Lessons from the Heart (34 page)

‘I've had two calls in the last day, and one lady – it was a clothes shop, you know, Sportsgirl? – well, she was virtually saying if there was nothing bad from me she'd take her on immediately.'

‘But where, Mrs Steinway?'

‘I didn't ask, love. I didn't think to. You'll have to ask her that yourself.'

‘I haven't been able to contact her for two days. The phone just rings. Or I get her mother.'

‘You might just have to go round there,' Mrs Steinway says. ‘And talk to her mother.'

My face must show something to her then.

‘You may just have to, love. If you want to find her.'

‘Laura,' Mrs Darling says, after taking an age with the door, and I know immediately I shouldn't have come, or not at this time. It's five-thirty already – and she'd have started drinking at lunch. At the latest.

‘Laura,' she says again, and drags me by the arm straight – well, not straight – through the house and into the kitchen. There are bottles on the shelves and in the sink and on the chopping bench in the centre of the room, but the place is spotlessly clean, as it always is – in fact the whole kitchen gleams with glass. Toni had said her Mum was always in the kitchen these days, washing glasses and bottles. Over and over. ‘Like Lady Macbeth,' Toni said, but not laughing as she said it. I listen but there's no sound from the rest of the house, and I wonder if Mr Darling's away, and how long it is since he's been here.

‘I blame the school,' Mrs Darling says, pouring. I wonder what she's been doing in here, in the silence, without even a radio on for company. She couldn't
just
have been drinking? ‘I blame this Pisscot.'

‘Prescott, Mrs Darling. It's Mr Prescott.'

‘She'd never have got in this trouble by herself.'

‘Do you know where she is, Mrs Darling?'

‘She could at least have –' Her lips start trembling, and I know this person is Toni's Mum and I should do something to comfort her, but I don't know what. Or how.

‘Do you mind if I look in her room, Mrs Darling?
Mrs Darling
–?' I have to say it again, because I think she's forgotten I'm there, or she's looking at me but seeing someone else and not me. ‘Can I look in Toni's room?'

‘She's not there,' Mrs Darling – Elaine – nearly shouts at me. ‘I've told you, I've told you already.'

‘I know she's not there. I just thought …'

‘She could at least have –' she says again. And her face is a watery mess, and she's drinking through it.

‘I'll just look,' I say, and the last thing I expect is her to follow me, bumping against the walls of her own house. She fills the corridor to Toni's room behind me, and the smell of her unhappiness fills the space between us and nearly suffocates me.

‘I won't …' I say, as I reach the door. ‘I won't take anything.'

And I realize how weird this sounds, as if Toni's dead or something, and I'm here collecting trophies or keepsakes for a memorial.

‘Take what you like. She won't be back for it.'

‘Don't you have any idea?' I say, as I open her cupboard.

‘Glebe is all I know.'

‘Glebe? Why Glebe?'

‘She told the taxi, the driver, I heard her.'

‘But Glebe's miles. And she's hardly taken anything.'

‘She could at least have –' Mrs Darling says for the third time. But still can't finish her thought.

‘Does Mr Darling know?' I say. And she kind of slumps then, as if his name itself is a blow. She turns her head from side to side and I don't know if she's saying
no,
or just moving her lips on the rim of the glass. At one point I see her teeth bared against the glass and I'm terrified she'll bite the rim clean off it.

‘Mrs Darling, is there anyone I can get?'

But she doesn't hear. Just stands slumped there in the doorway, somehow not falling, until something finally registers and she holds up her empty glass and squeezes her eyes up in a sort of apology. ‘I'll just …' she says, and goes.

And I can look properly then. I don't bother with the cupboard, the pockets of clothes, the drawers in the dresser, the bedside cabinet. I find it quickly, without effort, as I'm meant to, a folded square of notepaper pushed down between the bedhead and the wall.
Lolly,
it says in round, looping letters on one side. I stuff it in the pocket of my tunic, without reading. And leave. Or attempt to.

Mrs Darling fills the corridor again. Brimming, in the darkness.

‘I have to go now,' I say. A thief.

‘She could at least –' Mrs Darling's still muttering as she struggles to unlock the front door with one hand.

‘What, Mrs Darling?'

‘If she was going to leave home …' she says, and the door flings itself open in her hands.

‘What?' I say, nearly crazy myself with this pointless, broken record. ‘She could at least have –
what?'

‘Taken me with her.'

