All week Wally and I talked about going to the pub again. We decided what we were going to order: schnitzel instead of nuggets; lemon, lime and bitters instead of post-mix cola. We agreed to go into the games room, just to see what it was like. I made Wally pinkie promise so he wouldn’t chicken out at the last minute.
It felt good to have something to look forward to. I tried to forget about last Saturday. If I put it out of my mind it was like it didn’t happen. Maybe Mum would forget about it too, and we would go to the Connolly every Saturday like normal people and have fun and no one would look at us funny or spit in our faces.
We went to the dam on Saturday afternoon, and as we were scrambling out of the water Tilly asked if she could come over and see Mango.
‘Nah,’ Wally said. ‘We’re going to the Connolly.’ He draped the towel over his shoulders, lips pale and blue as chalk. ‘We went there last week.’
‘You’ve told me about a hundred times already,’ Tilly said.
‘You’re just jealous that you don’t get to go out for tea.’
‘Did you see Cassie last time?’ Tilly asked.
‘No,’ I said, slipping on my scuffs, tops of my feet burned pink. ‘But he’ll probably be there tonight.’
‘Mum and me used to go out all the time before we moved here. Mum hates cooking. She says it’s for housewives.’
‘Well, it’s family only,’ Wally said, ‘so you’re not invited.’
I’d been worried that Tilly was starting to like Wally more than me, so I tried to hide my smile. Sometimes I wished it could just be Tilly and me together, but Wally would never let that happen, even though he only liked Tilly a tiny bit more than what he had at the start.
‘I didn’t ask to be invited,’ Tilly said.
‘Well, good.’
Tilly wrapped her towel around her waist, scratched her calf with her toenails. Her nose was sunburned too, pink as an Iced VoVo. ‘Tell Cassie I said hello. If you see him.’
Back at home we got dressed over our togs. We brushed our hair and our teeth, then sat on the verandah and waited for Dad to come outside with the car keys and his good shirt on, hair slick as Vaseline, for Mum to put her lipstick on, the smell of lavender to steam from the bathroom.
‘Where are they?’ Wally asked, pulling on his socks. There were holes in the toes, as though they’d been chewed through.
I went inside to see. Dad was in the lounge room, drinking a beer on the couch. He was in a skivvy, wasn’t even dressed yet. ‘Where’s Mum?’ I asked.
Dad paused. ‘She’s crook.’
I started to get anxious. By this time last week Mum and Dad were ready to go. If we didn’t leave soon we might not get a table or they might run out of schnitzels.
‘What are you doing?’ I asked. I looked at the clock on the microwave. The numbers glowed green. It was nearly six. Dad turned up the volume; a race was about to begin, the greyhounds packed into the starting box. A crack sounded and I watched the dogs bolt onto the track. The stuffed rabbit whizzed around the course, grey and soggy-looking. Dad yelped and leaned towards the screen, hands grasping the air.
‘Get me another, would you?’ he said when the race finished, holding up his empty can.
I went into the kitchen. The sun exploded through the tropical-printed curtains that hung over the windows and made the walls underwater green. I saw the packet of sausages defrosting on the bench, the potatoes washed and peeled in the sink. Dinner. I felt my face grow warm, pulled a hair from my eyebrow to stop myself from crying. Outside, the whole paddock was golden, the sun sinking into a grassy haze. I stared at the sun until my eyes began to prickle.
‘What’s taking you so long?’ Dad called from the lounge room. I heard the floorboards creak as he stood up and lumbered into the kitchen. I grabbed one of the slimy potato bulbs and rolled it on the table.
‘I don’t want sausages,’ I said to Dad.
‘Well, that’s what we’re having,’ Dad said, opening the fridge.
‘I hate sausages.’
‘That’s news to me.’
My face burned and my eyes went blurry. My throat felt as though it was growing mould.
‘Christ’s sake,’ Dad said. ‘What’s wrong with you now?’
‘Nothing,’ I said.
‘Always bloody sooking, you lot are.’
I wiped my eyes on my sleeves and went to find Mum. She was under the covers, even though it was still light outside.
‘Why aren’t you ready yet?’
‘Ready for what?’ Mum said.
‘For dinner,’ I said. ‘Last week you said we were going to the Connolly every Saturday from now on until forever. You promised. Wally and me are ready. Why aren’t you?’
‘I promised no such thing.’
I pulled the cover off her. ‘Yes, you did. Now go get ready.’
‘Not now, Cub. I have a headache.’
‘Have some water then.’
She pressed the heels of her palms to her eyes. ‘Stop going on at me.’
I felt my knuckles tighten. I didn’t understand why she couldn’t see how important this was. ‘You’re always ruining everything,’ I said.
‘Just what am I ruining, then? Hey?’
‘Why can’t you be a normal mum? Why can’t you take us places and drive us to school and make our lunch? It’s because of you that no one at school likes us. Everyone thinks we’re weird.’
Mum didn’t say anything. I waited for her to yell at me, but she didn’t. She just pulled the covers up to her chin and lay there. Like she didn’t care at all.
‘No wonder Cassie hated living here. He hated living with you.’ I felt a twinkle of nerves go up my arms but, still, she just lay there like a log. I kept going, couldn’t stop myself. ‘No wonder that woman spat on you. You deserved it. If I were her I would’ve spat on you too.’
I didn’t wait for a reaction, just ran into our room and flopped on my bed. I took off my good clothes so that I was just in my togs. They were still damp and made me feel slippery, like I was coated in seaweed. Wally was on his bed, back in his normal clothes. He must have figured it out already.
‘Why are you crying?’ he asked.
‘I’m not crying.’ I bunched my fists and punched them into the quilt.
‘Yes, you are.’ Wally’s lip twitched up, just a fraction, as though things were ticking over in his brain.
After a while Dad called out that dinner was ready.
The smell of sausages frying on the stove made me starving, but I stayed in my room all night.
I didn’t talk to Mum for the rest of the weekend, which wasn’t hard because she barely left her room, but on Monday when we got home from school, I could tell something was different as soon as Wally and me put our bikes under the house. The radio was on and Mum was fussing about in the kitchen, doing the washing-up that had piled high in the sink like towers. Her hair was helmeted to her head but she’d scraped it off her face and into a rubber band. I ignored her, walked down the hallway. Cassie’s bedroom door was wide open.
No one had been in there for months, and I could smell the staleness of it when I got to the door. Cassie was sitting at the end of his mattress, his sheet in a twisted ball beside him. Mould crept up the walls like grey bruises, dust bunnies fluffing under the bed in wisps.
I’d been in a bad mood all weekend but I felt it slip away. ‘You’re back,’ I said.
‘Yep,’ Cassie said.
‘For good?’
Cassie shrugged, turned his back to me. He didn’t seem happy to see me, not like at the park. I stood in the doorway while Cassie riffled through his rubbish bags and started putting things away. I took his place on his mattress as he went through his cupboard, taking out old shirts, sniffing them and then trying them on before folding them neatly back in their spots. I couldn’t take my eyes off him. He’d got even skinnier, his collarbones jutting. He laid his work uniforms on the mattress and smoothed out the lint-covered pants. He hung the pants and shirts in the cupboard, took his work shoes out of a plastic bag and lined them up next to the door. He took out a tin of shoe polish and a scrubbing brush with tarry black bristles, placed them both in a drawer.