The Slightly True Story of Cedar B. Hartley Page 10

  ‘Madge keeps getting out. We’re moving to our Grannie’s house,’ said Hailey.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because we have to. Daddy says.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Next week.’ Madge weed on Hailey’s leg and she said ‘Yuk’ and went home to wash it off.

  Ricci came over with a dish of capsicums stuffed with cheese and rice and herbs.

  ‘Here, darling,’ she said plonking them on the stove and then grabbing the Wettex to give the stove a vigorous wipe. ‘I make too much for me.’

  ‘Hailey’s moving,’ I said.

  ‘I know.’ (Of course she knew. You can never tell Ricci something because she always knows first.) ‘They were evicted.’ She said that just to prove she knew more than me, and then she slumped down at our kitchen table and started to moan.

  ‘What’s wrong, Ricci?’

  ‘Oh darling, my dog, Bambi, he need an operation, but the bloody vet, he wants me to pay 500 dollars. Oh you think I have that much money? Of course not. I ask my cousin to lend me money and she say no. Ooh she a miser. I very unhappy. I take my Valium, but I still unhappy. You know how much I love my dog.’ It was true. She loved her little fluffy yapping Bambi as if it was her baby. I was worried.

  Mum came home, grinning.

  ‘What’s so funny?’ She started to laugh.

  ‘I just saw something funny.’ She raised her eyebrows and poked her finger at the capsicums. ‘Did Ricci bring these?’

  ‘Yep. What did you see?’

  ‘Mr Abutala. You know, Hailey’s dad?’

  ‘The fat man?’

  ‘Large, not fat. Yes, him. He was shooing this rabbit into the Zitos’ garden, with a stick.’

  ‘That’s Madge. That’s Hailey’s rabbit. It was in our garden before.’ Mum giggled and put the capsicums in the oven.

  ‘Well, looks like maybe Madge isn’t wanted round at their house, and Mr Abutala is trying to find Madge a new home. Let’s hope Madge doesn’t get into the boys’ garden, or Pablo might make a stew out of her. Did you thank Ricci for the capsicums?’

  ‘Yes. And I gave her some eggs. What does evicted mean?’

  ‘Why, who’s been evicted?’ She looked worried.

  ‘They have, the Lebbos.’

  ‘Cedar, don’t call them that. Evicted means the landlord has told them to leave the house. Do we want a salad?’ She opened the fridge and squatted down to look for lettuce.

  ‘Can we be evicted?’

  ‘Anyone who rents a house can be. It doesn’t mean they did anything wrong. Sometimes the people who own the house just want it back.’

  I didn’t like the idea. I’d got used to this old house and this street and the way you can go to the creek or to Smith Street. One thing I can’t stand is how you never know when someone or something is going to go away. Now I couldn’t even be sure our house was going to always be our house. And then what if we had to move out and Barnaby wouldn’t know where we were. ‘We’d lose Barnaby if we were evicted,’ I said to Mum. She was washing the lettuce in the sink. She sighed a big sigh, because she worries about Barnaby, and I can tell she misses him because sometimes she goes into his room and just sits there. She said she was sure we weren’t about to be evicted yet, and Barnaby would come home soon, and could I check the capsicums in the oven. I told Mum about Ricci and her dog. Mum said she would definitely lend Ricci the money if she could but she couldn’t—not all of it, but some, perhaps.

  After dinner I went to my room and got an idea. I always get ideas when I need them, especially if I lie still and think.

  Kite and I were doing dive rolls through a hoop, taking turns to hold the hoop.

  ‘You weren’t very friendly yesterday at Oscar’s,’ I said.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Kite and he smiled.

  I did a big dive. I love dive rolls.

  ‘You can go higher. Don’t hold your breath,’ he said.

  ‘Why weren’t you?’

  ‘Why wasn’t I what?’

  ‘Friendly.’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Because of Oscar? Because you thought I might make fun of him?’

  ‘Yeah probably. He cops a lot you know. Kids think he’s a mental.’

  ‘I don’t think that. I like Oscar.’

  ‘Well, I’m sorry, I just didn’t know.’

  ‘That’s okay. Can you hold the hoop higher then?’

