Chloe watched her eat, feeling severe, like her Personal Nutrition Monitor. ‘So, will Bass come back tonight, you think?’
‘Probably. Can I not-be-home at your place?’
‘Sure. Long as you leave my brothers alone.’
‘How about your gorgeous dad? He’s so kissable with his grizzly little beard, so cute! And he’s so happy all the time.’ She sighed at the mystery of it.
‘Janey.’
‘It’s okay. I’ll be good.’
‘Promise now. This is the rule, to keep you in line later, when you stop thinking.’
‘Okay. I promise. I won’t touch. I won’t even flirt. I’m not really—you know—anyway. Wrong time of the month. It was only because they were there, last night.’
‘Good. We’ll watch a video and have hot milk and wear flannelette pyjamas.’
‘Cor, you guys really know how to live.’
‘So have you been home since?’ said Dane, efficiently stirring the coals and putting the poker back on its hook.
‘Nope. I shouldn’t need to. I’ve had everything changed, Social Security and that.’ Janey and Chloe sat at the table eating slabs of a cake they’d just made. ‘I’m eighteen now; there’s no need for them to know where I am.’
‘They might still try to find out.’ Dane sat down with them and took a gulp of coffee.
‘Oh yeah, well … They won’t go to the cops, anyway.’ Janey took another enormous bite of cake.
‘I can see Nathan getting it into his head to hunt for you and follow you home,’ said Chloe.
‘Nah, he hardly steps outside the house—oops.’ A spray of crumbs had hit the table. She started to pick them up with a licked fingertip. ‘I mean, he goes to work, but apart from that he just stays in his room with his Penthouse, or watches television. Oh, he’s started going to a gym, too.’ Chloe made a face. ‘Anyway, I thought about that, I told you.’ Janey winked at her.
Chloe grinned. ‘Janey’s thinking of changing her appearance,’ she told her father.
‘Look at him!’ Janey laughed. ‘He’s thinking, “Well, she couldn’t make herself look any worse!” Aren’t you, Dane?—it’s written all over your face! You can’t get out of it!’
Dane put on a blisteringly innocent look, then said, ‘Change I can imagine. What I can’t imagine is Janey looking inconspicuous.’
‘Like, normal?’ Janey kept on laughing.
‘Well, I can’t imagine walking past you and not noticing you.’
‘Ah, it’s just this hair, and all the make-up.’
‘Um, and sometimes the clothes,’ Chloe reminded her. ‘Like, the vinyls.’
‘Yeah, I guess. Anyone else want more cake?’ She picked up her plate and went into the kitchen.
Isaac came down from Nick’s room, gave his expressionless nod to Chloe and Dane and left a pile of books on the table. He took two mugs out to the kitchen. He and Janey said hi, and Janey came back. Without looking at it she picked up the top book in her sticky fingers. She started leafing through it automatically. Chloe watched her switch from vague to sighted.
‘Well, you know, I can just not wear the vinyls,’ she said doubtfully, and was gone into the book, scowling.
Chloe peered across. ‘What is it?’
Janey’s head joggled. ‘Leaves, walls, piles of rocks. They’re—who is this guy?’ She checked the cover. ‘Some kind of artist.’ She gave a little disbelieving hoot of laughter and leafed more slowly, and leafed back, and began reading captions, one by one, and searching the black and white photographs.
‘Ja-ney!’ Chloe tut-tutted and brushed some crumbs from the glossy pages.
Isaac came back. He fetched his coat and shrugged it on, glancing at the book over Janey’s shoulder. ‘Andy Gold-sworthy. He’s good, isn’t he?’ He said it as if of course they’d all know the man’s work well.
‘Is this …’ Janey sounded truly puzzled. ‘Is this, like, art?’
Isaac seemed taken aback. ‘Well, a pile of people seem to think so. I guess it’s a matter of opinion.’
‘Oh, I’m not slagging him or anything,’ said Janey, not looking up. ‘I just … It’s not like art so much; it’s like, just, something you’d do.’
Chloe got up to look at the book too. It was full of black and white photographs of stones piled in columns on the seashore, beehive shapes built of flints or tiles of ice, body-shadows printed with rain on grass. ‘Things you’d do, Janey, only on a bigger scale, maybe.’
