by Joanna Baker
While I was enjoying feeling clever, Chess had another idea and added it to my list of instructions. ‘And after that you could talk to Craig Wilson.’
I made an outraged sound. I was about to say something when I heard a movement in the kitchen. Alec put his head through the door. He didn’t say anything, just saw where we were and disappeared again, but it was enough to scare me away. On top of what we’d already been through this morning, the idea of talking to Alec, pretending I didn’t notice how drunk and dirty he’d been, trying not to let Chess feel ashamed of him, would all just be too much.
‘Look, Chess, I’ll see what I can do. I better go. I won’t take the bike. A walk will be good.’ Before I finished I unfolded myself from the chair and moved towards the steps.
‘OK. Bye,’ said Chess.
I got to the mangy lawn, feeling her father watching me from the window and thinking he might come out again. When that happened I wanted to be well away. It was all I could do to stop myself from breaking into a run.
But before I could get much further Chess called out to me, an uncertain sounding, ‘Oh!’, as if she’d remembered something. I had to turn to face her. ‘Thank you for coming, Matt. It was nice having you.’
That was it, like a bad actress reading from a play. Is this what she really thought she was supposed to say, just because some kid had come for a lemonade? Chess was standing in her pencil posture. When she saw me noticing she moved her arms, trying not to do it.
Well, you had to feel sorry for her. Kindly, I said, ‘Chess, doesn’t anyone ever visit you?’
‘Of course they do. People visit us.’ As my question sank in she looked offended. More than offended, hurt. ‘What do you mean?’
I could’ve kicked myself. It had been a typical Matt Tingle comment. It was supposed to help but really made everything worse.
‘No. I just …’ I stared at her with the open-mouthed fish face that I do at moments like this.
Chess was saying, ‘Leanne Summers came around to do that maths thing, and Peter Reagan.’
‘Last April?’ It was shock that made me say that. Was that really the last visitor she’d had? As soon as I said it, I wished I hadn’t. Quickly I went on. ‘Anyway, I better go. Sorry. I didn’t mean … Look, I’ll see you.’ I flapped an arm meaninglessly and began to walk away again.
Behind me she said, ‘How can a car be dark blue and white at the same time?’
Again I had to turn around. But I just stared at her, unable to get my head around the sudden change of topic, and not trusting myself to speak.
Chess was a bit flushed and was frowning wildly in a way that didn’t really match the words, but all she wanted to talk about was another puzzle. She said, ‘No magic. No fantasy. Just logic.’
‘Well it …’
I stopped. She wasn’t going to tell me the answer to her little riddle. Chess didn’t operate like that. With one question she’d slipped back into the teacher thing, and I felt I owed it to her to let her play. She took a step back to indicate that the lesson was at an end and this was in the nature of homework. She repeated the question. If there’d been a blackboard she would’ve written it up and tapped at it with the chalk.
‘How can a car be dark blue and white at the same time? Give it some thought. I think the truth to this whole thing lies in the answer.’
Chapter 13
There were some things I knew about Jeanette Carmody already. For a while, when I was seven, she came every Friday night, while my parents rehearsed with the Indigo Valley Singers. I knew how she’d seemed to me then, tall and shapeless, with long dark hair, yellowish skin and thick black eyebrows. The only facts I knew were that she had lived in Charles Street, was run over at the age of sixteen, and that for years after that happened, Mum would trot around there about once a month to talk about it.
Today I was going to go with her.
***
As soon as I left Chess’s it started raining, but I didn’t mind that. It was warm and I liked rain. A four k walk. Three-quarters of an hour to plan my approach.
When I got home I went to the laundry for dry clothes, then to the kitchen. Mum was there by herself reading the iPad among the remains of lunch. Dad would’ve been in the shed. I threw my shoes in a corner, grabbed a piece of left-over cabana, and plopped into a chair.
‘How did it go?’ said Mum.
