Tree Palace (19 page)

Rory’s didn’t respond. He wandered off into the trees with his head down, thinking and scratching his hair. He leant against trunks and swiped his foot across the ground.

He decided to go to school. He’d grown enough through summer that his khaki shorts rode high on him. Moira let them down to the absolute ends of the material. Barleyville High wasn’t a stickler for perfect attire. There were hand-me-down uniforms for free at their fetes but Rory got away with a pair of Shane’s black socks instead of grey. He wore a T-shirt instead of a school shirt because he said school shirts chafe. He had the slit-eyed look of someone determined to endure a hardship. He rode his bike slowly but got to the playground by bell time and went to his classes and sat sullen and silent.

Being trapped there, having to learn things was bad enough—the gobbledegook mathematics and lockjaw language of books. The word about Shane was circulating somehow, the way gossip does. Rory had to put up with sneering taunts, mockery he couldn’t rage at and avenge because of fear the trouble would follow him home and Shane would be so mad at him and disappointed.

His old man’s in jail. Hey, shithead, is it true your old man’s in jail? What’s it like having an old man in the slammer?

‘He’s not my dad. He’s not my real dad.’

He was ashamed he said it but he said it anyway. Not that it made much difference. The taunts changed to mockery about how trants have sluts for mothers. Rory went cold in his blood imagining violence. He didn’t get violent. He wanted to but didn’t, and prayed to Shane for strength not to cry. He prayed for forgiveness for saying he wasn’t his real dad. He felt so bad about saying it that he couldn’t keep it up. He tried hard but couldn’t and changed his tone to one of attack. He held up his index finger and middle finger and crossed them and boasted about Shane being as close to him as
that
. ‘Yeah, he’s in jail and when he gets out he’ll come after you. He’ll come after you and your families and burn your fucking houses down.’

He said it with a low-growl voice and meant every word, though he knew it wasn’t true. He only had to say it twice to his playtime tormenters and they backed away and called him insane. He knew to deny everything if the teachers quizzed him. They didn’t bother. The playground went hushed when he was around.

The word must have reached Mr Dixchit as well. He stared at Zara all the time and made regular counts of her till. She sensed him hanging about and thought he either had the hots for her or was suspicious. He wasn’t the hots kind with his hands-behind-his-back way of addressing her. He counted other girls’ tills during shifts but not as often as he counted hers. When he paid her her cash, doing it secretly as if they were shaking hands, he was fond of saying, ‘You know what I have? I have eyes in the back of my head.’ She expected he regretted hiring her and was ready to pounce at the slightest discrepancy.

She hated Midge coming into her work because he looked seedy. He looked the sort of man who had a brother in jail. She pretended he was just another customer. Under her breath she said, ‘Go away. Don’t speak to me.’

‘I got to do the shopping for Moira,’ Midge said.

She made a show of not recognising him—‘Just these items, sir?’—then resumed her whispering. ‘Get the other girl to serve you. And wait for me down the street. How many times I got to tell you. Don’t hang around.’

He gave in and did as she asked and had another girl serve him. He parked the car down the street from the supermarket. He was hurt that she was ashamed to have him near but hoped it was just a passing rejection.

Driving home Midge said he wished she was friendlier. They had always been civil and friendly. Given he was driving her back and forth she should be respectful. Zara just shrugged.

Truth was, Zara looked upon them as inferiors now, Midge and Moira, Shane and Rory. She was young but felt like a woman of the world with proper employment. She didn’t know what to feel about Mathew. He’d come out of her and therefore couldn’t be inferior. Best thing was not to think of him at all. Best way to do that was put in lots of hours at the supermarket.

It didn’t always work. One time she stood waiting for customers and had a terrible empty sensation along her arms. As if she’d been holding something heavy and put that something down and an aching emptiness filled her muscles. She had to shake her arms and blink the sensation from her mind.

She dug a hole under a corner of the tent and kept her money there. She wrapped the wad in cellophane for protection and made a lid for the hole by removing the top of her cosmetics box. She covered this with dirt and smoothed the plastic floor across it, checking the hole every evening and counting its contents. She was damned if she was going to share a cent.

One day she got home and looked at Rory and Moira bickering and thought, How can we even be related!

