‘Sophie.’
‘I bet you were a swot at school.’
‘Is it that obvious?’
‘As obvious as . . .’ She looks at my curly hair.
‘Yeah, yeah, you should see it when it’s wet. Like pubic hair on a bowling ball.’
She laughs loudly and the waitress looks over, scowling. Sophie leans forward. ‘Don’t say that to your students – they’ll never let you forget it.’
My students? I sigh.
‘You don’t want to be a teacher, do you?’ says Sophie.
‘I don’t . . .’
She reaches across and pats my wrist.
‘So, tell Aunt Sophie what you want to be then.’
At university last Friday I sat in the library for hours, reading, listening to my iPod, taking notes. I leant back in my cubicle and watched the other students: the science geeks with books piled high were scribbling notes with forensic dedication; the engineering blokes at the open table were flicking rubber bands at each other and giving passing girls a score out of ten, holding up just enough fingers and laughing. A young woman in an anarchist T-shirt handed them a brochure announcing a rally for student unionism. They gave her a zero.
As she offered me the pamphlet, a rubber band hit me on the shoulder. The girl turned and scowled at the engineering students. The bloke who flicked it smirked, wanting me to respond. I could feel the heat rising to my cheeks. When I didn’t make a move, the girl walked back to the desk where the engineering students sat and snatched up the pamphlet she’d offered. She called them creeps in a loud voice and stalked off.
‘I’ve no idea what I want to be.’
Sophie clicks her fingers. ‘I know. A writer. Everyone wants to be a writer.’
‘Everyone?’
‘Not me – other people. Straight from university to writing a bestseller,’ she says. ‘You can put me in your book. But not as the heroine. I want to be the one who boils the bunny.’ She scratches her nails across the table. ‘Yeah, dark and menacing and—’
‘What if I write feel-good stories?’
‘No one reads those books!’ Her voice is too loud for this café.
The woman looks at us and I fidget nervously. Sophie shakes her head slowly. ‘No matter what you want to be, James, you need to grow a backbone.’
‘And you need to stop . . .’
‘What?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Backbone, James?’
‘You need to stop being provocative for the sake of it.’
She leans back in her chair and looks at me for a long time.
I get up to pay the waitress, hands fumbling with my wallet. The shopkeeper punches the figures into the cash register and points to the total.
‘She’s not really . . . we’re not related,’ I say.
She holds out her hand for the money. ‘Don’t tell me your troubles, son. I’m not your mother.’
I hand her a twenty-dollar note, not waiting for the change.
The wind whips down the wide street carrying the smell of fertiliser and dust. Sophie sits on the bonnet of the car watching a boy in a bright red skater shirt ride his bike through the gravel, practising his skids. His cap is so low over his eyes he doesn’t notice us. He pedals faster and faster and throws the bike from under him. The skid tosses up gravel and a few stones hit my car, the sound like chattering teeth.
The boy freezes, half-astride his bike, biting his lip and looking up at me under his cap. Sophie’s watching. I’m torn between admiring his bike-riding and checking the BMW for dents.
‘Nice bike,’ I say.
He grins broadly. ‘Mum gave it to me. It’s my birthday.’
His knuckles grip the handlebars as he realises he’s said too much to somebody whose car he may have just damaged. I unlock the car. ‘Happy birthday.’
On my thirteenth birthday I got home from school to find a new black suit, with a white shirt and a purple tie, on my bed. Dad was away interstate and Mum had talked for days about my birthday surprise. We ate chocolate cake on the back verandah and she polished my school shoes while I changed into the suit. I’d never worn one before. A nervous penguin with pants just a little too short was reflected in the mirror. We drove into the city and down to the harbour. When I saw the gleaming white tiles of the Opera House, I asked, ‘Why are we coming here?’
‘It’s my treat, James. You’re a young man now. You need to experience culture.’
