Escape

by Anna Fienberg

  I get up and put on a jumper, taking the letter with me into the bedroom.

  I've met an American girl at school, Marisa Castello, who's really nice – great sense of humour. She has Italian heritage too and wants to get into aid work like me. She's interested in going to Tanzania – the education and welfare standard there is relatively high, even though the government is repressive. They need more teachers, urgently. But don't worry mum, Marisa has travelled a lot and is very sensible. There are a lot of Africans in Italy – at the markets they sell jewelery and carvings and stuff – their clothes are so cool, long patterned caftans . . .

  The front door bangs. Guido's step is quick and light up the hallway.

  'Rachel?'

  'In here! There's a letter from Clara.'

  He sits down on my bed. A gust of cigarettes and something sweet, mints or perfume. I sniff , trying to diagnose the different parts, and he moves further down the bed, away.

  'So, what does she say, our piccola cara? Are you going to show me now or do I wait till next year?'

  His hand quivers in the air. For all his stoic refusal to discuss Clara's disappearance, he can hardly contain himself at her news. I hand him the letter. He smiles as he reads, giving little gasps or grunts as his eyes sweep down the page. When he's finished he sits holding the fragile blue paper, staring at the wall opposite. His eyes have that unlatched look, far away, inside.

  'Sounds like she's enjoying the sights,' I offer.

  'Sì.' He puts the letter down carefully on the bed, near my thigh, and turns to walk out the door.

  'But she doesn't say anything really substantial – like how she really is,' I blurt.

  Guido stares at me.

  'What I mean is, there's nothing personal. Like what her room is like or her teacher, what she has for breakfast, how she's coping with a strange language—'

  'Is not a strange language to Clara or me—'

  'Well, but different, obviously, and she's never had to be totally alone before.' Without me, I want to add, but stop myself in time.

  'She is enjoying the art and she makes many interesting points. These are 'er opinions. I find the letter very informative and perceptive, and yes, she sounds 'appy. You should be glad. You are never satisfied.'

  I say nothing. I know my outburst is unreasonable. But I just want this ache to stop. If only I could pass it on for a little while, give it to someone else who loves Clara as I do and they could hold it safely while I try to digest what I've just read.

  Guido sighs, turns towards the door. He's unbuttoning his shirt as he goes. In the doorway he hovers, his shirt in his hands. 'You will wash tonight? I need this shirt for tomorrow.'

  'Why that one particularly?'

  'Is not important, is just a simple request, okay?' His tone is so quickly impatient, the last word bang like a bullet.

  'Okay.'

  When he's gone I pick up the letter again. My heart is racing. The rapid way Guido's anger rises is unsettling. Don't think about it. I turn over on my stomach, bunching the pillows up under my chest, and examine Clara's handwriting. A jolt of love flips my heart. Really, Clara's handwriting hasn't changed all that much since primary school. Letters sloping backwards like someone struggling against a big wind. Excruciating spelling – rithing, for heaven's sake. I remember her excitement in grade four when she came home and announced importantly that the class were going to learn grown-up writing. Cursive writing. She'd sat down at the kitchen table to do it straight away. It'll take a bit of practice, I said. Clara had frowned. That afternoon we'd had an appointment at the doctor about Clara's ears and she said that funny thing: Why do we always have to go to this doctor's practice? Why can't we go to a proper doctor who's finished practising? No, that was the trouble – she just never wanted to put the time in to perfect things. But I remember how she crowed with delight when Baudelaire allowed us to rent that portable jail. I taught her to escape from it, handcuff ed, in six minutes.

  'They all leave home,' says Doreen, 'that's what they're supposed to do. You should be bloody relieved she can do it!'

  I decide to get up now and make dinner. Walking down the hall I notice Guido's door closed and Clara's open. A ratty old jumper still lies on her bed. Beside it is her hairbrush, filled with pale curling hairs. I look at everything in the room, the chair with the milk stain on the brocade, her bookshelves, her old Dolly magazines. I leave everything as she left it, like a shrine.

  As I dice the onions, tears well up and break their banks. They drip onto the cutting board, onto the hot plate. They make an angry hissing sound.

  'What are you making?' Guido comes into the kitchen.

  'A mess.'

  'We are 'aving pasta again?'

