The House of Memories

by Monica McInerney

  After Lucas went home again, the emails between him and Felix increased. There were intense discussions about communism versus capitalism and the merits of cricket compared to football. The books kept arriving. Poetry from Byron, Yeats and Wordsworth. The Spot books. The Mr Men tales. Lucas was no literary snob. Aidan had to put up another bookshelf in Felix’s room. Felix emailed Lucas to say thank you and to remark that his bedroom looked more like a library these days.

  Wonderful! Lucas emailed back. A boy can never have too many books. Wait till you see what I’m sending you for your second birthday …

  But then —

  When —

  Afterwards —

  After it happened, as soon as Lucas got my message in the middle of his night, he wrote to me. On paper, not by email. It arrived by courier. One line of writing, on thick parchment paper, with the fox drawing on the letterhead.

  My dearest Ella, I am devastated for you both. I am here if you need me. Lucas.

  It said everything I needed to hear. It made me cry for hours. I had already been crying for hours.

  Almost twenty months had passed since that day. I wasn’t arriving in London unannounced. Lucas had emailed a fortnight earlier: Where are you now, Ella?

  I was in Margaret River, in Western Australia. My contract as a casual worker at one of the largest wineries in the area was up. I’d been offered an extension but I was ready to move. Since it happened, I hadn’t stayed anywhere for long. I’d left Canberra within weeks. I’d moved to Melbourne, then Sydney, before I’d heard about the winery job. I’d been there since.

  I’d like to see you, Lucas had written. Please let me buy your airfare.

  I wanted to see Lucas too, but I didn’t need his help with the airfare. I’d saved every cent I’d earned. There was nothing I wanted or needed beyond the basics. I booked my ticket the next day. It felt exactly the right thing to do, after months of feeling like I was living in fog.

  Even flying into London that morning had felt right. Because I thought being here again might help? Because I had loved it once, and had been happy here? I think I hoped that being back would help me or force me to feel something other than despair.

  Come and see me as soon as you get here, would you? Come straight from the airport.

  Lucas wasn’t being mysterious. He was always matter-of-fact like that.

  You do know you are welcome to stay for as long as you need to? Mi casa es su casa.

  My house is your house. He had said that to me many times over the years. To his many student lodgers as well, I knew. Aidan had always laughed at his terrible Spanish pronunciation. Lucas was a genius historian but a bad linguist. Thank you, Lucas, I wrote back.

  I walked the short distance from Paddington Station to his street. Twenty-seven years had passed since my first visit to Lucas’s house. He’d been in his mid-thirties then. He was in his early sixties now. Yet he always looked the same to me. I was the one who’d changed most over the years, from that seven-year-old fox-stealing curly-haired child to the thirty-four-year-old woman I now was. I’d been a tall, skinny child. I was still skinny, still taller than average. My dark-brown hair had been long until a year ago. I’d cut it two days after I arrived in Margaret River and kept it short since.

  The houses on his street still reminded me of wedding cakes. His blue door was still in need of painting. There was a new door knocker, in the shape of a fox. I only had to knock once. The door opened and there he was, smiling at me. His hair was still a big mop of unruly curls, a Fox family trait. He still wore glasses that could have come from a museum. His baggy, grubby clothes might have belonged to a gardener. Seeing him standing there, so familiar and so solid, I couldn’t help myself. I started to cry.

  ‘Ella.’ He held me tight, waited until my tears slowed, then took a step back. ‘Come in.’

  If he was my aunt rather than my uncle, it would have been different, I’m sure. It would have been all talk, no silences. I’m so sad for you, Ella. You poor thing. How can you even begin to get over something like that? All the words I’d heard from so many people in the past twenty months, heard so many times that I couldn’t hear them any more. I hadn’t told the people around me in the winery in Margaret River what had happened, why I was there. I didn’t tell them that I was an editor, not a vineyard assistant turned restaurant kitchenhand. I could have got work in my own industry. I’d had many offers after word got around, but I needed everything to change. I couldn’t have any reminders of what my life had once been like.

