Little Bird Read online

  As I met his eyes all my anger melted away. Somewhere in the back of my mind I was still confused, but all that confusion was just background noise, like a mistuned radio.

  Someone tapped on the door. I turned to see a girl, one of the dark-haired, flashing-eyed music groupies, standing in the doorway, watching us. She stepped into the room, and a boy followed her in. He was tall and jangly, like a puppet on strings, with long limbs and curly red hair. He grinned at me. I forgot to smile back. My heart was fluttering. What had Spence been going to say? Why had it meant a lot to him?

  ‘Hey, Spence,’ the girl said. Her voice was deep and smoky, with just the right kind of husk to it.

  ‘Here’s trouble,’ said Spence. ‘What can I do for you, Beck?’

  ‘I just came to hand this in.’ She held out some crisp sheets of written music, held together with a paperclip. Spence took it.

  ‘It’s a bit late, Beck,’ said Spence. ‘Two weeks late.’

  ‘Sorry. I’ve been, like, really sick and, well, I had this fight with my boyfriend and . . .’

  ‘And you were abducted by aliens and your dog ate your homework,’ Spence teased, good-naturedly.

  ‘No!’ Her eyes widened, the picture of innocence. If innocence was a big flirt. ‘Come on, Spence. Please?’

  ‘Oh-kay. But only because you asked so nicely.’

  ‘Thanks, Spence. You rock.’

  ‘Correct.’ He glanced at the pages. ‘Is this the piece I heard you practising the other day?’

  ‘Yeah. Do you mind having a quick look through it? I’m not sure I got all the notation right. I mean,’ she glanced at me, ‘if you’re not too busy.’

  ‘Not at all,’ Spence said. I deflated.

  They stood so close she may as well have climbed inside his pants. They read through the mess of squiggles and lines and dots together.

  ‘Hang on, so this is the chorus?’ Spence asked. ‘What are you singing here?’

  Beck read the song lyrics out in a monotone, hurrying through them. I almost snorted. They sounded ridiculous, so silly and sentimental. ‘You live under my skin, under my skin is where you’ve been, slipping and sliding under my skin, under my skin, under my skin.’ Spence hummed questioningly and Beck sang emphatically back, her singing voice still husky, but loud and clear. When she sang, even in the ordinary space of Spence’s office, the same words took on a heightened meaning. They were electrifying, daring, totally provocative – they made me blush. I couldn’t look at Spence.

  ‘Here,’ Spence said. ‘The phrasing’s awkward. Let me grab a pencil.’

  If I’d known how long they were going to be I would have sat down. I watched the minutes tick by, knowing that if I missed one bus the next one wouldn’t be along for at least another hour. I began to ache from standing too long, and from boredom and crushing disappointment. If Spence was surrounded by girls like Beck and Colette all day, showcasing their enormous talents, what chance did I have of being seen by him? I was just the babysitter.

  Beck’s lanky friend sat down on another teacher’s desk, picked up more sheets of music that were just lying around and proceeded to read through it as if he were reading the Sunday newspaper. There weren’t even any words – it was just clumps of notes.

  He looked up and saw me watching him. He winked and went back to reading.

  Finally Beck and Spence were finished. Beck took her assignment with her, even though it was already two weeks late, promising to drop it round to Spence’s house that weekend. There was something about the way she said it that made me think it was because she wanted me to know she was going there. But then Spence said, ‘Oh no, Beck, you guys aren’t rehearsing at my place this weekend. We’ve got the studio.’ Then, to add insult to her injury, Spence lifted his keys from his desk and said, ‘Well, I better get Ruby-lee home before she turns into a pumpkin.’ (I was glad he said home and not ‘to the bus stop’. Even the pumpkin comment sounded good, like we were on a date or something.) Sailing out of the office beside him, while Beck and her friend loped in the opposite direction, filled me with pure, evil satisfaction and all my doubts left me. I was special. I was the one he was taking home, wasn’t I? Beck left without acknowledging me at all, but her friend lifted his hand in an oddly muppet-like farewell.

