‘I don’t know I did!’ said Janey, and sank to the table, sobbing.
Catching Chloe’s full eyes, Joy said, ‘She did.’ Dumbly Chloe nodded. ‘Sometimes it doesn’t feel like it,’ Joy went on to Janey, ‘but most of the time you know, for sure, it was the very best thing you could have done for him. Don’t you?’
Janey nodded and sobbed. Then she struggled up and said, ‘Sometimes I think, if I did what all those counsellors said, and really tried—sometimes I think—I would like to, you know—have him with me?’ The last words came out as a whisper.
‘And living where? In that little room?’ said Joy gently, through Janey’s gasps and shudderings.
‘And you guys—you could help—’
Joy smiled. ‘You feel like this every time, remember, Janey? And think about it—Maxine and Terry love him too. They’ve made a life for him; they’re a family together. And look at that lovely smile. Look at him. That’s a happy boy. The thing kids want is stability—every day the same pattern so that they can get the hang of things. To switch back to living with you would be really scary for a child that age, hey?’
Janey nodded and took a fresh handful of tissues, peering over them at the photograph. Chloe dried her own eyes as her mother’s voice began to clear away the outburst feelings. Pete listened, cheek in hand, as if to a fairy story. Dane was back in the kitchen, quietly stacking the dishwasher.
‘Chloe’s the luckiest person in the world, having you,’ said Janey to Joy.
‘We-ell. You can have a few leftover bits she’s not using,’ she answered. ‘Can’t she, Clo?’
Chloe patted Janey, waiting for her to laugh, or at least smile. Instead she sighed. ‘You can’t keep on looking after me, can you?’
‘What do you mean!’ said Chloe staunchly.
Janey ignored her, searched Joy’s face. ‘Every time it’s the same, like you say. I get a photo and everything falls apart, and you guys put it all back together again for me. I can’t work out a way of doing that for myself. Why can’t I?’
‘Maybe there isn’t a way, yet.’
‘But what if there isn’t ever?’ Chloe felt fright run down Janey’s back. ‘What if I can never? And Cole minding me when I go off the deep end—what, is she going to do that for the rest of her life?’ Her voice went deep with holding back sobs, ‘I don’t think so.’
Chloe felt excluded, talked about as if she wasn’t there. This was some kind of knot between her mother and Janey; something bigger and more complicated than the simple promise Chloe had made, back when the pattern of Janey’s hormones was first making itself obvious. Had it been silly, childish, to offer her help? Was it something she and Janey ought to grow out of? Ought Janey to be trying to cast her off? This seemed to be what, or part of what, Janey and Joy were wrestling about. Chloe stood to one side, wondering who made all these rules, and how Janey and Joy knew about them.
Joy was in front of Janey, her arms out as if she were herding Janey’s tears back inside. ‘I can’t speak for Chloe, Janey, but you know you’re always welcome here; we know you, we love you, and most of the time we can help you.’
‘Oh, how can you,’ growled Janey. Her face was deep red and almost unrecognisable so twisted. ‘How can you know, and still … and still …’
‘Go on, finish it, Janey,’ said Joy, laughing gently.
‘And still … love.’ Janey ground out the word on a congested breath. And with it something snapped in her, and she went forward into Joy’s arms like a child crying who had broken some vital bone and couldn’t understand why the pain wouldn’t stop.
Janey had to huddle to be hugged by Joy, and Joy had to stand tall and reach up around her. Joy looked like a fine, finished person fitted around something shaggy and unmade. ‘It’ll be all right,’ she said, in a voice that was utterly convincing; Chloe felt her own fears melt and a stronger part of herself stand taller. If only she were always as sure as that herself, so that Janey only needed to lean on her, not the whole family. She had the feeling she was failing everyone, to some degree.
Pete flitted past into the kitchen. Chloe saw his and Dane’s hands collide, both reaching for the electric jug. Dane smiled and reached instead for the tin of drinking chocolate and the mugs. Chloe touched Janey’s ropy head once, then went to the kitchen to put biscuits on a plate.
On her way up to bed, Chloe met Nick at his door.
‘Janey gone?’ he muttered.
‘Yeah.’ Chloe went past him.
‘What was it all about?’
‘Eddie.’
