Clara x
Hey Mum,
Guess what – Roberto asked me OUT!! Isn't life spectacular? xx
Chapter 24
When I get into bed now, I try to imagine Clara in her spectacular life. I see her strolling through the Boboli Gardens, grass rolling on either side, limbless sculptures watching, mute. Guido must have walked down that path, been a lover in the grass, or a snake.
When he rang yesterday he said, 'I have a motorbike.'
'But how?' I said stupidly. I heard a sigh.
'I used that thing called money, as most people do.'
'But where from, our savings account?'
'Yes, and why not? You are using the house we bought, not me! That money is half mine, more than half! I am only telling you so you don get a surprise and get angry when you go to the bank. And Silvia contributes, she likes to buy me things. Is fantastic.'
'But you don't know how to ride!' I protest. 'You'll kill yourself!'
'I rode one for years, a vespa in Italy – all the ragazzini do that. What do you think, that I didn't have a life before I came to Australia?'
'But we never even let Clara have a bicycle because of the big hill in our street. All that speed gathering under her wheels before she had a chance to learn how to ride . . . ' I made an effort. 'But how are you?'
'My script is going very well. Silvia is . . . wonderful. She is very intelligent, helping me unblock. She says I should do writing exercise each day before I begin my script. Is like limbering up before a marathon, doing stretches or breathing, to get the thoughts flowing. She sets me little exercises, with random topics like "the sea" but this doesn't 'ave to be the actual sea you are describing. It could be whatever the sea makes you think of, maybe chaos or drowning. Then there are the exercises about memory, real or imagined. Is wonderful. They free you up, you 'ave to let go of the editor in your head, which is ironic, I tell Silvia, because she is a script editor, my editor—'
I hold the phone five inches away from my ear. Every few seconds I bring it closer to hear if he has finished but his voice is still going. That voice hurts so much, full of wonder for the wonderful Silvia. I want to reach down the phone and smash it, smash his happy excited face and Silvia's pressed right up against it, being wonderful.
'I do the exercises from the point of view of my main character, you see, the man in the script. Is so revealing, is like going straight to the heart of this other person inside, straight to his pulse. Writing from the perspective of third person is even more liberating, like the freedom I used to get at Carnivale in Venice, wearing a mask. You see the mask is not an illusion, is more a representation of the inner person, the real person—'
I hold the phone away again. Who does he think I am? Does he see me at all? Has he ever? Now his voice has stopped I say, 'How wonderful! I notice you told Clara about our separation and you didn't bother to tell me first.'
'Clara is translating my poems. Her Italian is improving, she is doing well at school. Is all going well, everything. No need to worry.'
'Well yes, but she's been up and down. Being alone hasn't been so easy for her . . .'
'Why you always pick up the negative? Is natural that she reflects on 'er life, she is a person who thinks. Is good this quality, no? You want a daughter who doesn't think?'
'And what happened to your rage about your intelligent daughter doing such a lowly job as a cleaner? Doesn't it bother you any more?'
'See, you are doing it again. Everything changes, Rachel. Everything passes. These events move through us like water, like the sun, we must not hang on to them. You are becoming sour—'
'Like the lemon. I know. Listen, Guido, I'm falling apart here – the sliding feeling in my brain is sending me mad—'
'I 'ave to go now, Rachel. I will come round soon for the rest of my books and other things. Remember, is nothing these feelings, is all in the mind. Everything passes. You must learn to detach. Oh, and those white shirts in my wardrobe – I've got an appointment with the producer and some business people so you make sure the shirts are clean and ironed? White suits me best with my dark hair. You know, is unusual that I 'ave no grey yet, and my hair is not even thin. I am feeling very fit. Silvia says I am in my prime which is good because she is fifteen years younger than me but her friends say we look the same age! Is very important this meeting. No, don wish me luck, is a curse, malocchio. Is just another event in the universe that I must not get attached to, Silvia reminds me.'
When I hang up the phone I go into his room to have another look at those shirts. They smell clean, perhaps just need some fresh air flowing through them. I take them out and hang them up in the doorway. My urge to see Guido and tell him how things could be different and that we could live a new wonderful life together has evaporated completely with the sound of his voice. I stand with the shirts in my hand. There is the illusion of Guido, I think suddenly, and the reality of Guido. Why do I carefully hang up these shirts instead of ripping them into rags or using them to wipe my arse?
