Finding Grace (15 page)

I can't look at her anymore. I'm afraid I'm going to laugh. I
do not
want to laugh.

“Charity and I were only trying to protect Grace's things. Mr. Preston thinks himself all high and mighty and orders everyone around. He told the nurses not to let us
take anything and to call him directly if we came over. I don't know who he thinks he is.”

You know what I reckon? Brioney is cross because she's the older sister. She thinks she should be running Grace's life, not Mr. Preston. She thinks it's her responsibility. She wants the responsibility because it makes her feel important.

You know what else I reckon? I reckon she always has been jealous of Grace for being attractive and the career woman in the family. I reckon she's angry because Grace was so independent and doesn't need Brioney, even now.

“Anyway, love, I better be off. I've got a class this evening.”

Brioney left.

I watered the garden for a while longer, humming to myself. I should be a shrink, man. I know so much.

When I went back to my room, my quilt was gone.

I went
to uni this afternoon. We had a prac. I'm really getting into this uni lingo. When I walked into the lab, I saw Hiro. He smiled at me, so I went and sat next to him. I didn't have anything to say, so I let him talk to me.

When he started to speak, I couldn't understand him at all. I could feel a blush creeping up my neck and chin, so I leant forward on the desk and tucked my chin into my elbow. I sort of cocked my head while he talked to me. I had to listen really hard but once I got used to it I stopped thinking about blushing. After a little while I had no trouble understanding him at all.

It turns out his name isn't Hiro at all. It's Harold. He comes from Taiwan. His father works in finance. He's doing
his degree here in Australia because you can get a better job in Taiwan if you have a degree from here.

He has a younger brother at home whom he misses very much. He likes to play soccer. He plays the cello.

The cello is a pretty cool instrument to play. My brother, Brody, played the euphonium in primary school. He wanted to play the saxophone but he was late to the first band rehearsal. The euphonium—the uncoolest of all the brass instruments—was all that was left. No kid dreams of being a concert euphoniumist, do they? Except of course, my brother. He practiced diligently.

Pwarp, pwarp, pwarp.

The euphonium has such an unromantic sound. There are never any euphonium solos. You never see “Concerto for Euphonium in C.” So when my brother practiced, there was never any melody, just
pwarp, pwarp, pwarp, pause, pwarp.

When he went to high school they didn't have any euphoniums, so he gave it up. They had an alto sax, but he wasn't interested.

Hiro was telling me about how he's learning to play the cello. He said he went to classes in Taiwan after school.

“My mother, she makes me practice, always. Now I am here, I don't practice so much. She phones me up, “Are you practicing your cello?', “Yes, Mum,' I say. But I don't practice so much as I say,” he said, smiling.

I asked Hiro if he would like to go to the bar with me sometime. My head was bobbing up and down as I talked because my jaw was wedged into my elbow. He smiled and said that he would like that very much.

While we were doing the prac I noticed that he had
long muscular arms and beautiful strong hands. When he turned his head away from me to look at the blackboard, I noticed he had a really nicely defined jawline and a strong, muscly neck.

When he turned back to me, he smiled again. I felt butterflies in my belly.

Oh dear. I'm starting to notice curves about his person. I think I fancy him.

I think
that Grace has started to respond to me. Just recently she has started to turn her head toward me when I walk into the room. Her eyes look through me. What I mean is, her eyes are looking at my eyes but it's as if she's focusing on something just behind me.

When I first arrived I found her creepy, but it's different now.

Tonight I was in Grace's study and I had just opened up the spooky box. I had the desk lamp on. I was settling in, feet up and reclining, like you do.

Some people say they can feel it when someone is watching them. I have never had that sensation. I'm just not psychic at all. I haven't got second sight, hearing or smell.

Wouldn't that be a weird psychic power? What would second smell be useful for, then?

Ommm, your great-great-grandmother wishes you to know that the secret ingredient is tarragon.

Ommm, fifty years ago somebody had cheese fondue in this room.

Ommm, some entity is frying chicken on another astral plane.

That would be the problem with second smell. How would you know you were having a psychic experience and not just smelling something?

So, I'm reclining and I look up and Grace is standing in the doorway watching me. She looks just like I imagined when I first arrived. Most people, when they are standing for any length of time, tend to lean on one foot, or lean against whatever is nearest. It's dark and Grace just stands there with her hands hanging straight down beside her and her bare feet together. Her face is all white, her bottom lip droops and she looks straight at me.

I'm reclining in the reclining chair, frozen. The light is coming from behind her, outlining her shape in the doorway. All I can see is her white face and her dark eyes.

I feel fright, but fright from not expecting her to be there rather than fright from Grace herself. This is just Grace, gentle Grace, silent Grace, Grace for whom I made peanut-butter soldiers this morning.