  After training, we were in his kitchen eating cornflakes with honey. He kept smiling at me. He had a spoon in his mouth but still he kept smiling.

  ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘You keep smiling.’

  ‘Do I?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘It’s because you do.’

  ‘Do I?’

  ‘Yep. I—’ He stopped with his mouth open, then he closed it again and looked down at his cornflakes. ‘I dunno, I like training, that’s all.’

  I don’t know why, but it made me feel the funny feeling when he said that. So I flicked a cornflake across the table and quickly changed the subject before I started blushing or something. I told him my new idea. First I explained about Ricci and her dog who needed an operation. Then I said it.

  ‘I thought we could do a circus show, to raise money.’

  ‘You and me?’

  ‘Yep, you, me, maybe Oscar could do something. And Caramella. Whoever. It would be like a benefit. For Ricci’s dog.’

  ‘We’d need a lot of people to come.’

  ‘Yep, but that just depends on advertising. We’ll ring up the tellie and put an ad on there.’

  ‘Where would we do it?’

  ‘Here.’

  ‘I’ll have to ask Dad.’

  ‘Yeah. Ask him tonight.’

  There’s a long way between an idea and a real thing. Inside your mind there is a boundless view. You can imagine whatever you want. For example, you can plan exactly how you would like your house to be; you close your eyes and picture spiral staircases with slippery banisters and blue wooden floors and stars stuck on the ceilings and a grass carpet for rabbits in the rabbit room and sometimes there might be a white cow on the couch or a herd of wild wandering albatrosses, wearing new hats and recently returned all the way from Russia to tell you tales, waiting in your bathtub which is as big as a bus and always perfectly warm with honey-scented bubbles. And through the diamond shapes on the windows, all you can see is every kind of tree, even mountain ash, and some with swinging ropes and the warbling of lemon-bellied fly-catchers and laughing kookaburras and some festooned with rare spotted birds that sing like Stevie Wonder. And then, just at the moment when you’re in the trees swinging from a rope and going all Tarzan, your mum yells out and you have to open your eyes. ‘Cedar! dinner’s ready.’

  So you open them, and lo and behold, there you are just lying on your back facing the cracked ceiling above you, which is blotchy with dirty yellow puddles as if someone peed on it. That’s how it really is. Real life is a bit like a used tea towel. And you can’t get even one single albatross to wear a hat and tell you tales in the bath, no matter what you do. Some ideas just have to remain as ideas.

  In my mind I went to town on the circus idea. I mean I really went mad. I lay on my bed and I couldn’t stop imagining it, bigger and bigger, all cutting edge of course, and theatrical and magnificent, with dramatic lighting and a live band with cymbals clashing at every spectacular moment. Me, riding a galloping white horse, in fact doing a handstand on its back, looking oh so Lana Monroe in a costume which glitters, and with feathers in my hair. Then from the roof comes Kite, swooping down, (either he’s flying or he’s attached to a rope, looking excellent in his camel corduroys and a beanie) and the cymbals are clashing and trumpets blasting and lights flashing as he grabs me by my ankles and the audience goes oooh! as we swoop up and up and the show begins . . . Only I forgot, there are no animals.

  And it’s in the garage.

  And I’m not really sure if Kite can fly or not.


  ‘Did you hear me, Cedar? I said dinner’s ready.’ Mum wasn’t in a good mood. I could tell by her tired voice. And earlier, when she got home, she had listened to the messages on the answering machine and then she sat down and cried. I heard her. She didn’t know I was home, because I was in my room being quiet and ant-like, concentrating with unwavering determination on circus ideas. I rolled off my bed in the way that all acrobats naturally would. When I walked into the kitchen, Mum wiped her eyes quickly and stood up and pretended she was looking out the window, out onto the weedy yellowed garden. She said something about the chooks, Rita and Door, just to make it convincing. But I knew.

  ‘Are you okay, Mum?’

  ‘Yes, I’m fine, just had a hard day at work.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Oh, I had a difficult client. A couple actually. I had to take Matteo—you know the old Italian man who still thinks he is twenty-two—I had to take him to McDonald’s. He wears a very nice suit. It was alcohol that did it to him. He lives in a home and this is his outing for the day. He’s difficult, because he doesn’t know how old he is. So he sits in the car and he puts his hand on my leg or round my neck and he says, ‘I love you, I love you.’

