Escape

by Anna Fienberg

  But one night Mum was late. There'd been a problem with a child at the Starshine Home. Mum missed her usual bus and had to wait for a later one. As we waited, I noticed Danny's constant checking of the clock. He turned the knives over and over on the table. He picked up the salt and pepper shakers and put them down at least fifty times. At last, at 5.45, Deborah walked in the door. Quickly, with her coat still on, she began cutting up vegetables. She had to stop when the phone rang.

  At the little table in the hallway, Mum stood twisting the cord around her hand, nodding, glancing at Danny. It was Liz, one of the Starshine nurses, she mouthed in my direction. I went into the kitchen to keep on with the chopping, but Danny began to pace. His trips up and down the living room rug grew faster. His arms started to flail oddly at his sides as he paced. Finally he rushed up to Deborah, took the phone from her hand and banged it down.

  'Ready ready ready ready READY!' he shouted, his smooth face twisting into a mask of fury. He shouted from his monster face until Dad came and took him by the shoulders, leading him into his room.

  A couple of hours later, Danny came out and apologised. He was very quiet now, but I never forgot his sudden transformation.

  'That would have been frightening, at ten,' the therapist said. I nodded, but I couldn't say anything more.

  Yesterday, when I walked into her room, I noticed the flowers on the coffee table. Hydrangeas. The blue perm kind. The therapist asked me what I'd been thinking about since we last met.

  'Hydrangeas,' I blurted, still looking at them.

  She smiled. 'You don't like them?'

  'Oh no, I mean, well, actually, I've never really liked hydrangeas. They're too tidy and self-contained. And . . . they remind me of Danny.'

  There was a waiting silence. 'We have all the time you need,' she said gently. She didn't even mind that I hadn't liked her hydrangeas. She smiled at me with her eyes.

  After that scary night, I told her, Danny worked even harder at trying to please. He got the job at Woolworths and helped clean the house on Saturdays. His back was never quite straight, always a little bent, like an old man with a burden. Dad took him to a physio who prescribed exercises for scoliosis, and Danny did them religiously. He conversed and smiled and said thank you a hundred times a day. So I shouldn't have had this awful feeling about him.

  'There's that old "should" again,' remarked the therapist. When she said should, it sounded like a harmless old aunt in a good cardigan, always reminding you of yesterday's mistake.

  I told her that and we grinned at each other for a moment. It was a good moment.

  But it was strange, I went on, that even through all his politeness, I always felt there was something remote about Danny. He didn't react specifically to what another person was saying. A discussion didn't ever wander in a direction that Danny hadn't planned. He seemed like a politician on the news with his guard up, choosing not to respond to anything difficult and only answering the questions he knew.

  'When's he going?' I'd ask Mum. He had been in our house for much longer than any other boy. Every now and then there was another small eruption, and Dad would take him into his room.

  When Danny had been with us for five months, I came out into the living room on a Saturday morning to find my mother and father sitting on the sofa. I smiled and said good morning as I walked with my clothes to the bathroom. But there was an uneasy quiet in the room. Neither of my parents sat around in this casual way so early on a Saturday morning. Only people like Mr Mulgrade the judge and his wife had time to do that while their housemaid clattered in the kitchen and the gardener clipped the hedges.

  In the shower I kept the window closed and let the steam matt around me. The warm water rushed over my face like kind rain and I remember wanting to stand there forever in that soft world hearing only the shish of the shower and feeling my skin grow rosy. This was going to be a good Saturday, a wonderful Saturday, because I was going ice-skating. I wasn't going to let any bad thoughts darken the day.

  When I came out, wearing the new paisley flares my mother had made, my parents were still sitting in the same position.

  'Rachel?' my mother said as I walked past. 'Could you sit a minute? We have something we'd like to discuss with you.'

  'Where's Danny?' I asked, my feet frozen to the floor.

  'Woolworths rang and asked him to work an extra shift this morning,' Dad said. 'So we thought we'd take this opportunity to talk. Put those pyjamas down on the chair there, sweetheart.' And he smoothed a place next to him on the sofa.

