Thursday, 14 April
Selma Ferguson was the undisputed princess of our year level.
She had long, blonde hair and perfect skin, and she cultivated that pouty, vacant expression you saw on models in magazines. Everyone knew that she had parts in Home and Away and that she had a contract with a modelling agency. She was the centre of an eager group of girls who radiated around her in dread of being the next one to be dropped or humiliated on social media. To Selma, I must have been worse that invisible, like a boring, grey stone. I didn’t vie for her attention, and I didn’t gossip.
But Rosa Spinella became Selma’s latest target. Rosa was new, so I didn’t know her well. She wasn’t in one of the friendship cliques yet, and I was a well-known loner, so we sometimes gravitated together.
On Monday, Rosa and I were at the lockers getting ready for the day. Rosa was sipping from a takeaway cup of coffee. Suddenly, as she reached into the back of her locker for her diary, Selma walked past and lurched against her, upending the coffee down the front of Rosa’s dress.
‘Sorr … eee,’ Selma said, and then she walked off with her coterie of giggling subordinates.
‘That was deliberate,’ I said, staring after them.
‘I know, she does it all the time,’ Rosa said, dabbing at her dress with tissues.
‘Come on, we’ve got time. I’ll help you wash it off in the bathroom.’
It was quiet there, and we did the best we could to clean the stain.
‘What do you mean “all the time”?’ I asked.
‘Bitchy comments about my appearance, my name … supposed to be private but loud enough for me to overhear.’
‘Your name? Rosa? What’s that about?’
‘Spinella. It’s Italian.’
‘And?’
‘How many other girls with Italian names are there at this school? They’re like “Go back to your fruit and vegetable stall”.’
‘Rosa, that’s bullying.’
‘I know.’
‘Tell someone.’ I urged.
‘Really? Sure. That should help.’ We both knew it would be pointless.
Today in our English Literature class, Rosa and I sat together near the front of the room. Rosa wasn’t like me. I was every teacher’s dream student. I was quiet. I did my homework, and I never disrupted the class, but Rosa was funny and a bit weird. She doodled strange little faces in her diary, mimicked the teachers behind their backs, and she always asked questions no one else thought of, especially in Mr Jordan’s class.
Mr Jordan, our English Literature teacher, was the youngest teacher in the school, and the nerdiest. He combed his dark hair back off his forehead, and he seemed to use that old-fashioned hair oil that you sometimes saw in vintage advertisements. Every day he wore a white shirt with a bow tie, and over the shirt he wore a cardigan. Yes, an actual cardigan.
He always matched his bow tie to one of the colours in his cardigan. He wore shiny, brown, lace-up schoolboy shoes with white socks. He had black-framed glasses with thick lenses, and he had a habit of pulling down the right sleeve of his cardigan to polish his glasses on the cuff. He did this as he stared into space, or out the window, or while he was listening to someone read or explain something about one of our texts.
As geeky as he was, I had a major crush on him. It wasn’t his looks or what he wore, or even that he was patient and quiet, not like some of the other teachers whose mouths were as big as their egos. No, it was his voice. When Mr Jordan recited a poem (he seemed to know by heart every poem that had ever been written), the words flooded over me like deep, rich music. He recited poetry as if he was in love with its beauty, as if he marvelled at it. His awe for a poem was so strong — you couldn’t help but feel that same awe too.
I got caught up in the words too, and I wanted to listen to him all day. He said that the best way to appreciate poetry was to read it aloud to yourself, and so I did, when I was alone at night, listening to the cadences as they danced off my tongue.
But it was not only poetry. Mr Jordan said that the stories in our set novels were not just single stories, but hundreds of stories. They were stories about everyone everywhere, stories about us. I saw deeper into the novels now, looking for the bigger stories. Mr Jordan was the best teacher I’d ever had.
This term we were studying Sonya Hartnett’s novel, Surrender. Mr Jordan asked us to read a chapter a night, and to keep a journal of our reactions as we read it. We were to write 500 words in response to each chapter. We had to handwrite it, in a proper lined exercise book. He said (not knowing why) that in handwriting, you could pour more of your soul onto the page. We were to keep the exercise book with us at all times. It was our writer’s notebook, as well as the journal where we recorded our reactions to the texts.