‘Right. I didn’t want to come down and—’
‘Yeah, we could practically hear you not wanting to come down,’ Chloe said, pausing at her door.
‘Well, I wouldn’t have been any use to her. I don’t know about all that stuff.’
Chloe stared up at him. ‘What stuff?’
‘You know, people … crying … having kids.’ Chloe gave an exaggerated blink. ‘What? What you looking at me like that for?’ An embarrassed smile curved Nick’s lips downwards.
‘Oh, like I know—like Pete—knows such a bundle!’ Her voice cracked and tears were suddenly in her eyes again. In disgust at him, at herself, she went into her room.
‘Well, you sort of do—both of you’ve got more experience with her than—’ He was at her door, stopping uncertainly when he saw her, head in hands, sitting on the bed.
She looked up savagely. ‘It never occurs to you that we might just be winging it?’ she said, and hiccupped. ‘Look, if you don’t know about people crying, why don’t you—just—bug off and stew, in your own ignorance?’ she finished indistinctly.
After a moment’s indecision he left the doorway. She kicked the door closed, hard, and put her head down and wept.
‘There.’ Magda stood back and looked Chloe up and down. ‘Have a look at yourself.’
Chloe turned to the mirror. Her shoulders and chest had been transformed into a cleavage, a décolletage, offered brimming in the ice-blue cone of the bodice. The skirt puffed out and back in again, fairy-flossed with tulle, icicle spangles dripping through its masses.
‘Gorgeous enough, do you think?’ said Magda.
‘Pretty gorgeous,’ said Chloe. She examined her reflection again. Her own, everyday head stuck up at the top, and her feet in grey woollen socks showed at the bottom. ‘It needs the slippers and coronet, and an icily made-up face. Really. To be properly gorgeous.’
‘Time enough for that next week. I love rehearsals, don’t you? Everyone slowly going off their brains. James will be tearing out what’s left of his hair … I’m really not happy with the way this zip’s sitting at the back.’ Magda zeroed in on it, scowling.
Chloe stood still. It was funny how, when you tried to be absolutely motionless, your body still swayed just slightly, and you noticed how much your breathing moved you. You thought you could be as stiff as a doll, any time you wanted, but really you were animal—constantly, automatically in motion. Even if she fainted, her heart would go on with its work, and her lungs with theirs. Even at her stillest she was beating, running, streaming with her own life. There was nothing she could do about it.
Isaac’s parents bought him a car. He stepped into the Hunters’ dining room jingling his keys and saying with affected nonchalance, ‘So who wants to go for a burn?’
‘Ho, there’ll be no stopping you now,’ said Dane. All of them went outside to walk around and around the thing, touching its highly polished blue-black panels reverently, Dane asking obscure questions Isaac had to consult the manual to answer.
‘Come on, then,’ said Isaac. ‘Let’s drive somewhere it’s a real chore to get to on public transport.’
‘The beach,’ suggested Pete. ‘Bondi or Manly.’
Isaac looked up at the low grey clouds, but Nick and Chloe said, ‘Yeah, let’s go and have fish and chips at the beach.’
‘Uh-uh, Chloe,’ said Isaac as she opened the back passenger door. ‘I need you in the front.’
&n
bsp; ‘What?’ She frowned.
Nick burst out laughing. ‘Gee, Zack, you’re so weak! He wants everyone to think—’ he explained to Chloe ‘—you know, the car, the bird—what a guy! Should Pete and I stay here, you reckon?’ he asked Isaac with heavy irony.
‘You can come, but only on sufferance, so behave,’ said Isaac, grinning. ‘And keep your feet off the fittings.’
Chloe got in the front. ‘Bit short of leg-room back here,’ moaned Nick.
‘See you in a little while,’ Isaac said to Joy and Dane. ‘We’ll just zip out there and back.’
‘Just don’t let our lot distract you into a power pole,’ said Joy. She fluttered her fingers at Chloe, who had just discovered the electric window button. Joy bent down and croaked, ‘Fluff up your hair a bit, darl! And where’s ya smile?’ Chloe pulled a dork-face, and Isaac drew away from the kerb.
They glided across town, across the bridge, through the suburbs to the beach. Feeble sunlight broke through the clouds as they parked; ‘I knew that was going to happen,’ said Pete.
They bought fish and chips and sat on the grass under the Norfolk pines, eating and looking out over the water to the container ships moored to the horizon.
