Page 8 of The Story of Us
“Just take a deep breath, go to your happy place and work your magic.”
If only writing was that easy.
* * *
There wereseveral benefits to living with one’s grandmother like being woken each day with a cup of steaming peppermint tea on her bedside table. Then Joanie would leave the door open and let the crooners from the sixties coax Eloise out of bed and into the real world. When Eloise had moved in five years ago to help Joanie recover from one of her hip replacements, the plan had always been for it to be a short-term thing but she’d just … never left.
The television in the lounge room was on mute, with closed captions rolling across the screen. Her grandmother’s only coffee of the day was on its usual coaster, next to her iPhone. Joanie looked up from the book she’d been reading—a slow-burn, second-chance romance she’d taken from Eloise’s bookcase.
“What do you think of it?” Eloise asked.
“The main guy sounds like a fox. Bet there are a few things I could teach him. I was pretty flexible back in the day.”
It was a good thing Eloise hadn’t had breakfast yet. Innuendo never paired well with a full stomach. Neither did knowing her grandmother’s sex life had been far more exciting than hers was or had ever been.
“Don’t look at me like that.”
Eloise blinked. “Like what?”
“Like I shouldn’t say those things.”
“I didn’t …”
Joanie put her book down and crossed her legs. Her toenails were a shocking orange. At this rate, one day, her grandmother would start glowing in the dark. “I spent my whole life doing the right thing, doing what I was supposed to because I didn’t have a choice. Now I’m on my own”—her pencilled-on eyebrows crept up her wrinkled forehead—“in the twilight of my life, I’m determined to enjoy myself. Maybe you’d like to give it a go sometime.”
Eloise didn’t know what to say. On the one hand, she was happy for Joanie. Based on the stories she’d heard about her grandmother’s childhood, there’d been a lot of rules and pressure to be the perfect child. Then Joanie and local boy George Mandrill had married young, and while their relationship wasn’t an unhappy one, it hadn’t been what a romance author would describe as a love match. And things had got very complicated when their fifteen-year-old daughter came home pregnant. When George died in a tragic small plane crash fifteen years ago, Joanie said it was a wake-up call. She’d decided to live her life to the fullest.
“I do enjoy myself,” Eloise grumbled.
Her grandmother lifted her book, plucking the leather bookmark with a buttery yellow pom-pom at the top that Eloise had made her in primary school out of the pages. “You could’ve enjoyed yourself a lot more last night. That dress, and the girl in it, was a slam dunk. Or a goal. Which is the football one?”
“Before or after I set everything on fire?”
Joanie didn’t bother looking up. “Please. It was all a bit of a snooze fest before that. You lost your chance to have a lot of fun when you decided you couldn’t compete with the maid of honour. He wasn’t interested in her.”
Eloise’s breath caught in her throat, and she flopped onto the light pink couch her grandmother had bought a few years ago.
Joanie turned a page delicately. “Nate’s had his eye on someone else for a long time, anyway.”
Eloise buried her face in the fluffy cushion next to her. Of course, Nate wanted someone else. She’d been such a fool to think a pretty dress and high heels would make him look at her differently. He’d had plenty of time to look at her over the years and never made a move. The closest they’d ever got to having a moment had been over a year ago when Nate had driven her home because it was raining and she’d walked to work. For a fleeting second, Eloise had thought that he was going to kiss her as the rain tapped against the roof of his car and the air pulsed with the heat of a summer storm. But he’d just leant past her, explaining that the passenger side door stuck when it was wet. When was she going to get the message and realise he didn’t feel the same way?
Besides, what had she expected him to see? A woman who lived with her grandmother? Who was always covered in paint smudges and was never quite caffeinated enough to hold a proper conversation? Who talked about going on a big adventure but was scared to leave her hometown? Who’d never even had a real relationship? Why would she when her two exes—even calling them that was a stretch—had treated her so terribly and been cruel about her lack of sexual experience. Because nothing acted like a stronger contraceptive than knowing her parents had had two children by the time she finished high school.
“Everyone knows Nate’s got it bad for the shy, unassuming social worker at Kathleen’s Place.”
Eloise’s eyes widened.
The social worker?
At Kathleen’s Place?
“But I’m the … that’s me.” To further prove how ridiculous she was, Eloise pointed at herself.
This time, Joanie did look up. “I know, dear. We’ve met.”
“What do you mean ‘everyone knows’? Who’s everyone?” Eloise pushed up off the couch.
If Joanie said it was her friends, this conversation was over. Joanie and the rest of the Old Girls Gossip Brigade regularly imagined chemistry between any two people who had pulses. Of course, they sometimes got it right. Case in point: Nate’s older brother Owen and her best friend Alice. Those two had thought they were sneaking around, pulling the wool over everyone’s eyes when really all of Wattle Junction had known they were falling in love.
