The Whole of My World (12 page)

 

 

Errol Street Oval is a hole. I mean, literally a hole. Firstly, it's damp and old, with rotting wooden railings and wobbly seats that seem to inflict splinters just by looking at you. Secondly, it looks like it's been built in a pit. The sides rise up, elevated slightly over the tired-looking oval, giving it the appearance of being below ground.

Like I said, it's a hole.

Or maybe it's just that it feels like the depths of Hell because the North Yarra Redbacks – our archenemy in the seventies but now barely worth mentioning – have given the Mighty Falcons an absolute shellacking. I mean a humiliating, excruciating walloping. To the tune of seventy-one points. Even saying it out loud stings.

Tara and I gather our bags and coats as the siren goes, our hearts heavy with the loss. Top spot on the ladder is nearly impossible now. Although we're second and safe there, finishing on top sends a message. The Warriors are two games clear now and, with only three matches to go, there's no way they'll drop. My only consolation is that, since Mick didn't play, losing means there's some hope he'll be selected next week. Plus, everything changes once the finals race begins. It's like starting again. Clean slate, new page, whatever cliché you want to use, finals football is in a league of its own, and what happens during the season doesn't guarantee you anything on grand final day.

That doesn't change the fact that I hate losing to North, made worse because Tara and I were virtually abandoned by the cheersquad at three-quarter time. Danny was gone once they hit fifty points up, and Bear left at ten goals. Another of Tara's rules – one Dad enforces too – is that we never leave before the end of the game, even if we're being slaughtered.

We're in no hurry to get to Fernlee Park, knowing our loss will kill any party atmosphere at the social club, so we decide to go to Tara's house first. But as we lug our flogger and a backpack full of clothes for the sleepover on that long trip home, surrounded by victorious Redbacks supporters, I almost wish we'd left early too. Screw the rules.

I'm so dispirited by the time we get off at Flinders Street Station to change trains that I'm tempted to split from Tara and just go home. But she doesn't feel any better than I do and I can't face Dad's relentless determination to make me a good loser. I can't watch the replay tonight. I can't suffer this disappointment twice. Surely losing is enough of a lesson on its own? At least Tara understands how I feel.

We catch the damp, smelly train with a few stragglers from the game in the same carriage, and get out at Silverdale Station. I follow Tara across the busy High Street intersection to a side street not far from the station. As we round the corner she says with a stiff kind of sarcasm, ‘Home sweet home.'

I don't quite do a double take but my jaw drops a little. Her house is a mansion. As we enter through the side fence, I see a tangle of garden and a swimming pool resembling a tropical rockpool. I feel like we've stepped into a jungle. The house is huge – three storeys – and sticks out high above the neighbouring buildings. I think of my single-storey, beige brick house, the plain patchy lawn and the wobbly wooden letterbox, and wonder why in the world Tara's home isn't the centre of St Mary's party calendar.

Inside, it's like something from an American sitcom. It looks like it's been recently renovated – outside is traditional and
historical
somehow, but the inside is modern and new. Everything is so pristine and tidy it looks like no one lives here, like the kind of house featured in
Home Beautiful
. It's so different from any house I've ever been inside that it takes some moments before I realise why I'm so taken aback by it, and the fact that it belongs to Tara . . .

She's rich. Tara Lester – or her family, anyway – is
rich
.

Tara leads me straight to her bedroom. In complete contrast with the rest of the house, Tara's room is more than lived in. It's
possessed
. I can see Tara's imprint in every corner and space in sight. The wall, like the walls of my room, are lined with every Glenthorn picture and poster I've seen and even a couple I haven't, including a shiny full-length photograph of Killer smiling at the camera, ready to kick the ball. Her doona is in Glenthorn colours, her bedhead is covered in stickers and ribbons, all of them featuring brown and gold, so that there really doesn't seem to be any other colour in her bedroom. Even her bookshelf is filled with brown photo albums trimmed with gold ribbon.

I am completely in awe. ‘I love your room,' I gush.

Tara shrugs and flops down onto her bed as though it's no big deal. But there's a shadow of a smile on her lips and I feel good that maybe I put it there.

I drop my bag on the floor and take a seat on the fold-out bed she's already set up beside hers.

After a long silence, during which neither of us seems to know what to say, Tara jumps off her bed. ‘Hungry?'

I follow Tara into the kitchen, taking in the tall ceilings, and the shiny, polished floorboards. The walls are lined with paintings that look like they belong in a gallery.

‘In here,' Tara says, leading me into a huge kitchen. She immediately heads to the fridge, which is one of those double-door models you see on
The Brady Bunch
. I'm about to follow when I hear a voice behind me.

‘Hello, girls,' Mrs Lester says, seeming to float into the kitchen to join us. When she looks at me, her gaze sits just above my left ear. It's as if her body is here, but her head is off visiting someone else.