‘OK.’ It was important not to say too much at this stage, otherwise she’d know I was up to something. Mum had to think this was all her own idea.
Sure enough, she wanted to make me talk. ‘Wilsons all right?’
‘Yeah. S’pose.’
‘It took a while.’
‘I’ve been at Chess’s.’
Mum wriggled forward in her chair. ‘That’s good, Matt.’ She loved signs that I was pally with Chess. Now she’d want to know how Alec was.
I fed her some information. ‘Alec came out. Chess was heating up a pie for him.’
‘How did he look?’
‘Bad.’
Mum made a worried sound with her tongue.
‘I walked home.’
‘Oh, that’s good.’ She was pleased about this, too. Exercise.
‘It was nice in the rain, you know, thinking and everything.’
‘Good, Matt.’
Weak isn’t it. Our conversations are always like this.
I gave her a bit more, leading her towards the topic of the Carmodys. ‘I went out round the bottom of town, for a bit of extra exercise.’
‘Really? Which way?’
Perfect. ‘Charles Street.’
I got some French stick to go with the cabana. Crumbs went everywhere.
‘Matt.’
I said it for her. ‘Use a plate.’ There was one on the table. I didn’t have to get up.
‘Did you see Mrs Abercrombie?’
‘No. She wasn’t out the front today.’
‘Mmmm.’ Mum’s eyes were wandering back to her iPad. I put my feet up on a second chair and leaned back. ‘Bit funny at the Carmodys’ though.’
This had her attention straight back. ‘What?’
I shrugged and sounded bored. ‘I dunno.’
‘What do you mean, funny?’ insisted Mum.
‘Nothing. I dunno.’
‘Matt.’
Now I gave her a look of surprise as if I’d just realised how seriously she was taking this. ‘Um. Well, look, nothing really. Just the curtains. All the curtains were shut.’
‘Were they out?’
‘The car was in the drive. And there was washing on the line. I saw it from the road.’
‘Washing on the line?’ Mum was looking seriously concerned now. She hadn’t thought to ask why I’d notice washing down the side of the Carmodys’ house. ‘But it was raining, wasn’t it?’
‘Oh, yeah. Started raining just after I left Chess’s.’ I stayed very innocent and not very interested. ‘Why?’
‘Mary Carmody doesn’t forget things like that. There must be something wrong. I should’ve known. They were quite fragile the other day, and now the funeral …’
I grunted and got some more bread.
‘I’m going around there,’ said Mum.
Bingo. I studied my bread, allowing a little pause, then I said, ‘I might come.’
Without looking, I knew Mum was staring at me. She would have trouble working out why I said that, but she didn’t ask anything. She would never want to discourage me from going anywhere with her. She thinks we should spend more time together. I pushed myself up in the chair and put my feet on the floor, to show I was ready to get my shoes.
‘I’ll take some zucchinis,’ said Mum.
Chapter 14
Most of the places in Charles Street were pretty dismal, with scraggly bushes, ivy growing up the trees, junk on the verandahs and corners full of ugly things like gas bottles. The Carmodys’ was the only decent place there. Actually I don’t know why I liked it. Maybe because I’d spent so much time here when I was sev
en and eight, and coming here always made me think like a little kid. The front of the Carmodys’ house was carefully painted and the path to it had pebbles stuck in the concrete. The garden beds were all edged with round rocks and all the bushes were clipped into balls. The only really leafy part was a row of bushes they’d let grow right up in front of the windows. You could see the windows through the bushes, but they made the front rooms dark, which some people thought was bad. I liked it.
The best thing was a little pond, smaller than Chess’s and surrounded by mossy rocks. There were always fish in the Carmodys’ pond, and in the middle there was a cement frog, way over-sized — a giant fat thing that kind of rose up out of the water and took up most of the pond. I’d always loved that frog. It had a long line for a mouth that turned down a bit at the ends. I used to try to cheer it up by running my hands over its slimy skin.
I couldn’t do that any more. I was too old.
