Frankie Read online

I pull out my phone and hold it at arm’s length. ‘Just smile.’

  ‘Hate photos,’ he says, but when I lean closer, our shoulders pressed against each other’s, he doesn’t flinch or move out of shot.

  My phone makes a fake camera noise and flashes.

  It’s not a great photo – too dark and Xavier’s eyes are kind of half closed – but then family photos are supposed to be crappy.

  I show him.

  ‘Great,’ he says. ‘I look like a serial killer.’

  ‘You look like Uncle Terry.’

  ‘Cool,’ he says.

  I laugh. He doesn’t know that Uncle Terry’s a low-life armed robber.

  ‘What?’

  I shake my head. ‘Nothing. I mean, thanks. For the dumplings and . . .’ I hold up the vinyl and wiggle it. ‘I mean it. Thanks.’

  He grins. Dimples. ‘No problem. I mean, you do kind of owe me four Eminem CDs, but . . .’

  I elbow him. ‘You seriously need a musical overhaul.’

  He laughs. It brings a grin to my face.

  Being grounded isn’t so bad after all.

  Daniel Awolowo watches me with his fist pressed into his neck, just below the ear. He taps his pen against a notepad on his knee. It’s one of those four-coloured pens. As if anyone uses the green ink.

  A burn scar runs the length of his forearm; I asked him about it at our first session but he said it was nothing I needed to hear about. I had to tell him how I got the cluster of five-cent-piece-sized scars on my forearm – how come there’s a different rule for him?

  He’s been waiting for me to speak for five minutes now. I’ve forgotten what he even asked. I doubt it was important.

  He’s got a serene, sleepy look on his face, though. I almost want to break my vow of silence to ask how come he looks so happy when I’m being a total cow.

  If I’d met Daniel in the real world I’d probably like him. I can actually picture him dropping by the Emporium, sitting at the front counter, a Scrabble board between us, him getting a triple word score with ‘xebec’. I think he’d order the falafel, extra garlic sauce and he’d have his chips with sweet chilli aioli. He’d drink coke; not diet, not zero. Coke. Vinnie would wear her blouse, the black one that’s see-through, and she’d flirt with him. We’d talk about stuff. Stupid stuff that only he and I would get.

  But I met him here, and there’s no chance to laugh about stupid things. We’re not going to take turns making up silly stories about passing strangers. We’re not going to argue about the etiquette of double-dipping a chip. This sterile office in the university’s Psychology Department is where an underpaid psychologist-in-the-making is trying to get me to open up about my feelings. The walls need painting, there’s a dead plant in the corner, stained cups on the desk, an eggtimer in the shape of a chicken and dusty venetian blinds. One of the cups says You don’t have to be crazy to work here, but it helps, with a picture of a cross-eyed monkey eating bananas. Someone thought they were the life of the party giving that as a Kris Kringle.

  ‘I’m bored,’ I tell him. ‘Can I go now?’

  Daniel takes a sip from the monkey cup. ‘My mother always told me there was no such thing as boredom; just boring people.’ He smiles. I wonder how he gets his teeth so white.

  ‘Did your precious mother say it was rude to call people boring?’

  Sleepy smile and only a minor shoulder adjustment. ‘You’re easy to anger today. Anything upsetting you?’

  ‘These questions.’

  ‘Aside from my questions.’

  I glare at the chicken.

  Whose idea was therapy? I don’t mean for me specifically because I already know it was a hair-brained scheme cooked up by Vinnie and Vukovic. I mean, in general. Like, who invented it? What idiot thought it was a good idea to have someone sit in a crappy little room divulging all their deepest hurts and fears to a total stranger? How did they manage to keep a straight face selling that idea? Because everybody knows that talking about things only makes them worse. It’s way better to push your worst experiences deep into your subconscious and then shovel a whole heap of shit on top of them to make sure they never surface again.

  I’m going to invent anti-therapy. I’ll make millions.

  Daniel crosses his legs. ‘Did you at least do the time capsule like I recommended?’

  ‘No. I told you that was a dumb idea.’

  ‘I remember. You were vivid in your description of how dumb it was.’

  ‘My Grade Four teacher said I was verbally gifted.’

  ‘Did you like it when she said that? Did it make you feel good?’