Tara barely looks at her mother. ‘This is Shelley. From school.'

‘Hi, Mrs Lester,' I say, standing straight and tall like Mum always told me to.

‘Tessa, dear. Call me Tessa.' She looks a lot like Tara, but where Tara's features don't seem to match, Mrs Lester's fit perfectly. She looks older than Mum did but you can see she was really pretty once. She's gazing at the space right beside me now, like there are two of me, and she's focused on the wrong one.

I smile nervously. My dad would freak if I told him Mrs Lester wants to be called ‘Tessa'. Which is
so
old-fashioned, but that's my dad.

‘Got a cigarette?' Tara asks her mother boldly. Mrs Lester doesn't seem surprised, in fact, she looks as though Tara's just asked her for a Tim Tam.

‘Of course, darling.' Mrs Lester waves a packet of Alpine Lights in front of her daughter. I can't stop staring at her nicotine-stained fingers as they tremble violently. Neither Tara nor her mum seem to pay any attention to those quivering hands. Mrs Lester waves the pack in my direction.

‘N-no thanks,' I stammer, blushing. I'm pretty sure Mum never gave me instructions on how to refuse a cigarette from my friend's mother.

Mrs Lester continues to stare at me in that dizzy way. It reminds me of when a cartoon character has been turning around in circles and their eyes turn into crazily spinning spirals. ‘Thanks,' I manage again. ‘But really, no.' I don't want to offend her and I really don't want to piss off Tara, but I don't smoke. Dad would kill me if he found out I'd even tried it.

Mrs Lester drifts past me towards a cupboard, then back again, her eyes searching. I smell alcohol – not the faint trace of beer I used to smell on Dad after Christmas lunch, but more like how a pub smells.

I watch her navigate the kitchen table with deliberate care then ease the kettle onto the stove, as though frightened of dropping it. Her whole body is tilted to one side and her head seems to loll under its own weight.

My blush is spreading outward, not retreating at all. I'm so embarrassed for Mrs Lester that I briefly forget Tara is there. Mrs Lester takes out three mugs from the cabinet above her, her whole body swaying from the effort of looking up. Her hands move at a glacial speed, her concentration taking all of her energy. She's not just drunk – she's blotto.

Tara stomps towards her mother and grabs two of the mugs from her hands. ‘I'll do it.' She looks mortified.

I hover near the doorway, wondering if I can come up with an excuse to go back to Tara's room or even to go home – anything to get away from Tara's humiliation. And then I remember the image of Tara walking away from me that Thursday after training; her skirt uneven, her back stooped from all it had to carry, the weight of the world, it seemed . . .

I can't leave her.

I force a smile. ‘What time do you want to go?' I ask Tara, desperate to ease the tension in the kitchen.

Mrs Lester is blissfully unaware. She swings around at my words, her smile vacant and enormous. ‘She's so good to me, my girl. Isn't she?' Mrs Lester says, her words running together. She's talking to me, looking at me, but I'm pretty sure her question is rhetorical.

I smile and nod, just in case. Hedging my bets, as Dad would say.

Tara pours hot water into two mugs, deliberately leaving the third one empty. It doesn't matter, Mrs Lester's forgotten anyway. She's propped up in the corner of the kitchen with her back to us, humming something that would make Mum's tuneless singing sound like Dame Nellie.

Tara walks right past her mother as though she doesn't exist and hands me one of the cups of coffee, the cigarette tucked behind her ear for later. She takes a packet of biscuits from the pantry and leads me back to her bedroom.

On my way out, I turn back to say goodbye to Mrs Lester. She's facing me now, that same absent smile on her lips. She stops singing, smiles brightly and waves, as though I've just walked into the room. I wave stiffly and shut the door, hoping I can wipe that picture from my head just as easily.

 

 

We scoff down half the packet of biscuits while getting ready to go out. I pull on a pair of clean bubblegum jeans and a grey shirt, while Tara chooses stone-washed denims and a lemon scoop-neck blouse with puffy shoulders. We both wear boots – mine are grey suede pixies while Tara's are black patent leather. She doesn't mention her mum and I know better than to say anything, so I lie on my bed while I watch her do her make-up. Tara traces her startling blue eyes with a black pencil before adding mascara. She has one of those mirrors with the lights around them, the kind movie stars have in their dressing room. I remember watching Mum put on make-up when I was little, and feel a strange pang at the memory.

‘You ready?' she asks, returning her mascara brush to its bottle.

I get up and study my reflection in the mirror beside her. My grey shirt is tighter than it used to be. All that effort to distract people from my breasts – the loose jumpers and the oversized school uniform – undone in a single look. I stretch it out as much as I can, tugging under my arms and around the collar, hoping it's caught on my bra or is just sitting wrong. I tug at it again. It's a bit better.

