Touching Earth Lightly (4 page)

Chloe went upstairs, feeling chalky with the dust from Janey’s things.

‘So, she’s all settled?’ Joy was closing her wardrobe door, her long grey-blonde hair loose, her dressing-gown neatly tied.

‘Yep.’ Chloe hadn’t expected to meet anyone else tonight. Her face had already gone to sleep.

‘She happy?’

‘Glad to be out of that house. She should’ve done it two years ago.’

‘Ah, she never could’ve, then.’ Joy leaned against the stair-rail. Her eyes were an older version of Chloe’s light grey ones. ‘I guess that’s saying she’s made some progress.’

‘Maybe,’ said Chloe doubtfully.

‘You look tired, my love.’

Chloe nodded. ‘Dad got a meeting?’

‘Or another woman,’ said Joy cheerfully. ‘There’s some left over minestrone, if you’re hungry.’

‘I’ll have a shower first, I reckon.’ Chloe rubbed her dusty face with a dusty hand.

When she came downstairs her mother had heated a bowl of soup and cut bread to go with it. ‘Oh, wow, thanks.’

‘You wouldn’t’ve bothered, left to yourself.’

‘You’re right. I was thinking cereal. Is that
another
postcard from Isaac?’

‘His last. Boston. You don’t reckon he’s homesick, do you?’

‘I reckon he’s showing off fit to bust.’ Chloe pulled the card off the corkboard.

‘Isaac? Modesty itself.’

‘Maybe with grown-ups. I find him a bit arrogant, myself.’ She read the catalogue of things seen, places been.

‘He’s just shy with you,’ said Joy. She finished tidying and sat down opposite.

Looking forward to seeing you all Thursday
, Isaac finished. Was that homesickness or just politeness? ‘Shy? Why would he be shy with me?’

‘Well, golly gosh, who knows?’ Joy had her chin in her hands and was twinkling.

Chloe snorted, let a few seconds pass. ‘Nice soup, Mum.’

‘Glad you like it.’

‘So that it forms a kind of gorgeous
nest
around you when you sit down.’

Chloe held her elbows out as the wardrobe woman moved around her, smoothing paper bodice panels against the stiff corset. She liked this time, the very beginning, when the first few pieces of the opera were being picked up and experimentally placed together, when there were only swatches of cloth and dashing little costume sketches and people’s brains whirring. The whole production was there like an invisible castle and, with every move, people made more stones appear, until a wall could be recognised, a tower, a turret, a drawbridge—and on opening night the entire structure would be complete, with pennants flying and processions passing, prisoners screaming in the cells and maidens waving handkerchiefs from the tower windows.

Boscovicz’s story of passion and war was being fitted into a strange era that existed only in the director’s imagination, a melding of eighteenth-century Hungary and twenty-second-century Somewhere Else. Chloe was amazed how seriously everyone took this ridiculous illusion. Of course, everyone was being
paid
to do their bit, but there was something else, something about this close work Magda was doing now, with her chalk and her pins and her muttering, the time it took, the bother she was going to—even though the audience, metres away, would miss anything but the general effect, the gorgeousness, the nest-likeness.

‘So, are you a music student, up at the Con?’ said Magda.

‘Nope. I’m going to uni next year, to start
the BA
.’ Chloe had learned that you used such ironic emphasis to show that you recognised that a Bachelor of Arts went nowhere, was just a constructive way to fill in time before your life started.

‘So you’re in Year 12 now?’

‘Last year. I deferred my course.’
I have this friend, you see
… ‘I thought, if I have to look at another book I’ll shoot myself.’

There was a knock on the door. ‘Decaffuccino, Mag?’

‘Oh, yes, please!’ Magda began to struggle up.

‘Pay me when I bring it up.’

‘Okay.’ She settled back on to her knees. ‘Good idea, to take a break. See how the world works. Though God knows—’ She glanced all around the room. ‘—
this
won’t give you much of an idea!’

In the long mirror Chloe looked like a stiff mannequin in her brown-paper bodice and underpants, her hair caught up high out of the way. That was the lot of extras, to stand or mill about, display the costumes and
not distract
from the main action. She’d been hired for her docility and punctuality, her ability to do a regal walk and sit still; the rest of her didn’t concern the director or anyone else; they didn’t want to know anything about her unless it was likely to get in the way of the production. It was relaxing, to be used like this.

Magda shot the papered bodice a look in the mirror from hip height. ‘Good-o.’ Her knees clicked as she stood up and put aside the extra pins. ‘Not that James won’t change his mind fifty zillion times before we finish. You’ll probably end up swinging upside down in a green furry bodysuit at the premiere.’ She adjusted the bodice at the back of the neck. ‘They using your hair?’

‘They’re
augmenting
it,’ said Chloe.

‘They want it big, huh?’

‘Big and blonde. Like a cheerleader.’

Magda laughed. ‘Now that
would
be avant-garde. You should suggest it to James. Ha! I can just see his face, can’t you?’

‘Yeah—“Get back in your box, you!” ’

Magda chuckled and began to unpin the back.

‘Here’s the
man
!’ Chloe heard Nick yell, opening the door.

‘Mate!’ Isaac yelled back in his deep, cracked voice.

‘Maa-ate! Maa-ate!’ they brayed at each other, laughing.

From the top of the stairs Chloe saw Dane and then Joy hug Isaac. ‘The prodigal returns! Look at you! You look great!’ said Joy. ‘Tanned and all!’

