11
W HAT is with this guy turning up when I’m looking my absolute most shitful?
The annoying part of all of this is I’m usually not one of those people who gets in a flap about how I look.
I mean, I know I’m no supermodel, but I was the first grandchild and remain the only granddaughter of my Nonna.
You can’t have seventeen years of being told in no uncertain terms that you’re the most heavenly, beautiful creature on the planet in great danger of ravishment without a fraction of it sticking, causing just a smidge of vanity.
‘You didn’t say you’re working today, Dad?
’ He hasn’t changed position. He’s still next to me leaning against his work bench, staring at Paul – not exactly hostile, but without his usual ‘g’day, mate’ vibe.
I’m sitting on Dad’s workbench like a child and so I launch myself with a little more vigour than necessary and land on my feet, graceless, but at least upright.
‘Your jumper is upstairs, I’ll go get it. ’
‘Keep it, Cat,’ says Paul. ‘I’m good, thanks for asking.’ He turns to Dad. ‘Mick, Mr Kelty, before we get going, I’d like to apologise to you and Mrs Kelty for not bringing Cat home last night. It’s not the best way to start a job, losing the boss’ daughter. She just disappeared.’
‘She walked home alone last night.’ Dad downs his coffee and then straightens. ‘Alone.’
‘I know, and I hate that.’ Paul holds his gaze. ‘As soon as I knew she’d left I came past, and I saw you guys upstairs through the windows.’
‘You’re not planning on asking her out again, are you? What if you took her to the city and let her hitchhike home?’
The air has become stuffy and heavy, and it’s not from the dust particles floating around under the house.
‘I’m right here, Dad.’
‘I haven’t asked anyone anything,’ says Paul, ‘but I’m feeling like it might be a bad idea if I did anyway, and I don’t blame either of you.
Once bitten and all that, but again, Mr Kelty, I’d like to apologise, and Cat, I’m sorry you felt like walking home in the dark was a better alternative than hanging out with me. ’
‘Well, that’s not completely accurate.’ I dart a glance at him. I can feel the heat in my cheeks. ‘I’d just had enough of the party. Not you. It’s not that deep.’
Dad takes a moment to assess Paul’s speech and I hold my breath in anticipation.
‘We’ve got to get this formwork up,’ says Dad. Paul holds out his hand and Dad shakes it in one firm thrust. ‘I appreciate your apology.’ He crouches and disappears through the manhole.
Paul squats on his haunches in the doorway, his hands gripping the door jamb above his head. His board shorts creep up his thighs and as he leans forward his t-shirt rises, exposing a patch of skin, startling white against his tanned lower back. I fight an urge to flatten my hands against it.
‘What are we working on?’
I can’t hear Dad’s reply.
‘So, all the formwork?’ Paul moves into the space and all I can hear is faint builder-babble.
‘I’m going upstairs,’ I say to the hole in the wall. There’s no answer. The rain hasn’t let up, but I bolt up the stairs anyway.
A couple of minutes later, Paul runs through the rain to his car. Mum comes to stand with me at the window. ‘Is that Paul here already?’
‘He apologised to Dad about not taking me home last night.’
‘Well, that’s pretty sweet.’
‘Sweet? You don’t think it’s chauvinistic? That he seems to think it’s the 1950s? Who are you and what have you done with my cool, feminist mother who has spent the last seventeen years telling me to fight the patriarchy, burn my bras, and rise from the oppression of men?’
‘Well, I don’t know that I was ever that emphatic,’ says Mum, ‘and fun fact: did you know that the feminists never actually burnt bras? It’s a misconception that’s floated through time.
Anyway, there’s a big difference between being a chauvinistic pig and being someone with basic manners.
I hope you can recognise the difference. ’
‘What freakin’ manners?’ I say. ‘He left me to walk home alone in the dark. Anything could have happened to me.’
‘But it’s Paul’s fault, is it, that you bailed out on your date with him? And enough of the gutter language.’
‘Yeah, yeah, I already heard it from Dad. I get it. Do we have to keep going over it? Tu capisci?’
‘Ooh, so it was a date.’ Mum tickles me. She’s practically cackling.
‘Are you twelve? The sooner you get back to work, the better. You need adults around you. You’re turning into Matty when you should be getting ready to turn into Nonna.’
‘Oh, shit, I nearly forgot,’ says Mum, conveniently adopting my gutter language. ‘Nonna! She’s expecting me to pick her up for lunch. Want to come for a drive?’
