Touching Earth Lightly (12 page)

‘It’s great. So you got all the babies untangled?’ Chloe touched the spoke of one mobile, and a flock of babies bobbed and swung.

‘It took forever,’ said Janey in a satisfied voice. ‘Like my cushions?’

‘They’re truly gorgeous. Class trash.’

‘Aren’t they? Bette reckons they make the place look like a
bordello
.’

‘A cross between a bordello and a medieval castle. Will they all have crests on, or whatever?’

‘I haven’t decided. If they do, they’ll all be different—like, a lion on one, a dragon. Stuff like that.’

‘Heraldic devices.’ Chloe heard her own voice and realised she sounded exactly like her mother. ‘I like it. The whole thing is classic Jane Knott. Your place for sure, now.’

‘Yeah.’ Janey looked up at the rocking baby mobile. ‘You were right. I ought to keep something mine. From now on I’m going to be strong about who gets to come in here. There you are, a rule; I’ve made a rule.’ Her fist bumped on the bed-settee.

‘Have you got any money left, after pillows and fabric?’ Chloe crossed the room to stroke them.

‘This? This cost almost nothing!’

Chloe watched Janey enthuse about her bargain-hunting. Here in this room, this Janey-den, with just the two of them, she felt, tentatively, that it might work for Janey, with everything in its place, all her talismans about her, and everyone’s good wishes woven through the air around her like a protective spell.

‘This’s great, Janey,’ she said, when Janey paused. ‘I like to think of you living here. When you were at home I always felt a bit sick when you left our place.’

‘Yeah, well, now I don’t have to spend half my life hiding out at your place, hey? Like,
have
to,’ she added as Chloe sent her a ready-to-be-insulted look. ‘I’ve got another choice now, that’s pleasant.’

‘Sure is,’ said Chloe, nodding.

Janey chose to come to Chloe’s on Tuesday. She was happier and more relaxed than Chloe had seen her in a long while; there was a softness about her eyes, a pleasant dreaminess. They sat up talking in the dining room, because everyone else was out at the half-price movies. At around eleven Isaac, Rachel and Nick came back.

‘Look at you: two wise monkeys,’ said Nick, for they were both nursing mugs of hot chocolate, both swathed in dark jumpers, both peering up curiously.

Isaac did a double-take. ‘God, Janey, you look amazing!’

‘Why, thaink yew,’ said Janey smugly and fluttered her eyelashes at Chloe, who laughed.

‘This is Rachel, Janey. This is Janey, Rachel,’ said Nick.

‘Janey had floor-length black dreadlocks last time I saw her,’ Isaac explained to Rachel.

‘And make-up you could scrape off with a knife,’ added Nick, eyeing Janey’s clean face.

‘Yep, this is the new me,’ said Janey nervously into the appreciative silence that followed.

Chloe looked at the ‘new’ Janey. Chloe had always known about this naked face; it wasn’t new to her. Did it actually look better? Isaac and Nick probably found it less threatening than the old one, felt easier with it; maybe that made it more attractive to them.

Rachel went up to the bathroom, and Nick began lining up mugs and milk. Isaac sat about halfway down the table. ‘So how’s your new place, Janey?’

‘It’s fab. I love it,’ said Janey.

‘It’s all Janey-fied now,’ said Chloe. ‘It’s a mad room. You should have Janey as interior decorator when you set up Hunter Goldman. You could be Knott Hunter Goldman.’

‘Hunter Goldman—
not
,’ said Nick, watching the mugs circle in the microwave. ‘That’d be about right, the way we’re going.’

‘Besides,’ said Janey. ‘I couldn’t do it for someone else’s room. I don’t know what anyone else likes—only me.’

‘You know what
I
like,’ Chloe countered.

Janey screwed up her eyes at her. ‘I guess I could,’ she said doubtfully, ‘do up a room for you.’