‘This is so cool—no grown-ups,’ said Pete, through a mouthful of hot fish.
‘It’s different, isn’t it?’ said Chloe. ‘You can go anywhere, wherever you want—no plans, no packing, no having to tell anyone. And it’s so quick! You can just go, on a whim.’
‘Not to mention being able to pull the birds. Eh, mate?’ Nick thwacked Isaac on the arm.
‘Don’t be gross,’ said Isaac, reaching for the chips. He looked up and down the beachfront. ‘Look at the way they’ve crammed in these apartment blocks along the water, will you?”
‘Uh-oh. I hear shop-talk approaching,’ said Chloe.
‘Like lemmings,’ said Isaac.
‘Like what?’ said Pete.
‘We’re like lemmings that have just crawled out of the sea, Australians. Some have crawled a little way in, but most of us are just hanging on by our fingernails—’
‘Claws,’ said Chloe.
‘—to the edge of the land, hanging over the sea, hoping a boat will come along and take us Home again.’
‘That is a very cute image, Isaac,’ said Chloe.
‘It wasn’t meant to be cute—it was supposed to be perspicacious and bitter. Surf, sun, sand—pah!’
‘You’re wrong, you know,’ said Nick. ‘All that cultural cringe stuff’s gone by the board these days.’
‘Has not,’ said Isaac.
‘Has so.’
‘Certainly hadn’t when those apartments were built.’
‘Besides,’ said Chloe, ‘what’s there to look at, in there, inland? Bush, cattle, desert—’
‘If there’s nothing else there’s the sky. Skyscapes.’
‘Naah,’ said Nick. ‘Blue, blue, blue—boring bloody blue.’
‘And if it’s clear at night, star and planetscapes. You remember, up at Coltrane Creek. All of you were pretty impressed, then.’ He kicked Nick’s shoulder.
‘Oh yeah, stars,’ said Nick dismissively. ‘Too many of the buggers for my liking. ‘Drather not see ’em.’
‘Yeah. Intimations of mortality, bog off,’ said Chloe.
Isaac looked at her. She whipped a hand over her mouth in mock guilt, but his eyes didn’t let her off the hook. She did remember lying under the stars on the bank of the creek, amazed, frightened even, at how small and singular her own mind was, in this scale of things.
‘I read about a guy in New York,’ Pete said, chewing, ‘an astronomer, went to give talks in schools about the stars. The kids thought he was lying—they’d never seen any stars. ‘Cause of all the city lights, you know? It’s so bad in New York you can’t see any.’
‘Wow! Wouldn’t that be a job, convincing people that stars existed,’ said Chloe. ‘Showing them for the first time—I guess you’d give them a telescope, or take them out into the country.’
‘Watching their tiny minds blow,’ agreed Nick.
‘I’d like that job,’ said Pete. ‘I’d like to be the teacher on that bus trip.’ He laughed at the thought, looking out over the winking sea, a wad of potato chip in one cheek.
Janey stood in the doorway, most of her hair cut off, and the centimetre that was left bleached white as stars. Chloe screamed ‘Aah! Mum! Look!’ and Janey came in laughing, bent double, her hands over her face. Her short fingernails were freshly polished black and she wore voluminous clean black from high neck to sandshoe’d toe.
‘Oh, you are brave! You look amazing, truly!’ Chloe hugged herself, in terror at seeing Janey’s face so undisguised, at the thought of her going about with nothing to hide behind, so unprotected.
‘It’s so light, and so cold—’
‘Look, when you blush like that, you can see your whole head blushing!’
‘I know.’ Janey’s hands flew about her head, tweaking the white tufts. Then she pulled an envelope out of her pocket and gave it to Chloe.
‘My God! Is that you, Janey?’ Chloe’s mum came down the stairs. ‘Hyuk, hyuk—that was some lawnmower.’
‘God, Mum, that is such an old joke. Ignore her, Janey. What is this—’ Chloe peered into the envelope.
‘It’s one of my dreddies. I’m giving them to all my fans,’ said Janey.
‘Ooh, don’t you smell of hairdresser’s,’ said Joy, passing her.
Chloe drew out a metre-long black dreadlock, bound at the snipped top with a band of red and yellow silk thread and at the tail with blue and yellow. The tail band was hung with one of Janey’s votive discs and a tiny wooden giraffe. The hair itself was warm and flat from being pressed against Janey’s buttock.