  Spence and I walked side by side up the silent hall. He held the door open for me. We crossed the deserted quadrangle to the staff carpark. I felt like there was another me sitting on the bench where Tegan and I sat every day, watching Spence and I as we walked towards the deserted carpark, like we belonged together. I could almost see us – me and Tegan; Tegan leaning down to whisper some saucy comment about the student and the teacher leaving the school grounds together. It sent a thrill jolting through me.

  ‘Did Colette have a good time on Saturday?’ Spence asked.

  ‘Yeah. She did.’

  ‘So she got home safe and sound?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Did someone drive her home?’

  ‘Yes. Her friend.’

  ‘Friend?’

  ‘Anna.’

  ‘Oh, Anna. I know Anna.’ Spence nodded at a battered green station wagon. ‘This is me.’ The backseat was folded down and the car was filled with music stands, guitar cases, speakers, microphones and other musical equipment. He had to clear a pile of music books and fast food wrappers off the front passenger seat before I could sit down.

  The walk to the bus stop might have been long and torturous, but the drive was disappointingly brief, I didn’t even get to hear the song change on the radio. Spence pulled up at the bus stop.

  ‘Will you have to wait long?’

  ‘No,’ I lied. I picked up my bag from between my feet. Suddenly I blurted out, ‘I’m going to be looking after Maisy on Sunday afternoons. So if you . . . if you wanted to drop in . . . if you wanted to see Maisy, well, you know . . .’

  ‘Sunday afternoons? What’s Colette doing?’

  ‘The band she used to be in has asked her to rehearse with them.’

  Spence didn’t answer straightaway. He gripped the steering wheel for a minute, his knuckles turning white. Finally he said, ‘When Colette told me she was keeping the baby, I couldn’t believe she would do that. Why would she go through with it? I mean, it’s not like there aren’t alternatives. What does she want a baby for?’

  ‘You don’t still feel that way, do you?’

  ‘It’s such a mess, Ruby-lee. The whole thing’s such a mess.’

  ‘A mess?’ I said, and my voice was hardly above a whisper. ‘You think of Maisy as a mess?’ I couldn’t think of anything else to say. To me, Maisy was the most precious thing in the world. And Spence was her dad. How could he see her as a mistake?

  ‘Look, don’t worry about it. Forget I said anything. Sundays? They’re usually a pretty packed day for me, but maybe I’ll swing by. See you later.’

  I closed the passenger door and he raised a hand as he swung back out onto the road towards the highway. I watched his car get swallowed up by the traffic and then disappear round the sweeping bend.

  10

  May went by, a month of Sundays (whatever that means; Nana used to say it) and Spence didn’t come.

  At school he barely acknowledged me, a tilt of his head or an eyebrow raise, that was all. After I’d ditched her for Spence,Tegan wasn’t talking to me again either, and somehow I didn’t have the heart to try and win her back. It wasn’t the days that passed by in a blur. It was more that I was blurred around the edges, like a picture someone had tried to erase – as if I barely existed anymore.

  And home didn’t really offer any escape. After the dinner with Dad, Shandra got Mum to ring and cancel the reception centre, the hairdresser, the photographer, the flowers . . . I don’t think any of us believed she meant it, even as the phone calls were being made, until she cancelled the dress. Usually between them Damien and Mum would have been able to fix everything, but Damien stopped coming around and Shandra seemed to retreat into herself. Everyone – es
pecially Shandra – was brittle and sharp with each other and I felt like I was always walking around on eggshells, waiting for someone to snap at me for clearing my throat or breathing too loudly.

  Life would have been unbearable if it wasn’t for Maisy. In the middle of May she stopped wriggling around on her stomach, got up onto her hands and knees and started to crawl. She could sit herself up, which gave her a new opportunity to examine things; often she’d sit in the middle of the room turning something – a book or a toy or a biscuit – over and over in her hand as if she were memorising it, or trying to figure out how it worked or where it came from. She clapped at her own reflection in the mirror, and she tried to wave by throwing her fist up in the air, which made her look, Colette said, like a rockstar at the end of a show. She began talking more too, mostly bababa and gagaga type noises, but sometimes it seemed we were almost communicating. Colette said that when Maisy heard me on the stairs on a Sunday afternoon, she belted across the floor on her knees, pulled herself up to kneeling at the front door and pressed herself against it, listening to my footsteps echoing in the stairwell.

