I pick up the phone and dial. It’s answered by the nursing sister on duty. She can’t help me. I’ll need to call back after the New Year break and talk to Mrs Adams, who handles the accounts. I thank her and hang up.
Two minutes later I pick up the phone, press redial and she answers again.
‘You don’t have a Rosanna Martino there, by any chance?’
The heat is like a smothering blanket. I sit in the car watching the old people out on the lawn under the trees, just sitting staring. I wonder if one of them is Rosanna.
There is no one in the entrance hall. No directions, just the lingering odour of old food and old people, cheap talc and Sorbolene. I manage to catch a nurse as she strides past.
‘Mrs Martino?’
‘Third door on the left,’ she says without slowing her pace.
My shoes sound stealthy on the lino as I creep down the hall. I peek around the door.
‘I’d like to know who the hell put me in here,’ calls the woman leaning forward in her bed to get a better view of me. ‘There’s nothing wrong with me.’
I approach her bed and see the thick plait, now grey as silk, curled across her shoulder and shrewd dark eyes that take in every detail.
‘Rosanna?’
She looks at me for a long time, right into my eyes. ‘Have you come to take me home?’ she asks, stretching out her hands towards me.
‘Do you know who I am?’
‘Of course,’ she says with a smile. ‘Adriana.’
It’s the first time I’ve heard my name spoken this way. It’s beautiful.
‘I knew you would come,’ she says, taking both my hands in hers. ‘I knew you would come one day. Sit here beside me.’
She takes my face in her hands and holds it in front of her while she studies me and kisses both my cheeks. Her expression is radiant; there is such love in her eyes. Suddenly, she says plaintively, ‘When is Jack coming? He hasn’t been for weeks.’
‘Jack?’ I sit up in shock. Has no one told her Jack is dead?
‘Oh, you know Jack. You said he had beautiful brown eyes. Che bel figliolo.’
I take her hand. ‘Rosanna, I’m so sorry. Jack has died. He died a year ago.’
Her eyes fill with tears. ‘Oh, yes, I forgot. Someone told me. I get muddled.’ Her face has clouded over, no signs of the happiness of a few minutes ago. She looks at me closely. ‘You’re not Adriana, are you.’
‘I’m Adrienne, Jack and Isabelle’s daughter.’
She suddenly becomes restless, blinking and looking around the room worriedly as though it’s crowded with memories and she just needs to find the right one. ‘Jack and Isabelle’s daughter,’ she repeats.
I stroke her hand and say gently, ‘I’m living at the farm. At Duffy’s Creek.’
She brightens. ‘We used to swim in the creek. We washed our hair and lay on the rocks in the sun. Bella and Rosa, the olive sisters, they used to call us. I didn’t care – better than the salami sisters!’ she laughs. ‘Bella hated it.’ The light fades and she gives a heavy sigh. ‘Bella hated everything we had and wanted what she couldn’t have. She took everything.’
‘Well, the house is still there, and the blue rug, and the olive trees, and the creek, of course. It’s all still there, probably hasn’t changed a bit.’
‘I knew who I was then,’ she says with a slight smile. ‘I was 100 per cent me. I have these little strokes now. The doctor said they’re like little … hmm … little …’ She contorts her face in a childlike pose of intense concentration. ‘Grenades! They blow my mind,’ she says, with the chuckle of a well-worn joke. ‘So, if I forget things you’ll have to forgive me. I’m starting to forget more than I remember, I think. I’ll remember you, though.’
I am rather lost for words. It’s not that I find this somewhat circular conversation difficult – it’s not unlike the ones I have with myself – but there is something about Rosanna’s presence. I thought I would have a hundred questions for her, but somehow they don’t seem as important any more. A part of me knows that many of my questions are simply too personal, too confronting, to be asked outright. I will have to be patient. I will have to wait and see what comes my way. At the moment it seems enough just to be here, to be with her.