  My mum does this very well. She acts it out, putting her mouth close to my ear and crooning in an Italian accent, ‘I love you, I love you.’ I laugh and she laughs.

  ‘What else?’ I say, because I know sometimes she needs to talk about the things that happen to her at work.

  ‘Oh, apart from two long and tedious hours of playing Snap with Joy, the worst part of the day was Renata. I was teaching her to cook. We made biscuits and I said she should share them with everyone at the home she lives in. She refused. She said only if they came to her one by one and asked. Then she might give them just one, but only if she liked them. It wasn’t fair. The ingredients belonged to everyone at the home and, anyway, she has to learn not to be so selfish. No one likes her. I insisted she share them, and she threw a plate at me and called me a bitch. I left. I’m not going to work with her again. She’s too volatile.’

  ‘What’s volatile?’

  ‘Unpredictable, explosive, like a volcano, about to go off any minute. Like Pablo de la Renta on a bad day.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, thinking that could be a good name for our show.

  ‘Did you hear the phone messages?’ said Mum, who was picking at her food but not really eating it.

  ‘No, why, was there one for me?’

  ‘There’s one from Barnaby, I think. You listen.’

  I dropped my fork and went to listen. It was just guitar, with a little breezy humming. No message. Definitely Barnaby. I smiled but I felt mad. He could have said something. I wish he’d say something. He sounded like a far-off wind.

  ‘That’s him, for sure,’ I said.

  She nodded and smiled and her eyes went soft. ‘Funny, when I first heard it, I thought it was your father.’ She looked away from me. I thought she’d gone mad. My father was dead and couldn’t leave a message even if he wanted to. Then she sniffed and shrugged. ‘I mean, of course I knew it couldn’t be, but when you want to you can almost fool yourself.’

  I frowned at her. Had she really lost it?

  She patted my wrist. ‘Your father used to play and sing down the phone at me when we were young, just like that. And Barnaby sounds so much like him.’

  I nodded. Not because I knew that, just because I understood. I understood why she had come home and cried. It wasn’t really work and Renata throwing the plate, it was Barnaby’s message. It was my dad not being here any more. Being dead.

  ‘Maybe it means Barn’s coming home soon, Mum?’ I said.

  ‘I hope so.’ She looked all funny and sad again, so I changed the subject.

  ‘Guess what? Me and Kite are going to do a circus show, as a benefit, for Ricci’s Bambi.’

  ‘Kite and I,’ she said. (She can’t help correcting me, because she’s a mother. They get used to looking out for what you’re doing wrong, instead of what you’re doing right.)

  ‘Kite and I are doing a circus show,’ I repeated slowly. She smiled and seemed half worried. She said would I please be careful and were we using anything high and was anyone helping us? I lied and said Kite’s dad was helping us, and then she felt better about it.

  ‘Have you told Ricci?’ she said.

  ‘No, it’s a surprise. You know, just in case it doesn’t work out.’

  Kite and I started the next day. Kite had a whole lot of ideas, too. We spent the afternoon jumping about from one idea to another. He’d say, ‘Let’s try this,’ and we’d do it for a bit until I’d say, ‘I’ve got a better idea, why don’t we do it this way?’And then he wouldn’t like it that way for one reason or another (like he’d say it was daggy or overdone or predictable) and so we’d start with another thing altogether, until we both got sick of it. So we stopped and went inside for some cornflakes, and we sat there at the table and we didn’t speak or smile at all. Then I said, ‘Maybe if Oscar and Caramella came and helped, it would be easier?’

  He slumped forward on the table and knocking over his bowl of cornflakes with his elbow, said that would make it worse and we had to work out first what we wanted them to do, and Oscar couldn’t balance properly anyway, and Caramella was unco. We got in a bit of an argument about Oscar and Caramella, because I thought it would be a good way for them to be a part of something. Kite said it might make them feel bad if they couldn’t do things well, and I said it wouldn’t matter, we could find a thing they could do well, something they’re good at, not necessarily acrobatics. He sighed and I felt bad. There was a puddle of spilt milk trickling towards the edge of the table. I put my finger in it and drew a square. Maybe Kite was right. It was too hard. Kite’s dad came in.

