By Lesley Buxton
Here is a list of things I have stolen for Clare: a brand new tube of scarlet, Chanel No.2 lipstick from my step-mother, a black silk ribbon from our class president Kaye Riley, Clare’s parents wedding album from the top drawer of her nana’s bedside table (Clare stood look-out at the top of the stairs) and two O’Henry bars from the school tuck shop.
My latest victim, Clare’s nana, is asleep, stretched flat as a corpse across her favorite orange recliner. In the space where her right foot should rest sits a black alligator handbag.
I stand at the end of the recliner. This is the first time I’ve seen Clare’s nana without her fiberglass leg. It stands on the side of the recliner with her cane, as if on guard. Her real leg ends just below the knee.
Clare watches from inside, her face pressed against the old glass door. “Get the bag,” she mouths. We are best friends-blood sisters. We do everything together. Before Clare came to Beckstown, I’d never met anyone like her.
If only Clare’s nana was wearing her leg.
Clare’s nana squirms. Her blue cotton dress rises, exposing two plump dimpled thighs, and one mighty calf. I scrutinize the soiled beige sock protecting the stump.
“Hurry up, Lisa-take it!”
Clare never gets nervous. She steals all the time. At Christmas, she gave me a photo of my mother she took from my father’s wallet. Stealing is fine, she says, if you only steal from people who are bad, or who must be taught a lesson.
She bangs her hand against the door, gestures to the bag. Still asleep, Clare’s nana tugs her dress over her thighs. I cover my eyes with one hand, peer through the cracks. I snatch the bag. Clare’s nana moans, loudly. I knock over the cane and the leg. They clatter against the patio tiles. I study her face to make sure she’s asleep, then pick up the cane and place it, carefully, against the recliner. The leg-I can’t touch it. I leave it lying there. Clare’s nana moans, again.
I scramble to the door, the bag tucked under my arm. Clare opens the door and I dash in. She turns the key, pulling the door twice, to make sure it’s locked. I hold the bag open for her as she rummages through layers of crumpled Kleenex and candy wrappers. At the very bottom is my stepmother’s lipstick. Clare removes the lid. The lipstick is brand new.
This morning, as Clare was getting ready for school, her nana found the lipstick in the pocket of her school cardigan. “Ladies do not wear lipstick.”
Clare says her mother used to wear it all the time. On special occasions, she’d even let her wear some. The lipstick is for our end of year party at school.
“Don’t worry, Lisa,” Clare says. “Your step-monster got so many, she’ll never miss it.”
But I want my step-mother to miss it.
Clare draws a crimson line across her palm. “I’m checking the colour,” she explains, tossing her black hair. “Making sure it works with my skin tone.” Clare is wearing her school uniform, as usual. The shirt hangs over her green and yellow kilt. Her grey cardigan is knotted around her small waist, her knee socks rolled around her ankles.
I took one of Clare’s school shirts once, right out of her locker. Clare was convinced the culprit was Mr.Weinhold, the janitor. She said she’d seen him looking at her funny. She doesn’t know I memorized her combination.
I like to place the shirt on my pillow when I go to bed. It smells of her: Love’s Baby Soft perfume and Dr. Pepper. I keep it hidden at the back of my closet. Not that I really have to worry. Clare rarely visits. Her nana doesn’t approve of divorce. My house is officially off limits.
Clare hands me a Kleenex. Obediently, I dab my lips. The Kleenex smells of peppermint. “My mother used to wear this colour,” she says leaning into me.
I look down the front of her shirt, accidentally at first. Below her collarbone is a cluster of freckles and a mole. Under the mole, on her left breast, is a bruise. It’s the size of a quarter, the colour of a purple Smartie. I feel Clare’s eyes on me. My skin prickles with heat.
“Open your mouth-wide.” Clare drags the lipstick over my lips. She is concentrating so hard her mouth hangs open. Her teeth are small, white, exceptionally even.
My heart is pounding.
She laughs. “It’s hard, your lips aren’t as fat as mine.”
Her lips are the colour of cinnamon.
Clare stands back to inspect her work. “You look pretty-really pretty.”
I gaze down at my feet. I’m wearing my green flip-flops from Giant Tiger, with a pair of pink flowery shorts and a matching T-shirt that my mother sent as a present. The shorts are too big and occasionally I have to yank them up.
The other day, while Clare was showing me her parent’s wedding album, she said I looked like her mother. Her mother was blonde with pale skin, but as far as I can tell that’s where the similarities end. Instead of a wedding gown, she wore a daffodil mini and knee-high white patent boots. In every photo, her lipstick was immaculate, even after the champagne and cake. When Clare talked about her mother, I had to strain to hear her.
“Now me.” Clare hands me the lipstick. My hands tremble as I slide the lipstick over her bottom lip.
“How do I look..?”
I want to say beautiful, but something inside me warns me not to.
“You think I look gross!”
“No!”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Please Clare, don’t get upset, please, you look beaut-”
“Gotcha!” Clare explodes with laugher. “I gotcha you good-again!”
My eyes sting.
“Lisa, you freak, it’s a joke. Laugh, why don’t you?”
I squeeze my eyes shut but, it’s no use, I start to cry. Instantly, the expression in Clare’s eyes changes. She pulls me to her and kisses me, pressing her lips on my cheek. This makes me cry so violently my body shakes. “I’m such a baby, such a-”
Clare kisses me again.
