Page 2 of Birds of a Feather

After leaving the bathroom, I found Gran waiting by the front door. I leaned down to hug her; her tiny shoulders slipped under my armpits and her short-cropped hair gently tickled underneath my chin. She always seemed tiny; I was taller than her by the time I was twelve. But lately she seemed even smaller, and the hunch she had developed through years of looking down a microscope had become more pronounced.

She had a light-pink silk scarf adorned with flowers draped around her neck and was wearing a pair of silver gumleaf earrings from her extensive collection.

‘You look nice,’ I said. ‘I like the earrings.’

She smiled, and jiggled her head to make her earrings dance below her lobes. ‘You ready?’ she asked.

I shrugged my shoulders defeatedly.

On our way out, we passed by ‘Herrick’, who Gran had rescued from a garage sale the previous month. Herrick was a jackalope – a taxidermied head of a rabbit, fitted with a large pair of forked deer antlers and mounted on a dark timber plate. Apparently, the myth of the jackalope began when American colonists spotted rabbits with warty growths on their heads and then some crafty taxidermists from Wyoming attached a pair of antlers to a rabbit’s head and sold them for a lark. Now they hung in bars and tourist haunts all over Wyoming – and above Gran’s fireplace.

‘Goodbye, Herrick,’ she called merrily.

‘Goodbye, Herrick,’ I echoed.

As silly as it was, I was a little jealous of him. He didn’t have to deal with my family.

Chapter 2

Beth

‘Hola!’ my father bellowed as he threw open the front door.

He was wearing a sombrero and a multicoloured poncho. I recognised the poncho as the one he’d bought when he and Mum travelled to South America for four months when I was in primary school. They’d left my siblings and me with Gran and Grandpa.

‘Como estas? Come ’ere.’ He grabbed for me, pulled me into a big hug and kissed me loudly on the cheek. ‘How’s my girl?’

‘I’m good, Dad,’ I replied breathlessly; most of the air had been squeezed from my chest.

I pulled back to survey him. His sombrero was askew, having been displaced by our embrace. Up close, I could see he had used an eyeliner pencil to draw on a moustache. My first instinct was to call him out for cultural appropriation, but I had enough experience with family lunches to know that they usually went better if conversations like those were saved until after we’d exchanged greetings.

‘Hi, Elise.’ He turned to Gran with a giant smile. They kissed each other’s cheeks.

‘Darling, you look FAB-U-LOUS,’ she gushed. ‘If I’d known it was a Mexican-themed lunch, I would have dressed up too.’

‘Oh, it was a little last-minute. We accidentally drank all the wine in the house last night,’ he chuckled, turning to walk back inside. ‘But we had some tequila and Cointreau. So, I figured, when life gives you lemons … you make margaritas. So, it’s a Mexican fiesta – isn’t it, Rosie?’

‘Ohhhh … they’re here,’ my mother cooed as she appeared from the kitchen. She was wearing a Frida Kahlo-esque floral headdress made from large, brightly coloured flowers. She looked magnificent.

People often described Mum as ‘breathtakingly beautiful’. Her eyes were a striking aqua, and her wild curly hair – once a vibrant strawberry blonde, but now a little lighter – was often decorated with coloured paint that had strayed from the paintbrushes she wielded.

‘Mum,’ she said, wrapping her olive-skinned arms around Gran. ‘How are you doing?’

‘I’m good, darling.’ Gran looked Mum up and down like she was admiring a magnificent piece of art. ‘You all look wonderful.’

‘Thanks,’ she said, through a broad smile, her eyes twinkling. There was no question she was at her most beautiful when she smiled. The lines that had developed around her eyes, down her cheeks and across the bridge of her nose didn’t seem to age her, but endearingly animated her smile and added to its warmth. And her laugh was a raucous, joyous, contagious sound that reverberated around even the densest space.

Growing up, I’d found it mortifying.

Mum launched into a lively description of how some neighbours – ‘the ones from number fourteen that we always thought were a bit odd’ – had seen them in the front yard and suggested they all have a drink. It turned out that they were a bit odd, but they also were a lot of fun. One drink turned into one bottle, which turned into one big night.

‘Can you believe they’ve lived down the road from us for nearly five years, and we’ve only just discovered them?’ Mum mused. ‘Think of all the fun we could have had.’

I hoped the odd couple from number fourteen knew what they were getting into. My parents had a habit of becoming fast friends with other couples. They would share an intense friendship, living in each other’s pockets, until the couple retreated back into their life of suburban normalcy, completely worn out. My parents had an insatiable stamina for life and a vitality that exhausted most others. Few other couples could keep up for the long haul.

‘Who’s for a drink?’ Dad asked, while waving a blender jug in one hand and three upturned cocktail glasses in the other.

‘I’ll have one,’ Jarrah said, materialising from down the hall.

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