Stacked on the small pine table are my four magicians tucked neatly into their folders. Patrick O'Leary from Ireland, Chip Hanson, Chuck Lancer and Jonny Love from the USA. Except for Jonny, Mary had said, you'll have to do all your interviews by email. The men are happy to send you the brochures and DVDs from their shows, their baby pictures, school compositions, addresses of friends and family, reviews.
But how do I juggle four extra lives? I find it so hard trying to hang on to my own. I can feel the men leaning over me, breathing heavily, waiting to see themselves in a new spotlight. Which events in their lives best illustrate who they are? Will they agree with my choice? Will they feel misinterpreted, misunderstood? Will they argue? It would be far easier if they were all dead. See, there you go again, says the voice, wishing people ill.
I'm getting that itchy feeling under my skin, where I can't scratch. My legs are sticking to my chair. The clock says I have another two hours to go tonight. I didn't do more than forty minutes today. If I leave the chair for any length of time, the voice will conclude I am even more of a total failure than I was yesterday.
Surely I'm not the only person in the world who finds it hard to sit still? When Simon came round the other day with the chlorine, he told me about a famous author who chained himself to his chair for six hours each day so that he couldn't leave his writing. What about the bathroom? I wondered. What about food? When I mentioned this to my mother, she rolled her eyes. Of course he was a male author, she sniff ed. Who would bring you your lunch, Rachel?
Well, that was a fair question, but it wasn't really the inequities of gender that ruffled my mother. No, the problem for her is the subject I'm writing about. I knew it. My mother has never approved of magic. She calls it 'practised deception', or 'professional lying'. But at least it's honest, I wanted to say. Just by standing up on stage the magician announces he's about to deceive us. He'll make us disbelieve our senses, show us beautiful lies that will look like the truth. If you ask me, there's none of that clarity in real life. There are no announcements. And yet, isn't there a lot of lying or let's say, double messages going on? I spent most of my youth getting lost in misdirection, obediently looking where I was told while the real action was taking place somewhere else. I was always confused, startled by the way things turned out, and life seemed to slip by, incomprehensible, a series of sleight-of-hand tricks I never managed to grasp.
'Is there any dessert?' Guido calls from his room.
Guido is always waiting for his dinner. He doesn't go out much any more at night. He doesn't lie on the sofa and read, or play with his word mosaics. Since Clara left he goes straight to his room to work on his script.
He's like a man possessed. 'How do you show time passing, without using clumsy dates and seasons flashing by on the screen?' he demands, charging suddenly into my room. As if I'd know. And he won't tell me the context of what it is he's writing, so I find it hard to make an intelligent comment. He stands there in the doorway, jabbing his notebook with a pencil. 'What is the colloquial espression for something "very loud" in English?' he insists. 'Capisci, the film is set in Italy, this is where I know best, but I want to write also in English, because is here that I 'ave contacts, who will supply the funding. If they can't understand my writing, they cannot support it.' Ear-splitting, I think, too late, as he rushes away.
He works late into the night. Sometimes I hear him go to the bathroom and my clock says 3 am. Then he sleeps late into the morning.
Our worst argument was last week, when I woke him accidentally. I needed my book Nature's Magic for my school lecture at Kirkwood Public that morning. I was running late, searching for my experiment ingredients, and just before walking out the door, I remembered the book. I could see it in my mind, in Guido's room, balancing on top of the bookshelf above his head. He'd taken it only two nights before for some research he'd been doing. I'd asked him what he'd found useful, a bit flattered and intrigued, but he'd just waved me away. 'Is not important,' was all he said.
I tiptoed into his room. There were papers and magazines spread over the floor. My eyes travelled over the bookshelf and then I saw Nature's Magic, its bright red corner sticking out from beneath Guido's head. Christ, could it have been any worse? I stood there hesitating, trying to assess the situation. I inched forward until I was so close I could see the individual dark points of stubble on his chin. Speed and accuracy, I knew, were going to be the most important elements here. Carefully, holding my breath, I took gentle hold of the book and, with one rapid movement, slid it out from under his head. I'm quite skilled at this because I've had hours of practice with a similar magic act where a strip of paper is pulled from under a stack of Chinese checkers without causing the pile to fall. I've done it a hundred times with gratifying success. But as I discovered long ago, inanimate objects are much easier to control than husbands.
