She dreams of fiery beards.
The fingers prise open the wall over her bed. Forever watching. The Sisters of Fate think she is their joke.
A bell wakes her every morning and the time to ponder her dreams is stolen by the shuffling of her dorm mates, the terse urgings of her house mistress. They are lost, these dreams. The dreams from the time of Athena are tucked safely away, written into journals, but these dreams will be gone by the time the breakfast bell rings. So be it, she thinks. But a part of her panics. Alex. Last time she missed something important she lost Alex. What will happen if she stops paying attention? But then, paying attention didn’t help much either. Even knowing the date did not stop them losing the chook sheds. They were only sheds. Chickens.
From the outside is silence. Poppy writes one long letter on thin paper, his looping old-fashioned writing filling every space on the page.
‘The roses are opening, the pink ones you like are especially prolific this year … The ute needs a new gearbox, but the mechanic can’t get the one we need … The road to town has more potholes than I have ever seen. I had a word to Bob Green—who knows why they keep re-electing him? He’s as useful as a spoon for a steak dinner …’
At the end of the letter he says her father sends his love, but makes no mention of what her mother sends. Her mother sends nothing. No phone calls. No letters. No more parcels.
The morning of the Easter Service, she sits on her stripped bed, her packed suitcases at her feet. The girls around her twitter with excitement, going home, Easter chocolate on the horizon, the end of exams, the melodrama of missing friends and boyfriends for the whole of the holidays—the dorm is chunky with emotion. Its colour, she thinks, is yellow. Yellow butterflies fluttering and flapping. Her colour at this minute is the ugly brown grey you get when you mix all the colours left on your palette at the end of art class. She’d dreamt all night of colours. In the dream, every day was assigned a colour. You couldn’t change the colour. She tried adding yellow to blue to make green. She tried adding blue to red to make purple. She couldn’t squeeze the paint out of the paint tubes; they were blocked with dried up paint, or they were empty, or once, when the paint came out easily, it wasn’t the colour the label said and she knew she had been tricked. She suspected Athena, but Athena, she knew, wasn’t around anymore, so she must have thought about it a long time ago to set it up so the paint was the wrong colour.
This day is designated a bleak colour. A bleak colour for her. Yellow for most others. Her fear, the tightness in her chest, the churning in her stomach, she must be honest with herself. No one is coming to get her. She wrote to her mother and reminded her of the date of the last day of term. No reply. The school must also tell parents when the term ends. Her mother is not going to turn up. This she knows. She could say there was a sudden illness. Whose? She needs to be specific to make the story believable. The headmistress will call her home; she will say she will get on the bus, someone will pick her up from the bus. They will feel guilty they forgot her. She will pretend it is not a problem. They will feel worse. She won’t tell her friends they forgot her. The headmistress won’t tell anyone.
By the time the new term starts everyone will have forgotten about it and she won’t have to lie for too long.
‘I don’t have your address.’ Bianca springs onto her bed and thrusts an address book at Cassie.
Cassie reaches into her pocket and takes out her address book. ‘I want yours too’ She smiles.
She opens Bianca’s address book at ‘S’ and starts to write.
‘The first thing I’m gonna do when I get home,’ says Bianca, ‘is have the biggest most ginormous bowl of ice-cream with chocolate topping and hundreds and thousands.’
Charmaine pulls the sheet from her bed and tosses it on the floor. ‘No more lumpy bed. Mmmm, my own bed.’ She flops on her bed and writhes in mock ecstasy.
Cassie laughs along with them all.
‘As soon as I get home, I’m gonna take my horse for the longest ride.’ Sharon sits on Cassie’s bed and passes her address book over.
‘Won’t it be dark when you get home?’ Bianca says.
‘Don’t spoil my fun.’ Sharon pouts.
‘What are you gonna do?’ Bianca asks Cassie.
