Have You Seen Ally Queen? Read online

  STARFLOWERS

  The principles of political correctness are used in the ‘Starflower 1000’ advertisement. In it, a woman and man are having an argument. The man suggests the woman is premenstrual and she says, ‘No, I’m angry. If I was premenstrual I’d DO something about it, like take Starflower Oil.’ The advertisement is politically correct because ... because ...

  Shite, shite, shite. I’ve got no bloody idea why it’s politically correct. I just get the feeling that it is. Maybe I should write that. The advertisement gives viewers the feeling that it is being politically correct. No, Ally, you idiot—you can’t say that. You’ll get two out of ten if you say that. Well, maybe that’s what I need right now—some crappy marks might reverse my nerd status at Peel Senior High.

  I go upstairs to the living room. Mum is making her own self-raising flour by adding cream of tartar and bicarb soda to plain flour. (She does it all the time, makes her own self-raising flour because she reckons the premixed stuff you buy tastes rank and it’s a rip-off, and, besides, she likes making her own. See, she’s a complete freak. Other people just pay the extra twelve cents and get the convenience of pre-made self-raising flour, but not Mum.) I plonk in front of the TV. Radio National’s still on and I can hardly just turn on the telly. So I sit and stare at the grey screen.

  ‘How’s the essay coming along, Ally?’

  ‘Assignment. It’s an assignment. Badly.’

  ‘Oh. Sorry. What do you have to do?’

  ‘Don’t worry about it, Mum. You can’t help, all right?’

  Oh, God, nice one, Ally. So much for Angelgirl. I turn around to her. She was only trying to make conversation. Poor Mum. What a shitty daughter she ended up with.

  ‘What are you making?’ I ask, nodding at the ingredients she’s got lined up on the bench.

  She’s just looking at it, all the flour and all the mess, and says, ‘I don’t know, actually.’ Very quietly, she says again, ‘I don’t know.’

  The overhead light is really bright. Everything is under a kind of grey-white glare.

  I turn back uncertainly to the not-on telly. I feel vaguely sick. I don’t want to go back to my room; I can’t go out, it’s night; and I don’t want to be here with Mum being strange. (Maybe she needs some Starflower Oil?) Mostly, I don’t want to be with me.

  ‘Do you want a hand?’ I croak. Say no, say no, say no.

  ‘No, no thanks, Ally. You do your ess—assignment.’

  ‘That’s boring as batshit.’

  ‘Ally!’

  ‘Sorry, but it is! Everything is.’

  Mum looks at me then.

  ‘Can I ring Shelly on the landline?’

  She puts down the sieve. ‘Oh, Ally. Why can’t you just keep yourself occupied? People didn’t have telephones and DVD players in the old days, you know. They just had candles and books and wrote letters and talked. Maybe that’s what we should do now, talk.’

  God. Candles. Letters. Talk. Why can’t she live in the twenty-first century? ‘Yeah,’ I tell her, ‘I wanna talk to Shelly!’

  She blows out, like she’s trying to stay calm. ‘Well ... you can’t.’

  ‘What? What! I can’t? You just don’t like her, that’s your problem. You never did. That’s part of the reason we came down here, isn’t it? Because you didn’t like my friends.’

  ‘Ally—’

  ‘Well, Dad thinks they’re fine. He likes Shelly! You’re just ... You’re such a weirdo! No one else’s mum is like you.’

  She slams down the flour sack. (Mum doesn’t buy paper packets of flour. Fabric sacks are reusable.) The loose stuff puffs out into a nuclear cloud while she storms into the bedroom. She’s not meant to storm off, I think, I am! I stomp down the stairs and crack my door shut. It’s really loud. Too loud, really.

  BEAUTIFUL BANGLE

  I’m walking along one of the long grey corridors trying to ignore the popular kids lining the lockers, when Ms Carey comes out of a room and falls into step with me. I’d die if it were anyone else, like Mr Farran, but it’s pretty cool walking around with Ms Carey.

  ‘So how’s the assignment coming along, Alison?’

  Her arm is long and brown next to mine, and has a beautiful wide bangle on it, and a loose string of sandalwood beads spilling over onto her hand. I know they’re sandalwood because Mum’s got some in her top drawer, though she doesn’t wear them. They wouldn’t be as cool on her, anyway.

  ‘Umm ... not bad. I did some last night. It’s been a bit hard because since we came down here Mum’s become a bit of a TV nazi.’

  ‘TV nazi?’

  ‘Yeah. One hour a day is all we’re allowed. One hour!’

  ‘Your mum sounds like a smart woman.’

  I look across at her. We are almost the same height. ‘Serious? Don’t you think it’s a bit weird?’

  ‘No, no! It means she really cares about you.’

  I think I wish she cared a little bit less. I fiddle with one of my earrings, twisting it around. I want to ask Ms Carey about her mum, but don’t know if I should. I’m transfixed by Ms Carey’s glorious, elegant arm; I want to touch it. I reckon it’d be warm. It looks like it’s fairly glowing.

  ‘What’s going on in that head of yours now?’ She’s smiling at me.

