I Have a Bed Made of Buttermilk Pancakes Read online

  Now there was a stampede of parents – Mummy’s purple hands flying, Daddy’s bath towel flapping – and they gathered around Fancy. Daddy straightened the towel around his waist.

  ‘You did not!’ cried Mummy.

  ‘I did,’ said Fancy, defiantly. ‘I told you it was incredible.’ She looked up at her parents and folded her arms, but her mouth trembled. Marbie, in her doors-pace, thought of the episode of Charles in Charge, when the good sister tries to be bad, but she can’t pull it off because of her nature.

  ‘When?!’ cried Daddy.

  ‘Oh, darling,’ said Mummy, gently. Fancy’s hands fell to her side and she sat down at the table.

  It turned out she had told him everything. She did not know why.

  ‘Tell us again what you told him,’ ordered Daddy, over and over. ‘Why did you tell him?’ murmured Mummy, also over and over, until Marbie grew bored and climbed onto the side of one of the doors so she could slide with it, very quietly.

  ‘Marbie!’ snapped Daddy. ‘Go and get changed out of your bathing suit!’

  ‘Okay,’ agreed Marbie, looking down to the floor where there were little splatters of sea water from her bathing suit. Quietly, she walked into the room and sat down on the couch.

  ‘Oh, Fancy,’ said Mummy, in a low, shivery voice.

  ‘Tell us what you told him,’ Daddy commanded. ‘Tell us exactly.’

  ‘Well, I told him about Ireland and about the cherry pies –’

  ‘Oh never mind,’ grumbled Daddy.

  He looked at Mummy and she looked back. It was quiet.

  From the couch, Marbie murmured to herself, ‘Should I tell them that I never told anyone the Secret? Should I say that out loud?’

  The others turned to her. ‘GET OFF THAT COUCH!’ Daddy shouted.

  ‘Radcliffe’s not going to tell anybody.’ Fancy’s voice collapsed into her arms, and her next words were tangled in a sob: ‘He promerr ewerd terl any obee.’

  Mummy and Daddy were quiet, figuring out what she had just said. After a moment they both breathed in an ‘ah’ of comprehension.

  ‘Well,’ said Daddy, ‘if he promised he wouldn’t tell anybody, I suppose we have to trust him.’

  ‘But heaven help us when the two of you break up!’ fretted Mummy.

  ‘We’re not going to break up,’ Fancy wept. ‘He loves me! He said that he loves me forever!’

  ‘There now,’ said Mummy, apologetically. ‘Of course he does.’ She put her arms around Fancy and said, ‘Of course he does, hush now, of course he does, sweetheart.’

  So the next day, in the high noon sun, Marbie was distracted.

  Fancy was sitting on her beach towel under the umbrella, one arm curled around her knees, gazing moodily down at the sand. Daddy was trying to tune in his transistor to hear the cricket. Mummy was on her fold-up chair, reading New Idea. The seaside noises and the radio fuzz and the magazine pages turning were only there to heighten the quiet of the family.

  From her towel in the sun a few metres away, Marbie was able to observe her family and, in particular, Fancy. It seemed to Marbie that Fancy, who was usually smart, had now been stupid in two ways. First of all, it was stupid to tell her boyfriend the Secret. Second of all, it was stupid to tell her parents that she had told her boyfriend the Secret. In fact, and this was what interested Marbie, the second stupid thing was a whole new level of stupidity.

  She stared out to sea, thinking hard about the two different levels of stupidity. Soon the levels began to shimmer in the air. Just above the horizon was the first level; somewhere a little higher, striking through clouds, was the second. Marbie stared at the first level, then looked up at the second, down at the first, up at the second, down and up, down and up, until an umbrella hit her smack in the forehead.

  It was a beach umbrella, snatched out of the sand by a random gust of wind. It had streaked through the air like a javelin while men shouted ‘HO!’ and leapt after it. The sharp end hit Marbie in the forehead and knocked her out cold.

  While she was in the hospital, there was a lot of talk about how lucky it was that it hadn’t hit her just over to the right. Or just up a bit. Or a tad lower. Or a smidgeon to the left. And imagine if it had hit her in the eye! She was that close to death, but all she got was ten stitches, two black eyes, and one night under observation.