‘What have you done?’ Moira was demanding.

‘Nothing.’

‘What have you done, Rory?’

‘Nothing. Nothing.’

‘Then how come the school’s writing to me?’

‘Wish I hadn’t given it to you. I only gave it cause I done nothing.’

Zara went into the tent and changed out of her work smock to keep it clean. She knelt and lifted the plastic and the dirty lid and counted her money. She almost had enough to get a mobile. There was a tower in Barleyville now and everyone talked about the good reception. She didn’t know who she’d call. But she’d have it in her hand, a statement of progress. A solid promise of possibilities. She put on her dressing gown and went to the house to get a bowl of water and soak a flannel and take it back to the tent to birdbath herself. She closed her eyes to block out Rory’s complaining.

‘
She’s
meant to go to school and doesn’t.’

‘That’s different. She’s older.’

‘She’s not the leaving age.’

‘She’s got a job.’

‘I can get one too.’

‘We’ll see when Shane gets home. Midge, read me this from school. What’s it say?’

Midge unfolded the neatly creased white page.

‘It says.’ He sat down to read. ‘It says it’s from the student development co-ordinator. It says,
We suggest as part of improving Rory’s school participation and his overall studies that he undertake an activity program.
They want him to learn the recorder for the school orchestra.’ He looked up from the page. ‘What’s a recorder?’

‘It’s a music thing,’ Rory said. ‘I don’t want to learn a music thing.’

Moira told him to shush and let Midge finish.

‘It says for you come in to the school, Moira.
We welcome your participation in a parent and teacher meet-and-greet evening.
’

‘I’m not going into any school. I’d feel two inches tall. Where’s it say that?’

‘There.’

She took the note from Midge and put her finger to the line trying to decipher it.

Zara thought, I want to un-relate myself. She got her water and kept her back to them as if backs were protection against being related.

Next payday she bought the cheapest phone from the newsagent. At work she showed it off and got tips from the girls on its use. She gave her number to them and asked to be rung for the fun of answering. Beyond that she had no expectations of receiving a social call. It didn’t matter. The phone was more a symbol: she was ready for the world. The world was her family, not the Tree Palace people.

23

Zara caked more make-up to her face to make it look older and cover her spots. She wanted to mix with older people and needed to look the part. When girls from school saw her working they’d say, ‘That can’t be Zara the trant.’ She had no wish to be dragged back into classrooms. She made herself more forthright to win Mr Dixchit’s favour. Instead of being timid when around him she made conversation and suggested small things like putting chocolate and lollies at the checkout so kids nagged their mothers to buy them. Her mood became different in the car, which thrilled Midge. She chatterboxed to him about how cluey she was.

One evening they arrived home and Rory had a plastic recorder to his lips. He was blowing a pitiful tune and complaining. It was meant to be the national anthem but amounted to a screech.

‘I don’t want to do this,’ he whined. ‘I hate this. I don’t want to do it.’

‘Do it,’ said Moira.

‘I feel dumb.’

‘Do as you’re told.’

‘No.’

‘I’ll tell Shane when I see him.’

‘I don’t want to be in no orchestra. It’s dumb.’

Midge scratched his head and smiled, not because of Rory but because of Zara. He had a copy of the local paper and took it to the porch where Moira was supervising the music session. ‘You see this? This is all Zara’s thinking. Tell them what you did here, Zara.’

The butterfly clip on Zara’s ear studs had come loose. They were decent ear studs she’d bought from Barleyville Gifts and Apparel. Tiny silver parrots in a circle of silver leaves. ‘Someone check in my collar,’ she said, bending to have Moira look. The clip was caught down her neck. She didn’t say thanks to Moira for fishing it out, so Moira said it for her, sarcastic.

Zara made Midge lower the paper so Moira could see.

‘Mr Dixchit does all the advertising. I just said to him why not put pictures of meat and vegetables alongside the prices to highlight them. And take out the Colgate and shampoo photos which everyone knows look the same as last week.’

‘She’ll run that place,’ Midge said.

‘And that line there:
There’s only one standard—the best.
That used to be at the bottom of the page. I said to him, “Put it higher. Put it higher.”’