  'Yes.' I don't turn around. 'It's late, and pasta is quick.'

  'Why you don make potato and onion soup? My mother used to make potato and onion soup when I was sick. Was good. Simple.'

  I want to tell him that after a whole day lecturing at Sydney Grammar and cooking my parents' dinner it would be nice to come home to potato and onion soup prepared by my husband, but never mind. It will be a good sauce, because I bought parmigiano reggiano this afternoon. They sell it now in a special deli section in Coles. I'm about to tell him that, to reassure him, but suddenly I can't be bothered. I'm not going to ask him either why he suddenly wants something that his mother used to make, when just the mention of her let alone her damn soup has been verboten for years. Better to pretend I've made a special trip to the city to get the parmesan, anyway. From real Italians. Guido still doesn't believe in Coles.

  I chop up the tomatoes and parsley, wondering for a moment what would happen if I walked out of the kitchen and said, 'I'm going to a Latin dance class. Get your own dinner, you lazy pig.'

  That's about as likely as ending up with Harry Houdini in the Detroit River. I smile at the continental parsley, then chop it into tiny pieces until it is dead.

  Chapter 19

  Hey Rachel, how you doing? Just checking you got the DVD my publicist sent? I'm looking forward to meeting you. If there is anything you would like to clarify before we meet, I'm happy to oblige. Just e mail me at jonnylove@ illusions.com. Surprised to see how many books you published! I googled you – Very Impressive! I'm real glad we'll have the opportunity to meet up for the interview. You sound like a real Interesting Lady! I'll be performing at the Casino Theatre and staying at the hotel so we could have dinner there after the show if you're free.

  Stay well,

  Jonny

  P.S. You've got a great smile. Hope you're wearing it to the show!

  I lean back in my chair. My heart is racing. Christ, he's probably seen a photo from ten years ago. Fancy, though, me being on the web. Mary didn't tell me that, or I've forgotten. I kick off my shoes and close my eyes. I take four deep breaths and the starry, faint feeling tingles down my neck. You've got a great smile. I try a secret smile. Adorable sunshine, I love you!

  'Rachel?' Guido is coming out of the bathroom. 'Where are the fresh towels?' He stands in my doorway, naked, dripping.

  'Oh!' I delete the email. 'They're in the linen cupboard where they always are – did you look?'

  He sighs and stomps off . I retrieve the email and save it carefully in the Love file. Then I open the top drawer of the filing cabinet, lift up the handcuffs and escape manuals, and take out the DVD. Jonny Love. His face smiles back at me, his mouth curled up at one corner, mischievous, playful. But there's an intensity behind those dark eyes that I recognise. A shiver stirs under my skin. In just a few weeks I'll be sitting down with this man at a table, with candlelight and a glass of wine.

  I look back at the computer and read what I've written so far.

  Jonny Love wanted to be an actor from the age of six. He had an uncanny gift for mimicry, perfecting a startling array of accents so true that his family often thought, arriving home, that guests were waiting for them in the living room.

  'I liked the attention, I guess,' says Jonny. 'And the way
I could change the atmosphere in a room. My mother was often sick, prone to migraines, and if I put on one of my voices or acted excited, you know, a bit crazy, she'd laugh and nothing would seem so bad. I never minded playing the fool, I guess, particularly if I got a few laughs!'

  In an interview with The Washington Post, Jonny likened the escape artist's role to an actor in a play. 'The important element is the reaction of the audience, and this depends on the actor's ability. He has to give a credible performance, persuade the audience to believe in the emotion on stage. For the escape artist, this "play acting" is damn difficult – much more difficult than doing the real thing.'

  Escapology is an art that is both theatrical and real. The fear of death, of eternal entrapment, tugs at the unconscious, at what it means to be human – we being the only species who, while we are alive, are conscious of our deaths.

  'The young escape artist might not be fully aware of this dynamic,' Jonny confesses. 'Young men often feel immortal, and may unintentionally make the illusion of danger real. The penalty for failure is, or should be, nothing more than an artful trick. Despite what publicity releases imply, the professional escape artist might take carefully calculated risks, but never takes any chances. On stage he promises the possibility of death, but he never risks the fulfilment of that promise. He is creating an illusion like all other illusions.

