One Whole and Perfect Day Read Free

stayed there. He’d flicked again. And again.
    ‘Oh, leave it!’ hissed Lily.
    Outside in the street it was raining. Mum had been home with the flu. Lon had just dropped out of his economics course. The fridge was packing up and the person Lonnie called Dad had forgotten to ring Lily on her birthday. Not that she cared about that – he always did it, forgot and then rang three months later, upsetting her all over again. Once he’d even got her name wrong. He’d called her Lolly. Lolly! It was strange how someone you didn’t know could make you feel as if you didn’t matter.
    A wind from the Antarctic had scoured their faces as they emerged from the supermarket, and on the median strip in the middle of the highway, perched dangerously between two roaring streams of traffic, Lon had grabbed her arm.
    ‘We needed something laughing,’ he’d said.
    ‘What?’
    ‘That’s why I wanted it, the cream cheese. So there’d be something in the house that laughs. Even if it was only the cow on the cheese packet. “ La vache qui rit .” ’
    She couldn’t help noticing how perfect his accent was, how he’d sounded exactly like Mme Bispin at school. So how come he’d failed his oral French exam back in Year 12? Lonnie was a total mystery. Trucks and cars had roared round their tiny traffic island, the rain had pelted down, Lonnie’s face had gone vague and dreamy, as if his soul had been beamed up to some distant corner of the universe and only his shell was left here for Lily and Mum to mind. When a break came in the traffic she had to tweak at his arm.
    ‘C’mon’ she’d said gently, as if he were some frail and helpless creature she’d taken for a walk. ‘C’mon, Lon, let’s go home.’
    What would Lon be having for dinner tonight? wondered Lily, dragging herself back into the present, their gloomy kitchen and the spaghetti sauce. Now he no longer shared their life and was out there in the big wide world on his own. Cheeseburgers from the takeaway? Hot chips? Pot noodles warmed in hot water in the kitchen of the boarding house she and Mum had never seen? If it even had a kitchen . . .
    She glanced up at the clock. Almost six: Mum would soon be home. What would it be like to have a dad come home from work and in the door each evening? Lily shook her head, dismissing such a fantasy, took up the knife and began to chop onions again. No matter how hard she scrubbed in the shower, she was sure the smell of them stayed in her skin and hair.

3

MARIGOLD
    In her small stuffy office at the daycare centre, Lily’s mother was about to turn off her computer.
    ‘Leonie!’ she called to her assistant. ‘Leonie!’
    Marigold liked to have someone right beside her when she closed down, because you never knew what might happen, did you? Computers weren’t rational, they were random. Like family life, thought Marigold. ‘Leonie?’
    There was no reply. Marigold glanced at her watch and saw that it was after six. Leonie would be gone then; she always left on the dot of 5.30.
    Marigold leaned in towards the computer, so close her nose almost touched the screen. She pressed the commands lightly, as if she feared electric shock, sucking in her breath, holding it, sharp and painful, deep down in her lungs as she waited to see if things would go smoothly, or if some terrifying message would leap onto the screen. Perhaps that nerve-racking box would appear, the long grey box of small squares where you had to wait, alert and trembling, till every square filled itself in.
    Tonight the process went without a hitch: Logging Off came up on a sky of perfect blue, the musical chimes rang out, and Marigold was free. She leaned back in her chair and yawned in sheer relief: ‘Ooooh-aaaah!’
    It hadn’t been a bad day, she reflected. No one wandering from the premises, no adventurous old person sneaking through the gates and trailing down the highway, imagining it was a Saturday night in l937 and the Roxy dance hall was just around the