Borrowed Light (10 page)

So I'm making a bunker for us all. And Sam can help.

O
N SATURDAY NIGHT
, I told Tim. He said nothing for ages. We were at Miranda Blair's house, out in the garden. The music was loud, even out there, because she had speakers dotted like garden gnomes in amongst the potplants.

‘I'm pregnant,' I said again more loudly, in case he hadn't heard. I looked nervously around, to make sure no one was listening. ‘But don't tell anybody,' I added.

We were sitting on those canvas director chairs. I took a slug of green ginger wine. Something sour rose up in my throat.

‘Jesus,' said Tim. He took my hands and wobbled the ring from Franklins back and forth on my finger. He coughed.

‘Cally,' he said, and squeezed my hand. ‘Don't worry, Cal, I'll look after you.'

It was almost worth it, all of it, to hear him say that. All the sickness and the anxiety and the newspaper and everything. His face was shining with concern. There were little crinkles of worry at the comers of his blue eyes. He made me think of the doctor. I know it's not cool for a woman entering the new millennium, but I'd have given everything to be looked after. I started to imagine us in a little flat, with carpet (not timber floors), and our own dining-room table. We'd have people over for dinner, and a stock of green ginger wine. It would be just the two of us. Tim would go out to work, and he'd come home to delicious smells of roast. I couldn't quite get to the baby bit, but I just needed more time to imagine it.

I started to feel breathless, as if I'd just run a mile. Our little flat was becoming so clear in my mind. I could see the guests around the new dining table—there was Miranda Blair in her black lipstick, and there was her tribe. They were all laughing at something I didn't hear. They kept drinking our wine and breaking our glasses, and the house was filled with people, surfers and lifesavers and others I didn't know. The floor was littered with surfing magazines. There were no issues of
New Scientist
anywhere. No one had heard of black holes or inertia. When I went into our bedroom there was still the noise and the music. There was nowhere to go. Nowhere that was mine. The doona was too white. I put my hands over my ears, but it didn't do any good. I wanted my father's earplugs. God, I even wanted my father. I wanted to go home.

‘Are you all right?' Tim asked. ‘You probably shouldn't be drinking that.' He took my glass away from me and put it on the wooden table, out of reach. I'd done that kind of thing with Jeremy when he was four.

If I lived with Tim, I couldn't keep wearing this bad disguise. Eventually I'd have to take it off. Then he'd see me in the nude, with all my bones and my tail wagging and my
estrogen deficiency. And then we'd both die. It would be like one of Jeremy's meteorites hitting the earth. The end of life as we know it.

But I didn't have to worry, as it turned out. It wasn't that kind of ‘taking care' that he had in mind.

‘Listen, Cally,' he said. ‘I know this guy in the Cross, he's a friend of my brother's. He's an expert with herbs and plants that cure you of all kinds of things. He's at the cutting edge of this stuff. I'll talk to him and see if he can give you something to make your period come on. He helped one of my brother's girlfriends once.'

I looked up at him. ‘Really?' I said. I thought of my mother with her onion juice.

He nodded. ‘We could go, say, Tuesday night? Monday night I've got swimming training.'

I beamed at him, showing that I understood.

‘We could go out to dinner afterwards, Gal. I know this nice little place in Kellet Street. We could go there, just the two of us, after the cure.'

I told him that sounded lovely.

I went and rescued my glass from the wooden table, and someone filled it up for me. I took a swig. It was sickly sweet—marsala. I could see it lying in my stomach, a red band of liquid on top of the green ginger. It would be like that oil and water experiment I did with Jeremy. The two substances never mixed, no matter how much he shook the test tube. I felt the two wines staring at each other in a hostile manner in my intestine. One of them tried to climb back up my throat.

