CUP OR CONE?
Constance Allan
(she/her)
A man walks in. He’s dressed in a long-sleeved shirt with a large, ugly fish printed on the front and back. He has an unfortunate sunglass tan, no shoes, and four kids clamouring passed him.
The youngest one has curly blonde hair and points at obscure things around the shop.
‘Dad!’ she says, pointing to a crack in the floor.
The older ones stand ahead of the red line taped to the ground, their hands smeared on the glass.
‘They have Bubblegum, Dad!’ the brunette boy shouts.
‘Nah I’m getting Mint,’ the taller one says.
The brunette opens his mouth.
Don’t you dare, I think.
He spreads his hands further apart on the glass, canvasing even more area with his grubby fingers. His tongue meets the glass. The dad says nothing, oblivious apparently.
The brunette is French kissing the glass.
Literally, fuck my life.
‘What are we having today guys?’ I ask with the artificial sweetness of the Bubblegum flavour.
‘Just a couple of ice creams,’ the dad says.
Yeah, no kidding.
Deep breaths. Inhale. Exhale.
‘Or is it gelato?’ he asks.
‘It’s gelato,’ I reply, watching the line pile up behind the five of them.
He scrunches up his nose. ‘Hmm, don’t much like that vegan stuff.’
‘Gelato isn’t vegan. It’s milk-based,’ I say, the Bubblegum sweetness transitioning into the bitterness of the Coffee.
‘You sure?’ he asks.
‘Almost positive.’ I add a wide smile to my response to avoid a bad Google review.
‘How about that then kids? Daniel, you order first.’
‘Bubblegum,’ he says, eye contact reserved only for the gelato.
‘Say please,’ the dad says.
Daniel mumbles something inaudible under his breath that sounds nothing like a please, and his dad applauds him with a ‘good boy’.
‘What size?’ I ask.
‘Just one scoop.’ The dad’s eyes now fixated on the cabinet.
Why bother looking, you know you’re going to order Rum & Raisin.
‘In a cup or a cone?’ I ask.
‘Ah,’ the dad pauses, ‘Daniel?’
Daniel takes a soft forty seconds to decide whether he will have a cup or a cone. The dad intervenes with questions of whether he will be able to manage the melt situation, given the heat of the day.
The line behind them has doubled now.
‘A cone,’ Daniel whispers to his dad, because apparently asking me directly just isn’t in his repertoire of skills.
‘A cone,’ the dad turns to me and says, not realising I’ve already wrapped a cone in a napkin and have added a scoop of Bubblegum.
The other kids take almost as long as Daniel to decide a cup or a cone.
‘$24.50 for those five,’ I say. The dad fumbles around deciding if he will use cash or card before electing his AMEX to complete the job.
*
With the windows down, the air is crisp and flattens the sweat to my face. I turn up the radio. A radio host asks the recent winners of a romantic reality show if they’ve had sex yet. The girl laughs in response, her discomfort searing through my crackly car speakers.
I turn it off. Avoiding the pothole in the cratered driveway, I pull in.
I fumble around at my front door, attempting to use the light from my phone to find my ever-growing key chain.
It’s quiet. The possums are having a domestic somewhere higher, the powerline I think.
My hands cover my face and I breathe into them. Hot air. Sweaty, sad, stale air. Inhale, exhale.
It’s so quiet.
*
My sister was turning eleven. She’s the one just above me in age. Sometimes lost to the whims of the world and sometimes lost in the whirls of the family.
But I love her. People often mistake us now for best friends, not sisters. We’re attached at the hip, with fewer arguments about clothes as the years go on.
Now she lets me borrow her favourite black dress whenever I like.
It was her eleventh birthday. Mum and Dad prepared a surprise party after school. There were balloons and new pool toys and even Mum’s famous and rare vanilla butter cake.
‘It’s only for very special occasions,’ Mum told me as I begged, whined for it once, when Ellie was coming for a sleepover.
It was a Friday afternoon and seemed so fitting for the sometimes-forgotten child. Our favourite neighbours were coming. They were the best at Red Rover and there was sure to be a game.