‘Let’s see,’ Cassie says, putting the pen to her mouth. ‘I think I’ll eat some of my mother’s chocolate cake. Two pieces.’ She points the pen at them for emphasis. ‘Then I’ll call Paulo.’
‘Cake and then Paulo. He can’t be as good as you say.’ Charmaine throws a pillow at Cassie.
Cassie fends the pillow off. ‘Well, a girl’s got to build up her energy,’ Cassie says tartly.
‘I’m gonna find me a spunky skeg at the beach.’ Charmaine kicks her long brown legs into the air.
‘Oh, yeah,’ Bianca says, ‘and what will Steven have to say about that?’
‘What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him,’ Charmaine says, sitting up, her grin broad and cheeky. The class bell trills. ‘Shit, I’m not ready.’ She leaps up.
‘Slut,’ Sharon says under her breath.
Cassie hands back the address books and takes a deep breath. Into the fray.
They file into the assembly hall in their class groups. Cassie sits between Sharon and Bianca. As they mill around the assembly hall doors and the parents start arriving for the service, Cassie slinks off to the toilets. She emerges when the bell to start proceedings rings. So far no one has noticed the absence of her caregivers. Not that her father would ever come. There is always too much to do to leave for the day. Poppy might come, now that no one is needed at home to look at Aunty Ida.
While the dull service drones, the heat of the room presses on parents and students. Sweat gathers under Cassie’s thighs, her uniform sticky and itchy on her skin. The thunderstorm in her stomach builds. Something thick sits in her throat and she can’t even eat the lollies Sharon passes along the row. They melt into sticky goo in her clenched fist.
Cassie rehearses in her mind. ‘Something must have happened. Mum said they were leaving first thing. Maybe there’s been an accident.’ She imagines the fawning and the stroking. ‘We should go to the office,’ someone will say and she will nod. The tears in her eyes will come easily. They are coming now. She pushes them back. She has gotten good at doing that.
How will she make sure the phone call is private? Whoever comes up to the office with her can’t overhear what is said. Maybe no one will come up with her. Maybe she will be alone. If not … if not she will have to think of something. She could say she wants to make the call. That way they will only hear what she wants. Will they let her do that? Maybe they will take her into the headmistress’s office and she can tell whoever it is that she will be okay, and they can go back to their parents. Not to worry about her. Why would anyone go up to the office with her anyway? They will be too busy saying goodbye and leaving. Maybe no one will notice no one is there for her. She can just wander up to the office and pretend she is waiting until someone notices she is still there.
They sing the school song.
The headmistress wishes them a safe and happy Easter.
The hall erupts into a burst of noise.
Cassie turns in her seat.
She sees her father first. He looks like a fish in a frypan. Poppy stands beside him, in his best suit. The sweat flows over his face like a river. A smile spreads across her face like a yellow sunrise.
She hugs them both, her fist still clenching the sticky lollies. ‘Where’s Mum?’ she asks, looking around, behind them, in the distance.
‘She couldn’t make it,’ her father says, turning towards the door. ‘Let’s get your bags.’
They wait until the suitcases are in the boot and they are in the car before they give her the letter. She thinks it is weird that Poppy sits in the back seat with her.
He hands her the letter and pats her knee. He
leaves his hand on her knee and looks at the envelope.
It is a pink envelope. Pale pink. Written on a pink day perhaps. There is no name on the front of it. No address.
‘Is it for me?’ she asks.
They don’t answer her. She turns the envelope over. The flap is gummed down tight. She finds a gap and slips her finger underneath, ripping the pink paper. Inside she finds pink paper with a border of roses.
Dearest Cassie,
I hope one day you will understand. I hoped I would get to the school to talk to you face to face, but for so many reasons it hasn’t turned out that way. Perhaps this is better. I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore.
Cassie, my darling, believe me when I tell you I love you. I have always loved you from the moment I saw you. Before that even. Maybe I didn’t show you or tell you enough. But I do and I always will.