‘Did you bring make-up?' Tara asks, dabbing her lips with pink gloss.

We're not allowed to wear make-up at school – the nuns scrub it off with alcohol if they see it, leaving your skin raw for the rest of the day – so I've never seen Tara with make-up before. And I've never worn it myself. Mum always said I had to wait until I was fifteen. Which I am now, but it's not like I can ask Dad to help me. I can just picture how
that
conversation would go. I shrug. ‘I don't have any.'

Tara barely blinks. I'm guessing by the slow and careful turn of her wrist, her tongue half stuck out in concentration and the make-up remover right by her hand, she's pretty new to the process. ‘You want some of mine?'

I hesitate, not sure I know what to do. I'd probably just mess it up on my first shot. ‘Nah. Thanks.'

Tara studies me. Then, without a word, she stands up and guides me to the dressing table. ‘Sit.'

I take a seat at the dressing table, immediately feeling altered somehow just by having all those lights framing my face. Is it possible to look different in different mirrors? Because somehow my reflection doesn't resemble the one I usually see in my mirror at home.

Slowly, with the hint of a tremor in her hands, Tara touches the mascara to my lashes, paints my lips a creamy pink then rubs some blush on my cheeks. At the beginning I sit stiffly, uncomfortable at having her so close to me, taking control like this, like an older sister. Like a mother. But she doesn't once meet my eyes, so set on the task at hand that eventually I relax and let her go.

Tara steps back and pulls the chair out so I can get a clear look at my reflection. I don't look terrible. I look . . . nice. Older, too. My eyes look big and stand out from my not too pimply skin. My mouth looks fuller with plump lips I didn't know I had. ‘Thanks,' I say quietly.

She shrugs, dismissing me, then runs a brush through her long hair and ties it back in its usual ponytail. ‘We should go.'

She grabs her jacket, and I follow her out through her enormous house and into the busy street. The air is damp and the grey clouds overhead have brought a heaviness to the wintry night sky. The tram trundles down High Street, half empty yet seeming to labour under the weight of its passengers. Before we get to Fernlee Park Road, Tara stands suddenly, flicking my leg for me to follow. We're in Glen Malvern – nowhere near the club. I catch up to her in the doorway as we pull up at the stop. ‘We're not there yet,' I say.

‘I need to get something first,' she answers airily.

This has to be bad. I wonder if she's going to buy some grog or cigarettes – though why would she when she can bum them off her mum? – or maybe she's been lying the whole time and has no intention of going to the social club at all.

Tara is already leaping off the tram so I figure we're safer having this conversation on the footpath.

‘Hey! Where are we going?' I pull up beside her as she lights up a cigarette.

Tara blows out smoke in answer and jogs across the busy road. It's not until we cross the side street next to a Chinese restaurant that I recognise where we are. School. I haven't walked along this part of High Street before and, in the darkness, lit only by uneven streetlamps, everything looks different and strange – even the increasingly recognisable shape of St Mary's Convent and the school buildings beside it.

‘Forget your homework?' I joke, catching up to her.

Tara just keeps walking, slower now because she's crossed into the car park beside the convent and is heading towards the church next door. St Michael's Church is shared by St Ignatius and St Mary's, and is the usual venue for school masses and the occasional R.E. lesson. The church is filling up for the Saturday night service. Cars nose their way through the crowded car park, carefully avoiding the stream of pedestrians heading toward the church building, who seem oblivious to the danger.

Tara takes the front steps to the narthex in twos. I stop at the bottom, wondering what the hell she's doing. I don't go inside churches anymore if I can manage it. Not just because I don't believe the stories they tell us at school – although I don't – but because I'm a little nervous about setting foot inside, knowing I've made this decision to reject my religion.

I wait nervously for Tara to reappear, trying to decide how long to give her before I head back to her drunk mother and ask her to call my dad to pick me up. I don't have enough money for a taxi all that way, and Dad would freak if I caught public transport by myself so late on a Saturday night. But when I picture Dad's face meeting a blind Mrs Lester, I decide I really don't have a choice. So I wait, untying the pink V-neck jumper from around my waist and slipping it carefully over my newly made-up face. After a few minutes I spot Tara as she makes her way through the thickening crowd, pressing against the tide on her way down the stairs. She hands me a St Michael's newsletter and folds her own copy before slotting it into her duffle-coat pocket.

I stare at her, perplexed.

‘For Mum tomorrow,' she says matter-of-factly as she heads back through the car park towards Fernlee Park Road.

I stand there, confused.

She turns back and stretches her hands in the universal gesture of ‘What the hell is your problem?'.

‘Why do I need a newsletter?'

‘It's proof,' she says, then shakes her head at my apparent stupidity. ‘Mum will ask us what the Reading was.'

