Finding Grace (14 page)

Mr. Preston picks up the remote and starts flicking.

Flick, flick, flick.

The news. I figure he'll be distracted and won't notice how much of his pizza I'm eating.

How come, if someone offers you something they're eating suddenly it's the most delicious thing you've ever tasted? Salt and vinegar chips are the worst. If someone offers one a salt and vinegar chip one always eats it very slowly, thinking
This is the best chip I have ever had in my whole life.
One is always too polite to ask for another, but thinks instead,
As soon as I'm out of view, I'm buying myself a bag of salt and vinegar chips.

“See you, chum,” I say.

“Have a good time, chum,” he replies.

Inside the car, I pop in the snorkel, wishing I hadn't put on the red lipstick, which is now all over my chin and my nose. It's one of those stay-on-forever lipsticks. It doesn't stay on the lips, but get it on the chin and nose and you can bet it'll be there all night.

The evening is mild. I drive along the streets with my snorkel out the window. There are couples walking their dogs and fit people in short shorts jogging. There are people dressed up for dinner walking toward the restaurant strip. I drive past the park. There are people unpacking barbecues. They have their picnic baskets and their Eskies.

Kate lives in a long street of terrace houses. The renovated ones have terra-cotta pavers with matching terra-cotta pots on their verandas, and gloss-painted wrought-iron filigree fences in emerald or maroon. They have timber venetian blinds on their timber French doors.

The unrenovated ones have rusty wrought-iron filigree
fences and cemented front lawns. They have aluminum windows covered by thick white venetian blinds.

There are all sorts of cars parked up on the footpath, from Jaguars and BMWs to Combis and Datos.

Maxwell opens the door for me, then goes outside to wait on the veranda.

What is he waiting for? He's here! This is it, isn't it?

Inside, Kate is perched on her favorite velvet cushion. She's holding a little white flower. She looks so much like a fairy in a little green floral dress that I'm about to ask her if I was supposed to come in fancy dress. I get as far as “Was I …” before I realize that it isn't fancy dress, it's a funky outfit, but I'm close enough to saying it to muster a nice big red blush.

“You're early, have you been running?” she asks.

I say yes, because it's easier than explaining that I'm blushing because I thought her funky outfit was a fancy-dress costume.

Maxwell is standing in the doorway looking up and down the street, rising up and down on the balls of his feet, waiting, waiting. He's wearing black leather pants and his shoes squeak.

“Maxwell, darling, can you put some music on?” Kate asks.

Maxwell turns around. “What?”

“I said, could you please put some music on.”

If she has to say everything twice tonight I'm going to have to kill him. It's unbearable, it's a form of torture. It's a bit like sentence-finishers. I always want to say something really unexpected just to throw them off. I can never think quickly enough, though.

Kate and I talk about uni. She asks me if I've been to the bar. I decide that I should ask Hiro to come and see a band with me. If there is a band playing we won't have to speak and I won't have an opportunity to get embarrassed.

We chat about people at the café. I ask after the chef, the other waiters and the regulars.

Then we make poo jokes and laugh hysterically. As a general rule I am not a big fan of the poo joke, but Kate is a funny girl and she has me rolling about on my big velvet cushion. Maxwell is standing in the doorway looking disapproving.

At about nine-thirty when I'm ready to go to bed (being a morning person), people start arriving. All of a sudden the house is packed to capacity. I'm introduced to about fifteen people; they were all born in the early 1970s so they have names like Vladimir and Paris.

I'm sharing my big velvet cushion with a girl called Charisma, which is unfortunate really, but her parents weren't to know at the time. She's telling me a long and involved story about the ovarian cyst of someone I don't know. Charisma is boring me to tears and I keep yawning.

At a quarter past ten, someone who actually knows the person with the ovarian cyst and is asking interested questions rescues me from Charisma.

I slide off the velvet cushion and start looking for Kate. I work my way down the hall and a girl with an English accent and short spiky blond hair accosts me. She's wearing hot pants and a little sparkly top. She has glasses with very thick black frames. “Rachel! It is so-o-o good to see you!” says the funky hotpants girl.

I've never seen this person before in my life. “Hello …”

Oh dear, I don't know your name, that was definitely an “insert name here” type of hello, how can I cover?

“… there!” I say, grinning at her. “What have you been doing?”

Now, my understanding is that when someone asks “What have you been doing?” that is your cue to give a brief twoor three-sentence summary. For example, in my case it would be “Oh, you know, not much. I've moved out of home. I'm going to uni. I have a job.” Thereafter, the asker can choose a topic area to pursue, it's like
Select a subject from the following menu.
This girl, however, took it as an invitation to tell me her whole life story. At least it was an interesting life story.

“Oh, well, as you know, I went to London as an exchange student.”

Oh right! It's that dumpy-looking, quiet girl who went to London as an exchange student. What was her name?

“It was fabulous, just fabulous. It's changed my whole life.”

I have never seen someone change so much. I can't believe my eyes! She used to be one of those girls who looked about forty! Now she is a thin, funky-looking person in hot pants. What was her name?

She goes on and on about the school she went to and how she traveled all across Europe and she came back to London and performed in a troupe of acrobats as a juggler. She went to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, where she fell in love with a stand-up comic who ended up being bisexual and two months later ran off with her flatmate.

“I was just devastated. I mean, my flatmate who I had lived with for years, Nigel, we went to Madrid together and
to Prague. And then Edinburgh, naturally. We had been the dearest of friends. Suddenly he started wanting his name to be pronounced “Nee-gel.' I couldn't believe it. It was just so painful. So I said to myself, Ruth …”

Ruth! Her name was Ruth.

