I take a Twistie from Patricia’s outstretched hand but just hold it for now, saving it for later.
“So how are you feeling, Ally? Have to say you look all right!”
“Okay…I’m okay…better than before.”
“Wendy told Mum your heart’s buggered up. What happened?”
“Oh, it just kind of sped up and got out of beat. And it couldn’t get back…into its beat. The doctor says it’s something called arrhythmia. He’s put me on some medicine. But it takes a while to start working.”
“What made your heart get out of beat? You didn’t bump into that chunderous Kimberly Linton, did you?” Patricia pulls a face, and the sight of her twinkling brown eyes rolling in toward each other in such a funny way warms up my chest and recharges my stomach. I eat my Twistie.
“Nah, it wasn’t Kimberly….I haven’t seen her for ages, thank God. I was in Joy’s glasshouse, with that mother angel I bought at the Mother’s Day stall. Remember the silver statue, holding the baby girl?” And feeling the tent snugness of just Patricia and me alone in the white room, I take a chance and tell her something I would never dream of telling anyone else.
“It was pretty weird, Patricia—she wanted me to smash those BLAMED FOR BELINDA bottles, you know, the ones we found at the back of the cupboard the day we got the mulberry leaves for Simone. The mother angel wanted them smashed, she wanted me to get rid of them all.”
“Jeez, Ally…a statue of an angel wanted you to smash bottles! That is weird. That is very bloody weird. Don’t tell the doctors; they’ll check you out of here and send you to the loony bin. But you know…I kind of get it.” Patricia hands me another Twistie. “Did you smash them all?”
“I think so….I think she did it, mostly.”
“Well, it was always weird, Ally. I don’t mean you, I mean all those bottles full of Joy’s tears, kept in that cupboard. You know what? They’re better off smashed.” Patricia dips into her calico bag and gets out a packet of playing cards. “Reckon you’re not up to Spit, but do you want a game of Go Fish?”
“Okay, if you want,” I say, pushing myself up with my elbows. Patricia sits cross-legged at the end of my bed and deals us seven cards each. “Does Joy know her bottles were smashed?”
“I don’t know. She left with Rick and Matilde to go off to Wendy’s looking for me. It was pretty late; I don’t remember what happened after the bottles were smashed. I just woke up here.”
“Do you have any threes?” asks Patricia, looking up briefly from her cards, then back down. “Why were they looking for you at Wendy’s? And why were those three even together? I thought they didn’t speak to each other.”
“Go fish,” I say, and I tell Patricia about Lucinda Lister going missing and her mother going mental and blaming Matilde and maybe me for Lucinda and, get this…the death of Belinda. And Matilde going mental and blaming Joy for me going missing and the death of Belinda and—guess what?—my brother or sister too.
“Do you have any queens?” asks Patricia.
“Go fish,” I say, and I tell her about Joy blaming Matilde for the death of Belinda and maybe Lucinda too and Rick blaming them both for me going missing while all along I was hiding in a pouch I’d made with my quilt along the wall side of my bed. I tell her that I could hear all the blame and sadness and pain that they’d bottled up for years, that was out now, out and being hurled around like a weapon.
“Do you have any aces?” I ask Patricia, and then I tell her that the mother angel heated right up in my hand and sent me a message with her hot beating pulse; it was completely clear, just like Morse code. She wanted me to take her to the BLAMED FOR BELINDA bottles and smash all our sadness and set free the emotions that had been bottled and labeled and stored away in the glasshouse but were still there in the air at Number 23—and Number 25—and even in Rick’s flat, Every. Single. Day. And it was there too in their nonspeaking language, pulling me and pushing me, until it burst out into the world with a whole lot of yelling.
“Jeez, Ally…that’s enough to bugger up anyone’s heart.” Patricia passes me two aces. She brings over my water glass and holds the straw while I take a long sip. I lay my cards down and rest back against the pillow, feeling exhausted.
“Reckon you don’t so much need medicine, Ally,” says Patricia gently, gathering up my cards. “You just need your mob to settle their score and stop revving you up with all their own stuff.”
* * *
■ ■ ■
I doze on and off for the rest of the day. Each time I wake Patricia is still there. Sometimes she’s playing cards by herself on the floor—Concentration—sometimes she’s curled up in the chair by the window, working on something that looks like patchwork, and sometimes she’s sitting at the end of my bed smelling the same and looking reliable.
I dream of the mother angel.
She’s holding a cherub—it’s me—with a birthmark on my pudgy left wrist. She tells me the birthmark is on precisely that spot because it’s where she has kissed me one thousand times. It’s her mark of love, not a stain of someone else’s pain.
Now the mother angel is swimming in a rock pool and I’m on her shining-shell back. Her arms are moving through the clear water. Against the sandy bottom I see she has flipper-fins rather than hands. She tells me not to be afraid of the waves or the current or the deep waters below. She urges me to take in all the fresh air I need before I dive down, and to make sure to exhale the old air powerfully when I surface again because by then it’s no longer nourishing my cells.
