About a Girl

by Joanne Horniman

  In my lunch hour I sunned myself in the park. With the money I earned I bought heaps of CDS, and spent more time listening to music. I threw out all my black clothes, and looked for ones that I really liked. That’s when I found the spotted red dress that was destined to be worn the first time Flynn invited me to her place. I hesitated over it in the changing room, but the shop assistant told me it suited me. I went to op shops and found bangles and handbags that went with my new clothing. Not wanting to ask Morgan to cut my hair again, I went to a hairdresser and had the style repeated.

  And after almost a year, I began to feel that I was back to normal, if the word ‘normal’ could ever be used to describe me. The big thing that did make me sad was the rift between Michael and me. At the start of my illness (and it was an illness, I can see that now) I kept pushing him away until he’d stopped trying. I didn’t try to heal our lapsed friendship. After all, I reasoned, he now had the other Anna.

  I told my doctor I wanted to come off the antidepressant tablets, and she agreed that I should. I had felt fine for a long time. If I ever had a troubling thought I let it drift away, like a wisp of cloud detaching itself from a mountaintop.

  Mostly I felt like the old me, but sometimes the medication just made me too tired, and I couldn’t be bothered with anything. I was sick of feeling empty.

  Coming off the tablets was as scary as going onto them. For two weeks I took a tablet every second day instead of every day. Then for the next two weeks I took a tablet every three days. I watched myself: every feeling, every reaction.

  And then I was on my own.

  I anxiously waited for the monstrous, angry Anna to reappear. But she stayed away. There were no tears. I slept well. I felt that I’d been learning to fly a plane for the first time and had touched down smoothly and safely.

  Before Christmas I had some holidays due, and my mother said, ‘Let’s go away up north. You and me and Molly.’

  ‘A holiday!’ I said.

  ‘That’s what they call it!’

  We hadn’t been anywhere since my father had left. I remembered us once all piling into the station wagon and heading up the coast, camping overnight in national parks, spending occasional nights in motels so we could have a proper shower, eating fish and chips while watching the sun go down over the sea.

  ‘Let’s do it,’ I said.

  This time I shared the driving with my mother. Not long before, with money I’d saved, I’d bought myself a small used car, but we took hers. It was wonderful being away from routine. Even though memories of those other holidays tugged at me all the way up the coast, as I’m sure they did with her, we were determined to enjoy ourselves.

  On the way back we spent two days in Lismore, heading out to wander in the rainforests, and I loved the place. Driving along narrow winding roads like green tunnels through the trees, cresting a hill to be surprised by an unexpected view … it was all so different to the south, where we came from.

  Looking through the local paper late on our first afternoon there, I idly scanned the employment ads, and saw the bookshop job. For some reason my heart leapt. Here was something I hadn’t even thought I’d wanted.

  ‘Look at this,’ I said to my mother, my voice quick with excitement. ‘I have all the experience they want. What do you think?’

  ‘I think you should go and introduce yourself tomorrow morning, if that’s what you want to do.’

  We were heading home the next day. The manager asked me to send in a formal application when I got back. She interviewed me over the phone. And when the call came a day later offering me the job, I was surprised how much I longed for it. I was almost nineteen, and I wanted to get out and manage on my own. I saw myself wandering along the white northern beaches, meeting new people, shedding the layers of old Canberra skin.

  ‘Do you think I should take it?’ I asked my mother, with tears in my eyes.

  ‘When do they want you to start?’

  ‘Two weeks after Christmas.’

  I knew that I would go.

  Brushing aside my mother’s offers to come and help me set up, I drove myself north with a few belongings, and stayed in a bed and breakfast till I found a flat.

  And then I met Flynn.

  PART THREE

  Chapter One

  THE NIGHT THAT I went to Flynn’s place, the night after my mother and Molly left, we had the flat to ourselves.

  If someone had stood in the street outside, they’d have seen a soft light, as if from a shrouded bedside lamp. The window stood open, and at some stage a dark-haired girl, a kimono flung round her shoulders and coming loose, appeared and stood for a while looking out. She turned, and said something to a person unseen, and then moved away from the window.

  Much later, towards dawn, a girl with short red hair, dressed in the selfsame kimono, made her way gingerly onto the roof to retrieve a teapot. Later still, a cat jumped up from inside the room and perched on the sill, swishing its tail and looking out at the street, and then down into the room.

  From the cat’s vantage point, the room was strewn with clothes hastily discarded, and a tray with teapot and sugar bowl lay on the floor. An arm reached out from the bed to place a teacup onto the tray. A plate with toast crumbs soon joined it; the cat jumped down to lick up butter and crumbs.

  Soon grey light crept over the back of the building, followed by yellow sunlight, which lit up the old red bricks. The dark-haired girl, naked, walked past and closed the curtains.

  A shower hissed, and steam issued from another window. Someone sang, and someone else laughed.

  They were happy, those girls who shared a kimono.

  Chapter Two

  I HAD TO go to work that day, and I could not remember having slept. I served customers with my head blurry, gave the wrong change, crashed a pile of books over onto the floor and made a baby in a pram cry, and thought about Flynn every single moment.