  'I had a tendency to rashness when I was young. At seventeen, when I was working on the Bohemian Torture Crib and experimenting with belts in the bathroom, I nearly strangled myself. I had to hit my head repeatedly against the door like some kind of maniac and yell at the top of my lungs for someone to come and untie me. My sister heard me finally, but it was frightening. I took it as a warning. A friend of mine wasn't so lucky.'

  I read back over the last page, making notes in the margin: find out more about family, reaction to his magic, cheering up mum a good quality – expand. Lift your own doomsday tone . . .

  I swivel 360 degrees in my chair. Why is it so hard to sit still?

  Use those Siberian chains of yours, says Lena, lock yourself to the desk and throw away the key. Write a bit each day and eventually you'll finish.

  I doodle on the pad next to the mouse. I make a house with a garden path. Black-eyed Susan loops along the borders. Yesterday I made chilli beef for Mum. It took her ages to get up from the sofa to answer the door. I was going to use my key but then her face appeared, quite grey. She said she was exhausted and I felt so guilty having made her get up. Or perhaps I had even woken her. I didn't feel right coming away afterwards. I rang an hour later to make sure that Dad had come home. He said they'd just finished their dinner and it was delicious but the chilli was 'a bit of a challenge for your mother'. I asked him what he meant and he said, 'Well, she gets tired so easily.' What, eating dinner?

  I squirm away from that thought and return to Jonny Love. The new batch of photos sent by the publicist are stuck with Blu-Tack on the shelf above the desk. Every time I sit down my eyes look into his. He really is charismatic, with that strong square jaw and perfect teeth. There is a tattoo of an anchor and a mermaid on his forearm, lending a piratical, slightly dangerous air. In one photo, my favourite, he's wearing a thin gold earring. I must ask him about the tattoo in my next email. A stab of alarm makes my pulse race. Emails are one thing, meeting the man is another.

  I get up, and stretch. The clock shows I've been working for just thirty minutes. You're the one with the concentration span of a goldfish. Despair settles in my stomach. I'm sick of lugging the dead-weight of me around. I wish I could just evaporate into thin air, like steam from a kettle.

  I don't feel like this when I visit schools – at least, not while I'm performing tricks. A young Guido floats into my mind, throwing silver rings in the air, shuffling cards, emerging from a straitjacket. As his audience applauds, his face is alight, passionate. Afterwards, I remember, he couldn't sit still but had to walk the streets, march off the excess energy. He was stimulated, elated, on fire with his success. Compare that to sitting at home in his room all day, making words on an unresponsive, blank piece of paper. Where is the adrenalin for him now, the sharp sting of achievement? Oh, if only he could just experience, once again, the immediacy of an audience's response, the electric concentration, the challenge of a real penalty for failure . . .

  I wince at the half-empty screen of my computer. Guido is so restless – he says he's excited about the script but he doesn't look happy to me. It's unnerving watching him pace the house, pick things up and throw them down, sigh, talk to himself in urgent whispers as if everything is at stake, then throw himself on the bed or the couch, abandoning himself to unconsciousness. He seems permanently hungry or unsatisfied, only barely in control. And he's so quick to anger, like a pot on a low heat, ready to boil. He's let his hair grow long and it's stiff and dull because he doesn't wash it unless he's going out. His hands run through it constantly so that it stays the way he's left it, leaning to the right like a salty bush in a gale. His hair makes me anxious. It is unfamiliar. He doesn't smell of aftershave any more, but nervous sweat. Sometimes, accidentally, I get in the way when he's doing his pacing and he bumps into me as if he hasn't even seen me. At first I asked him if he was all right and got barked at, so I don't ask him any more.

  He creeps in to listen to my phone conversations – sometimes he hovers over my shoulder with a notepad, scribbling – but when I ask him what his script is about he says vaguely, 'Oh, a life, a boy, a journey . . .' Last week I met him outside my bedroom, striding the hall, bristling with frustration. 'I need more than this,' he exclaimed when he spotted me. His hand, sweeping the room, took in me, the sofa, the kitchen, the window with the mulberry tree outside. 'This life is banale, I need adventure! Something to write about!' And he pulled me by the arm as if I were one of his awkward magic props. 'Come on, we're going out!' But when we do go out, he just sits at the table with that unhappy stare. I try to make conversation – the book I'm working on, the personalities, the latest government catastrophe – but he looks away around the room for something more interesting. It's exhausting. I feel so inadequate, humiliated. And frightened. I wish I could enjoy going out with my husband, relax and smile as other people do. A waiter watches us. And what have I really got to talk about now that Clara has gone? The schools I visit? The meals I make for Mum? I think of Rita weeks ago suggesting a therapist: 'It's difficult adjusting to the empty nest.'