We didn't stay at the party much longer, because Tim wanted us to go back to his place. I didn't like to say no. My head was spinning as we walked into his room. I told Tim about my head and he spread Saturday's newspaper out on the floor in case I was sick. We lay down and I don't remember much until the last part. I turned over and threw
up all over the Leunig cartoon on the back page. We both sat up in horror. I must have drunk quite a bit of marsala because the vomit was a stunning colour, quite scarlet and swirly. It lay in bands across the headings on the newspaper, like the Great Red Spot around Jupiter. We watched the red spread and stain the paper, seeping onto the polished timber floors, and out into the universe.

Tim jumped up and ran to fetch a rag. I just sat there, leaning against the bed. I felt almost satisfied, watching my Great Red Spot. I don't know why.

Tuesday, 27 January

Callisto started high school today. Nearly twelve years old. She's growing up so fast. Poor Cally, she was nervous this morning. She talks non-stop when she's anxious. ‘My uniform is too long, Mum,' she wailed. ‘Everyone will think I'm a nerd. First impressions are really important.' And she embarked on a long diatribe, following me into the bathroom.

‘Take the case of ducks and imprinting,' she said to me in the mirror. A duckling stumbles out of his egg and thinks the first animal he sees is his mother. He'll go on all his life expecting some green tree frog to teach him to dive. It's tragic, and now all those Meadow High kids will form the impression that I'm a dork, no matter what I wear tomorrow.'

To cheer her up, I told her she's so good at arguing, she should become a lawyer. She said she couldn't convince me to take up a lousy hem, so how could she persuade a jury? She folded her arms then in a gloomy fashion and went into her cone of silence. I wished I had taken up the hem last night. I meant to, but Naomi rang up in a dreadful state. Lost her job!

I wish, too, that she wouldn't worry so much about appearances. She's always puzzling over what other people think of her. It makes her so vulnerable. I want to grab the people she likes and put a spell on them so they all rush to be her friend. Find a love potion.

I used to be just like her. My mother laughed at me about it. She thought it was idiotic to worry about other people's opinions. I never let her know how much time I spent in front of the mirror.

At forty the state of your face is the least of your worries.

In the car, on the way to school, Cally fiddled with the catch on her bag. Open close, open close, snap, snap, snap. She was holding her breath while she fiddled, and letting it out in great gusty sighs. Snap, sigh. So irritating. But I was sick with anxiety for her. I know what it's like. All those new faces, kids making mysterious instant decisions about you. ‘I've got a purple bag and so have you, let's be twins.'

Cally never had the right bag when she was little. Now I think she has, because she's done the research. She takes it very seriously, this watching of other kids. Notes what they're wearing, and the words they use. She does a far better job of camouflage than I ever did.

I never had many friends at high school. Kids didn't come to our house much, because my mother was always working. She had to—how different would my life have been, if Dad had lived longer? Mother says he could put a smile on anyone's face. He told long, complicated jokes, more like stories, really, and he never forgot the punchline. He was like a good long drink after a tiring day, my mother said.

When Cally was in kindergarten, I used to wait for her in the afternoons with the other mothers under the big oak tree in the playground. I'd listen to them talk about what they put in the children's lunches, what toys they bought them for birthdays, which friends they were having over to play. It made me so depressed. They were Professional Mothers. They knew what special packets of crisps children liked, where to get those biscuits shaped like teddies, how to pack the drink bottle in the lunch to keep it cold. They seem like small details, but there were so many of them, and I didn't know how they learnt them all and remembered them. Cally would run out to meet me but
I could barely smile at her. I used to wonder if she would rather go home with Sharon or Melanie. I wondered if she pretended that their mothers were hers.

Sometimes I wished they were, too. Then I wouldn't have to worry like this, all day, every day. And I'd know someone was looking after her better than I could.

It's hard to believe my baby Cally is almost a teenager! I never thought she'd get there, that I'd be able to do it. Every day is such a mountain to climb. In the early dawn, that wattlebird wakes me up. It has a squawk like a scream. My heart sinks. I think of all the things I have to do by eight o'clock. Lunches, clean clothes, library books, polished shoes. I remember I forgot to buy the bread. Maybe there are no sprouts for the sandwiches. I hate myself.

