Текст книги "Saving Francesca"

Автор книги: Melina Marchetta

Соавторы: Melina Marchetta
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chapter 15

IN DRAMA, MR. ORTLEY plays “Venus.” It’s the version by this sixties band, Shocking Blue. And suddenly, out of nowhere, Thomas Mackee starts to dance. Later he tells people that he thought he heard “I’m your penis” rather than “I’m your Venus” and that’s why he got up. But, as usual with Thomas Mackee, you never know the truth.

Thomas Mackee on a dance floor is totally uninhibited and hysterical to watch. Despite his lanky slobbiness, he moves well. He makes the most ridiculous faces as he twists, his mouth in an O shape, and we’re laughing so much our stomachs hurt. He manages to combine the most outrageously physical moves, and they work. At a dance party you wouldn’t want to be anywhere near him, but here he has the whole space to himself and he relishes it. I look at Mr. Ortley and he’s laughing just as much as we are, and I wonder if this is one of those perfect teaching moments he tells us he’s been waiting for.

Thomas Mackee loves music. I can tell by the way his body reacts. For a moment I feel a bit of envy because I think I want to be out there making a fool of myself as well. His rhythm is erratic, and in my head I just can’t follow the groove. And then somehow we make eye contact and it clicks.

Don’t do it, I tell myself. My ex–Stella friends, like Michaela, would think I was a dickhead. A show-off. A loser. I can just imagine them, exchanging looks that say more than enough. It’s how they’ve stayed popular for so long. By not doing anything that will make them look like fools. They never leave home without their safety nets and I think, good for them, but the thing with safety nets is this. I got tangled in them so many times and the Stella girls always seemed to leave me dangling, upside down, to the point where I almost couldn’t breathe anymore.

So I dance.

Thomas makes aV with his fingers and he turns it around and points to his eyes as if to say “focus,” and I do, matching his moves, swaying to his beat. The guitar arrangement on the song is fun and it’s easy to change direction. Everyone is clapping the beat, and there’s something so uncoolly cool about it. It’s like geographical humor. You just don’t get it unless you were there. Thomas Mackee has a sense of the ridiculous and it’s contagious, and I’m sure if he were forced to, he’d admit that he’s spent a lifetime making up these moves in his bedroom. Was he hiding in there as well? Was he shaking off an image he’d constructed for himself?

He tires, and I catch Siobhan Sullivan’s eye and then I take her hand and we’re in Year Seven again, making up the moves that made so much sense at the time. There’s a recognition in her eyes, and being best friends with her is the most vivid memory I have of St. Stella’s, and for one split second I can’t remember being friends with anyone else.

At the end we take a bow, and for the rest of the day whenever someone from drama class walks past me in the corridor, it’s hard not to grin.

And being that happy makes me feel guilty. Because I shouldn’t be. Not while my mum is feeling the way she is. How I can dare to be happy is beyond me, and I hate my guts for it.

I hate myself so much that it makes my head spin.

At times, the house becomes a thoroughfare of my mum and dad’s world, and as people pass through I hope that one of them has the secret to Mia’s recovery. Some of them we see almost every day. People like Freya, the “bastard magnet,” who cheerfully breezes through the house, chatting to Mia as if nothing’s wrong. I like it when Freya comes over. It reminds me of old times, when she and Mia would almost be speaking over each other to get a word in. Sometimes Freya takes her for a drive to get her out of the house and I find myself waiting for a miracle, like them walking through the front door, laughing hysterically over some story Freya has told. But it’s only Freya’s voice I hear each time and she and I will exchange looks and sometimes there are tears in her eyes because I know that she needs Mia to come back as well.

This is my theory. Mia’s not going to go out into her world, so I decide that I need to bring her world to her. She has so many people in her life and I don’t know where to start: school, university, work, family friends, colleagues, past teachers, past students. I begin with the people she works with, the ones my dad doesn’t relate to.

Sometimes she used to fight with him about them because, as independent as she is, when she went out she wanted my dad and her to be together.

“Go out with them on your own. I’ll look after the kids,” he’d argue.

“That’s a cop-out,” she’d say. “I go out with your friends.”

“Because my friends are our friends.”

