Flesh & Blood Read online

  Mum’s polite recording invited me to leave her a message, so I put on my best Dutiful Daughter voice and did exactly that: I thanked her for her messages, and explained I was on a plane when she’d left them. I had absolutely no idea how Henry was but I told her he was well anyway, and apologised for not calling back sooner because my friends had thrown me a party.

  And I’m trans-something, and I broke up with Henry and I’ve fallen for a penniless, white, atheist schoolgirl, I mentally added as I hung up, dropped my phone on the passenger side and leant against my seat. She’d play that message to Grandma, probably, and maybe even her Church friends when they asked about me. Henry told me once that she kept every single message I left so she could share them with people and tell them all about her Daughter Who Lives in Australia.

  I sighed. Well, I couldn’t stay parked outside some stranger's house all day, could I? I put my car into gear and drove back to Sarah’s.

  Rob was still asleep when I got home, and despite the fact Sarah always promised me he could sleep through a hurricane, I tip-toed around the house just to be polite. His hangover was probably at least as bad as Sarah’s.

  I got stuck into quietly cleaning up the living room and the kitchen before I wound down enough to think clearly about what had happened this morning: I’d freaked the fuck out over nothing and made an enormous drama over what was essentially just my mum being my mum. She always called repeatedly, always. And since she had no cause to believe anything had changed other than the fact I’d left work, it stood to reason that she wouldn’t change what she did, either. And yet, I’d been stressing over it, absolutely fucking sure the world would end, and probably doing that ‘teeth-grindy’ thing Bree always accused me of.

  I had a mental image of Bree waggling a finger at me and saying sternly, ‘You’re worrying too much again!’ I wanted to text her and tell her she’d been right, except that she still hadn’t replaced her phone.

  I should get her one, I thought. My final pay from Frost hadn’t come through yet, but I had enough money from Broome— despite how many presents I’d bought her there— that could probably get her a pretty decent one and still have heaps left over. It was Friday night, too, so we could make a night of it without interfering with her homework. I could give her all those presents, get her a phone, and just generally thank her for giving me something in my life I didn’t need to worry about.

  I’d need to pick her up from school, though, because it took her a couple of hours to get back to Sarah’s by public transport, and we probably wouldn’t have enough time to have a proper look around otherwise. I agonised over whether or not I should bother Bree’s friends to pass on a message to her, but in the end decided it would be for the last time, anyway.

  I took my phone out of my pocket, opened the Facebook app and tapped on Courtney’s portrait. “Hey, sorry to bother you, are you in class?”

  It wasn’t even ten seconds before she replied. “Oh hello there… yeah but we’re doing a group exercise. What’s up?”

  “Could you ask Bree to wait for me out the front where I dropped her off today? I’ll pick her up after school.”

  This time, Courtney took longer to reply. “Ummm ok? If I see her, I’ll tell her :)”

  I frowned. “Aren’t you two in the same classes?”

  “Yeah we are but I haven’t seen her today. I kinda thought she was spending the day with you?”

  Bree, I thought, groaning. I’d dropped her there this morning, for crying out loud.

  I typed a short thanks to Courtney and then l let my hand fall into my lap. Well, so much for having a nice, restful afternoon relaxing and unpacking and having nothing to worry about.

  THREE

  I shouldn’t have waited outside Bree’s school, I shouldn’t have. Courtney never messaged me back to tell me that she’d spoken to Bree, so really I had no cause to be here because Bree obviously wasn’t. So what was I doing here?

  You are trying to catch Bree in the act of hiding things from you, Min, admit it, a voice answered me. Which is not fair, because Bree doesn’t have to tell you everything she does.

  “Yeah, but it would be nice if she’d tell me anything she does,” I said aloud, and then realised I was talking to myself with my window down, parked outside a high school, and then felt really self-conscious.

