The Baby SUV Invasion — A Short Story by Lindy Warrell

Preface

I wrote a bad poem a while ago, so my TramsEnd Poet friends told me, and I took their suggestion to turn it into my first short story. I wanted to call it Edth and Joan Do Coffee, but it was not a good title for SEO (search engine optimisation). The current title is supposed to be more searchable and, funnily enough, talks more about the story of two old girls being supplanted in life anyway.

The Baby SUV Invasion

Edith fondled the glass, waiting for her latte to cool, thinking, if you had coffee in a ceramic mug, it’d be half bloody cold, so why is it so hot in glass? At her age, she fancied hot coffee, preferably without burnt fingers. Still, her latte was delicious. She never believed the young barista who once told her that milk burns coffee beans and sours the taste if it is too hot.

‘Sorry, I’m late.’

‘Never mind, I ordered anyway. What are you having?’ Edith stifled an urge to tell Joan to her face that she was always bloody late. The woman’s frivolous apology irritated her.

‘I’m going to try Caramel Macchiato. It’s Starbucks, for heaven’s sake. We might be pushing 80, but I reckon we should expand our horizons, don’t you think?’

‘Excuse me.’

Edith and Joan swung around in unison as a young mother pushed past them with a bulky, black pram on large pneumatic wheels. Her infant mewled under blue blankets beneath the hood. They gave each other a knowing look as if to say that young mothers should park their monstrous SUV prams outside.

Joan remarked that young mothers no longer seemed to want to hold their babies. ‘And, did you notice? The infant’s face was florid and beading with sweat under all those blankets. Someone should tell her we’re in a hot Australian summer, not the middle of the Arctic Circle. Crikey, look out, Edith, here comes another one.’

By the time a waitress brought Joan’s Caramel Macchiato to the table, Edith and Joan were transfixed as the two pram-wielding mothers moved tables and chairs to make room for more mums filing through Starbucks’ glass doors. The ensuing circle of mothers rocking prams with their faces turned to each other, away from their babes, created a veritable spinning wheel of grizzling babes in SUVs

Edith and Joan concluded that the young mothers’ overly loud chatter and high-pitched laughter hinted more at desperation than fun.

A waitress approached to ask if Edith and Joan were okay. They thought the girl looked about twelve and kindly said they were fine. They appreciated the thoughtfulness.

~

When Joan arrived at Gloria Jeans as arranged the following week, Edith forced her lips into a smiley shape when her friend finally sat opposite her, huffing with exertion, saying, ‘Sorry, I’m late.’

‘Never mind, I ordered anyway.’ There was no point in pouting or turning a cold shoulder, as Edith wanted to do.

‘I’m tempted to have a sweet treat today, not just coffee. Can I buy you something, Edith?’

‘Joan, how come you’re offering to buy my coffee when you’re the one on a pension? Feeling guilty?’

‘Guilty for what?’

‘Nothing. Don’t worry about it. ‘ Edith’s irritation was rising. ‘What sort of bloody cakes have they got here? Starbucks was all doughnuts and muffins.’

‘You’re right. It’s not much better here — Gloria Jean’s is all mud cake and banana bread, heavy, thick stuff. Still, I like Gloria Jean’s coffee. I’ve ordered a chai latte, but you know what I mean.’

 ‘That’s what I got, too. But I’ll give Gloria’s gut-binding cake a miss, thank you very much.’

The old friends stopped talking to enjoy their chai till Edith broke the silence. ‘Do you know what I really fancy? A slice of rich black forest gateau with layers of chocolate sponge, sour cherries, syrup and cream. You can’t find that anywhere nowadays.’

‘Oh! Yum. It’s hard to find a decent carrot and walnut cake, too, slathered with cream- cheese icing. The best I ever had was in the Yarra Valley years ago. The icing was about half an inch thick, and the cake was tantalisingly moist. I’d happily drive to Victoria tomorrow to taste that again.’

Edith snorted. ‘Neither of us drives any more, you silly old git.’

‘Oh, well,’ Joan prattled on. ‘A girl can dream.’

Edit changed the subject. ‘Have you ever tried the pies and pasties here? They are the worst. I guess it’s an Australian shop with American recipes.’

Joan picked up the cake thread as if Edith hadn’t spoken. ‘Chain coffee shop cakes are as bad as all that soft bread the supermarkets force us to eat nowadays. Do you ever wonder what happened to hot bread and crumbs all over the kitchen floor, from cracking through the crust to the soft, warm dough inside? Did you ever pull the dough out to eat on the way home when you got a half loaf still warm from the baker? Mum used to yell at me when I did that.’

