Leaving Jetty Road (16 page)

chapter thirty-one

Sausages

M
y parents throw a celebration barbecue for dinner after my last exam. Tim and his girlfriend, Sally, join us at the last moment. Dad picks tomatoes and parsley from his veggie garden and makes a salad, muttering about the spring onions that died on the last 100-degree scorcher a couple of days ago: “They’d have tasted so good with these tomatoes.” Then we sit around the outdoor table on the porch, facing the brown, scraggly, bare-patched lawn. Mosquitoes whine at our ears.

While Mum’s back in the kitchen pouring herself a second glass of wine, the phone rings. She picks it up, murmurs into it, calls out: “It’s for you, Nat.”

My insides flutter with stupid, inevitable hope. I stumble toward the screen door, take the phone from her.

“Nat?”

It’s Lise. I sink back to earth.

“Am I interrupting anything?”

I can smell the sausages smoking on the barbecue. (Why don’t vegetarian patties smell like that?) Suddenly I realize how
long
it is since I’ve spoken to Lise.

“No, no,” I say hastily. “Go for it.”

She hesitates. Then she says simply, “I was just ringing to tell you I’m going into the hospital soon. They’ve just put me on the waiting list.”

My mind reels. “The hospital?” I echo.

Lise takes a breath. “I’ve been seeing this counselor—well, this psychiatrist, actually—and I’ve realized—I don’t know—”She stops, then starts again. “I’ve just
got
to start eating.”

How hard can it be to eat?
I wonder.

“It’s harder than it sounds, Nat,” she says, like she’s reading my mind.

The words hang between us over the phone. I try to tease some kind of sense out of them.

“This program I’m going into, in the hospital,” she says at last. “It’s specially designed for people with anorexia. To give them support while they put on weight.”

There. Finally, after all this time, the moment of truth.
My friend Lise, the anorexic.

“Are you scared?” I ask her slowly.

“No,” she says, sounding puzzled. “I thought I would be, but I’m not. It’s what I need.”

That’s when I notice something different in her voice, something I haven’t heard for a long time, if ever. At first I can’t put my finger on it. Then I realize that it sounds like
—hope
?

“Things’ve changed,” she says slowly, as if the words that she’s saying are unfamiliar to her, like a new language. “I
want
to get better. I really do.”

My eyes well up at her words, like so many times recently. But they’re not tears of self-pity this time: they’re tears of pure, simple shame. All this time, I’ve been thinking of my own problems, and here Lise is, going through stuff I can’t even begin to imagine.

“Lise?” I say, humbly.

“Yeah?”

“Can I come and visit you? In the hospital, I mean.”

“Do you want to?” she asks, surprised.

“Of course I do,” I say, wiping another tear away. “You’re my
friend.

From the garden, the clink of glasses drifts up to me, mingled with the cheerful voices of my parents laughing with Tim and Sally. Suddenly I can’t face all that blatant happiness. I can’t help myself: I just have to be alone.

In my bedroom, I lie curled up on the bed, cocooned. I glance at the letter on my desk which I started to write to Josh earlier this afternoon: I got halfway and then couldn’t bear the sound of my own whining, even on paper, and stopped. Next to it is a picture of Sofe and Lise and me, taken at the Year 11 school camp: we’re standing on the beach in our bathing suits, arms across each other’s shoulders, hair dripping. Sofia has her mouth open in a wide, white-toothed smile, and Lise is laughing, her curly wet hair draping the smooth, generous curves of her body.

I roll onto my other side, facing the door, and tuck my head into my elbow. Everything used to be so simple before, so
right,
I think, wiping away yet another tear: Lise eating ice cream on a cold winter’s day; Josh cuddling up to me, murmuring sweet things in my ear. What
happened
?

There’s a knock on my door. Mum pokes her head around, sees me on the bed.

“Oh, sweetie,” she says, her eyes crinkling up with sympathy.

She comes into the room, sits beside me on the bed.

“Lise is going into the hospital,” I say desolately.

She nods. “It’s the best place for her now, isn’t it?”

We look at each other for a moment without speaking. Something passes between us then—some tacit kind of understanding, something that loosens the knot that’s been inside of me recently whenever I’m around her. The time for anger between us is over, I realize. At least for now.

I want to apologize to her, to say:
I know you did everything you could for Lise.
Because I can see now that she did, you know? She
did.
That’s what she was trying to tell me the other day, in front of the TV. But I can’t bring myself to say the words aloud. Mum and I—we’re not good at that sort of stuff. Despite all her “social working” on me, I still can’t bring myself to say the things she wants me to say, the things I
should
say. I just can’t. Because the thing is, then where would I be? Would there be any me at all?