Every day Mr Jordan asked five different students to read from their journal. Usually he didn’t set a topic, he liked us to give unedited reactions to what we’d read, but yesterday he gave us the theme of ‘identity’ as an introduction to one of the big themes of the novel.
‘What is identity?’ he asked. ‘Where does it come from, what influences it, does it change over time?’ He threw questions at us, but he wouldn’t give us a prescriptive list. He said that we must chase the questions down as a child chases a balloon, and if a different question or idea catches our interest, we must chase that one instead.
In class today, he asked Rosa to read her excerpt on identity. I knew she hadn’t done it, but she sat with her notebook in front of her face and gave an amazing discussion of the theme. She explained how identity was shaped by home, school, family and wider society, how it could be damaged by trauma, how people our age liked to try on different identities, how identities could sometime split off under pressure into multiple identities, until finally ‘when you’re old’, she said, identity settled down into something comfortable.
She didn’t falter once. It was fluent, thoughtful, reflective and clever, but she was reading from a blank page. I knew that because I was sitting next to her, but no one else knew.
Except Mr Jordan.
‘Wonderful, Rosa,’ he said, polishing his glasses on his sleeve and staring out the window as if an irresistible spectacle was taking place out there, one that only he could see. ‘Please bring the written version to me at the beginning of tomorrow’s class, as well as tonight’s entry.’
Was there a tiny, almost uncontrollable smile on his face as he turned back towards the class?
‘You’re crazy,’ I said to Rosa as we packed up our books.
‘I know, but isn’t he sweet? What are you doing for lunch?’
‘Nothing. I’m going to the library to borrow some books.’
‘Library? At lunchtime? How boring. Come with me to watch the netball. The Year Eleven team’s playing Melbourne Grammar in the gym.’
So we sat in the stands with salad rolls from the canteen and watched the teams expertly handle the ball from one end of the court to the other. I’d never played netball, and I was amazed how fast the game was. You couldn’t stop watching for a second or you’d miss a spectacular pass or a goal. The girls ran, jumped, guarded their opponents, threw goals and called encouragement to each other, and just briefly, I forgot Sunday night’s horrible scene when the ambulance took Mum away, and the anxiety I felt for her like a stone in my guts.
As we wandered back towards the classrooms, Rosa asked, ‘Do you want to hang out at the weekend?’
Immediately I was tense. My stomach clenched. I couldn’t tell her the truth. ‘Oh, my mum’s in a mental hospital, my dad’s disappeared, our house is a tip and I’m temporarily staying at my uncle’s place.’
So I lied. ‘It’s hard at my house. Mum’s sick and you can’t make any noise.’ It was as good a story as any.
‘Oh, I’m sorry. What’s wrong with her?’
I embellished quickly. ‘She gets terrible migraines. They go for days.’
‘How awful. Well, come to my place. We can make as much noise as we like there.
My older brother works on Saturdays, and Gio plays soccer, so we’ll have the house to ourselves. We can binge on movies.’
I wanted to say yes, but Rosa’s friendship would come at a cost to me. I would have to keep my home and family secret, and it was exhausting. She’d start to wonder why I never brought her home. Migraines don’t last that long, do they?
At an earlier time, I would have turned away, but something was uncoiling in me now, because of Mrs Goodall, and Golden Beach, and my beautiful rosewood desk. Rosa’s offer of friendship was like a tantalising vision bobbing ahead of me, just out of reach. I only had to stretch out, catch hold of it, try it on as you try on a new top, and if it wasn’t right I could give it back. Or so I told myself anyway.
‘Sounds good. So how old’s Gio?’
‘Only eight. He’s totally gorgeous. Sometimes, just sometimes, that compensates for the loud, boorish brother, Dario, or Deegs, as his moron mates call him.’
‘Does he work full time?’
‘No, he’s at uni. He works in a music store at the weekends. He has a sixties music fetish. He knows everything about everything. Really, it’s best to ignore him.’
