One Whole and Perfect Day (6 page)
‘A celebration,’ she said to Sef, and there was a kind of familiarity to the word, as if someone had said it to her, very recently. ‘A celebration,’ she repeated, and now it seemed to her that the word had the sound of bells in it. And if there was a celebration, then Lonnie would have to come. He and Stan would make it up. Of course they would. May’s soft face took on a determined expression. She would make sure they did.
Powdery golden sunlight drifted through the windows of Dr Finch’s tutorial room, warming Lonnie’s knees through the frayed denim of his jeans, and his skinny arms through the loose weave of the big yellow sweater his nan had knitted for him. It felt strange to be warm again; Mrs Rasmussen’s Boarding House for Gentlemen was so cold that the small electric heater Lonnie had picked up from the Op Shop barely made a dent in the deep freeze of his room. Lying in bed at night he often pictured the small sitting room at home; its gas fire blazing, Lily doing her homework at the table, his mother deep in paperwork she’d brought home from her job, occasionally chatting with a lame duck she’d brought home as well.
Unlike his sister, Lonnie had never minded Mum’s lame ducks in the house, though these days it gave him a twinge to think of one of them snuggled up warmly on the battered sofa which had been his special place, even sleeping in his bed in the small room down the hall.
Lonnie tipped his head back to let the sun shine on his face, and stretched his long legs out till he was almost lying in the chair. When he thought of home these days it felt like he’d been cast out, and yet he knew it hadn’t really been like that: Pop might have thrown him out of
his
house, but Mum hadn’t chucked him out of theirs. It had been his own choice to go; he’d wanted space from them.
All
of them, not just Pop. Pop thought he was useless. He said Lonnie had done his dash with him, whatever that meant. What was a dash? Lonnie closed his mind against the image of Pop’s red angry face, and a much older memory of a big warm hand enclosing his. Pop had done his dash with
him.
‘He’s no grandpa of
mine
,’ he muttered, and didn’t notice how the girl in the chair next to his turned her head and smiled.
Yes, he’d wanted space from all of them: from Mum, who was always worrying about him and therefore made him worry about himself; from his bossy little sister, who also thought he was useless; and even from Nan, who seemed to think he was some kind of angel fallen down from heaven, which somehow made Lonnie feel worst of all. They mucked you up; you didn’t know who you were. He had to get himself sorted, he had to work out what to do.
Now the unaccustomed warmth took hold of Lonnie, his eyelids fluttered, and Dr Finch’s words on the poetry of Matthew Arnold rumbled right over him, like tumbrels on the way to the guillotine. His head drooped, he dreamed that kind of dream where you seem to wake in the place you’ve fallen asleep . . . there at the window of Dr Finch’s room Lonnie saw a tall dark-haired young woman in a long brown dress, peering in through the glass. He knew at once it was his favourite writer, Emily Bronte, because he’d know her anywhere. She was gazing straight at him, beckoning with a strong brown hand.
Lonnie rose from his chair and floated through the window into a landscape of stones and rough dry grasses and banks of purple flowers. He could hear water bubbling over pebbles and a small brown bird rose up from the grass and spiralled into the wide blue sky. ‘Emily!’ he called, and the tall young woman striding along a little way ahead of him turned, her great sombre eyes shining, the corners of her long mouth lifting in a smile. ‘See, she likes me!’ Lonnie murmured joyously. ‘See, Emily Bronte likes me! She understands. And if
she
likes me, then – Ah!’ he broke off with a small sharp yip, because someone, someone right next to him, had pinched his arm, hard.
He woke to see a pair of eyes, darker than Emily’s, beneath a glossy blue-black fringe, and recognised the fourth-year girl who sat in on some of the first year tutorials. ‘What – what’s up?’ he floundered.
The girl rolled her eyes sideways, and Lonnie turned his head to find Dr Finch standing beside his chair. ‘Ah, so you’re with us again, Mr Samson.’ He was holding Lonnie’s essay, ten creased and tumbled sheets on the poetry of Emily Bronte fastened together with the lucky paper clip Lonnie had kept from primary school, from Mrs Phipson’s Grade 4 class where he’d won a chocolate car for his project on ‘What I Want to be.’ Lonnie had wanted to be a Flying Doctor. How sure he’d been of everything back then!