The two drawers under Guido's desk are locked. I don't know why he bothered. Maybe he thought I'd be too polite to go that extra step and flex my lock-picking skills. He doesn't know about my transformation. That werewolves lose any shred of good manners when the sun goes down and they open a bottle of red. Most probably he didn't think about me at all, my politeness or lack of it or any skills I might possess. In the top drawer there are some papers, an old postcard of Piazza della Signoria. Under the papers there is a photo of Guido I haven't seen before. He is young, twenty perhaps? Clara's age. He is leaning against a stone wall, green vines curling behind him, his head thrown back, eyes half open, a lazy smile tilts his mouth. He's holding a yellow rose, it's a little bruised, wilted as if someone's been lying on it. He looks relaxed, satisfied, as if he's just had sex . . . An old familiar feeling twists up through my belly. It's like a finger, probing, tickling, reminding me. There is still the question. It flicks at the wonder of this person, so exotic, alluring. The old longing starts, for the mystery of him. Why can't he speak to me as he does to Silvia? I close my eyes. I think of the Bohemian Torture Crib to which Jonny Love will chain himself here in Sydney. I am condemned to lie on the rack, strapped to my memories. But there's no money or glory in it for me.
I sift through the papers in Guido's drawers. I have no compunction about doing this. He is like a history project that I have to research, the deadline falling when he comes to take everything away, all signs that he ever existed. He will take everything and I will have nothing. I find another photograph, of a baby in a mother's arms – it must be Guido, black button eyes, face snuggled into his mother's neck. His mother. Same dark eyes, fine features, hair in a beehive, swept up off that slim neck, beautiful. Another photo – a small boy with skinny knees holds his mother's hand on a lawn, a hedge running straight as a ruler behind. The woman is smiling but you can see the smile is strained, stretched. The boy is frowning into the camera. His mouth is slightly open, showing the chipped front tooth. Guido said it happened when he fell off a horse. This is the first time I've seen photos of Guido's boyhood, his family. When he's already gone.
In the second drawer I find more papers. Diagrams with names and arrows. A mind map, as I used to ask my grade three to do, with characters' names inside circles, and arrows connecting them to events, other characters, showing relationships. Mother, Father, Boy, Nun . . . I riffle through a wad of typed notes in Italian, stapled together. In the margin there are scribbled comments in red pen. Someone else's handwriting, not Guido's, and written in English. Yes, this is where the energy is! and powerful, nauseating, oh this is good and nasty! How can something be nauseating, and good? Alienation, yes, keep writing the hard stuff , like Hemingway said. The words run vertically up the margin, tumbling over the page with 'wonderful' enthusiasm.
I find a page in English. The font is different, in Arial Narrow. Silvia's translation? I glance at the door. He didn't say when he'd be coming. It couldn't be now, he's in the c
ity with Silvia, but sweaty panic breaks out on my skin.
Luca remembers his mother. He remembers a time when he was very small, three perhaps, when they lay on the big white bed together. His father had gone to work. Furioso. His father was always angry. Luca didn't know why this was so. Luca crept into the bed where his mother lay. She didn't get up to dress or straighten the house or prepare for the lunch. She put her arm under his neck and pulled him close. He was happy and the room filled with a gold light. He laid his head on her chest and leant into her. He could hear her heart beating under her soft nightgown. Her skin was warm, the bed was warm from her body. She read him a story. Pinocchio. She giggled with him at Pinocchio's long nose. She talked to him in English. Sometimes she did that. He liked her English voice. It was a private language, made just for him. She didn't use it with his father, or anyone else he knew. Just him and herself. Special. That morning she said, 'Poor Pinocchio, it's not fair, that ugly long nose just because of a few little lies. We all lie sometimes, don't we?'
Luca remembers being upstairs in his room, alone. He sits on the floor listening. There is the sound of his mother banging dishes down in the kitchen. There are squares of sunlight lying on the orange rug like puzzle pieces. A loud crash, as if something has broken on the kitchen floor. He goes to the door and calls 'Mamma?' but there is no answer.
In the late afternoon, the squares of sunlight on his floor have vanished. The room is grey. He is not calling for his mother any more, he is surrounded by pieces of lego, towers and soldiers and bridges. He is making up worlds and smashing them down – whole armies, he makes the Boom! Boom! Whoosh! little bombs of sound through his teeth, angry explosions. Someone calls him from downstairs for dinner, but he doesn't answer. He is absorbed in his war. He falls asleep among the lego men, a tiny plastic cannon under his cheek, making a deep impression.
