Little Bird (2 page)

Shandra stepped out of the dressing room with a strange, quiet look on her face. Colette whistled.

‘Well?' Shandra asked. The attendant stood back smugly as if she had personally picked the dress out.

I couldn't speak.

It wasn't just the dress – the
perfect
dress – it was everything: the attendant had arranged Shandra's long, blonde hair up on her head, stuck a veil on top and put a fake bouquet in her hands. Shandra had kicked off the wedding shop cream-coloured high heels and stood in bare feet, which made her look soft and vulnerable. I realised I could actually
see
Shandra's feet – the dress ended a centimetre below mid-calf instead of spilling over half the floor.

Suddenly Shandra wasn't my sister anymore. I realised my whole family was about to change. My childhood flashed before my eyes: holidays at our grandparents' farm, playing on the hay bales and hunting through the vines for ripe raspberries; years of bickering in the backseat of the car; how once Shandra had cut my left plait clean off with Mum's good scissors; how we used to roll around on the ground laughing till we couldn't breathe; all the shoes and dresses and magazines we'd swapped between us; the time I king-hit Shandra from behind, totally unprovoked, and Shandra had had to go to Emergency with suspected concussion (she was totally faking).

‘What do
you
think?' asked Colette.

‘I feel like a bride,' Shandra said in a tiny voice, and she laughed, and her eyes filled with sudden tears.

‘You're gorgeous,' Colette said. ‘Hell, I'll marry you.'

‘No way! You're damaged goods.'

Colette stuck her fingers up. ‘That dress makes you look fat.'

‘Get stuffed!' Shandra flounced over to the mirror. ‘I'm a
broide
.'

But at the mirror she stopped mucking around and examined herself, her face flushed with pleasure. I forgot that Shandra marrying Damien was the biggest mistake of her life, and felt instead a warm, glowing joy.

Shandra turned to one side and examined her profile. ‘Milk froth?' she asked Colette. ‘Vanilla? Snowbell? Maybe pearl?'

Colette considered for a moment. ‘Feather?'

‘Cloud,' I tried to say, but the word caught in my throat.

‘She speaks,' said Colette.

I met my sister's gaze in the mirror. ‘Cloud.'

Shandra smiled happily. ‘Cloud.' She closed her eyes and I remembered playing hide and seek while Shandra counted to a hundred. A surge of grief mingled with my joy. Shandra's eyes sprang open, as if trying to catch her own reflection by surprise. Ready or not.

And I was hit by another flash of memory: hiding in the long grass in the empty lot behind our house while fat white clouds raced across the sky. Ready or not? I was never ready, but Shandra would come anyway, swish swish through the overgrown green, and Shandra always found me.

2

I thought my brain was going to explode as Shandra handed over a wedge of fifty dollar notes – and that was just a deposit! I couldn't imagine having that much money, let alone spending it on a dress I would only wear once.

Colette flicked her mobile phone open and closed impatiently during the whole transaction, which I admit seemed to take forever, and, when Shandra was done, ruefully announced that she had ten minutes of child-free time left. Shandra hustled us into the fancy cafe across the road and told us to order anything we wanted, it was her shout. If I had forked out that much money I would need a lie down, but Shandra hadn't even broken a sweat.

We sat at the back of the cafe, under one of the slow-moving ceiling fans. I ordered an iced chocolate with extra whipped cream. Colette ordered another glass of sparkling.

Shandra and Colette talked a mile a minute. It reminded me of skipping in primary school, the double dutch kind where you had to run in between two ropes and start jumping like a mad thing, but if you didn't time it exactly right, you goofed it. I kept waiting for a chance to lurch in, but it all seemed to move so fast.

‘Should you be drinking that?' Shandra asked. ‘Aren't you still breastfeeding?'

‘Don't
you
start,' Colette groaned. ‘First the child health nurse, then my parents, my mothers' group. Even Spence's mum rang the other day to lecture me about it. She sleeps better on formula. And my nipples kept getting infected.'

‘Ew! Too much information.'

‘Believe me, my whole life is too much information,' Colette said.

‘Oh, but Maisy's so cute!'

‘Yeah, right,' Colette said. She checked the time on her mobile again. ‘Damn. I've got to go.'

