Fifteen
BECAUSE WE WERE allowed out early on Wednesday afternoon, we decided to go down to Harley’s at Darling Harbour to make great career decisions over a cappuccino.
I think if I’m ever asked to recall what Year Twelve was all about, I’ll remember it as one big cappuccino experience.
Harley’s is our hangout. Between four o’clock in the afternoon and six in the evening the place is packed with students from schools all around the inner-city area. It works out well for the owners because they don’t get many businesspeople coming in during those times who would be scared off by loud teenagers squashed together just to be seen. It’s a fiftiesstyle place with a jukebox and pleasing food like hamburgers and French fries. On the wall there’s fifties memorabilia like posters of James Dean and Natalie Wood in scenes from Rebel Without a Cause. The music is modern, though, and it never stops. Working with Michael means that I don’t go as much as I would want to, but once a week is enough to catch up on the gossip.
“I’m going to be a fashion designer,” Sera suggested after we sat in a booth that had just been vacated.
“I know so many people doing fashion designing,” Anna said, flicking the page. “You end up working as a sales assistant in some store.”
“Makeup artist?”
“Sera, admit it, you are not artistic,” I told her bluntly.
“Are you saying my makeup doesn’t look good?”
“I knew this would happen,” Lee said, slamming the book shut.
“If I wasn’t thinking of doing law, I’d be a translator for the Italian consulate in some mysterious country,” I told them, dreaming of how
exciting it would be. “But I know that the proper Italians would pick out my Sicilian accent. The northerners are snobs just because they’re blond.”
“I’m blond and my parents aren’t from the north,” Sera said, using my glasses again for a mirror.
Lee, Anna and I exchanged glances.
“Should I tell her, girls?” I asked, feigning pity.
“Go ahead, Josie,” Lee said, adopting a sad voice.
I took hold of Sera’s hand gently.
“Sera, my poor sweet disillusioned Sera. You were not born with that color hair.”
“No?” Anna said, horrified, before we all burst out laughing.
Sera grabbed the career book from Lee’s hands and flicked through it again.
“How about teaching?”
“How about the public service? You’d be happy there, Sera.”
Sera looked at me suspiciously, wondering if I was teasing her.
“I’m going to be doing teaching,” Anna said definitely. “The Catholic Campus at Strathfield.”
“I can see you as a teacher,” Lee agreed.
“No way,” I laughed. “Anna will always be a McDonald’s worker to me.”
Anna laughed and then bent her head, urging us to close in.
“Guess what?”
“What?”
“I think Anton Valavic likes me.”
Sera almost fell off her seat laughing and Anna looked wounded.
“Sera, grow up,” Lee said, lighting up a cigarette. “Go on, Anna.”
“Let me go on,” Sera said, wiping the tears off her face. “I’ve seen Anton Valavic. He’s a man. I mean, have you ever seen the way the guy fills out his school pants? Could you imagine our little Anna appealing to him?”
“I think he’s a softy,” I told them. “Well, deep down anyway, and Jacob Coote told me at the dance that Anton liked you, Anna.”
“Well,” Anna said in a hushed tone, looking around to see if anyone was listening. “Every night when I finish at McDonald’s he’s out there, sitting on his bike. When I drive away, he rides home in his direction. Every night.”
Her large blue eyes looked misty and her cheeks were burning red with embarrassment.
“Are you sure he just doesn’t like Big Macs?”
She shook her head.
“He never ever comes inside.”
“He’ll break your heart,” Lee said, passing her cigarette to Sera.
“Speak of the devil. Here he comes with Josie’s boyfriend,” Sera said slyly. “Why don’t we just ask him?”
“Sera,” Anna hissed, putting her head on the table.
We all knew that Sera only needed a dare issued and she would go ahead and embarrass anyone.
“Sera, if you say a word, you will regret it till your dying days,” I told her.
“Are you threatening me, Josie? You of all people can never say anything to embarrass me. People talk about you enough.”
The booth behind us was vacant and Jacob Coote, Anton Valavic and four others squashed in, much to the despair of Anna and me.
