by Toni Jordan
Rachel feels it like a blow to the chest. What can she do? The door is too far away, on the other side of a sea of people and guarded by Tommy and Kurt besides. She’d have to manhandle the girl in front of everyone to force her to put the box back on the shelf. The jig would be up. Rachel looks at Mrs O’Loughlin: she saw it this time all right, there’s no mistaking that set to her shark face. Mrs O’Loughlin nods at the boys and follows the girl to the cashier. She stands behind as she pays the bill. Rachel wrings her apron as if it’s wet and comes closer so she can hear. The girl collects her change.
‘You’ll be coming out the back while one of the boys fetches a policeman,’ says Mrs O’Loughlin, leaning in. ‘And the less fuss you cause us the better it’ll be.’
The girl blinks her big eyes at her. She doesn’t move.
‘This silent business won’t change where you’re headed,’ Mrs O’Loughlin says. ‘I’ll have the boys carry you, just see if I won’t. There is no excuse for thievery. Every box in this shop is under my eye and the good lord knows I will do my duty.’
Rachel feels as if she’s leaning over a canyon, suspended in air.
The girl opens her mouth. ‘I do beg your pardon. Madam?’ Her accent is European, her voice is low and guttural.
‘A foreigner,’ says Bridget, in her brogue. She and Maureen are standing behind Rachel, eyes agog. ‘I shoulda known.’
‘Don’t you madam me and all,’ says Mrs O’Loughlin. ‘There’s a cell waiting for the likes of you.’
‘Forgive my English,’ the girl says. ‘But to what do you refer?’
‘I refer to the box in your pocket, you sneaky little thief.’
The girl frowns and pats one pocket. It’s empty, but it’s the wrong one. Mrs O’Loughlin rolls her eyes. The girl pats the other pocket. There’s something there, it’s obvious. She extracts a tin of chocolate-covered cherries tied with a velvet bow.
‘Abraca-blessed-dabra.’ Mrs O’Loughlin runs her tongue around the front of her teeth.
The girl looks as if she could cry. ‘Excuse me, please.’
‘You can keep your please, where you’re going.’
Rachel takes a step closer, then another. She would give everything she has to stop time, make everyone pause so she could take the box from the girl’s hand and replace it on the counter.
‘My mind,’ the girl says, and her voice softens now to become crystal-thin and lace-edged. ‘It wanders. I cannot keep it fixed to its work. I can only offer a thousand apologies.’
‘Out the back now, I said, toot sweet,’ says Mrs O’Loughlin.
‘Perhaps I pay? And a tip for your trouble?’
From the same pocket, the girl extracts a fat wad of notes wrapped with a rubber band. She peels off two—no, three, notes. Rachel doesn’t know how much one of those boxes costs because she’s never bought one but she knows a Hershey’s is a nickel. The box of cherries might be thirty-five cents, maybe even forty.
Mrs O’Loughlin stares at the notes.
‘It is all the fuss,’ the girl continues. ‘Since the book. My head, it is full of stories. I apologise again.’
‘Book?’ says Mrs O’Loughlin. ‘Don’t play games with me.’
‘Holy father,’ says Bridget, from behind Rachel. ‘Sure and I know who that is. That’s whatshername, isn’t it?’
‘That’s her all right,’ says Maureen. ‘I read that book from the library. It’s got her picture right on the back. I shoulda seen it before now. She’d be almost thirty, would she? She’d pass for a teen.’
‘That book made me cry like a babe,’ Bridget says. ‘Thought my eyes would fall out when Cadence finds the note.’
The restaurant falls dead quiet. ‘It’s Inga Karlson,’ says Rachel, at the precise moment the girl says to Mrs O’Loughlin, ‘My name is Inga Karlson.’
‘You never are,’ Mrs O’Loughlin says.
The girl smiles. ‘I always am.’
For a few seconds, there is a frozen tableau of staff and customers, all of whom seem to have heard at least the last part. A woman at a nearby table begins to clap and the applause spreads in a wave, with occasional whispers of clarification, from table to table. One group of three women—post-matinee tea and rock cakes—stand. Before long, half the restaurant is standing and clapping, their sweets and salads forgotten.
Inga turns around to face them and Rachel sees that her skin is no longer ivory—her pale throat is rose now, and her cheeks are tinted cherry.