  I went over every little thing about her. There was so much to think about: the way she looked different up close, a new person altogether, but still Flynn in some mysterious, indescribable way. I remembered her newly browned skin, and a smile that I felt sure she’d never bestowed on anyone else. I had tenderly watched over her as she slept.

  She was a couple of years younger than I was, but in many ways she seemed older. She knew so much about her own body, and what gave it pleasure, that I felt I was being taught both about Flynn and about myself.

  A little while before noon she came into the shop, her hair loose and unkempt; she was so beautiful that I was immediately filled with desire. I went to go towards her, but she warded me off with a warning, smiling glance, and continued to saunter among the shelves, picking up a book here and there, every now and then glancing flirtatiously towards me. I stood mesmerised at the counter.

  I knew that she had to go to work in the café at midday, so I went there for lunch. Someone else at the counter took my order, but Flynn delivered it. She didn’t say a word, but brushed her hand as though accidentally against my shoulder. It was a delightful game. I thanked her casually and smiled down at my plate. Flynn returned moments later with a cloth, and leaned close to me, needlessly wiping the already clean table. All without a word exchanged.

  I finished work before Flynn did, and after shopping for food, went home to my flat to meet her, as we’d arranged that morning.

  A little after six the knock came at the door and, with my heart pounding, I let her in.

  She carried her guitar – held it by the neck, its slim, white body hugged close to her.

  We were both nervous. I remembered that morning, the sun streaming onto her satin kimono tossed over the back of a chair. The thud of the cat as it jumped down into the room from the windowsill, the spidery cracks in the ceiling of her room. And now this: the actuality of her again.

&
nbsp; ‘Have you met Louise?’ she asked, holding the guitar up in front of her like a shield. She looked bright and hot; her eyes shone as though a fire was burning inside her.

  ‘I don’t believe I have,’ I said. She hadn’t told me that her guitar actually had a name.

  ‘Well, Louise is my best friend and bosom buddy.’ She spoke glibly, as though she often said this, and placed the guitar carefully onto the sofa, where it reclined, looking almost human.

  We stood awkwardly. The ease we’d gained the previous night and this morning had dissipated by our being separate for the entire day. It seemed that each time we met we had to reinvent how we were with each other.

  She went over to the window. Outside, it was still the bright light of a summer day. I wanted it to be night, stars overhead, the wingbeats of bats, creatures rustling in the pawpaw trees outside my window, everything secretive and unknowable. I didn’t yet know how to be with her in the daylight.

  Flynn turned round to look at me, and her face was luminous yet hidden, the way the moon appears to get caught in the bare branches of trees before tearing itself free. Her eyes were unreadable and clouded with thought. I’d seen that look before – she wouldn’t look at me, but somewhere over to the left, where she saw something only she could see. I thought of the way she had come into the shop to flirt with me, and later at the café. She was so changeable – would I ever know where I was with her?

  But hadn’t I wanted this? Wanted someone with whom falling in love would be a risk? All along, since I’d seen the diaphanous girl in the car park, I’d known I wanted someone not predictable, not ordinary, and the problem with dangerous girls was that you might never be certain of them.

  ‘What are we going to do, Anna?’

  Her voice sounded so lost and plaintive; perhaps she was already regretting coming back to me. There were dark rings under her eyes. Neither of us had had enough sleep. I felt tears well up, because I had no answer. As far as I could see we were in unmapped territory. Unmapped enemy territory. There were no street signs for what we were doing, and I saw that it would be easy to lose our way.

  It was too much to think about right now. I was immediately aware of being tired and hungry.

  ‘I think we should cook dinner,’ I said. ‘An army marches on its stomach.’

  We set to work. I’d bought thick lamb chops, and new potatoes. I put these on to cook while Flynn constructed a salad, making a game of all the things she discovered in my refrigerator. She threw in everything – snow peas, lightly blanched French beans, capers, tinned baby beets.

  ‘Pomegranate molasses?’ she said, wrinkling her nose. ‘What on earth do you do with pomegranate molasses?’

  ‘My mother bought that. She puts it in Middle Eastern stews. Or on ice cream. Not a salad thing.’

  She put it into the salad dressing anyway.

  We ate in the dusk sitting out on the wall overlooking the town. Ravenous, we used our fingers and tore the meat with our teeth. The grey cat appeared and cadged scraps. Replete, I sighed and licked my fingers.

  Chapter Three

  THAT NIGHT I woke to find her gone from my bed. I had a moment of panic thinking that she had left me again, that it would be a repeat of when she’d gone away to think about us.

  I found her in the living room cradling Louise in her arms, and she looked up at me with such an expression of dreamy contentment that I knew she wouldn’t be running out on me again – at least, not that night. I knew that the reason she’d brought Louise around and introduced her was because she wanted to show me what was important to her. It was a declaration of her seriousness about me, because she could have introduced Louise before, and hadn’t.

  ‘I couldn’t sleep,’ she said with a smile. And because I was awake, she started to strum softly. An electric guitar played without an amp sounds like a guitar dreaming, it is so secretive and private. There is nothing to resonate, no shouting, only whispers.

