Girl Next Door - Alyssa Brugman [59]
It hurts that Dad doesn't want us to go with him. I need my parents to want to be with us, even if we don't want to be with them. I remember one Valentine's Day when I was about twelve, Mum and Dad were talking about going away for the weekend. They asked us if we thought we were old enough to look after ourselves overnight. Will and I told them that if they went away we'd have a party while they were gone. We were just kidding, but they didn't go. It was a joke, but I think we made it because we didn't want them to want to go somewhere without us.
I wonder if Tanner Hamrick-Gough feels like this every time her parents go back to Dubai? Apparently they think she gets a better and safer education here. Tanner says they can make more money over there, and that's probably true, but why can't her parents get a job here – at least until she's finished school? It's only a few more years. There must be some point at which they think the relationship they have with their kids is more important than having stuff, otherwise why would they have kids in the first place?
Unless they thought kids would be fun, but it didn't work out that way and now they're completely jack of them, which is even more depressing.
We stop at a petrol station. Bryce Cole puts in ten dollars, which takes the gauge from empty to nearly empty.
Just on dusk we pull up outside a brick house in a suburb I've never heard of. The woman who answers the door has drawn-on eyebrows so high on her forehead that she looks permanently shocked. Maybe she is shocked. She's got drawn-on lips as well. She's made herself a little cupid's bow.
This is a much cheaper option than surgery, I think. You just draw your features where you want them to be. You could change your mind, too. You could move your eyebrows to suit your mood.
She's got long fake fingernails and lots of bling, but the pantsuit she's wearing looks neat and comfortable. It's something that even my mum might have worn around the house – Sportscraft leisurewear.
'Bryce,' she says, leaning back against the doorframe and crossing her ankles.
'Hi, Mum,' he says.
As soon as he says it I can see the resemblance.
'Who's this?' she asks, looking my mum up and down.
'This is Sue, a friend of mine.'
'And did you father these?' she asks.
Bryce Cole blushes. 'No, Mum.'
Bryce Cole doesn't have to say anything. She gets it; she's just making us work for it. She raises her real eyebrows and her drawn-on ones disappear into one of her wrinkles, so then she has no eyebrows at all, and she stops looking surprised and just looks weird. She stares at us.
A woman with disappeared, drawn-on eyebrows, who lives west, is judging us.
After a long silence she says, 'You can come in for a cuppa,' then she turns around and I follow her down the hallway.
We walk though a crowded lounge room and into the kitchen. I lift a stack of well-thumbed women's magazines off the dining chair and sit down, then make a space between a variety of hideous, unfinished craft projects on the table for my elbows. There's an upright piano under similar domestic debris. It's dusty and smells like old people. I wrinkle my nose at Will.
Mum settles into a rocker in the corner.
Barb Cole spoons instant coffee into cups. She nods towards Mum, asking if she wants a cup. Mum stares at the instant coffee tin in Barb's hand. I've heard her say she would prefer to drink dishwater than instant coffee, but after a pause she sighs. 'Sure. Why not?' Mum turns to Bryce Cole. 'Where . . . um . . . where were you thinking of staying?'
'Not here, that's for sure,' Barb scoffs.
There is a long awkward pause. Will, Mum and I trade glances. That's what we're here for, right? To stay? When I look at Bryce Cole's face I can see he was going to raise it more subtly, maybe just by waiting until Barb had gone to bed and then dossing in the corner.
'Mum, it would only be . . .'
'No way,' she interrupts. 'I told you the last time, and the time before that, and the time before that.' She holds