Paper Alice Read Free

baby’s lap, the father came out, scooped up his protesting son and carriedhim back inside. Not even giving poor Ball Boy another throw.
    Strange, isn’t it? I’ve watched this family from when that dog was a puppy and the baby wasn’t even born. I feel as though I almost know them and yet we’ve never exchanged a word. The back fence is too high for that.
    On one side of them is what I called the Creepy Crawly house. Though there’s nothing Gothic about it; it’s ultra-modern. But just about the only thing you see moving in the stone-paved, box-hedged courtyard is the Creepy Crawly cleaning thing, inching its way around the lap pool. Occasionally its owner, a middle-aged man with grey crinkly hair who wears cardigans and trousers pulled up over his stomach, comes out to check the chlorine levels, but I’ve never seen him have a swim.
    On the far side was the most interesting place, unrenovated and obviously rented, full of guys and girls who looked like musos. They played a lot of what sounded like original music, often heavy metal, but sometimes more melodic stuff that I liked. Today there was a couple of them sitting out on the concrete on rickety old chairs, chatting in the late afternoon sun.
    This lot left their washing on the line for days on end. Particularly one blouse, pretty and delicate and kind of retro-looking, which had been hanging there for weeks. It made me sad to see it left all forlorn when the other clothes were taken in. I kept wondering why no one rescued it. You could write a story about it, I thought: The Sad Little Shirt . Or a song . . .
    There was movement below, in our own courtyard. Mum, a spray bottle of weedkiller in her gloved hands,was stooping to attack some weeds that had dared to sprout between the pavers. Despite the lateness of the hour she still had on a big sunhat and one of Dad’s old long-sleeved shirts, plus a mask, just in case of inhaling any fumes.
    You’d think she’d have had enough of wearing a mask during the week. She is, of all things, a dentist: a partner in a practice in a nearby suburb.
    You’d never pick it to meet her. A successful businesswoman, perhaps, or the headmistress of a snooty girls’ school, but not a dentist.
    â€˜I can’t believe your mum’s a dentist!’ some of my friends have remarked, over the years. ‘She could’ve been a model!’
    But I don’t think so. She may have had the figure and the looks, but our Marisa would never have done anything as show-offish as modelling. And anyway, as I’ve known from my very first preschool check-up with her, she’s a very good dentist. Her gaze might sometimes be vague and cloudy at home, but at work it positively shines with concentration, a little frown of absorption on her brow, instruments gleaming in her hands. She’s booked up months ahead with devoted patients who send her cards and gifts at Christmas, and sometimes even thank-you flowers during the year.
    Even so, dentistry and my mother seemed an uneasy fit. Unlike Dad, she hardly ever mentioned her work at home, or at least not in my hearing. It was as though it was a part of her life to be kept completely separate. Like her white coat: to be put on when she walked through the surgery door, and taken off when she left in the evening.
    And she often arrived home at night looking all paleand closed-off, like a shuttered-up house. On these nights she’d go straight to the piano in the family room and sit down and play, sometimes without even taking off her coat. And play, and play. Chopin, Debussy, Rachmaninoff, Beethoven – the music would pour forth, filling every nook and cranny of our airy, modern town house.
    If I was currently in a good mood with her I’d go and lie on the nearest sofa, close my eyes, and let it ripple all over me. When I was little I even used to put on my leotard and slippers and dance about the room, in which case she’d