball Boy, engaged in his favourite activity of throwing his own tennis ball. It's kind of sad – he does this a lot during the week when he's out there all day on his own.

As I watched, the toddler of the house came waddling out the back door and made a beeline for the ball. Ball Boy crouched down, wagging his tail as his little master lowered himself unsteadily down, picked it up and chucked it about half a metre before plopping down again and clapping his hands. Ball Boy, equally delighted, made a great show of pouncing on it, which made the baby shriek with laughter. Then just as the dog was dropping the prize in the baby's lap, the father came out, scooped up his protesting son and carried
him back inside. Not even giving poor Ball Boy another throw.

Strange, isn't it? I've watched this family from when that dog was a puppy and the baby wasn't even born. I feel as though I almost know them and yet we've never exchanged a word. The back fence is too high for that.

On one side of them is what I called the Creepy Crawly house. Though there's nothing Gothic about it; it's ultra-modern. But just about the only thing you see moving in the stone-paved, box-hedged courtyard is the Creepy Crawly cleaning thing, inching its way around the lap pool. Occasionally its owner, a middle-aged man with grey crinkly hair who wears cardigans and trousers pulled up over his stomach, comes out to check the chlorine levels, but I've never seen him have a swim.

On the far side was the most interesting place, unrenovated and obviously rented, full of guys and girls who looked like musos. They played a lot of what sounded like original music, often heavy metal, but sometimes more melodic stuff that I liked. Today there was a couple of them sitting out on the concrete on rickety old chairs, chatting in the late afternoon sun.

This lot left their washing on the line for days on end. Particularly one blouse, pretty and delicate and kind of retro-looking, which had been hanging there for weeks. It made me sad to see it left all forlorn when the other clothes were taken in. I kept wondering why no one rescued it. You could write a story about it, I thought:
The Sad Little Shirt
. Or a song . . .

There was movement below, in our own courtyard. Mum, a spray bottle of weedkiller in her gloved hands,
was stooping to attack some weeds that had dared to sprout between the pavers. Despite the lateness of the hour she still had on a big sunhat and one of Dad's old long-sleeved shirts, plus a mask, just in case of inhaling any fumes.

You'd think she'd have had enough of wearing a mask during the week. She is, of all things, a dentist: a partner in a practice in a nearby suburb.

You'd never pick it to meet her. A successful businesswoman, perhaps, or the headmistress of a snooty girls' school, but not a dentist.

‘I can't believe your mum's a dentist!' some of my friends have remarked, over the years. ‘She could've been a model!'

But I don't think so. She may have had the figure and the looks, but our Marisa would never have done anything as show-offish as modelling. And anyway, as I've known from my very first preschool check-up with her, she's a very good dentist. Her gaze might sometimes be vague and cloudy at home, but at work it positively shines with concentration, a little frown of absorption on her brow, instruments gleaming in her hands. She's booked up months ahead with devoted patients who send her cards and gifts at Christmas, and sometimes even thank-you flowers during the year.

Even so, dentistry and my mother seemed an uneasy fit. Unlike Dad, she hardly ever mentioned her work at home, or at least not in my hearing. It was as though it was a part of her life to be kept completely separate. Like her white coat: to be put on when she walked through the surgery door, and taken off when she left in the evening.

And she often arrived home at night looking all pale
and closed-off, like a shuttered-up house. On these nights she'd go straight to the piano in the family room and sit down and play, sometimes without even taking off her coat. And play, and play. Chopin, Debussy, Rachmaninoff, Beethoven – the music would pour forth, filling every nook and cranny of our airy, modern town house.

If I was currently in a good mood with her I'd go and lie on the nearest sofa, close my eyes, and let it ripple all over me. When I was little I even used to put on my leotard and slippers and dance about the room, in which case she'd accompany me with some ballet-type music, like Tchaikovsky.

Dad loved these impromptu concerts too. If he came home in the middle of one he'd grab a beer, blow me a silent kiss, and sit back and listen, eyes closed. And when Mum was finished she'd stand up and come and kiss us both, suddenly as bright and fresh as if she'd just wakened. She'd smile and laugh and they'd often forget about cooking; we'd go out for dinner instead.

Currently, however, there wasn't a lot of merriment going on at 62 Veronica Street. Dad had lost his job a few months before and, although he was supposed to be doing consultancy work, he didn't seem very busy. He was just about always home when I left for uni and there when I returned, and spent a lot of time reading the papers or watching TV. I knew that he was going to a few job interviews, but nothing ever seemed to come of them.

‘The scrap heap,' I overheard him saying to Mum one night. His voice sounded really bitter. ‘If you're a forty-nine-year-old ex-marketing manager, that's all you're good for – the scrap heap!'

‘Don't be ridiculous,' came Mum's reply. ‘There'll be something. It's just a matter of time . . .'

But she didn't sound very convinced.

And the more down Dad got, the vaguer Mum seemed to become. She reminded me of a delicately coloured balloon on a long string – when things got difficult she just floated a bit further away, without actually leaving. It made me angry; want to yank hard on that string.

The fact that Mum makes enough money to support all three of us somehow made things worse.

‘I'm sorry Tinks,' Dad said wearily one night when she was opening a pile of bills, ‘that it's all up to you at the moment.' Tinks is his pet name for her, a shortening of the Tinker Bell he jokingly christened her when they first got together.