What I needed was a new pair of soccer boots and pants that reached the ground. What I got was a bunch of divas singing in Italian. Afterwards in the foyer, Mum wanted to buy me a CD of the opera. She talked all the way home about me taking music lessons, starting with the violin. I stared out the car window at the passing lights, hoping she’d forget about it by morning.
Sophie holds the mobile phone so tightly that the veins bulge in her arm. She reads the text message again but still can’t stop the screen from shaking. She feels the rumble of trains overhead. Her eyes close, seeing only the text, word for blunt brutal word. The waitress asks if she’d like another coffee and she shakes her head. She pours herself a glass of water and takes a quick sip, making an involuntary sound, like a frog, as she swallows. If she tried to stand, her knees would buckle.
The young man with the laptop stares at her, his eyes tracing the outline of her long legs through the black dress. Their eyes meet and he mistakes her anguished look for receptiveness.
‘My name’s Ethan.’
‘And you’re a writer,’ she says automatically. A deep knot tightens in her stomach. She knows it will spread and ache until she makes her way home, back to her father and the cattle-truck town.
The man moves across to her table. ‘How did you know? Did you recognise . . .’
She almost laughs at such arrogance. ‘How many books have you written, Ethan?’
His hand moves protectively over the laptop. Another bloody MacBook. ‘One, so far. I’m working on another.’
When she feels this much pain, she wants to inflict some of her own. ‘And it topped the bestseller list?’
‘It . . . got great reviews.’
He gestures to the waitress for two more coffees without bothering to ask if she wants another.
‘Did you publish it yourself?’
‘No!’ he says defensively. ‘I’m with Vagabond Press. It’s a collective.’ He reaches into his hessian shoulder bag and brings out a copy, which he places on the table between them. Harry Jackson’s Secret.
To Sophie, the man on the cover looks suspiciously like the author. She stretches her legs and inadvertently touches his foot.
‘His secret is . . . he doesn’t know when to stop,’ she says.
Ethan smiles, showing a chip on his front tooth. ‘Nothing that obvious. He’s a serial—’
‘Killer?’
‘Monogamist.’
She picks up the book and flicks through it, skimming the back page.
‘You’ve written two hundred and forty-eight pages on a man who flips from woman to woman?’
He looks hurt now, challenged. ‘It’s more than that. It’s about commitment, betrayal . . .’
As he’s talking she turns the book over and reads the blurb. Yep, right there, commitment, betrayal, duplicity.
Now there’s a way to waste an hour, Sophie thinks. ‘What’s the next one about?’
Ethan leans forward, placing the MacBook on the table. He rubs his hands together, ignoring the waitress as she slips the coffees between them. His fingers are short and chubby.
‘It’ll make a great movie. It’s about a man in a bank who works out a way to transfer money without anyone discovering it until . . .’
‘It’s a movie before it’s a book?’
‘Well, not exa
ctly. But once published, if it lands in the right hands . . .’
‘Vagabong Press again?’
‘Vagabond. They publish quality.’
Sophie wonders what that word means.
‘I’m working on it in between . . .’ he sips his coffee, ‘. . . study.’ He sits back in his chair, his eyes roaming from the book to Sophie.
‘I’m a barmaid,’ she says loudly.
He stirs his coffee, waiting for her to continue. ‘And?’
‘And . . . nothing. Not a painter, not an actress, not a writer. Just a barmaid.’
He looks disappointed, so she rubs it in. ‘The most artistic thing in my bag is nail polish.’
And Johnnie Walker, she remembers. She could use a drink now.
His eyes linger too long on her body.
She leaves the coffee and stands.
He looks bewildered. Should he follow her out?
‘Stay there, Ethan,’ she says, touching his shoulder. ‘I’m not into artists. Too deep . . . or too shallow.’ She nods at his computer. ‘Put it in your next book.’
She steps into the lunchtime crowd outside the café door and takes her first step towards returning home.
My car obediently follows the white line. Sophie leans forward and switches on the radio, searching until she hears music instead of voices droning weather and talkback. She finds a song and turns the volume up high.
‘I love Sinead O’Connor.’