  I flop down on the chair again and look at the last sentence I wrote, but the screen suddenly goes blank, into sleep mode. I shake my head, trying to focus, and the loose change in my head flies up and scatters, settling to one side. I hold my head on the other, hoping for balance, and sift through my emails.

  Maybe I should make a special dinner tonight and explain my idea to Guido. If I can just find the right words, perhaps I can fix this. Turn it around, as they say. After another wine, it seems possible. Just this morning, when Guido suddenly noticed me in the kitchen, something softened in my chest and I smiled back at him, lit up. It was a strange moment, lovely. I'll tell him that I understand his passion for writing, but sometimes we need immediate gratification, the acknowledgement of a live audience, to feel good about ourselves. Don't we all need affirmation? Why, he and I could do a few children's shows together. I could imagine something low-key at the Opera House, a show for schools, they could be bussed in . . . and Mary would love it! Nothing like a live performance and publicity to enhance royalties! I could be a good assistant now, I think, with the experience I have. I could certainly practise up any tricks he might think I could perform. Why, I could go on a grapefruit diet. And even now, my legs aren't so bad. The shows would be for children, anyway, so I wouldn't have to be Pamela Anderson, for heaven's sake. And it wouldn't mean he had to stop writing, just combine a bit of magic with it. God, we could earn much more doing magic shows together, we'd be able to pay off a large portion of the mortgage and who knows, we might be free then to do something else, go and see Clara in Italy .
. .

  A sudden spurt of hope rushes through me and I open my eyes to see a new email arrive, like a reward for positive thinking – from Clara!

  Hi Mum and Dad, hows it going? I'm okay, and guess what, I've got a job as a cleaner! My boss is a signora who lives right near my school. Its a live-in job which is brilliant – I'm getting pretty tired of shared accommodation. Marisa is great but the other girl in the room is mental – it must be her first time out of home but she acts like a prison escapee making the most of her freedom. She brings men home at 3 in the morning, mostly waiters, smokes all the time in bed and farts like you wouldn't believe (when the men aren't there). She can make her farts go up at the end like a question. She thinks its histerical. I tell her the room stinks and all that rich restaurant food will reck her stomach as well as her wallet, but she doesn't listen to anyone – only the waiters.

  Beh, è cosi – it is like so, as the signora says. I was looking at the noticeboard and there was this ad offering free bored in return for cleaning and helping with the shopping plus various 'lavori domestici'. Plus a small salary to be decided upon. What do you think Dad – the ball park figure is around 80 Euro a week, taking into account that I already get bored and food. Sounds good to me.

  So I went to see the signora – Lucia Bosia – the apartment is only ten minutes bus ride from the school, or twenty minutes walk. La signora must be really rich, what with a place right near the Ponte. Her apartment is on the second floor of a big old palazzo built in the 17th century. Beautiful, with three enormus bedrooms, and an awesome salotto – living room Mum – that looks out over the cobblestone street. From the window you can see the panetteria where other old ladies line up to get their bread each morning, and the tobaccaio which sells bus tickets and batteries and stamps as well as cigars. It will be amazing to wake up to that instead of to an assortment of horny waiters. The signora seems friendly, around 70 I reckon and not so very disabled except for her knees - 'i ginocchi terribili' - and a bad hip as well. It's all due to athritis, I think, though sometimes I don't know what on earth anybody's saying and I just smile and agree till I'm like one of those toy dogs that sit in the back of cars nodding over every bump. Like yesterday when I was leaving I told the signora that I hope her hip improves and 'ti ringrazio domani' meaning 'I'll ring you tomorrow' but when I got back to school and looked up our entire conversation in my grammar book, I realised I'd said, 'I'll thank you tomorrow' and 'I hope your anchor gets better.' No wonder she looked confused.