‘You are too kind,’ she says to the room, and she gives a small, stiff bow. ‘I will never forget.’ And to Mrs O’Loughlin, ‘Again, I can only apologise for my oversight. But I think now I have interrupted. Excuse me, what were you saying?’
‘I was saying,’ Mrs O’Loughlin says, ‘what a pleasure it is to serve you, Miss Karlson.’
17
Brisbane, Queensland, 1986
It’s two days later, and Caddie’s dining table is covered in magazines and glossy brochures and paper stock in various dusky pinks. There are squares of lace in ivory, pearl, bone, frost. Cubes of fruitcake in foil wrappers and fraying strips of satin in salmon, shell, coral, fuchsia. Caddie is sitting at the table next to Terese, writing in a notebook. Pretty is lying on the couch, watching TV with the sound low. Terese’s mum, Olympia, is visiting. She’s sitting at the table with her left leg, the one with the aching veins, resting on a chair. Caddie can feel a heat rash prickling behind her knees.
‘I think this one.’ Terese picks up one of the lace squares. ‘It’s not too floral. More geometric. Less chance of clashing with the actual flowers. If you think it’ll go with the bridesmaids’ pink?’
‘Which is the bridesmaids’ pink again? This bubblegum one?’ Caddie says, reaching for a strip of slippery satin.
‘Shit no,’ Terese says. ‘What is wrong with you? I’m not standing at the altar with an entourage of Barbies. Besides, it’ll be the same pink on the cummerbunds and that’d look sickly on Pretty.’
‘All these pinks look sickly to me,’ Caddie says.
‘Good thing it’s not your wedding then, isn’t it?’ says Terese.
‘I had a soft spot for the mauve,’ Olympia says. She winks at Caddie. ‘It’d match my hair.’
‘Let me make one thing clear, Mum, we’re not revisiting the mauve,’ Terese says.
‘She’s winding you up, babe,’ calls Pretty from the couch.
‘A white suit for you, I think, Ionnis. You’d look just like Johnny Young.’
‘Kill me now,’ he says.
In August, when the westerlies come through Brisbane, everyone curses the gappy timber and deep shade but now it’s blessedly dark inside the house, and cool. Relatively. These old houses have verandahs and eaves and low doorways. The sensible spot to sit would be underneath the house among the grove of stumps, but in Brisbane that’s reserved for cars and washing machines and the beer fridge. Still, the gloom upstairs has a solemn air. If it was his house, Pretty often says, he’d put in a skylight.
‘Do you know how long it took to choose the pink? Back me up here.’ Terese waves the swatches in the air.
‘The pink is great, babe,’ Pretty says. ‘Whichever pink you want.’
‘Do you want me to play the piano, Terese?’ Olympia says. ‘Anything you like. Doesn’t have to be Streisand.’
Pretty drops his head back and stares at the ceiling. ‘Olympia. Please.’
‘I fail to see why you should pay some, whatisit, string quartet. Save it. Put it towards your deposit.’
My little caboose, Olympia would call Terese when they were children, because Terese’s two older brothers were in high school by the time she was born. Olympia was older than the other mothers at school, and more glamorous. Caddie remembers waiting at the top of the car park for Olympia to pick them up after school. Terese’s shirt untucked, shoes around her neck, laces tied together. Caddie’s own hair in blonde pigtails, grazes on her knees from playing elastics, both of them carrying their cardboard ports and Olympia, stepping from h
er car and shocking the other mothers into silence with her blue eyeshadow and mini-dresses and platform heels and the long strands of beads that Caddie coveted above anything else. On afternoons when her father was in work, she’d stay at Terese’s. Her house was chaos and noise; at the home Caddie shared with her father, everything was deliberate and calm. Two boys and the fug of their rooms, the vibration of their every word and every footstep and Olympia in constant motion, rushing out to singing classes and Irish dancing—her own, not the children’s—shoving bowls of spaghetti at her and Terese to eat on the couch, or dragging furniture around so they could hang a sheet on a broom handle to make a stage curtain.
‘You’re the mother of the bride, that’s a big enough job,’ Terese says. ‘Besides, you’ll be looking after the flower girls.’
‘Girls?’ says Pretty. ‘Plural?’