Your father is a good man. We were so young when we met. It seems like a different world. A different time. But, we have both—I have been unhappy for a long time. Maybe you noticed. You are a perceptive girl. I am so proud of you. You must never think any of this is your fault.
This is the hardest part. I just have to say it. I am going to live with Athena and her dad. He and I …
Cassie crumbles the letter without finishing it. She opens the window and the letter leaves her hand in the wind like a rock in a slingshot. Poppy squeezes her knee. The car accelerates, hurtling like a dragon, her father’s foot a lead weight. Cassie crosses her arms over her chest and digs her nails into her shoulders. She watches the trees spin past.
~ 34 ~
Fire
She slams her bedroom door. It punches the doorframe and the walls quake. Apparently her mother said she would come back for her. Apparently her mother wanted her to know she loved her. Apparently her mother no longer loved her father. Apparently her mother loved Mr Cerauno with his ugly beard and his evil long fingernails.
Apparently her mother loved Athena.
She clenches her fists, stalks to the window, thumps her head on the glass and peers down at the windowsill to a layer of sticky dust and dead flies. Tears burn the corners of her eyes. She thumps her head on the glass again and rips the curtains closed. She turns and faces the room. Dust layers her furniture, her books, her every possession. ‘Bitch,’ she growls between clamped teeth. She kicks her desk. A vase of dried flowers spills from the edge, cracking open as it lands. With a deep wobbling breath she spreads her arms across the desk and smashes the contents onto the floor.
Alex’s painting, the one he gave her for her birthday, tumbles in the rush. She digs through the debris and finds it, the canvas scratched, the paint scarred. Her mother would have stayed for Alex. If that day she had got out of bed earlier, read the shadows on the garage wall, figured it out, she could have saved Alex. Her mother would never have left Alex. She, Cassie, is a person you could leave. Alex you could not.
She falls back onto her bed and presses her finger along the scarred paint, trying with all her will to repair the damage. It won’t go back together. Tears burst from her eyes like lava. She throws the painting on the bed, slips to the floor and reaches under the bed, groping with her hands. The box. She bumps it over the carpet, into the light and opens the cardboard flaps. They scrape across each other like fingernails on a blackboard. Inside lies Athena’s experiment, perished. Cassie, the guinea pig. Was Athena ever actually interested her? Or her mother? Did she plan this?
Clues.
She scrabbles through the pages, tearing clues from the staples. She sorts them into three piles. Athena would be proud of her scientific methods. Three streams of clues.
First, the tarot cards.
Her mother’s cards—when she occasionally allowed it. The recurring three, like points on a triangle, the Knight of Cups, crafty, yet romantic and artistic, and logically The Lovers, the serpent of temptation winding up the Tree of knowledge. The Lovers card, with its maddening need to choose between two paths, to swerve, to follow a passion. Could Cassie have swayed the choice? Her father obviously couldn’t.
Athena’s cards. Mothers everywhere, but no real mother in Athena’s life.
Second, the dreams. A man with his face alight, his fingers shooting flames. Dreams, she closes her eyes, dreams that filled her both with desire and fear.
And, last of all, like a beacon flashing, the first time she knocked on the door of Athena’s house. That vision of her mother sobbing. The vision she saw for real on the night of Alex’s funeral. It never said she would leave.
None of it said she would leave. Just pointed the way in the obscure way the cards and dreams always did.
She tips the box towards her. A plastic bag slips from under the cardboard flap. A spark of electricity shoots from her stomach to her chest. Desire flows through her like warm honey. She didn’t know it was there. She doesn’t even recognise the bag. Magic!