  People were already glancing nervously towards me anyway, because apparently young Asian guys didn’t park their scary black Lexuses outside Cloverfield very often. It was going to look even worse when she didn’t come, too, like I was some perv who was just here salivating over the hot high school girls in their short little skirts. I put my hands up on the steering wheel so people could see them, but it didn’t stop all the Landrover-driving white soccer mums from frowning at me like I had my tongue hanging out of my mouth over their daughters.

  It serves you right for trying to trap Bree, I told myself.

  I mean, what did I really think I was going to do when Bree didn’t show up? Did I really think I was going to go home and confront her over it? I couldn’t see myself doing that, because not only was it an enormous dick move, at some point Courtney would tell Bree I’d spoken to her. Then, it would be clear that I’d come here knowing there was the potential Bree wouldn’t arrive for the sole purpose of trying to force a confrontation with her later.

  And, Min, that’s fucked, I realised. I couldn’t force Bree to tell me anything, no matter how much I worried about her. And yet, here I was, in the middle of trying to convince myself that I wasn’t an asshole prick, sitting outside her school when I knew she wouldn’t be—

  “Oh my god, hi!” The passenger side door opened abruptly and gave me the fright of my life: I’d been looking out towards the gate.

  Bree swung into my car with a giant grin on her face, and I must have jumped a mile because she laughed at me as she stuffed her schoolbag under her feet. “Sorry to burst in like that, but this is awesome! I didn’t know you were going to pick me up, too! Is this, like, payback for throwing you a surprise party yesterday? You’re picking me up from school by surprise?”

  I gaped at her for a second. How was she....? “You’re here?”

  She looked amused. “Um, yeah? Remember how it’s a school day you and dropped me off here this morning…?”

  I was still trying to figure out how she got here if she wasn’t at school all day. Did she come back to school for some reason?

  Bree reached across and gently closed my jaw. “Um, you do realise that when you do something for someone by surprise, you don’t actually need to also be surprised, yeah…?”

  I gave her a look. She was clearly waiting for an explanation and if I told her anything other than the truth, I was going to look pretty fucking hypocritical, wasn’t l? “Courtney mentioned you weren’t at school, so I wasn’t sure you were going to get the message that I’m picking you up.”

  Something passed over her face. In a second, it was gone. “Well, I’m here, aren’t I? I had some other stuff to finish so I had to miss a few classes, but I’m definitely here! See?” She didn’t let me ask what the ‘other stuff’ was, because she immediately donned that coy smile and gave me some serious bedroom eyes. “That is,” she said, pretending to be about to undo her shirt buttons, “unless you’re just imagining me...”

  Yeah, I’m fantasising you tell me what’s going on, I thought, but just sighed at her and turned on the engine. She didn’t want to tell me, that much was clear. Maybe it was something embarrassing, then? To say Bree didn’t do that well at school was a serious understatement, so maybe she was taking remedial classes or something. I didn’t want to prompt her to tell me anything that might ruin her good mood. It was nice to see her happy.

  “You look worried,” Bree observed, watching me from the passenger seat as we left the school. “Are you still worried about the messages? Were they all from your mum, or…?” She was trying her very best to look innocent.

  She was the opposite of innocent, and I gave her a sideway
s glance. “I think you know the answer to that, Miss Singing-in-the-Library.”

  She giggled. “Oh my god, I wondered if you’d actually listened to them or just deleted them!” she told me. “Yeah! I was going to wait until the party to sing to you but I decided it would actually be pretty awesome if you got off the plane and the first thing you heard was—”

  “—someone shouting at me from across Arrivals?”

  She made a face. “Well, you were supposed to listen to it before we met up. But, yeah, anyway. Who were the rest from? Were they from your mum after all, or, like, did Henry or someone leave some as well?”

  I sighed. “No, they were from Mum.”

  “Oh,” she said diplomatically. “Well, what’s she up to at the moment? Busy with your grandma?”

  “Calling Henry repeatedly when I don’t answer.”

  “Oh,” she repeated, this time scrunching up her face.

  “I know,” I sighed, and then reflexively checked my phone despite the fact I was driving and it was all sorts of illegal. “I called her this morning and left a message, but she hasn’t called me back yet, so that’s something to look forward to...”