‘We need three. Elena, Thea and Yolanda. Can’t manage with less than three, because of the size of the train.’ Then, to Olympia: ‘Did you order the flower girls’ dresses, at least?’
‘Of course. I went with one size bigger than what you wrote down.’
‘Mum, no,’ says Terese. ‘I took the girls for their fitting. The size was perfect.’
‘And what if they grow in the meantime? If a dress is too big you can pin it, big deal. If it’s too small, big problem. Hope for the best and prepare for the worst.’
‘That does sound logical, Terese,’ says Caddie.
‘Thank you, Cadence,’ says Olympia. ‘You are a sensible girl.’
‘All right, fine. Good idea, Mum. Now, the bridesmaids’ dresses.’ Terese picks up one of the wedding magazines and flicks pages. ‘Come on, bridesmaid. Give me a hand.’
Caddie grabs a magazine and also starts flicking.
‘You still working at the bookshop, Cadence?’ Olympia says.
Terese looks to the ceiling. ‘We’ve all told her, over and over. There’s a big wide world out there, Cads.’
‘I like it.’ She loves the routines of bookselling: restoring order to the chaos of the shelves, delivering the perfect title into someone’s hands. The delight of the new releases, the warm memories of the classics, the abstract beauty of the jackets.
‘If I was your age again, what I’d get up to. Adventure. More mischief, definitely. That’s what I regret. And men. More men.’
‘Mum. Gross.’
‘You should be going to nightclubs, Cadence. Images, is that the one? I’ve seen the ad on the telly.’
Caddie reaches for another magazine and fans the pages. There are no dresses in this one, she thinks idly. Then she sees that it’s not a bridal magazine at all. Professional Photography Magazine, it says. February 1986.
‘Should this be here?’
‘That’s me,’ Pretty says, from the couch. ‘Classy photos, that’s what I want. The photos actually matter. They’re what we’ll be showing our kids, and everyone else. I’m not having just anyone. God, remember Sonja and Steven’s?’
Hard to forget. Every time the photographer knelt down to take a shot of the happy couple at the altar he revealed his plumber’s crack to the congregation.
‘What about the video?’ says Olympia. ‘I could probably give a hand there. I do have performing experience, if you remember.’
Once, when they were twelve, Olympia told everyone she was starring in a television commercial and invited the neighbours over to watch it during the second half of Number 96. She served toothpicks threated with cubes of cheddar, salami and pickled onions the colour of traffic lights. Asti Spumante in champagne saucers with hollow stems. The whole street, fifteen people or more, sat huddled around the set in Terese’s lounge room. At last the ad appeared and there was Olympia: a dancing tube of toothpaste recognisable only by her gorgeous legs, her body a gleaming white tube capped with a jaunty lid.
Terese spent the whole evening outside in her treehouse.
‘Yes, the video. A video is a must. Which Mum will not be helping with.’
Caddie flips the magazine’s pages, past advertisements for Canons and Nikons and Hasselblads, past articles on lighting and chemicals and endorsements of reflectors. Then she sees the yellow eye.
On the far left-hand column of the page: a narrow advertisement for the Brisbane Camera Club. All residents welcome, it says, to socialise with other photographers, develop their skills and engage in friendly competition. The logo of the club is a representation of a yellow shutter inside a circle.
Caddie blinks. She feels a taut strumming inside. She’s seen that logo before. It was on the shirt of the chatty photographer who stood next to her in the queue at the Karlson exhibition.
18
New York City, 1938
Schrafft’s has had famous customers before. Many of them are immortalised on the long back wall of signed photos. Mayor La Guardia has lunched here, and Ethel Merman, more than once. Frances Alda. Sheila Barrett. New York is a town powered by fame: most of the shop girls and waitresses and cigarette girls and busboys and delivery boys have travelled to this heaving city to become the person they know they can be. The thin skin between the life you have and the life you desire—this is a good part of New York’s charm. Yet Schrafft’s has never seen a customer like Inga.
For a good twenty minutes she goes from table to table shaking hands, thanking people. She is self-deprecating, blushing. Two of the women have All Has an End in their bags, if you can believe it, and she signs them with kindness and wit. She pays for sundaes for the children, she buys boxes of chocolate-coated cherries for the staff, all twenty-two of them, even the cooks, and apologises to all of them for the trouble she has caused. They gush at her. They loved her book, they adored it, they all tell her. All except Rachel, who seems to have lost the power of speech around this woman. Mrs O’Loughlin has Tommy fetch the photographer who works from the store around the corner and he captures Inga surrounded by the staff. A wonderful addition to their photo wall. Then everyone lines up and Inga moves along like royalty, shaking hands, and Inga is warm and shakes hands with everyone the same, with no special recognition toward anyone.