I’ve never been a great one for too much hugging and kissing but I put my arms around her now and she hugs me tight. She hugs me as though she’ll never let me go. I feel I am somehow already intimate with her, as though she’s part of me. As though we’ve hugged a thousand times. It’s as if I’m meeting a part of myself. Her skin is my skin. It’s something I’ve never felt before. I’m amazed and devastated. I feel my face start to crumple the way it did when I was a child before I learnt to weep silently and, later, secretly. If I let myself loose I could lay my head on her lap and howl down the lost years. She holds me in her arms as though she’s comforted me my whole life. She comforts me in a way my mother never did.
I don’t know how to tell her I haven’t come for her.
When I get home I start to quietly unravel. There seems to be nothing to stop me now. When I call Joy I’m crying so much she doesn’t recognise my voice at first. She arrives within minutes.
She finds me curled on the couch, tears streaming from me, a torrent of grief. She sits beside me, wraps her arms around me and holds me without a word. I can’t speak. I don’t know where to start. A long time passes before my voice croaks out the only explanation that comes, ‘Rosanna.’
I hear her sharp intake of breath. ‘You found her?’
‘Yes.’
‘She told you?’
‘Told me what?’
She looks into my face. ‘She didn’t tell you anything?’
‘She said she’d had some small strokes,’ I grab a wad of tissues from the box Joy brought with her and give my face a pat, my nose a good blow. ‘She’s in good spirits but she is somewhat befuddled and forgetful.’
Joy gets up and opens a window to let the cool night air in. Insects hurl themselves against the flyscreen, desperate to get into this stifling room. ‘That’s the trouble with secrets, sooner or later they get forgotten. I can imagine Rosanna wanting to forget what’s gone on.’ She stands at the window, looking out into the darkness. ‘Somehow I always knew I’d have to be the one to tell you, some day.’ She pauses, as though looking for a way out. Seeing none, she settles herself back on the sofa.
‘Adrienne, I knew Rosanna well – in fact, we were good friends. We both worked at the hospital and I used to come up here and see her quite often. I would bring my eldest, Sammy, with me when he was a baby; she was very good with him. Then something changed. Isabelle came back to live at the farm with her for a time. Isabelle was a very different person – private, rather aloof.
‘Rosanna suddenly left her job and when I came to see her, Isabelle told me she wasn’t well. She was quite off-putting. The same thing happened the next time. I went a third time and I knew they were home but they didn’t answer the door. I saw Isabelle several times in town and noticed that she was pregnant.
‘Then one evening I found Jack banging on my door. He said that Rosanna needed me urgently.’ She stops and gives a deep sigh. ‘I think we both need a cup of tea.’ She gets up and goes into the kitchen to put the kettle on. I follow her and sit down at the table under the 100-watt halo. It’s too bright tonight. She makes the tea slowly and deliberately, warms the teapot, spoons in the tea. ‘Would you like a nice piece of toast, dear?’ I would.
Joy sips her tea. I eat my toast. ‘I’ve been at a lot of births but nothing like yours. You decided to come a bit early and no one knew what the heck to do. Good Lord, I can still see Isabelle’s face, white as my mother’s best sheets. Jack was none too happy about my being there, I can tell you. Probably thought that would be the end of their little secret. And perhaps it should’ve been. I’ve always wondered if the fact of me knowing the truth is what made them stay away. I’ve never told a soul before today, but this has gone on far too long. The thing
is, Isabelle wasn’t pregnant at all.’
‘Isabelle wasn’t pregnant! What on earth do you mean?’
Joy slides her hand across the table and places it over mine. It’s warm and soft from clasping the mug of tea. ‘What I’m trying to tell you, in a roundabout way, is that Rosanna is your mother. They planned it all. Jack was your father, but Rosanna is your mother.’
My hands fly to my face; it’s warm and dark and safe in here. No one can see me. No one can hear me. There is silence. And as I sit in that silence I feel relief. It is as though I have been waiting all my life to hear the truth and here it is, laid out on the kitchen table, golden as toast.