  ‘What’s up? How’s the show going?’ He put his hand on Kite’s slumping back.

  ‘We didn’t get anywhere,’ said Kite without even looking up.

  ‘Ah,’ he said. And immediately I felt better, because he said ‘Ah’ the way a doctor does when he understands what’s wrong. ‘Too many cooks, I imagine?’

  Kite screwed up his nose and nodded. I wiped up the milk. Kite’s dad sat down and smiled. I was hoping he might offer to help, but he didn’t. He asked me if I’d had a drink (lately he’d been buying apple juice) and he looked sadly at Kite who just slumped there. He tapped the table with his fingers and it made an annoying sound. I felt like frowning, because of the annoying sound and the milk and Kite slumping. But I didn’t. I just stared out the window. I didn’t know what to say. Half of me just wanted to give up on the whole thing. But half of me didn’t. The half of me that wanted to give up was the bad half, the sooky half that wanted everything to be easy; that half just wanted to go and flop on my bed with Stinky and stare mournfully at the blotchy ceiling. The other half kept imagining how it could work, if we wrote a plan, or took it in turns to be the boss, if we just kept trying.

  ‘Do you reckon you can help us, Dad?’ Kite looked up slowly. He was squinting, as if the idea was being squeezed out his eyes, as if it was hard to ask. His dad seemed relieved. He stopped tapping and he slapped his hands down happily on the table.

  ‘I’d like to give it a try.’ He looked at me. ‘What do you think, Cedar? Are you willing to let an old guy have a go at directing your show?’

  ‘Sure.’ I didn’t give it a second thought. That was the firmest thing I’d ever heard Kite’s dad say, and his eyes opened wide and bright. I suddenly felt light and good and excited. I could almost have gone and started again right then.

  ‘Okay, we’ll start tomorrow,’ he said, and even he seemed happy. Kite gave me a wink. I tried to wink back but I’m a hopeless winker; both my eyes go at the same time, like a blink. He laughed.

  ‘Lucky your handstands are better than your winks,’ he said.

  Kite went to see Oscar, and I went straight over to Caramella’s to ask her if she’d join our circus. Stinky weed on their silverbeet, but Mrs Zito
didn’t see and I didn’t tell. Mrs Zito gave me a pomegranate off their tree. Caramella and I went and sat on the Motts’ wall and shared the pomegranate.

  ‘Guess what?’ I said, spitting out a pip as far as I could. (The pips are covered in a soft blood-red jelly which you suck off.)

  ‘What?’Caramella never guesses.

  ‘We’re starting our own circus.’

  ‘You and Kite?’ she said, dusting her round knees and bending her head.

  I got another pip on the tip of my tongue, and curled my tongue to make a kind of wind tunnel, and then I blew hard. The idea was to get the pip onto the road. Caramella didn’t even look up to see where it landed. She sighed.

  ‘We want you to join. Will you?’ I said, nudging up against her. She still didn’t look at me. Her head was droopy. Her hands were clasped together and the thumbs were wriggling. I heard her sniff a big breath in. It wasn’t how I’d expected. I thought she’d be rapt.

  ‘No. I’m not good enough. You know I’m not.’ She sounded far away, as if she was buried underneath her own skin. I tried to look her in the eyes, but she wouldn’t look at me.

  I told her she was good enough and I wouldn’t have asked her if I didn’t want her in it. I put my arm around her. She still looked down. I enthused some more.

  ‘I want you for all the Caramella kind of things you can do.’ I said. ‘It won’t all be high balances, it’ll be low ones, too. Anyway, it’s not what you do, it’s how you do it, even if it’s just walking or standing or speaking. It’s about performing Caramella, because whatever you do, you’ll do it in your own Caramella way, no one else’s way, and that’s what we want.’ I was getting confused. I thought I knew what I wanted, but I was only just working it out as I said it.

  Caramella sniffed. ‘Does Kite want me in it too?’ Her thumbs stood still, like little exclamation marks. It occurred to me then that perhaps Caramella had been feeling left out. Lately I’d been spending more time with Kite, and that meant less time with Caramella. She was still my best friend. I was just temporarily distracted. But it’s terrible to feel forgotten, even if you aren’t really.