When Inga smiles at Bridget and Maureen exactly the same as she smiles at Rachel, she could cry.
After everything’s been settled, after Inga’s offered to pay for the cherries, again, and Mrs O’Loughlin has again waved it away, a strange expression comes over Inga’s face. She pales. She stretches out a hand to settle herself against a table, making the glassware wobble. Everyone startles.
‘I beg your pardon,’ Inga says. ‘I feel. Forgive me. My old trouble, it is returning. It has nothing to do with your food, I assure you. Even if I were to collapse upon your doorstep, no one would think that, I am sure.’
Mrs O’Loughlin’s eyes bulge. Does Inga need a glass of water? A place to lie down? Should they call her a taxi?
‘A taxi, yes,’ Inga says. ‘But I fear I may faint. Could someone possibly accompany me? Perhaps that girl there? If she is not too busy?’
Inga raises her quivering arm, open-palmed, and gestures toward Rachel.
*
It’s almost four o’clock. They’re outside now, and there’s a powdery quality to the city air. Rachel’s grabbed her coat and bag. Inga’s leaning against her as they start up Fifth Avenue and Rachel can feel the weight of her and her fine bones and she smells cut grass and laundry soap. Her solid farm-girl feet next to Inga’s dainty, bowed heels. What will she do if Inga collapses? Does she have the strength to carry her? Mrs O’Loughlin wanted to send Tommy out to hail a taxi but Inga dissuaded her. A stroll for a block or two, through Union Square, perhaps even Madison Square; that would revive her. She’s been spending too much time indoors. She’s been not eating right—leading inevitably to her lapse in concentration just now, with the cherries. With someone beside her she won’t fear being overcome. There are not words enough to thank Mrs O’Loughlin for her kindness.
About a block up Fifth Avenue, Inga straightens and stands on her own without Rachel’s help. Rachel’s a
rms are empty now and she’s conscious of them, of the sudden lack of Inga’s body that’s kept her from floating up to the clouds. Inga charges ahead and swings a sharp left along West Fourteenth. They’re not heading for Union Square, then.
‘Are you feeling better, Miss Karlson?’ Rachel says.
‘Miles.’ She’s walking better too. Faster.
‘Would you rather I left you here?’
Inga slows and smiles at Rachel. ‘Silly,’ she says. Her eyes could melt snow.
As far as Rachel can see, a swaying field of bobbing hats. They pass men in fedoras and a few women in felt berets and turbans, all in sharp suits of grey and brown. Cars, gleaming. Trucks and buses.
Inga stops dead in the middle of the sidewalk. Rachel almost collides with her.
‘Where shall we go?’
Where? Does she mean which doctor? Which hospital?
‘Honestly, you should be under glass. No, I’m not ready for a quack just yet. The zoo? There’s a tiglon or maybe a liger or something. Half of one thing, half of the other, poor pet. Or the Museum of Modern Art? We could catch something at the Roxy or, I don’t know, have you been to Argosy? We could browse the maps. Or shopping. I could take you shopping for a hat.’
‘Miss Karlson. If you’ve recovered, I should go back I think. I’m on till six.’
‘That is a terrible idea,’ says Inga, with finality.
It dawns: Rachel is being given an afternoon, as if she is a queen with no commitments. There is much at risk if she is discovered but Inga Karlson won’t betray her, she’s sure of that. No one will know.
‘The park,’ Rachel says, without hesitation. ‘I want to see what grows when no one is looking.’
As it turns out, a great many things grow in Central Park when no one is looking. The cab drops them at East 61st and the park’s still green this warmish fall. It’s eerie—against the charging skyline of the towers, dozens of trees lie wrecked and broken, downed in last week’s storm. Other visitors are few but there are men with axes clearing paths, others barrowing away the smaller limbs. Rachel and Inga meander around the choppy lake and cross the Gapstow Bridge and squirrels peer at them, evaluating their snack-source potential.