“Hi,” I call as he walks out.
“Hi, Rosie. I told Charlie we were camping before New Year’s.”
I think about that for a second. “You told her we were going, or you invited her to come?”
“Shit,” he says, and makes a sign to his mum that he’ll be a minute. He goes back to her door, rehearsing what he’s going to say. Charlie opens it before he knocks. Both of them look surprised. Dave laughs and walks inside. I sit on my front step waiting for the outcome. He walks out a while later, grinning.
“Happy Christmas,” I tell him.
“Not Christmas till tomorrow, Rosie,” he says.
Sure it isn’t. Looks like New Year’s won’t be half so boring this year after all.
I open the door to let in some breeze, and Dave’s standing there. Both of us jump.
“Sorry. I was about to knock. Can I see the tree?”
“Sure. But it’s only been five minutes. It pretty much looks the same except for one bit of tinsel.” I walk down the corridor, and he follows.
“That piece of tinsel makes a big difference,” he says.
“It’s because it’s expertly arranged. It’s still a bit lopsided,” I say, and lean my head over so the tree’s not crooked.
“I like lopsided,” he says, and keeps looking at it straight on. “So, before, when I said we were going camping, I meant you should come.”
“Will there be snakes?”
“There are always snakes in the bush. You won’t see them, though.”
“That’s comforting.”
“Just make some noise to scare them off. You can wear those stylish boots, too,” he says.
“Yeah. Okay. I’ll come.” I smile. I show him to the door. I close it.
And then I put on a Spiderbait CD and turn it up loud. “You’re fucken awesome,” I sing, and throw tinsel. “You’re fucken awesome.” Mum and Gran are dancing right here with me. We bounce down the hall. I’m about to go on the only date I’ve ever been asked on, and that calls for some kitchen moves. I’m yelling out lyrics and making toast when Dad walks in. “Good,” he says. “You’ve got dinner.”
At least I think that’s what he says, because even though he walked through the living room, he didn’t turn down the music. “I was thinking of this more as a predinner snack,” I say.
“What?”
“I could go for some of your pasta,” I yell.
He walks to the freezer and pulls out a container. “Not exactly what I had in mind, Dad.”
“Sorry, Charlotte?”
“Hang on. I’ll turn the music off.”
He waves. “Don’t worry. I’m going out. This doesn’t wake Grandpa?”
“A truck speeding through his bedroom probably wouldn’t wake Grandpa.”
I don’t know if Dad heard over the music. He checks that the buttons on his shirt are done up, which is the sign that he’s not so happy with me. We don’t say words like “truck” or “dead” or “cemetery.” Apart from the funeral, we haven’t been back there.
He leans in to kiss the top of my head but misses. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he says.
“Of course you’ll see me tomorrow. It’s Christmas.” He looks surprised. The lopsided tree flipping you the finger didn’t give it away?
I turn off the music after he’s gone and eat my microwaved gnocchi. One night when Mum was sick, I sat in Dad’s office at the restaurant and watched him through the glass. Everyone was noisy except him. He chopped and fried and set out plates and helped people without yelling that they were too slow. In the middle of all that noise, no one noticed an apprentice’s pan catch fire. The flames were huge but Dad leaned over and dropped a lid on it without saying a word. He saw me looking and winked. He’s always been quiet but before Mum died it was a cool quiet that people really liked. He took notice of things. He took notice of me. I remember sitting next to him at the funeral. I didn’t need him to say anything. I just needed him to look at me and wink.
The first summer here after Mum died, he visited old friends most nights. I fell asleep listening for his footsteps and I’d dream strange things like I was at the edge of the ocean, staring at opal water. I knew that Dad was underneath somewhere and the seaweed was holding him under. When I woke up, Gran was sitting by the bed.
“What about Dave’s CD mix?” Mum asks, and she makes a good point. I leave a little plate of pasta for Grandpa in case a very loud truck detours in the night. I go into my room and choose some tunes. And the first one is by Spiderbait.