I look at the newsletter and back at Tara, who's still frowning at me like I'm an idiot.

‘She thinks we're going to Saturday night Mass,' she says.

‘Why would she think that?'

‘Because that's what I told her,' Tara says, shrugging.

Bemused, I follow her back to the tram stop, feeling the weight of the many lies we're telling dragging behind me, wondering why Tara even needs to lie to her mother, given that Mrs Lester was so sozzled when we left the house that we could've told her anything and she'd never remember.

It feels a lot like I've moved into something more than a new friendship. I've moved into a whole new world. And although I'm a little terrified by all that can go wrong, I'm also unexpectedly excited about it, too, in almost exactly equal parts.

 

There are only a handful of cheersquad regulars at the entrance to the social club – Jim-Bob and Sharon, for once without their kids, plus a couple of committee members I never talk to. None of them are members of the social club, nor have they found anyone to sign them in, so they're hanging around, waiting for likely soft touches.

Tara nods at the Lovely Ladies – all three are glammed-up and shiny, their long necks weighed down by all that foundation and hairspray. I sense Tara holding back big time, the desire to mock these girls crouching inside her ready to pounce. But she has to be nice. They're our way in.

‘Hey,' Tara says, transforming her usually tight smile into something resembling friendliness. ‘You guys going in?'

It's a stupid question. All three are at the top of the stairs, rummaging through their matching Glomesh purses for membership medallions and fake IDs, their feet halfway across the threshold between the Great Unwashed and the Signed In and Paid Up, their giggling chatter punctuated with names of the likely targets of their affection for the night. Players, of course.

‘Yeah,' Lisa says, without looking up. Lisa is blonde like Kimberly but her hair colour looks natural, while I'm pretty sure Kimberly's comes straight from a bottle.

‘Can you sign us in?' Tara asks. ‘We'll buy you a drink,' she adds, even though this is the first I've heard of it. Not only do I have no fake ID and look like I'm barely through puberty let alone eighteen years old, I have a total of fifteen dollars in my wallet and face the very real possibility that I'll need every cent of it in case I need to catch a taxi alone.

Lisa shrugs noncommittally while Kimberly completely ignores Tara and goes through the glass doors without looking back. Renee rushes after her friend and it occurs to me that this is how it always works for these two. Kimberly does what she wants – decisive, unthinking and absolute – while Renee simply follows, always two steps behind. Renee is pretty but not
as
pretty, smart but not
as
smart. She's the Clayton's version of Kimberly – the girl you have when you're not having The Girl.

Tara and I watch the bouncer through the doors as he stops them inside the foyer, their mouths moving mutely, their hands flying. They giggle and squirm as they provide evidence of their legitimacy or their ability to fake legitimacy (they can't be more than sixteen, seventeen at best). I'm amazed as I witness his whole attitude shift in response to their extra flirty smiles, the subtle way they tilt their heads, the gushing apology for holding everyone up . . . All the ways their bodies convey to this man that while they are both gorgeous and out of his league, there's still the tiniest chance that if he's
really, really
nice and
really, really
helpful . . .

How do they learn this? I wonder. Does someone teach them? Or is it something present from birth, like the colour of their eyes, or the shape of their chin?

Lisa, still looking for her ID, glances at Tara then at me, clearly frustrated but doing her best not to take it out on us. ‘How long before Mick's back?' she asks, sifting through the junk in her purse.

It feels like a test. I weigh my answer. ‘A couple of weeks, depends on the scan.'

She nods, taking this in. Sounds reasonable, that nod says. Believable. ‘When's the scan?'

I don't know. Mick doesn't even know. But I understand I have to answer, and for reasons that escape me, I pluck this fiction out of the sky. ‘Tuesday morning. They have to wait for the swelling to go down.' The lie comes easily – disturbingly easily. I wonder where it was hiding that it could emerge so perfectly formed.

‘We really need him,' she says.

‘No kidding.' I'm relieved to be back on safer ground, the kind made up of truth. I offer a dry chuckle even though the sting of the North Yarra loss is still raw. I'm performing, I realise; faking cool to this girl who will or will not be our ticket into the social club tonight, depending on how I do.

‘Yes!' she cries, holding up her social club medallion and the errant ID victoriously. ‘Come on,' she says, and Tara nods her approval at me as we follow Lisa inside.

The moment we enter the safety of the social club, Lisa turns and flashes her nearly perfect teeth in a seamless dismissal. ‘I'll see you later,' she says, before heading towards the back of the room.

‘Where's she going, do you think?' I ask Tara, glad Lisa's gone on one level – the cool Shelley takes enormous effort and focus to get right – but also disappointed because I kind of like her. Or I like
me
when I'm with her, which is a new experience. That this seems largely one way is not something I want to spend too much time thinking about.