‘But he doesn’t sell this stuff?’ Janey insisted to Isaac. ‘Look at this, these leaves. It’s like those fish, in Japan, the poison ones. Pufferfish?’
‘Blowfish?’ said Isaac. ‘You’re right. The way they lay them out in slivers around the plate.’
‘And you get one dud sliver and you’re dead. But, it says, he just lets them blow away. Takes a photo and then goes away. How does he live?’
‘Sells the photos,’ suggested Chloe. ‘Puts them into this book and sells them at sixty dollars a hit. What I Did on My Holidays—built a pile of stones.’
‘Oh, I like them. I like the idea,’ said Janey.
‘You must be an artist too,’ said Isaac.
Chloe instantly felt very plain and un-artistic. She sat down.
Janey looked up as if Isaac had just recited a proverb in a foreign language and she was waiting for a translation. His eyebrows peeped briefly over the top of his glasses-rims. Janey looked down at the book, stilled.
‘I’ll leave it here if you like,’ said Isaac, picking up the rest of the pile.
‘Yeah? Mad.’ She turned another page.
He wound his scarf around his neck. ‘See you all later, then.’ His eyes met Chloe’s over Janey’s head like parents’ over a sickly child. She nodded his smileless nod back at him.
‘He’s nice, Isaac,’ said Janey next morning. They were walking down King Street on their way to her place. She had the Goldsworthy book under her arm.
‘You reckon?’ said Chloe.
‘He is! He’s very … gee, he’s changed, hasn’t he?’
‘Has he?’ said Chloe, turning away to watch the traffic.
‘Remember what a weed he was? And all the spots? Poor bloke; I used to feel so sorry for him. And now he’s … up there, and so clever-looking!’
‘It’s just those industrial-strength specs he wears.’
‘You reckon? And his body—’
‘Don’t start about bodies!’
Janey laughed. ‘No, just this one. He’s gone all bumpy. Big bumpy nose, Adam’s apple, forehead—’
‘He’s always had the nose.’
‘Oh, gee, you’re mean!’
Chloe cackled.
‘And I bet under all those dark intellectual jumpers there’s some good stuff,’ Janey went on. ‘You see him yesterday, putting on that coat? Good broad shoulders. He’s really kind of chunked out—not in a fat way, though.’
‘And there you were, looking at blowfish leaves and talking about art—well, I was fooled!’ Janey nudged her almost off the kerb. ‘Anyway, he’s the same cold fish he always was.’
‘Oh, bull. He’s perfectly nice.’
‘Very polite. Scrupulously polite, but with that basilisk stare.’
‘What the flipping heck’s a basilisk?’
‘I don’t know. A lizard that turns people into stone just by looking at them? Something like that.’
‘A gargoyle, isn’t it? On a church?’
‘You’re thinking of a basilica, as in St Peter’s.’
‘I don’t know what I’m thinking of.’
They went into Janey’s house.
‘Your friends find you, love?’ called Bette from the kitchen as they passed.
‘What friends?’
‘Friends?’ echoed Chloe. ‘She hasn’t got any friends, have you, Janey?’
‘Nope. You’re it.’
‘Those lads. Three or four of them. Came by last night. Said they’d check at your mum and dad’s place.’
&n
bsp; ‘Ho, they won’t get out alive.’ Janey grinned. She opened the door and stood there, pawing inside the door frame for the light switch. A powerful sour smell began to taint the hallway.
‘Don’t look, don’t look,’ said Chloe. She tried to pull Janey back, but Janey stood solid, examining everything—the clothes and bed-linen piled and peed on, the arcs of splashed beer across the wallpaper, the books thrown, splayed, trampled, torn to pieces, torn to confetti, some of them.
‘Gee, I didn’t … didn’t realise you had so much stuff,’ Chloe tried to joke. Bette stood behind her, peering past them, her hands to her cheeks. The skin on her fingers was glossy like the cloth of a worn suit.
Janey strode to the bedside table. ‘Oh God, they’ve gone! They’ve taken them!’
‘What?’
‘My Eddies! My pho—ah!’ She snatched an envelope from the floor and several photographs slid out. ‘Oh, thank—’ She sat on the edge of the bared blue mattress and sorted through the photos. Her hands shook. ‘They’re all here. Phew. Oh.’ She held them to her chest and struggled to smile at Chloe, her face still ragged with leftover fear.
