Laura’s what you’d call my friend ‘on the side’. Rosie hates her and believe me, Rosie stirs around but doesn’t easily hate a lot of people. With Laura, it’s like you can see the loathing come spitting out of her eyeballs. I don’t know why. Ro never gets around to telling you why, she just turns on you with declarations like ‘With that bitch there’s no list long enough.’
Lisa hates Laura because Ro does. And I can’t be bothered being trashed by them so I hang out with them at school and barely nod at Laura. Then I see Laura for some sanity outside of school. I don’t tell the others too much about it. Now and again we get sprung as we’re sitting doing homework together at my place or huddling over coffee in some café on Norwood Parade, and so I hear often enough, ‘She’s a lesbian, she’ll turn you.’ I’ve even told them Laura’s going out with a male uni med student. Rosie just snarls back that I’m too naive and easily fooled by an obvious cover-up. It’s like there’s an either/or fence with my friends sometimes: ‘It’s either us or her, girlfriend.’ Ro actually said that once, hands on hipsters, with Lisa nodding skinnily behind her.
Laura couldn’t care who I hang out with, ‘As long as I get to see you too, Pina, and I prefer to see you for real outside school, not in all that fakeness at school.’
I can feel Laura’s warm smile over the mobile now as I ask, ‘Laura da Vinci, Princess of Missing Jigsaw Pieces, tell me something. What’s it like having two homes?’
‘Well, Princess Pina, manageable now that my parents are friends and happy in their new relationships. I really admire them for the tough decisions they’ve made.’
‘Do you ever wish they hadn’t got divorced?’
‘Lotsa times. It would’ve been so much easier, but life’s good now, Pina. Anyway, what choice did they have? My mum was falling for someone else. She got married way too young. You know that wog thing our mothers had to put up with: first boyfriend you take home, you marry. Then comes the pregnancy ’cos you weren’t allowed to figure out birth control, being a good Catholic girl. And so along came me and years of responsibility, and let’s not rock the boat of famiglia and figura. But my nonni still pray the rosary for them twice a day. I’m going to do it differently, Pina. I’m going to take my time. I’ve made no promise to Tim.’
‘Would you go out with Tim and other guys at the same time?’ I’m almost hoping that Laura da Vinci says yes, has heard something, can validate and affirm as she does so often when I feel things but have no words or experience to make sense of them.
‘No way, one at a time, till I find the right one and then maybe we’ll marry. But before then, I’ve got to get myself educated, careered and financed. Independent, you know?’
‘What if you end up liking two guys? At the same time.’
‘Pina, no, of course not! That doesn’t happen. There’s got to be something wrong with one guy if you need to be with another. Like my parents. There was something seriously wrong between them so they fell out of love with each other and then moved on to other partners. Anyway, what’s brought this on? Is everything okay with Scott?’ I know from the way she says his name that she doesn’t like him too much. The feeling’s mutual. Scott thinks she’s a ‘foul feminist’ who could be a bad influence on me.
‘Just talking to Laura da Vinci.’ I try to laugh. Don’t ask me again, Laura, because even your philosophical know-how wouldn’t understand this.
We say goodbye, and I switch off my mobile.
4
On love and life, according to Dad
THE HOUSE HUSHES A LITTLE after the clatter and conversation of the post-dinner clean-up. It’s only been about an hour since I escaped the kitchen but it feels a lot longer. I stay in my room as it darkens with the evening. I listen to lives going on outside my door, the same sounds I’ve always known, have always been a part of, but now feel displaced from: the laughter, the chats; familiar television shows interrupted by repeated commercials, followed by Mum’s critical commentary; the seventies music from Dad’s computer CD player; the shower and flushing toilet; Leo going to bed after goodnight kisses. All so normal-sounding in an alien way.
Then Mum knocks on my door, ‘Hey, Pina, how you going in there bella? Want some chocolate?’
‘No. Stop stuffing my face!’ I want to hurl my fists at the door. I want to open that door and fall crying into her arms.
‘Pina, I’m worried about you. You seemed more irritable than usual at dinner. You feeling well?’
‘I’m feeling sick, okay? Just leave me alone tonight.’
