The Assembly

by Janet Woods

  ‘She took it so I’d have a home.’

  Alex didn’t seem to notice the defensive tone in her voice. ‘Your mother invested wisely. Property in the centre of Fremantle has increased considerably in value.’ He gazed up at her. ‘Have you consulted with your mother about this?’

  ‘She died three months ago.’

  ‘Oh, I see. I’m sorry.’

  ‘She never stopped thinking about him, you know. She believed that love lasted forever, and waited for him. Silly, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Perhaps something prevented your father from visiting. When I fall in love I’ll certainly want it to last forever. My parents adore each other and they’ve been married since Adam and Eve. It was love at first sight, too.’

  ‘All right, I’ll take ‘silly’ back, since I don’t think I could win an argument with a barrister, especially one speaking from personal experience. But I wouldn’t hanker after a man who clearly didn’t want anything to do with me. Life has more to offer than that.’

  ‘Yet you’re looking for your father.’

  ‘Only out of curiosity; he doesn’t mean anything to me,’ she protested. ‘Did you find anything in the archives?’

  ‘Yes. The money your mother accepted was authorized by Mrs. Maria Demasi.’

  ‘Was that his mother?’

  ‘The paper indicates it was his wife. It’s not unheard of for a wife to settle her husband’s intimate indiscretion.’ When she winced he shrugged an apology. ‘The agreement prevents you from seeking out Georgio Demasi or his family.’

  ‘No, Alex, it prevented my mother from doing that. I didn’t sign it, so I’ve got a right to do both, unless there’s a restraining order out against me. Is there?’

  ‘Not one I’m aware of. I thought you said you’d never win an argument with a barrister,’ he said with a smile. ‘Will you allow me to act as go-between?’

  ‘I can’t afford a barrister.’

  ‘I’m due some time off soon. I won’t charge.’

  His eyes were blue, like cornflowers. His mouth had a smiley curve that begged to be covered in kisses, and she didn’t want to part with him. ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because you looked great when you got out of bed, with one brown eye glaring at me through your hair like a Yeti.’

  ‘When did you last see a Yeti?’

  ‘Before you, never,’ he said.

  In the ensuing silence – while she was wondering what he looked like in the mornings – his stomach rumbled. So did hers.

  ‘We’re in agreement then,’ he said, and they laughed at the same time.

  ‘I’m starving, can I take you to dinner? We could go to that little Italian place on the cafe strip. They make the best lasagna in town, and the waiter will sing an Italian love song for a charity donation. That should appeal to the Italian half of you.’

  He appealed to both her halves. Afterwards, when they walked back through the soft twilight he took her hand in his. When they reached her home he kissed her. His mouth was as warm as the bottle of the rosé wine they’d drunk between them – his kiss hot enough to loosen the stars in the sky. They showered around her, sprinkling stardust like handfuls of bright diamonds.

  He laughed afterwards, a soft, intimate chuckle that made her knees melt, and he loped off into the night, turning circles, swinging his bulging briefcase around and singing, ‘Volaré . . . oh . . . oh!’ at the top of his voice.

  He was crazy. And she suspected she might be, as well.

  ‘There might be something to this love-at-first-sight, thingy,’ she said to Moggy when they were having an in-depth conversation over breakfast the next morning. She reached for a can of kitty pilchards. ‘After all, I fell in love with you at first sight.’

  ***

  And that was the start of it. Her father’s tragic story had unfolded while her own love story picked up momentum.

  Carrie discovered that Georgio Demasi hadn’t been married to Maria, but engaged. Her father had never known he had a daughter. After he’d returned from America to Italy there had been an accident. The neighbours had heard him arguing with Maria. He’d got into his car and driven off down the hill – too fast to take the corners safely.

  ‘So he’s been dead all these years and my mother never knew.’

  She felt like crying when Alex folded her in his arms, saying, ‘I love you.’

  A couple of weeks later their came the letter from someone called Beata Demasi.

  ‘I wrote to her about you, and sent the letter to her solicitor to pass on,’ Alex said.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘I didn’t want to disappoint you if she wouldn’t see you. It turns out that your Italian grandmother didn’t know you existed. Maria certainly didn’t tell her. I was unsure of her reaction.’

