My sister’s eyebrows quirk. She looks just like Mum when she does that. ‘Someone’s in a good mood!’
For Shaka’s sake! How hard is it to call me by my proper name? That dog is now taking chunks out of my ankles. My sister thinks I’m overreacting, and maybe I am, but – damn it! – it would be great if just one thing could go right today.
Dinner with Sonny had been a disaster, to say the least. I’d been on my best behaviour, making an effort to get on with him for Mum’s sake, but then the topic of conversation had moved on to politics. Like most self-made rich people I’ve come across, he was of the view that, if he could make something of himself, so could and should everyone else.
It was after he made a pointed comment about how, when he was my age, he was already out working full-time that the gloves came off.
‘Showing your true colours?’ I asked Sonny. ‘I never took you to be an “I’m all right, Jack, go ahead and pull the ladder up” kinda guy.’
‘I am not,’ Sonny said with indignation. ‘But too many people these days are looking for handouts. If I want something, I go after it and nothing gets in my way.’
‘Well, bully for you,’ I said with disdain. ‘Some people work just as hard if not harder than you, but simply aren’t as lucky.’
‘Troy …’ warned Mum.
‘Lucky? I make my own luck,’ Sonny told me. ‘Always have done. You wanna know some other names for luck? Bloody hard work! Dedication. Persistence.’
‘Bullshit.’
‘Troy!’ said Mum.
Sonny’s lip curls in disdain. ‘You’re here in this huge six-bedroom house surrounded by a couple of acres of manicured lawns and you’re going to lecture me about working hard for what I have? Seriously?’
‘Sonny!’ Mum admonished.
‘Mum, he’s talking out of his —’
‘TROY! SONNY! That’s enough. Troy – apologize at once!’ said Mum.
‘Pfft! For what?’
At which point, Mum did her nut, yelling at both of us. She insisted that we change the subject, but the damage was done. Dinner after that had been uncomfortable to say the least. I said no to dessert and escaped to my room, and for once Mum was happy to let me leave the table early.
‘So why’re you in such a bad mood, squirt?’ asks Callie. ‘Did someone at school steal your crayons?’
Ha bloody ha! OK, so my sister is ages older than me – well, eighteen years older to be precise – but I’m taller than her, better-looking, just as smart and not her baby brother any more. So hardly a squirt.
‘For all you knew, I might’ve been fast asleep,’ I point out.
‘Not likely.’ Callie indicates my laptop. ‘Which government institution were you hacking into?’
‘Was doing my Chemistry homework actually.’
‘Yeah, right,’ says Callie. ‘And it says something that I think you’re hacking into somewhere you shouldn’t rather than trying to find footage of men or women displaying all they have and haven’t got.’
‘If I were trying to find films like that, it’d be of women, not men,’ I tell her.
‘Whatever,’ Callie says dismissively. ‘I couldn’t care less which way your pendulum swings.’
I shake my head. ‘Is there something in particular you wanted or are you just here to be generally annoying?’
‘OK, spill, Troy. What’s biting you? We usually have to be together for a least five minutes before you try to pick a fight.’ Callie sits on the chair by my desk, only to immediately leap up again. A frown, a quick glance down and then she lets rip.
‘What the actual hell? Troy, I swear every time I come into your room, I feel like I need a tetanus shot.’ Callie removes a less than fresh pair of underpants from the chair. Holding them gingerly by the waistband between her index finger and thumb, and as far away from her nose as she can get them, she drops my underpants on the floor like they’re toxic. They aren’t that bad!
‘Troy, you are disgusting,’ Callie says with some force. ‘How are we related?’
‘Like this, sis.’
‘I’d shift your underwear into the laundry basket before Mum sees it if I were you,’ my sister warns.
‘Don’t nag. Damn, I get enough of that from Mum.’
‘Don’t be such a slob then. I was never like that,’ says my sister.
‘No, you were perfect in every way.’ Is that a hint of sour in my voice? Hell, yes. Though Callie’s immediate snort of self-derision makes me smile and the sour fades.
‘Perfect?’ Callie’s eyebrows shoot way up. ‘Boy, you have no idea what I was like when I was your age, but I was about as far removed from perfect as it’s possible to get.’
‘Mum’s always going on about how you knuckled down and got on with your schoolwork when you were in your late teens,’ I say, before adopting Mum’s voice and tone. ‘“Callie very rarely went out at your age. Callie focused on her studies. Your sister was determined to make something of herself. What’re you doing with your life, Troy?” And on and on ad nauseam.’
‘Get Mum to tell you about me and Uncle Jude some time,’ says Callie quietly.
‘Your dad’s brother?’
Callie nods. My sister very rarely talks about her childhood and, every time she does, there’s a palpable sense of sadness that flows from her before she changes the subject. But now she’s actually inviting me to speak to Mum about her past? That’s a first. I open my mouth to ask more, but then I notice her expression. Whoa! From the look on my sister’s face, her thoughts have plunged her into some dark waters. Any lingering traces of resentment are banished in an instant. Callie isn’t sitting with me in my room any more. No, she’s long ago and far away. Lips pursed, eyes glistening, body absolutely still and hunched; my sister’s reminiscences aren’t exactly accompanied by joy. Was she thinking about her dad again and how she never got to meet him?
‘Penny for them?’ I say.
‘My thoughts aren’t worth that much,’ she replies, still focused on the past.
Time to drag my sister back to the present.
‘Callie, what d’you think of Sonny?’ I say the first thing that comes into my head.
My sister’s eyes snap back to mine, immediately alert. Like a butterfly emerging from a cocoon, Callie my sister has retreated and Callie the lawyer is out and beating her wings.
‘Why d’you ask?’
‘Callie, don’t go all barrister on me.’ I grimace. ‘Just give me a straight answer. What d’you think of him? D’you trust him?’
‘Is there any reason why I shouldn’t?’
For Shaka’s sake! Getting a straight answer is like trying to get blood from a piece of flint.
‘Sonny loves Mum. He has done ever since I can remember,’ Callie says carefully. ‘He’ll make her happy. Don’t you think Mum deserves to be happy?’
I nod. ‘Yeah, she does.’
‘Troy, what’s going on in that head of yours?’ She comes over to sit next to me.
I shrug. ‘Just worrying about nothing.’