Isaac put an arm around Pete. ‘And you’ve done a beanstalk on me.’

Pete grinned in embarrassment.

‘Six months is a long time when you’re his age,’ said Dane.

Isaac looked up at Chloe with leftover smile on his face. ‘Chloe.’

‘Hi, Isaac. Cool glasses.’ They were new—the usual thick lenses in heavy black circular frames fastened visibly with tiny silver screws. Should she kiss his cheek or hug him? Everyone else seemed to be all over him like a rash. She held back on the bottom stair, staying slightly taller than him.

‘You like ’em?’ He blinked self-consciously.

She nodded. ‘Nice.’ His skin was really clear, if a little rumpled by scars; Chloe felt as if she could actually see him. Also it was startling that he had a presence, suddenly amplified—was he actually bigger?—after being a series of flat picture-cards winging through the post. Now he was person-sized and three-dimensional again. He had real eyes, ears, mouth, hands, that he had taken all around the world, and a bunch of exotic overseas memories filed away inside that head.

‘So. You brought some photos?’ Dane said, and everyone moved towards the lounge room.

Joy hung back and hissed at Chloe, ‘Go get some of that fizzy stuff out of the fridge.’

‘It’s only Isaac, Mum,’ Chloe muttered. Joy gave her a look and she went.

‘That’s Gilbert. He drove us around,’ Isaac was saying when she returned, as Dane looked through a packet of photographs.

‘You mean, “He was our chauffeur,”’ said Nick. ‘It’s okay, Zack, we don’t mind being poor.’

‘Get off his back; he’s just being polite,’ said Joy.

‘This is in Connecticut still.’

‘Lovely countryside.’ Joy craned over Nick’s broad shoulder. Pete hung over the back of the couch between Isaac and Dane, his dark hair flopping into his eyes.

Chloe sat by the fire on a footstool and watched them, her family at rest. She liked them best like this, with one or two people visiting. A whole roomful was hard to keep track of, but with one or two you could follow the conversation, and note each person’s contribution to it.

‘Whip through these; they’re just note-taking, for uni,’ Isaac was saying.

‘Lovely rivets,’ chirped Pete.

‘They are, actually—oh, you were joking.’ Isaac glanced at Chloe and gave a mechanical fake laugh. ‘I’d forgotten about jokes, after six months with my parents and their friends. Thank you.’ He accepted a drink from Joy.

‘Here’s to your return, Isaac,’ she said. ‘We’ve missed you.’

‘Yeah, the place’s been real quiet without you,’ said Nick, propping his feet on the coffee-table. ‘No one swinging on the chandeliers, no one sliding down the banisters singing Mary Poppins songs.’

‘No farting competitions in the cubby,’ Pete contributed, then hid his face in his orange juice.

Isaac sat deadpan among these lies. Chloe watched him for a reaction and caught a minuscule flash of amusement behind the bottle-bottom lenses. ‘When you’re all finished,’ he said, sitting forward. ‘Are you finished? Can we be serious now?’

‘We’re never serious,’ said Chloe. ‘It’s a point of pride.’

Isaac raised his glass and began, ‘You-all may not’ve noticed my absence—’

Nick screeched an imaginary bow across some violin strings. Joy said, ‘Oh, Isaac.’

Isaac silenced them with a hand. ‘—but I’ve certainly noticed not being here every Sunday and four or five evenings in between.’

‘Hey, this is a real-for-true speech,’ said Pete.

‘Thanks, Nick, for all those tasteless postcards, and Joy, for all those little notes keeping me up to date. And Pete, for your Finnish letter—I appreciate the … the
hard work
that went into it.’

‘He actually got that sent off, did he?’ said Chloe, then went quiet. Isaac turned from Pete to her and she knew what was coming. She screwed up her face.

‘And thank you, Chloe, for your usual enigmatic silence—’

‘I wrote heaps, actually; I just didn’t get around to sending it.’

‘Bullshit,’ said Dane and Nick at once.

‘Sorry, Isaac.’

‘It’s okay. The wound will heal in time.’ He waved his glass around at all of them. ‘It’s good to be back.’

‘Good to have you back, mate,’ said Dane, and they all clinked glasses and drank.

Janey stood at Chloe’s door against a burst of winter-morning sun. She stumped in. ‘You didn’t tell me.’ She threw herself onto the couch, stared accusingly at Chloe.

‘What. Cuppa?’

‘Yer. About the Jerry Street Child Care Centre.’ Having made her entrance, Janey hoisted herself up and followed Chloe into the kitchen’s harsher acoustics. She was all black-legginged legs, with a tiny snarled black jumper like a wisp of some kind of mould around her shoulders and arms.

‘What about it?’

‘It’s two doors away.’

‘They make a racket, do they?’

Janey went to the fridge and stared in. ‘Yes, well, it depends which way the wind blows. Like the trains, you know. But on a lovely, sunny day like today they’re all out, and it’s like … I don’t know, it’s like—’ she closed the fridge door and leaned one hip against the bench ‘—some terrible old movie, you know?’

Chloe laughed. ‘
Which
terrible old movie?’

‘Oh, I don’t know, one where, you know, his true love’s died—maybe he’s murdered her, himself—and he walks away and there’s the sound of children playing and the tissues come out all over the cinema—’

‘Everyone “blubbing”—’