  ‘I’m not sure. She also said I was a pain in the arse. Not in front of me. I was listening at the door of the teachers’ lounge.’

  ‘And how did that make you feel?’

  ‘No big deal. It was easy being a pain in her arse because it was such a massive arse.’

  Daniel doesn’t say anything. He scribbles in his notepad and smiles when he catches me watching him. ‘Sorry. I know you hate me taking notes.’

  Despite the apology, he keeps writing. He marks the full stop at the end of his sentence by twisting the pen into the page. He doesn’t ask me another question.

  Fine. I can ignore you too, Daniel. I pull out my phone and scroll through the news. There’s been a bad car accident on Alexandra Parade. Gippsland is flooding. A meth-head has had a showdown with police, locking himself in his house and screaming about being allowed to see the Emperor. Some politician was accused of lying, a rapist got off on a technicality and a footballer got drunk and peed in a public fountain.

  The usual, basically.

  Except for the boy.

  There’s a big picture of him on every news site. He’s probably my brother’s age, even though he’s one of those kids that puberty hasn’t gotten around to yet. It’s a school photo – you can see his lips are partway through ‘cheese’. It’s the kind of photo that haunts twenty-first birthdays – zits, braces, bad haircut, hunched shoulders, half-closed eyes.

  Missing, reads the headline.

  ‘So let’s talk about what happened between you and Steve. He made you angry, didn’t he?’

  Shush, Daniel. I’m reading.

  I’m reading about . . . Harrison Finnik-Hyde?

  Jeeze Louise.

  His parents talk about him like they’re recommending him for a job: accelerated learning program at school, soccer star, always does his chores, eighth-grade violin. ‘Harrison is a good kid,’ his dad tells the reporter. ‘We want him home with us.’

  There’s a picture of the parents standing outside their leafy Malvern home. The dad’s got cropped grey hair and eyes that are too close together. The mother is short; hair like a shampoo commercial. Her skin is soft, line-free, even though she’s been crying. She’s holding a bunch of tissues to her nose and mouth.

  No one’s seen him since Friday morning when a neighbour spotted him talking to a man – late 50s, fair, short.

  And then he didn’t show up at school.

  ‘Frankie? Are you listening to me?’

  I sigh loudly and look up from my phone with a well-practised scowl. ‘What?’

  ‘I asked why you think Steve made you so mad.’

  ‘Do you find it hard not to judge people?’ I ask. ‘Do you analyse your wife? Your kids? The checkout chick? The plumber? “Oh look, he picked up his coffee cup with his left hand even though he’s right-handed – he’s sexually repressed. Probably gay.” Is that what you do?’

  He leans back, both hands behind his head. ‘You think I’m judging you?’

  ‘I’m just interested. I think I’d find it hard to switch off. If I knew stuff. If I knew what it meant when someone pulled on their earlobe or shifted in their seat or licked their lips when they spoke about their mother.’

  ‘Do you want to talk about your mother?’

  ‘Why, did I lick my lips?’

  ‘No. But you brought her up.’

  ‘I brought up a generic mother. A hypot
hetical mother. A fantasy.’

  ‘Is that how you see your mother? As a fantasy?’

  ‘You’re pissing me off, Daniel.’

  He laughs. It’s a warm sound. Makes me hate him even more. ‘Then I am not earning my fee, am I? I’m supposed to make you feel better, not worse.’

  There’s a second desk in the room so maybe Daniel shares this office with someone. I bet the other person killed the plant. I tried growing flowers in the back garden once but they all died. It’s so much easier to kill a plant than help it grow.

  I slide my phone into my pocket and sink down in my seat. I wonder what Harrison Finnik-Hyde’s mother is doing right now. I’ve seen the films. Men in suits with silver briefcases poking around the house dusting things while the parents sit by the phone and wait for the kidnapper to call in a ransom. She’d be crying into a wad of tissues just like in the photo. She’s probably never left the house before without her hair and make-up done, but today she’d still be in her PJs and dressing gown. She’d have red, puffy eyes and her hands would be shaking.

  Because she’s so distraught.

  Because she can’t think of anything worse than something happening to her violin-star baby.

  Because she cares.

  I sit forward. ‘You want me to tell you about Juliet?’