  Oh my god! I was thinking about your beautiful glowing arm. I’m purpling with shame. ‘Ah, I ... I ... was just wondering about what your mum was like ... if she was strict or anything.’

  A gust of fresh wind comes up the corridor. Something passes across Ms Carey’s face, though it lasts only a moment. I might even have been imagining it, because now she’s smiling again, sun is in her face, she’s saying: ‘Strict! She was awful—we had to do so much around the house. We weren’t allowed to go out with boys or anything, not till we were much older.’

  ‘That’s harsh,’ I say.

  ‘Yes. She was strict, all right.’

  Everyone’s mum is horrible, then. Not just mine.

  I’m just following Ms Carey now. I can’t even remember where I was going in the first place when this all started, but it looks like we’re heading towards the office.

  ‘You moved down here from Perth not long ago, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  She looks at me kindly. ‘It’s a pretty big change...’

  We’ve stopped outside the office now. Kids don’t go inside unless they’re in trouble.

  I take a breath. ‘Yep. It’s totally different.’ I look at her for a moment, and for that moment, and for a long time afterwards, I think I might cry. I want to tell her how much I hate it, how I miss my friends, my places, how I hate catching the bus and hate who I am and hate my mum but love her too (how does that work?), and how I worry about Mum crying and generally being weird.

  She’s looking at me, Ms Carey, waiting for me to say something. Her eyes are sparkling and full of light.

  Then she takes a step back. ‘Well, I’d better go and do this photocopying before Period 1 starts.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I squeak, nodding as she goes inside. I stay outside. Kids move about me, in all directions.

  (S)HELLHOLE

  Period 1 is hell. Things started badly. I nearly missed the bus because I had to make my own lunch this morning. Mum was having a lie-in or something—very weird for her; she’s not much into sleeping in. Lyingaround, she calls it. Dad calls her the Productive One. She went to bed early last night, too.

  Worse, though: someone has found out that I live near Rel, and that we bumped into each other on the beach yesterday. It’s official: we are sand-dune neighbours. I knew it would get out eventually that we live in the same bit of Melros. I don’t care about any of the kids’ stupid shitty stories and goss; I keep thinking about Ms Carey. We have English in Period 8 today. I want to sketch out what she’s wearing—in detail. I love the way she looks; I need to look more like her. I might do the bus+train combo into Perth on the weekend so I can go to the Freo markets and buy some new clothes. If Mum’ll let me. I’m sick of all
my gear, how I look, how I sound, how everyone thinks I am. It’s all going to change. Angelgirl is here. To stay.

  I turn sweetly to the kids snickering like dickheads behind me.

  ‘Yeah, we do live near each other.’ I look pointedly at Rel and smile as seductively as I can bring myself to without puking. ‘Don’t we, Rel.’

  Turning back to face the front of the room, I can almost hear the mouths dropping open. People woo-woo at Rel.

  Someone laughs raucously and says, ‘Rel, you’re going red, mate!’

  At lunch, Rel hisses at me, ‘What was that this morning?’

  He looks bewildered, and for a moment I feel bad.

  ‘I’m just sick of those dickheads hassling me—I had to say something. Sorry.’

  He’s still pissed off. ‘Good one. Now they think...’

  I giggle. ‘So what? It’s not that bad, is it?’

  He does a slow nod at me.

  I try not to shrink into my school dress.

  ‘Don’t flatter yourself, Queenie. It’s bad. It’s bad.’

  SKELETONS

  There’s so much in my head, so much swirling around, that I need to get it down in my diary and think it all through—Rel (what a tool! I blew him right off on the way home), Ms Carey, the way I look, Mum, the kids at school ... everything.

  I come in, bringing the weedy seagull breeze with me, and straight away I know something strange, odd, bizarre is going on. When I dump my bag upstairs, Jerry’s sitting at the counter, thumbing distractedly through an electronics catalogue. Dad’s home from his site visits ultra-early. Gulls are squawking around the verandah and Mum’s nowhere to be seen. At this stage, an attractive option is to go to my room and hibernate with my diary.

  ‘Ally, is that you?’ Dad calls out.

  I look at Jerry. I want to escape. It’s too quiet. Where’s Mum?

  ‘Yeah,’ I mumble.

  He comes out of the bathroom and past him I can see the starfish and sea sponges and seahorse skeletons Mum has been collecting from the beach. She saves them so carefully, it’s like a museum in the bathroom. She strings them up on the flywire, and when you have a shower you look outside at the sparkly ocean over the salty remains of dead creatures. I don’t know any other mums who do that. Dad says Mum’s collection is beautiful, a reflection of who she is (a weirdo) and how she enjoys nature (like some kind of middle-aged hippie). I reckon it’s bloody spooky, a reflection of just how screwy this family is becoming.

  Dad looks distracted. He asks me quickly, ‘How was school?’

  ‘Fine,’ I answer suspiciously.

  ‘Okeydoke. Sit down, Ally. I’ve already told Jerry this. He’s being very grown up about it.’

  I throw Jerry a sour look. That’d be right.

  Dad’s taking slow breaths, is looking kind of small in his chair. I get scared, then. ‘What’s up? Where’s Mum? Is she still not up?’