Lolly,
the note says, and it's only three lines, and I can see she's scribbled it at the last moment, maybe with the taxi already waiting in the driveway, its engine running and the driver tooting impatiently.
Don't look for me,
it says.
I'm okay. When I'm ready I'll get in touch. Don't look, Lolly. Please? Till I'm ready.
And at the bottom, there's a row of Xs, and Toni's signature, a T with two dots for eyes drawn in beneath the crossbar.

It's dark, but I walk home the long way from Toni's, back through the park, kicking the dead leaves.
Don't look, Lolly. Please? Till I'm ready.

Are you ready?

No.

Are you ready now, then?

No. And you're looking.

I'm not.

You are. You have to start counting all over again.

One two three four five six seven eight nine ten – coming, ready or not!

And I find I'm running then, and skipping, and have a pain in my chest, and it's weird because I can't stop myself laughing at the same time.

‘Toni,' I say out loud, and I know to people passing, to people hurrying home under the lamps, I must look totally crazy, talking to myself and laughing like this, in an empty park. And two or three people – even a man – step off the path altogether as I go past. But I can't help it.

If she was going to leave home …

‘Oh, Toni,' I say, and the pain of not sharing is like a shard of glass that's lodged itself under my heart. ‘Can you believe it? Can you just believe it?'

She could at least have taken me with her!

15

Days pass, a week. And then, almost without noticing, it's a month. And time – Mr Jasmyne's right – can flatten out completely and become a road without contours, or features, or even road signs to warn you that anything's passing at all. Even your own life.

And all this time I do what Toni asks, and I don't look. At anything. I spend every evening in my room, and Mum and Philip and everyone just creep round me and push stuff under my door – like bananas, or notes to ask whether the TV's too loud and whether maybe they should think of moving out of home altogether, or would it be enough if they just got room service installed, like most parents doing the HSC?

And if anyone asks what I'm working on, at the moment, just to get me talking, and relieve the pressure, on everyone … I just say, ‘Zeno's paradox' or something, and Mum just says ‘Oh,' and Philip says he hopes I'll at least have it sorted out by eight o'clock so I can help Katie with the washing up, and Mum glares at him then because he doesn't understand what pressure I'm under and he could be driving the answer – right at this moment with his facetious smart-alec remarks – completely out of my head, and that'd be two thousand years worth of wasted effort straight down the drain. To say nothing of Fermat's last theorem, which might have been next in line, or the Infinite Hotel problem which – if it had been solved in time – would at least have given Jesus a room and a bed at the inn, and think of the straw that would have been saved in the centuries since.

And blah.

And I even turn the mirrors in my room to the wall, so I can't look at my own ugly face. Though one night, when I think it's all been too long, and it's not fair and I'm sick of never looking at another single human being – except your family, who aren't human and never count anyway – I do … well, not exactly
look
, but I do kind of peep …

‘New subscribers,' the operator at the other end of the line says. ‘Surname and suburb, please?'

‘Darling,' I say.

‘Initial?'

‘A.'

‘A
darling?'
the woman says and pauses. They must get lots of hoax calls, I suppose. ‘Suburb?' she says, sharply.

‘I'm not sure. It could be Glebe.'

I listen to her nails clicking on the keyboard.

‘There are no new subscribers under
A. Darling
in Glebe. In fact none in Sydney Central at all.'

‘Oh,' I say. And she must hear my disappointment. Because her voice softens a fraction.

‘Of course, there's often a lag in getting new names onto the database. You could try again in a few days.'

‘Thank you,' I say, knowing that I won't. That doing it this once I could convince myself was an impulse, some crazy thing I'd done without thinking. But not twice, because I'd have to have thought about it in the meantime.

‘I don't suppose,' I say, musing aloud, ‘she could have started a business herself?'

‘That'd be “Commercial”,' the woman says. ‘It's a different list.'

‘Could you look anyway? Just in case?'

‘What?' she says, her voice hardening again. ‘An
A. Darling
under “Commercial”?'

‘No,' I say, ‘of course not.' And hang up.

Flowers come, in the middle of all this, for my birthday. Seventeen roses, red and black. Three of them are barely buds.

‘There's no card,' Mum says, bringing them up to my room. ‘Only the address label. But just look at them, will you? These black ones … they must have cost a fortune.'

‘Mmmm,' I say, and bury my face in them. The florists probably spray them just before delivery, I think, because I can feel the droplets of water they leave on my cheeks.