Twelve
ON HIS RETURN from the north coast, Jack was delighted to be greeted affectionately by Isabelle, to be shown the cleared vegetable garden and the abundance of sweet marjoram and wild sage that had thrived on the neglect of the past year. To have her tear open purple figs for him to taste – a gift of early summer rains – reminded him of his early days with Isabelle. His spirits lifted to see his wife so light-hearted. He had wondered if she would ever recover from the loss of the baby she had wanted so much, yet never spoken of.
Rosanna and Isabelle had made Jack a homecoming meal of rabbit stew – Rosanna’s specialty. Three weeks in a primitive hut, living in a way that had once been his entire way of life, now seemed brutal. He had come to dread meals of canned food that had once seemed palatable. His companions took little interest in what they ate – often not even bothering to heat their food – just as long as there was plenty of beer to wash it down. He missed the sense of celebration around meal times and the flavours, tastes and textures he’d discovered at the Martinos’ table. He craved a single sip of the sweet dark caffè Isabelle made for him each morning. It occurred to him that food had become a seductress he could not resist.
Jack’s homecoming felt as though it was the start of something new. Isabelle seemed more attentive. She waited, just a little shyly, for him in the double bed while he bathed and shaved his bristles. She softened in his arms in a way he had almost forgotten, all of which made her proposal even more of a shock than it might have otherwise been.
‘Rosanna and I have been talking,’ she began hesitantly. ‘She knows what we want and about the loss, of course. And there was the problem before that, so …’ she trailed off. ‘Rosanna is younger, and she’s strong. So, this is what we talked about. The problem … and Rosanna has offered to help.’
Offered to help with what? Jack was mystified. Isabelle was often inclined to talk in fragments but he could usually connect them together. Several of her words were smudged in a way that made him suspect she had ‘fortified’ herself for this discussion.
‘What is it you want us to do?’ he asked.
She was silent for a moment and then, her voice little more than a whisper, said, ‘I want you to be with Rosa.’
‘Be with Rosa? Marry her?’ he said with alarm. He pulled away from her. Isabelle sat up, her face strangely luminescent in the moonlight.
‘Not marry. Have a child with her. For us.’
Jack sat up, stunned at first, disbelieving, but then a fury threaded its way through his body like hot wire until he was consumed with rage. He leapt from the bed and paced the floor. His anger had him by the throat. He opened the French doors, walked out onto the verandah and stood staring into the night for a long time. He wasn’t thinking about what to say or how to respond. His mind was a tangle of anger and disjointed thoughts that scrambled over one another, vying for attention. He remembered his moment of acute clarity at the wedding as he stood beside Isabelle contemplating the plastic bride and groom and his sense that he was interchangeable with a thousand different bridegrooms. Jack was beginning to realise that Isabelle was the one with the grand plans and those around her must play their parts.
When he returned to the room Isabelle had gone. She was back in her childhood bed.
By the morning his anger was a hard lump sitting in his gut. He felt used and manipulated, outraged that Isabelle could think she could lend him to her sister like a stud bull. He had the car packed for their journey back north before breakfast, hurried Isabelle along and left without making eye contact with Rosanna.
They drove in silence for several hours, then Jack pulled off the main highway onto a side road to have a break and stretch his legs. It was hot and the road was dusty. He pulled up under an expansive plane tree that offered shade for the car.
Jack got out, walked around the car and opened the door for Isabelle. Without waiting for her to get out, he went over to the tree, the girth of which could only have been spanned by two people meeting at the fingers. Two people in agreement, reaching out to one another. He rubbed his hands over the surface, feeling its roughness on his palms. There was a moment of solace in the warmth and solid feel of the massive tree.
He took a pack of cigarettes out of his shirt pocket and pulled one out. He felt Isabelle standing behind him. ‘Why do you want to do this, Isabelle?’
‘I don’t feel that there is any choice.’
He turned to face her. ‘How can there be no choice? We don’t have to have a child! We were happy before – we can be happy again.’ He felt around his trouser pockets for matches.