'Che cazzo fai?' he shouted, leaping out of bed as if he'd been shot. 'Get away from me! What's wrong? I did nothing wrong!' He was looking around wildly, his eyes wide and staring.
'I . . . I was just getting my book,' I mumbled, trying to breathe.
Guido just stood there, his neat narrow feet bunched anxiously into the carpet. He looked peeled, somehow, naked as an egg, his saggy old boxers clinging to his hips.
'I'm sorry I gave you such a fright,' I whispered.
Guido shivered. 'Why you do this to me? I 'ave not slept. You 'ave no consideration for me and my work. Is very important, I am trying to create a whole world on paper, hai capito? Is like building the Sistine Chapel, each brick. Oh you 'ave no understanding, you do not let me find any peace!'
Guilt flipped to anger, hot as oil in a pan. 'I can't help it if I have to get up and to go to work while you're still in bed. My school visits help pay off our mortgage! How else do you think you'd be able to play around all day with your mosaics or your scripts or whatever the f—'
Guido uttered a gurgle of rage and sprang at me, but I had already turned, my chest thumping with what Clara called the flight response, and I was winging down the hall, as fast as my high heels would carry me.
'This mortgage is like the prison,' Guido shouted after me. 'I don even wan this mortgage, always stuck in one place, in this cultural dessert!'
From the doorway I yelled back, 'Well go then, go why don't you, you miserable bastard!'
I was ready to slam the door and run but his eyes had widened, as if my words had plunged him back into a dream and each of his elegant feet had landed suddenly in dangerous, different worlds. Go, I'd said, oh how could I, how could I? Terror flashed through me. What if he did?
'Oh I didn't mean it, what was I saying, I'm sorry I'm sorry, it's just that, oh I'll be so late!' but he turned away, his shoulders tight with indignation, and stomped back up the hall. I closed the door and hurried after him, weeping and apologising, and went into the kitchen and made coffee and found bread to toast and cheese to grill and laid out the breakfast mats and found a clean ironed serviette to put into his favourite silver serviette ring which I quickly polished before laying it carefully next to the knife. It struck me that my small domestic activities were like offerings to a god who needed to be placated in order that I, his creation, might survive. As I did all these things fear flamed in my chest. Alone, imagine being entirely alone. I didn't think once about Kirkwood Public School and the 576 children who would soon be lining up to file into the hall to attend their lecture on the science of magic.
'Is like plastic, this cheese,' Guido said as he finished the first slice of toast. 'Why do you continue to buy inferior packet food, cara?' But the shaking of his head and the hint of a resigned smile that followed his words signalled increased tolerance. Cara. That word laid the terror to rest. As I gathered up my instruments, I began to make a mental list of credible excuses I could give Kirkwood Public when I arrived forty-five minutes late.
It wasn't until I'd crossed the Roseville Bridge that I realised I'd left the cabbage juice at home. The main part of the bloody experimen
t! 'Shit!' I swore at the traffic, and then found I couldn't stop. Instead of sifting through my list of excuses, I began to find worse words, Clara's dreadful favourites, and soon I was thumping the dashboard with my fist, screaming.
He said the cheese was plastic but he'd eaten it all, every last crumb, just as he always did. I'd stayed and made him breakfast. I'd sat with him and watched him eat while 576 six children sat in a hall and waited for me.
The noise of the scream frightened me at first, as if a deranged stranger had broken into the mineral silence of the car. At the traffic lights, a man in a Porsche turned to stare. I closed my mouth and looked away. My throat felt as if it had been scraped with a spatula. Behind my eyes thoughts were lit up, neon green, poison bright. I saw the angry breath of me twisting up like genie smoke let out of a bottle. It rose from the clamp of my body, floating off across peaceful suburban gardens, over rooftops, leaving me light-headed, ethereal as a spirit. Not that I believe in them, of course.
'Mum, guess what a drunken ghost is called,' six-year-old Clara piped in my head as the lights changed. 'A methylated spirit!' I could see my daughter's little round face scrunched with giggles as I drove, hyperventilating, onto the freeway.