  Colette was always pleased to see me too, for different reasons. As soon as I arrived she practically sprinted out the door, hardly even saying goodbye to Maisy or me. It was strange, but the more delightful and responsive Maisy grew – and the more I loved her – the more uninterested in her Colette seemed.

  Colette never mentioned Spence to me, but once I overheard her talking to him on the phone. ‘Well, tell your mum we had a deal.’ She went quiet again, and I could practically see the sparks flying off her as she listened. ‘I can’t believe you’d even try a line like that on me.’ The last thing I heard her say was, ‘Look, face it. Maisy and I are better off without you. If you ever want to talk to me again, get a lawyer.’ After she banged the phone down she retreated to the bedroom, and when she came back she’d applied fresh eye make-up, over pink tender eyes. Part of me wanted to stick up for Spence, tell Colette about the photo he carried in his wallet for example, or the way he’d looked at Maisy when she was sleeping. Then I remembered how he was that day in the car, how he’d called Maisy a mistake, how oddly his mother had behaved. Maybe Maisy and Colette were better off without them. Maybe I was too. But I couldn’t help the painful thrumming I felt when I thought about him.

  It’s not like I’d expected Spence to fall in love with me. Not really. It was just that . . . well, there had been moments, when we were together, when I’d seen something in his face. Something soft and rosy, like a flower waking up in spring. Oh, I know that sounds soppy. I really wasn’t expecting Spence to fall in love with me, it was just that I . . . I couldn’t entirely rule it out either. It was possible. Not likely. But possible.

  Every Sunday I took Maisy for a walk. At first, I was secretly hoping that we might bump into Spence waiting for us down on the street. And that he’d look at me and Maisy with wonder in his eyes. By the end of May, I’d stopped watching out for him as I made my way from Colette’s flat to the park. Instead I simply enjoyed being with Maisy. Everywhere we went, strangers stopped to talk to her, to jiggle her little feet or touch her hands, and then afterwards they’d look at me and say, ‘she’s lovely’ or ‘what an angel’, and I would beam as if I were in some way responsible for the loveliness of her. And even though it had nothing to do with me, I did actually feel a bit responsible, like I’d contributed in some way to the delightfulness of Maisy.

  On the last Sunday in May, Mum gave me a lift to Colette’s, grumbling about the long drive.

  ‘I don’t know, Ruby-lee. It doesn’t seem right, you doing all this babysitting for nothing.’

  ‘I like doing it.’

  ‘She’s taking advantage of you.’

  ‘She’s not. I like hanging out with Maisy.’

  ‘You’re getting too attached to that baby. She’s not yours. And if she starts to rely on you, well, it’s just not a good idea.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Well, it’s not like you’re family.’

  As if family was so great. I picked at a loose thread on my jeans.

  ‘Ruby-lee, you’re in your last two years of school, darls. You should be knuckling down if you want to get into uni.’

  ‘Who said I was going to uni?’

  ‘Everyone goes to uni now. You don’t want to end up like me.’ Mum saw my expression. ‘Yeah, all right,’ she said, annoyed. ‘No need to look quite so horrified. You could do a lot worse too.’

  But she’d struck a chord. I didn’t want her life, married twice, raising two daughters, working as a hostess in a Chinese restaurant. I was already worried about being invisible, but my mother was the original vanishing woman. People just didn’t seem to notice her. She’d be ignored at the deli counter in the supermarket or passed over completely in the doctor’s waiting rooms until finally she got up and reminded the receptionist she was there. People she worked with at the Chinese restaurant wouldn’t recognise her if they bumped into her in town and she said hello. My teachers never remembered her name. Even my own father, her husband, had stopped seeing her, had somehow ended up with Paula, apparently forgetting he already had a wife. And me and Shandra too, I admit. We hardly ever paid her any real attention. She was part of the house in the same way the tables and chairs were – we didn’t really notice them either.

  ‘Just remember,’ she was saying, ‘Maisy’s not your baby.’

  ‘I have to go.’ She was wrong. Maisy was my baby, by some extraordinary fluke. Maisy belonged to me, more than baby William, even though he was related to me. I knew it. Maisy knew it too.

  I raced up the stairs.