  Time and again, people who did know what had happened suggested that keeping busy would help the healing process. It’s not true, you know. Nothing helps. Because whatever I do with my body, my brain keeps ticking away, going over and over every second of that day, trying to find a new way of remembering, another way of changing what happened, winding itself into knots. That was – that is – the torture of it. Because it doesn’t matter how many times I examine it, how often I try to rewrite that day in my mind, the ending is the same. And no amount of physical work helps: outside pruning grapevines, rod-tying, picking grapes, or the work I did once I moved into the winery complex itself: washing floors, doing dishes, waitressing, being a kitchen assistant, working any shift on offer, doing overtime uncomplainingly, working the longest hours I could and spending any free time I had walking to tire myself out, to try to exhaust my body so my brain would have no choice but to sleep as well … Nothing works.

  ‘You look well,’ Lucas said.

  He was being kind. I knew I looked exhausted. I probably had mascara all over my face now too. I tried to smile. ‘You too. Have you been working out?’

  It was an old joke between us – Lucas would sooner fly to the moon than go to a gym. He grinned, running his fingers through his curls, ruffling them more than usual. He always did that when attention turned to him. I imagined he was like that at the university too, tousling his hair during his lectures, getting closer to the image of a mad history professor with every sentence.

  ‘I like the jumper,’ I said. It was a jumper I’d knitted – tried to knit for him – twenty-one years ago, when I was thirteen.

  I’d found the pattern in an old magazine and got our next-door neighbour to teach me how to make it. It was supposed to have a design of a fox – of course – on the front. I made a mess of it, unpicking and reknitting it so many times that each strand of wool was covered in grime from my increasingly sweaty fingers. I had trouble with the sleeves and the turn-down collar, and as for the fox design … By the time I finished, the creature on the front looked more like E.T. than a fox. But I proudly sent it off, wrapped in Christmas paper. In return, Lucas not only sent me a fax telling me how much he loved it and how warm it was, he also sent a photo of himself wearing it. Charlie had taken a great interest in the photo. He kindly said nothing about the jumper’s design, but focused on Lucas himself. It was the first time he’d seen a photo of him. ‘Does he look like your dad? Like your dad would if he was alive, I mean.’

  Lucas and my dad had been very alike. Charlie was right, I realised. I now had an idea of what my dad would have looked like if he hadn’t gone off to Canada and got killed.

  I noticed Mum picking up the photo too, but she didn’t say anything to me about Lucas’s similarity to Dad. She did say something to me about the fox resembling an alien, though.

  ‘Never mind. Practice makes perfect,’ Walter said. ‘You could try to do a jumper for Jess next.’

  ‘No thanks,’ I’d said. My knitting days were over.

  ‘I get offers for it every day,’ Lucas said now. ‘It’s a work of art.’

  ‘Art? That’s one word for it.’

  I followed Lucas into his withdrawing room off the hallway. It was messier than ever.

  ‘Drink?’ he asked. ‘It’s night-time for you and your body clock, isn’t it?’

  I shook my head. I’d stopped drinking alcohol. ‘But tea would be great, thanks.’

  We went into the kitchen. It
was filthy, every surface covered in dirty dishes, saucepans and plates. I tried not to react, or wince, when he pulled out two grubby cups from the crowded sink. When he reached for a milk jug that I could see had something like gravy on the side, I couldn’t stop myself.

  ‘Sorry, Lucas.’ I took the cups from him and washed them out, followed by the jug, followed by the kettle, and then, for good measure, I washed out the sink too. Lucas watched it all with a half smile. He’d never taken offence when I expressed disgust or astonishment at the squalor he and his students lived in. He just took a seat at the cluttered, dirty kitchen table – my fingers itched to clean it as well – watching me with his usual amused, affectionate expression.

  ‘It’s lovely to see you, Ella. I did miss having a maid.’

  ‘This house needs a bulldozer, not a maid.’

  ‘Speaking of which, how is your mother?’