Oh, Clara. I gripped the steering wheel, watching my knuckles whiten. Although I've tried, I just cannot think of it as Clara's 'adventure' or 'holiday travels' as other people seem to. I see it as Clara's disappearance, like a magic act gone wrong. My daughter just walked behind the folding doors at the airport, shoulder bag swinging against her hip, Saraah's suitcase wheeling behind her, and vanished. I stood there for a further thirty minutes, eyes fixed on the spot where I last saw my child. Perhaps I would get another glimpse – there might be some administrative hiccup, a technical problem. 'Oh, Mum, thank god you're still here,' Clara would say, running back, bag flying open so we'd have to stop and pick up all the old lipsticks and pens and hairclips and tissues, 'the plane has been delayed until next week!'
I'd stood to attention in the departure lounge wearing the good cream suit I usually reserve for school visits. People eddied around me like a stream parting around a rock. I was trying to comprehend the breathtaking pain that was opening out in my stomach. I just couldn't believe my eyes: the dear familiar body I'd washed and stroked and worried about for twenty-one years was gone. I didn't know how I could inhabit the next part of my life, when I would have to point myself toward the EXIT sign, find my car and drive into the world without my daughter. But as the minutes ticked on, I realised that Clara was not going to reappear like Harry Houdini from behind the curtain. This wasn't a magic trick I could control. My daughter had truly vanished.
Guido has barely talked of her since she's gone. He didn't accompany us to the airport. He doesn't seem to approve of airports, the way some people can't cope with funerals. Several times I've attempted to discuss Clara's progress with Guido, hoping we could conjure her up between us. 'Clara will be going into class now,' I say sometimes at night. I say that at 7 pm. I'm always calculating the ten hours' difference between us. Or, 'She'll be asleep now, I wonder how comfortable the bed is, if she's warm enough. Still, they have central heating in the northern hemisphere, don't they?' Guido just shrugs, his shoulders bowing as if I'd just placed an intolerable burden upon him. 'It is you who hate the cold,' he argues. Perhaps he's grieving in his own way, but heavens, it's so hard to know what is moving behind the wall that is Guido.
As I drove into the parking lot of Kirkwood Public, a fresh ripple of rage flipped over in my belly. 'Selfish bastard,' I yelled, thumping the dashboard. I must have put my foot down then, hitting the accelerator instead of the brake, because the car leapt forward and banged into the four-wheel drive in front. Fuck!
Chapter 18
I have to be at a funeral in an hour but I can't find it. I'm still at home in my nightie, searching for the church. My street directory seems to have lost most of the eastern suburbs. I flip to the cover – a 2001 directory – Christ, it's five years old! I haven't been to a church since Maria was married nearly twenty years ago, let alone this one, a bloody ferry and bus trip away. Oh why do people have to die, just when you can least afford the time? Can you hear yourself? spits the voice.
The service has already started when I arrive. I sit down in a pew near the back of the church. It's hard to concentrate on the sad people speaking from the altar and in the rush I've forgotten to bring my glasses. Their faces all look alike, washed together in a soft blur.
I think about a lot of things during the service. Because I ought to, I start with Gerald Bone, the guest of honour. Poor Gerald, I whisper, struck down in the prime of his life – a successful orthopaedic surgeon, the ex-husband of Maria. I haven't seen Maria for quite a while, perhaps ten years, because Guido doesn't approve of her. I wonder how many regrets poor Gerald might have nourished. Not as many as me, I bet. I think we need nine lives, like cats, to get even one thing right. Lena says you should learn to accept your history, learn from it, be yourself with all your flaws, rooms and ceilings . . . But I don't.
Yesterday, when I told Simon about the funeral, the conversation turned quite philosophical. As he poured acid into the pool, turning his head away from the acrid fumes, we talked about death and the self and a French philosopher who said, 'I think therefore I am.' I remembered being impressed by that at uni, but I don't understand what it means any more. Does it count if you just have ordinary thoughts, like: now I will brush my teeth and then on the way back from the bathroom I will pick up those dirty clothes from my daughter's room? You might exist, according to that French philosopher, but do you deserve to?