The only sound in the kitchen this morning is a humming fridge. I was hoping Dad would be humming in there while he cooked Christmas lunch but he must have come home late last night. The door to his room’s closed. I sit outside. It’s one of those mornings where the moon’s still in the sky.
I hear opening cupboards after a while. Grandpa’s out of bed before Dad, which is a first this summer. “You’re cooking?” I ask, standing at the back door watching him.
“I had a dream your gran was yelling at me to get up and put the turkey in the oven.”
“We’re having turkey?”
He holds up a package from the freezer section of the shop. “With some imagination, it can be anything we want it to be.”
Dad gets out of bed at eleven. He pours coffee and watches us cook. “Did you have a good time last night?” I ask, and he nods. “Who were you visiting?”
“Jen and Al Grace.”
“I thought they moved to the city years ago,” Grandpa says. “I’m sure they did.”
“Is that turkey?” Dad asks.
“It says turkey on the pack.” Grandpa looks over at him. “But I have serious doubts.”
I set the table like Gran did, with bonbons and hats and streamers. We sit to eat, and everything looks like it should except for the empty chair next to Grandpa and the empty chair next to Dad. And except for Grandpa, who’s still wearing his pajamas.
“Presents,” I say after we finish. I got Grandpa some Johnny Cash, a little hardworking country music for a hardworking country man. I didn’t know what to get Dad. In the end I went for a Nigella Lawson cookbook. I’ve seen him watching her shows every now and then, and I don’t think it’s entirely for the recipes.
His head stays straight on, so maybe he likes it. He hands his present to me, but I’m not too excited. Most Christmases he gets me a watch or a necklace I’d never wear. One Christmas he bought me a Britney Spears CD, which was so far off the mark I cried a little.
I pull off the paper and there’s a Waifs CD, plus the single by Natalie Merchant and Gabriel Gordon. “Dad, thanks. I wanted these. Especially this.” I hold up the single. “I’ve wanted this for ages.”
“I have ears, Charlotte.”
“But how did you find it?”
“Gus helped me.”
I didn’t even know he knew Gus’s name. “I’ll play it for you,” I say. “There’s this line of trumpet running through that hits you from the inside.” He listens, and I watch to see if he hears what I do. There’s something about the voice that makes me think of Mum.
“It’s lovely, Charlotte,” he says.
“You feel like you’ve heard it before, right?” I ask.
“Gus played it for me in the shop,” he answers, which isn’t what I want him to say. “That was a lovely dinner. If no one minds, I might take a walk. Catch up with some friends.” That’s definitely not what I want him to say.
He walks down the hall toward the front door, and I follow him. “Can I come with you? I’ll be quiet. You won’t know I’m there.”
“It’s not an easy day for your grandpa,” he says. “Stay and keep him company.” The tree flicks me the finger on my way through the living room. I flick one back. Solidarity. Christmas isn’t always what you’d hoped for.
Grandpa and I eat cake in the garden after Dad leaves. “Can this be anything we imagine it to be, like the turkey?” I ask. “I’m imagining it’s not stale. I’m imagining it’s one like Dad used to make. Do you r
emember those?”
He nods. “I’ve been a bit behind on orders at the shop.”
“It hasn’t been long,” I say. “You know, since Gran.”
“Been long enough. The shop was her baby.” He feeds his cake to the birds. “Why didn’t you give your dad music for Christmas?”
“He doesn’t listen to it.”
“He did. I remember the first time he heard your mother play Gnossienne No. 1 at a school concert. She played the piano so beautifully.”
“Erik Satie,” I say. “They played it at the funeral.”
“She loved that piece.”
“I hate it.” The notes sound like falling ice.
“Your father was only sixteen when he heard her playing it. A country boy. I don’t think he’d even heard classical music before then.”
I hear Mum playing that song on the piano as Grandpa talks. I always asked her to stop; it made me think of ghosts even before she died. “Will all Christmases be like this one now that Gran’s gone?” I ask.