Luca remembers his mother going away. 'I won't be gone for long,' she said, with that little smile. But she had told him that everyone lies like Pinocchio.
He had learnt to swim by the time she came back. There had been a summer at Liguria and a winter. He had learnt to float on his back, far out near the buoy on the horizon. While he floated he watched the clouds and thought about nothing. When she came back, she was thin. Her chest had gone. Her stomach went in instead of out. She was straight like a ruled line. She didn't want to read to him, even look at him. He was invisible. He felt lonely in the same room with her. When he spoke to her she didn't bend down to him. She talked over his head.
Once, when he passed her bedroom he saw her standing naked. She was brushing her hair, looking into the big gold mirror. He saw a purple scar across her belly, and the black curly hairs reaching up to it. She was stroking it, half-smiling. He was revolted and excited and deeply happy that something had hurt his mother very badly. He dreamt of the scar and the man who did it for years after that. Sometimes he was the man. Sometimes he was his mother.
Luca remembers when he first met his wife. English white skin, hair like fire. He liked running his fingers under her hair, feeling her scalp. Her hair was wild, but it obeyed his fingers. She looked at him with adoration, as if she was at church. She was in love with him but he was not in love with her. She said he would always come first in her life and that she would look after him. She did not know how to cook so he showed her how to make the pasta al dente, to bake pepperoni and peel the skins, capponata, simple fresh dishes. Every evening she served the spaghetti too soft and too sweet and every evening he told her the right way. She apologised but the next night was always the same mistake. She was eager to please but incapable of it. She was like the spaniel his mother kept with its long blonde hair and slavish eyes. She wagged her tail and apologised and lay on her back for him but she had nothing inside her. Sometimes, when he was on top of her, he watched the clouds in his mind and thought of nothing as if he were floating on that sea in Liguria.
Sometimes he imagined other women. He turned her on her back and she offered up her arse like a sacrifice. He could do anything to her. She was resigned, a martyr. But she was like all the other women he had known. She said he would come first and then she betrayed him.
He did not know what love was until he met Silvia.
I put the papers back in the drawer. My hands are shaking. A wave of nausea sweeps me and I run down the hall to the toilet. Vomit burns in my throat, red wine, rice crackers and green disgusting bile. Disgustoso. Twenty years of a lie. You've only got yourself to blame.
Today is Belmore High School. Three sessions, $770 dollars, including GST. I'll take the exploding wallet and that new trick with the sword. It's a dramatic illusion, perfect for teenage boys. The sword appears to stab right through the arm and out the other side. Baudelaire gave me some new fake blood that tastes metallic and salty, just like the real thing. Blood, sex. I won't think about it. I don't have to.
The clock radio says I should get up. A car bomb overnight killed twenty-one people in Baghdad, eight of them children. The kids of Baghdad wouldn't enjoy my illusion. There's enough real blood shed every day. What the hell am I doing? It's early, but I get up because I have a long way to go. I don't want to lie here in bed anyway, in the musty sheets which haven't been changed since Guido left . Nearly three months. But he was never in love with me. I get up and put on my shoes and run out the door. Run run run, see Jane run. The icy winter air stings my legs. I look down and see I'm running in my nightie. I don't care. No one will notice because middle-aged women are invisible. And there's nothing inside me. It is so quiet, the sun just coming up. The leaves of the paperbark tree hardly stir. The lawns glisten with dew. My shoes are loud on the road, slap slap slap, slapped in the face, twenty years of slapping. You are the idiot for holding your face there, says the voice. I was in a holding pattern.
There isn't a breath of breeze. The streets, lined with trees and telegraph wires are frozen, like objects in a picture. There is something dream-like about being the only moving thing in a painted landscape. Nightmarish. I have a sudden urge to hear Simon's voice. Simon, with the strong capable hands, the calm tone, the look of concern. I saw him yesterday, when he came to clean the pool. What did he say? About his wife, and the grief? I'm going to think about that. Repeat his words in my mind instead of Guido's.