  Fancy was very emotional so Radcliffe held her hand and nuzzled his nose into her shoulder, for support. That Friday, Radcliffe came along to his first Zing Family Secret Meeting, and was quiet and polite, but couldn’t stop looking at Marbie, who was on the couch surrounded by pillows, and whose forehead was a thunderstorm of purple. The following week he had relaxed enough to point out that the circles of black around her eyes made her look like a racoon. ‘See you later, racoon girl,’ he called as he left the garden shed that night. Everybody laughed.

  Afterwards, Marbie took over responsibility for putting up the family beach umbrella. She alone knew the full extent of the risk. She had a strict routine: first, dig a hole as deep as your arm; deeper; dig until you have to lie down on your side to reach the bottom of the hole and scrape the damp sand with your fingertips; next, take the bottom half of the umbrella and plunge it into the hole, then twist to the right leaning with all your weight; next! pack the hole with firm sand; finally, pile sand thick and high around the base of the umbrella, twist on the top half, and bury three sea-grapes at random spots for good luck.

  She was left with a crocus-shaped scar on her forehead, and a lifelong fear that long sharp items (such as umbrellas, or fence posts) would somehow end up in her eye.

  One Friday morning, Marbie stood on the porch of their new apartment, drinking her berry-and-banana shake and saying goodbye to Listen.

  ‘Don’t walk too fast,’ Marbie suggested. ‘You’ll need your energy for the Walkathon. Why don’t you skate to school today? Or I could give you a lift.’

  Listen just laughed, and strode off at her regular high speed.

  ‘You look good,’ called Marbie. ‘You look great. Like a really hip walker is how you look.’

  Listen laughed again, and changed her walk to something hip and groovy for a few steps, then continued in her normal way. Because of the Charity Walkathon that day, she was not wearing her school uniform, but hipster jeans and a tank top that showed off her stomach.

  Marbie herself locked up and set off to her car which was parked down the street. Halfway to the car, the neighbour’s black cat crossed her path.

  Every day since the day they had moved in, the neighbour’s black cat had crossed her path. Sometimes it made an elaborate effort to do so: a triple backflip from a tree followed by a high jump over Marbie’s head, for example. But that Friday morning, it didn’t even try, it just walked on across her path.

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake,’ Marbie said aloud. ‘You don’t scare me, you know that, Gary?’

  Gary was the name of the cat, and in fact, his name alone scared her.

  But it was a perfectly nice day at work: a lot of chatting; stamping documents; a plate of leftover sushi from a conference on another floor. Toni went to stationery and came back loaded with gifts, so, also, a lot of time setting up her new magnetic paperclip holder.

  She spilled some of the paperclips onto the carpet, and picked up a handful, deciding to leave the rest on the carpet there. It was a decision she would regret for the rest of her life. (Let’s say, one day, Marbie knocks over a vase of flowers. The water seeps into the carpet, while flowers roll under the desk. She gets down on her hands and knees and crawls under the desk to retrieve a flower or two, and, without her noticing, a paperclip sticks to her knee. Unaware, she leaves work, travels home, meets Vernon, playfully knees him in the thigh, and the paperclip somehow sticks into his skin, and he gets lead poisoning, and dies!) (Her eyes filled with tears at the thought.)

  So she crawled under the desk and picked up every single paperclip, afterwards brushing her knees carefully for remnants. Then she wrote replies to all the e-ma
il in her ‘FRIENDS – MUST REPLY’ folder.

  That evening, at the Night Owl Pub, the others had just left and Marbie was finishing her beer when the aeronautical engineer appeared.

  ‘I have just enough time for one beer,’ he informed her, sitting down opposite.

  ‘What makes you think that I have time for one beer?’

  ‘Sure you do! What’s the rush?’

  The Zing Family Secret Meeting was the rush.

  ‘Okay. Just one.’

  ‘Where is everyone?’ said the aeronautical engineer, frowning around at the empty seats.

  ‘I wish you’d stop doing that,’ said Marbie.

  The aeronautical engineer went to the bar and returned with a pitcher of beer, which they began to share.

  ‘Aeroplane wings are supposed to shake,’ said the aeronautical engineer after a pause in conversation.

  ‘Okay,’ agreed Marbie. He would know.

  The aeronautical engineer said: ‘Play a spot of tennis?’

