by Toni Jordan
‘Hi Gracie. Has Mum phoned?’
‘Yep. ’ ‘She’s not feeling too well today, Gracie. You could call her occasionally, you know. We won’t have her forever.’
‘Uh huh.’
The clock is swinging around to 21 minutes past. Coming, coming…Now.
‘Been doing anything?’
‘Nope.’
‘We’ve been busy. Harry’s going to China in a few weeks. He’s been invited to speak at an international banking conference.’
Really. My brother-in-law is Jill’s height, 167 centimetres, and roughly her shape, complete with man-boobs. Mr high-powered executive, too important to spend half an hour a day walking with his kids. Harry has grey wiry hair on his head that looks like it belongs in his groin, and flabby pink manicured hands. He always wears a suit. The idea that anyone would choose to listen to Harry speak boggles the mind. A conference for Chinese insomniacs, perhaps. Or perhaps it’s an IDIOT conference: International Dickheads In Overpriced Ties.
‘China, heh? Are you going?’
‘Thinking of it. It’s only a week and the kids can stay at their friends’. I’m sure they’ll be all right. It’ll probably be good for them.’
‘Could you bring me back an abacus?’
‘Of course. Hilly wants to talk to you,’ she says. I can hear the phone being handed over.
Hilly is my niece, Jill’s middle child. I don’t call her Hilly, short for Hilary, which is an egomaniacal combination of Jill and Harry. I call her Larry. Unlike Harry junior and Beth, both of whom are chubby, dark haired and vaguely artistic like their mother, Larry resembles me at her age; all ungainly arms and legs like a new-born fawn. She’s also scruffy, abhors fashion magazines and is as sharp as a tack.
‘Hey.’ Her voice is small and thin. She’s being monitored by her mother.
‘Hey Larry,’ I say. ‘How’s life?’
‘What do you call a tree with no leaves?’
‘I don’t know. What do you call a tree with no leaves?’
‘A tree with no leaves.’
I can hear Jill saying, ‘Hilly, are you telling Grace that silly tree joke?’ I can hear a clunking noise as the phone is walked somewhere else, probably back to her room.
‘What do you call a tree with leaves?’
I don’t mind the silly tree joke. But I hope it’s not a long silly tree joke.
‘I don’t know Larry. What do you call a tree with leaves?’
‘Russell.’ She chuckles in a way that is most unladylike and sounds more like me than Jill.
‘Ha. That’s gold, Larry. You’ll have to give up on this vet idea and become a comedienne.’
‘I’m not going to be a vet any more. Dad says animals get sick and die and stuff. He says I should be a teacher but that’s way too boring. I’m going to be an Egyptologist.’
‘Really? What will your mummy think?’
‘Un-funny Grace. Did you know the Great Pyramid of Giza is the only one of the Seven Wonders of the World still left?’
‘Yep. And it’s made from 2.4 million blocks of stone.’
Silence. ‘That’s cool.’
‘How’s the family?’ I ask.
Some kind of clicking noise at the other end. She’s playing with her iPod or Xbox or something else I don’t understand. ‘Harry wants to drop out of the football team. Dad’s gone ballistic and makes him train every day. Bethany won’t leave me alone. It’s so annoying. She’s sleeping with a peg on her nose ’cause she thinks it’s too big.’
‘That’s gross.’
‘Duh. She wants a satin pillow slip like Mum’s, ’cause you get less wrinkles if you sleep on satin.’
‘When I wake up my face looks like the Sphinx.’
Snuffling noise. This amuses her. ‘I haven’t cut your hair in ages.
I did a good job last time, didn’t I?’
‘10 centimetres, right on the nose.’ Larry is one of the few people I trust. What if some distracted hairdresser removed 9.5?
‘It must be really long now. When are you coming over?’
I’d like to say: soon, honey, but I feel like I’m a planet, a serious planet like Jupiter or Saturn. It’s not easy to get me out of my orbit these days.
‘Mum’s having some kind of lunch thing next week. It’ll probably be really boring and stuff but she said you could come if you want.’
I imagine Larry pulling at Jill’s sleeve. ‘Mum, Mum can Grace come…please?’ until Jill says, ‘All right, but you should call her Auntie Grace.’ This would have cost Larry something, for me.