In her desk drawer she finds papers and a light. She doesn’t care about the smell or hiding it. She inhales the smoke deep into her lungs and holds her breath. The sense of wellbeing hugs her skin, holds her tight. She releases the smoke. It comes from her in a steady shooting stream and then … it drifts. She pulls again and the end of the joint crackles and burns and spits. She pulls the hot magic into her lungs, holds the magic inside her, and sees that her grief likes it too. Her grief, she realises, is a flame. A ball of flame she decides, like a planet. Like a star, like the sun, only small and tied up tight, the magic, the smoke, the marijuana, the weed, loosens the flames. Tiny tight lights flicker, test the feeling of freedom, open slightly, just a little, then another little flame flickers from the ball and she feels them tickle her chest. Massage the muscles, the veins. The ball of tight pain being given free rein to inhabit her. It flows and licks and builds into its true form. The Anger. The Anger allows the Pain, the Grief to have True Meaning. With every inhalation the Anger takes shape, grows and settles, becoming part of Her. Sated, she kills the burning joint end into her carpet.
Her cards, dejected, rejected on the bottom of the box. In her hands they glow with invisible energy. She slides them delicately from their box, slippery, smelling of incense. She shuffles them, the cool cards sliding, mixing together, holding each other tight, separating, choosing among themselves how they will enlighten her.
She flicks her finger across the side of the pack. Which of you, which of you, which of you?
She cuts the deck. The card is revealed.
Three of Cups.
The Three Sisters. The Goddesses of Destiny. She who spins lives, She who measures lives and She, the Inevitable One, who severs lives. She throws the cards against the wall. They scatter like naughty children. They are vague and deliberately contrary. She asks them questions and they throw in her face the Sisters of Fate.
The problem is, the flames of Anger whisper, furious, between clenched teeth; the problem is you sit around like a stunned mullet, waiting for some future to happen, or you try to change some future, you never actually … and Anger spits the word … never actually make a future.
She crawls on her knees and searches through the strewn cards until she finds the Three of Cups. She grins and sits back. The lighter gripped solid in her hand. She spins it aflame. The flame tastes the card. The Sisters of Fate. The plastic coating melts and curls until the laughing flame catches the Sisters’ skirts and travels up to their waists, and onto their grinning beautiful faces, and singes their hair, and she can smell the hair and the fabric of their skirts burning, an acrid smell, burning flesh smell, and the cups they hold aloft start to burn and she can feel the heat in the fingers that hold the card, but she holds it tight. The flame licks at her fingers, curls over fingernails, bites chilli kisses. She throws the final scrap of plastic and cardboard onto the floor. The flame disappears in a flash of ash.
She has let life happen to her.
She gathers the notebooks, pulls the
cards back into a deck, and fills the box with the bitch’s experiment. It’s all going back. She changes from her school uniform into jeans and a dark t-shirt.
The lighter she stuffs into her pocket.
It rests against her thigh like a lover’s hand.
A rustling comes from behind Poppy’s closed door. The screen door creaks on its hinges and she closes it slowly, gently. She moves the box of experiments and punishments onto her hip and wraps her arm over to grip it. She creeps down the stairs. The twilight settles like an invisible cloak. A world between worlds. She peeks into the garage. Empty. Probably her father has gone to the pub. Drown his sorrows. See a man about a dog.
Across the clearing a scar of flat cleared earth has replaced the chook sheds. It’s like a bomb has gone off. A nuclear attack, the evidence cleared. The nuclear black stallion. Careless and vindictive. Why did he choose them? Clearly the Fates sent him. To drive the last nail in the coffin. Taking Alex and Ida freed her mother of responsibility. Sending her Paulo and the dramas at school sent Cassie to boarding school. And last of all, taking all hope from the farm. There was no reason to stay. Fate made her mother’s decision easy. But why would the Sisters of Fate choose to punish her?
The answer is easy. She tried to cheat Fate.
She tried to change what the Sisters decreed.
She’s doing it still. Tonight. Tonight will be her night. Tonight they will suffer.
She follows the fence to the gate, the wood pile eerie in the half light, shadows growing from the dark corners. The sharp edge of the box digs into her flesh. The track beckons and she smiles; with her free hand she retrieves the lighter and flicks the flint.
Cassandra Page 24