“I said to myself, Ruth, it's time to go home. I mean Europe is fantastic, of course, but I couldn't get far enough away from Nee-gel, and Australia is about as far as you can get, really, isn't it?”

Ruth tells me that she came back to Australia to start a degree in performing arts, but she's finding it really difficult. Not the degree part, naturally, because she has made a living out of performing arts, but the being back in Australia part.

“I'm living with my parents to save money. They're trying to run my life. I just can't wait to get back to Europe.”

At eleven I leave Ruth, promising to catch up another day. I find Kate to say goodbye. She's fighting with Maxwell in the kitchen. Maxwell is standing at the back door, he has his coat over his arm and is playing with a set of car keys in his hand.

Where is he going?

She gives me a hug and we promise to have coffee.

I drive home to find Grace in bed asleep and Mr. Preston sitting on the couch with his head thrown back, snoring. I walk into the kitchen, put the kettle on and bang the kitchen cabinets for a bit, hoping he will wake up.

I walk into my bedroom and kick off my boots.

When I come back, Mr. Preston is awake. “Must have dozed off,” he says with that startled look. His eyes are all red and glassy and his hair is standing up at a funny angle at
the back. I offer him a cuppa but he says he'll just go home. He picks up the pizza boxes and takes them outside to the bin.

When he comes back in, he says to me, “Our mate next door came back from the police station earlier, and those two had one hell of a barney. All's quiet now, though.”

He picks up his keys and his phone. “Did you have a nice time?”

I nod and smile brightly. “Yes. Thank you for coming over.”

“No worries. It's good to see you're getting out a bit,” he says, patting my shoulder.

He tiptoes to the front door, like some kind of pantomime burglar. “Well, good night then,” he whispers.

“Good night.”

He closes the door silently behind him.

I changed and hopped into bed. I lay for a while with the light on, thinking about Ruth and how different she was. I thought about how she went from a dumpy-looking nobody to a person who has done something exciting, all on her own in another country.

I wonder how much we change and adapt to our environment? Who would I be if I were not here? What if I had stayed at home? What would I be doing now? Has taking this job changed my destiny?

The big question is did Ruth become a juggler because she was in a juggler-friendly place, or was she fated always to be a juggler and sought a place to realize her destiny?

I thought about Grace, who had an exciting life and now …

I thought about how such dramatic changes are occurring in people's lives all around us, all the time. We
plan, we think we know where we're going and then bang— we meet someone or we see things that change our whole life, just like that. Or do we invite the bang by the choices we make?

I lay under my quilt and shivered. Sentience, man! Who needs it? Life was much easier ten minutes ago when I knew everything.

Meanwhile, if Mr. Preston was the overcoat-wearer with the blue lips, how come he didn't pick it up when I called the cat Pritchard?

Curiouser and curiouser.

Tight Mouth
came to see me today. Why? Why me? I don't like her.

I was standing out in the back garden, watering. Plants keep appearing. I don't know much about plants, but plants seem to be appearing that I'm sure weren't there before.

There are several rosebushes that have healthy-looking new growth on them. I'm very excited about the prospect of roses. I will be able to fill the house with flowers.

Brioney sat on the edge of the pond. She told me she wasn't speaking to Charity and she usually borrows her sewing machine and would it be OK if she borrowed Grace's for a couple of days?

I told her that Mr. Preston said I wasn't allowed to lend anything, but she was welcome to sew here if she liked.

Please, please, please don't say yes.

Brioney was sitting on the very edge of the pond with her long legs tucked primly sideways. “Well, all my patterns are at home and it really wouldn't be convenient. It really would be so much easier if I could take it with me. It would just be for the afternoon. Mr. Preston wouldn't have to know, now, would he?” she says, looking at me slyly.

“Brioney, you aren't suggesting that I would deceive my employer?”

She sniffed and shook her head briskly. “No, no, of course not.”

She changed the subject. She told me that she was going to finish a quilt.

“I make quilts. I made one for Grace, you know. It's the one in your room. Months, it took me—months. Actually, I wouldn't mind taking it back, since she's not using it,” she said, running her fingers through the back of her hair.

“I'm sort of using it at the moment,” I said, smiling awkwardly.

“Oh.” She shook her head briskly and sniffed. “I was going to come and pick it up while Grace was in hospital. Charity and I popped around to pick up a few things, you know, the valuable things, because it's not safe to leave them lying around, you know, with the house empty for who knows how long?”

She paused. Using her index finger, she pulled her gold necklace out from her shirt and ran her finger along its links, first to the left, then to the right. The loose folds of
her skin around her throat stretched under the chain, first to the left, then to the right. It was disgusting and fascinating at the same time. Her tanned skin was dry and leathery, with little lines running through it, like a reptile's.

“When we came back the next time there was a security guard here. A security guard!”

Stretch left, stretch right.
She had thin lips and they turned down at the sides.

She looks like a tortoise!

“Can you believe it? He wouldn't let us in the house! Her own sisters! I mean, I can understand protecting the house from burglars, but her own sisters! That's a bit over the top, don't you think?”

Her nose was turned up a little at the front so you could see the shape of her nostrils.

She looks
exactly
like a tortoise! Oh, that's such a relief. It's been bugging me for ages.

“Anyway, after a while he was only here at nights. The nurses were here on their own during the day, well, except for Grace, of course. Charity and I popped round a couple of times, to see if there were any valuables lying around. I mean, I know this nursing agency is very reputable and everything, but you can't trust anyone these days. Some young nurse, after a bit of extra cash, sees a gold bracelet lying around and … well, you know what I'm saying.”