“Mine could be ours if you gave them a chance.”

“I have given them a chance. I don’t watch enough public television and foreign films for them, and all they talk to me about is soccer and the Cosa Nostra.” He’d adopt an appalling polished Australian accent, and even Mia would fight hard not to laugh at that. He’d grab her mouth with his hand, making a smile out of it.

“Can we have a maturity moment?” she’d say. “Every time I go to one of these things, I feel like a widow, Rob.”

“That’s probably because I feel dead when I’m around them.”

They’re weird, in a way. Sometimes I used to hear them at night and they’d be killing themselves laughing after having a heated argument over dinner. Most of all, she’d be sounding him out. He knows her department by heart. He knows who’s lazy, and the strengths and weaknesses of every student in her tutorials. Sometimes we’d be out in Norton Street and bump into one of her students and he’d say, “Oh yeah, Katrina Griffiths, who wrote the paper on McDonald’s imperialism.” Or else at night they’d talk about what he was working on—the Pirelli house or the Jameson carport. They’d debate about whether he should hire someone else, and they’d talk about going overseas.

“I can’t leave my mother,” she’d say. “They won’t give me time off work. Frankie just started Year Eleven.”

“There’ll always be an excuse not to relax, Mia.”

“It’ll cost us at least ten thousand in airfares alone.”

“We’ll leave the kids with my mother.”

Thanks, Dad.

“No way. I couldn’t do that.”

Mia hated being separated from us.

“Luca would be fine but Frankie would never cope,” she’d add.

Thanks, Mum.

My dad liked doing things with her on their own, whereas Mia always had an entourage. Luca, me, Angelina when she was growing up, my nonna now that Nonno’s dead, my aunt, Mia’s friend from the university who couldn’t cope with a breakup. Mia was the mother hen, taking in the problems and issues of all around her.

I’d hear her and her friends talk about men. Freya, the “bastard magnet,” would talk about her relationship with her current bastard. “I tell him my problems and he thinks he has to solve them,” Freya would say, “when all I want to do is verbalize how I’m feeling.”

“Robert doesn’t try to solve things,” Mia would tell them. “He just tells me, ‘Everything’s going to be fine.’ ” She’d say it almost critically, and I couldn’t understand why. It’d make me angry. As if she’d have to find something negative just to fit in with the whining.

Telling Mia’s world about what’s happening isn’t easy. They either don’t get it or don’t want to. Maybe I’m just not selling it well.

“Mia’s depressed,” I say.

“Tell me about it. I can’t get through this work and the department expects miracles.” (The any-problem-you-have-mine’s-bigger work colleague.)

“Mia’s depressed,” I tell the next one.

“Nothing to worry about. She’ll snap out of it. You know Mia. Thrives on drama. Tell her to ring me.” (The practical university friend who thinks you should be able to juggle everything and not complain.)

“Mia’s depressed.”

“Well, I can’t say I blame her, Francesca. She does everything around there.” (Another of Mia’s work colleagues. Hates my father.)

“Mia’s depressed.”

“That’s what happens when you take on too much.” (Mia’s school friend. Gloating voice—a “you sucker” to women who take on heaps and try to have it all. Crucify them! Crucify them!)

Some promise me the moon, others nothing. But by the time I get off the phone, I feel a hundred years old.

chapter 16

I GET STUCK with Thomas Mackee one afternoon at the bus stop. Luca’s at choir practice, and the girls have got various commitments. We stand alongside each other in silence for a while. Then our bus comes along and the psychotic bus driver chooses not to stop for us and we exchange glances. Suddenly we can’t pretend the other is not there.

“Why did you ask me to dance in drama?” I ask him.

He rolls his eyes. He does it exaggeratedly and I regret the question.

“Before your feelings get out of hand,” he tells me, “I have to warn you that you’re not my type.”

This time I roll my eyes.

“It was like you were asking me to,” he says. “Anyway, I felt like a bloody idiot out there on my own and I thought, who do I want to drag down with me?”

“So why drag me down?”

“Why did you say yes?” he asks.

“You made me laugh and I haven’t laughed for, like, ages.”

“Because you’re a grinner,” he confirms.

