Love You Two

by Maria Pallotta-Chiarolli

  Then we have one of what Mum calls those strega moments, a synchronicity that links us in a long-time friendship despite the way we sometimes strain at the chains. They’re both looking at me, waiting, and I know we’re thinking the same thing. I now have something else to worry about, and they’re worrying about it with me. I decide I’ll answer the unspoken question. ‘No, he didn’t use a condom.’

  The silence sits for a moment longer. Rosie uncrosses and crosses her legs and flicks her blonde-streaked hair again. ‘Well, you can worry about that when your period’s due. Or get to a GP for the morning-after pill. Believe me, it works.’ Lisa turns to her and we know what she’s about to ask. Rosie ploughs ahead. ‘For now, you got to worry about your boyfriend’s goss. Look, Pina Pal, Scott’s telling his random Ned Kellys you went all frigid on him, all dykey, that it must run in the family, what with your brother.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Come on, Pee, you know everyone at school thinks Leo’s a homo. So Scott’s saying maybe it’s the gay gene. And he said,’ Rosie stops and stares questioningly at me, ‘he said that explains you and Laura.’

  ‘Leo’s not gay! And I’m not gay either. And why do you always have to bring Laura into everything? I just wanted to experience love, Ro. I was feeling so low ’cos I found out about my mum and I was all over the place.’

  ‘What about your mum?’ Lisa asks, her stick fingers gently stroking my arm.

  Rosie’s frowning, still staring intently at me and ready to take on my mother, since she knows firsthand how to deal with unruly mothers. ‘Yeah, what about your mum?’

  I shrug. I’ve got no words for it myself. Lots of words in this book in my hands. Should I open to a random page and begin to read? Then what?

  Rosie moves towards me, sits on my other side, nudging my shoulder affectionately but roughly with her own. ‘We’re your bestie babes. Give us the whole picture so we can help you sort out all this crap and give Scott a little more hell. We can cyberswipe him on YouTube and MySpace.’

  I pull back. Rosie would never see the whole picture. She’d see the jagged barbed-wire edges. No, I can’t do that to my mother. I can’t betray her even if she has betrayed me most of my life. ‘Nothing. She’s had an argument with my dad, that’s all.’

  ‘Big deal.’ Lisa smiles forlornly. She sighs and scans the stars on my ceiling.

  Rosie and I exchange that ‘she’s about to do a sfogare’ look. We stay silent so she can get on with it.

  ‘My mum threw a chair at the wall last night. Dad turned around in shock and fell onto the coffee table and that broke, and coffee spilled all over the carpet. That made Mum hysterical and Dad started praying, “Please God, please God, not the bloody carpet. We sweated our guts out to buy that carpet.”

  ‘Last thing I saw before I left for Rosie’s was both of them on their hands and knees scrubbing at the carpet, swapping suggestions about the best way to get rid of the stains, going on and on about how they’d both worked so hard to get the best carpet. Go figure.’ Lisa rolls her eyes, and agitatedly pats her jeans’ pockets. ‘I’m hanging out for a smoke.’

  ‘Lisa, you’re mum’s getting violent! You wouldn’t just watch if your dad threw stuff around, would you? But then, I kinda wish my mum had cared enough for my dad to stage those woggy dramas with him,’ Rosie says bitterly. ‘She called it quits as if it was just a wrong street she’d turned down. As if there weren’t kids she’d left behind wondering what the hell happened to the parents they knew … and loved?’ Rosie’s face has lost its perfect gloss.

  There’s another knock on the front door. Lisa gets up and answers it, mumbling something about a chance to have a puff. I hear Laura’s voice, concerned and calm, chatting with Lisa. I see Rosie’s face darken, her body stiffen like a cat getting ready to pounce, camouflage hues of perfection and toughness flushing to the surface of her skin again, outlining her as if someone had come along and traced her with a thick black crayon.

  Laura comes in with Lisa just behind her, still breathing out her last drag from a cigarette that must be waiting outside. Laura and Rosie eyeball each other for what seems like ages, telepathic messages passing between them, messages I’ve never had the code to decipher.

  Laura sits next to me and takes my hand. ‘Are you okay? Is Leo okay? I’ve just had an altercation with Scott. He’s at the mall.’