So instead we just have this moment together—this moment of unspoken, tenuous peace.

“I wasn’t a very good friend to Lise this year,” I say finally.

“We all did our best, Nat,” she says, ever the positive thinker, ever the social worker. “You, too.”

Did
I, though? I wonder. The truth is, sometimes I think that Sofe was a better friend to Lise this year than me. At least she was
honest
with her. At least she had the guts to speak out.

Mum sits silently with me for a couple more moments. Then she picks up another photo—the one on my bedside table. It’s Josh and me at the Formal—that wide, idiotic,
happy
grin of mine.

“Do you miss him, Nat?” she asks quietly.

I don’t say anything. My throat clots with tears that I try desperately to hold back. She strokes my hair, and her touch sets me off yet again. I didn’t know it was
possible
to cry so much.

“I miss him every moment of the day, Mum,” I say through my tears.

“I know.”

“I can’t imagine life without him. It doesn’t make sense.”

Some time later, after I’ve cried a whole
sea
of tears, I sit up and grab a tissue from the bedside table. Mum smiles at me, puts her hands on each of my shoulders, holding me at arm’s length. I can smell the white wine on her breath, that familiar, tipsy-summer-evening smell of hers. She gazes into my eyes, says simply, “Time, Nat.” She nods firmly, without looking away. “That’s what it takes.
Time.
”

Then, for a while, we sit there, side by side on the bed. We don’t talk. There’s just the smell of barbecue smoke drifting in through the window and the hum of a stray mosquito homing in on its target. The feel of my mother beside me, solid, dependable,
there.
That’s all. Just
there.

Afterward, we go back out to the garden together. I am red-eyed and shaky, but finally calm.

Dad grins at me, deliberately oblivious of my tear-streaked face. “Have a sausage, Nat. It’s December. There’s still time to break your New Year’s resolution.”

I look at the sausage he’s holding out to me and think of Lise, whose suggestion it was, all those months ago, to go vegetarian together. I think of all she gave up when she started down that track, and where it got her. Then I think of Josh: the way he used to come up behind me in the kitchen at the Wild Carrot, put his arms around my waist, croon “Broccoli, broccoli” at me. Loretta never did understand why I laughed so much while I was washing the dishes.

I am
so
sick of feeling crappy, you know?

“Okay,” I hear myself saying loudly. “
Yes.
I’ll have one.”

He hands the sausage to me, folded up in bread. I hold it in my hands; it’s warm and sloppy with tomato sauce, the butter on the bread stained black by the grill. I feel momentarily like I’m a kid again—those endless summer barbecues, the welcome pleasure of respite from Mum’s lousy cooking.

I can feel them all watching me anxiously as I take my first bite; I think they half expect me to spit it back out at them, go running around the back lawn shrieking wild things about animals and slaughterhouses.

But I don’t. There’s a limit, I think, to feeling sorry for yourself. There’s only so much misery you can allow yourself before some little stubborn part of you bounces back in rebellion.

“It’s
delicious,
” I tell them with a tentative grin. I eat the rest of it, then say, “Are there any more sausages left?”

Dad hands me a second one, wordlessly. I bite into it, and for a moment, at least, the world is sunny and still and free of grief.

chapter thirty-two

Under the peppercorn trees

S
everal weeks later, there’s only one more torture left for the school to inflict on us: Speech Day. Even though, as Year 12s, we haven’t been back to school since our exams ended, we’re still expected to turn up on the last day of term, dressed in the regulation knee-length socks, school ties, and blazers, prayer books in hand. It’s like some kind of final sadistic punishment designed to make you really hope you’ve passed.

Sofia and I both arrive unexpectedly early. We linger around under the scanty shade of the peppercorn trees down by the tennis courts, chatting, and she gives me the latest update on her going-around-Australia saga.

“Nick finally got the VW going.”

“Really? So when’re you going?”

“Sunday.”

I blink. “
Sunday?
As in
this
Sunday?”

She nods, breaking out into an excited grin. “First stop, Great Ocean Road.” Then, seeing the expression on my face, she laughs. “C’mon, Nat. It’s not like I’m going forever.”

She’s right, of course. I know Sofe: she’ll be back, in her own good time. It’s just, I wasn’t expecting her to leave so soon.

“Promise you’ll send some postcards,” I say plaintively.

“Of course.
Stacks.
”

“To Lise, too?”

She sighs. “To Lise, too.”