  Daniel doesn’t say anything, just watches. I wonder how much talking goes on in his house. I bet they do nothing but talk – a big, messy, warm family and all they do is talk about their day, what they did, what they’re going to do. And I bet they laugh a lot. He’s got laughing eyes.

  ‘When I was four, Juliet took me to the Collingwood Children’s Farm. There was this guy she’d been dating. I don’t remember his name. He had really thin hair and it was fair too so you could see his scalp underneath; I remember that. He was tall. And about the same size wide. Juliet got big eyes around him and she was always hanging off him. We walked to the farm and she kept saying, “We’re going on a family outing, just the three of us.” I liked it there. They had those fluffy rat things – they’re not rats they’re . . . I don’t know. They’re cute, and we all sat in this barn and they passed the rat things around and we petted them. There were lots of other kids. And I saw chickens and pigs and horses and goats. Guinea pigs, that’s what they’re called. I liked them best. They were soft and really fragile and the lady – the woman who worked at the farm – said I had soft hands, that I knew how to hold the guinea pig without hurting it. I was proud of myself for that. I turned around to tell Juliet but she wasn’t there. I asked the lady where my mum was but she didn’t know. I handed her the guinea pig and went outside. I looked. I called for my mother.

  ‘The lady sat me in the office. There was so much wood. I remember that: wood floor, wood walls, a wooden desk, wood chairs. The police came; they asked me what Juliet looked like. “Snow White,” I said. They took me to the station and I waited there for ages. I coloured in. I ate. I slept. I talked to the police officers. I couldn’t remember my last name. I couldn’t remember my mum’s name. Then they found a note in my jacket pocket. It had a number to call: Vinnie’s. She came and took me to her home and then that’s where I lived. With Vinnie and Nonna Sofia. And no one talked about Juliet. For ages I thought she was dead, but then Vinnie told me she’d moved to Queensland and that’s why I couldn’t see her again.’

  Daniel’s sleepy smile is gone. He’s just looking at me. Blank.

  ‘Are you going to ask me how I felt about that? How Juliet abandoning me made me feel? Maybe I should be grateful that she left me where there were cute animals to distract me. It was pretty considerate of her, you know. She did much worse things to me than that.’

  Daniel’s chair creaks as he shifts.

  ‘But I don’t feel grateful. It makes me so damn angry I want to hit people over the head with the collected works of Shakespeare.’

  The eggtimer goes off. Instead of ringing, the chicken clucks.

  I stand. My chair wobbles but doesn’t topple. ‘So we’re done, right?’

  Daniel shifts forward, like he’s about to stand. He doesn’t though. ‘You should –’

  ‘Do you know what a “xebec” is?’

  A frown spoils his smooth forehead. ‘A kind of ship. I think. Why don’t you –?’

  ‘No, Daniel. The chicken has spoken.’

  I pick up my bag and walk out. He doesn’t call after me. He can’t because my time’s up.

  When I first moved in with Vinnie she had her fruit and veg delivered. But when the handsome Greek guy who did the deliveries became ex-fiancé number two, Vinnie started dragging me to the market on Saturday mornings for a special kind of torture.

  I hear the stallholders shouting the second we stumble from the tram, me wrestling with our old-lady trolley and Vinnie digging into her handbag for a cigarette.

  I punch the button at the intersection and wait. I punch it again.

  Then over and over.

  The green man starts flashing at me. About time, dude.

  I fight a gang of Vietnamese ladies as we cross the street, the wheels of their trolleys bashing into my ankles as we jostle for space. Old-lady-trolley-racing is a blood sport.

  The second we’re under the market’s corrugated tin roof, I’m immersed in noise – kids screaming, old ladies haggling over the price of bananas, stallholders shouting over the top of one another, pigeons cooing from the beams and the off-key wailing of the busker who sings Korean love songs even though he’s Croatian.

  And it stinks.

  Nothing beats the stench of rotting fruit, Spanish donuts, pigeon poo, baby vomit and hairy-guy body odour.

  ‘This way,’ says Vinnie, tucking her handbag under her arm. She butts out her cigarette on a post before we enter the fruit and veg. ‘Remind me to grab some pet mince for my baby.’

  Baby. Yeah. Baby dragon more like.

