Something in the World Called Love

by Sue Saliba

  simon had known jonathan since high school and it was jonathan’s idea to form the band. he would sing, simon would play guitar. soon enough jonathan’s other housemate, scott, took up drums and, in perfect completion, alain turned up one month later for a house interview, clutching his beloved bass guitar. it was established. mercy maidens played their first song and number 30 starling street – one main street and four houses away from 22, lost its last female inhabitant – jonathan’s now ex-girlfriend, tamara – and became officially ‘the boys’ house’.

  it was true, it wasn’t exactly the home esma would want to live in, with its hallway of dust and bikes and its broken vinyl chairs gathered around the lounge room tv, the corner of empty beer cans people forgot about for weeks and the kitchen with its mismatched pots and band posters splattering the walls.

  but all the same, she loved going down there.

  there was something alive and unexpected and warm about the boys’ house. you never quite knew what adventure might appear, or who you might happen upon, or what thoughts you might come away with that opened up the world again,

  curious and alive.

  and something more: when esma left the boys’ house the fear in her was always stilled, at least for a time. the trembling disappeared and she was strong and free and forgetful of all the unseen forces that kept her small.

  ‘yes, once i was scared and shrunken by fear,’ she imagines herself telling a particularly interested women’s magazine on her way home between number 30 and number 22 starling street. she’s mature, successful and all-knowing now. ‘but then all that fear just went away.’ ‘how did it go away?’ her admiring, worldly – but not as worldly as esma – interviewer asks her.

  ‘i believed in love,’ she says. and she’s surprised at her own answer.

  what connection did love and the dusty, smoky boys’ house have? they didn’t even have curtains in some of the windows. jonathan had poked some street-found cardboard in the panes of his bedroom to stop the late morning sun waking him, and alain had been peeling black spinach from the bottom of the fridge the last time she’d called around with a message for simon. the bills were never paid, the garden was overgrown and the bathroom light flashed off and on, off and on whether you held the switch for it up or down.

  still, although the words in her head didn’t quite fit the scenario, her feelings did. chaos and mess and acceptance, it made her whole.

  ‘see you tonight at eight,’ simon called as he left for work that friday morning.

  ‘okay,’ esma said back, and she hoped she’d called it loud enough for simon to hear but not too loud that it might wake kara.

  okay, she signalled outwards with her left hand held high, but the front door had closed, simon had gone, and that trembling motion inside her – that fluttering that made her run so fast or lie curled and hidden beneath her blankets, was back.

  strong, screaming, present.

  and the memory of kara that afternoon they’d sat in kara’s bedroom and kara had asked her about prasit returned. ‘i can see why he loved you,’ kara had said.

  ‘esma, are you doing anything tonight?’ it was kara as she entered the kitchen.

  esma had turned out the light and was sitting in new-found darkness.

  ‘esma.’

  she felt herself spotted.

  ‘esma, are you going to be around tonight?’

  ‘i, ah… i’m not sure. i think so, maybe. you’re going out, aren’t you?’

  ‘yeah. yeah, i wondered if you could take a message from chloe for me. i can’t get in contact with her and it’s pretty important. i think she might ring tonight.’

  chloe was kara’s sister and her mention always spelled urgency.

  ‘ah, i’ll try. i mean, if it’s really important.’

  ‘yeah, it is. i’ll tell you about it after i talk to her, but for now i just need to know her answer. so if you can, ask her if it’s yes or no and leave a note for me so i’ll get it when i come home. thanks, esma. i really appreciate it.’

  ‘okay, okay, i’ll try but i mean if i have to run out to the shop or something it will just go on the answering machine, i guess.’

  ‘no. no, i don’t want it going on the answering machine.

  i’m only trusting you with this, esma. she knows she can trust you.’

  ‘okay.’

  and kara, smiling, said, ‘i have to run, esma. i’ve got a lecture on anatomy. we start dissecting the cadavers next week, beginning with the head.’