One of the girls had sandwiched Anna’s braid between her back and the booth and Anna tried in vain to yank it out.
“Do you mind?” Lee said loudly to them.
The others turned around to look at us with disinterest.
“Oh, look, it’s St. Martyr’s,” one of the girls snickered.
I met Jacob’s eye for a minute and looked away.
Anna and Sera still had their backs to them and one of the boys began to swing Anna’s braid back and forth. He pulled out the silk scarf she had tied around the plait and wound it around his fingers.
“Just grow up and give it back to her,” I snapped.
“Give it back,” Anton Valavic said quietly.
The boy threw the scarf over to Jacob, where it fell on the table just as one of the girls knocked over a bottle of ketchup. Anna stood up, sighing, and reached for it, folding it up and placing it in her satchel. “My grandmother sent this to me from Croatia. It’s pure silk.”
I packed up my books and threw them into my bag, nudging Lee.
“Let’s get out of here.”
We paid for our coffee and squeezed through the crowd that had just come in from Glebe High.
“He really looks like he likes you, Anna,” Sera said sarcastically.
“Shut up, Sera,” both Lee and I said at the same time.
We browsed around for a while looking at all the stalls with their trinkets and T-shirts and spent half an hour in Gap and Abercrombie trying on clothes we knew we couldn’t afford to buy. The crowds got to us after a while.
Lee and I said good-bye to Anna and Sera and walked outside along the pier where the sun had appeared out of the blue. We sat looking out at the water, watching the activity on the other side, where the city center lay.
“What am I going to do with my life?” she asked me in dismay. “You’ve known since you were five. I change my mind every week.”
“I thought you’d decided on advertising?”
“That was last week. I spent three days sick at home, remember. I watched TV all day long and was insulted by the advertisements I saw. I don’t want to be into bullshit. Anyway, to get a foot in the door you have to be glamorous. I’m not into glamour.”
“I think that glamour in advertising, is a myth. They make it look glamorous on television, but I doubt it is.”
“My father started out in advertising, you know. A thousand years ago when he used to be sober.”
I get embarrassed when Lee speaks about her father’s drinking problem.
It’s a subject she hardly ever brings up and if something bad happens we don’t find out about it until months later. Lee’s father is one of those charismatic men and his five children absolutely adore him. But when he drinks he’s abusive. Not physically, though, but verbally. Lee once told me that she’d rather have her bones broken by sticks and stones and that words did hurt. She spends a lot of time living with her brother’s family when things get to be too much at home.
“I feel sorry for my parents,” she went on. “They’re forty and their life is shit. She won’t leave him and he won’t do anything about his problem.
They tend to think that one day the problem will go away without them having to work on it. I’ll probably be exactly the same.”
“Anyone who takes your attitude deserves a bad life, Lee. We’re masters of our own destiny.”
“That’s rubbish. If your father’s a garbage collector, you’re going to be a garbage collector, and if your father’s filthy rich, you’re going to be filthy rich because he’ll introduce you to his rich friend’s son. People breed with their own kind. Rest assured that John Barton will marry one of the Poison Ivys of the world, just like his brothers have married daughters of the well- known. The rich marry the rich, Josie, and the poor marry the poor. The nerds marry the nerds and the wogs marry the wogs. The western suburbs marry the western suburbs and the north shore marry the north shore.
Sometimes they crossbreed, though, and marry into the eastern suburbs.”
She sighed sadly, shivering from the cold breeze that was coming from the water. “And we all end up where we started.”
“That’s not true. My future has nothing to do with what my family did.”
“Josie, whether you want to admit it or not, you are going to be a barrister because of your father. Without being there he’s still managed to be the greatest influence of your life.”
The sun went completely and we cuddled up to each other for warmth.
“This is depressing me.”
“You? I’m the one who doesn’t know what she’s going to do with her life,” she wailed.
We stood up and began walking toward the stairs that led to the main road.
“How about being a cop?” I suggested.
She gave me a sour look. “Your cousin is going to be one. He probably thinks I’d want to be close to him.”
We both laughed, trying to keep the hair out of our faces and having to walk backward for a few seconds to achieve it.