  On the train home, Marbie wondered why she had agreed to play tennis with a stranger. They had arranged to meet at courts close to her place, the following Saturday.

  Arriving at her station, and walking through the balmy night to her car, she wondered next if she was sober enough to drive. She stepped up onto the parking lot fence, put one leg in the air like a ballet dancer, and held that position for a moment before she fell. That was a good sign.

  She drove to her parents’ place, imagining her arrival in time for dessert, hopefully some kind of cherry pie tonight, and also imagining her excuses: Tabitha told this really long story about her pregnant sister, who has started having fits. It’s awful; she was really upset. The train was one of those slow, all-stops ones. My car was in a different part of the parking lot from where I parked it this morning! I’m sure it was. I’m sure somebody moved it. All of these things were true, even though they were not the reason for her lateness.

  By the time she got there, dinner was already over, and the Meeting had begun. Listen and Cassie were watching a movie, as usual, in the living room. ‘Hello!’ she called to them, running through on her way out to the garden shed. ‘How was the Walkathon, Listen?’

  ‘Fine,’ said Listen, her eyes on the TV.

  In the garden shed, Marbie sat next to Vernon, and leaned over to whisper in his ear that she had just agreed to tennis with a stranger. Before she had a chance to whisper, Vernon kissed her. He quietly passed her an extra copy of her mother’s handout, which she immediately made into a paper aeroplane. Vernon took the aeroplane from her hand, held it up, and said a dismissive ‘tch!’, at which Marbie giggled, and her mother, at the front, said, ‘SHH.’

  She and Vernon were always getting into trouble at Meetings.

  Then Vernon reached under his chair and he had a plate of cherry pie hidden there for her, with a spoon.

  After the Meeting, they drove home in Vernon’s car. Marbie, feeling sleepy in the passenger seat, took her paper aeroplane out of her pocket, straightened out the crumples, and said: ‘What do you mean: ‘tch’?’

  ‘It’ll never fly,’ he declared, glancing over at her plane. ‘Crash and burn.’

  ‘It’ll fly.’

  ‘Show me,’ said Listen, leaning forward. Then, sitting back again: ‘Vernon’s right, Marbie. That won’t fly.’

  ‘An aeronautical engineer showed me how. It will fly.’

  ‘Crash and burn,’ repeated Vernon. ‘Which aeronautical engineer showed you how?’

  ‘I don’t know. Just this guy.’

  The paper aeroplane had a sharp point, which hit Vernon smack in the cheek.

  ‘It flew,’ proclaimed Marbie.

  ‘It never.’

  ‘It hit you in the cheek!’

  ‘It never flew.’

  ‘Well then how did it get to your cheek?’

  ‘You threw it at me. Throwing isn’t flying.’

  Marbie sat back and pulled on her seatbelt. ‘Hmm,’ she said.

  ‘Hey, Listen,’ said Vernon, checking his sister in the rear-view mirror. ‘How was the Walkathon today? We forgot to collect your sponsorship money from the Zings.’

  ‘Fine,’ said Listen. ‘It was fine.’ She didn’t say any more than that.

  The Walkathon was fifty-five times round the oval to raise money for an international mine-clearance charity. They got their purple sponsorship cards ticked each time around. Every five times they got a cup of orange juice, and every ten times they got to stop and have a Vita-Weat, and the teachers laughed and said things like, ‘Come on! Pick up the pace! Hup-two!’

  They walked in groups with their friends, and Listen walked with Donna Turnbull and the others, from Primary.

  After eight laps, Donna said, ‘Raising money for mines, eh? What do you reckon we should do with the mines when we get them?’

  ‘Depends on what kind of mines,’ said Sia. ‘If they’re diamond mines, we should get out the diamonds. If they’re gold mines, we should get out the gold. If they’re silver mines . . .’

  The others were all laughing, so she stopped.

  ‘We should plant them in the Science labs,’ suggested Caro. ‘So we wouldn’t have to go to Science anymore.’

  ‘Yeah you would,’ said Gabrielle. ‘It’d be cool, because Science’d be like a mine field. So you’d have to get someone to go into the lab first and, like, test out the path to your bench.’

  ‘You’d get Caro to do it,’ said Donna.