  ‘have fun,’ esma said, and immediately felt the usual stupidity that she stumbled around inside of whenever she tried to match kara. an altogether wrongness, even an anger with herself.

  so different from how she felt at the boys’ house.

  and how did she feel there now that it was friday night and she’d managed to convince herself to ‘just go down the road before chloe calls’ after kara had left for the ball – ‘do i look glamorous enough, esma?’ – and simon had welcomed her at the front of number 30 – ‘you look great in that purple coat, esma,’ – and kissed her on the cheek? ‘this is bryan, my legal ethics tutor,’ he said and introduced her to a young man he seemed to have been in deep discussion with. ‘come and see samantha out the back. she’s been saying she wants to see you again.’

  the party was in full swing, so different from the quietness of 22 starling street. jonathan was giving a crowd of very young looking blonde women a tour of the house, since after all he was the singer of the band, a role that seemed to confer on him a magnetic status that esma remained puzzled about. scott was explaining the technical details of making the demo tape to a particularly black-clad audio student who nodded a lot and said ‘sweet’ and ‘cool’ in a knowing kind of way.

  ‘come on, esma.’ simon was at the back door. ‘samantha’s out here. so’s rascas.’ and simon was right. rascas was curled in samantha’s lap, his right cheek lost in the material of her skirt.

  and of course there were other people. women with rings in their noses and boys with dreadlocks or flannel shirts. someone twirling a fire stick. someone else admiring alain’s prized purple guitar.

  but esma saw only rascas.

  she ran across the yard to him and he lifted his head to her. ‘it’s the beautiful rascas,’ she said and she leant her face into his, until she realised she was entering samantha’s lap.

  ‘sorry,’ she said. she was suddenly herself again – firm and fixed and foolish.

  ‘it’s okay,’ samantha said. and she moved her arm so esma noticed a tattoo of a small flying bat. ‘i think he’s beautiful too.’

  ‘do you? but he’s so shy. i mean most people seem to like dogs with character, with attitude.’

  ‘rascas has attitude.’

  ‘you know what i mean, outgoing, confident… that kind of thing.’

  ‘what’s so special about that kind of thing? i reckon rascas has his own kind of thing, far more wonderful than big barking and frantic tail wagging.’

  ‘really… what is it, do you think, rascas’s special kind of thing?’

  ‘it’s a tenderness of the heart.’

  ‘what?’

  ‘you heard me, esma. a tenderness of the heart.’

  how could that be something wonderful, with rascas crouching at every breeze and shocked so hard he couldn’t walk within ten feet of the ocean?

  ‘do you mean fear?’ esma said.

  ‘i mean what’s behind fear.’

  ‘is there something behind fear?’

  ‘of course.’

  ‘what?’

  ‘simply this,’ samantha said, rubbing her finger against rascas’s velvet ear. ‘simply… being alive.’

  and esma looked at the distance between herself and rascas, he shy and comforted in samantha’s lap, unashamedly scared in the world, and unwilling to hide it. ‘i like your hair,’ alain said as he pushed a plate of jonathan’s rainbow cake between esma and samantha. ‘it’s even blacker this time.’

  ‘yea
h,’ esma said. ‘thanks,’ and she swallowed the rainbow cake before samantha could catch her eye and ask any questions about her dyed hair.

  for esma had always dyed her hair, ever since jen had left home, and she didn’t like people asking or even commenting since it seemed to draw attention to something she’d rather not discuss,

  or reveal.

  but samantha was curious. ‘how long have you been dying your hair?’

  it was exactly the question esma didn’t want to answer, and she stared at rascas. he soft and somehow forgiving of all her foolishness.

  ‘ah, i have to get home, actually,’ she said.

  ‘why?’

  ‘there’s a phone call. i almost forgot.’

  ‘well, come right back once you’ve made it.’

  ‘no, no, i’m not making it. i’m waiting for it.’

  ‘you mean you’re leaving the party to go home and wait for a phone call?’