‘As for pies’, Edith refused to let Joan hijack the conversation. ’Once upon a time, you could get a Balfours or Mrs Mac’s pie or pastie in any Adelaide petrol station — or garage as we used to say — which would have stocked Villies pies and pasties too. These new servos make their own. I’ve never tried one. Not once. The pastry is too thick. You can tell by looking at them through the pie-warmer glass, which nobody ever seems to clean properly. The pies we got at school were the best, Balfours, I think.

As they finished their chai, Edith and Joan watched a parade of youngsters and middle-aged women with adult children filing in and out of Glenelg’s Gloria Jean’s café. Edith broke the silence. ‘My daughter took me to a posh lunch in Port Adelaide the other day. I fancied Pavlova. She ordered it, and bugger me, it turned out to be a deconstructed pavlova. Have you ever heard of such a thing, Joan? It was a piddling little serve of crumbled left-over pav shell, with a few bits of fruit cut so small you could hardly tell which was what, and a small dollop of cream.’

Joan banished the disturbing frown that tried to wrinkle her forehead earlier and fell into line. ‘I know that place, along the main road. I had an expensive green leaf confection there that I wouldn’t feed to a rabbit. Drowning in vinaigrette, it was, but with not enough substance to be called a salad.

Edith’s forehead was less compliant listening to Joan when rattling on about the snitty, a dish that evolved from the Weiner schnitzel. ‘We used to sprinkle it with a lemon quarter to mitigate the fat, but now, they drown the dish in gravies and sauces until the crunchy golden crumbs are sodden.’

‘The thing is…’ Edith interrupted. The thing is, every chef in every pub, restaurant, and café now invents or reinvents food presentation. It’s all about visuals and photographs since nouvelle cuisine became the rage and the internet. Schnitzel doesn’t really fit that scenario, does it?’

The two women emptied their cups, tightened their smiles, and stood to leave. They arranged to meet next week in the afternoon for a change at The Grand Hotel in Glenelg, where they serve high tea.

~

‘Sorry, I’m late.’

‘Joan, do you realise we’ve met for coffee on Wednesdays for at least 35 years, and you’re always friggin’ late. I do not recall a single occasion when you were on time.’

‘Don’t be like that, Edith. You always start without me anyway, and you’re halfway through your coffee before we even say hello.’

‘I’ll be whatever I like, but here’s the deal. Next week, l will wait for you no longer than 10 minutes past the appointed time. If you are not there, I’ll leave, and you will never see me again.’

‘Well, if we are going to be honest, I’m fed up with you being the one who thinks she always knows best.’

‘What?’

‘You did it last time with the pies.’

‘The pies?’

‘I wanted to talk about bread, and you insisted on yapping on about pies. You’ve always thought you’re better than me because you married an engineer and my husband was a tradie, but I remember well whose husband treated who better.’

Edith stared at her friend, mouth agape.

‘That shut you up, didn’t it? You and your David treated my Gary and me like we were not quite the full quid sometimes. Did you think we didn’t notice?’

‘Well, you should have learned how to cook properly. We used to make sure we’d eaten before we came to your place for dinner. You couldn’t cook a roast to save yourself: wet, overcooked cabbage, squishy pumpkin, dry meat. Your roast potatoes were never crisp, and you used Gravox. ’

Joan burst into tears. ‘You were just jealous of Gary and me. I always thought you fancied my husband, and all the while, your up-himself David, used to try to put his hand down my shirt or up my skirt if ever he found me alone in a corridor or the kitchen while you were swanning around showing off your world’s best gravy.’

‘Me? fancy Gary? You must be joking. The man’s fingernails were never clean.’

Joan stood up abruptly, still crying and ran out of the café.

Edith apologised to the staff for Joan’s behaviour, saying as she paid the bill, ‘My friend’s a bit mentally loose. She’s getting on a bit.’

~

A few days later, Joan’s heart missed a beat when she discovered Edith’s funeral notice in The Advertiser’s obituaries, which she read every day. There it was, in black and white. Edith was dead. It read, ‘Beloved wife of David and mother to James, Carry and Barbara, died peacefully at home on 11 February. The funeral will take place on 16 February at the St Peters Anglican Church in Glenelg at 2 pm, followed by cremation at Centennial Park.’

So much for high tea.

Joan decided her eulogy, were she to go to the funeral, would be: ‘Edith and I were lifelong friends who grew up together on a Housing Commission estate. We shared birthdays, weddings, births, and deaths. We outlived our husbands, and our children long ago fled the coop. We were two women defined by the lives of others. We said we were friends but had nothing in common. We simply clung together from habit over a waft of caffeine.’

Happy Writing

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Lindy