More irritable than usual? They’ve come to expect me being feral. For a moment, I feel like a bitch, but I don’t want to feel like that any more. She’s the bitch. I am way too justified in being ‘irritable’.
‘Heard your phone ring a few times. Your friends all right?’
‘Stop spying! I know you don’t think much of them but they’re my friends.’
‘I’ve never said a bad word about them since you were five-year-olds in fairy costumes. I just worry about Rosie these days and I feel sad about Lisa’s family. And I wouldn’t trust them to always know what’s best for you.’
‘Jesus, stop lecturing!’ I bite my wrist to keep the sobs from spurting out of my mouth.
I can hear her shuffling near the door. ‘Pina, I’m here if you need me. That’s all I want to say, bella.’ Her voice sounds resigned, soft. ‘I’m not so good talking to closed doors. Daughters I love chatting with.’ She tries a laugh and it’s as if she waits to hear if I laugh back. Or at least do my usual groan at her gushing and call her a mega-loser.
Instead, I’m staring at the door wanting so desperately for it to open, and all the while hating her, wanting to stop this gnawing pain and queasy anger she’s set churning in me.
I breathe deeply and then say as evenly as I can, ‘Leave it alone, Mum.’
‘Okay.’ She pauses, taken aback at my unusual calmness. Then, ‘Goodnight gorgeous girl.’
I hear her walking slowly away. I bury my face in my pillow and cry.
Soon Dad’s walking towards my door, then he’s knocking. I know he’s conferred with Mum. They always do that. The united front. ‘Hey Principessa, I’ll leave you alone but I want to say goodnight. We know you want some privacy, but we’re here for you, okay? We love you hon.’
‘Dad, just open the door a bit. Don’t switch on the light.’
There’s his tall chunky figure silhouetted against the hallway light.
‘Dad … Dad.’ But what do I say? ‘Are you happy, Dad?’
I can just make out his chubby face. I hear his chuckle and sigh. ‘Yes I am, Pina. I have you, Leo, your mum. I have a good job, a good life, and good health, even a spare tyre in case I break down.’ And I see the shadow of his hand patting his gut. But I don’t laugh. He asks quietly, ‘What about you?’
How do I tell him it’s about him? ‘Would you change anything?’ I ask swiftly. How do I tell him I feel sorry for him, and that the last thing I want to do is feel sorry for my father? Yet I also feel so frustrated and angry with him because he doesn’t seem to recognise what a fool he is, what a wimp he’s been made into.
‘If I changed anything, I might be happy in a different way, or be extremely unhappy. I might gain something, but I might lose more. I might upset this beautiful balance your mum and I have grown, and there’s no way I want to do that. So unless I get unhappy one day, I’m not changing a thing. Life comes with bits of everything thrown in, Peanut, and I’m so lucky that the bits of badness are far outweighed by lots of goodness.’
It makes sense but it’s being applied to a relationship that doesn’t make any sense. He asks again, ‘What about you?’
‘I don’t know, Dad, I don’t know anything any more.’
‘Then while you don’t know, ride it out. Don’t do anything that’ll come back to haunt you one day. Get information. Think, feel. Go on other journeys and you’ll eventually know when and what changes to make.’ He stops talking and we stay with the silence
, he at the door, a soft silhouette of someone once so familiar and reassuring in his simple loving cuddly self, me a teary confused mess on my bed. Then he adds slowly, ‘But make sure you know what you feel, not what you’re told you’re supposed to feel. Goodnight, Principessa Pina mia.’ He quietly shuts the door.
No doubt, Mum chose a really good man to love and wreck. Is the other man like this one? From what I know of him, I have to admit he could be.
I feel my stomach knot again and I turn onto it, hoping that by pressing it into the mattress, I can iron out the clumps. I hear Dad next door saying more goodnights to Leo, his lionheart, his ‘Cuore di Leone’. The words are muffled but the warmth is clear. I even hear Leo laugh in a way that only Mum and Dad can muster from him – free of that fear he seems to have at school.