And the mother angel sings my soul a song.
Inspire, expire, inspire, expire
Balance yourself, Ally
Drawing from within
Expel this expired disequilibrium.
St. Liberata is playing her lute while the mother angel, wearing white robes, is brushing my hair with long tender strokes. She hands me the brush, and herself as a statue, and kisses my birthmark again, more than twelve times.
Her lips press against my pulse and beat out a message. But it’s different this time, not Chaotic or Confused: it’s Calming, Confirming and Clear.
S…O…S
you have
Saved Our Souls
by
Smashing Our Sadness
now
Sing…Our…Song
Ally
Sing…Our…Song
Tell them, Ally, tell them that your soul has a song to sing.
* * *
■ ■ ■
Joy, Rick and Matilde come into the room with different versions of what might bring a heart back into beat. Rick is holding a jar full of air from Bondi Beach and a parcel of hot chips. As he hands me a second chip—salty and warm, dipped in tomato sauce—Joy insists on a few sips of lemon myrtle tea from her old silver thermos and places a large red and green bloodstone crystal onto my chest. Matilde has prepared her liver dumpling soup, which quite frankly has never been a favorite of mine. She’s bringing a third spoonful up toward my mouth when Sister Josepha arrives and saves me from having to swallow any more of the livery mush. She has brought a scapular of St. John of God, the patron saint of cardiac problems, apparently. She leans me forward and positions it around my neck, with one piece of cloth sitting above my heart and the other hanging down my back.
Despite their fussing over me, everyone seems pleased to see Patricia sitting cross-legged in the corner of the room. And they’re all there together when the doctor arrives. He scans the scene, and my chart, and sets up his stethoscope to once again listen to my heart. He looks up and announces, sounding quite disappointed, “I’m afraid the medication isn’t doing what I’d hoped. We’ll have to try something else, perhaps even surgery. I’ll confer with my colleagues. We’ll speak again tomorrow.” Joy gives a small gasp and Sister Josepha bows her head and gently closes her eyes.
&nb
sp; “That won’t work either,” blurts Patricia, moving forward from behind the adults.
“I beg your pardon?” says the doctor.
“You can try anything you like, but none of it’s going to work.”
In the split second it takes for the doctor to settle his stethoscope back into his pocket, his bearing changes from capable-professional-in-charge to bowled-over-bloody-astonishment. He’s staring at Patricia, who is less than two-thirds his size, and she returns his gaze with a bold certainty before she continues, “Her heart’s all out of whack because of her mob, this lot in here, and all their stuff they load up onto her.”
While the adults look around at each other, Patricia comes in close and mouths at me: If you can ride a wave, you can climb a tree, and if you can climb that mulberry tree, you can do this. Go on, Ally…tell them.
My pulse slows down and I’m sucked into the vacuum that Patricia has created. It’s a void, a free space, a chance for my heart to find its own rhythm. And there it settles to a steady beat.
And I tell them.
“It’s not enough that you all love me. Not anymore. Please…you have to stop hating each other.”
* * *
■ ■ ■
She introduces herself as Stephanie and tells me she’s What’s Called a Social Worker.
“Do you mind if we have a little chat, Allegra?” she asks.
“No…that’s all right,” I say, partly because she seems kind of nice but mostly because I’m stuck in this bed and Stephanie with her big forehead, hoop earrings and multicolored panel skirt is standing between it and the door.
She pulls a chair in close and with a friendly smile, but awful breath, asks me if I like school, play any sport, and whether I’ve seen Picnic at Hanging Rock at the pictures? I answer Yes, No and No.
She’s seen Picnic at Hanging Rock—just last week—and she tells me, her large hazel eyes framed by clumping mascara, “It was beautiful, with lovely scenery and haunting music, but I found it really quite spooky.” Then she asks, as though we’re friends in the playground, “What’s your favorite movie you’ve ever seen at the pictures?”
“I don’t have one,” I say. “I don’t really go to the pictures.” She seems a bit disappointed by that answer and says, “What about telly then? What’s your favorite show?” I explain that we don’t have a television set at Number 23 so I can’t help her there either, and I’m starting to wonder what a social worker is, exactly. But before she can fire another question at me, I tell her that I have been to the Opera House, to see a ballet called Onegin for my twelfth birthday, with my grandmother Matilde.
“Lucky you,” she says, sounding a bit too enthusiastic. “That must have been wonderful. I’ve never seen anything at the Opera House. Is Matilde the grandma you live with?”
“Yeah, well I live in her house, I sleep there, but I go into Joy’s next door a lot too; she’s my other grandmother. And Rick, that’s my dad, he’s out the back in his flat above the garage—of Matilde’s house, not Joy’s house, even though he lived there when he was little because he’s actually Joy’s son, not Matilde’s son—but now he lives on Matilde’s side of the fence.”
“So how do you find that, Allegra?” asks Stephanie, who I’m guessing had a tuna sandwich for lunch. “Do you all get along?”
“Yeah…I get along with them all,” I say.
“Oh, that’s good. But do they get along with each other?” Maybe it was tuna with onion.
