Dad thought Mum would be less sad if Cassie came home. That’s what Cassie said, anyway. He said that on Sunday Dad was waiting for him in the car park when he finished work, said he’d give him one hundred dollars if he came home. And Mum was happier, for a little while at least. She wanted to have something special for dinner to celebrate and, even though it was a Monday night, Dad and Wally drove into town and got takeaway from the Chinese. Dad brought us back a pair of wooden chopsticks each, wrapped in stiff white paper. We all used forks, though, except for Dad. All through dinner he fumbled with his chopsticks, trying to scoop up fried rice that would fall back onto the plate or shoot onto the tablecloth. We were all done long before he’d finished.
‘Just enjoying my meal,’ Dad said, sticks scratching the bottom of his plate like fingernails. ‘Savouring the taste.’ When he went to eat the glossy pieces of honey chicken he stabbed them through their dripping middles, using the chopstick as a spear.
After dinner we all read out our fortune cookies and everyone’s fortunes were lucky. Only good, golden things ahead. I collected the thin strips of waxy paper everyone left scattered on the table and put them in an empty marmalade jar. I put that on the windowsill between our beds: a good luck charm.
For that first week everyone hung around Cassie as though he was a prince. When Cassie was at work Wally slipped into his room and left lollies on his pillow. Mum kept asking him questions about his job and who he’d been working with, where he’d been living and who he’d been living with. She acted like he’d just been on some long holiday somewhere doing something exotic instead of being a few kilometres down the road, where she could have gone and talked to him at any time if she’d really wanted to. But I knew Mum would never go into town alone, not even for Cassie.
I felt like we’d gone back in time. Like everything with Ian was a rotten dream and we’d all woken up at the same time. I liked just sitting there and looking at Cassie as he ate biscuits over the sink or watched TV. Whenever he caught me staring he’d smile and go back to whatever he was doing, never acted bothered that I kept doing it. He never called me weird for staring, not like Wally. He looked different from before, something I couldn’t put my finger on. I probably spent hours those first few weeks, just watching him and trying to figure out what the different thing was.
10.
WHILE CASSIE WAS AWAY HELENA had got a job as a receptionist at O’Neill’s Real Estate on Main Street. Every morning she drove Tilly all the way to school before going to work, and picked her up at the end of the day. One morning when Wally and me went to leave for school Helena and Tilly were still in their car next to the clothesline. As we wheeled our bikes towards the driveway Helena opened the car door and came over. She smoothed down her skirt, waved at us like she was trying to get our attention, even though it was pretty obvious we’d been staring at her the whole time.
‘Is your dad here?’ Helena asked. ‘Or your mum?’
‘No,’ Wally said, clicking his gears, even though Mum was right inside.
Helena looked to the road and then back at her car. ‘Shit,’ she said, pressing her palm to her forehead. ‘Shit, shit, shit.’
The flyscreen opened and Cassie came onto the verandah. He must have been watching from his window.
‘Piece of shit car won’t start,’ Helena said, looking up at Cassie. He held onto the post above his head and his ribs poked though his skin like ladder rungs.
‘What’s wrong with it?’ Cassie asked.
‘I don’t know,’ said Helena. ‘I don’t know a thing about cars.’
Cassie took a sip of tomato juice, placed his glass on the railing. ‘I can drive you,’ he said, ‘if you want.’
Helena smiled, clasped her fists together. ‘Lifesaver,’ she said. ‘And Tilly as well? I know it’s far, but I can pay you.’
‘I’m heading out that way anyway,’ Cassie said, even though he didn’t start work until dinnertime and usually sat around all day doing nothing, had no reason to go anywhere. ‘Just let me get my keys.’
Tilly had moved to the yellow house steps and Helena waved her over. Her school bag was strapped to her back like a turtle shell, shiny pins attached to her collar.
When Cassie came back he’d put on a t-shirt and his boots. He lit a smoke, and peeled the tarp from his car. The tarp was weighted to the ground with bricks. He stacked the bricks against the fence and folded the tarp onto the grass, taking his time. He licked his finger and rubbed a smudge on the car roof.
‘Hop in,’ Cassie said finally, opening the back and passenger doors.
Tilly stared at the ground as she headed towards the car. ‘Hi, Cassie,’ she mumbled as she got into the back seat.
Once they were down the driveway Wally knocked up his kickstand and threw his leg over the seat. He rode over the tarp that had unfolded and was blowing around the yard. ‘We should have asked for a lift as well,’ I said as Cassie pulled into the street. Wally’s skin was lit up blue, like a Smurf. There was a wind and the tarp rose into the air, slow as a cloud, and then sailed down again, swallowing Wally behind the plastic.
That Friday Mum and Dad drove to the city for the funeral of one of Dad’s cousins. They hardly ever went into the city, hardly ever went that far out of town, except when Dad had a job in a town nearby, which were easier for him to get than around here, where people would rather paint their own houses instead of having Dad do it. Cassie told me that Les and Dad used to paint all the houses and buildings in town. They had a business together and Cassie would peel the dried paint from the hairs on their arms and legs. But no one wanted their houses painted by Dad anymore.
‘It’ll be like a little holiday,’ Mum said, as she wiped out her toiletries bag with toilet paper. She’d lined up all her things next to the sink—her toothbrush and roll-on deodorant, a small gold can of hairspray—and now she arranged them into the puffy pink bag. Dad put his hand on Mum’s shoulder and smiled, a sad smile, and I couldn’t tell if he was sad about having a dead cousin or sad about Mum thinking that going to a funeral would be a holiday.
Tilly came over after school. She hung around the kitchen while Cassie cooked our dinner, Mango whipping around her legs. She stirred the spaghetti for him, got out the bowls from the cupboard. I sat at the table and pretended to do my homework. I wasn’t quite used to Cassie and the different thing. I watched him, looking for clues.
‘Thanks for driving me to school the other day,’ Tilly said.
‘No worries,’ Cassie said.
‘Mum said you saved her life.’
‘I wouldn’t go that far.’
Tilly lifted out a strand of spaghetti from the pan, nibbled off the end. ‘Did you cook?’ Tilly asked. ‘When you moved out?’
I wondered why Tilly was asking Cassie so many questions.
‘Nah,’ Cassie said. ‘Takeaways mostly.’
‘Who’d you live with?’
‘A guy who works at the pub,’ said Cassie. ‘The one who got me the job.’
‘I can’t wait to move out. I can’t wait till I’m eighteen so I can drive and do whatever I want.’