‘I’d like to Larry, but then I’d need to have my brain botoxed like your mother’s friends.’
She’s sniggering. Possibly I shouldn’t say things like that.
‘Hold on.’ She’s gone for a minute, or holding her hand over the phone. ‘Mum wants to talk to you.’
‘See you, DeFazio.’
‘See you, Feeney.’ She watches too much television. Cable.
Another minute and Jill is back on the phone. She’s walking somewhere discreet.
‘I’m having a lunch next Tuesday with some friends.’
‘Tuesday, did you say? Let’s see. What a shame. I’m donating a kidney on Tuesday.’
‘Gracie. They’re really nice girls. I could pick you up.’
‘Jill…’ ‘Okay. I wanted to talk about something else. I’m worried about Hilly.’
‘Uh huh.’ Jill is the kind of person who worries about being hit by space junk. I cross my legs and let my foot dangle. All of a sudden I notice a wart on my foot. How could I have a wart on my foot? I don’t have contact with any humans. Can they come in the mail?
‘The headmistress called last week. She’s concerned about her swearing.’
My tongue makes sympathetic clicking noises. ‘Gee you don’t expect that at a posh girl’s school. Swearing headmistresses.’
They’re viral, I’m pretty sure.
She sighs. Perhaps she’s counting to ten. ‘Hilly is swearing. We certainly don’t talk like that at home. Harry would die if he heard her. I understand adolescents go through a rebellious stage but she’s only ten. We’ve never had that trouble with Harry junior.’
On account of him being a total prig. I know there’s a way to get rid of them…Put the head of a pin in a gas flame and burn them out?
‘Please don’t take this the wrong way…but…is it you?’
‘Is what me?’ Or is that for ticks?
A deeper sigh. ‘Are you teaching Hilly swear words?’
‘Fuck no.’ I remember—you tie a banana skin to it.
‘Grace, please!’ Her voice drops to a whisper. ‘You have absolutely no idea what it’s like to have children.’
I pause for a moment. ‘You’re quite right,’ I say. ‘I don’t.’
5
Monday lunch was a disaster. I was due for an egg and salad sandwich, but I got stuck counting the sprouts. Alfalfa sprouts are the worst, even worse than grated carrot. I have gold tweezers with flat, angled points designed for eyebrows but it’s hard on the back and the eyes, and easy to make mistakes. I’m normally very good at this. Not this time. When I finally got to 100 it was 2.30 p.m., way past my lunch hour so I couldn’t eat. The sandwich had to go in the bin, and then I clipped the empty plate on the edge of the fridge and it shattered everywhere. 87 pieces.
Monday was 36 degrees, Tuesday 25. I tried to do some housework despite it not being a Sunday night. I counted out 10 pieces of clothing (underpants and bras and socks and hankies don’t count and are unlimited) to make a load but I couldn’t get the powder exactly level with the top of the little cup. This has never been a problem before.
There’s one of my usual tasks that I don’t do. I don’t clean out my handbag. At the bottom of my handbag is a folded napkin. If I emptied my handbag I would have to hold the napkin in my hand, and then I might unfold it. And then I might see the phone numbers written on it. And I might never forget them.
Wednesday I think I ha
d some kind of migraine or something, so other than the café, I stayed in bed all day. It was 14 degrees. See what I mean? It’s impossible.
I have changed my routine slightly. Now I always stop 5 paces from the door of the café and peer in the window, before continuing inside. It’s out of my control, either way. But I’d like to be prepared.
Now it’s Thursday and back to 22. At 7.00 p.m. I ring Larry. Normally I don’t do this; if we speak during the week it’s because she rings me. (This is okay because children can’t be expected to stick to the timetable. As soon as she hits 18 things will have to change.) But I need to speak with her. So, from now on, at 7.00 p.m. on the night before any and all first dates, I ring Larry.
‘So what’s happening?’
‘Nothing.’ She’s sullen and terse. She’s never sullen and terse.
‘Come on.’
‘I hate Stephanie.’
The joys of girlhood. I remember Jill vowing eternal sisterhood and never-ending loathing to the same girl on the same day.
‘I thought Stephanie was your best friend.’
‘She’s not. I hate her. Now my best friend’s Courtney.’
‘What’s Courtney like?’