“They don’t really need to get along with each other,” I tell her, turning my head down and a little away from her line of bad breath so that now I’m facing the open window.
“Why not?” she asks.
“Because…well, they don’t usually need to speak to each other. And if they do, they just give me the message and I take it between them.”
“What sort of messages do you take between them, Allegra?” This Stephanie is pretty nosy.
“Just stuff, things they need to know…mostly about what each of them is doing with me, if they’re taking me places, you know, on their own.”
“So you’re something of a go-between then, Allegra?”
How does Stephanie What’s Called a Social Worker know about me being a go-between? Does she know about Lucinda Lister?
“How does that make you feel, Allegra?” she asks.
She should have said she’s Stephanie What’s Called a Busybody.
“Allegra?”
“I’m tired now,” I tell her, and roll over onto my side, away from her stinky-breath questions.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The nurses are doing their rounds: a white whirl of chatting efficiency; medicating, observing and recording before dimming the lights, when Rick appears with messy wet hair “for just a quick visit.”
He sits down in a chair at the side of my bed.
“Wanted to pop in on my way home from a surf and say good night, Al Pal.”
But it seems like he’s here for more than that. After a while he goes on to say, “And also, I wanted to tell you that Lucinda Lister is back home. I thought you’d like to know.”
“Did she have the abortion thing?” I ask, looking down.
“I don’t know about that. But she’s home safely, so that’s the main thing. I saw her leaving for school this morning in her uniform.”
Rick seems relieved, and he knew that I’d be relieved too. And he’s right. I am relieved to know that Lucinda is home, back with her mental mum and gone-away dad, and that our family doesn’t have two deaths on its head.
And as though he’s reading the other thoughts looping through my mind, Rick adds, “And those things Tracy Lister said…when she went right off. She had no right to blame you for the situation her daughter wound up in. That was never your fault, Al.”
My dad takes my hand and holds it in his, just like it might be something breakable. He holds it for more than two-hundred-apple-pie. His hand is brown and broad and sits salty around mine, giving us both something to look at before he finally says, “Al, I want to talk to you…in an adult way.”
I nod, still looking at Rick’s hand.
“I know they sent the social worker in here to see you yesterday. She and the doctor spoke with me afterward about their take on things, on what might have landed you in such a bad way.” Rick lets out a long breath, as though it’s one he’s held on to for a long while. “So it’s probably about time I told you my take on things too.
“After your mum died, there was a whole lot of blaming that went on between Joy and Matilde—and between the two of them and me. We had different stories in our heads about what led to Belinda’s death, whose fault it was. No matter what, we just couldn’t take on each other’s point of view, let alone each other’s pain. So we were stuck. Stuck in our different corners, coping with being broken in our own different ways.
“But one thing we did have in common was you, Al.” He squeezes my hand gently. “And while it was tough living bang-up against each other’s anger and grief, we all dug in and we stayed where we were, to look after you. Because you were so little, Al…and you didn’t have a mum.” Rick looks so sad. “We weren’t really doing it together, but none of us could have cared for you on our own, giving you everything you deserved…everything your mum and I had hoped to give you. Everything your grandmothers believed, in their wisdom, that you needed.
“We were all mad as hell at each other, Al, but we were mad about you, and we only ever wanted what was best for you.”
The four chambers of my heart are pounding.
Rick and Belinda
Joy and Matilde
Lub dub—lub dub—lub dub—lub dub
My left side
My right side
Lub dub—lub dub
My upper atriums
My lower ventricles
&nbs
p; Lub dub—lub dub
“There was this terrible tension between us, but we thought we were doing a good job keeping it from you. I guess we thought if we just didn’t speak to each other, then you wouldn’t pick up on it. But you were smarter than that. You are smarter than that. And I realize now that the way we did it hasn’t been good. It’s been bloody unhealthy. And it hasn’t been fair to you, Al, not one bit fair.”
It’s sadder than sad seeing my strong dad with tears in his eyes. I want to comfort him, but I’m stuck too.
“The way you’ve had to circle around us and scoot between us, trying to keep things ticking along. Loving us equally and not taking sides. Carrying messages over the fence, from one house to the other, and up to my flat—back and forth—softening them up, making them less brittle. None of that was fair. We made you orbit around our separate adult worlds rather than us orbiting yours, as we should have done, in unison.”
I want Rick to comfort me too.
Lub dub—lub dub
“And now it’s making you sick, Al.” Rick takes both our hands, mine inside his, up to his face. He wipes his wet cheekbones. “We’ve bloody well made you sick.”
Lub dub—lub dub
“All of this should have been settled years ago, and I’m sorry, so sorry, that it wasn’t. But I’ve got a plan, Al Pal. I’m going to fix this. I’m going to fix this, and I’m going to get you well.”
Lub dub—lub dub
I picture those four chambers working separately, pumping hard for survival. Receiving blood—sending blood—receiving oxygen—sending oxygen. Each blood cell has been reddened, nourished and used, over the years of my life.
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