  ‘You’re late!’ Colette said. ‘I was worried you weren’t coming.’

  ‘Sorry,’ I said, though I felt a flash of annoyance. I mean, Mum was kind of right. It wasn’t like Colette was paying me.

  Colette left in a hurry. I stood in the middle of the lounge room. For the last few weeks Colette had been letting things go. There were dirty, discarded clothes piled on the couch, and used crockery cluttered the coffee table near where Maisy was playing. I piled them up and carried them to the kitchen. There were more dishes piled on the sink. In fact every single dish Colette owned was used. I washed a cup to make a cup of tea, and then discovered the milk in the fridge was sour. Apart from a few sad carrots and containers of leftovers, the fridge was empty and smelled bad.

  ‘Shall we go for a walk?’ I asked Maisy, keen to get out of the flat. As warm and homey as it had been in the early days of looking after Maisy, it was now dim and dreary and depressing. ‘Let’s go get some milk.’

  We went to a small local supermarket and bought milk and biscuits and a single-serve cup of ice-cream. Not wanting to go back to the flat, I pushed the pram to the park.

  It was a windy, grey day, and the park was mostly empty. As I spooned ice-cream into Maisy’s mouth I noticed a dark blue, shiny car driving slowly on the high side of the park. I watched it as it stopped for a minute, then it drove off. A few minutes later it was back.

  I threw the empty ice-cream container in the bin. Maisy leaned back, watching the last of the autumn leaves eddy in the wind. The car came back for a third time, and this time it pulled to a stop.

  ‘Come on, Maisy,’ I said, unsettled. ‘Let’s go home.’

  As I walked briskly, pushing the pram ahead of me, a woman got out of the car. She hurried down the grassy slope towards me, the wind tugging her coat and whipping her bobbed ash-blonde hair. As she smoothed it down again, I realised it was Spence’s mother.

  ‘I saw you from the road,’ she called, when she got closer. She lurched towards Maisy.

  ‘Mrs Spencer, I don’t think you should . . .’

  ‘Please, please . . .’ she was saying as she fumbled with the clips on Maisy’s pram.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I only want to hold her. Hello, my darling,’ she said to Maisy. ‘Hello, my darling girl.’

  Maisy smiled uncertainly into her face.
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  ‘Oh see, see now. Blood’s thicker than water. I’ve always said that. She knows me.’

  She gathered Maisy up in her arms.

  ‘I don’t think you should do that, Mrs Spencer,’ I squeaked weakly. I knew what she was getting at. I was water. She was blood.

  Maisy flashed me a panicked look. I saw her bottom lip tremble. It broke my heart. My voice was thin, but I tried to stay calm for Maisy’s sake. ‘I have to get Maisy back to the flat. Colette will be home any minute.’

  Annette looked me unashamedly in the eye. ‘She won’t be home for at least another hour. We both know that.’ How did Annette know what time Colette would be home?

  This time my voice was firmer. ‘Look, I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to give her to me.’

  Annette clutched Maisy, her voice rising. ‘You’re sorry? You’re sorry? You get to see Maisy whenever you want. But apparently grandparents have no rights.’ Maisy began to cry.

  I held my arms out. Annette drew Maisy away, like a reluctant child in possession of a toy. For a moment I thought she might run away with her. I looked around for help, but there was no one in sight. I didn’t think I’d be able to beat Annette in a fight. She was quite solid – she probably went to the gym, between lunches and hair stylist appointments. Hang on, what was I thinking? A fight? I’d never fought anyone in my life! Well, except Shandra, and that didn’t count.

  ‘Please, just let me have ten minutes with her,’ Annette said. ‘Ten minutes. Let me push her around the park.’

  I couldn’t even meet her eyes. ‘I don’t think it’s a good idea.’

  ‘Five minutes.’ Annette begged. I could hardly bear it. In the end I reached out and took Maisy. I thought for a moment we were going to have a struggle over her, but Annette gave her one last squeeze and that was it. Maisy collapsed against me, her fingers in her mouth, still crying.

  ‘I’m really sorry,’ I muttered as I buckled Maisy into the pram, still not able to look Annette in the face. Finally I glanced up. Annette was staring at Maisy, clutching her hands together.