‘My room’s already got pretty obvious Janey touches in it, with the costumes on the wall, and the shelf-stuff that you keep fiddling with and putting in those weird
groups
.’

Janey laughed. ‘They’re little Andy Goldsworthy
cairns
, like in your book,’ she explained to Isaac.

‘Except they’re made of all my earrings, tangled up together—’

‘Well, you hardly ever wear those dangly ones—’

‘Well, I won’t be able to, ever again, now they’re in that little
beehive
. And all my make-up, all balanced so that the whole thing falls to bits the minute I pick anything up—’

‘I wish she’d use false fingernails, so I could do one of those pufferfish thingies,’ Janey confided to Isaac. ‘It’s all right,’ she added hastily to Chloe. ‘I’d do it on your desk and then just take a photo of it and tidy it away.’

‘You could do it at your place, now,’ Chloe pointed out. ‘Just buy some sets yourself.’

‘I could.’ Janey considered it. ‘But somehow it wouldn’t have the same … the same …’

‘The same
artistic validity
as using
found objects
,’ said Isaac deadpan, nodding understandingly. Nick snorted.

‘Yeah!’ Janey grinned at Isaac. ‘Took the words outa my mouth.’

Rachel came back in. She was wearing some kind of scent, spicy and mysterious. Chloe was enchanted by it even as she resented it invading everyone’s nostrils. Had she just
refreshed
it, up there in the bathroom? She wore a cream-coloured jumper as seductively soft-looking as the scent was enchanting—Chloe could imagine how it would feel to touch, to hug. She scratched the palms of her hands in irritation. Isaac was pulling out the chair next to him for Rachel.

‘So. Good movie?’ Chloe asked them.

Isaac and Rachel looked undecided. ‘It was
okay
…’ Rachel began.

‘It died in the bum,’ said Nick, stirring.

‘Yeah, it started off all right, didn’t it?’ said Isaac. ‘Then it just went on and on. By the end of it you got sick of the same two faces emoting on the screen.’

‘Oh well, we won’t bother with it, then, will we, Janey?’

‘Nah, give that one the flick,’ said Janey. Chloe saw that she was exchanging a look with Nick.
Oh, bugger, not this again
, she thought, and gave Janey a kick and a look. Janey looked back at her evenly, as if it was beneath her dignity to acknowledge the kick.

Nick brought Isaac and Rachel their mugs and sat with his own at the far end of the table. ‘Mum and Dad still out?’ he asked Chloe.

‘And Pete.’

‘Let’s have some music, then.’

‘Oh, not—’ Chloe began to moan.

‘It’s all right, I’ve got something
appropriate
.’ He went out and Chloe heard him going upstairs.

‘Oh yeah,’ said Chloe. ‘He’ll bring down some Miami goon music that’ll send us all round the twist.’ She rolled her eyes at Rachel, who smiled neutrally.

Nick came down and through the door Chloe saw him crouch in front of the CD player. A moment later the dining room seemed to open out into an echoing space of rainy jungle, into which eased ripples of tribal drumming and an insinuating flute. The conversation around the table died, because the flute was like a voice expecting to be heard and listened to, to be allowed to speak its tale. Nick came in and handed the CD case to Isaac. Rachel leaned against Isaac’s shoulder to read with him, and Chloe saw Isaac adjust his body to accommodate her presence, her weight.

Couples
, she thought in dismay, intercepting another of Nick’s glances towards Janey. Janey looked at Chloe and flashed her eyes in a way that disguised what she was thinking, as if Chloe couldn’t guess. Chloe listened to the flute and to the beat of some bass instrument beneath it, possibly stringed. If the music had not been so beautiful she would
have gone up to bed, and left Nick and Janey to work out what they would. Would it be so terrible now? Maybe the flicker of panic she felt was just habitual, left over from that other time. If Janey were more often like this, happy, funny, easy in herself, outward-looking, if she and Nick got together and Nick’s attention somehow managed to hold her at this point of balance …