  “It will be fine,” Bree told me, making me put my phone away again. “It’s just your mum. She’ll just want to wish you a happy birthday and nag you a bit, it’ll be okay. So, anyway!” She said, changing the subject. “It’s Friday, and you know what that means?”

  “That I’m stuck with you all weekend?”

  She shoved me. “No,” she said. “We can go out somewhere because we don’t have to get up really early!”

  “Don’t you have homework?” I asked, wondering if it would lead into a discussion about what she’d been up to all day.

  It didn’t. “Uh, nothing I can’t leave until 9pm on Sunday night,” she told me. “Come on, look! The city is right there.” She pointed at an exit that was coming up on the M1 and started reeling off a long list of stuff we could do, but I didn’t change lanes until she got to, “And think about it, if your mum calls you back, it will be really loud and you will be out in public so it’s not like you can have a super long conversation with her, yeah?”

  Good point. “Sold,” I said, and took the exit. “I was actually thinking we could do something else tonight, because we always go to the city.”

  “You always go to the city,” Bree corrected me. “I hardly ever go, at least not until I met you. Anyway, I love the city, and not just because it’s where I met you, but also because it’s so full of people, you know? And half the people there are tourists and they’re always excited and happy, and that makes for a really great atmosphere.”

  After we’d driven around and found a park, I had to agree with Bree's assessment about the ‘great atmosphere’. While I was working at Frost, I could count the times I’d left before five on a single hand, which meant I’d never experienced a Friday afternoon in Sydney Central. People were leaving work early and piling into bars and cafés for late afternoon drinks, and it was clear from the spring in everyone’s step and the laughter from outdoor dining areas that they were all relaxed and looking forward to the weekend.

  It was weird not to be part of that crowd anymore—not that I ever had been, really. My weekends had always involved work, but that was because I had work. I wasn’t part of all these people who were going home or going out to relax and unwind, but their mood was contagious anyway. It was nice strolling hand-in-hand with Bree through it, not wearing heels, not wearing a dress and just generally enjoying the buzz.

  “I always thought it was a really pretty logo,” Bree said thoughtfully, looking up at Frost HQ’s snowflake on the skyline. “Even before I found out you worked at Frost.”

  I snorted. “Pity about the people who run it.”

  “I know,” she said as we wandered past some shop windows. “I just think it’s pretty, and it would be cool to have a name that means something, too, and not just one no one can spell. ‘Lee’ must be great for that.”

  “Sure. Everyone takes one look at my face and spells it L-I.”

  “Still,” she said, swinging our arms. “It’s easier than ‘Dejanovic’. ‘Bree Lee’ sounds weird, though, doesn’t it? I’ll have to go by my full name after we get married, Briana Lee. That sounds way more balanced.”

  After we get… I stopped in place in the middle of the footpath. “Bree, we’ve been going out for a month, don’t you think it’s a little early to start planning marriage?”

  She rolled her eyes at me. “Don’t most serious relationships start with the kind of, like, unspoken expectation that you’re looking for someone to grow old with?”

  “Yes. The unspoken expectation.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m ‘spoking’ it,” she told me, not paying any attention to the people walking around us and eavesdropping, “because it’s silly pretending that’s not what we’re looking for, isn’t it? So, yeah, of course I expect we’ll eventually get married, and when we do, I’ll be Briana Lee.”

  I don’t know why I was surprised Bree would openly talk about it; on what I’d come to recognise as our first date in that enormous and expensive restaurant in Darling Harbour, Bree had already asked me how many children I wanted, and then told me she wanted ‘heaps’. Still, with all the stuff that was going on with Mum and with Henry, I couldn’t even fathom marrying a girl. I couldn’t fathom marrying at all, not yet. I was only just recently free from a future where I was Henry’s wife and mother to Henry’s children.

  It was a moot point right now, anyway. “Two females can’t get married in Australia,” I pointed out as we started walking again. “So no one’s officially taking anyone’s name just yet.”