  ‘I wrote a song about you while I was away,’ said Flynn. ‘Would you like to hear it?’

  It was about that day on the roof, when she’d reached across and touched my hair, about knowing then that something would happen between us, about being thrilled and terrified at the prospect. It was a thoughtful, tender song, and it was the music that made it a song, because otherwise it was like a short story, with no verses or refrain. I like songs like that, and I told her so.

  ‘The thing you need to know about me,’ she said, ‘is that if I didn’t do this, I’d be really miserable. I don’t mean now, at this minute, but generally.’ She repositioned the guitar against her body and looked up at me so earnestly that a little crease formed between her eyebrows. ‘It feels like what I should be doing.’

  I felt envious, because there was nothing that I felt I really had to do. Apart from be with Flynn.

  I knew that she had only finished school the previous year, and was taking time off to write songs, working in a coffee shop to support herself. ‘I’m so sick of study. I know I’ll probably end up doing a degree one day – maybe in music – but for now I just want to write songs and perform as often as I can. And what about you?’ she went on. ‘Do you have a passion?’

  ‘I love listening to music,’ I told her. ‘Maybe I’m cut out to be a fan.’

  ‘No, but really. What are you going to do with yourself?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said, and it sounded so feeble. Because it seemed for years what I had longed for was to be with someone – just like this. I wanted somewhere in the world I could feel comfortable, and I didn’t know if I would ever find that. I wanted not to feel so strange and awkward and alone.

  ‘I tried uni,’ I said, ‘and I dropped out.’

  ‘Why? Was it too much work?’

  ‘No, it was too easy.’ I thought of my high distinction. It was true that I’d worked quite hard on that paper, but no harder than I thought was needed to complete the task.

  ‘I like working in a bookshop,’ I said. ‘It’s every reader’s dream, didn’t you know? I’m out the back half the time with my nose in a book.’

  ‘Does your mother miss you?’ she asked, out of the blue. ‘Mine does me. She keeps wanting me to visit – it’s only thirty minutes away but I try to avoid it. I like being independent. Home is so …’

  She didn’t finish the sentence. Her face looked downcast for a minute, but she seemed to pull herself together and went on, brightly, ‘What about your little sister? Molly-who-got-grandmother Molly McGuire’s-name. She’s so gorgeous. You must miss her.’

  ‘I can live without her,’ I said lightly. I didn’t say how jealous I’d once been of all the attention Molly got. It sounded so childish and petty. ‘But I do miss her a bit, yes,’ I admitted.

  ‘What is it that’s wrong with her?’ asked Flynn. ‘I’m sorry, but I did notice …’

  ‘That she’s not quite right? That’s okay – people do notice. She’s just slow. “Special needs”. You know.’ I shrugged.

  ‘And she’s such a pretty little girl,’ Flynn said, as though that somehow made it worse, or less comprehensible. ‘You look so alike! And tell me about this brother of yours, the one who’s a musician.’

  I felt an irrational stab of jealousy.

  ‘He’s useless,’ I said abruptly. ‘He’s always talking about leaving home, but he never does. I think he just has it too easy there.’

  ‘Ooooh …’ said Flynn, teasingly. ‘Touchy!’

  All this talk had woken me up slightly, but I was so tired, really, and I could see that Flynn was too. ‘Come back to bed,’ I said. ‘Or we’ll be useless at work tomorrow.’

  Just as I was falling asleep, I felt the grey cat, which had apparently now moved in with me, jump onto the bed, make itself comfortable, and begin to purr.

  Chapter Four

  ‘HOW DO Y
OU write a song?’ I asked Flynn one day.

  We were in her room on a Sunday afternoon. Her cat, Timothy, lay at my feet, nibbling occasionally on my big toe. He was an affectionate, though sometimes surly animal, and had accepted me as though he’d known me for years. I was content to sit and stroke him as I watched Flynn hunch over her guitar, trying out chords, scribbling something down, seemingly unaware that I was there.

  Though sometimes she shot me a glance that spoke of what now lay between us. ‘I’d like for us to be able to just sit around together, each of us doing her own thing,’ she had said a few days before. ‘You know – just to have that ease, of being together, not needing to talk or touch.’

  ‘Like an old married couple.’

  ‘Yes.’ Flynn smiled. ‘Is that so absurd?’

  We had not, of course, quite reached that stage. Now I wanted to go to Flynn and sit at her feet, take away her guitar and lay my head in her lap in its stead. But I asked, how do you write a song?

  Flynn stopped strumming and said, ‘Songs come in all sorts of ways. Sometimes there’s a musical phrase or a melody that comes into my head, and the song builds around that, often without me consciously thinking about it. Sometimes it’s a few words or a line that comes first, and I find some music in my head to fit it. But often it’s a memory, or a feeling about something that won’t go away, and it’s so insistent that I begin with that, and see where it takes me.’

  She bent her ear towards her guitar again.

  Stopping quite suddenly, she added, ‘It’s funny – sometimes songs come so quickly on the heels of each other it makes me breathless. And then I go without a new song for so long I start to fear I’ll never write another one again. I hate that. It makes me edgy and nervous. Because if that ability left me, what would I have?’