She gave a dismissive wave as if wasting her breath showing Moira a printed line. Moira pretended not to notice and prodded Rory to keep playing. He played two notes and had to look at the directions: a sheet with finger holes inked in for him to follow. The phone in Zara’s pocket rang and he thought the chiming sound was his recorder.

‘Hello,’ Zara answered, excited. She walked with a skip in her stride towards the tent, then veered to the trees where they striped the L-shape dirt with late shadow. ‘No worries,’ she said. ‘Great. See you then. Yip. See you.’

When she got off the phone they were all staring at her. She wiggled the device in her fingers. ‘Cool, eh?’ She reached behind herself to unzip her smock. ‘Brent’s picking me up down at the crossroads. Don’t want him—’ She stopped herself saying
coming here.

‘Who’s Brent?’ said Midge.

‘He’s from town. Brent Romano. His dad owns the refrigerator truck and him and Brent bring in the milk and the frozen foods.’

Midge had a suck on his asthma spray. ‘And he’s picking you up?’

‘Yeah. We’re going out tonight.’

‘Where?’

‘None of your business.’

She went into the tent to get ready.

He stood at the door flap. ‘This Brent fella know you’re a mother? I mean, you should spend your free time with Mathew. All day at work and now out at night.’

There was no answer. Moira told him to let Zara go where she wants. Mathew wasn’t missing out. ‘You saying he’s missing out?’

‘I’m not saying that.’

She thought, why mention Zara and Mathew in the same breath? How dare those words be used together: Mathew, Zara, mother. The girl thinks she’s too good for us now. Waving her hand in that smart-aleck way. Serves her right if I give up having feelings for her. Think of her not as a daughter but a roommate of Tree Palace. In fact, that had already happened.

Sometimes you have to force yourself to love people. There was no forcing with Mathew. With Zara she had to force herself these days. She had to force out remembering that Zara tried to kill Mathew, then in its place force in love for the girl, and she failed at it. There was no real forcing with Rory. Oh, she was short-tempered with him and always had been. Yet forcing herself with Zara made her want to force Rory away, as if they came as a pair, brother and sister. She felt herself doing it and tried to stop. Even now, as he was trying his best blowing and following the finger holes, she was doing it.

‘Can I finish now?’ he said.

‘You hardly started.’

‘School won’t know.’

‘They will ’cause I’ll tell. I’ll say Rory won’t practise and do his studies and they’ll say we wipe our hands of him.’

‘Good.’

‘You know what then?’

‘What?’

‘They’ll send you to a place for simpletons.’

‘No.’

‘Yip.’

‘No way.’

‘Yip.’

‘I’m no spastic-face.’

‘I know you’re not, but they’ll think so and they’ll send you away. I bet that’s why they want me to go visit the teachers.’

‘Bullshit.’

‘Mouth!’

‘Sorry.’

‘I’ll do my best to stop them sending you.’

‘Promise?’

‘I promise. Just do the things they tell you.’

Being God with her affections—giving them and taking them back and giving again—was the wrong thing to do but she did it anyway and it made her love Rory again, him sitting there, recorder in hand, worried and grateful to her.

Out Zara came freshened with make-up and jeans. A yellow T-shirt from the supermarket sale tray. Her good black shoes slung from her fingers and from her shoulder a shiny red bag on a long strap. She trod softly to avoid the hurt from stones.

‘Anyone got smokes? Left mine at work.’

‘My rollies if you like,’ Midge offered.

‘Yuk, no.’ She cocked her head at Moira, ‘You?’

‘If you want. I’m off ciggies.’

She got Zara her last ten and said, ‘Have the lot.’ There was a strange moment where, instead of Zara being rude as usual, instead of her self-centred air and not saying thanks, the girl apologised for having been off-handed before. ‘You know, when I was showing you the paper. I mean, I wasn’t being nasty.’

‘I didn’t notice.’

Zara put the cigarettes in her bag, pressing them down to the bottom to keep them safe from falling out. There was a stranger moment from the girl. She asked, ‘How’s the baby?’

‘Eh?’

‘Mathew?’

‘Why?’

‘Just wondering.’

‘Fed and watered. I got him under control.’

‘It’s good he’s got you, I guess. You being here all the time.’