Making Up
I had to forget about my stupid pride. I think I realised that if I didn’t do something about Topps and I, we’d never become friends again. It’s not as if he didn’t have other friends. He could forget all about me if he wanted. Sure, he’s one of my best friends, but it’s not as if we hung out together every weekend and sat together every class. His mates, Will Phillips and Ray Knipe, were basically computer geeks like him. They hung out a lot together, but for some reason he preferred my company. ‘You know why,’ Courtney Jarratt would have said with a wink. I’m not so sure. If he was friends with me just because he thought that one day we’d get together, he’d have given up long ago. I’d made it clear I didn’t like him in that sort of way.
But I really did care for him, so I was ready to do the apologetic stuff to get him back onside. I knew how, too. Compliments. It works every time, especially when you compliment a guy. They’re suckers for it. I don’t mean I was being manipulative, I just needed a springboard to reach the next level: an apology.
So during computer studies I waited until he was finished updating his homepage, walked over behind him, leaned over and read the content of the screen. I told him, as I placed my hand on his shoulder, how cool it was. He smiled and looked at my hand, which I left on his shoulder just a second longer than I normally would as I kept reading the screen.
At lunchtime he caught up with me at the canteen and bought me a raspberry liquorice strap.
‘A peace offering,’ he said as he handed me the liquorice.
‘Thanks Topps, but it should be me apologising to you.’
Topps snatched the liquorice from my hands and bit off the end. ‘Apology accepted then,’ he laughed, chewing madly.
It was good to be friends again. It’s the worst, having to ignore each other. You want things to go back to the way they were but you don’t want to have to be the first to say you’re sorry. If we ever have arguments it’s Topps who usually breaks the ice. I wish I could, but I can’t. I don’t know why.
We didn’t talk about the Video Saloon. I think Topps didn’t want to risk another argument and neither did I. I’d made up my mind, anyway. I was going to say no to Crass and start looking around for another job. I’d try Coles or even the Chicken Shack. There wasn’t a whole lot of options for me, but I guessed I’d get something.
The following weekend summer made a sudden appearance in the form of a hot, aqua blue Sunday afternoon. My fingers made sweaty prints on the DVD covers and I had to keep wiping the covers clean. Melbourne weather is like that. Hot days just creep up on you and knock you around, burn your shoulders and make you sweat. Then the next day it could be all windy, miserable and cold. Weird.
I was in the weekly release section checking out a Ben Affleck film, Surviving Christmas. It was one of the flicks that totally skip the cinema and sits forlornly by themselves in the weekly section. It seemed to refused to rent itself out.
Ben Affleck used to be my favourite actor. In two years he made three brilliant films: Good Will Hunting, Chasing Amy and Shakespeare in Love. That film made me go funny in the stomach. Really. It was so romantic in a real sort of way. I still watch it every three or four months. It’s my comfort film. Then what happens? Gigli, Daredevil, Pearl Harbour. That’s what. I’ve seen them all. They suck! Sure, I’d love to be in a romantic but doomed love triangle with Ben, but only in a decent movie. Anyway, that was a long time ago and I’d almost forgotten about Ben now.
Since working at the store I’ve watched a lot more videos and read about a lot of movie stars. I always found it funny that actors star in some of the best movies ever and then suddenly string together complete duds for five years straight. It’s like they hit a wall and that’s the end of their career. Or is it just bad luck? Is picking a movie basically random, like the Saturday night lottery? Did Ben just get lucky when he made all those great movies?
I continued dusting the shelves when a girl in a tight black T-shirt, hipster jeans and tussled brown hair came up and asked for Crass. She could have been out of Neighbours – she’d be one of the bitchy girls who tries to move in on taken guys. Before I could answer, Crass called out ‘Hey ya Toni!’ and walked over to us.
He obviously knew her. She put her hand on his arm affectionately. I counted at least five cheap gold rings on her fingers. Classy. I thought I remembered seeing her around town a few times, but I’d never seen her at school before. I guessed she was around 18, so she may have left.
‘Crass, how ya doing?’ Toni said. She was all smiles. I tried to make myself scarce and kept on dusting.
‘Toni, looking good,’ Crass said.
‘Awh, you’re sweet,’ Toni purred. ‘Now, what about my summer job? Have you asked your boss yet?’
Crass jerked his head over towards me. ‘Sorry, man. We don’t need anybody at the moment. Stacey is working the weekends for us. I can put in a good word for you though.’
Toni gave me a dirty look, as if I had taken her job. They spoke a little more before Toni said, ‘Well, I’ll catch ya mate,’ and wiggled her way out of the store. Her bum was swinging so much it could take kids on a playground ride.
‘Is she looking for a job?’ I said with obvious loathing.
‘Yeah. Man, is she one hot chick, or what?’ I took that to be rhetorical question and didn’t answer. ‘Perhaps I should let her in on my little business venture?’ Crass said. ‘She needs the money. Unless, of course, you’ve changed your mind?’