‘No, thanks,’ I say. ‘Take Tommy with you though, that game is killing me. I do have to focus, you know?’
She calls my brothers as she grabs her handbag from the kitchen bench. ‘Cat, ask Paul to move his car, please,’ she says.
‘Not gonna happen.’ I cross my arms and turn my nose up. Even I know I’m the posterchild of pure brat behaviour, but I can’t make myself care.
‘Going to, not gonna. All right, I can’t be bothered arguing. Matty, run downstairs and ask Paul if he’d mind moving his car, please.’ She gathers up Tommy from the game. He barely protests, knowing he’ll be seeing the woman who maintains a temple in his honour of chocolate and lollies.
I go to the bathroom to survey the damage.
Not too bad. Not great, but not terrible.
I mean, yes, these yoga pants need to go to God, but apart for some dust in my hair from under the house I haven’t come off too badly.
The monstrosity of a pimple has receded, and my eyebrows are holding their shape from their last interaction with the brow bar.
I give my face a quick scrub and pull a hairbrush though my hair.
Despite my best efforts at gentleness, my eyes fill as the brush tears through the mini-dreadlocks I’ve accidentally cultivated at the base of my neck.
I give up on the hairbrush; this is a job for conditioner, and that’s a job for tonight.
Shame I didn’t think of it this morning when I spent ten minutes polishing each individual tooth in my mouth with the new electric toothbrush my orthodontist gave me for ‘graduating’.
Pretty crappy graduation gift, really, considering the gazillions of dollars my parents spent there, and the hours upon hours I spent flat on my back being tortured.
Bathroom ablutions, check. I yank off the hideous grey yoga pants and pull on some jeans.
Comfort, be damned. My singlet is unadorned with those insipid logos that everyone seems to love having plastered all over themselves.
We’re done here. My transformation is complete.
The self-loathing for giving a you-know-what about how I look in front of a Neanderthal is next level, even if said Neanderthal is the hottest of the hot.
Back in the living room the paper lies waiting for me. Ugh, issues. Ugh, dying planet. Ugh, asylum seekers. Ugh, the patriarchy. Ugh, beautiful walking surfer god under my feet, literally .
As if on cue, the banging starts up downstairs again.
How am I supposed to concentrate with all this noise?
Mum’s car appears at the corner, and there’s Nonna perched in the front seat.
As they pull into the drive she looks up and I wave.
Matty races up the stairs to reclaim his seat in front of the video game.
I hear Mum and Nonna moving up the terraces under the stairs, the entrance specifically built for Nonna so she could avoid the steep staircase.
Dad did offer to build a pulley system for her to get from the street to the house.
Imagine Nonna, perched on a little metal bar, being hoisted over the balcony railings. We laughed; she didn’t.
I kiss her on both cheeks as she comes through the door. She walks straight to the dining table and gathers up all my newspaper articles that I’ve separated into sections. I take them off her, somehow without snatching, fold them neatly and slip them into my issues folder.
‘Nonna, want to see my Italian?’
‘Why do you need to learn Italian?’ she says. ‘You’re Australian. It’s a waste of your time. I didn’t come here and learn every word of English just for you to spend all your time learning Italian.’
It’s an argument we’ve been having since Year Nine when I chose to study Italian of my own free will, as opposed to the school insisting on it.
It’s one of her many paradoxes. In her eyes, we, her grandchildren, are Australian to the point of ‘ Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, oi, oi, oi, ’ but when Tommy tells her that Italy is in the running for the World Cup, she’s all ‘ Viva L’Italia ,’ never mind the fact that she’s never watched a footy game of any denomination in her life.
That’s not accurate. She goes to Matty’s every game, sitting in Dad’s crusty old ute.
She used to insist that Dad change ends each quarter, so she’d be right in front of him in the goal square until Matty threatened to stop playing.
‘Mama, please don’t start this again.’ Mum’s already endured this argument through her own education. ‘You know why. She gets extra points for university by doing Italian, and anyway, we want her to have a connection to her cultural heritage.’
‘Cultural heritage? Pftt.’ Nonna crosses her arms. ‘All your ancestors did was struggle for a better life, which we got, by coming here.’
‘Oh, Nonna,’ I say. ‘Where’s your patriotism? I’m going to need your help this year more than ever in my life, so I need you to get over yourself.’