‘We need to talk about the bridesmaids' dresses. All my plans have been thrown off by the dress.' Shandra grinned dreamily when she said ‘the dress', as if there was only one in the whole of existence. I knew she didn't care about starting from scratch. Planning the wedding was practically her full-time job anyway. Even at the real estate office where she worked as a receptionist she spent most of the time surfing wedding sites or flicking through bridal magazines.

‘I've got a great idea for the dresses,' Colette said, gulping down her wine. ‘But I do have to go. Talk about it later?'

Shandra pouted. I think she thought her wedding should be our full-time jobs too. ‘Are you coming to Bella's twenty-first on Saturday? We could talk about it there.'

‘I can't, Shan. Mum's got night shift at the hospital this weekend. Anyway, she and Dad have cracked it. She reckons I expect too much of them, and they'll only babysit once a fortnight now.'

‘Once a
fortnight
? Hypocrites! They're the ones who went all grandparental on your pregnant ass. What about Spence? Can't he take her?'

‘Are you kidding? I wouldn't ask him if my life depended on it.' Colette stood to go.

Shandra stuck her bottom lip out, then brightened. ‘Hey, I know!' she said. ‘Ruby-lee'll babysit on Saturday. Won't you, Ruby-lee?'

I blinked, taken by surprise.

‘Really?' Colette asked.

‘Uh . . . sure,' I said.

‘Have you ever babysat before?' Colette asked.

‘Oh, she's done it heaps of times,' Shandra said. ‘No dramas.'

‘That would be ace. Thanks, mate.' Colette beamed and I smiled back, not quite sure what had just happened.

‘I'll drop Ruby-lee off and pick you up at the same time.'

Colette ducked out the cafe door, waved from outside the window and was gone.

‘I've never
baby
sat before,' I said.

Shandra shrugged. ‘Well you can't be any worse at looking after a baby than Colette. Besides, you used to look after those next door kids all the time.'

‘Yeah, but they weren't babies.'

Shandra shrugged. ‘What's the diff?'

‘They could talk. They could walk. They could go to the loo by themselves. They ate normal food like chips and ice-cream.'

‘Oh well,
sorry
. You don't have to do it.'

‘Yes I do! Now that you've said I would.'

‘Maisy's easy-peasy. She never cries when I'm there. You'll be fine.'

‘Uh huh.' As far as I knew, Shan had never offered to babysit Maisy, but she was quite happy to volunteer my services.

‘She'll probably be asleep the whole time anyway.'

‘Let's drop it.'

‘Fine.'

‘Fine.'

I took a big slurp of my drink. The chocolatey goodness rushed through me.

Shandra sipped her black tea. ‘You know, you're not going to be able to have sweet stuff like that all year.'

‘Why not?'

‘Do you know how many grams of fat are in that? All those empty calories? I don't want you to be fat for my wedding.'

‘Are you saying I'm fat?'

‘No,' Shandra said. ‘You do have a tendency to gain a little, that's all. But you can go on my diet with me and . . .' Shandra kept harping on. By the time we left the cafe, ice-cream and chocolate milk were sloshing around my stomach, and any stirring feelings about Shandra the bride were gone. Shandra was well and truly my bossy, annoying sister again.

I still wasn't speaking to her when we got home. ‘I don't know why she's being so touchy. It's
my
wedding,' Shandra said, flouncing into the lounge room and flinging herself onto the couch. ‘You'd think she'd be grateful for some honest advice.'

‘From Bridezilla?' I snorted from the doorway. ‘I don't think so.'

‘Oh, Shan, I do wish you'd waited for me to come. It's not every day your daughter goes shopping for a wedding dress,' Mum said.

I felt sorry for Mum. Her shoulders sagged with disappointment.

Shandra rolled her eyes. ‘I can't do anything right, can I? Maybe I should call the whole wedding off.'

Shandra said this on average three times a week. Frankly, I thought it should be encouraged.

‘I'll get the phone,' I said. ‘Mum, what's Damien's number?'

Mum ignored me and, as always, made a fuss of Shandra.

‘Don't say that, Shan,' she clucked. ‘Tell me about the dress. I can't wait to see you in it, that's all. And don't pay any attention to your sister. Ruby-lee's at a difficult age.'