Some kids at school say Leo’s gay. If that’s true, would it make a difference to the way my parents love him? Nah, Leo’s got nothing to worry about in that department. They have gay and lesbian friends, much to Nonna’s discomfort. I heard them once tell Nonna that if she wasn’t comfortable coming over for my mum’s fortieth birthday party because gay people would be there, then she could choose not to come at all. Of course, this wasn’t a real choice for Nonna. Did she want to be known as the mother who didn’t show up at her own daughter’s fortieth birthday? And anyway, at least if she attended, she could keep an eye on ‘those’ people, make sure they didn’t whisk the children into the toilet.
Even Dad, Southern Italian stallion that he is, somehow missed the queue where they gave out the fists to ‘bash the finocchio’. (That’s the Italian for fennel, but also slang for ‘gay man’ – I don’t get why languages are so weird.) My stomach feels a little better as I focus on remembering when Leo and I were younger; me doing time in puberty, Leo still blissing out in childhood. We were out with Dad at some Saturday afternoon concert at the Adelaide Festival Centre, something very forgettable and embarrassing with The Wiggles, that Leo had wanted to see.
Dad’s car had refused to start earlier that day, and Mum was working – well, that’s what we were told, now I wonder. Dad took us to the concert by taxi. After the show, he got us into a taxi again, helping us into the back while he sat at the front with the driver.
Of course, Dad started chatting with him. Turned out he was a Somalian refugee, had managed to get his family out to Australia to escape war and starvation. They talked about the racism his family experienced here.
We came to a red light at an intersection outside a groovy café in Rundle Street East, sporting rainbow colours and an outdoor, inner-city crowd. Sitting at one table was a group of men, laughing, gesturing and doing what I now would call ‘acting gay’. Actually, if anyone had asked me then, I would’ve said they were doing their rendition of The Wiggles.
The driver obviously didn’t think much of The Wiggles either. He looked across, pointed, and said to Dad, ‘Dey sick.’
Dad followed his finger, then turned back abruptly to the driver, ‘Sorry, mate, what did you say?’
‘Dey sick, dey ’omosessual.’
I saw Dad’s shoulders heave with a huge breath. ‘What makes you think being gay is being sick, mate?’
‘I am Christian. God say. Evil. Bad pipple. Not normal.’
Leo and I waited for the preaching to begin. We almost felt sorry for the driver. He didn’t know that once you triggered Dad off, it took ages to wind him down. The light turned green, the taxi cruised forward, and then Dad began.
‘Did you know that two hundred years ago Christians said that your ancestors weren’t even human, mate? You were considered such dumb animals that there was nothing wrong with making you slaves and taking you away to white people’s, yeah, Christian people’s lands to work, starve and die on. It was a “Christian duty”, decreed by God, to come to your lands and Christianise you or kill you. It was called colonialism, mate.’
Dad stopped to breathe. The driver was trying to concentrate on the road, but glanced now and again with shock and anxiety at Dad.
Re-oxygenated, Dad continued, ‘Yeah, mate, all that bullshit ’cos of the colour of your skin. And some people here in Australia still think that don’t they? So how can you turn around and spout that same religion to discriminate against another group of people the church hasn’t got Christ-like about yet? Geez, I don’t believe this.’ Dad shook his head.
‘You – you a good man, but God –’
But Dad hadn’t finished. ‘What do you think your grandchildren and their children will think of your cruel version of Christianity one day, mate? Do you want them to remember how you came to this land to escape oppression only to oppress others?’
The driver looked agitated. ‘I – I sorry sir. Pliss don’ report –’
Dad settled down, but shook his head. ‘Look, I’m not reporting you, mate. I just get disappointed. You should know better.’
The taxi glided along in silence now while Leo and I stared at the backs of their heads.
A few streets away from home, Dad spoke again. ‘Listen, let us out here, mate. I think a little fresh air will do us good.’ The driver looked confused, relieved, remorseful.
‘Have a good life in this country,’ Dad said to him through the rear side-window, ‘but Jesus, mate, let others have one too.’ The driver nodded solemnly and drove away.
Leo and I looked up at Dad. Sort of proud of him and sort of overwhelmed, knowing what he too had been through before coming to Australia. Dad lost his own parents when a bus taking them home from a Papal rally plunged over some cliff in Calabria. Luckily he was sixteen and no longer into the Papacy so he missed that trip, but it drove him away to start again in Australia.