“It’ll get easier. We’ll make new memories.”
The birds and flies and clouds move slowly, like they hear Mum’s ghost music, too. “What if we can’t make new ones?” I ask.
“We have to, Charlie,” he says. “If you can’t do that, then you die.”
Grandpa’s asleep on the couch when Rose knocks this afternoon. I’ve been sitting near him, wishing he was awake and trying to get Mum’s ghost music out of my head. “Come for a swim?” Rose asks. I get ready and grab the CD I burned and close the door, all in record time.
“I got something for you, too,” she says after she opens my present. I unwrap a small, framed picture of the protistans. “Just one I got off the Internet. You can take it home.”
“Thanks.” I wrap it back in the paper so it won’t break.
“Dave said you’re making a CD for him, too.”
“It might take a while.” I wrote a big list last night, but I haven’t made final decisions yet. The mix has to be exactly right. It has to say I’m cool enough to like retro, but I still know the latest music. It has to make him think he can’t live without kissing me. That sort of CD could be years in the making.
“Christmas must be quiet without your gran,” Rose says.
“A little. We ate something worse than what you cooked the other night.”
“I thought your dad was a chef.”
“He doesn’t cook much at home anymore. But at the restaurant people line up around the block for his food. Before Mum died, she and I would go there every night and eat desserts he’d named after us. Charlotte Double Chocolate Cake. Arabella Lemon Mousse. Mum always said, ‘Let’s go halves in ourselves.’”
“You didn’t eat there after she died?”
“Not much. I guess he was busy, and I got older.”
“You’re never too old for cake,” she says. “Or mousse. Arabella’s a cool name.”
I like how Rose talks about Mum today, just throwing her out there. After the accident, the kids in my class avoided me. Like they thought they could catch my bad luck. Not Dahlia. She arrived the year after the accident, so she didn’t know to be careful. “How come I never see your mum?” she asked one day.
“Because she died.”
“I worry my mum will die,” she said, and sat closer to me.
“Race you to the river.” Rose runs and I chase, stumbling across rocks and grass and dirt. When we get there, she tosses her T-shirt and shorts onto the ground and dives into the water. “Hurry up, it’s beautiful.”
I’m wearing my bikini under my clothes, and I can still hear Louise calling me four-eyes. I’m not worried about what Rose thinks. I’m worried Dave’ll appear out of nowhere. When he looks at me, I feel like I’m Clare Bowditch onstage with her band, singing these earthy songs about what I want and what I’m aching for. I’m sounding so sexy that my song’s hitting him in the chest and stealing what he keeps there. Things might change if he sees me in my bikini.
I stand on the side, and Rose disappears, diving beneath the water, gliding and surfacing. “Come on,” she yells, and it’s hot, and so I think, Stuff it. Who cares what I look like? Louise, sure, but she’s a long day’s drive away. I peel off my shorts and throw myself into the water. “Shit. It’s freezing.”
“Bloody freezing,” she says. “Keep moving.”
I swim off Dad and Grandpa and the memory of Jeremy’s party. I swim off that music they played at Mum’s funeral. I swim till the ghosts in me are numb.
When we’re drying off on the grass, Rose says, “I like your bathing suit. I’ve had this one for years. Luke likes it because it’s almost see-through.”
Somehow things don’t matter today as much as they did. “I fell in the pool at the Year Ten party. My top came off in front of everyone.”
She sits up and leans on one arm. “And?”
“And it’s not a long story. The whole of Year Ten saw me naked.”
“That’s pretty bad. Still, I bet when you go back the guys’ll be lining up to ask you out.”
“I doubt it. I really humiliated myself.”
“Yeah, but you really humiliated yourself naked. I hang out with two guys. Trust me, the humiliation will fade and all they’ll remember is the naked. Plus, you’re pretty. Pretty girls get away with more.”
“I’m not pretty.”