Today I drove Cally to school. I normally do, unless David is around. Even if he is, he usually leaves for work at sunrise. He misses the traffic that way (and family breakfast disputes). He's good at avoidance techniques. My husband, the empty space.

Today we got all the green lights. It made my spirits rise. We seemed to fly through the traffic, with nothing stopping us. I thought that was a good sign for Cally's first day. I told her that, but she just sniffed.

Well, it was a good sign. Maybe Cally will blossom in her teens, she'll go straight ahead like a green light. With any luck she'll be better than me; she won't be pulled back by every little snag in the world.

I'm like a jinx, the way I think everything will go wrong. She'd be better off without me.

Wednesday

Naomi rang again tonight—still upset. Perhaps we went too far with the hypnosis. But she did want to explore the notion of double consciousness. There is the possibility of reaching a secondary personality through neuro-hypnotism. When Naomi was in the trance, she said things that were completely out of
character. I made some notes about it in the red book, but must put more detail in. There was a lot of anger, and her voice changed—it was rougher, more masculine. I told her that, and she was amazed. Next time, I'll put the tape recorder on. It's as if these two personalities, these two halves, have no knowledge of each other. Someone said once that ‘perhaps we are also—preponderantly—what we forget.'

I can't forget, that's my trouble. People so often dismiss that other personality—the one we experience in dreams—but I think it rules our lives. A nightmare will influence your decisions the next day, whether you know it or not.

David says that's a lot of rot. But he never remembers his dreams, anyway. The past for him is a confusing landscape he wipes clean with turps each day. He says we have to look toward the future, that every day is a new day, and why do you have to rummage around in the back streets of history when you can be making it?

We don't ‘make it' much any more, anyway.

My mother would probably agree with David. About history, I mean. She says that there is so much to see out there in the universe—‘It is continually expanding, Caroline, do you realise?—why bother staring at your puny navel all day?' She says it with that sneer of her nostril.

I think that is very superficial of her. Even scientific theory supports my argument. When we look up at the night sky and see all those stars and planets shining, we are looking back in time, at the past. It takes all that time for the light to reach us. Jupiter's light takes thirty-three minutes to arrive, Ruth, do you realise? If we had no past, we'd have no light. Every crumb of matter and energy holds traces of its history, if only we can learn to read it there.

My mother spends all her time looking outwards. I suppose I look more inward. But it isn't puny, the interior world. It is continually expanding, the more you look. Inside each cell there are atoms and inside the atoms are protons and neutrons and
they hold traces of your father and the ape you once were, and the talent for music your great-grandfather once had. The more you travel into the past in your mind, the more there is. It's like a treasury of Russian dolls.

I just hope tomorrow is a better day for Cally. For me, too.

I must try to act positive, be encouraging. She must never know how it really is for me.

I
FOUND A HIDDEN
stash of these diaries in my mother's room. They were in a row of shoe boxes she keeps at the bottom of her wardrobe. I felt like telling her she'd be a lot better off if she kept shoes down there, like any other normal person, instead of private weird notes that her daughter can find. But I couldn't say anything, because I wasn't supposed to see them.

Funny, isn't it, because I remember my first day of high school, too, and I thought we caught every red light. We were late, as usual. Mum had to drive like a madwoman with wings just to get there on time.

That first year of high school I was put into the top class. I was sure there was some mistake. I sat at my new desk, and studied the letters chiselled into the wood. Whoever made those deep gouges must have used something very sharp, like a penknife, or maybe a dagger. It made me tremble. Even the graffiti was difficult to understand.

Melanie, Sharon and Morgan weren't in this class. We'd known each other ever since we were five. In high school they were put into a lower class. They'd be sitting together now, all cosy and giggling at someone else. They'd be well camouflaged. Company gives you that. When I dared to raise my head up from the desk, my heart pounded even faster.