Girl Next Door - Alyssa Brugman [11]
Mum's already swapped the bar fridge for a secondhand cot. It stands there in the middle of one of the spare rooms – just a cot by itself. When I looked at it closely I could see little teeth marks on the rails.
It's so weird to think there'll be a baby. I don't think I've ever seen one up close. I hope she doesn't expect me to babysit.
Mum put most of Dad's clothes out too, and what didn't sell in the first garage sale she took to Vinnies. I didn't like the way she did that – kind of unspoken and discreet, as though he's dead. I managed to keep one of his t-shirts – an old, daggy one with holes around the collar and cuffs that he used to wear when he was working in the backyard. I stuffed it in the back of my cupboard.
This time we've put out just about everything we can't eat, or aren't wearing right at this second. It's as if we're living in this bizarre limbo-land, like when you're moving house and you don't know where anything is and you're camping in your own house, except I do know where all my stuff is. It's at other people's places. I realise I should be upset about it, but I keep expecting that at any minute Mum will take us shopping and we can get new stuff.
We used to do that a lot. Mum and I would head into the city and shop while Dad and Will went out skydiving or making rafts by weaving reeds and earnestness together, or whatever Will's latest survival project was.
She also used to take me to her day spa, where we'd have a hot stone massage, a facial and a manicure. We haven't done that for a long time. Come to think of it, Mum hasn't been around much – even on weekends. She's always working, and when she's home she's selling things, or ignoring the piles of bills on the kitchen bench. Sometimes she cries.
There are two couples here already, arms folded, picking their way through our stuff. One fellow is flicking through the box of CDs. A lady drives up our street and slows as she rounds the cul de sac, deciding if our bits and pieces are worth getting out of the car to look at. Apparently not.
So far we've sold a Dinnigan dress of my mother's for eighteen dollars and a vacuum cleaner for fifteen dollars, and haggled over a stick blender. I wanted seven dollars, but the neighbour from four doors down only wanted to pay three-fifty. Annie from the granny flat bought a pinch pot I made in year seven for fifty cents.
An older woman stares intently at a canvas my brother and I painted when I was about three. She's hoping it will be by someone famous and we won't know how valuable it is, but in the end she decides it really is just a finger painting. There's been some interest in our clothes dryer and my funky silver pedestal fan, but so far, no takers.
It's pretty humiliating. I'm glad Declan is with me.
'So three days this week I put on my school uniform, and then after Mum went to work, Bryce Cole and I went to the track. Twice it was gallopers and the other time we went to the trots. So far I'm about even, but he's promised to teach me how to do a quinella next time. Do you have any idea how much you get if you win that? It's amazing! I don't understand why there aren't more people doing it.'
Declan jiggles his knee. 'I think I have cancer.'
'Don't use the C-word, it's bad luck.'
'That's not the C-word,' he snorts.
I keep my eye on two young boys who've just arrived on bikes. They're looking furtive. 'Why do you think you have cancer?'
He shifts in his seat. 'I have a dry mouth. I'm thirsty all the time. I'm so tired.'
'Maybe you don't drink enough water? It could be hormones. It's a boy thing. Will never gets out of bed before noon,' I counter.
'Will sleeps late because he's up all night arguing online.'
This from a boy who has a sign on his bedroom door