I was hoping he’d forgotten about it. ‘Crass, I still dunno. Why do you need me to do it anyway?’
‘Stace, all I’m asking you to do is hand a few customers some packages every now and then. It’s simple. Easy money, man. See, I can’t be here all the time and I just need someone to hand over the goods and take the cash.’
‘And all I have to do is hand over the packages?’
‘Yeah, that’s all.’
‘Does Vince know about it?’
‘Yeah, he knows, but, well…he’s cool about it, only I don’t like promoting the fact I’m selling them on his time.’
‘I still don’t know.’
Crass took a DVD cover from the shelf and flicked it into the air. ‘It’s up to you,’ he said, catching it in one hand, ‘but I know plenty of others who’d be happy to earn a few extra bucks working here.’ He walked back to the counter with the DVD in his hand, stuck it in the player and began to watch it.
I kept up with the dusting. Crass didn’t seem to be too cut with me. But was that a threat? ‘I know plenty of others who’d be happy to earn a few extra bucks here.’
I’d already gone and put my name down in Coles but the assistant manager, a woman named Raz with hips the size of a ute, told me every teenage kid in town was on the waiting list – they all wanted jobs for the summer holidays. The Chicken Shack didn’t even take my details. They said they advertise in the front window when they need someone. ‘I’d just lose this,’ the bristly manager had said, giving back my resume. That left the bakery and a few smaller stores. I guessed I’d have to go to Ringwood and the big shopping centre there, but it’d mean a bus and then train journey. Not something I was looking forward to.
I kept on dusting and began to think it was actually worth risking a few over-thecounter sales of pirated discs just to keep my job. Who’d ever know? I could blame Crass if I was caught. I could do with the extra money too.
I tried to put the idea out of my head but later that night I started to ponder over it as I half-heatedly finished some algebra problems at the kitchen table. The kitchen was getting feral. Ridges of dirt trailed around the edge of the cupboards, the fridge and oven were streaked black with grease and the frying pan hadn’t been washed in three days. Congealed fat lay as smooth as an ice rink on its surface. Mum would never have let us get away with this. She wasn’t the world’s greatest cleaner, but the house never looked grotty. It was always neat. I felt the place was starting to slowly fall apart.
Dad was fairly hopeless tidying up and I only glossed over the real dirty bits. I’d vacuum but I didn’t dust. The white windowsills were now camouflaged with grime and the shower had bits of my mousy hair and dad’s beard (when he bothered to shave) guttered around the plug hole.
A pile of bills and letters lay next to my homework. I left my textbook and absentmindedly sorted through the letters as I thought what to do about the Video Saloon. I had one over on Crass, that’s for sure. I knew about the copies in the basement. If he hassled me about handling the discs I could bail him up and tell him what I knew. That’d shut him up. Perhaps I could blackmail him? Tell him I was keeping the job and if he didn’t want me to go to the police, he should just leave me alone. Man, I could make him quit. But that was wishful thinking. The best I could do was keep stringing him along and remain ambivalent by not giving him an answer.
A Visa bill caught my attention. I always thought credit cards were a cool idea – spend money you didn’t have. I could buy a car tomorrow. Just having the freedom to take off whenever you want without asking Dad for a lift or waiting for the bus. The day I get my P Plates I planned to drive along the Great Ocean Road all the way to Port Fairy. Mum and Dad only took me down there once. Usually we went east along the Princes Freeway to Lakes Entrance. I can still recall every major country town we went through on that three hour drive: Warragul, Moe, Morwell, Traralgon, Sale, Bairnsdale. One after the other, like suburban train stations on the way to the city.
Dad liked to get off the Freeway and stop at one or two of the towns before we reached the coast. He said he felt guilty bypassing them. He liked the open cut mines and the hard working people of the towns. He even liked the huge power station outside of Moe that looked like something from Chernobyl, the nuclear reactor that caught fire in the Ukraine. I did an assignment on it once. I found the power station ugly, but Dad thought the men and women who worked there were honest and tough.
My grandpa used to work in the paper mill in Traralgon before he married Nan and moved to Melbourne to work in the city as a printer. They’re both dead now, but Dad always felt closer to them when we stopped in Traralgon.
Mum and I preferred getting to Lakes Entrance as quickly as possible; Mum for the beach and me for the strawberry milkshake we got from the fish & chip shop as soon as we stopped at the caravan park.
We’d been to Lakes Entrance so many times every trip had faded into just a few distinct memories: the big trevally Dad caught that faked being dead until I touched it and it suddenly leapt at me, its mouth gaping and desperate and me squealing my head off. Or buying a cheap kite from the corner store and flying it in the park, only to have the string snap and the kite fly into the ocean that lapped at the park’s edges. I cried so much that Dad even attempted to wade out and get the kite back. My favourite memory, though, was making a train with Mum and Dad on a giant slide in a Bairnsdale park one summer’s day. The slide went down a hill and was the biggest I’ve ever seen – I was only eight or nine at the time, but I remember thinking it was like a roller coaster. I was at the front, my Mum hung onto me with her bare, brown legs and my Dad had his bony hands on her shoulder. Then he pushed us off too hard and we went flying down the slide, Mum screaming louder than I’ve ever heard her before and Dad yelling “Whoop-Whoop!” until we hit the bottom, me hitting the dirt hard and Mum landing on top of me, Dad jumping off the slide and leaping over us. All of us laughing so hard as we lay in the dirt. I’ve never seen my parents laugh so much. Dad was actually crying with laughter because Mum’s legs were up in the air and I was squashed underneath, neither of us able to move. I don’t think I’ll ever forget that.