  I glanced at my mother's face. She was sewing, looking down at her lap, taking up a hem. A saggy patch drooped on either side of her chin. I hadn't seen this before and hoped it was only because her lips were all pursed up as she pulled the thread through the tough cotton. But she looked old, and her shoulders were bent.

  I sat on the edge of the sofa. The clock pinged on the wall.

  'We've been thinking,' Dad began, 'about Danny.' He touched Mum's knee and smiled warmly at her.

  I held my breath. I pictured the skating rink and those little chocolate cakes they gave you afterwards.

  'What would you think about Danny staying here permanently, sweetie?' said Dad. 'It seems possible that we could adopt him, give him a decent start in life.' He looked at me expectantly.

  'But what about his own mother and father?' I burst out. 'Haven't you found them? Can't you work things out?'

  Mum sighed. Her lips disappeared into a thin line.

  'You know his mother died when he was little,' Dad said patiently.

  'Well, his father – you'd think after all . . .'

  'You would,' Dad agreed. 'But I've been checking on his history and the man's been in and out of hospital all these years.'

  'A mental problem,' Mum put in. 'He hears voices, talks to himself.' She went red and looked back down at her sewing.

  'So he's not really equipped to take care of a teenage boy,' Dad interrupted.

  'There is an older brother,' Mum said, looking up. She cut off the thread with her teeth.

  'But he hasn't been in touch for two years.' Dad looked hopefully at me. 'Danny is a good boy, Rachel. I know he has his problems, but I think with security and a loving home, with people he can depend on, he has a real chance to heal, and go forward with his life. I for one would love to give him that chance.'

  The new fridge down the hallway whirred into action. Mum said once it was the best invention of mankind, after the washing machine.

  'I don't know,' I mumbled. 'It's your decision, isn't it? You're the parents.'

  Mum put her hem down and took my hand. 'That's right, Rachel, but this family is a true democracy. If a decision affects us all, then we should all have a say. We can take a vote, just like in a real parliament. It's only fair,' and Mum smiled at me, the droopy pouches at her mouth lifting. I saw something else in her smile – a pleading, an uncertainty, maybe a kind of hope. But what for? What did she want from me?

  I stared at the hydrangea picture on the wall. I'd caught Danny gazing at it once. I'd told him it was painted by a man with no hands or legs. The man had held the brush in his mouth and had to get upon a kind of scaffolding to do the top part. 'It gives me the shivers,' I'd confessed to Danny. 'It's sort of dead and closed-looking, like the flowers you'd put on a grave. But my parents bought it to help the man.'

  'It's called a still life,' Danny had hissed. 'What do you expect – flowers jumping around?' He'd thrust his face into mine. He smelled of Lux soap. 'Could you do a painting like that? You don't know anything. You have the best parents in the world. You should be so grateful to live under this roof. I don't think you realise that, any of it. You're just a stupid girl.' He'd glared at me and those wide surprised eyes narrowed. I imagined him transforming, darkening, with a scary hollow laugh.

  Sitting next to my parents, I looked away from the painting and down at my lap. I was careful not to catch their eyes. I twisted my hands. Danny was really a good boy, wasn't he? My father said so
every day. And my parents were saints, everyone agreed. And Danny helped around the house – he did far more housework than lazy me. He was clean and neat and usually he was polite, much better behaved than any of the other boys who stayed. And perhaps if we adopted him my father wouldn't bring any more of them home. But my chest tightened. The thought of Danny breathing forever in the room next to mine made me feel like I was drowning.

  'Can I think about it for a while?' I said.

  'All right,' said Dad, but as I got up from the sofa I saw a look of such disappointment pass over his face that I nearly turned and threw my arms around him and cried, of course, it would be lovely, yes!

  I stood on one leg on the rug, biting my lip. Then we heard the front door bang and Danny walked in.

  'Hello, hello,' he said, 'is everything all right, okay?' He was smiling but he peered quickly from one face to the other. He said things twice when he was anxious.

  'Yes, of course,' said Dad, springing up. But he looked startled – guilty – and he glanced at me. Danny caught the look and examined me, a detective searching a crime scene. I felt the blush deepen on my face, creeping down to my chest until it was hard to breathe. Muttering something, I fled into my room.

