The Pause Read Online Free Page A

parents are from overseas,’ I add in some sort of bizarre hope that being the child of a fellow immigrant will make me appear slightly more acceptable.
    â€˜Where from?’
    â€˜My dad’s from Ireland and Mum’s Italian. Well, her parents are.’
    â€˜You speak Italian?’
    â€˜I understand some, but when they all get together for Christmas and stuff they speaktoo quickly.’ Arms flailing around like those bendy-balloon guys outside car yards.
    â€˜What do you want to do, after the HSC?’
    I’m going to go out with my mates and get completely shit-faced. ‘Go to uni and study English.’
    â€˜Why English? You already speak English.’
    â€˜To teach. I want to be a high school English teacher, or else work overseas teaching English, in Shanghai or Beijing perhaps.’ I throw in this last bit hoping that my altruism towards her countrymen (women, persons …) might change her initial opinion of me.
    â€˜Teachers don’t make much money,’ says The Kraken.
    Oh, please hurry up, Lisa.
    â€˜But Lisa wants to be a teacher, too.’
    â€˜Lisa is a girl. It doesn’t matter too much what she does. It matters what her husband does.’
    â€˜My mum’s a barrister,’ I say, brimming with pride.
    The Kraken glares at me as if having a barrister for a mother is all types of wrong.
    Did the last forty years not happen? But luckily, just as I’m wishing I had a bra and some kindling for a fire, Lisa returns with her books. She gives me a look. We both know what she was doing: she wanted to leave me alone with The Krakento see how well I would cope. Had she left it any longer she might have returned to find me nothing more than a pile of spat-out bones and a couple of blinking eyeballs on the floor.
    The Kraken gives me one last look and then stalks off towards the kitchen. When she gets there she calls back, ‘ Lisa! Fai-di yup lei choo fong! ’
    Lisa gives me a smile, rolls her eyes and beckons me to stay where I am.
    Of course, I’ve no idea what The Kraken just said, but judging by what happens next, it was probably something like, ‘Lisa! Get your butt in the kitchen pronto!’
    The kitchen is obviously the hub of the house. The aroma is intoxicating. Over the years the culinary odours have seeped into the walls, giving the house a strange yet delicious essence. Cooking clearly plays a significant role in the Leong home.
    Adopting what seems to be the custom, I kick off my shoes and place them with the thirty or so pairs already in the vestibule. From where I am I can see into the lounge room. I notice there’s a jade Chinese dragon on top of the piano. There’s also the ubiquitous bare-bellied Buddha smiling at me like someone’s just told him the one about the priest, the rabbi and the lawyer who walk into a bar and the barman looks at them and says, ‘Is this some sort of joke?’ Man, that is one rotundenlightened being. For a guy who started the movement in abject poverty, he certainly stacked on the kilos once it got going.
    Chris and Maaaate’s homes look nothing like this, their parents having embraced Freedom and Ikea. My dad emigrated to Sydney from Dublin when he was in his early twenties and yet the only Irish thing in the house, apart from him, is a shillelagh, which is kind of like an Irish nunchucka. It’s a heavily polished, short wooden stick which Mum lets him keep on display for no other reason than it could possibly be used to beat a spider into compliance.
    There’s a bamboo cane leaning against the wall near the piano and a single chopstick next to the Buddha, which seems a bit out of place. There’s also a family portrait on top of the piano which, judging from Lisa’s age and the stupid hat that her father is wearing, was taken last Christmas. Lisa’s brother and sister look to be well into their thirties. Lisa must have been some sort of accident. A happy