  ‘Well, we got to him before you did and fixed him already. So whatever you think you had with Scotty-boy, your al-ter-cay-shun, do you mind not holding her hand?’ Rosie spits out.

  ‘Rosie, please –’ Laura begins. There’s a weariness there, a longing to connect with her.

  ‘Get your paws off her! Can’t you see you’re to blame for Scott thinking she’s a frigid dyke – like you, like –’

  Laura interrupts her but I get the feeling Rosie’s swallowed whatever else was there to be said. ‘It doesn’t matter what Scott says. I told him, guys who are lousy lovers call girls dykes. I said maybe he’s trying too hard to prove he’s not gay if he can stand there and let Leo get done like that.’

  ‘What?’ I clutch her hand back.

  Laura hesitates. Rosie shakes her head scornfully. ‘She doesn’t know, you insensitive bitch. She didn’t need to know.’

  ‘What? Know what?’ I yell, gripping Mum’s book on my lap.

  Laura’s arm goes around my shoulder. Rosie’s eyes are still burning into Laura’s hand over mine, but now they follow the arm around my shoulders as she speaks slowly. ‘That your stupid boyfriend got his stupid little brother to get his gang onto your little brother and give him a good bashing so he’d stop being so gay. For his own good, don’t you think?’ Rosie’s struggling to stay in control on the surface. While I’m trying to take it all in, a part of me watches the pain oozing from her.

  ‘’Cos being gay’s sick, isn’t it? Being lezzos like you, Laura, it’s disgusting!’ Her voice is getting louder, yet wavering. ‘You recruit people to be perverts like you!’ She leaps forward and grabs Laura’s wrist and flings her arm off my shoulders. ‘Like your mother, Laura! What she did!’ Rosie’s screaming now.

  Laura gasps and tries to calm Rosie. ‘Stop it Rosie, please. Don’t do this to us, please.’

  We’ve never seen Rosie like this. We’ve seen her lose her cool in a cool way, but this is real out-of-control stuff. This is heart stuff. We’ve always known there was a weight inside her just waiting to break to the surface, and this is what it looks like when it does.

  Rosie must be realising that she has three people staring at this un-camouflaged her, three people unwilling and unable to anticipate her next move. ‘I’m outta here.’ And she’s at my bedroom door. ‘Pina, go and get screwed over by Scott, or someone who’s way better in bed, before you become like her and her mother!’ She strides out.

  ‘Rosie!’ I try calling after her. Something’s seriously wrong. Rosie acts mean about Laura, Rosie acts tough about Laura, but she’s never turned on me like that.

  Lisa looks frantically at Laura, then at me, then at Laura. She shakes her head apologetically. ‘I need a smoke. And I’ll take care of her.’ She dashes to the door.

  The front door slams behind them. I turn to Laura, wanting to ask something but unsure of what. She shakes her head and is trying not to cry. ‘Please don’t ask. I’m sorry about what happened here with Scott. I’m sorry about Leo.’ She sighs and wipes her eyes, those calm eyes still managing to look wise. ‘It doesn’t matter if he’s gay, Pina. But it does matter that you don’t stand up for him at school. It always upset me how you’d just join in when others were paying him out.’ Then she does a kind of shrinking shrug as if someone’s laughed at her. ‘But then, who am I to tell you that?’

  I sit there quietly looking at Mum’s book, knowing Leo’s next door. What’s he heard? What’s he thinking? How hurt is he? Who could he be if I stopped wanting him to be like everyone else’s little brother?

  And who is Laura? What’s with her mum that’s got Rosie so riled up? Wh
at’s with all our mums?

  Laura stands up abruptly as if hearing those questions in my silence. ‘I think I’d better go. Is there anything I can do?’

  ‘No.’ It’s all been spilt. Now I gotta mop up.

  ‘I’ll call you tomorrow, if you want, and maybe we can just hang out and talk. If you want. But I think you should ring your mum, or dad, and get them to come and check Leo out. And maybe get to a doctor. You know, morning-after pill.’ Laura’s coping again, scheduling and delegating, making everything seem like just a ‘to do’ on a daily planner.

  She reaches out and touches my hair, gently and affectionately, the way she always has. I flinch a little. It happens before I’m even aware of it, before I can stop it. Before today, I’ve nestled into Laura’s friend’s touch. Before today …

  Her hand floats away from me, slowly and sadly. She’s heading to the door. ‘Laura,’ I call and she turns around. ‘Are you …’ and the rest sticks.