‘I am not!'

‘She's
always
at a difficult age,' Shandra said, making a face.

‘Come on, girls,' Mum pleaded, looking at me, expecting me to be the peace-maker as usual. ‘Let's all get along and make this the best wedding ever?'

I was sick of hearing about the wedding. They would talk about the dress for hours. As I went out the back the screen door slipped from my hand and slammed shut behind me. Great, now they would think I was having a tantrum. And if I called out that I hadn't meant to slam it, I would sound even more childish.

I sat on the porch and looked at the dry, weedy backyard. The lawn, or the scrappy bits of it that struggled to survive, was brown and faded. A month or so ago Stefan had mowed it in an attempt to prove to Shandra that, with a home-built gazebo and some landscaping, we could have the wedding at home. Shandra had cried for hours at that suggestion and Stefan had come the closest I'd seen to losing his wick about the whole idea of a wedding. Hoo-bloody-ray, I'd cheered. But between them Mum and Damien had calmed Stefan and soothed Shandra, cajoling her out of her room, promising her the wedding of her dreams. Shandra emerged, pink-eyed and triumphant. I couldn't believe she actually expected Stefan to mortgage the house to help pay for a wedding – one measly day of her life – especially when Damien would be happy getting married on a footy pitch and then buying a round of beers at the pub. Okay, maybe he'd stretch to champagne and mini-quiches on his wedding day. But no, not good enough for Princess Shandra, so Stefan and Mum had agreed to fork out their share, and Shandra had hit Dad up for plenty too.

Anyway, after that the lawn had given up the ghost and I couldn't blame it. If I was stuck here forever I might lie down and die too. I didn't understand what could possibly be appealing about marriage. The last thing I wanted to do was get tied down to a life like this. Though to be honest, I wasn't sure what else there was for a girl like me. It wasn't like I was a superbrain, or good at sport or music or anything. I was just ordinary. Ruby-lee. Plain, old, nothing much.

I gazed around the drab backyard. The only thing here to love was our old plum tree. It was almost bare; the last of the autumn leaves fluttered in the breeze. It was at its best in spring, when its black branches were covered in blossoms, and late summer, when its limbs hung heavy with ripe, sweet fruit.

A blackbird landed on the rusty gate underneath the plum tree. Once that gate had been constantly in motion. When we were kids the empty block behind our yard had been an extension of our garden, a playground, high with grass and weeds, filled with abandoned sheets of tin and flat wooden pallets, perfect for cubby building. These days the block looked more like a tip, with rusted car bodies and abandoned piles of wood. I guess it was a tip back then too, it just hadn't seemed that way to me. We'd stopped going there when Shandra tore her shin on a rusty nail and had to get a tetanus injection. Afterwards she'd declared herself too old for hide and seek. And even my friend Tegan had decided she would rather shoplift lipstick lollies from the milkbar than build cubbies. Playing cubbies by myself just wasn't the same.

The little bird tilted its head and studied me with its beady, yellow-ringed eye.

‘What are you looking at?' I asked.

‘Rubes?' Mum said gently from behind the screen door.

‘I'm putting the chops on, love. Can you take a beer down to Stefan and let him know dinner's nearly ready?'

I sighed and stood up. I grabbed a stubby from the fridge in the back room. I slipped back out the screen door, making sure it shut quietly behind me this time, and walked across the dusty lawn to the back shed. The blackbird took off in a flutter. I wished I could be that free, lighter than air.

‘G'day, Ruby-lee,' Stefan said. He was sitting on a folding chair staring at a patch of sky where the tin roof had separated from the wall. He waved the spanner in his hand; talkback radio droned in the background. I kind of liked the shed smell – petrol and potting mix and something else, something I didn't recognise, musty and sweet. Stefan spent a lot of time out here.

‘Dinner's nearly ready.' I handed him the beer.

‘You're a legend,' Stefan said. ‘How did the big shopping trip go?'

‘All right. Shan found a dress.'

‘Yeah? A meringue?'

Stefan was the only one who thought it was funny when I called Shandra Bridezilla, though he never laughed in front of Shandra.

‘Nah, it's really pretty. Colette helped pick it out.'

‘Oh yeah? What about you, did you find a dress?'

‘Not yet.'