‘But how can this’ve happened?’ Bette leaned in the doorway, nearly in tears herself. ‘Oh, love, I must be getting old, not to’ve heard anything.’
Chloe opened the curtains, found the French windows loose, a reddish wood splintering out of the many layers of paint. ‘A crowbar,’ said Chloe, pointing out the marks to Bette.
‘Some people,’ said Bette. ‘Some people. All your things. How could I not’ve heard, with a crowbar?’
‘Oh, look, they’ve left the teeve.’ Janey sounded a trifle hysterical. ‘They must be going to come back for the big game today.’
‘What game’s that, love?’
‘I don’t know. Isn’t there always some kind of big game, match of the day …?’ She got up and ran her hand across a beer stain. ‘This is almost dry. They must have come back pretty well straight away.’
‘Bass, you reckon?’
Janey shook her head. ‘I don’t have a clue, really. Could’ve been anyone. Could’ve been someone I don’t even know, couldn’t it? If they’d really wanted to hurt me they’d’ve ripped these up.’ She waved the photos.
‘Oh, love,’ said Bette.
Janey seemed to notice her for the first time. She laughed and crossed the room to her. ‘Don’t get all upset, Bette. It’s only a few things, a few bits and pieces. What does Nick call them, Cole?’ She put her arms around Bette’s shoulders.
‘Objets.’
‘There. Objays. Nothing to cry about.’
‘But, coming in … and putting filth! Someone here should’ve heard. If that useless Ken was in, I’d tell him off all right. I’d make him come and clean up. Right next door—he must have heard something, he must’ve.’
Chloe was gathering intact books. There were only ten or so; Janey would only need one shelf now. She stepped over the wreckage and piled them on the bedside table. Then she fetched a garbage bag and started piling in torn pages, covers that swung pageless, beer-sogged wads of text.
‘Well, they didn’t enjoy Lady Chatterley,’ she said, plopping half of it into the bag. She looked up, and Janey was smiling wryly back at her, and Bette looking bewildered.
‘Rachel, it’s lovely to meet you. Come in.’
Up in her room, Chloe paused in her hair-brushing.
Rachel said, ‘How do you do?’
‘Come through,’ said Joy.
Chloe had been about to go down. Instead she went to her window and peered down through the glass roof of the dining room. She saw Joy naming them around the table, saw Maurice and Jube and Carl smile and the others nod and Rachel’s dark frizzy hair, a longer version of Isaac’s, nod back. Isaac and Rachel sat down at the table, and Chloe could see Rachel’s pale, pointed face among the hair, and the difference in Isaac’s bearing, his consideration-of-Rachel turning his body slightly towards her.
Chloe kept brushing; it was one of those activities that needn’t ever finish if she didn’t want it to, and it made soothing noise in her head that stopped her thinking. Then she found herself in the middle of her room, pulling every last hair from the brush bristles. She put the puff of hair in the bin and sat on the end of her bed staring at the brush. Maybe she didn’t have the energy to go down today, to face all those people, to make all those hullos. Rachel probably felt like this when she got up this morning, but then that momentum of being-in-love-with-Isaac would have picked her up and carried her here, because it was new with them, still, and anything done with Isaac was worth doing. Chloe remembered that elation of being picked out right at the start, a solitary being with no family around her, shining in her own self that suddenly seemed so defined and so wonderful, reflected in Theo’s eyes.
She stood up abruptly, and caught her own eye in the wardrobe mirror. Yuk. It was these clothes. She looked like a dying moth, flap flap, flutter flutter, everything pale and wan. The faded print on the long skirt—that could even be floral. Almost shuddering, she shed the layers, and put on jeans so rarely worn they almost creaked when she bent, and a close-fitting top. Now I look like a sex bomb, she sneered at herself in the mirror, and softened the top a little with a blue cotton blouse tucked into the jeans, and tied her hair back into a thick plait. Farm girl, she thought, pulling on her boots. Bushwalker, charity car-washer, eater of wholemeal. She debated whether to take out the stud in her nostril, but decided that would be going too far.
She went to the window again. Rachel down there like a delicate smiling toy, Isaac’s hand on her thigh under the table—what is wrong with this picture? What exactly is the problem here?