‘Maybe they're from Philip?' Mum turns the address label over in her hands. ‘Or what about this Sean who keeps ringing?'

‘I'm not interested in Sean. Or Philip. Or anyone at the moment.'

‘I know.' I see Mum hesitate before she says anything more. ‘Laura,' she begins finally, ‘I do sometimes feel like I'm being cast as the dragon guarding the gate, you know.'

‘I don't ask them to ring here.'

‘But that doesn't seem to dissuade them.'

‘Could you just get me a vase, please?'

‘Do you want to keep the label?' Mum says from the doorway. And she's still turning it this way and that, as if some message in secret ink will eventually appear.

‘No,' I say, knowing there's nothing on it. ‘Thanks,' I say. Expecting her to go.

‘You're not going to become a total hermit on me, are you?' ‘No, Mum,' I sigh.

‘An obsessive? You don't see anyone, you don't go out. You do nothing but work.'

‘And who do I get that from?'

‘Darling, study's one thing. It's important. Achievement. I believe in all that. But –'

‘It's not the whole world?'

She pokes her tongue out at me. And still doesn't go. She's always like this – if she strikes a problem, she'll work away and work away at it until she gets an answer. My mother's an obsessive. And I just hate the way her eyes light up and this bubble appears – you can
see
it – over her head when she thinks she's figured something out. Like now.

‘You
know
, don't you …' she says in her Sherlock Holmes voice as she comes all the way back into my room. And she still hasn't gone for the vase. ‘You're not even wondering who these flowers are from, because you already know, don't you?'

‘Do I?'

‘And all this time I've been asking you, and speculating, and you know.'

‘Who do you think?'

‘Well, it's got to be someone who knows your birthday obviously, and someone who knows you like roses.'

‘And?'

‘And someone who thinks they know you well enough that you'll guess immediately who they're from. So it can only be –' she says, and stops. ‘Oh,' she says then. ‘Oh.'

‘Dumb,' I say. Not nastily.

‘What is
he
doing there?' I say. Because Thomas is sitting up at the table in a high chair, being fed some grey gunk off a white spoon.

‘Do you object?' Mum says. ‘Miss Ask-me-first?'

‘No, I mean eating that stuff.'

‘It's pureed apple.' She holds up a green and blue tin that's vaguely familiar.

‘He loves it,' Katie says from the other side of the high chair. And it's like I haven't heard Katie's voice or seen her face for ages. ‘Don't you, Thomas?'

Thomas waves his own spoon in a splattering circle. He looks suddenly much older. A boy, almost. With apple spread on his cheeks.

‘But … he doesn't eat food.'

‘You mean he throws it?' Mum says.

‘No, I mean solids. He doesn't –'

‘He's been eating them for ages,' Katie says. ‘Hasn't he, Mum? You just never notice anything.'

‘He hasn't,' is all I can say back to her. ‘And I do – notice, I mean.'

‘I weaned him weeks ago, darling,' Mum says.

‘What, Thomas?'

Mum fakes it, then, looking around the kitchen for another baby.

‘Oh,' I say.

‘Dumb,' she says. Not nastily.

More weeks go by. Another month. While I look for a message, a note, a phone call. Nothing comes. And then, of course, as soon as I give up and stop looking, it does. A letter, out of the blue. And again, it's Mum who brings it, but not like she's bringing flowers this time.

Though the envelope itself is blue.

‘But that's not from Toni,' I say as soon as I see it. I know her writing as well as my own.

‘It's from Dad.'

‘Dad?' And for one crazy instant, I think she must mean Mr Darling. ‘Whose Dad?'

‘Yours.'

And I see then, it's a special air envelope, with a logo of the Parthenon in one corner. And Toni, I realize, is hardly likely to be using airmail from Glebe. Though Glebe might just as well be Greece, or somewhere.

‘From Stavros,' Mum says then. Because we've always called him that –
Stavros
– since we came back from Greece, and I wonder what Mum's doing, suddenly calling him
Dad
all over again. Maybe it's just the shock, I think. It's seven years since he's written.

‘Christ, I hope it's not bad news,' she says, and holds it out.

‘Haven't you read it? Even opened it?'

‘It's not addressed to me.'

Laura Vassilopoulos,
the envelope says. And I can see now it's Dad's writing, Stavros's writing. I've still got the card he sent for my ninth birthday. I turn the envelope over, feel it. ‘It's got something in it, something stiff. It feels like a card. Maybe it's for my birthday.'