‘Dario? Gio? Is that Giovanni? Do you speak Italian?’
‘My parents were born here, but that doesn’t stop them making us talk Italian at home whenever the mood takes them. So what about Saturday?’
‘Yes, I’d love to come, but I warn you, I’m quiet and boring. Can I bring some DVDs?
‘What have I done?’ I badgered myself as I hurried to my Maths class. Is it too late to get out of it? I could say I had to work, that Hungry Jacks had called me in for an extra shift. I could say that Mum needed me; I could say that I was sick; I could say that I had an urgent assignment.
Then I tried to imagine how Mrs Goodall would respond …
‘Relax, Alison, all you’ve done is agree to spend a few hours on Saturday with a girl from school. No commitment, no return visits — and let’s face it, you need a friend.’ Then she’d say in her calm, objective voice … ‘You’re doing very well, Alison.’
Chapter 23
Alison Brennan
Saturday, 16 April
Rosa lived in Northcote, in a double-storey red brick house. It had two white iron balconies facing the street on the upper level, and a wider white balcony on the lower level. They made the house look friendly, as if the upstairs balconies were the house’s eyes and the lower balcony a smile.
I was nervous. I couldn’t say anything as Rosa showed me around. I hoped I wasn’t gawking. It was the kind of house I imagined for myself in the long night hours as I listened to the rats scurrying outside my bedroom. It wasn’t just the sparkling white tiles and honey-coloured wooden cabinets in the kitchen, or even the bare, pale wooden floors of the family room with its minimal furniture, and wood fire. It wasn’t the thick ivory carpets of the bedrooms upstairs, or the same honey glowing wood of the cabinets in the bathrooms.
No, what I loved was that it was all so uncluttered, almost spartan. There was nothing that wasn’t necessary, just a few prints breaking up the white walls, and one panel in the family room covered in photos of Rosa, her parents and brothers, and other people I guessed were her extended family.
The house was very clean and neat — the only thing on the kitchen bench was a wire basket full of fruit — but it wasn’t sterile or cold. It felt like a happy house, and you could tell a family lived there. There was a wooden deck leading from the family room, and on it was a big basket of logs waiting for the fire. There was a gas barbecue there, as well as a soccer ball, a football and a cricket bat. There were bikes in the garage next to the deck, and skateboards and skis.
Rosa told me that her mother was a seamstress. One of the rooms on the top floor was her workroom, and it contained her sewing machine, an ironing board and a cabinet that took up a whole wall. The shelves of the cabinet were fitted with little drawers, there must have been fifty of them. Rosa opened some to show me. Every colour of thread you could imagine was in one drawer, hundreds of buttons of different shapes and colours in another, sequins in another, tiny pearls, laces and ribbons, and a life-sized mannequin. There was everything you would need to make gorgeous clothes. The windows, which were covered in a soft, drapey, transparent fabric, framed a view of the city.
‘We’re not allowed in here,’ Rosa said. ‘It’s Mum’s room. Sometimes if I need to talk to her and she’s busy, she’ll let me come in, and we talk as she works, but not often.’
I coveted that room. I wanted its couch with the bright cushions, its windows with their gauzy curtains, its spotless carpet without a single thread or piece of fabric spoiling its perfection. I wanted it even more than I wanted Rosa’s room, which was as bright and clean as the rest of the house and decorated with larger versions in charcoal of the quirky caricatures she drew in her diary.
You just knew that the people who lived in this house loved it and were proud of it.
That settles it, I said to myself. Rosa will never, ever see my house.
I thought about houses a lot. I knew I was going on about Rosa’s place, but I hadn’t been in many houses. There was Uncle Leo’s, of course, and Grandpa’s, and Lo-an’s, my friend from primary school. Sometimes there was a party at another girl’s house for the swimming team, but that was it. Mum and Dad never went anywhere. They’d never even taken me to other people’s houses.