  Buttons is a fussy eater. He’ll eat my socks (and piss in my shoes) but won’t go near tinned cat food.

  I ram the trolley into the back of a slow guy’s legs. When he turns I look the other way. This is a contact sport, mate. If you can’t handle it, quit.

  Saturday morning is the worst time to come to the market. Vinnie says coming on a Saturday is tradition. I say it’s child abuse.

  But not today I don’t. Today I smile and pretend I’m loving it.

  The only reason Vinnie is still talking to me is because I’ve got another chance to stay at school. In two weeks’ time the board are meeting to decide whether or not to expel me and I have to front up and explain why I should be allowed to stay. She’s got the date circled in the calendar, the one with cats dressed up in scenes from silent-era films. Every time I look at the dreaded date I see a Persian tied to a railway track.

  Irony’s a bitch.

  So basically I have two weeks to catch up in all my classes, earn back Vinnie’s trust and write a stirring speech to present to the board – I have a dream, ask not what Collingwood can do for you but what you can do for Collingwood, we shall fight them on the tram lines, blah, blah, blah.

  Too easy.

  I don’t know how she does it, but Vinnie carves a path through the mass of heaving, sweating people, even in six-inch heels. Me and my combat boots have to elbow our way through, never once coming out the other side without a stomped-on foot, a bruised rib, a finger caught in a trolley or the slimy feeling of having been gawked at by a bunch of hairy, apron-clad middle-aged men.

  The call goes up around us: ‘Get your tomatoes! Granny Smith apples! Two ninety-nine a kilo! Potatoes! Get your potatoes here!’

  ‘Bella!’ calls Sergei as Vinnie marches up to his stall. He reaches down and brings up a box of vine tomatoes. ‘I keep these aside. Just for you, my bella.’

  She doesn’t even look at the fruit. ‘Half price, I assume.’

  Sergei looks at her like she just flopped a dead rat on his table. ‘No, no, no. How I live?’ he asks, hands imploring. ‘How I feed my son?’

  ‘I’ve seen you
r son,’ says Vinnie. ‘He could skip a meal or two.’

  Sergei sighs loudly. ‘Is true.’ He leans forward, pushing the box into Vinnie’s arms. ‘Half price for my bella.’ He winks.

  Somehow Vinnie always manages to strike the perfect balance between flirting – ‘Why, you have the biggest plums, Sergei’ – and haggling – ‘Who would pay full price for these? They look like they’ve already been eaten’.

  So much I need to learn. Teach me, oh masterful one.

  ‘Now,’ says Vinnie, eyeing off the other veggies. ‘How about those cucumbers? They look a little limp.’

  I stand to the side, tighten my scarf around my neck and people-watch.

  There’s an older woman wearing pearls and a powder-blue cardigan. She’s stuffing a bag of something red into her trolley with her face scrunched up. Retired secretary, divorced, small dog. She spies on her neighbours. Hasn’t spoken to her only daughter for twenty years. Bitch.

  A guy walks past. Late thirties, green-rimmed glasses, carrying a giant bag of almonds. I don’t even bother because it’s just too easy.

  The stallholder opposite is arguing with a woman who wants to pay a third of the marked price for spring onions. I reckon he’s married to a woman who wears floral dresses. Puts onion in everything he cooks because he needs an excuse to cry. Has a total disappointment of a son. A son who still lives at home even though he’s forty and collects science-fiction toys and never – never – takes them out of the packaging.

  ‘Frankie?’

  Vinnie is holding out a bag of cucumbers; she shakes the bag at me until I grab them.

  ‘Are we planning a girls’ night in? Face masks, cucumbers on the eyes. I’ll let you braid my hair.’

  ‘I’ll braid your tongue,’ she says.

  I stuff the cucumbers into the bottom of the trolley. When I look up, the stallholder opposite is throwing his hands up in exasperation and I wonder how long he’s been doing this job.

  I read somewhere that the average person has seven jobs in their lifetime. Vinnie used to be a secretary for an accountant; that’s how she met husband number two. After he got done for fraud and the firm went bust, Vinnie burnt their wedding photos in the backyard and went to work as a cleaner. After that she was a barmaid, then a cleaner again and then an Avon lady. When Uncle Terry went to jail, she started making kebabs.