The weather was breaking up into one of those patchy days when it rains and then straight away the sun comes out. The Carmodys’ curtains were all open and there was no washing on the line, but Mum didn’t notice that.
Mrs Carmody answered the door and didn’t look surprised to see us. She took the zucchinis with a little thank you. It was something that had happened a hundred times before, although she was a bit surprised to see me there.
‘Charles is in the lounge. Go in, Sarah, dear. I’ll put the kettle on.’
The lounge room was small and a bit cold, with square armchairs and a hard-looking couch with wooden arms. Mr Carmody was in one of the chairs, reading a gardening magazine.
Jeanette’s father had been something in the Shire Council. He was almost unbearably boring. When I was younger, I tried not to look at him so that he wouldn’t start talking to me, and I answered all his questions with ‘yes’ or ‘no’ and nothing else, so that he wouldn’t ask any more. The trouble was, as I got older, I noticed other people did this too, and, well, you had to feel sorry for him really, especially as he always looked sad and kind of lonely. Really it wasn’t fair to be rude to people like this, and sometimes you just had to put up with them. Now, when I got caught by him, which was only about twice a year, I got through our conversations by jumping my body around and grinding my feet together, fighting the urge to get up and run.
He spoke heavily and slowly, even when he said things like ‘yes please’ and ‘very well thanks’, to show he’d thought it out carefully. He had a round face, a small mouth and thick glasses with big owl-like eyebrows fanning up above them. Weirdly, his wife looked much the same, except for the eyebrows. In fact they were almost exactly the same in height, shape, hair colour, and even they way they dressed, which sometimes made them hysterically funny.
Mum started chatting to him about something in his magazine and I stood there looking around. The mantelpiece was covered in photos. I went over to check it out. There was one of Mr and Mrs Carmody on their wedding day. I hate wedding photos, because you know people have tried so hard and they still don’t look that good, and then you feel sorry for them. The rest were photos of Jeanette and her older sister and brother. These were depressing, too. The brother and sister’s photos covered their whole lives, from baby to school kid, then young adults and then the family shots where they had kids of their own. Jeanette had the same thing, except they stopped when she was sixteen. But there were a lot of teenage ones. You could see an effort had been made to have the same number of photos for each kid.
After a while Mrs C turned up with a tray, with flowered cups and a tea pot with a bobbly knitted cover. She had cordial for me in the same old glass with red horses on it, and that made me sad, too. I don’t know why. Something about her not realising I’d grown up, as if she’d forgotten people kept changing.
She organised me into an armchair, with a biscuit in one hand and my drink in the other. I put Deb’s envelope on the wide arm and smiled at her, wondering what I was going to say.
There were leaves pressing against the front window and a soft green light filtered in. The conversation was exactly like it had always been. The Carmodys started off with a few general comments about roses and the weather, but they were tense and not quite with it — as if everything else we said was just a warm-up, like watching trailers. You felt they’d like to fast forward through it.
I knew they were going to talk about Jeanette, because they always did. They loved talking about her. Mum said once that they probably didn’t get much chance anywhere else, because most people didn’t know how to deal with grief. Most people would think the Carmodys shouldn’t go on about Jeanette after eight years.
They asked Mum a few things about herself and didn’t listen to the answers. They asked me about my drawing, like they always did. They didn’t really care about my drawing, but this was all they knew about me. I suppose I could’ve told them something new, but today I was as keen as they were to get on to the topic of Jeanette.
Sure enough, by the time everyone had chosen a biscuit and taken two sips of tea, we were away.
Mrs Carmody always said the same kind of thing about Jeanette. She was saying it again today. ‘We are under no illusions about her,’ she said. ‘She was not brilliant, or even beautiful in a conventional way.’
‘Although we thought she was beautiful,’ said Mr Carmody.
‘She was,’ said Mum.