It was fun being with Rosa. We talked about school and the teachers with their funny or weird habits. Rosa mimicked our homeroom teacher’s strong American accent so perfectly that I rolled on the couch laughing. We talked about assignments and what we wanted to do when we left school. We made sandwiches and iced coffee and watched two episodes of Breaking Bad on Netflix. Rosa waxed my eyebrows and I tried on some of her makeup. I didn’t say anything about Mum being in hospital or Dad’s disappearance. How could I?
Late in the afternoon, Rosa’s mother and little brother came home.
Mrs Spinella was an older version of Rosa. She had the same neat, black hair that seemed to fit over her head like a close cap. She wore big, gold hoops in her ears, and bright red lipstick. She was small — elfin was the word I thought of — and she was dressed all in black: black leggings, a black jumper, which came almost to her knees, and black ankle boots. I wondered if she made her own clothes.
‘Leave your runners outside, Gio,’ she called. ‘Well, what have you girls been doing?’
‘You know, mucking around,’ Rosa answered vaguely. ‘Talking, watching stuff.’
Gio looked to be in about Year Three. He was a curly-haired little boy, dark, with olive skin and brown eyes. He cuddled up to Rosa on the couch, and she put her arms around him.
‘Did you kill them at soccer today, my hero?’ she asked.
‘Nah, not today. We lost.’
‘Next week then.’ Rosa kissed him on the top of his head.
I didn’t know it was like that, having a little brother.
‘Come any time, Alison,’ Mrs Spinella said as I left.
‘Do you want to meet Dad before you go?’ Rosa asked as we left by the front door. When I nodded, she led me to the tram stop on the other side of High Street, in the opposite direction from where I would get the tram home.
‘He has a food truck,’ she said, as we left the tram two stops down the busy street. We walked into a big open area ringed with trucks selling all kinds of food, Mexican, Chinese, Vietnamese, Indian, Spanish, hamburgers and ice cream. Rosa’s dad’s truck was called ‘Pasta Face’, and in front of its open serving window there was a long queue of people.
Mr Spinella sold pasta and pizza, lots of different varieties, but also other Italian dishes such as meatballs in tomato sauce, handmade Italian sausages, chicken, beef and vegetarian pasta sauces. There was a cabinet full of delicious-looking desserts.
When we got to the top of the queue, Rosa introduced me. ‘Dad, this is my friend Alison.’ And then to me, proudly, she said, ‘Dad makes everything himself. He’s a
chef.’
I thought of cooking in that spotless kitchen at Rosa’s house, how satisfying it would be.
Mr Spinella was big and loud. He was delighted that we had visited him. He called to another man who was working with him in the truck. ‘Look, Stevo, Rosa’s here with her friend. What do you girls want to eat? We’ve got a special seafood pasta today. It’s walking out the door. Take some, Alison.’ He scooped an enormous portion into a plastic container, snapped on the lid, and pushed it at me. ‘Here, darling.’
The pasta smelled heavenly, but there was much more than I could eat. I’d share it with Trent and Leo.
‘Come back and help me Rosa when you’ve said good bye to your friend,’ he called as we walked away.
‘What will you do?’ I asked.
‘Oh, serve the customers, collect money, clean, whatever Dad needs me to do.’
‘Do you help every weekend?’
‘No, only if he asks me. He used to have a restaurant when we lived in Sydney, and I worked there at the weekends, but he sold that and bought the food truck when we came here. He’s much happier now, and he’s home much more. Because he’s happier, everyone’s happier. The food truck is open mostly at the weekends, but during the week, only in the evenings. He can take Gio to school, help Mum in the house. He was always worried about the business when we lived in Sydney.’
Now I knew a lot about Rosa’s family, but she hadn’t asked any questions about mine. I wondered what she thought. What would I tell her if she asked?
Rosa walked with me to my tram stop. ‘See you on Monday,’ she said, hugging me.
I hugged her back.
That’s what normal’s like, I thought as I found a seat on the tram. Normal family, normal house, normal friendship.
‘Well, Alison,’ Mrs Goodall’s voice sounded in my head. ‘What was so hard about that? Admit it, you enjoyed it. Rosa’s nice.’
‘But the secrets I’ll have to keep,’ I answered silently.
The Blooming Of Alison Brennan Page 10