  Quickly I began to pack a bag for Joanna's. Clean pyjamas, undies, a pair of jeans for tomorrow, Sasha the mermaid. If I woke up in the night, Sasha was an immediate comfort. I sat on the bed, stroking her lovely fish tail. I'd think only about Sasha, not about Danny.

  'Rachel!' my father called from the living room. 'Your friend Joanna is here. Are you ready?'

  'Coming!' I cried, and gently lay Sasha under the pyjamas in my bag. Then I waved to her friends grouped on the pillow, picked up my bag and dashed out of the room.

  The skating was fantastic. Mrs Mulgrade had even arranged a lesson for us. By the end of the half-hour I could go quite fast, as if I was flying. There were little chocolate cakes with hundreds and thousands on them and the smell of warm leather from the car seats in Mrs Mulgrade's Jaguar on the way home.

  At night, as I fell asleep in the truckle bed, I squeezed Sasha's tummy to my chest. I tried not to think about anything troubling.

  On Sunday afternoon, when I arrived home, my parents were in the garden. Dad was potting up a new gardenia bush and Mum was raking the path. They seemed deep in conversation but they put down their tools as I called hello.

  'How was the ice-skating?' Dad asked, taking off his gloves.

  I told them about the rink and the cakes and the huge colour TV at the Mulgrades. Then I said, 'Where's Danny?'

  'Gone to get some milk and biscuits from the corner shop for afternoon tea.'

  I went to my room and threw down my bag. I sat on my bed and closed my eyes, savouring the ice that had glittered under friendly white lights, the pink cardigan like fairy floss that Joanna had let me wear, the chocolate treasure we'd snuck into her bedroom for a midnight feast. I remembered all these things, and a bubble rose in my throat, sweet, joyous, tingly.

  'Rachel?' My father's voice called from the garden.

  I heard footsteps. Boots scraping on the mat outside. Floorboards creaking under heavy feet. Dread pooled in my chest. I didn't want to stop being on the ice. I didn't want to take off the cardigan. I didn't want to feel like this, sinking, choking, furious, evil. I wanted to keep being a whirling white fairy, white as ice. But I was falling down the hole, into the witchy dead darkness. I sprang up to run out my door, out of my street, out of my self. But I ran right into Dad.

  'Everything all right?' he asked.

  I stared at him. There was a stone in my throat.

  'Because I was wondering, we were wondering,' Dad tapped his thigh in a nervous rhythm, 'if you'd thought about what we discussed yesterday. Your mother and I would like to tell Danny fairly soon—'

  'No!' I shouted. 'No, no, no, no. I just want him to go away! I just want our family back!' I ran fast into my room, as fast as I could away from my words. I didn't look back because I couldn't bear to see the smash of my father's face. I slammed the door. But as I lay panting on the bed his face hovered above me like a moon, luminous and cratered with sadness.

  When Danny's brother Mark came to get him it seemed that everyone wore that face. But I couldn't say what they wanted to hear. I just couldn't say it. Why wasn't I enough? I wanted to shout at my father. Why aren't I enough for you?

  We had to sit through a cup of tea and hear about Mark's job and flat. Dad had already visited the flat and he said it wasn't what you'd call 'ideal'. The rooms were sparsely furnished, with stacks of old newspapers on the floor, and in the bathroom there were heavy mould stains around the sink and shower. More importantly, Dad hadn't liked the look of some odd pills lying on the kitchen table. The second time he visited, unannounced, he'd detected a definite whiff of marijuana in the air. I remembered Dad saying once that lots of hippies smoked this weed stuff and it wasn't the worst kind of drug, oh no, and sometimes people pumped with alcohol committed far more violent crimes. I wanted to remind him of this but I didn't say anything.

  Still, Dad said, trying to be hearty, you couldn't deny Mark was family. And Dad wasn't going to send Danny back to strangers again. No siree. He'd pop in on a regular basis and see how things were going . . .