  ‘Very well, thank you,’ I said, trying not to smile as I searched for a biscuit in one of the tins and found a few mouldy crumbs instead.

  ‘Still mad as ever, I suppose?’

  I nodded.

  ‘And still famous?’

  ‘Getting more famous every day too.’ It was true. In the past six years, after a chance encounter with a TV crew in a Melbourne shopping centre, my mother had somehow become a household name in Australia. Walter was now her full-time manager. It was unfathomable to me. My mother had barely boiled an egg during my childhood. Now she was a celebrity TV chef.

  ‘Charlie seems as happy as ever in Boston.’

  I nodded again. Charlie the happy house-husband, father of four and adored/adoring husband of Lucy, a sales representative for a medical company. They’d met when Charlie was seventeen and in the US as a Rotary exchange student. After becoming penpals, they’d met again when they were both in their mid-twenties and Lucy was visiting Australia. They’d fallen in love, married and immediately begun having children. Their youngest was four years old, the oldest nearly eleven. Lucy worked full-time while Charlie stayed at home, in an arrangement that suited them both.

  ‘I do enjoy his family reports,’ Lucas said. ‘Thank you for adding me to his mailing list. The one about the children at the dentist was like a comedy sketch.’

  I couldn’t think of anything to say to that. I’d stopped reading Charlie’s weekly emails about his family. I was still in touch with Charlie about other things, of course. We emailed often, both of us carefully choosing our words, avoiding certain subjects. Charlie did all his communicating via computer, late at night, once the kids and Lucy were in bed. His family reports were only emailed to a few people – Walter, Mum, Jess, Lucas and me. They were his way of staying sane, he’d confessed to me once. They always had the same subject line, a play on words from Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon stories. The original began: It’s been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon. Charlie’s was: It’s been a noisy week in Boston. I missed his stories of family life. But I couldn’t read them any more.

  ‘And Jess?’ Lucas asked. ‘How is she?’

  At the sink, midway through pouring the boiling water, I stiffened.

  He must have noticed. He waited a moment, then repeated his question.

  I turned. ‘Lucas, I’m sorry. I can’t —’

  He spoke again in the same calm tone. ‘Is she still writing her autobiography?’

  I knew that piece of news about Jess years earlier had amused him. Jess had been writing her life story – in diary form – for the past six years, since she was sixteen years old. She’d always been convinced she’d be a musical theatre star one day. ‘I’ll be too busy when I’m famous to write anything, so I’m doing it now to save time,’ she’d told us all. She’d never been secretive about it, either. Other teenage girls probably hid their diaries from their families. Jess did formal readings from hers. They were written as she spoke, in a stream of consciousness. The title was the first line of each day’s diary entry: Hi, it’s Jess!

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said, not looking at him. It was the truth. I had no idea where Jess was or what she was doing. I’d asked my mother not to mention her. She’d eventually, reluctantly, agreed.

  Lucas didn’t ask any more questions about her. Another reason to love him. An aunt might have kept on at me, as my mother had, many times. Please, Ella, she’s your little sister. Your family. You have to find a way to forgive her. You have to be able to move on somehow.

  But how could I move on? Where was there for me to go?

  There was one other person for Lucas to ask about. As I brought over the tea, I waited for him to mention Aidan. He didn’t. Not yet. But he would, I knew. I could almost feel Aidan’s presence in the kitchen between us. We’d met for the first time in here.

  Lucas took a sip, pulled a face and put down his cup. ‘Ella, it’s terrible. The cup’s too clean.’

  I swatted his arm affectionately, glad of the change in topic. Our conversation turned to general subjects, my flight, the London weather, his own work. Yes, he was very busy, as always, he told me. Yes, the house was still full of lodgers. Four at present, with a waiting list. Yes, they were all double-jobbing: PhD students by day, tutors by night. Geniuses in the making, all four of them.

  One was a literature student, he said. ‘You’ll like her. Very cheerful girl. She has the most extraordinary hair. Bright pink one week, blue the next. You’ll have lots in common too, books, words, grammar —’

  It wasn’t the time to tell him I’d given up editing. ‘She sounds great,’ I said.