  ‘Your Mum’s taken a bit of a turn. She’s in bed. She’s not very well.’

  Oh. That’s all. A turn. Then I get suss. What is that? ‘A turn? What’s wrong with her?’ I look at Jerry. ‘Have you seen her?’

  ‘No, he hasn’t, Ally.’ Dad flashes his eyes at me meaningfully. ‘She’s really not feeling very well at all. She’s a bit ... overwrought.’

  ‘What, stressed out?’

  ‘Well, yep, you could say that.’

  The sound of me slamming the door on her last night reverberates in my head.

  I look again at Jerry. He’s just looking down at the floor. He’s not looking very happy at all, actually. Poor little bloke. I take a breath, try to soften a little bit, try to understand what Dad’s saying.

  ‘Can I see her?’

  He hesitates, but says yes.

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Yep.’

  I reach out and squeeze Jerry’s knee. ‘I’ll go and see Mum, Jez. Don’t worry, Dad’s probably just making a big deal out of this, as usual.’ I try to grin at him, but it doesn’t work, not even a little bit.

  I follow Dad. He whispers something reassuring to me outside their bedroom, but I don’t feel reassured.

  Gulls shriek outside.

  SKANKY FUG

  I creep in to Mum’s room. The thick smell of her sleep and her breath and her body sticks in my throat. I look at Dad, sitting beside her on the bed. I can’t believe he hasn’t let in any fresh air, or sunlight, and I go over to the curtains and yank them back.

  ‘Dad!’ I whisper as loudly as I can before it’s my proper talking voice. ‘What’s the story?’ I’m looking at him, looking at the side of his face with its brown-sugar skin and the sharp stubble that moves when he talks.

  ‘Haven’t opened the windows,’ he mumbles, not looking at me. ‘She said she wanted to ... keep the world out.’

  I’m going to have to look at Mum sometime, I know that. I’m not even sure if she’s awake.

  I look around for the oil burner. It’s one of Mum’s aromatherapy things. I plink in a few drops of orange oil, her favourite, and light the tea-light underneath.

  I turn around. Mum is awake, but she’s not looking at anything. She’s not looking at Dad, who’s rubbing her arm. And it’s like she hasn’t even seen me.

  I move a bit closer. ‘Mum.’

  Dad says, really gently, ‘Annie.’

  She doesn’t say anything.

  My knees go a bit, and I nearly fall onto the bed. ‘Mum!’ I insist.

  ‘Don’t, Ally. She doesn’t want to talk.’

  I stare at her blankly. Dad grabs my hand, and we stand there a while, the three of us linked limply like a daisy chain that’s been out in the sun too long.

  The smell of the orange oil reminds me of our old place, out the back next to the mandarin tree, where Shelly and I used to hang out after school with a packet of caramel buds and the day’s goss. On the weekends, Mum would always be out there, turning the soil and mulching the flowerbeds. And Dad’d be in the shed, tinkering away on his funny projects. He fiddles around with all sorts of stuff, reckons he’s ‘fixing’ things. An old fridge motor. Jerry’s Dalek. Dad calls himself the Queen Machine when he fixes something. It used to be so completely embarrassing when Shelly came over and there was another new gadget to figure out, like a dog-proof latch on the gate, or something (even though we didn’t have a dog—it was ‘just in case’, Dad reckoned, ‘you never know!’), and Dad would be, as usual, hopping about like a garden gnome, virtually patting himself on the back.

  Tonight, Dad’s shed time has turned into Dad’s chef time—and none of us are too happy about it, to be honest. He makes us a foul dinner of gluggy risotto, since he doesn’t know that you’re meant to use arborio rice. He uses jasmine rice instead. Mum saves that for Asian food, stir-fries and Thai curries and stuff. Jasmine rice tastes pretty weird with parmesan cheese, I must say. Luckily Dad doesn’t make nearly enough. We each force down a few mouthfuls before hitting the TV, where none of us has to talk.

  Jerry quizzed me about Mum when we came out of her room. I was glad to get out of there; it was horrible. I didn’t know what to say to him, so I lied.

  ‘Mum’s fine. She just needs to rest.’

  ‘Did she ask about me?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, of course, Jez. She said to give you a big hug, and she’ll see you soon. I don’t think we should bother her too much right now, though. She really needs to rest and sleep a lot, and just chill out.’

  He looked a bit unsure about that. ‘Okay,’ he said, looking right into me.

  Sometimes I reckon that kid’s got a special radar detector installed, the way he senses things.

  Jerry’s gone to bed and I’m looking around for Dad. There’s a line of light coming from under the shed door, and I can hear the chinking of tools.

  I go in, and he’s standing over his toolbox, moving a screwdriver from one compartment to another.

  ‘Dad?’

  ‘Hmmm?’

  I take a breath. For a minute I want to say nothing and run out onto the b
each.

  ‘Is Mum gunna be all right?’

  He shuts the box and goes to the little chairs, pats one for me to sit on. He doesn’t look very good, kind of pasty and tired.

  He looks at me, as though he’s wondering how to explain something.

  ‘It’s since the accident with that guy, isn’t it,’ I mumble.