I gaze at the chain-link fence, the tennis court a green blur behind it.
Will
she write to Lise? Somehow I can’t imagine it. What would Sofia say on a postcard to Lise, anyway?

Aloud, I say, “You’ll have to send everything care of the hospital. She gets admitted tomorrow.”

Sofia sighs again, this time with palpable impatience. “Hospital, schmospital,” she says. “I’m just not
into
this whole starving thing.”

I stare at her incredulously. I mean, surely a little concern wouldn’t go astray here?

“It’s a waste of time, Nat—that’s what gets me,” she says, tugging moodily at a peppercorn branch swaying over her head. “Playing skinny, playing frail. Playing the loser.”

“Yeah, but—”

She plucks a peppercorn frond off the tree and brushes it across her face, her nose ring winking defiantly in the dappled sunlight.

“I think she should just
get a life.
”

I look up through the trees to the deep blue sky above us, saying nothing. If only it was as easy as that.

“She hasn’t just got anorexia, you know,” I say quietly. “There’s other stuff going on with her, too.”

“Like what?” asks Sofia, puzzled.

So I repeat what Lise told me on the phone a couple of nights ago when she called again: about the fear that crawls up her throat during the day, the nausea that keeps her awake at night. Apparently, she had no idea what these things were until she described them to one of the hospital doctors during a preadmission assessment the other day. “Panic attacks,” he called them.

Sofe groans. “Why didn’t she tell anyone?”

I shrug. “Who knows? Maybe she thought it would go away.”

But in my head, I can still hear what Lise said when I asked her the same thing over the phone.

“I couldn’t tell anyone,” she said, in a voice that rang with loneliness. “I thought I was going
mad—
”

Next to me on the bench, Sofe yawns, no doubt already warming up for the speeches we’re about to be subjected to in the assembly hall. Her yawn makes me smile wryly, and she grins back at me, but neither of us says anything for a while. We sit on the bench in peaceful companionship, and I let my thoughts drift. I find myself thinking back over the year, and for a sudden, poignant moment, I am flooded with images: Josh in his suit at the Year 12 Formal; the chocolate cake I made so hopefully for Lise; Sofe unrepentantly brandishing her nose ring the day she got suspended.

Then, for some reason, my thoughts wander even further back, to that day in the living room when Lise talked to Sofia and me about New Year’s resolutions. The image is still so clear in my mind that I can see the ceiling fans rotating above our heads, feel the sweat collecting on my upper lip, hear the bright, optimistic, determined way she said, “Let’s go vegetarian. It’s
good
for you.”

Sometimes I think that day in the living room was like the starting point. Of
everything,
you know? Of Lise becoming anorexic; of me getting the job at the Wild Carrot Café; of Sofe going out with the first guy she’s ever felt serious about in her life. After we made that resolution, everything changed.

A sudden thought occurs to me. I turn to Sofia.

“Remember our New Year’s resolution?”

She nods.

“I’ve got something to confess,” I tell her sheepishly. “I didn’t stick to it.” Then I add hastily, “But Lise didn’t, either.”

An expression of mock horror passes across her face.

“
Lise
didn’t stick to a
resolution
?”

I shake my head. “The dietitian at the hospital says she has to eat meat while she’s there.”

Sophia rolls her eyes. “What—anorexics aren’t allowed to be vegetarian? They’re not allowed to have a conscience?”

I shrug. “Something like that. Anyway, what about
you
? Did you keep your New Year’s resolution?”

“Mate,” she says simply, “I can’t
imagine
eating meat now. I’m even buying cruelty-free soaps and shampoos.”

I almost laugh out loud. I mean, sticking to things has never exactly been Sofe’s strong point.

But when she sees my face, she frowns.

“No, for
real.
Did you know that jellybeans are made with calves’ feet? The gelatin in them, I mean. And guess what? Cheese has rennet in it, and that’s made from the lining of a cow’s stomach.”

That’s when I realize she’s serious.

She’s changed, Sofia. It’s weird, you know? In some ways, I think I’ve always seen her as unchangeable.
Different,
yes, with her cigarettes, her colorful clothes, her mum’s backyard dope plant—but still, somehow, constant. Now, though, it comes to me suddenly that her life has changed as much in the last year as mine—as much, even, as Lise’s. Meeting Nick has made her, not happier, exactly (she’s
always
been happy), but calmer. More settled. It’s like she’s found a life that’s
right
for her.

But now that I think about this, am I surprised? About the vegetarian bit, maybe; but the rest of it—no. Not really.

Somehow I always knew Sofe would find her own path.