  ‘You would NOT!’ shouted Caro, and they all laughed again.

  ‘Let’s run now,’ Donna said, when they’d stopped laughing. ‘You wanna run for a while?’

  Then she counted. ‘One, two, three, and four,’ she pointed as she counted, Joanne, Caro, Gabrielle and Sia, and pointed at herself, ‘and five.’

  She didn’t point at Listen.

  ‘Just us five,’ she said, without looking at Listen: ‘Let’s run.’

  They had funny sparks in their eyes, and smirks, and they all began to run.

  Listen was confused for a moment. She thought that Donna had just forgotten to point to her, and she started to run too, but then saw that they were running faster, and looking at each other as they ran, like: ‘She’s coming with us! What will we do?!’

  She slowed down for a moment, to see if they would stop.

  They didn’t stop, they kept on running into the distance, and around the corner of the oval. Then they slowed to a jog, without looking back. Then they kept walking, fast.

  Okay, thought Listen, the idea is to catch up with me on the next round?

  Listen walked alone then, forty-seven times around the oval, slowly, to give them a chance, but they never caught up with her once.

  The Monday after the Walkathon, Listen watched Donna and the others out of the corner of her eye, waiting to see what would happen. At first she thought: well, if they don’t want me around, that’s fine with me, and she went to the library at lunchtime. You weren’t allowed to eat in the library so she saved her lunch and ate it walking home. In classes, she decided to concentrate on what the teachers were saying. It’s pretty interesting anyway, she told herself sometimes, but actually it wasn’t.

  Meanwhile, the others were getting on with life, talking to each other about ordinary things.

  The same thing happened Tuesday, but on Wednesday morning, Listen woke up and thought: this is all a mistake! They think that I’m the one who’s ignoring them! How terrible! But such a relief, and she practically ran all the way to school to clear things up.

  Caro was arriving at the school gate at the same time as her, so Listen called, ‘Hi!’

  Caro looked around and said, ‘Hi-i-i,’ sort of comical and musical, like the ‘hi’ you might say to a big blue beetle that landed on your plate at a picnic. Everyone would laugh and you’d shake the plate and the beetle would fly away.

  ‘What’s going on?’ said Listen, walking in step with Caro.

  ‘No-o-thing,’ said Caro, quickening her pace.
r />   ‘SIA!!!’ shouted Caro suddenly, and she waved at Sia, who was down in the teachers’ parking lot. Sia turned and stared, and Caro sprinted away from Listen, pounding down the driveway. Listen paused, and watched as Caro reached Sia and seemed to hunch over, gasping and talking rapidly, until Sia hugged her as if she needed comforting.

  Listen walked on quickly then, in a different direction.

  Later that day, packing up to go home, Donna spoke to Listen in a kindly voice. ‘Can I just explain something?’ she said.

  ‘If you want.’

  ‘It’s just that we all agreed on this, okay? It’s no offence or anything. See, we decided things are kind of different now we’re in Year 7, and you have to kind of like make the tough decisions? If you’re going to survive. And we think you’re not kind of right for survival, okay? And it was a good example at the Walkathon, when we were all making jokes about mines and that, and you were laughing but you weren’t making jokes yourself. You were kind of like taking because you were laughing, but you weren’t giving anything to us. And you know, things change, and we all agreed, kind of like. Okay?’

  ‘O-ka-a-ay,’ said Listen, trying to give her ‘okay’ a lilting, comical edge.

  The next day, Listen took a day off school. Marbie was staying home with a ticklish throat, and she suggested Listen might need a break too. After clearing her throat several times, Listen decided she had a tickle too. ‘I’ll write a note and say you’ve got pneumonia,’ offered Marbie. So that was settled.

  Marbie was reading a novel in the sunny part of the kitchen, and Listen went into her bedroom and stared around the room, and then she remembered: it’s Thursday week! I’m allowed to do the next spell!

  It was A Spell To Make A Vacuum Cleaner Break.

  ‘Well,’ she said to herself, ‘that’s a pretty stupid spell.’ But then she remembered that their vacuum cleaner was already broken. It got broken in the move: Mr Zing dropped a wardrobe on top of it, in the back of the ute. Maybe A Spell To Make A Vacuum Cleaner Break would have the reverse effect on a broken one? You never knew.