For the first time I looked closely at the faces of the Carmodys. I’d always thought of them as soft and fairly sappy, but today I must’ve had more of an idea of what they’d been through, because I saw something different. They both had drooping, lost-looking eyes. They weren’t just sad. Somewhere under the surface they were seriously damaged. They had the look of people who had been wounded, in a way that caused real physical pain, and when they kept talking about Jeanette, it was to rub away at the injury to stop it hurting.
Mrs Carmody’s mouth was wide and was pushed into a silly pointless smile which made her look nervous. I’d seen it before, but now I could see the pain under it. She turned the smile on me. ‘Jeanette was very fond of Matty.’ Then she got serious. ‘I know she could be tough. She had very high standards for her own behaviour and she had the same kind of standards for others.’
Mum said, ‘I know Derek and Julie Roland thought a lot of her. She was the only babysitter who could handle Tara and Wando at all.’
I smiled to myself. Mum never liked the Rolands, with all their money. She thought they were up themselves. But she would never let herself say anything like that. But she liked to say I was better behaved than Tara. That made her a better parent.
Mrs Carmody tried to be nice about it. ‘Oh yes. Tara and Wando. They’ve turned out quite nice children, haven’t they, considering all they’ve been through. But when they were little they could be quite naughty.’
There was a little pause while we all thought about Jeanette babysitting Tara and Wando. I wondered if Mrs Carmody was thinking about the fact that they ran away from her the night she died. She might blame them for Jeanette getting run over. But no one could say anything about that and soon she was off again.
‘She was never going to set the world on fire.’ Mrs Carmody had gone into a bit of a trance. She’d said this a million times before. ‘But she had a good heart and a strong mind.’
‘Yes she did,’ said Mum.
I said, ‘She liked going for walks, didn’t she? Out near Chess’s — Jessica Febey’s — place.’
‘Yes, well, she loved her sketching, you see,’ said Mrs Carmody. ‘Especially farm buildings. She could do quite a good likeness of those. She liked to draw sheds and garages. And there are a lot of sheds out along Station Road. She would go out there with her little sketch pad. She sketched that blue shed of the Wilsons’ several times. And when the Rolands’ garage burnt down, she went to sketch the ruins.’
Mr Carmody took over. ‘She wasn’t always so adventurous. She was steady and considerate of others and very disciplined with herself. She would have made a valua
ble contribution to the world.’
‘She already had made a valuable contribution,’ said Mum.
I hated the sound of this. Considerate, disciplined. I hoped people would have something more interesting to say about me when I was dead.
It was also completely wrong. I’d heard the Carmodys describe Jeanette like this before. But it wasn’t the way I remembered her. I had liked her. My parents had liked her too. But not because she was disciplined. My parents were big on creativity. If they’d found the place tidy at the end of a night of babysitting, they would think I’d had a boring time.
The first time Jeanette minded me, my parents told her I might like drawing so she brought some crayons and paper and we just immediately clicked. Jeanette loved art as much as I did, and I don’t mean her ‘sketching’ that her parents thought was such a worthwhile pastime. In fact they were way off the mark with that reliable and steady idea. When she was with me Jeanette was wild — at least on paper. We started off drawing little animals for each other but that only lasted about five minutes. First I put some horns on mine and then Jeanette started doing googly eyes and soon we were doing these completely insane monsters and we had paper all over the floor. We went from there into monster stories and monster plays. The next week we did an entire monster music concert complete with costumes out of the ironing basket.
Each time she came we just got madder. We made a scarecrow out of aluminium foil and cellophane. We put coloured goop on our faces. We wrapped up the whole lounge room in toilet paper. One of the last times she came she brought a picture by someone Dali, of a dead cow and some flat clocks that had sort of melted and dribbled down over a tree. She brought plasticine. We made melting clocks, and melting flowers and even a melting dog. She let me keep the picture. I still have it at the bottom of a drawer somewhere. Sometimes when I go digging for paper I find it and sit for while and think about how a lot of parents never really know their children.