I told everyone at school that it was her birthday, even the ones who weren’t listening.
‘Stop it, Keely,’ she said with a hush. ‘It’s just a birthday.’
So I broke into the first line of “happy birthday” and a chorus of chaotic voices joined in.
At lunchtime, Bri, the sister just above the birthday girl, fell over. Splat, hands first.
‘It could be broken,’ the teacher aid said pulling Bri up by her waist. Parents were called.
Missy, the favourite neighbour, picked us up from schoolinstead of Mum.
‘Everything’s ruined,’ I whispered to Missy during our after-school hello hug.
She shook her head and I began to cry. The sometimes-forgotten child asked me what was wrong and I told her I felt bad for Bri.
I didn’t tell her what was really wrong. She didn’t know what she was missing—it was a surprise after all.
Missy took us to the park, and I tried to smile as we climbed the spider web. But it was like any other afternoon and the forgotten one deserved the vanilla butter cake. Mum wouldn’t have finished baking because she always like them served warm.
We played for a while until Missy waved us over saying it was time to get home.
I felt sick on the ride home.
We got to the front steps. The house was still.
Missy swung the front door open and we podded in behind her.
‘SURPRISE!’
Ruby looked at me, the family, our friends, the neighbours. She looked at the balloons, and the yellow light from the oven. She looked back at me and began to cry. The tears turned to squeals of joy. The ten of just our family surrounded her in a suffocating squeeze. Bri stood with one arm in the arm, a plain bandage wrapped over it.
Mum was smiling as we all stepped away from the hug. I ran to her and she pulled me to her hip, and I rested my head to her side. How did she do it?
*
The house is quiet.
I pull a carrot out of the fridge and forage for a thing of hummus. It’s four days past it’s best before. I take the top off and give it a sniff. The carrot is unpeeled and uncut.
The couch is my haven and pulling off my pants, I flop onto it.
My laptop flashes a show, that I’m not even paying attention to. The hummus is grainy and the carrot floppy.
It’s 9:45.
I pick up my phone. You’re fine.
Mum’s number is dialled.
‘Hello sweetheart,’ she says after the third tone.
‘You’re awake!’ I say. My lungs fill with air.
‘Yeah, I’ve been watching this new show about serial killers. Got a little bit carried away.’
‘Classic.’
‘Is everything okay?’
I pause, ‘yeah, just finished work.’
‘Okay darling. How was it?’
‘Fine, I guess. My wrist has been clicking a bit from scooping too much.’
‘Be careful of that. Jamie from across the road has to have surgery on his wrist now, you don’t want that to be you.’
‘I’ll tell customers not to order triple scoops.’
‘Are you sure you’re okay Keels?’
Inhale, exhale. My phone breaks and I’m sobbing into the phone. ‘I just miss you.’
‘Oh Keels.’
‘And I’m sick of working in a job where people treat me like I’m stupid. Sometimes I wish I just did med like Henry and Frankie and Elizabeth.’
‘No you don’t, you’d hate med, you know you would. Your time will come.’
‘I know that,’ I say. I take a deep breath to control the tears. ‘I didn’t think it’d be easy, but I don’t know, not this hard either.’
‘Well just keep chugging along,’
‘You know I will.’
‘Okay, I’ll let you go—’
‘Wait, before you go. I want to ask something.’
‘Sure.’
‘Remember Ruby’s 11th birthday? How did you get everything done with Bri and everything?’
I hear her smile through the phone. ‘Your dad picked Bri up and took her to the doctors.’
I laughed and my lungs nearly pop. ‘Night night Mumma. Love you.’
*
I pull the A-frame out from behind the drinks fridge and flip the sign over on the door.
‘Are you guys open?’ a woman asks.
‘Just now,’ I say with a laugh.
‘Wonderful.’
She scans the cabinet, whispering the names of the flavours to herself.
‘I’ll take a passionfruit, thanks,’ she says.
‘In a cup or a cone?’ I ask.