  She looks up and smiles sadly at the messy-starred ceiling. Then she looks down at me. Her eyes look like they’ve captured the shine of stars. ‘No, Pina, I’m not a lesbian.’

  She turns to the door, grasps the doorknob, and talks to it. ‘Okay, here I am preaching to you about how you treat your brother. Meanwhile …’ she sighs, shrugs, and turns back to me, her eyes resigned, her fist still gripping the doorknob. A twisted smile splits her face. ‘Pina, my mum’s gay. I made life so hard for her for a long time because it was hard for me. Because it’s so hard out there, you know. Big secret I’ve been keeping. And she’s been keeping it because of me, because of school and rellies. But now she doesn’t want to any more. She wants to be proud and strong. The way she’s meant to be. But I won’t let her speak. Not even to my boyfriend who must think I live with a serial killer ’cos I never let him come over. Look, I never had that many friends at school anyway and the ones I had, like you, I wanted to keep. So I’ve been forcing her to stay in the closet – so I can stay out of it. How stupid. I’m deep in it with her anyway. Closet claustrophobia kills your insides.’

  And she’s gone.

  Serena, Laura’s mother. I like her. I can see her now in her teacher’s garb, rushing home after work to cook tea. Laura’s mother at school sporting events, sitting in a fold-out chair under a tree, her long brown hair in a pretty French knot. Laura’s mother making salami and provolone sandwiches, selling second-hand goods at school fairs, supervising at school dances, sewing hundreds of sequins on my drama costumes because my own mother’s useless at it. Laura’s mother in neat motherly skirt and jacket (the kind I longed for my mother to wear) at funerals, weddings, baptisms and communions marking the Italian community’s visits to the local church. Laura’s mother hanging out with our mothers, including Rosie’s mother. So Rosie knows about Laura’s mum. Does my mother know?

  All I know is that inside that ordinary mother, that ordinary teacher, is Serena, who’s a lesbian and knows hurt and hate. These mothers of ours, going through hurts that we daughters have to learn to live with. Beautiful mothers whom others would hate if they knew the women they really are. Does Serena keep a writing book like my mother?

  What will happen to Leo if he’s gay? Will his real life be lived in a book so that his ribs can stay intact in the world?

  Still holding my mother’s book, Gianna’s life, I go and knock on Leo’s door. I have to knock a couple of times before there’s a muffled reply. ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Are you okay?’ Now why does my voice automatically sharpen like that? Why can’t I be gentle even after all that’s happened?

  ‘Yeah.’

  I consciously soften my voice. ‘Do you want me to call Mum?’

  ‘No, don’t worry her.’

  I can’t help feeling relieved. I don’t know if I can talk to Mum yet. I’m not even brave enough to open this door and look at my brother. ‘I heard what happened,’ I say.

  There’s a pause. Then, ‘I heard what happened too.’

  I freeze, but the tears come again to thaw me. I touch the closed door as if it was his face or shoulder. ‘Don’t tell Mum and Dad, Leo. Please. I’ve got to work some stuff out. I hate Scott for what he’s let happen to you. I hate myself for letting it happen to you for so long.’

  ‘Did he hurt you too?’

  ‘I’ll be all right.’

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘Catch ya,’ and I head back to my room. Was it easier having the most real conversation we’ve had in a long time as brother and sister through a closed door? Maybe one day I’ll have the guts to actually talk to him, I mean really talk with him, face to face.

  I place Mum’s book on my bedside table and lie down. Then the thought comes to me: Mum has a brother too, a brother who gave her this writing book. Zi Donato. I wonder how much he knows, what they share. I wonder how close they were when they were growing up. I know Zi Don’s a footy player and Mum hates football. I know he looks like a male version of my mum and Zi Elena, although not as good-looking. In fact, I know very little about him, this uncle who turns up at Easters and Christmases. I know he gets the usual pleas each year from Nonna, some of which I don’t really understand: ‘Why can’t you move back here? You are the first born and the only son, and you go away, leaving us here. The mistakes are finished if you make your family proud now.’

  Zi Elena and my mother always stand up for him. ‘Ma, he has his life there now. He has his reasons, let him be,’ Zi Elena says. And my mother adds, ‘And there’s nothing he should be ashamed of.’