Chloe looked around at them all, quiet in the spell of the music. Well, maybe life would be more normal, then, for Janey and thus for all Chloe’s family. She looked at Janey listening, chin in hands, and wondered how she could think of this person, the hidden wealth of this person and the way she ranged from extreme to extreme of her boundaries, as a burden. Hadn’t she made Chloe open her eyes and see, well, pretty well every major thing worth seeing since they first started high school together? Hadn’t she sparked off so many thousands of wondering thoughts, about people and how they worked, how they ought to work but didn’t, how the world worked all around them, because of and in spite of them? Wasn’t she grateful? Didn’t she owe Janey any help, any support Janey might need?

The piece ended, and everyone made waking-up, appreciative noises. ‘I’ll turn the rest down,’ said Nick, getting up. ‘It’s only that first track that’s worth listening to up loud.’

Janey got up and went out to the lounge room after him with the CD case. ‘Where’d you find this?’ she asked, and threw herself on a couch. Nick perched on the back of the other one to answer.

Isaac lifted an eyebrow at Chloe. ‘She seems … happy.’

Chloe tried out a number of answers in her head—
Yeah, for now/Come back next week, why don’t you
—but she wasn’t willing to use any of them in front of Rachel; she didn’t want to make Janey out as a basket case, or herself as best friend of a basket case. She nodded non-committally in the end, but she’d left it so long, the delay kind of negated it. She felt as if one of her arms had fallen off, leaving a cold, unbalancing space beside her.

She got up and went through the lounge room. Nick was talking about ordering CDs on the Internet from America, and Janey—yes, she
did
look better this way, more approachable, less threateningly
unusual
—Janey was listening as if, hmm, yes, she would just
pop
home to her laptop and have a go at that herself.

‘I’m going to hit the hay, so I’ll see you guys later,’ said Chloe.

‘Yeah, I’ll head home soon, too. See you, Cole,’ said Janey.

‘’Night,’ said Nick.

It wasn’t as if she were busting to be part of a couple with someone, Chloe told herself as she pulled her pyjamas on. It was just that watching couples form was not her favourite way of passing the time. She went to bed with the radio muttering on her night table so that she couldn’t listen for, wouldn’t hear … anything outside her room. And if she did, she would just turn the radio up a bit louder.

She got up early next morning. She had the dress rehearsal to think of, but also a cold, self-punishing curiosity drove her. It was necessary to know when Janey had left—
if
Janey had left. She passed Nick’s room. The door was flung open and there was no one in either bed—good. Downstairs, everyone was getting through breakfast, scattered about the table. Nick looked, well, normal—or was he just
trying
to look normal?

She poured herself coffee and felt in the mood for a cigarette with it. She sat down with the mug stinging her hands and felt her stomach shrink from the first hot, nutrient-free swallow. Nick, digging through porridge, looked up at her without interest.

‘Janey stay long?’ she asked as his eyes glided off her.
Come on, hit me with it
. As if he would, with all the others there.

He shook his head, chewing warily.

‘Oh, good. So you didn’t have to
cope
with her for too long?’

Dane looked up from the paper at the aggression in her voice—at her, at Nick, who made a non-committal face and devoted himself wholly to his porridge.

‘Was something wrong?’ Dane asked Chloe in an undertone.

‘Ah, no. Everything was lovely.’ Chloe considered adding
Wasn’t it, Nick?
, but thought she already sounded bitter and twisted enough. Nick wasn’t pretending; nothing had happened with him and Janey, and next time they met Janey would be at a different point in her cycle and kill off whatever spark of interest he had felt. There was nothing to be afraid of.

Was she afraid? She tried to work out exactly what feelings were swirling around inside her, but her unused anger against Nick muddied everything, as did the spin of the caffeine in her brain. She would keep her mouth shut until it all settled. She cast a smoothing-things-over smile at Dane and got up to get herself some proper food.