‘Stop stressing, Pete!' Mum said, her voice all light and floaty. ‘It's not as though we really
need
the two salaries.'

Sometimes it was hard to know whether she was just being insensitive, or deliberately cruel.

Dad has always reminded me of a cheerful, energetic teddy bear, but as the weeks went by and there was still no work it was as though the stuffing was slowly being pulled out of him, bit by bit.

Now I heard his car coming in below and waited. Sure enough, three minutes later his head came around the door.

‘Working hard?' He didn't actually wink, but he might as well have.

I swivelled round, yawning and stretching and rolling my eyes.

‘Hmmm. I just can't seem to get into it. How was tennis?'

‘Demoralising.' Dad gave a short laugh. ‘Don Davis brought his son and a mate along and they gave us a thrashing.' He shook his head ruefully. ‘Your poor old dad's just not what he used to be, Al.'

‘Oh, rubbish!' I cried. But my heart gave a tiny lurch. Standing there in his sweaty tennis gear, hair thinning on top, he did somehow look a bit . . . shrunken.

‘Well, I'm off to the shower, before I seize up completely. You out tonight?'

I nodded.

‘Well then.' He pointed a stern finger. ‘Work!'

I sighed.

‘OK . . .' Then I remembered. ‘Oh, Dad?'

‘What?'

I scooted across to the bed, picked up the clipping and held it out.

‘Guess what . . .'

When I went downstairs again I pulled out the phone book. I went to the Ls, running my fingers down the columns.

Licht . . . Litcher . . .

Not a single Lichtermann.

As my father had remarked, it certainly wasn't a common name, but in a city this size you'd expect that there would be at least one.

Maybe Wilda was from interstate or, I suddenly thought, from overseas, on exchange. It would certainly explain her strange first name.

Then Mum came in. I closed the book and put it away again.

I'd been to a few of Baddo's parties before, this one didn't look as though it was going to be any different from the others.

‘What?' said the taxi driver, staring, ‘they got the whole suburb there?'

It certainly looked like it, or everyone between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five at any rate. People were spilling out across the lawn from the open front door and french windows, and music boomed up and down the usually quiet suburban street. Plus there was a mob jammed onto the small circular balcony leading from the upstairs study.

As I leant forward to pay the driver, a girl who looked vaguely familiar pushed her way out through the front door and hobbled – one heeled shoe off, one on – past the hydrangeas and round the corner of the house. Her mouth wide open in a silent laugh, or scream – you couldn't tell which.

Suddenly she stopped, yanked off her remaining shoe and hurled it into the bushes.

The driver and I stared, waiting for whoever it was chasing her to follow, but nobody did. He snorted.

‘Thanks,' I said, getting out.

‘You take care, love,' he said, still glaring at the house. As I'd discovered during the course of the drive, he was Armenian, and the father of five, including two teenage girls. I'm sure if it had been either of them he was driving they wouldn't have been allowed to get out of the car.

He drove off, shaking his head. As I walked towards the door a figure detached himself from the crowd on the balcony and leant over the balustrade, stretching his arms out.

‘Hey, look who's here, it's Alice! Helloo, Aleece–'

My heart sank. It was the host, James Baddersley, aka Baddo, who'd obviously already had quite a bit to drink.

I gave him a tiny wave. ‘Hey Baddo–'

‘Wait!' He raised his bottle, mock-dramatically. ‘Don't move! I'll be right down.' And he pushed back through the throng and vanished.

Oh
great
, I thought, stepping through the door. The front hall and lounge room were packed. I recognised a few faces – probably from his last party.

Despite living locally, Baddo's father had forked out for him to live at a residential college at uni and each time Baddersley senior went away to visit his girlfriend in the country, Baddersley junior invited what seemed like the whole college home for a party.

Dunc and I had gone round the day after the last bash to help him try and clean up before his father got home. We left before Mr Baddersley's arrival, but Baddo had assured us that his father hadn't really minded about the trampled flower beds, the stained carpets and the broken glass in the bottom of the pool. Nor about the complaints from neighbours about having to summon the cops at 3 am.

I couldn't believe that Baddo was holding another party, and he'd been pretty vague about whether he'd actually been given permission. His father must've been mad, I thought, to have even given him the keys of the house. Then again, considering Mr Baddersley's post-divorce purchases of a hot convertible and an embarrassingly youthful wardrobe of new clothes, he probably had gone a little crazy.

Now it was too late to escape. With a cry of
‘Aleece!' – his annoying, pseudo-French pronounciation of my name – Baddo was upon me, throwing his arms around me in a gust of sweat, deodorant and beer. I quickly turned my face, not quite in time to avoid his wet lips brushing the corner of mine.

‘Thought you were never,' he grinned, ‘gunna grace us with your presence!'

‘Well,' I laughed, edging away a fraction, ‘here I am!' I really didn't like him when he was drunk. I glanced around, hoping to spy Dunc.

‘Lover boy was out the back, when I last clapped eyes on him.' Swaying slightly, Baddo seized my hand. ‘Come on, I'll take you.'

‘No!' I cried, ‘it's OK. I can–'

But he was already pulling me down the hall towards the kitchen, parting the crowd as he went. ‘Beep beep!' he shouted. ‘Make way!'

Faces turned as we passed, and someone said, ‘Hey, Al–' but I didn't have time to register who it was. I was being dragged along like a recalcitrant toddler, starting to get the giggles in spite of myself.