  I realise I’ve never had big chats with Zi Don. He’s always been the kind of uncle who gave you whizzies, horsey-rides, read you stories and let you stand on his feet while he danced you around to a tarantella. I loved seeing him for those few days a year but never really missed him when he was gone. He left no lingering intrigue or longing. He was simply there, simply having fun, a figure everyone wanted to have a little piece of but also someone the older rellies seemed a little weird about. Probably his being a lawyer, with lots of money, a life in the big city of Melbourne, a Vietnamese architect non-Catholic, non-babied girlfriend he lived in sin with. Not like their sons; the local concreters, plumbers and electricians, who’d had traditional church weddings, have kids in Catholic schools, mega-mortgages, and former ‘good Italian girl’ wives.

  The last time I’d heard from Zi Don was my birthday, with his standard package of something funky. This time it was a collection of colourful bracelets that jangled on my arm from wrist to elbow, creating a shimmering rainbow effect. His usual card invited me to come and stay with him whenever I wanted. This time he’d added his girlfriend’s name, Wei Lee, telling me she’d chosen the bracelets as she had an eye for design. Then he’d added a PS: ‘You’re sixteen now and life can get pretty spun out, what with school, friends, family, love (?), so come on over if you ever need a break. I know your mum and dad would love you to.’

  I feel a huge weight lift in me. I decide – I know – I need to go to Melbourne to see Zi Don, to get away from everything here. I can look back at everything here from over there. He might have some answers and he wouldn’t ask a lot of questions. Like I said, we’d never had a deep and meaningful. He’d let me be in his easygoing way.

  I get on the internet and soon I’m booking a bus to Melbourne, overnight, tonight. Tomorrow morning: new morning, new city, new life maybe? I’ll leave a note for my parents and I’ll phone Zi Don just as I’m about to leave on the bus, so there’s no way he won’t have me stay.

  I feel like some energy has been restored just at the thought of going to stay with someone sane, practical and uncomplicated.

  I’ll email Laura from Melbourne. Tell her I’m sorry. That my mum’s got a secret too, and way worse than her mum’s. Suddenly that all seems easier too, through cyberspace from another city.

  I get up and it feels good to have easy, definable, manageable tasks to do with my hands and with which to occupy my brain. I shower and allow the soapy water to wash away the heavy odours of the day. T
entatively, I touch myself between my thighs, making the warm soapy water do its thing. I put on some jeans and a t-shirt, put some clothes in a sports bag. In my backpack I put some apples, a toothbrush and toothpaste, my make-up bag and my wallet with any money I can find. I put my mobile in my backpack then take it out again, staring at it. I don’t want to switch it on and I don’t want to take it with me. I fling it onto my bed.

  The last thing I do is put Mum’s book into my backpack.

  I find some notepaper and write to my parents:

  I’ve gone by bus to Zi Donato in Melbourne. I need time out from everything here. To figure out some stuff. Don’t worry about me.

  I place it on the kitchen bench near the phone, where we always leave messages.

  I decide to leave early. Now that I know where I’m going, I want to leave this house immediately. I’ll wander around town and the bus station and just watch people doing their daily surface stuff while who knows what else is going on inside.

  There’s one last thing I want to do before I go.

  Dear Leo

  I’m going to Melbourne to Zi Donato. I need time to think.

  But when I come back, I hope we can talk a little.

  Can you keep Mum and Dad chilled about me? I need to work out how I feel about things before I talk to them.

  Pina Xo:-(

  I slip the note under his door.

  8

  Border-travelling

  PASSENGERS WAITING FOR their overnight bus are like turtles carrying humps of homes and belongings on their backs. They wander around, or squat against the bus station walls, blending in with the grey concrete ground and muddy bricks, dirty brown wooden benches and smudged glass doors.

  I’m standing near a bus with a sign in its window saying it’s heading to Melbourne. I’m listening to teenage tourist backpackers in baggy shorts and baggy shirts speaking their German, French and American. Old pensioners in slippers shuffle and fidget as they try to get comfy on the bench amid all their belongings. I’m breathing in bus fumes and the smoke from young guys with cigarettes between stained fingers, tatts peeking out of denim-jacketed wrists, and torn greasy jeans that look like they’ve been smoked as well.