  Mark had blue eyes like Danny, set far apart, but there was no surprise in them. Mark's face seemed weary somehow, with the flat look of a very old person who has seen everything. He stayed for a second cup of tea and piece of my mother's fruitcake. He ate fast, and a lot. I pinched the flesh over my knee. I made a crease and stretched the skin till it stung.

  Danny said nothing. But when Mark got up from the couch, taking his brother's arm, Danny's eyes started to fill. His hands gripped the sofa seat under his thighs. He held on, his jaw set, the veins in his arms ropy with effort. 'Come on,' Mark said, grabbing an elbow and pulling. But Danny was immoveable. He clung to his couch like a barnacle to a rock. Tears spilled down his cheeks. Dad cleared his throat loudly and came to crouch in front of Danny. His own eyes wet, Dad murmured to him so that only he and Danny could hear. He patted Danny's arm. I looked away from them both, at the bowl of apples on the kitchen table, at the awful hydrangea picture. My stomach twisted.

  I could change it all now, right now, I thought. Stop, I should say, it's okay, let's have Danny and Mark if you like and let's make everyone happy. I'm sorry sorry sorry. But the words stuck in my throat.

  Mark was trying to prise Danny's fingers from the seat. Dad was still talking. Danny's knuckles were white. Mum stood, her hand to her face. For a second I caught her eye. She raised her eyebrows so slightly. Will you change your mind, her eyes said. I went back to pinching my knee.

  'It's nearly six o'clock,' Danny suddenly screamed, 'can't we have dinner now?'

  'Oh for Chrissake!' exploded Mark and yanked his brother up under the arms. I expected to hear a pop like a cork coming out of a bottle but there was nothing, just Danny's eyes looking at mine. They were swimming with tears, expanding, flooding with misery. 'Please,' he whispered. I dug my nails into my palms. He knew, he knew I was the one. The witch. 'Please, I'll be good.'

  Mark put a hand on Danny's shoulder and he seemed to crumple from inside like a collapsible umbrella. He let himself be dragged along. The seconds between the couch and the door were as long as hours. I counted them, wishing him away, wishing myself into the ground or in the sky, flying with my witch's broom, my iron teeth set, sweeping away every stain of my existence.

  At the door Danny stood limp as Mark said goodbye. They turned to go and Danny called, 'Please, promise you will eat at six!'

  Dad watched them walk down the garden path. Then he went into his bedroom and closed the door. When Mum called him for dinner, he didn't answer. I sat with Mum eating a cheese omelette, a meal we often had when Dad wasn't home. We sat in the cold kitchen, silent. It was as if we were in mourning, eating the fruits of the funeral.

  Chapter 22

  When I leave the therapist, I don't switch on the radio
on the way home. I let her voice swirl inside my head, inside the car. I listen again to her responses, or just the quality of her silences. I hear my inside self saying things out loud. I see the photo of her grandchildren on the coffee table, the white box of tissues next to it. Although there's the large window above her desk and clipped gardenia bushes outside, it's as if we are in a desert cave, a safe house, rustling with jewelled secrets and sounds from the war.

  I try to hang on to her as long as I can. But it's never long enough.

  When I ask her how I should live now, she smiles. I can't gauge at all which might be the right path. She says there's no one right answer. That's frightening, because I'm used to waving my antennae around like a beetle, trying to sense danger, trying to please. But there is something a little exciting, too, about what she says, like a door suddenly left open, or a curtain pulled aside, letting the light shine through. I'd love to jump into that light, search for its source, burst out into the day, sunlit.

  I remember how big the voice became after Danny was taken away. It turned savage, barked at me, teeth bared in the silence. Dad went back to work on the Monday after Danny left , and still put out the garbage and read the newspaper. But his tears started again. A doctor came to the house to talk to him. They went for a walk together in the garden. Afterwards the doctor sat down in the living room with my mother and me, in the chair under the hydrangea painting. 'Pete has depression,' Dr Cross said. My father didn't talk much for the next few months except to voice essentials like 'Is anyone in the bathroom?' or 'That was nice, dear,' after dinner. Even this seemed to demand great effort and he flopped down on the chair afterwards in exhaustion. He never answered the phone. No more boys came to the house for a long time.