  ‘And you and work, Ella? Any plans yet?’

  It didn’t matter that I’d just stepped off a long flight. Lucas was always to the point like this. Another thing I loved about him. ‘No, not yet. I’ll register with some temp agencies tomorrow.’

  ‘Don’t.’

  ‘Don’t?’

  ‘Come and work for me again. You already know I pay well. Promptly, too.’

  ‘You don’t need to pay me. As soon as I finish this tea I’m going to scrub this place from top to bottom as a service to society.’

  He smiled. ‘That’s not the kind of work I meant. And that’s not why I asked you to come to see me.’ He stood up, walked across the room and shut the door. When he returned and sat down opposite me, his expression was serious.

  ‘Ella, I need your help.’

  Chapter Two

  From: Charlie Baum

  To: undisclosed recipients

  Subject: It’s Been a Noisy Week in Boston

  The weekly report from the Baum trenches is as follows:

  Sophie (10): Planning eleventh birthday party. Still. The invite list has changed twenty times. She’s having more fun than a nightclub doorman.

  Ed (8): Maths homework last night. He counted all the way to 100 and on to 200 and beyond. He reached 253 and sighed. ‘Counting never stops, does it?’

  Reilly (6): Teacher reported discussion in class today about religious ceremonies around the world. She asked why Easter is celebrated. Reilly’s answer: ‘Jesus died at Easter, right? And he was on a cross. And the cross was made of wood. And the wood was brown. And chocolate is brown. So that’s why we eat chocolate. And the reason the chocolate is given out by the Easter Bunny and we have chocolate bunnies is because Jesus was up on the cross, right? And below him, on the ground, running around everywhere, were rabbits. Lots and lots of rabbits.’

  It appears Lucy and I may need to rethink our ‘no religious education’ policy.

  Tim (4): Bathtime. Emptied entire contents of Lucy’s henna shampoo into water while my back was turned for seconds. We now have one very brown son.

  Lucy (36): Reaching new levels of overtime. Tired. Tired but happy. I hope.

  Charlie (36): Current weight ninety-five kilos. Diet producing extraordinary results of an invisible nature. Meals cooked for the family this week: spaghetti bolognaise, spaghetti carbonara, pizza, boeuf bourguignon. Meals eaten by cook this week: salad, salad, salad, salad. Odds on cook falling asleep in next salad he is forced to eat: exce
llent.

  Snip the cat (kitten age): Slept, played, slept, chased fly. Caught one mouse. Ate one mouse, excluding tail. Tail left on kitchen table. Children still retching. Father also.

  Until next week, everyone please stay sane.

  Charlie xx

  From: Charlie Baum

  To: Lucy Baum

  Subject: re: Modern Couples

  Yes, aren’t we modern, sending each other emails rather than leaving notes on the fridge? Thank you for your probing questions. Yes, I remembered Reilly’s doctor appointment, tomorrow at four p.m. Yes, I will book Sophie in for eye test. I wonder will she be able to find her own way there? (Hahaha. It was my sense of humour that first attracted you to me, wasn’t it? Wasn’t it??)

  Two questions for you now:

  Q1. Do you know how much I love you?

  Answer: Lots.

  Q2. Do I appreciate how hard you work?

  Answer: Yes, I do.

  See you tonight. I’ll be the fat guy in the kitchen with all the kids.

  C xx

  From: Charlie Baum

  To: Ella O’Hanlon

  Subject: You and flight

  Dear Ellamentary,

  How was the flight? How is London? How is Lucas? Thinking of you.

  Charlemagne

  xx

  From: Charlie Baum

  To: Lucas Fox

  Subject: Ella

  Thanks for the update. Yes, it’s definitely worth a try. Good luck.

  C

  From: Charlie Baum

  To: Aidan O’Hanlon

  Subject: Next week

  Aidan, I’ll take the eleven a.m. train, arriving Washington five-thirty p.m. See you at the hotel bar at six? My cell is +1 9173236740.