“You know what? I’d like to join the circus. I’ve wanted to do that ever since I read Mr. Galliano’s Circus by Enid Blyton,” she stated.
“How about a journalist?”
“They twist words and print rubbish.”
“A flight attendant?”
“They clean toilets on planes.”
“A teacher?”
“Hate kids.”
“So what would you be doing in a circus?”
“I’d be a fortune-teller,” she said, wrapping her tie around her head. “I would tell the yuppies that the stock market was going to fall and watch them go berserk.”
“Tell me my fortune, Madame Lee,” I said theatrically.
She grabbed my hand and looked at my palm.
“You, my dear Josephine, will travel the world in pursuit of happiness and find it.”
“Where? In Rome? Paris? New York?”
“Redfern. He will make you happy and give you ten bambinos. You will breed with this man and the world will follow your example of
crossbreeding. They will call it the ‘Alibrandi’ method and you will become famous.”
“Jacob Coote? Get out of here.”
“He was staring you out like crazy in there. For God’s sake, Jose, I’m envious. He is hot. He is without pretension. He’s the only person I know who will not put up with your melodrama.”
“Melodrama? Thanks a lot.”
“Jose, believe me,” she said when we stopped at the top of the stairs that led to the road. “Your problems are out there, I believe that. But they’re small. They only grow out of proportion when they climb inside your head.
They grow because of insignificant people like Carly and Poison Ivy and Sera, who feed on them because they know how you feel.”
I looked at her and nodded with a smile, and we gave each other a small, embarrassed hug.
After we went our separate ways I sat at the bus stop talking to my cousin Robert’s best friend, who goes to St. Anthony’s. His bus came soon after, and before I knew what was happening, Jacob Coote was sitting next to me.
“Who was that?” he whispered angrily.
“Jacob, get lost. That really upset Anna. You don’t know how sensitive she is.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, grabbing my hand. “Listen, we’ll start over again, okay.”
I looked at his clear green eyes, which always seemed so warm and sincere no matter how bad he looked at times. Eyes, my mother told me, never lie.
“Did you end up watching the movie that night?” I asked sulkily.
“No, I went and picked up a girl and screwed her brains out.”
I looked at him, unamused, knowing he was lying.
“That’s what you want to hear, isn’t it?” he asked.
“No, not really.”
“I went home,” he said gently. “Satisfied?”
I looked around at anything but him and he leaned forward and kissed me slowly on the mouth.
“Another chance,” he said. “We were both hotheaded and I said things I didn’t mean. I’ll never say them again. Cross my heart and hope to die.”
“And never lie again?”
He kissed me again and I looked around, embarrassed.
“People will see,” I said, stepping away. “We’re at a bus stop.”
He grabbed my hand and squeezed it, looking pleased with himself.
“You’ll have to come over again and redeem yourself with my mother,” I told him honestly. “She was very unimpressed.”
He shrugged. “I’ve lived through it once.”
I hugged him quickly, noticing that the bus was approaching.
“I’ll meet you at Harley’s at four-thirty tomorrow.”
“I work.”
“Hell,” he cursed. “How about after work?”
“Can’t.”
“Wanna cut?”
I looked around, agitated. I didn’t want to do things behind my mother’s back, but there was no other time to see him.
“Poison Ivy wouldn’t cut.”
“You’re not Poison Ivy. You’re no saint, Josephine, so don’t try acting like one.”
I covered my face and shook my head. “Okay,” I said. “Eight-thirty Friday morning at Circular Quay.”
He looked excited and I was pleased. Captain of Cook High, leader among the boys of the school community and voted sexiest male in the rebel St. Martha’s poll, and he was excited because I was going out with him.
He kissed me quickly this time and looked up when the bus stopped.
“I’ll be waiting.”
I stepped on the bus, waiting for the person in front of me to pay.
“I’ll take you to go and see that prejudice movie,” he yelled.
“Pride and Prejudice,” I called out. “It’s very romantic.”
I sat on the bus grinning from ear to ear, and wondered if I’d have something interesting to confess at confession next quarter.