We listen to an angel voice singing about sacrifice, alternating between whispering and soaring, repeating I gave my heart.
When the song ends, Sophie turns off the radio.
‘Nothing can top that.’
We both fall silent. The afternoon hums to the sound of car wheels and twin exhausts.
Sophie looks in the mirror and runs her hand through the tangle of her hair.
‘Perhaps the waitress thought I was a witch and you were under my spell.’
I slow for the crest of a hill. ‘She was jotting down a description for Australia’s Most Wanted.’
Sophie adopts a fake television voice. ‘Tall, shy, caucasian male, curly hair, thin features, wearing a shirt only a mother could buy.’
‘Held hostage by . . . wild-haired woman with fair skin, wearing army boots . . . and a dress stolen from the Salvos bin.’
‘Is the woman pretty?’
I grin sheepishly. ‘Vain woman in army boots.’
‘Vain!’
‘Suspect has black painted fingernails and . . .’
‘Male has guilty eyes and an expensive silver watch.’
‘Woman arches one eyebrow when questioned.’
‘Man has no visible blemishes . . . yet!’
‘Woman has tattoo of lover’s name on left hip and a rose . . . above her right . . .’
‘Oh, please!’ She bunches her dress up across her knees and accuses, ‘Man wears Y-fronts and will demand a lawyer. Or his mother!’
We drive past a small timber cottage shaded by a pine grove. Two kids play on a plastic yellow swing, the boy pushing his sister, her dress billowing. The front door of the house is open. A young labrador runs around the swing, barking.
‘That boy, with the bicycle. I’m glad you didn’t get angry . . . it was his special day.’ Then Sophie asks, ‘Does your mother wear nail polish?’
‘Yeah, red, I think.’
‘Ahh, a love of power.’
‘And what’s black supposed to be?’
‘The colour of darkness.’
She leans back against the leather, satisfied.
‘There’s an old lady who lives next to us,’ I tell her. ‘Her house is covered in thick creeper and she keeps lots of cats. Kids in the neighbourhood think she’s a witch.’
Sophie smiles.
I continue, ‘She doesn’t have black fingernails or earrings that touch her shoulders.’
Sophie considers this for a moment, checking her own hands. ‘Perhaps she’s retired. Even witches retire.’
‘Just a little old lady, really.’
‘Didn’t you ever wish you were someone else, James? Just for a while.’
I ponder the meaning of Sophie’s question. ‘You’re not a witch, Sophie. We both know that.’
She makes an exasperated sound at the back of her throat. ‘Don’t tell me you didn’t pretend to be Spiderman, or Superman, when you were young.’
‘Yeah, of course.’
‘So, there’s belief and . . .’
‘Kidding ourselves?’ I suggest.
‘I prefer to think of it as mutual understanding.’
I smile, despite myself. ‘So, we’ll agree you’re not a witch.’
‘Or we’ll pretend—’
‘Whatever you say, Sophie.’
We drive across a single-lane bridge over a dried-up creek bed. In the gully is a rusted Holden, windows broken, wheels gone, doors hanging open. A crow lands on the roof and flaps its wings, hopping gingerly across the scorching metal.
A four-wheel drive approaches in the opposite lane, towing a long caravan. The driver wears a white bowler’s hat; his wife beside him looks to be doing a crossword, a pencil poised.
Sophie puts her feet, boots and all, on the dashboard. She flicks a speck of dust from the steel-capped toe and unties her laces. The knobbly soles leave a dusty imprint on the leather dash. She peels off her black socks and wriggles her toes. ‘What if we all said what was on our mind? Imagine. I’d like that sort of world.’
‘You’re kidding?’ I scoff.
‘What’s wrong with being open and honest?’
‘Nothing.’
She folds her arms. ‘You should try it sometime.’
On one ankle, she wears a silver chain.
‘Can you take your feet off my dash?’
She laughs. ‘Is that your attempt at honesty?’
I shrug.
‘Don’t be so middle-class,’ she says.