‘She great. She’s got black hair. When we leave school we’re going to uni together and we’re going to share a flat and do anything we want. Stay up all night if we want. Have Tim Tams for breakfast if we want.’
‘Sounds like fun. Tim Tams contain three of the five food groups: chocolate, sugar and chocolate.’
‘Do you think we will? Share a flat I mean?’
‘Why not?’
‘Mum says I’ll have a hundred more best friends before I’m eighteen.’
Helpful. ‘Your mother doesn’t understand. Sometimes you meet someone and your life changes for ever. Remember when Nikola met Westinghouse.’
‘Yeah, yeah Grace. Jeez, I know this one by heart.’
Larry loves my Nikola stories. I can picture her nestling on her bed in her tribute-to-florals bedroom designed by Jill.
I sit on the couch and tuck my feet under me. ‘All right Miss Brainiac. What happened?’
‘When Nikola arrived in New York, he hardly had any money and he had no job. Like a backpacker. All he had was a note from his boss back in France.’
‘Who was the note addressed to?’ I say.
‘Thomas Edison. The telephone guy.’
‘And what did the note say?’
‘Something about Nikola being the greatest?’
‘Close. It said “I know two great men and you are one of them; the other is this young man.” Nikola was only twenty-eight then.’
‘That’s not young.’
‘I’ll let that slide, considering I used to travel to school by brontosaurus.’
She chuckles. ‘Your turn.’
‘Edison ripped Nikola off,’ I say. ‘Promised him a fifty thousand dollar bonus if he could redesign Edison’s generators to run better. Nikola worked his guts out, barely sleeping for months.’
‘Poor Nikola, but he was a bit of a sucker. Daddy says always get it in writing.’
That’s because Daddy would rob you blind himself given half a chance.
‘He was trusting. Instead of the money, Edison offered to pay him twenty-eight dollars a week.’
‘A week? I don’t remember this bit. That’s nothing. He must have been really pissed off.’
‘He was,’ I say.
‘So Nikola told him to shove it?’
‘Nikola told him to shove it,’ I say. ‘And then he met Westinghouse.’
‘He was an inventor too, right?’
‘Yep. When he was twenty, Westinghouse was nearly in a train crash. All the trains had dodgy brakes back then. He invented air brakes and made a squillion. Westinghouse already owned his own electricity company. He was a good guy. He was the first boss to give his workers a half day off on Saturdays.’
‘How did Nikola know they were going to be best friends?’
‘Gut feel, I guess. They couldn’t have been more different, but they liked each other straight away. Nikola was the shy, dark foreigner. Westinghouse was big and blunt with a huge coiffed moustache, always cheerful. Sometimes you’ve got to take the plunge, Larry. Sometimes if you open up, if you take the risk you can achieve more, learn more, feel more with someone else. Someone you can trust, someone you can expose your heart to. Some partnerships can achieve wonderful things.’
‘Like me and Courtney.’
‘Yes. Yes, just like you and Courtney.’
After I hang up I go down to the park and lie on the cricket pitch, staring up. The cement of the pitch is cool under my back. The stars are hanging right above my face. I can hear cicadas in the bushes at the side. From the noise there could be 100 of them, or 120. But there could be 2 or 3. I’ll never know. How can you count what you can’t see? The smell of grass and leather drifts over the oval. I’d like to stay out here all night in the quiet, but I start getting ready for bed at 9.30 p.m. and it’s already 17 past 8.
Seamus Joseph O’Reilly is 38. 3 years older than I am. George Westinghouse was 42, 10 years older than Nikola.
It’s been years since I tried to count the stars. I spent a lot of long teenage nights staring up there trying to count them. I needed to know their number. I remember waiting until the whole house was quiet, until my parents’ soft voices in the room next to mine had stopped. I remember sneaking out the window in my nightie, no slippers on my feet, and lying down in the middle of the lawn. It was cold but I didn’t care. I would stare at the sky, but the fucking things move. I tried to imagine the sky as a grid, drawing lines from objects on the ground. I tried scanning it with an aluminium-foil tube. I tried everything. Nothing works.