  ‘well, i wouldn’t if it were just for me, but it’s not. it’s for kara. it’s very important.’

  ‘and where’s kara?’

  ‘she’s gone to the medical ball.’

  ‘and you’re going to sit around and wait for her phone call, the one that’s for her?’

  ‘well, she asked me to. i mean she said it’s important and i’m just down the road. i mean, it’s easy enough…’

  samantha looked at the fire someone had made in an old metal drum, impossible to extinguish. rascas peered out at esma from the material of samantha’s skirt. and esma felt herself tight in her stomach so her head couldn’t think, and feeling it was too late to turn everything back to how it should have been again said, ‘well, i’d better go.’

  ‘see ya,’ samantha said.

  ‘bye. bye, rascas,’ esma said.

  and it was rascas who gave her the key to something

  she didn’t believe was possible.

  ‘you don’t have to leave,’ he seemed to say, ‘and you don’t have to stay. you know there’s something in between that encompasses everything.’

  all this in a twitching of his whisker.

  ‘i wonder if…’ esma turned back to samantha, ‘rascas might like to come with me? i mean, he could be my guard dog, protect me in the house.’

  ‘why not?’ samantha said, lifting rascas’s head from her lap. ‘sounds like you could do with some protecting there.’

  and esma, ignoring samantha’s comment, bent herself right down to rascas and said, ‘shall we go?’ and he untangled himself from samantha’s skirt and walked shyly ahead, through the house, around groups of drunken people, until he reached the front door and turned to esma behind him. ‘where to?’ she said when she caught up to him on the verandah and he lifted his nose to the air, grew taller and seemed to sniff the sky and stars. ‘to the gardens, is it?’ she said as she followed him onto asphalt path, then road, more curious and trusting than she’d felt in a very long time.

  for curiosity grew in trust – as if the confidence that you might never fear the fall let you step out further into unknown places, alive, open, always safe.

  ‘come deeper into the gardens,’ rascas seemed to say as he turned to esma, now on the path. he was disappearing into shadow and moonlight, growing so tall he might be a lion.

  and esma followed, skipped along. she felt herself almost flying to keep up with him.

  is this where mother possum comes, she thought, on those nights kara locks the window to her? is this where simon flees when kara answers him with silence? is this where everything that is dirty and messy inside the house escapes to when kara hates it? she sat beside rascas by the vacant duck pond and felt like she was remembering something she’d forgotten for a million years.

  ‘how come you know all about this place?’ she said, and he looked at the water as if knowledge in itself were no reward.

  ‘there’s something else, isn’t there?’ she said.

  he turned his head as a lonely duck went by asleep, face inside warmth so it couldn’t see its reflection on the water.

  ‘you know something else about this place, about these gardens, don’t you?’

  and she was right, although rascas wouldn’t tell her.

  it was something she needed great courage for, something he couldn’t yet risk.

  ‘what is it, rascas? will you tell me?’

  yes, he seemed to say, but not yet.

  ‘when?’

  when you can rest fully in trust. when you can rest in curiosity.

  and he must have anticipated the truth because no sooner had he said it than fear lifted itself again in esma. ‘i should be getting back,’ she said. ‘i almost forgot that phone call.’ and she’d try to tell herself in the morning that her memory of this time in the gardens was the result of a strange hangover (after all, she had skolled two glasses of wine beside the sink in the kitchen the minute she’d entered the party – a kind of hopeful attempt to defeat social awkwardness).

  how could rascas tell her the truth? perhaps he only hoped that by the time the gardens revealed their secrets to her, esma would have grown her courage.

  in the meantime, esma rushed over stairs and into doorways searching for the phone. surely it wasn’t as late as it seemed and chloe hadn’t called yet. worse still, it couldn’t be that… but as she got closer she saw it. kara’s bedroom door was closed and kara was inside. esma tiptoed further and pushed her ear up against the wood. and, yes, kara was in there and she was dialling the numbers on the phone, searching for the message that wasn’t meant to be on there and of course already aware that no message had been taken and left for her, that esma wasn’t at home when she arrived, that esma probably hadn’t been home all evening and who knew where she was or why she’d lied about not going out anywhere,

  or why when something, someone had come along out of nowhere she, esma, had forgotten her promise, simply abandoned her promise to kara,

  just like that.