‘Don’t be so bohemian.’
‘Ooh . . . touchy.’
‘You really want everyone to say what’s on their mind?’
‘Yeah, why not? But not petty rules or nitpicking or small-minded obsessions. I mean feelings. What we really think about . . . stuff.’
‘Stuff?’
‘Don’t mock me! What do you know about . . .’ She drops her feet from the dash, puts her socks in the boots and pushes them under her seat. She stares determinedly out the window. The air inside the car crackles with intent.
‘I’m sorry . . . I guess I don’t want to be judged by the car I drive. Or how boring my clothes are. Or – or how I look,’ I say.
Her eyes are glistening. ‘You’re telling me something I don’t know?’
On the outskirts of a small town, a wild-eyed cattle-dog bounds towards the car as if it’s going to jump through the window and go for our throats. I feel Sophie tense as I veer across the double lines, even though the animal is all bluff, ready to chase us as soon as we’ve passed.
I watch the dog in the mirror as we draw away. His tongue lolls from side to side. He stops and barks once, then trots back to the gate to wait for the next car.
Sophie’s voice is hushed when she speaks. ‘My brother used to wait until a dog ran alongside the car and then he’d open the passenger door quickly. He hit a kelpie once. My brother is a fucking idiot.’
‘Did you ever tell him that?’
She glances at me. ‘Don’t push me, James.’ She reaches to turn the radio on again, but stops herself, her fingers close to the dial.
‘Yes, I told him,’ she says calmly.
‘What did he say?’
She shakes her head and stares out of the window. Conversation closed.
They walked to their car, parked on the street. Dave, being the eldest, got in the front. Dad was driving, of course. Brad and Sophie stood on the footpath.
‘Get in, Brad.’
‘Nah, you.’
‘I need the passenger-side window.’
‘Crap.’
‘I do!’
Dad called from the front. ‘Get in! Both of you.’
Brad was thirteen, Sophie fifteen.
‘Sophie, hop in, please.’ Her father’s voice was tense.
The vinyl seat prickled her skin. Dad revved the car loudly as Sophie watched the houses streaking by. She noticed her father’s wrinkled brow in the rear-view mirror.
Dave and her father talked football: who should play where, who to trust, who’s the coach’s favourite. Brad spread out as far as he could, his knees scratched and dirty from many skateboard tumbles. He sniffled, wound the window down and spat into the wind, watching to see how far it went.
On Baxter Road, near the football field, Brad whispered, ‘Watch this, Bangles.’
She wore one bracelet and got a nickname for life.
Every Saturday, the same dog raced across the footpath, teeth bared, growling at the tyres. Dave and Brad usually leant out and spat, or hollered, waving their hands just above the dog’s snarl.
That day, Brad gripped the handle and swung open the door sharply.
‘No!’ Sophie screamed.
There was a sudden thump. Dave whistled from the front seat as they all turned and watched the dog rolling in a tangle of legs and fur, yelping.
‘For Christ’s sake, Brad!’ yelled Dad.
‘It was an accident, Dad. The door swung open. Lucky I didn’t fall out.’
Her father swore once, then returned to watching the road. Brad grinned inanely at Sophie. She imagined unclipping his seatbelt as he opened the door on the dog. Would she have enough guts to push him out?
When they arrived at the field, Dad grabbed the boot bag from the car and the boys followed him to the dressing shed, waving at their mates, each in the traditional striped black-and-white jersey. More than just a club.
Sophie wandered off to the tent where the mothers were unpacking hundreds of fleshy bread rolls. They slapped on the butter and passed them along the rickety table to Mrs Gleeson, who wrapped each roll in waxed paper while her husband stood at the barbeque, tongs in one hand, stubby in the other, cooking fifty sausages at a time. He turned the snags too often, all the while singing ‘Danny Boy’ at the top of his lungs. He plonked a sausage on each roll and winked at the girls in the queue, offering them an extra sausage, and wouldn’t he have liked to give them an extra-special sausage if only the missus wasn’t always around.