He flipped through the pages, avoiding the last one where the mark would be. He knew it wouldn’t be good; Dr Finch’s agitated handwriting, peppered with exclamation marks, glared at him from every margin. A NO!! in block letters had torn the corner of a page.
‘Mr Samson?’
Lonnie looked up; Dr Finch was still standing over him. ‘Too personal, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘Too much detail about the author’s life. That page on the chair she died in, for instance –’
‘It was a sofa,’ said Lonnie. ‘A black horsehair sofa.’
‘Yes, well –’ Dr Finch waved a hand dismissively. ‘Details like that aren’t important, Mr Samson. This isn’t a pensioners’ reading group.’
‘I know,’ said Lonnie, wishing it could have been. All at once, as if he was drowning, his life began to flash before his eyes in a series of little pictures: primary and high school, the writing course, Horticultural School, Economics 1, the whole confusing struggle to find something he could be. Pop’s angry face, Mum’s anxious one, Lily’s scornful smile. If only he
was
a pensioner, then surely they would let him be.
‘Without an understanding of contemporary literary theory, Mr Samson,’ Dr Finch was saying, ‘I’m afraid you’re not going to get very far.’
‘I don’t want to get far,’ muttered Lonnie childishly.
‘So be it,’ said Dr Finch, and turned away.
So be it. Lonnie felt a deep chill gather in his chest. ‘So be it’ sounded ominous. Was it worse, pondered Lonnie, or better than the phrase so many other teachers had left him with? ‘It’s up to you.’
Lonnie thought it sounded worse.
Out in the corridor, the students checked their marks, something they’d been too proud to do in Dr Finch’s company. There was a rustling of pages, little moans and sighs and grumbles, and the occasional gasp of sheer surprised delight.
Lonnie had a C.
C was undistinguished. C was borderline.
And yet when he’d written that essay on Emily Bronte’s poetry, Lonnie had felt it was so
right
. Each idea, each image and detail had fallen into place so simply it was as if the essay had always existed, fully formed and perfect, in some happy, cloudless region of his mind – perhaps the very same place his Grade 4 project had come from. Writing it, especially the piece on Emily’s death which Dr Finch had so derided, Lonnie had felt he’d at last begun to find himself.
Only he’d been wrong, it seemed.
The familiar panic began to surge inside him; the panic which had sent him to the Admin. buildings of two colleges, to give up his course and try something else again. This was the worst time, because he’d begun to feel at home with English Lit, and now he realised this feeling must also have been an illusion – like having a dad had been an illusion, a long long time ago. Lonnie crumpled the pages in his hand and began to run, swerving round the little groups of students, on down the corridor, bursting through the door into the courtyard, along the path towards Administration. Behind him a girl’s voice called ‘Hey!’ Lonnie kept on running. She couldn’t be calling him; he didn’t really know any of the girls at this university.
‘Hey!’ The voice was right behind him now. He turned and saw the dark-haired girl who’d woken him in the tutorial. ‘Hang on a minute,’ she said breathlessly.
Did she mean him? Lonnie glanced back over his shoulder, but there was no one else on the path. ‘Me?’ he asked, pointing to his chest. ‘Do you mean me?’
She laughed. ‘Yes, you.’
Clara had no clear idea why she’d run after this boy – the tall thin fair-haired boy who’d fallen asleep in class, and whom she’d always thought looked romantic, as if he might live in a garret and write poetry. Was it these soft looks that appealed to her? Or was it that sentence she’d heard him mutter in his sleep back there in Dr Finch’s room: ‘You’re no grandfather of mine?’ Certainly that had struck a chord in Clara, because it was exactly the way she felt about her dad. ‘You’re no Dad of
mine
!’
All she knew for sure was that when she’d seen the anguish in his face as he studied Dr Finch’s comments on his essay she’d simply had to run after him. Perhaps he didn’t know Dr Finch never gave anyone a good mark if he could help it.
‘Marked you down?’ she asked him boldly, gesturing towards the crumpled wad of papers in his hand.
‘Yeah.’ Lonnie flushed and looked down. He saw her feet, the little red boots she wore. They looked like shoes from a fairytale.
‘I know it’s none of my business –’ she was saying.
He raised his eyes. ‘Oh, it
is
,’ he said fervently. He didn’t want her to go.
‘It is?’ asked Clara, surprised. ‘You mean you don’t mind me butting in?’
‘Oh,
no
.’ He flicked the long pale lock back from his forehead, and it fell right back again.