  Carrie gazed at him, trying to hide her excitement. ‘She thinks we ought to have genetic tests done. If they prove compatible she wants me to go to Italy, so she can meet me.’

  He took her hands in his. ‘We could make Italy our honeymoon if you like.’

  ‘Is that a proposal?’

  ‘No. I intend to wait for the full moon before I do the official on-bended-knee routine. Do you like the idea?’

  He was sweet and romantic, and infinitely adorable. ‘I do like.’

  The event took place on the seashore. The moon was as round and shiny, as a newly minted coin. A glittering path led across the water, inviting them to step across the wavelets and walk on the moon’s surface.

  ‘I love you,’ Alex said, and slid a ring on to her finger. The square diamond was nestled in a frame of small rubies and gleamed as brightly as her smile. She liked square. Alex was square . . . on the surface.

  Sliding into his arms she held him tight. ‘I know now why my mother waited for Georgio.’

  A wedding ring joined the engagement ring a month later.

  ***

  N

  ow she sat on the exact spot where her father had been seated in the photograph – on a wall that sheltered small lizards in its cracks and provided a ledge for fiery red geraniums in earthenware pots. Below her, the sea was a lagoon of lapis lazuli.

  She turned when she heard a noise behind her, rose to her feet.

  Beata Demasi was tastefully wrinkled, tall and upright with soft brown eyes. Her hair had faint threads of grey.

  ‘My dear, I had no idea I had a granddaughter; we look so alike,’ she whispered. ‘Maria is sorry for the wicked thing she did.’

  ‘She kept us all apart and my mother lived in hope.’

  ‘I hope you can forgive her, because I have. Maria and Georgio grew up together and Maria had loved him since childhood. She was jealous, and she grieved when Georgio died. It was many years before she recovered. She has never married.’

  Beata reached out to tenderly touch her face. ‘I wouldn’t have rejected you, Carrie, dear. You have two cousins you know, both boys, and an aunt. They’re bursting with curiosity and will come to meet you soon.

  Carrie moved into her grandmother’s arms to be kissed.

  ‘It’s my birthday today. Such a blessed day my dear. It feels as if Georgio and your mother have given me the gift of you.’

  Carrie held the woman tight and tears came to her eyes. ‘Perhaps they did.’

  ‘Where is your man? I would like to meet him.’

  ‘At the hotel. We’re on our honeymoon, and he thought we’d like some privacy.’

  ‘Then you must ring him and tell him to come here at once, for I’ve told everyone about you and they will all come to celebrate my good fortune in gaining a granddaughter – and in the way Italian’s do. Good food, good wine and good music.’

  And as Alex danced with her in the soft Italian night and sang against her ear, ‘That’s Amoré,’ Carrie knew it was exactly that.

  *****

  SEEING RED – a devastating little Roman love story

  The day is fine and the wind is high in the heavens.

  Down here on earth, the day pre
sses warm against my back and all is solid. But it’s late and the shadows elongate and my stomach hollows against my spine and makes discontented rumbling noises.

  ‘Hush,’ I tell myself. ‘It’s Wednesday. We’ll wait for Bruno and his mamma.’

  I’ve known Bruno for eleven months, since he came to dig up the road outside the house. His mamma arrived from Rome three months ago and moved into Bruno’s flat. It’s not big enough to contain her and she took over my garden. She hates my cat digging in the veggie patch, and throws stones.

  ‘He’s got to crap somewhere,’ I tell her.

  My stomach doesn’t want to wait until supper. When we go indoors I pick at the grated cheese, melting each shred on my tongue until the flavour is a memory. Tigger sits on the kitchen bench watching the bolognese sauce belch bubbles. Red sauce splatters and spots the white enamel of the cooker. The sauce looks and smells like lava. I think I put too much tarragon in it. Stalks of spaghetti lie on the bench waiting to be boiled.

  When I was little I thought spaghetti grew on trees and was called busketti.

