Free True Stories by Helen Garner Page B

word: I’ve heard this wild laughter among nurses, waitresses, nuns. If you are not included in it, it can be alarming—not because you are the butt of it; it’s not ‘bitchy’ laughter—but because there is something total about it, shameless; it’s a relaxation into boundarylessness. Of course, as a spectacle, it is probably boring. It is ill-mannered of us to indulge in it in company. Sometimes two or three of us will withdraw from the table, at a big gathering, and be found in another room shortly afterwards, doubled up in weak, silent laughter. ‘What, what is it?’ the discovering sister will beg. ‘What? Oh, tell me!’
    The Favourite
    â€˜I was the favourite for eighteen months,’ says One. ‘I think I’m the only one who can categorically state that. A short blessed period which ended when Two was born and usurped my position. I’ve spent the rest of my life, in a warped way, trying to regain it through merit. Fat chance. This is the theory of the driven, perfectionist eldest child, and I subscribe to it.’
    â€˜I remember distinctly,’ says Two, ‘feeling that I was the favourite child. One and Three were in the poo for some reason, and I remember thinking, “Mum and Dad aren’t cross with me—therefore they must like me best.” It was a transitory feeling. Two years ago, when Mum and Dad were coming back from overseas, some of us went to the airport to meet them. Three had gone to the toilet, and Mum and Dad came out of the customs hall before she got back. We had the regulation pecks on the cheek, then Dad looked around and said “Where’s Three?” He saw her coming from a long way away, and he put out his arms to her while she walked towards him. He gave her a huge hug.’
    â€˜Two turned to me as we all trooped towards the car park,’ says Three, ‘and she said to me, “You always were his favourite.” What Two doesn’t know is that for five years I’d been chipping away at Dad, after watching Grandma die lonely in that nursing home, looking for affection from anybody who’d give it, because she’d wasted her chances in life—I was with her when she was dying, and I couldn’t bear it. I thought, “I’m not going to wait till Dad gets that old. I’ll teach him if it kills me.” So for five years I’d been insisting on giving him a hug and a kiss every time we met or parted. I even knocked on the car window and made him wind it down, when he’d got into the car to avoid doing it. I’d been pushing through that barrier. I was on some kind of mission, thinking, “I will find something on the other side of this.” I didn’t even need to earn acceptance or approval any more. I just wanted to break through that lonely barrier around him. I never felt the favourite.’
    â€˜Oh, Two was the favourite,’ says Four. ‘It was obvious. She was always the golden-haired girl. She was given a twenty-first at the Southern Cross. The Beatles had just been staying there. In 1965 it was the grooviest place in town. Later I remember Five being Dad’s favourite. Ohh—indubitably. When she was little.’
    â€˜Everyone loved me endlessly,’ says Five. ‘I was born so many years after Four that I didn’t have to fight anybody for anything. But sometimes now I feel a rather pathetic figure in the family—like the dregs of the barrel. As if what I’ve got to offer is somehow less. Everything’s been done before, and better. If I’m patronised or ignored, I bow out. With my friends I feel more entertaining and clever than I do with my sisters—more relaxed and free.’
    â€˜Once,’ says One, ‘I was in the kitchen at Two’s with Five and our brother. And in whispers we agreed that we were probably the three favourites: the eldest, the youngest, and the only boy.’
    â€˜Still,