Chloe laughed. ‘Oh, look, I’ll treasure it forever. I’ll nail it up at my window where it can rattle.’
‘Seriously, do I look like a dyke?’ said Janey, when Joy had gone into the kitchen.
‘No—yes.’ They laughed. ‘No, not really. Not you.’
‘And so what if you did?’ called Joy.
‘Yeah!’ said Chloe. ‘You might meet someone nice!’
‘I don’t want someone nice.’
‘You know what I mean. “Nice” doesn’t mean nice. Where are you going?’ Janey had started up the stairs.
‘I need a mirror. I’ve only just had it done, and you can’t properly look, in the shop. You can’t see how it looks in real life.’
Chloe followed her up and watched her scrutinise her head from all angles, run her fingers through the fur. ‘It’s so weird,’ Janey whispered.
‘It’s very different,’ agreed Chloe.
‘I used to have to toss my head, just, you know, to see. Now there’s nothing to toss! Just this little nude … nut.’ She patted the air where the hair used to be. ‘I end so much sooner than I used to—like, clunk!’ She held her new head in her hands.
‘Come and have a look what I’ve done,’ Janey had said, and hurried Chloe past the shabby terrace houses of her street.
‘Okay. Are you ready?’ she said now, with her hand on the doorknob of her room.
‘Don’t,’ said Chloe. ‘I’m scared we’ll find something worse than last time.’
Janey went in and switched on the bedside lamp. Chloe followed and stood in the centre of the room.
There was still the faint whiff of some kind of lemony cleaning agent, but no visible sign of the previous destruction remained.
Janey had put up her mobiles. Hung on invisible fishing-line, mirror-chip-crusted boxes opened to reveal tiny gold-painted baby dolls, the sort you get in Christmas crackers, their arms and legs out in a kind of startle reaction or freefall. Hundreds of other babies in their original flesh-pink shifted and wandered in the air overhead, strung in thread harnesses, some with wings attached, some with rose-thorn shark fins, some carrying tiny knives or medals on ribbons or wearing tutus or leather loincloths sealed behind with dewdrops of glue. Above the bed was Blu-tacked a large
watercolour Chloe remembered Janey doing at school, of horses’ severed heads being tumbled by foaming breakers of blood. The bed itself was covered in crimson crushed velvet with pillows covered with the same fabric. One of them was embroidered with a large old-gold fleur-de-lys. Janey sat among the pillows, hugging her knees and smiling. ‘You like it?’
‘It’s great. So you got all the babies untangled?’ Chloe touched the spoke of one mobile, and a flock of babies bobbed and swung.
‘It took forever,’ said Janey in a satisfied voice. ‘Like my cushions?’
‘They’re truly gorgeous. Class trash.’
‘Aren’t they? Bette reckons they make the place look like a bordello.’
‘A cross between a bordello and a medieval castle. Will they all have crests on, or whatever?’
‘I haven’t decided. If they do, they’ll all be different—like, a lion on one, a dragon. Stuff like that.’
‘Heraldic devices.’ Chloe heard her own voice and realised she sounded exactly like her mother. ‘I like it. The whole thing is classic Jane Knott. Your place for sure, now.’
‘Yeah.’ Janey looked up at the rocking baby mobile. ‘You were right. I ought to keep something mine. From now on I’m going to be strong about who gets to come in here. There you are, a rule; I’ve made a rule.’ Her fist bumped on the bed-settee.
‘Have you got any money left, after pillows and fabric?’ Chloe crossed the room to stroke them.
‘This? This cost almost nothing!’
Chloe watched Janey enthuse about her bargain-hunting. Here in this room, this Janey-den, with just the two of them, she felt, tentatively, that it might work for Janey, with everything in its place, all her talismans about her, and everyone’s good wishes woven through the air around her like a protective spell.
‘This’s great, Janey,’ she said, when Janey paused. ‘I like to think of you living here. When you were at home I always felt a bit sick when you left our place.’
‘Yeah, well, now I don’t have to spend half my life hiding out at your place, hey? Like, have to,’ she added as Chloe sent her a ready-to-be-insulted look. ‘I’ve got another choice now, that’s pleasant.’
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