She looked again in the mirror. ‘God, it’ll do! It’ll do just fine!’ Suddenly she was all jittery energy, slimlined and sparky and focused. She was downstairs and in the kitchen and carrying the bowl of pasta to the table, smiling and saying hello to Carl, Jube, Maurice.
‘And this is Chloe,’ Isaac said to Rachel. ‘Chloe, I want you to meet Rachel.’
‘Hi, Rachel,’ said Chloe, careful not to overdo the smiling or the casual tone.
‘Hullo, Chloe.’ Chloe hated the prettiness of her own name, suddenly, hearing it in that mouth. We aren’t precious treasured daughters together, she thought fiercely, with our pretty names. Why do they call girls these things, these decorative, sappy things? I mean, Chloe; I mean, Tinkerbell!
It was easier, though, to have the introductions out of the way. Chloe could just sit back in her family, invisible, watching. She felt weirdly as if they were being showcased; she found herself stealthily monitoring Rachel’s reactions, which were faultless: polite, understated, faintly ironic at times. She had a nice, intelligent smile. She was perfectly likeable, Chloe heard a voice in her head insisting. And Isaac did seem to like her, and there was a certain thing between them that Chloe assumed was sexual, despite their eyes not meeting; it was to do with points of contact being maintained—shoulders, knees, hands—
‘What’s Janey up to today?’ said Maurice on Chloe’s left.
‘Tidying up. Making covers to disguise her pillows as cushions. Homemaking.’ Washing pee off the walls, she added gloomily to herself.
‘Enjoying her independence? Well, she always has, hasn’t she? Been a bit of a lone wolf, in terms of her own family.’
‘She likes having her own place, that’s for sure. And they’re kind of another family there—I mean, the landlady’s lending her the sewing machine today, and there are these other tenants, all really old, like kind of grandparents.’ Chloe smiled; it was nice to have some good news of Janey, even temporarily.
‘Settling.’ Maurice paused in his eating and looked at Chloe. ‘Settling like a dragonfly, maybe.’
Chloe held up her crossed fingers and said nothing.
Late the next evening, Chloe opened the door to Janey, who was tremulous and pale, and wearing large dark cotton-knit everything, sleeves to her fingertips, pants like bags, black sandshoes. She held up a photo
of a little dark-haired boy in overalls, pushing a wooden cart full of blocks.
‘Oh, Eddie!’ Chloe snatched it, devoured it as Janey edged in, keeping her back towards Joy and Pete at the dining table. ‘Look at him! He’s just a doll. He’s just you through and through!’
‘You think? You really think he’s good-looking? I can’t tell!’
‘Of course he is. Can I show everyone? Like, Mum and Dad?’
‘Ooh, all right.’
They went through to the dining room. Joy was scowling over her tax at the one end of the table and Pete was reading for school at the other. ‘Ah, the man in your life!’ Joy said, when she saw the photo. ‘Lovely. Lovely eyes—yours, of course—’ She checked. ‘Doesn’t he look—he looks steadfast, is what it is,’ she finished, almost to herself.
Janey hovered, looking worried. ‘He’s walking really well already, they say, and starting to talk.’ She hung over Joy’s shoulder and stared at the photo. Watching her, Chloe suddenly felt the cruelty of this, this contract to salt Janey’s wounds every few months. Without these photos, she might have a chance. Chloe looked at the anger-burnished thought, and wondered what a person did with a thought like that, a thought she couldn’t speak.
Dane came from the kitchen. ‘What’s this? Oh, Janey’s boy!’ He had a good look over Joy’s head, smoothing his beard consideringly. ‘Solid little bloke, eh?’
Joy handed the photo back to Janey. ‘You should be a very proud mum,’ she said seriously. Chloe felt proud herself—or was it relieved?—that her mother always said the right thing.
‘Oh, I’m not—I don’t really do anything for him. I just admire him. He looks—he looks so—’ Janey’s face crumpled and she covered it and sobbed.
Pete looked up in alarm. Chloe put her arms around Janey, who smelled of warm cotton. The photo went over to Pete and back to Joy. Dane fetched a box of tissues from the kitchen bench.
‘He looks so happy!’ Janey finally got out. ‘And I do want him to be happy!’
‘Of course you do,’ said Joy, stroking Janey’s black locks. ‘And so he is. You made the right decision, Janey, you know you did.’
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