Now Leo slipped his hand into Dad’s. We were about a ten-minute walk from home. ‘Hey kids, let’s go past the deli, get a gelati, then we can walk home.’ Normally I would’ve grumbled at having to walk but I didn’t think that would’ve gone down well right then. I didn’t want the lecture that’s usually delivered to me when Dad’s in his pulpit, the one that starts with, ‘At your age …’
‘It isn’t bad being gay, is it Dad?’ Leo asked as we walked along, licking gelatis, Leo holding onto Dad with one hand.
‘It isn’t bad loving people, Leonuccio, and knowing there are many ways to love. One day his kid might be gay, then what? Is he going to choose the church over his own child? That’s not what Christianity’s meant to be about.’ Dad kept rambling while Leo smiled, secure and content. I was too, for sure, but I was that bit older and the incident niggled at me. My dad’s a saint, but he pontificates for ages after he’s witnessed an injustice.
With these memories of Dad, I manage to fall asleep, but I have weird dreams all night. I keep seeing this big heart, like the one our Biology teacher showed us. It’s translucent like coloured glass, throbbing and pumping. I can see into it to the two chambers, blood pulsing in and out of both. But in my dream, I can see this ribbon, a rainbow-coloured ribbon, tied around it. The ribbon’s getting tighter and tighter. As the heart pumps and throbs, it’s getting bigger and being squeezed by the ribbon – which must be as strong as steel, I’m sure. I hear my mother’s hippy laughing voice trickling ‘love you t(w)oo’ over and over, then it becomes a moan, and then a wail. Then the heart explodes. Blood and tears, shattered glass and shredded ribbon everywhere.
I suddenly sit up in the dark, almost hyperventilating. I have my hand on my heart, which aches like it’s been torn into two pieces; each one still pumping blood, struggling to survive.
I force myself to lie down again, spots of colour spinning in front of my eyes. I have to face the truth, I tell myself, as I wait for my heartbeat to slow down and my tears to dry up. I loved my family. I loved Leo’s courageous kindness and sensitivity even as I hated how it got him harassed at school and I had to handle it as his big sister. I loved my father’s strong affectionate goofiness even as I scoffed at it. I loved my mother’s beautiful resilient spirit even as I was finding myself resenting her for the many ways she’s
more beautiful than me – and I don’t mean just in looks. And now I feel betrayed by her.
I thought we were doing well, but it’s all been a lie and my heart has exploded. The only thing I can think to do, to salvage the bits of heart-flesh and scoop up the blood, is to hate them, to feel this raw strength and numbness that comes from hatred. Loving them like I used to didn’t stop chaos sneaking in, with me oblivious to it. Loving them in the morning, as if nothing has happened, isn’t an option.
5
How to explore your house, and find you have no home
I’M AWAKE, AND THE NEW knowledge I had submerged in restless sleep surges up again. The room lightens and morning sounds taunt me from outside my door. A retro radio station plays some disco number Mum says she and Dad danced to at their wedding: ‘Love is in the air’… The fridge swishes open several times behind sleepy cheery voices. Smells seep in from under my door: toast, vegemite, coffee, Dad’s sturdy aftershave, Mum’s too-sweet perfume, Leo’s girly hair gel. Loud whispers soften as they pass my door, and then grow again. The front door shuts three times, two cars back out of the driveway; a bank manager’s smooth Commodore and a hippy nurse’s late seventies chugging purple Volkswagen, both engines gradually silenced by distance.
The fourth morning unit has always been me, and I lie there in the growing stillness wondering how my morning sounds and sights and smells weaved or warped into those of the other three.
Then I remember there’s a fifth unit, in another house, and my mind slaps me with imaginings of other mornings. I push myself out of bed.
I used to think going on a journey meant you actually had to travel to another place or another country. I didn’t think it could mean turning a doorknob into a house whose surfaces you’ve traversed daily. Today, this house is to become the site of a major archaelogical dig to discover lost selves, hidden truths, buried evil.
I look down the corridor to the left where sun streams into the kitchen, glinting off the glassy pale-green Italian tiles. It all looks the same and feels so different. Has this really been my home?
Love You Two Page 4