Girl Next Door - Alyssa Brugman [14]
It's painful that they don't know Declan at all. It's painful because they're not real. Every conversation is like the courteous banter you have with someone you've just met and will never see again. It's a bus stop conversation. They look like a family, but it's as though they've just come together to do an advertisement for the tableware.
Usually I just keep my head down and eat as much as I can without stretching the bounds of neighbourly courtesy.
Declan's dad doesn't notice that his wife hates me. Usually he doesn't seem to notice me at all. Tonight, however, he suddenly turns his attention to me. 'How are you doing at school, Jenna-Belle?'
My mouth opens and closes like a goldfish's. Declan smirks. Has he dobbed? Is this a test? What does he know?
'To tell you the truth, I think I could do better,' I tell him, sneaking my hand across the table to grab another dinner roll.
'That's the spirit!' Declan's dad saws at his veal.
'It would be "the spirit" if Jenna-Belle vowed to do better. Technically she's only confessing to being lazy,' Declan says.
I mouth shut your face at him and slip the roll into my pocket.
Declan's dad hasn't finished drilling me. 'I've noticed you have a new house guest. Is this fellow a friend of your mother's?'
Declan's mum and dad are both staring at me, waiting for an answer as though it's really important. Declan's mum rests her cutlery on the edge of her plate and places her fingers softly on the edge of the table, as if it's a piano. She's sitting really straight.
I think he's asking if Mum is sleeping with Bryce Cole. I don't really know how to answer, because I'm not sure if we're pretending that the people who rent our rooms are guests. I don't know why he's asking me anyway. Surely he can ask Mum in the car on the way to work?
Now I'm wondering if the car-pooling must be really awkward for them both, because when we first moved in, Declan's parents and my parents had drinks and a few barbecues, and the occasional card game. They seemed to get along. And then all of a sudden they stopped the socialising. But the travelling to work together didn't stop. Could it be that my mum and Declan's dad have been driving to work together all this time secretly wishing to get out of the arrangement, but too polite to say so? Is the car-pooling the pineapple on everybody's heads?
'He's um . . .'
What can I say to Declan's mum and dad about Bryce Cole?
'I don't know much about him,' I reply.
6
SHORT
ODDS
It's Monday and Bryce Cole and I are at the track. It's a nice day, but so far we're the only ones here. I have a soggy caesar salad and Bryce Cole has a steak sandwich.
'Why don't you have your own house? How come you rent a room?'
'Why do you rent one out?' he counters.
I'm sipping post-mix lemonade through a straw. 'It's because interest rates went up. We were fine before that. Dad says it's always worse under Labor. He said last time interest rates were seventeen per cent.'
Now that I think of it, that might have been the very last thing I remember my dad saying before he left. We were out at dinner. We still went out for dinner together once a week. There was a restaurant down the road called Zazzoom, with bamboo in pots, brown walls, white tablecloths, and timber venetians. They were playing the same music that you get in a day spa – Portishead on Prozac. They served the meals with a kind of hushed flourish, as though it was a religious experience.
Willem had brought one of his friends from school, and I remember thinking 'football scholarship', because he was bulky and he had no table manners. He kept picking steak out of his teeth and pointing with his fork.
A couple that Dad knew from golf came over to the table and they were talking about politics. That's the only conversation I remember from that night. Dad and Mum weren't talking much and I thought it was