  ‘Yeehar!’ I do an imaginary slow motion leap in the air (Tigger leaps higher) and I give the spaghetti my version of a karate chop. It scatters over the floor. Luckily mamma had scrubbed the ‘feeelth’ from it that morning. Retrieved, the spaghetti is dusted off and thrown into the boiling water. It looks as good as new.

  ‘Didn’t I tell you twelve minutes exactly?’ Bruno’s mother had said the last time they’d come to supper. She’d thumped a fist on the counter so hard that the pads on her hips and stomach had quivered as well as the utensils. ‘Why you no listen to me, girl?’

  Hardly a girl. I’m nearly twenty-five, but one of those short, skinny women with small accessories. When I put my hair in a ponytail I can be mistaken for a schoolgirl. My long hair is what attracted Bruno in the first place, he said.

  A pity. Now I wished it hadn’t attracted him, handsome though he is.

  I write a remainder to myself on the white board. Get hair cut really short, Jessica.

  Bruno comes with family, and I never have time to be private and do my own thing.

  I’m not used to mothers. Mine didn’t give me enough love to remember her by before she did a flit. My father is John Smith, or so it says on my birth certificate. The many John Smith’s in the phone book denied parentage.

  The cottage was a legacy from gramps. It’s cute, made of green painted wooden boards and corrugated tin. Even in a light shower the roof rattles. The pressed tin ceilings leak when the rain is heavy. But the cottage sits on a large, solid block that overlooks the sea. The block could accommodate ten luxury units, a developer had told gramps.

  Bruno has six fatherless cousins. He’s sponsoring them for a new life in Australia and jokes that there’s room for them in the sleep-out. His mamma has already claimed a room for when we are wed, and has left a Virgin Mary on the window sill to guard it until she moves in. She said I am a heathen and will have to convert first before I can marry her Bruno.

  It’s the room my gramps died in. The biggest room with the best view. She has a damned cheek to think she can just move in here.

  I’m disgruntled. Does it show? My home feels less than my home at every turn. Bits of Bruno have already moved in. In my fridge is a cask of red wine. It takes up half the fridge space and tastes like vinegar. I don’t like alcohol, one glass and my knees vaporize

  ‘You have no taste, Cara,’ Bruno has told me countless times.

  ‘I’m beginning to believe him.’

  Gramps enjoyed alcohol too much. He drank because it stopped him thinking about Korea. A man could go mad if he thought too much, he said. After he died the doctor said he could have resoled his shoes with grandpa’s liver.

  On the back of the sleep-out door Bruno has hung his work coat on the same hook gramps used to hang his. It looks like a luminescent yellow ghost when the light shines on it. He’s also claimed grandpa’s chair, the one that reclines. Bruno’s hairbrush takes up room on my bathroom windowsill. The bristles are lost in a nest of wiry black hair. He leaves his washing in the laundry basket for me to do on Saturdays. His mother says I leave creases in it and comes round to iron it again after I’ve gone to work on Monday. Last week she left me an account for a new cover for the ironing board.

  She plumps the cushions, polishes the furniture, scrubs my attempts at cooking from the electric stove and rummages through the drawers. Things go missing. Sometimes I think she steams my letters open. There’s not a piece of fluff she misses.

  Tigger is thrown outside and the cat door blocked so he can’t get in again. Grampa’s bits and pieces have been packed in a cardboard box. Mamma gave away his gramophone and the records to a jumble sale last week. I bought it back from the stallholder at antique value and will be playing it for them. It’s the first time I’ve defied his mamma, and it felt so good I’ve decided to do it again when the opportunity arises.

  ‘Trash,’ she mutters to her son with a dismissive flick of her hand in my direction.

  ‘Beggars can’t be choosers,’ Bruno mutters, obviously thinking I’m too far away to hear. He’s replaced the picket fence with a high mesh one and padlocked gates. In the front garden, where the rose garden used to be, his yellow bulldozer and a truck stands. It blocks out the evening sunshine and the view.

  His mother has dug a garden patch and all sorts of vegetables flourish. Pepper. Tomatoes. Broccoli. Garlic. Hemlock! I find some chopped in with the cat’s biscuits. Mamma screeches like a witch when I pull the plant up.

  When I complain to Bruno he says, ‘Things change. Mamma is only trying to help. You must give her respect.’