  ‘simon just takes off when someone better comes along,’ kara had said. ‘he’s always doing it. it’s so… well, it’s hurtful but more than that, it means you can’t have an authentic connection with him. you can’t trust him. there’s no chance of real intimacy.’

  that’s what kara had said one tuesday night when simon had gulped down the lentil casserole she’d just put on the table in front of him. candles and yogic music, it was the tuesday night unofficial weekly house dinner. jonathan had arrived at the front door unannounced and when he made it to the kitchen said, ‘hey simon, do you want to come down the road? scott’s just bought some new cymbals for the drum kit,’ and simon, before he could look apologetically at kara, answered a spontaneous, ‘yeah, i’ll just finish this.’

  ‘he’s got no idea,’ kara said, clearing the table ten minutes later. ‘i have no choice but to close myself off to him.’

  and it was in this memory that esma froze, that fear rose up in her and curiosity, if it ever existed, became a lost vague murmur. ‘what have i done?’ she thought holding her knees against her chest as she lay in bed. ‘now i’ve broken kara’s trust and everything will be lost.’

  for everything was how esma saw the world. everything and nothing. the world was bursting and full and forever, or it was blank and useless and dead.

  eternalism and nihilism, she couldn’t get beyond them.

  or at least not yet, not now, as she lay crunched beneath the blankets, wishing for other, for opposite, for now to be last night again, for her to have not crossed the road to the gardens, to have not gone to the party at the boys’ house, to have not said yes to simon’s invitation after all, to be right back here again,

  two nights ago or one week ago, or any time before.

  safe in the warmth of kara. safe, in the promise of home.

  for although esma often felt lost, stupid, stiff around kara, there were those moments of connection, even intimacy, that esma experienced and couldn’t dismiss.

  the two forget-me-nots kara picked from a bush and left on a piece of
paper at esma’s door one night ‘because their beautiful colour reminds me of your eyes, esma.’ the promise to bind esma’s first awkward poems in half the silk she, kara, had been given by a cambodian medical student. the common sympathy of grief when kara spoke of her father and asked straight away, ‘do you still miss jen, esma?’ and, of course, that time late one night when kara had said, ‘i couldn’t bear to lose you too, esma.’

  here was the point at which esma realised her betrayal because although there were many points at which she and kara diverged,

  this was the one at which they joined.

  abandonment. a common feeling of loss.

  and knowing each other’s vulnerability they’d agreed to make a home.

  morning, discomfort and simon’s bleary but usual friendly face in the kitchen doorway.

  ‘hi, esma. did you have a good time last night?’

  and esma, burning toast, pushed open the window to shoo out the smoke.

  ‘sorry,’ she said.

  ‘that’s okay. did you have a good time?’

  ‘yeah,’ she almost whispered back.

  ‘yeah, samantha said she enjoyed seeing you. she said you had to run off early though. she wanted to ask you something about writing a letter for the animal rights group.’

  ‘she wants me to write a letter?’

  ‘yeah, you know it’s the group she’s involved with. that’s how i met her at the gig – they had a table there with information about animal rights and stuff. anyway, they have a campaign against a puppy farm.’

  ‘what’s a puppy farm?’

  ‘it’s a place where puppies are bred like it’s some kind of factory and they’re kept in pretty awful conditions, concrete floors, no proper food. it’s about making money obviously. the puppies are sold to pet shops mostly.’

  ‘and what about the parents? the mother dogs?’

  ‘they stay there like prisoners, locked up and used to create more litters until they’re too exhausted or old or sick. then they’re usually killed.’

  ‘oh, simon, that’s awful.’

  ‘i know it is… and something has to be done.’