“Am I?”

“Yep. Not often, but once in a while you have this goofy grin,” he tells me. “Most chicks have great smiles, even Finke has a killer of a smile when she forces herself, but you have a goofy grin. See, you’re doing the goofy grin now.”

I try hard not to, but the more I try the goofier it feels.

“It’s not the way to go if you’re trying to attract a guy,” he advises me, but he’s not taking himself seriously and he makes me laugh.

For a moment I can’t help thinking how decent he is—that there’s some hope for him beyond the obnoxious image he displays. Maybe deep down he is a sensitive guy, who sees us as real people with real issues. I want to say something nice. Some kind of thanks. I stand there, rehearsing it in my mind.

“Oh my God,” he says, “did you see that girl’s tits?”

Maybe not today.

One of Mia’s colleagues comes and visits, and they’re in her room for hours. Sue is the head of Mia’s department at the university and kind of scares the hell out of us all. Like with my dad, Mia has this way of making people want to hog her, and I always feel that in the eyes of her colleagues, Luca and I are like the enemy who take up too much of her time.

Afterward, I make Sue tea and she talks to me as if I’m an adult and I want to tell her that I’m not.

“Why hasn’t she seen a doctor yet?” she asks almost reprimandingly.

“She has. At the very beginning.”

“Has she gone back?”

“My dad says they’ll only put her on antidepressants.”

“Your father doesn’t wake up in the morning and see the world through gray-colored glasses. Antidepressants aren’t the only answer, but they’ll get her on her feet, and from there, she has to take over.”

“She doesn’t even take Tylenol,” I begin.

“And I saw the plate of food you had in there for her,” she continues, as if I haven’t spoken. “You don’t give a starving person a feast. It’ll kill her. Begin simply.”

I know she’s trying to be kind, but Sue is practical. She treats everyone like an adult, except for my father, who she treats like a child.

“Has she lost her job?” I ask.

“No. But her job is the last thing on her mind.”

“Is it because of Luca and me …”

“You and your brother have to stop thinking she’s there to be everything to you.”

We’re her children, I want to say. That’s what children do, isn’t it?

But I can’t imagine Sue’s children being like that. She taught them independence, and now they’re living in London and Toronto. Mia couldn’t even cope with me living in the next suburb with my grandmother.

The next day, when I get home from school, I tap on the door and let myself in. I bring in chamomile tea and toast, and for a moment or two I potter around her. One day I’d like to understand this thing, this ugly sickness that’s been sleeping inside of her like a cancer. I wonder if it’s sleeping inside of me. I wonder if it was in her when she was sixteen, or if it appeared much later. Looking at it from a distance makes me hate her for being weak. Up close, I’ve never loved her so much in my life.

I lie alongside her on the bed, where papers brought by Sue, the day before, are scattered all over the place.

“Have you done your homework?” she asks, because I think it’s the easiest question for her.

“Most of it. Have you done yours?”

She gives a little sound, like a laugh.

“I’ll do it for you,” I say. “You used to let me mark your multiple choice stuff.”

“That was when I taught Year Eight. It’s different.”

She hardly has the energy to speak, but I think she wants the company. The contact with the outside world, without having to involve herself in it.

We lie there for a moment in silence.

“Was Sebastian’s a mistake?” she asks me quietly.

I don’t know how to answer that. I thought I knew the answer, but now it’s not so easy to say. So I tell her about the Sebastian girls, and by the time I’ve spoken for an hour I realize that I can’t work them out. Why does Siobhan Sullivan hang out with us, when she’s accepted by so many other groups? Any day now she’s going to point out how uncool we are and move on. And Tara Finke? The guys in the social justice group hang around her like flies, and as gracious as she is with them, as passionate as they allow her to be without laughing at her like we do sometimes, she’s always back with us, arguing, bitching, yelling. It’s weird, but I think we’re kind of a legitimate group.

I know that Mia thinks that as well, because she nods. In the past, I’d lie on her bed and her voice would soothe me. Now it seems like the other way around.

And then I tell her about Will Trombal and about dancing in drama and Shaheen from biology and Eva from economics and Ryan from English and Will Trombal. I tell her about the pathetic Brolin and the lovely Brother Louis and the harassed but kind Ms. Quinn and Will Trombal.