‘Only you looked so upset back there, and I thought – I thought you mightn’t know Dr Finch does it to everyone. Marks them down, I mean.’
‘Does he?’ Lonnie smiled.
Clara smiled back at him. ‘Especially if they’re good.’
‘Oh, I’m not good,’ said Lonnie modestly. ‘Not normally, anyway. It was just that this time, for once, I thought I’d got it right, you know?’
She nodded.
‘It made me feel like chucking it in.’
‘Oh, don’t!’ She sounded like she really meant it.
‘It was only for a moment. Anyway, my pop would kill me if I dropped this course.’
‘Your dad?’
‘Haven’t got a dad. I mean, I did have, but he left.’
Her hand flew to her mouth. ‘Oh! Sorry!’
‘S’okay. It was ages back; I can hardly remember him.’
And that was true, no matter that Lily never believed him when he said so. He couldn’t remember much about Dad at all, except for these random little flashes he was never sure about. The only thing he remembered properly was the feeling in the house after Dad had gone, as if he and Mum had been let loose into an empty sky. ‘Pop’s my grandpa,’ he explained. ‘He’s got this axe, and he says he’ll use it on me if I drop out anymore.’
‘Oh, I bet he wouldn’t.’
‘He might, if he got mad enough.’ Yet all at once Pop’s hostility didn’t seem to matter quite so much, and even the wasted essay wasn’t so important. Lonnie had the definite feeling he was going to do better next time round. He bounced on his toes; feeling strangely light, as if some heaviness had lifted from him and floated away like the mist his nan called ‘foggy dew’.
The girl was smiling at him again. She was so small and slender, no bigger than those Grade 6 girls who called out to him every time he walked past Toongabbie Primary on his way to the station. She wore a pleated skirt and a long green sweater in a wool so fine and soft it made you long to touch. When she blinked, her long black lashes swept against the warm curve of her cheek; Lonnie thought he’d never seen anything quite so lovely, unless it was her tiny feet in those fairytale red boots.
‘Would you like –’ Lonnie paused, aware that he had to go carefully here. Last time he’d asked a girl this sort of question – a first year girl called Maureen, in his Bibliography class – she’d stared at him, astonished, and then said simply, ‘No.’ There’d been no explanation, not even the hint of an excuse, and now when he walked into Bibliography, Maureen and her friends all giggled at him.
Could it be that he’d grown weird, living on his own? So weird he no longer had the ability to realise he
was
weird?
Lonnie felt he couldn’t bear it if
this
girl giggled at him. Surely she wouldn’t? She was older, for a start. Would that make a difference?
She was staring at him. She had these beautiful soft eyes. Dulcet eyes, he thought.
‘Would I like . . .?’ she echoed softly.
‘A coffee,’ he blurted. ‘Like a coffee? Over at the Union?’ He held his breath, waiting for her reply. The thick lock of hair felt heavy on his forehead. He flicked it back, the lock fell forward again, hot and clammy against his skin. He flicked once more, and then remembered Lily telling him the gesture made him seem what she called ‘lacking’.
Then something astonishing happened. The girl leaned forward and gently smoothed the stray lock back from his hot forehead.
‘Sure,’ she said. ‘I’d love to have a coffee.’
For a long moment they simply stood there. Then she held out her hand. ‘I’m Clara Lee,’ she said.
‘Lonnie. Lonnie Samson.’
His hand seemed to melt into hers.
Now that Lonnie had moved out, the house seemed extra lonely when Lily came home from school.
‘Mum!’ she called, twisting her key in the lock, pushing the door open, stepping into the hall. ‘Mum!’ Because there were some days, very rare days, when her mother got home before her.
Today wasn’t one of them. Lily walked on down the hallway, switching on the lights, her school shoes clumping on the dull scuffed floor, and when she kicked them off and dropped her schoolbag and sank down onto her bed, then everything was silent and the cold air hummed inside her ears. Hollow, that was how their house felt now, and all at once she wondered if this was how it might have seemed to Lonnie after their dad had gone.
The idea surprised her. She’d never thought of Lonnie in this way before; as a little kid whose dad had vanished. He’d been almost six at the time, which was old enough to feel abandoned – old enough to miss someone, anyway. Could that long ago desertion even be the reason her brother was so hopeless? As if their father’s leaving had left a hollowness, not just inside the house, but inside Lonnie, too?