But I remembered our one trip along the Great Ocean Road like a movie you’ve seen six or seven times before. I remember every detail. Every frame. The smell of salt in the air, my CD Walkman lying next to me in the car forgotten as I watched the waves hit the beach as we drove into Lorne, bouncing on the trampoline with Mum along the beach and even the flavour of the ice-cream I had: rainbow with a Flake chocolate bar stuck into the top. I loved the Great Ocean Road, loved the winding road along the coast and the small towns that we drove though. I wanted to go back there, but I wanted to do the driving.
How old did you have to be to get a credit card?
I looked at the Visa bill. The credit limit for dad was $7500. That’s huge money! I reckoned I could buy a second hand Mazda hatchback with a thumping stereo for that.
I’d never really thought about banking before. Now, with the job, I’d started to get into the whole finance thing. I had my own tax file number and pay slips and had started to study my banking statements I received every month too. Each week I’d put half my pay into a savings account. I loved to see my account gradually rise when I ripped open the bank statements.
Then I noticed Dad’s balance. It said the balance was $4500. That’s how much he had used on the credit card. It was a lot of money to pay back. I knew if you didn’t pay off your credit card each month you had to pay interest. A lot of interest. How was Dad paying it off? How could he owe so much? I took a look at the description of payments on the bill: Coles supermarket; a bottle shop; Repco car repairs; water and gas bill; doctors; electricity bill; telephone bill; the bottle shop again. On and on. Everything was going on the credit card. And there was also a cash advance of $1000.
‘Taking an interest in the finances, Stace?’
Dad had come in from the lounge room and snuck up behind me. I jumped and dropped the Visa statement.
‘Just wondering how it all works. It’s a bit confusing.’
‘How it works is the bank says I owe a lot of money and I have to pay it back as soon as possible. Fairly simple.’
‘We owe a fair bit, don’t we Dad?’
‘I’m afraid I’ve let the bills creep up on us.’
‘How do we pay it off?’
Dad sat down and sighed. We’d never really discussed finances before. Dad did everything. Sure, he’d whinge when I needed money for clothes or an excursion or a movie, but I just thought that’s what dads did. I never knew we were really poor.
‘When we got your mum’s life insurance I paid off a lot of what we owed for the house. The rest I put into a long-term deposit account,’ Dad said. ‘For you.’
‘For me? What for?’
‘The future. You know, university, a car, rent and bond when you move out of home, even backpacking overseas if you wanted. Thought it’d make a nice eighteenth birthday present. Grandpa and Nan could never help me out much with money, they never had much spare, and your mum and I wanted to give you a good start.’
‘Gee, thanks Dad,’ I said, not knowing what else to say. I wanted to ask exactly how much he’d put in to the account, but thought it might be pushing it.
‘It’s just a pity that money has been tight in the past year,’ he said, ‘but I didn’t want to touch your account. And I haven’t. I…I know I have to get back to some decent work…and I will…so don’t worry about this, hey?’ He picked up the bill and put it underneath the pile of letters.
‘Dad, you can’t keep using your credit card for everything,’ I said. ‘Why don’t you take some money out of my account to help pay it off? I don’t need it right now.’
‘What? Nah, I don’t want to do that. Things aren’t too desperate, not yet. We’ll see what happens. But, if things get too bad, I guess I could…’ He rubbed his head. His skin was sallow and tight and his fingernails were bitten to the quick.
I knew offering money from my account meant I was letting Dad off the hook with work. But he was – and I hated saying this – probably pretty useless at work at the moment. I could still see the haunted look of Mum in his eyes. He needed another woman to look after him. I know daughters are supposed to feel all funny about their dads marrying again, but I reckon I’d welcome it. Then I wouldn’t have to be the one to look after him all the time.
God, this was worse than I thought. I imagined ourselves having to sell the house and living in one of the dumpy units near the secondary school where all the social security dropouts lived. I’d have to wear school uniforms from the Brotherhood of St Laurence like a couple of kids at school. The uniforms were always faded with loose bits of cotton hanging from the hems. “Povos” the kids were called.
One thing was for sure, that Motorola mobile phone I was looking at for Christmas wouldn’t be under the tree this year. Not unless I paid for it myself. Not unless I found a better source of income and earned a bit more money.
And, I thought grimly as Dad slumped on the sofa and despondently turned on the TV, I knew where to get it.