I stand up and walk over to her.

“What is it?” I ask, putting my hands on her shoulders.

Her dark eyes are on my face, sort of
through
my face. I'm standing in front of her. She opens her mouth.

Oh my God, she's going to speak.

I stand very still and wait for her to speak. My heart beats very fast, not with fear but excitement and anticipation.

I stood in front of her, waiting. Of course, she didn't speak. She just stood there looking through me with her mouth open. After a while I realized we had been standing there staring at each other for so long it was ridiculous. I turned her around and put her back to bed.

I lay in bed and I couldn't sleep. I wondered what I'd thought it was that she was going to say.

Get out of my spooky box and mind your own business. By the way, I really don't like peanut-butter soldiers.

I lay there and wondered if she would ever speak again. What would her first words be?

Something
terrible happened today. Grace has withdrawn again. She wet herself again this afternoon, after we got home. She hasn't done that for ages. She has gone back down again. Whatever was coming out in her has gone. I look into her eyes and there is nothing. She has stopped looking at me again.

I went to university this morning. I was in the lecture theater. Hiro isn't in this class, so I sat by myself. There was a boy sitting in front of me with this giant bottle of water. Every now and then he would take a long leisurely sip.

All of a sudden I was thirstier than I have ever been in my life. My mouth was dry, my throat was dry, my skin was dry. I felt as if I'd just eaten a salt sandwich on stale bread
with soy sauce. I couldn't think, because every nerve in my body was saying
thirsty, thirsty, thirsty
. I looked at this giant bottle of water in front of me that I couldn't have.

I had to leave. I packed up my stuff and walked out of the lecture theater. I had to have a drink.

I walked down to the coffee shop and there was Kate with a whole bunch of herbal-looking people. She was sitting cross-legged on the chair—force of habit, I assume. She waved me over. I took a big bottle of water out of the fridge and paid for it.

I sat down with Kate and her friends. They remembered me from the party. I couldn't remember their names.

“OK, what I want to know is how much of my destiny is predetermined,” I said as I sat down.

“Well,” said Kate, without blinking an eye, “I think it's a combination of choice and fate.”

Kate held her mug of coffee delicately in her lap.

“I disagree,” said a blond surfer type with dreadlocks. “We are all part of a swirling cosmos. Everything connects —that's nature. You know if a butterfly flaps its wings in South America—”

“Don't give me that,” interrupted a pert-looking girl with a red skivvy on, “you're confusing correlation with coincidence.”

The cafeteria buzzed with conversation and laughter. Cleaning ladies in pale blue tunics wandered from table to table collecting dirty plates and stacking them on industrial-looking trolleys.

The pert girl looked at me over the rim of her coffee cup. “You go ahead and create your own destiny, pet. Don't listen to him. He's an environmental science major.”

“No, you didn't let me finish,” said the boy with dreadlocks, “it's basic physics. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.”

“So, what's equal about a wing flap and a meteorological disaster of biblical proportions, you goose?” argued the pert girl.

At the table nearest to us a group of young men erupted with laughter. The dreadlock boy had to raise his voice to be heard above them.

“You can't tell me that Nature doesn't have a plan,” he said. “Let's look at the basic principle of survival of the fittest. You can't tell me that—”

“Yes, but who's talking about Nature? We live in a modern society—an artificial structure that supports the weak,” interrupted the pert girl. “It's one of the critical factors underpinning our civilization, you twerp.”

The boy with the dreadlocks put down the glass bottle he had been drinking from. “Firstly, we are still animals,” he said, shaking his head and pointing his finger. “We are not immune to the forces of Nature. And secondly, I object to your constant insults, which clearly indicate a flimsy argu—”

Sitting between them, Kate and I swiveled our heads from one to the other like tennis spectators.

“Oh, get out of my face,” said the pert girl. She turned her head away and waved her hand at him. “We live in a society where limbs are replaceable and barren women are assisted to bear children. Tell me that isn't a huge step toward immunity.”

The dreadlock boy took a deep breath and was about to speak when I interrupted. “OK, let's say that I go to Edinburgh
and become a juggler. Is that fate or coincidence?” I asked.

“Oh, you mean Ruth?” said Kate. “Well, that's different. She definitely heard the call of the juggler within.”

“No doubt about it,” said the pert girl.

“Yes,” agreed the dreadlock boy, “Ruth is a predestined juggler. She would have been a juggler even if she lived in Brewarrina.”

They paused for a moment. A cleaner with trolley leaned toward us, collecting plates and bottles from our table.

“How prometropolitan are you?” said the pert girl, as the cleaning lady moved away. “Are you suggesting that someone who lives in a remote or regional area can't have aspirations in the field of performing arts?”