She bit her lip. ‘It’s not enough.’
‘I’m not enough?’
Isabelle looked at her feet. She carefully rearranged the thick dust on the verge of road with the toe of her shoe. Jack struck the match and inhaled deeply. They both watched the dust being pushed this way and that as though it were something important, not to be missed.
‘There is no point in being married if you don’t have children,’ she said finally.
‘No point!’ Jack exploded. Isabelle flinched. ‘I love you, Isabelle. It doesn’t make any difference to me whether you can have children or not.’
She stamped her foot, creating a small cloud of dust. ‘You don’t understand! It matters to me. What will people think if we don’t have children? We’ll be outcasts for the rest of our lives. We’ll have no children, no grandchildren … we will never stop being different.’
Jack looked at her for a long time. He had never heard her speak so forcefully. He was hurt for a hundred different reasons. And he wanted to hurt her.
‘So you want me to have sex with your sister. What do you think people might think about that? Do you think they might consider that a bit “different” – perhaps just a little immoral? Because I certainly do. What about the child? What are we going to tell it? It’s not going to look like you, you know.’
She stood quite still, her head bowed. She made no sound. Her tears were raindrops in the dust. A magpie swooped down and perched on a bough of the tree. It filled its chest and warbled as though it thought them in need of a song. Jack felt like throwing a rock at it.
‘Come on, get in the car,’ he said, grinding his cigarette into the dust. Isabelle walked back miserably and got in the passenger’s side. Jack turned the car around and headed back to the main road.
They sat at the intersection with the motor running for ten minutes. He looked neither north towards home nor south towards the farm but straight ahead. He thought about his life before Isabelle. He thought about Rosanna shouting at him and the strength of her blow to his head. He knew he had let Marge down. He had let Dot down. He had let Franco down. Franco and his dreams. Several cars passed by but still he sat there. Finally, he pulled out onto the highway and headed back the way they came.
By the time they reached the farm he was too tired to maintain his anger. He was gratified to see that Rosanna looked quite nervous to see them return. She was without her usual bravado. He had a nap, made some tea and sat on the front verandah. Isabelle was nowhere to be seen.
Rosanna came outside and sat on the steps.
‘Bella has gone to keep Dot company tonight,’ she said, not looking at him.
‘I see. So how do you feel about all this?’ Jack regretted the question immediately, seeing he ha
d left himself open for further insult.
Rosanna turned to look at him. ‘I want to do it for Bella. This is the most important thing in the world to her.’ She tilted her chin towards him. ‘Your work is a lot less than mine, Mister.’
They held each other’s gaze for a long moment.
Jack looked away first. ‘Fair enough. Just tell me when and where.’ He put his hands behind his head and leant back in his chair with what he hoped looked like cool indifference.
‘First, we will have a nice meal,’ said Rosanna. ‘Let’s be civil to each other.’
‘It’s not necessary, really. We can just get down to business.’
Rosanna turned to face him. She leaned forward a little and he could see the soft flesh of her breasts lift under her cotton dress. She had taken to wearing perfume since her trip and he caught a whiff of it now. It made him feel nauseous. She gave a playful pout. ‘Please?’
She went into the kitchen. Jack waited. Finally, she came out onto the verandah carrying a basket. She handed it to him, went back into the house and returned with a rug.
‘We’ll go to the river,’ she announced and went down the front steps with every expectation that he would follow. He did. He had never been invited to the river before; it was Rosanna and Isabelle’s domain. During the summer they went almost every evening to bathe and wash their hair in order to save water. Rosanna swam there even during winter.
She stopped in the garden to strip a lettuce and pick a few ripe tomatoes before they set off across the paddock. The moon was rising as they reached the river. Rosanna spread the rug on the grass and took the basket from him. She took out a bottle of Franco’s vino rosso, unscrewed the top and with an expert hand flicked off the drop of oil that sealed the wine. Jack sat down on the rug. She dropped down beside him, took a swig from the bottle and handed it to him.
The Olive Sisters Page 16