We sat for a long time at the wooden table. I hadn't seen him for a week. We kept missing each other, he said. I told him I'd been out running. I made coffee, pleased that I could offer organic beans from East Timor. He seemed to approve. He told me he used to work for an NGO in East Timor, as well as in Africa. When he married, bringing his wife out here, they moved to a suburb near the beach. Zuri went to university, finished her education. She was my best friend, he told me. He worked for the Red Cross, made short trips each year to various countries. Zuri stayed home to look after their daughter. It was breast cancer, a little lump like a cherry stone under his thumb. She only had a couple of years out in the working world. She was a teacher, infants school. After she died, he got a job locally, anything, he had to look after his daughter, pick her up from school each day. He concentrated on simple tasks – the shopping, food in the fridge, paying bills. He had to fill the hours, ticking them off like a person in jail. But he felt he'd never be free. Grief is like a prison, that's what he said. 'It does get better, with time. You realise there is freedom outside the bars when you start to look forward to things.' There were the afternoons, when he'd pick up his daughter in the pool van, blue and white. Her school uniform was the same colour as the van, she loved that, and there she was every day at ten past three, her school bag between her feet, her neat round face looking down the road for him. Her smile when she saw him lit up the afternoon. During school hours he was busy with tangible things he could fix, and afterwards with his daughter and her homework and her friends and her feelings, filling his days with life, with the living. Now, he says, his daughter gets annoyed with him – 'Go and get yourself a life, Dad! You're young still, enjoy!'
We sat together for
such a long time that the dark came down and the possums ran along the telegraph wire onto the roof, cheeky as tame pets. 'Better keep going,' said Simon, and we grinned.
I run past the house with the Chinese jasmine and the paperbark tree and the fence with unreadable graffiti and the dog with the mink coat and the pool shop. I see with disappointment that there are no vans in the parking bay outside the pool shop. Too early, I suppose. The windows are blank, even the paper shop is closed. I run home and take a shower, the first in days. Water streams along the banks between the hairs on my legs. I'll have to shave them for my meeting with Jonny, but I can't be bothered today. I'll wear pants over them. I wish I could wear a balaclava over my head too. Lena told me that after two weeks, hair finds its natural pH balance and doesn't increase in greasiness. Hot water is as efficient as shampoo unless you're working with axle grease, which I'm not. Sounds a bit like the pool, which if neglected for two weeks in summer turns green and sullen and stays that way. Doesn't get any greener or any more sullen.
Why then does human misery not stop at a certain level, like a lift arriving at the basement? Surely there is some limit, the lowest floor? Why does pain turn bottle green, gangrenous, the pit deeper, greasier, slimier, the darkness roughening into dirt that stops up your mouth, your mind, your lungs?
*
After Belmore High I go to the supermarket. I'm out of red wine and crackers and pasta sauce for my parents' dinner. Coles is a vast country; god how I hate it. I trudge through the aisles, throwing things into my trolley. You'll break those biscuits, you're such a thoughtless waster!
I stand still, besieged by the voice. It bellows over everything, even the miked-up announcer telling us strawberries are reduced, a steal at only $3.99 a punnet. Cold bitch, selfish bitch. He was never in love with you. I look for Harry at the fruit and veg stand. Come on, come on, take me away from here! There are bananas and peaches and grapes and blueberries, huddled on the green nylon cloth of the stall. Just the cold hard facts, no mirage-metal shimmer, glitter of dark eyes, halo of wiry hair. Just fruit and veg and that woman picking over the peaches, trying to do her job and pry the probing fingers of her toddler away from the grapes. I close my eyes and try to find him. Charles River Bridge, Boston. He's diving from the bridge, bent over in half, his hands manacled behind his back. He hits the surface like a bomb and disappears in a necklace of white water. I hold my breath, we all hold our breath, all of us at Charles River. Will he come up? Will he survive the weight of those chains, unpick the locks and break through? Yes, see him now? His cuffs dangle from the wrist as he shoots up in the air, making the sign of victory. I feel myself smiling, the crowd is roaring, that invincible Harry, look at him swimming for the boat, long hard strokes, such powerful arms. He strides out of the water and up the steep bank, his trunks clinging like a second skin to the curve of his buttocks, but wait, no, he is slipping back down, grasping at the mud, slipping down into the water. His head bobs up, he tries again and slips, his hands flailing, small pudgy hands, tiny as the toddler who is now screaming next to me. Oh my Harry, I can't help you, you can't help me, what will we do?
Escape Page 35