  Bree shrugged. “Well, that’ll change eventually,” she said. “And if it doesn’t, you lean towards ‘M’ rather than ‘F’, don’t you? So if you decide to go through the whole thing of getting your documents changed to that, we can.”

  That was something I hadn’t even really considered so when Bree stopped again to admire some clothes in a shop window, I just looked at my reflection. I looked pretty ‘M’, didn’t I? Even if ‘man’ felt a bit… well, not exactly right? It was an interesting thought.

  Bree got sick of the clothes and tugged me along the footpath again. I drew alongside her while she chatted about her school friends as if everything was fine and she wasn’t hiding something from me. When there was a break in the conversation, I commented, “You know, it’s pretty interesting what you choose to ‘spoke’ about and what you choose not to.”

  “At least I’m not boring,” she said sagely. That made me laugh.

  When we passed mobile phone store, I stopped and Bree kept walking. I whistled at her to get her attention, and when she turned around, I nodded my head inside the shop. Her face lit up when she saw what it was, and she practically skipped over to me. “Really?” she said, “Really?”

  “Really.”

  She wrapped her arms around me and squeezed, gushed a big torrent of thank yous and then grabbed my arm to drag me in.

  The sales clerk had watched that whole scene and was smiling to himself as Bree galloped up to him and said, “I need something, like, really cheap or really old!”

  The clerk gave me a really baffled look. “Well, that’s a first,” he said to me. I chuckled along with him as he showed Bree a selection of handsets. In the end, she didn’t choose a really old phone, she just chose a Chinese brand I’d never heard of which did fortunately fit the criteria of ‘really cheap’. She made the clerk promise several times that no pawn store in Sydney would ever buy it. “We don’t even do warrantees for those here,” he told her. “We have to send them overseas to be fixed.”

  It didn’t matter to Bree that she’d gotten some shit knock-off phone, though, she couldn’t wait to tear into the package almost the second we were out of the store. “Oh my god, I’m coming back to the twenty-first century!” She pulled the phone out of its package and smiled down at it. “And it feels so totally flimsy and light, too. Andrej
won’t bother stealing it, I’m sure: it’d cost more to get a train to the pawn store than what he’d get for it.” She hugged me again. “Why are you so awesome?”

  I shook my head. “Don’t thank me too much, it’s mostly self-interest,” I told her. “I just want you to always be able to tell me where you are if plans change.” I looked directly at her and there was supposed to be an implied so tell me where you were today, but either Bree didn’t notice it, or she just very skilfully ignored it.

  “Yeah, but you wouldn’t have had to buy me one in the first place if my stupid brother would stay out of the fucking casino,” she said, and sighed as we wandered into Hyde Park and settled down on the grass so she could play with her new toy. “It sucks that you have to spend so much money on me because of him.”

  “So much?” I asked her. “Please, that was barely a hundred bucks. Just wait until you see what I got you from Broome.”

  She looked up from her phone, a delighted smile growing on her face. “You bought me a present?”

  “Nope.” As her face fell, I elaborated. “I did not buy you a present. I bought you several presents.”

  She made a growling noise and smacked me gently with the box. “Oh my god, I hate it when you do that,” and when I went to be smart about the fact it sounded like she was telling me not to buy her presents, she just threw the whole packaging at me. “And I hate it when you do that! You know what I mean! Stop making fun of me when I say things wrong!”

  I dodged the box, retrieved it and then lay back down on the grass while she read all about the features of her new phone in the booklet it came with, fingers laced with mine.

  It was a really beautiful early winter evening; the grass was warm because the sun had been out all day, and as it set – a beautiful orange and pink behind the skyscrapers— people were milling around the fountain, taking pictures of each other in the fading light, and wandering arm-in-arm through the park. I watched traffic on Elizabeth Street start to turn on all their headlights, and shopfront signage begin to stand out against the darkening buildings. And I wasn’t at work, I wasn’t stuck in an apartment doing work, I was lying out in a park watching the sunset with someone who was… humming really out of tune. I chuckled to myself at that.