The doorknob starts to rattle. We look up at the door, Clare’s nana scowls back at us. Her eyes are cornflower blue, the same as Clare’s but glassy as a doll’s. Clare snatches the lipstick, slips it into the pocket of her school cardigan. I look at the ground, study Clare’s nana’s bare foot. The toenails are over-grown, cracked.
“Open the door, Clare!”
“Why should I?” Clare’s eyes are brilliant. It’s the same expression she wore when she gave me the picture of my mother. The same way she looks when she walks past Kaye Riley and her gang at school.
“Clare, we’re going to get in trouble! What if she tells my step-mother? What if she says you can’t come to the party?”
“Lisa, I’m going to the party.”
I place my hand protectively over my cheek. I don’t want the old woman to see it. Part of me wants to run to the bathroom and scrub the stain away, so it will just belong to me, and nobody else. While another part of me wishes I could keep it there forever.
“Keep still.” Clare licks her thumb, dabs the corners of my mouth. “It looked like your mouth was bleeding.”
The old woman wipes the sweat from her forehead with her hand. Under her arms, her dress sticks to her sides. She taps the glass, and signals to me, her lined face suddenly soft. She points to the lock.
“It’s really hot out there. You’ve got to let her in.”
Clare spits on her fingers, then moves my hand from my cheek. “I think you’re going to be stuck with it forever,” she says after rubbing my cheeks roughly several times.
“Clare, I’m serious. I’m afraid she’s going to faint! She looks sick!”
“She’ll survive.”
“Come on Clare, I mean it.”
She shrugs her shoulders. I smile weakly at her nana.
Clare’s nana balances against the house, lifts her cane with both hands and strikes the glass door. The fat on the underside of her arms jiggling with the force.
Clare laughs loudly, so loudly it hurts my ears.
I want Clare to open the door, but I mustn’t say anything. Once, she stopped talking to me for a week and never even told me why. My stomach hurt so much I couldn’t eat.
“I’m thirsty,” Clare announces, turning towards the kitchen door and walking from the room.
I take her place at the door. My eyes fixed on her nana.
Clare’s nana hobbles back to the recliner and cautiously eases herself down. She caresses her stump.
The radio is turned on; the air sizzles as Clare rapidly switches from one station to another.
I watch Clare’s nana bury her head in her hands.
At last, Clare decides on a station. Music blares. Clare sings along. She knows all the new songs even though she isn’t supposed to listen to rock music. I allow myself to imagine-just for a second-Clare dancing: her eyes half-open, half-closed.
Clare’s nana lifts her face from her hands and our eyes meet. Her eyes are red, swollen. She places her hand on her heart, and winces. She takes slow, labored breaths.
“I think something’s wrong with your nana.”
Clare wails enthusiastically with the radio.
“I think she’s having trouble breathing-Clare! Clare!”
Clare’s nana heaves herself up with her cane and totters towards the door, stopping every so often to catch her breath. Why doesn’t she wear her leg? Surely it would make things easier.
Eventually, she arrives. I turn the key, opening the door, slightly. “I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I can’t let you in, I-” Clare’s nana rams her cane through the crack. I jump back. She flings open the door. I hold my hand tightly over my cheek.
“Disgusting,” she snarls, spraying my face with spit. “Disgusting girls.
“Clare! Clare!”
She returns, carrying two glasses of lemonade. At the sight of her nana, she rushes to the door. Lemonade sprays across the front of her shirt.
As Clare runs over the doorstep, her nana lifts her cane. Clare trips. The glasses fall from her hands; chips of ice, glass fly everywhere. Lemonade splashes across the patio. She lands with a thud on her knees.
I run to Clare. She pushes herself from the ground.
Her nana stands at the doorway. “Come along young lady, I’ve had enough for one day.”
I kneel down, pick the grit from her bleeding knees, wishing I was the one that was hurt.
Clare cries out as I pull a long thin shard from below her knee. “Mummy!”
“Don’t you dare make this into another one of your dramas, Clare Elizabeth.
“I want my mummy.”
“It’s time you toughened up, my girl. You don’t know how easy you have it. When my mother died I was younger than you. My father made me quit school to look after my brothers. You couldn’t look after anyone. Could you? Just look at you.”
I jump up, wrap my arms around Clare’s waist. She pushes me away.
“I’m sorry Clare-so sorry.” She looks the other way.
A gust of wind sends withered crabapple blossoms and dead leaves swirling across the garden as Clare limps towards the house.
“Please Clare, I said I was sorry!”
She stands at the door beside her grandmother, pretending not to see me. Her kilt lifts in the wind and her nana immediately pins it down with her cane. The vein at the bottom of Clare’s neck bulges.
Her nana gestures to the door. When Clare doesn’t respond, she prods her with her cane. When that doesn’t work, she does it again, harder. Clare winces, bites her bottom lip. Then, without warning, her nana thrashes the glass door with her cane. “Get inside!”
Clare’s head drops submissively and she scuttles inside.
I’m alone in the middle of the garden. The wind rises once more, blows my hair in front of my face. I push it back. The air crackles. I know Clare’s watching me. I can feel it.
There is the sudden rumble of thunder.
Clare’s window opens, she hurls the lipstick across the garden, then slams her window shut. It hits the garden fence, then lands near the recliner. I scurry to it. For a moment, I consider taking the lipstick and putting it in Clare’s locker, but decide against it.
Nearby, the leg lies forgotten on the grass.
In the distance, a silver thread of lightning flickers. I pick up the leg and hurl it across the garden. It’s beginning to rain. The rain feels soft, good.