Page 24 of I Am the Messenger

It's been a while since I delivered the coffee table to Ma's place. I haven't dropped in on her for a good couple of weeks--to let her cool down a bit. She gave me a nice drubbing when I finally turned up with it.

I visit her on a Saturday morning.

"Well, look what the bloody cat dragged in," she says wryly when I walk through the door. "How's it going, Ed?"

"All right. You?"

"Workin' my freckle off. As usual."

Ma works in a gas station, behind the register. She does bugger all, but whenever you ask how she is, she claims to be "working her freckle off." She's making some sort of cake that she won't let me have a piece of because someone more important's coming over. Probably someone from the Lions Club or something.

I come closer to get a better look at what it is.

"Don't touch," she snaps. I'm not even within reaching distance.

"What is it?"

"Cheesecake."

"Who's coming over?"

"The old Marshalls."

Typical--rednecks from around the corner--but I say nothing. Better off that way.

"How's the coffee table going?" I ask.

She laughs almost deviously and says, "Pretty well--go have another look at it."

I do as she says, walk into the lounge room, and can't trust my eyes. She's done a bloody swap on me!

"Oi!" I shout to the kitchen. "This isn't the one I delivered!"

She comes in. "I know. I decided I didn't like that one."

I've got the shits now. Really. I knocked off work an hour early to pick up that other one, and now it's not good enough for her. "What the hell happened?"

"I was talking to Tommy on the phone and he said all that pine rubbish was pretty ordinary and wouldn't last." She props between sentences. "And your brother knows about that sort of thing, believe me. He bought himself an old cedar table in the city. Talked the guy down to three hundred and got the chairs half price."

"So what?"

"So he knows what he's doing. Unlike some people I know."

"You didn't get me to pick it up?"

"Now why in God's name would I do that?"

"You made me get the last one."

"Yeah, but let's face it, Ed," she says. "Your delivery service is a disgrace."

The irony of it isn't lost on me.

"Everything okay, Ma?" I ask later. "I'm going to the shops in a minute. Do you need anything?"

She thinks.

"Actually, Leigh's coming over next week and I want to make a chocolate-hazelnut cake for her and the family. You can get the crushed hazelnuts for me."