The pew is hard and unforgiving under my thighs. I shift from one buttock to another but still the cold seeps through my stockings. It would be nice to be sitting here with someone close, to exchange a smile of commiseration, a shared grimace at life's injustices. Some husbands accompany their wives to funerals, I think resentfully. It would be comforting to hold a person's hand when you're facing death. But I didn't even think of asking Guido. He's superstitious about funerals – the more time you spend with the dead, he says, the quicker it will be your turn. He seems to think death is infectious, like anger or smallpox. Whenever he sees a hearse passing in the street he clutches his testicles and gives that little hop in the air while making the scongiuro. He doesn't care what people think. He's performing his ritual, like touching wood or metal, to keep himself safe.
Clara used to leap onto chairs and copy him when she was eight. It was a game she played with Saraah. As they jumped off , they tried to point their toes like ballet dancers. To make the scongiuro you point your index and little finger downward in sharp jabbing movements, making the shape of a devil's horns. When Guido saw the girls doing it he was furious, so they only played 'Evil Eye' when he went out. It seemed to give Clara a peculiar satisfaction. When she told him she was going to Italy, he warned her not to do it in public. It is rude, he said, and in certain parts of Italy the gesture applied upwards instead of down means that the wife of the man you are pointing at is being unfaithful. 'It never stopped you,' Clara said, adding quickly, 'making that sign, I mean.'
'That is because no one in this place understands such things,' he replied. 'We are safe 'ere among the ignorante.'
It's hard to concentrate on the present, to think about other people like Gerald, and all those grieving around me. I wonder for the umpteenth time where my humanity has gone. I used to take on others' feelings as easily as putting on a coat. But what I think about for most of the time, sitting there in the church, is my misery.
How is it that I cry in the bathroom each morning but can't leave my marriage? That I fantasise about my husband falling off cliffs, walking into traffic, being blown up in a cafe? Other people's husbands die, I notice enviously, why can't mine?
If Guido knew what I was thinking, he would live in mortal terror. His life would be one continual testicle-clutching leap. He would be perpetually air-borne, like one of those magicians who specialise in levita
tion. Oh poor man, what ever did he do to deserve me? You're a coward, as well as evil, says the voice. You're too afraid to leave. You wait until people die around you, like a germ or a witch.
Lately, I've found it hard to believe in love, or grief. The novels I read are full of romance. I linger over the way men and women look at each other, make love, go shopping. But for a while now I haven't been able to identify with the heroines as I used to. It's a bit like having a permanent cold and losing your sense of taste or smell – you can remember what love should feel like, but that's all.
When the funeral service finishes, we have to queue to look at poor Gerald. Maria will be there, hugging everyone.
It's a long queue and my feet hurt. I look down into the casket and see the dead man's hair combed carefully over his bald pate. A few thin strands are glued right down to his ear. That small piece of vanity, probably written into his last wishes, makes my heart turn over. Small, hopeful gestures have always been my undoing. I want to kiss his forehead but as I bend further, I notice a birthmark the colour of tea seeping from under his hair. It wanders over the top of his head in the shape of a boot, a sepia map of Italy.
The scalp of Gerald Bone, surely, never bore any such mark. I would have noticed it. Come to think of it, Gerald's scalp had been covered with quite a lot of thick, curly hair when I'd met him. It was only a couple of times, for drinks at Maria's house.
I peek inside the coffin again. This man is old. The last time I saw Gerald Bone he was drinking gin and tonic, gazing affectionately but patronisingly at Maria, and running his hand through a healthy bush of hair. Sweat breaks out under my arms. In seconds my good silk dress is sticking to me. Maria said Gerald had been killed by an out of control cement truck, not age.
Someone coughs behind me. I look around. A man with sunken eyes and a jutting forehead nods at me to move on. Herman Munster, I think randomly. A large gap has developed between me and the person ahead of me in the queue, the kind that opens up in a traffic jam when a driver is distracted too long in one spot fiddling with the radio. I move on a couple of steps, darting a glance up the line. A grey woman stands at the top, receiving people's pats and condolences. I squinch my eyes into slits, trying to focus. This woman is not Maria. Even without my glasses I can see that the bereaved wife having her face kissed is more or less my mother's age, and at least a foot shorter than my friend.
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