“Dave thinks you are. He looks at you like you’ve got four wheels and a windscreen. He looks at you like you’re a Porsche.”
The sun drifts down but the air stays warm. Now that Rose says it, I did feel a little like a Porsche at the party. At least before I hit the pool. I think about Dahlia telling me that Alex was interested, about how happy she was because I was taking a risk.
She was so happy when I told her I’d changed my mind about auditioning for the school concert that she walked into a pole and we cracked up like old times. I crossed my fingers behind my back.
On the day of the tryouts I stood outside the door in case she checked. I listened to amazing voices flying past me and I was jealous. Not because they were singing better than me; I could sing like that. But I couldn’t do it in front of all those people.
I walked away and when Dahlia asked how it went I gave her the thumbs-up sign. “But there were loads of people, so I probably won’t get picked.”
“What did you sing?” she asked.
“A Lemonheads track.”
“And when do you find out?”
“They said a couple of weeks.”
“What’s the exact date you find out?” she asked, and I knew that she knew. “Louise was inside watching.”
“She’s such a bitch,” I said.
“She might be a bitch sometimes, Charlie. But she doesn’t lie.”
“Are you okay?” Rose asks. “You’re not sad?”
I don’t want to tell Rose about Dahlia because it’ll mix the sounds of that day with this one and I want them to start and end in different places. If Rose Butler likes me, I must finally be doing something right. “I’m okay,” I tell her, and pull at the grass. “What about you? You don’t ever get sad?”
She pulls her knees up to her chin. “Angry, sometimes. That’s better than sad.” Same coin, different sides, I think, remembering the funerals.
We stay till the moon appears. Huge and yellow. Sharing light with the sun. It makes me think of this song about a canary moon that Mum used to sing before I went to sleep. I’d mouth the words next to her. Tonight I almost feel like singing it aloud.
Charlie and I stay at the river till the light’s gone. She’s quiet at first like she always is but then she warms up a bit and tells me about being naked at a party, and she looks like she sees the funny side of things. I tell her she’s pretty and that Dave thinks so, too, and her eyes fill right on up.
Mum acts as if Charlie’s breakable. “Where are you going?” she asked before I left today. “Charlie’s,” I told her. “I’m taking a present.”
“That’s nice of you.” S
he turned her teacup slowly in her hands. “What made you change your mind about her?”
I clicked my heels. “I guess I realized you were right.”
“I wasn’t born yesterday, Rose.” She used her quiet voice, like saying I was lying in a whisper wasn’t saying it at all.
“I’m sick of hanging out with guys all the time. Plus, Charlie’s from the city. She’s different to this place.”
“Well, that makes sense,” Mum said. “What are you giving her?”
“A picture of protistans. These things you can’t see.”
“She’s had a hard time, Rose. You’ll be nice to her?”
“She’s not made of glass. I’m not swinging at her with a freaking bat.” I picked at the best bits of turkey so I wouldn’t have to meet her eyes.
I take a side look at Charlie. “Are you okay? You’re not sad?”
“I’m okay,” she says. Maybe her problem is that everyone’s always telling her she’s unhappy like Mum’s always telling me I’m trouble. Maybe if we all lighten up, her eyes won’t be so hard to look at. They might change to blue in the light.
“What about you? You don’t ever get sad?” she asks.
“Angry, sometimes,” I say. “That’s better than sad.”
We watch the moon for a while. It’s almost red, a fiery sun somewhere giving out light so it can shine.
Canary Moon
Sing, canary moon
Sing me sweet and yellow notes
Let them circle in the sky
Let them drift into my throat
I’ll take them in
I’ll swallow songs
I’ll let them feather up my lungs
Let them feather up my blood
Sing, canary moon
Let me steal a little tune
And you won’t even notice that it’s gone
And when my belly’s full
I’ll canary into air
I’ll canary with you, moon
And let all the people stare
I just won’t care
I just won’t care
I’ll sing your yellow song
I’ll sing it sweet
And loud and long