My favourite part in the Bible is right at the beginning, in Genesis. And God took Abraham outside and told him to look up at the stars and count them if he could and this would be the number of his descendants. There is a lot of counting in the Bible. Neither Mother nor Jill would realise this; they don’t know much about the Bible despite, or perhaps because of, all the time they spend in church. After all, in Leviticus it says it’s against the law of God to wear clothes woven from two types of material and Mother is a linen-blend kind of girl. And Exodus prohibits the charging of interest on a loan which would be news to the pious Harry, who believes that tax deductions are God’s gift to slum-lords.
Why did I say yes to that Irish git? I’m due to wear a dusty pink skirt with black piping around the edges. And black wedgy heels. And a plain black T-shirt. Too girly. I might as well have ‘gagging for it’ printed on the front. I’d rather wear jeans, and, say, a peasant top. But jeans are for winter. And although I do have a short-sleeved peasant top that fits into the spring/summer wardrobe, I had to wear it yesterday so it’s not due to be worn again for another 4-9 days.
My last date was 2 years 6 months ago with that idiot Simon, some friend of Harry’s. Jill organised it. I thought Jill said he was a Swiss baker. Interesting, I thought. Loaves with 17 different kinds of seeds. Intricate little pastries filled with chocolate. Secret recipes passed through generations of yodelling fathers and sons. All night I worried about how he would get to work by 3 a.m. to start the yeast fermenting if he kept drinking like that. By the time I realised he was a Swiss banker I was so bored I had almost lost the will to live.
But this time will be different. I’ll order an entrée and one drink and then go home. To show myself I can—I can change routine if I want to. It’s only that most of the time I choose not to. Luckily he suggested a place in High Street so I can walk there and walk home. We’re meeting at 7.00 p.m., so if I leave at 9.05 p.m. I’ll still be able to be home and start getting ready for bed on the stroke of 9.30. I can leave home at 6.40 p.m., so, counting backwards: 5 minutes to put stuff in my small bag, 5 minutes to dress, 5 minutes to put on a bit of lippy and some mascara. 5 minutes to do my hair, 5-minute shower, 5 minutes for teeth, including brushing and flossing. Start getting ready at 6.10.
The cement is chilling right inside my spine now, and the bones of my hips are tender where they touch the ground. I know it’s time to head for home. The aura of exuberance, the energy remaining from boys batting and bowling has gone. The stars are winking but they seem very faint tonight. Light pollution from all these houses, little boxes on the hillside. I’m wasting my time even trying to count the stars because only God can do that. It says in Psalms that He decides the number of the stars. And He knows all of them by name.
When I get home from the park, despite following my normal nightly routine, I can’t sleep. I lie on my bed and stare at Nikola’s photo. It’s not really fair to be going out without him. I’m sure he wouldn’t like it. Serbians are passionate by nature—look at how upset he was when Marconi stole his patent for radio. He controlled his anger of course, and never said a bad word about anyone, but you could tell.
It’s only dinner, though. It’s not like I’m doing anything wrong. I remember reading somewhere that the key element of being unfaithful was secrecy. I’ve told him all about Seamus. This dinner’s a little test for me, like an experiment. He’s a scientist—he’d understand that. I’ve been feeling so much better lately and soon I’ll be going back to work. And when I go back to work I’ll have conversations with parents and eat with colleagues in the staffroom. That’s the thing about teaching—no matter how organised you are, how many systems you put in place, you can’t plan for people. They interrupt you. They’re early. They’re late. They can’t get it together.
This is a trial run. Nikola would understand that.
It’s Friday. 12 degrees. I don’t think I can go. I’d like to. But I can’t. It’s already 6.02 p.m. and I have to start getting ready in 8 minutes. I’m lying on my bed, waiting for the clock to tell me it’s 6.10. The trouble is my teeth ache. Mine are not sweet curvy milk teeth. My teeth are sharp with pointy canines that make me seem violent or unhinged. I’m not sure which tooth is aching. Perhaps it’s not a tooth. Perhaps the ache is further inside my jaw or in my temporo-mandibular joint. This makes more sense. I’ve looked and looked at my teeth in front of the bathroom mirror and I can’t see any holes or blackening. I’m meticulous about brushing. And flossing. It probably is in the joint because my jaw is opening stiffly with a popping sensation. I’ve read about this. It’s some kind of flaw in the tendon. I can’t keep my tongue still, that’s the problem. I can’t keep my tongue away from each plane of each surface of each of my 24 teeth or from under the ridge below my teeth or from the back of my soft palate.