And when I finish speaking, I kiss her cheek and I take away the tray.

And it’s empty.

That’s how we begin.

chapter 17

ON THE WAY to the bus stop from school, we walk past this young homeless guy sitting outside a major department store with a cardboard sign saying, I’m Hungry. Please Feed Me. Brian Turner from legal studies yells out, “Get a job,” and Siobhan laughs and Tara goes on about it all the way to the bus stop.

By the time we sit in the back row of the bus, she and Siobhan have had an argument about it, and the four of us sit in silence. Thomas Mackee is with us as well, because there’s nowhere else for him to sit.

The girl in front of us, who hasn’t shut up the whole time, stands up and waves to her friends as she gets off the bus.

“I love youse.”

We exchange glances.

“What a loser,” Siobhan snickers.

“Why is it that someone like Turner who calls out to a beggar on a street isn’t a loser, but someone who says ‘youse’ is?” Tara Finke asks, starting up again.

“Because I think that people should learn how to speak the English language.”

“But it’s okay for them to be immoral,” I say.

“Who’s immoral?” Siobhan argues.

“Brian Turner,” Tara Finke interrupts. “But it’s okay to laugh at his feeble attention seeking, but not to be touched by some nice person who says youse.”

“How do we know she’s nice? Because she expressed her love to her friends?”

“You’re judging her by her literacy,” Tara says. “You’re a literacist.”

“You’ve made that up.”

Thomas Mackee packs up his stuff and stands up. “You chicks give me the shits,” he says.

“You, on the other hand, brighten up our day,” I tell him. “We all regard you as a god.”

“You know what we call you? Bitch Spice, Butch Spice, Slut Spice, and Stupid Spice.”

He walks away, and we go back to saying nothing for a moment until Justine Kalinsky looks at me and holds out her arms. “My brother reckons that my arms are like Polish salami,” she tells me. “Do you think I’m Butch Spice?”

I look at her arms and shake my head.

“Well, I’m a size eight, so I can’t possibly be,” Siobhan tells us.

“And you’re a slut,” Tara Finke says matter-of-factly, “so it’s quite clear which one you are.”

We can’t let it go. We get off at Justine Kalinsky’s stop just to debate it all the way home.

“I think I could be Butch Spice,” Tara tells us. “I’ve got short hair and that’s how those morons think.”

“But I’ve got the stocky build,” Justine says. “It’s an Eastern European peasant thing.”

“No, it’s Tara,” Siobhan says. “I’m sure of it.”

“So between you and me,” I tell Justine on the phone that night, “we’re either bitchy or stupid.”

“Oh God,” she moans. “Everyone thinks I’m an idiot.”

“Thanks!”

“There is some possible overlap here,” Tara explains the next day as we sit in homeroom. “I think Francesca could be Bitch Spice, but some people do think she’s stupid as well.”

“I kissed two guys one night in Year Nine, so I could be Slut Spice too,” I tell them.

“No. Not possible. Because what would that make me? I’m not stupid, nor am I bitchy,” Siobhan says.

“Siobhan, you’re the whole spice rack as far as some people are concerned,” Tara informs her.

“Would you consider me bitchy, stupid, slutty, or butch?” I ask Shaheen in biology.

“The obvious one,” he says, knowing exactly what I’m talking about, which worries me. “By the way, is it true that you and Trombal pashed?”

“He was drunk.”

“You should go out with wogs.”

“He is a wog.”

“But not like us.”

“Are you asking me out, Shaheen?”

“Are you sick? As if you’re my type. You didn’t even know who Tupac was.”

I try not to look offended. “You could have let me down a lot more gently.”

He laughs. “You’re cool. Even though you’re not a Leb.”

“It’s obvious which one you are,” Jimmy Hailler tells me as we walk through Hyde Park.

“If it’s so obvious, why can’t I see it?”

“Because you live in your own world and can’t see anything.”

“Then which one am I?”

“You’re all four. You’re constantly bitching about things under your breath; you come across bloody stupid because you don’t speak; on a particular angle in that uniform on an overcast day with your hair up, you’ve got that stocky butch thing happening; plus you’re pashing other girls’ boyfriends, which makes you a slut.”