‘It's a bit late if it is,' Mum says, though she's normally not rude about Stavros any more, not in front of me anyway. And I look at her to see why, and find her hands are trembling.

‘Do you want me to go? While you open it?'

‘No,' I say. ‘No.'

‘Well,' she says, once she's seated herself on my bed. ‘Hadn't you better open it?'

I nod.

‘Do you want me to do it?'

‘No,' I say, and find I'm suddenly ripping at it.

‘Careful, Katie will want the stamps.' But I know she couldn't care less about the stamps, she's just demonstrating the calmness of her own voice.

‘Look.' The letter unfolds and something drops out, something square and stiff, and backed with brown cardboard. I turn it over. ‘A photo.'

‘Show me.'

‘Just a minute,' I say, while my eyes stop jumping and begin to focus on the photo, its poor, washed colours.

‘Oh,' I say.

‘Laura? What is it?'

‘Aren't they so cute?'

‘Show me.' She snatches the photo out of my hand, but the image remains with me. Two tiny, nineteenth-century girls in white party dresses against a blue kitchen wall, two girls from Alexandria or Palestine or somewhere – even India, they're so brown – with their hair drawn up and fastened in top-knots. Their cheeks are fat and wreathed in smiles.

‘That must be them,' Mum says.

‘They are
so
gorgeous,' I say, and reach out to take the photo back. But Mum pulls away, evading my hand, and pores over the photo, her eyes consuming every detail. I can't remember ever seeing her look at anything so intensely before.

‘Mum –' I say eventually, when I think she's actually going to eat it.

‘Yes,' she says finally and hands it over. ‘They're gorgeous.'

‘Why are you so sad then?'

‘I'm not.'

‘You sound it.'

‘What does the letter say?'

‘I haven't looked at it yet,' I complain, still watching her face. ‘You've hogged the photo so long.'

‘Well, read it now,' she says, and I know she has to restrain herself from snatching that out of my hands as well.

Which is why I unfold it so slowly.

‘Oh,' I say.

‘What, for Chrissake? Don't just keep saying
oh
.'

‘It's in Greek,' I tell her. And I feel as though something
has
been snatched from me. ‘Why would Dad … Why would Stavros write to me in Greek when he knows I can't read it?'

‘I'll read it to you, darling.'

Which, of course, we both realize is the point.

Mum props her back agains the wall for support and starts to read. ‘
Agapiti mou kori… My dear daughter,'
she reads, and her voice almost can't manage that. Not because I'm
not
his daughter, but because she's always feared he'd make this claim, that he'd come and claim his daughter. But that's long gone now. I'm seventeen, and I'm Mum's daughter. She stopped worrying about that as soon as she heard about his marriage and the twins.
His
daughters. Which still doesn't stop her from trembling now, hands and voice.

‘It
seems,
' she reads, ‘a
very long time since I last heardfrom you …'
Mum looks up and pulls a sour face. Each year I still send Dad a card for his birthday, a letter to him and Yiayia Irini at Christmas. I never hear back.

‘…
and you must now
,' Mum reads on, ‘
be … seventeen –
‘Read what's there.'

‘I am.'

‘Does he say seventeen?' My mother is the worst liar since George Washington.

‘He means to, darling. He says
sixteen
but …' She pretends to look at the postmark on the envelope. ‘I don't know when this was posted …'

‘Don't be pathetic,' I tell her. ‘I'm not a child. Just read what's there.'

‘…
sixteen
,' she reads, ‘and
almost grown up. Soon you will be leaving school and getting married
…'

We look at each other. ‘He's lost contact,' she says, ‘that's all.'

‘What else does it say?'

‘I
thought it was time you …'

‘What? Time I what?'

‘
Got to meet your sisters.'

‘My
sisters
? Show me.'

‘There.' Mum points with her finger. She actually rests it right on the paper, to steady it. ‘I
adelses sou. Your sisters …'

I pick up the photo and look. Of course, in my heart, ever since I'd heard about the twins, I've kind of known we were sisters, in a way. Half-sisters anyhow. But neither Mum nor I have ever used the word. It wouldn't have seemed real – two girls, thousands of miles away, whom I'd never met, maybe never would, just two more girls growing up. There were three billion of us on the planet. Katie was the only sister I had, really had. And I've never looked at the thought – till now – that Katie's no more a sister, in blood, than these two little girls. And the more I look at them, the more I see myself – they're black, like me, like Stavros – and the less I see my link to Katie, who's fair and blue, like Mum and Philip.