  The front room, the one I use as my occasional art studio will become Bruno’s office when we wed. He’s going to employ all his cousins when they come. He’s measured up the available space for three sets of bunk beds. They won’t mind sleeping in a small room together, they are used to it.

  ‘Where’s my respect?’ I ask him, beginning to fume.

  ‘It has to be earned. Between babies you can do the accounts and answer the phone at the weekend when we wed, Cara, because that’s what you do best,’ he tells me.

  I fume a bit more. ‘Where will I paint?’

  His brows knit together in a dark frown. ‘I have a business to run and haven’t got time for your little hobbies.’

  The last straw!

  Today I arrived home from work to find that the picture of gramps in his army uniform and slouch hat has gone from the wall. The photograph is in the dustbin. The deed has reminded me that life’s short and most of our memories end up on the tip, happy ones or not. But that was my memory to dispose of not that of Bruno or his mother. She has painted my bedroom wall red, when I told her not too. Red makes me restless.

  This is like a declaration of war on her part. She doesn’t know my star sign is Aries – that my planet is Mars and my nature is warlike when I’m pushed to defend myself. Red is my power color, and right now I’m so powered up I’m humming.

  Things change, Bruno had said. He’s right. Now I do see red, and it’s not the bedroom wall, or of the spaghetti sauce variety, but rather as if I have a whole planet of flaming Martians behind me and an urgent need to shed blood!

  It’s hard keeping myself under control, but I try. I want to keep a cool head if I can.

  For once the spaghetti is exactly right . . . the sauce perfect. The parmesan cheese smells like sports socks under stress, and is hand-grated. None of that stuff in a cardboard shaker for Bruno’s mamma.

  She does nothing but complain. The sauce is too peppery. The tomatoes were not ripe enough. It was too thick. She’d found a small stone in her spaghetti once.

  She should be glad it wasn’t a house brick! She should have been more thorough cleaning the ‘feeelthy’ kitchen floor. Let her complain. It will end soon.

  I drink the wine to bolster my courage, then place a record on the turntable and wind up the gramophone. Something holy and funereal that suits
mamma’s black dress emerges from the flaring trumpet. I take in a deep breath. The time has come!

  ‘Mamma, I have something to say,’ I tell her with as much respect as I can muster for Bruno’s benefit. ‘I’ve decided I’m not going to marry your son, after all.’

  They stare at me from eyes shining like black olives, mouths hanging open.

  ‘This is your last supper here. Your belongings are in a cardboard box on the veranda. Take them on your way out.’

  Tigger jumps up on to the dresser behind me to purr tabbily in to my ear. Whiskers are pricked, which means he’s ecstatic.

  Their eyes change. Astonishment becomes affront, then anger. Bruno fists my blouse and lifts me, where I dangle with my feet off the ground. I hadn’t expected him to get physical. He stares at me with a black Roman stare. It has red flames in its depths. ‘I painted your house. I gave you a new fence. Mamma made you a garden.’

  ‘Mamma tried to murder my cat.’

  He chose to ignore that and roared, ‘I respected you.’

  My gaze never strays from his. It can’t, it’s too scared to move. ‘I never asked you to. Put me down, and at once!’

  As he opens his hand and drops me, mamma screeches in rapid Italian, and it doesn’t sound very flattering. She interprets it into English for my benefit. ‘Beech, trashy beech! You no good fart (I think she means tart).’ Her feet stomp up and down making the china in the dresser jiggle.

  Bruno roars out similar threats and struts about like a roman gladiator, glaring from under dark brows - as if he owns the place.

  Tigger streaks to the top of the dresser and hangs over the top, swearing at them both.

  Bruno stomps off. The front door slams. The engine of the bulldozer roars into life. Just after I get to my feet mamma gives me a backhanded slap that knocks me sideways, then runs off, shouting in alarm, ‘You be careful of my garden, Bruno.’

  ‘My garden,’ I shout after her.

  The house shudders, shakes and groans, cracks open like an egg and showers me with dust, cockroaches, mousetraps and a huntsman spider or two. Tigger finds me, sits on top of the rubble and gazes down, purring and uncertain.