“Thank you for feeding my paranoia.”

“No prob. Want to hang out at your place?” he says as we reach the bus stop.

“No.”

“See. There’s the bitch coming through.”

The bus stops in front of us. “Get stuffed.”

I get on and show my pass.

“I’ve got nowhere else to go,” he cries in exaggerated anguish. “I’vegot -nowhere-else-to-go,” he blubbers dramatically in a pathetic broken voice, clutching the pole.

The bus driver and I exchange looks and I roll my eyes.

“An Officer and a Gentleman,” I tell the driver. “You know? Richard Gere?”

“First sign of trouble and you’re both off.”

We get to Annandale and he takes out a cigarette and offers one to me.

“I try not to indulge. It’s a filthy habit,” I tell him.

“I love that word filthy. I love the way you force it out of your mouth like it’s some kind of vermin you want to get rid of.”

“You’ve had vermin in your mouth?”

“You’re mean in that way, you know. You don’t let anyone get away with pathetic analogies.”

When we arrive at my house, I look over at the people across the road.

“Those people have no life,” I tell him.

“They look happy, though.”

He gives them a wave and they wave back.

We walk inside and I put on the teakettle, throw my bag into my bedroom, and push him toward the living room.

“Sit down and don’t touch anything,” I tell him before walking into Mia’s study. Today she’s sitting on the couch, in her nightgown as usual, her laptop in front of her, staring into space. She doesn’t want to lose the conferences and is making an attempt at writing the paper.

“I’m making some tea,” I say, kissing her. “I’ll bring it in a min—”

“Hi.”

I turn around and Jimmy’s at the study door.

Mia looks at me curiously.

“James Hailler,” he says, walking over to the couch and extending his hand for her to shake.

I’m furious, but he ignores me. My mum shakes his hand.

“What are you doing?” he asks her.

“Trying to write a paper.”

I look at him and indicate the door with my eyes. He reminds me of our dog. He totally ignores any look that demands obedience. Instead, he sits on the couch.

“What’s it on?”

“The role of fantasy in popular culture.”

“I’m your man. It’s my genre.”

I hear the kettle whistling and I ignore it. He looks at me and indicates the door with his eyes.

“The kettle,” he reminds me. “I like mine with a squeeze of lemon.”

I’m reluctant to leave him in there. Just say he asks her why she’s in her nightgown? Just say he spreads it around the school? I don’t know this guy. All I know is that he looks like he’s here to stay.

“And get James some biscuits, Frankie,” my mum says.

I prepare the tea and make my mum a salad sandwich, straining my ears to hear what they’re talking about. I don’t hear my dad walk in, but I see him as I come out of the kitchen into the corridor. He’s standing at the study door, and I come up behind him and give him a gentle push out of the way.

“This is Jimmy, Papa. Jimmy, my dad.”

“I didn’t catch your name,” Jimmy says to my dad, getting off the couch and extending a hand.

“Mr. Spinelli,” my dad says a bit coldly.

“It’s Robert.” This comes from my mum as I place the tray next to her.

Jimmy makes himself comfortable on the couch again and serves her the tea before biting into a biscuit.

“Hmm. What’s for dinner?”

When he leaves, my father comes into my room.

“He’s a drug user. I can tell.”

“How?”

“I know about marijuana, you know.”

“It’s called pot.”

“Oh, aren’t we the smarty-pants.”

“I think you mean ‘smart-ass.’ ”

“I don’t need this right now, Frankie. I’ve got enough things to fix up around here.”

“If you don’t want me to hang out with potheads, you should have sent me to Pius.”

I feel as if I’m doing Jimmy Hailler a disservice because he’s probably not a pothead, but it’s a way to rile my dad up. I’m not sure why I want to do that, but I just do.

He doesn’t say anything else. Later, I hear him in Luca’s bedroom, doing his quality-time thing. But I know he’s dying to get into that room to be with Mia while we have to watch it all from a distance. And I hate that distance. Because from a distance, Luca and I see it blurred. And blurred, it looks worse than anyone can ever imagine.