by Fiona Wood
Here, she felt like a flower finally in its right environment, her petals opening one by one to absorb the beauty, and then folding back up to protect herself from the fact that this was not her world.
She knew of people who lived like this, from magazines, but seeing at close range the vast span of difference between her life and Billy’s almost made her laugh with disbelief at the unfairness of it all. Who had decided that some should have so little and others so much?
She hoped none of this was visible on her face, especially the bit about tasting her own wee.
She turned to Billy. ‘What are these? It’s such a pretty scent.’ She bent to sniff the big-headed yellow blooms made up of many small flowers threaded with delicate red stamens.
‘Yeah, they’re ginger flowers, I think – my mum likes them, too.’
Billy leaned in, smiling. What? Was he going to kiss her? She heard a confused rushing in her ears, and felt a tug of desire so strong it was like being winded. She held the table edge behind her for balance. But he just brushed the tip of her nose softly with his little finger and said, ‘Pollen.’ He stayed close, looking into her eyes. Whatever else might have been about to happen didn’t, because she sneezed five times in quick succession and had to fish a tissue from her pocket and blow her nose.
Classic mood-breaker.
She gave herself a stern mental shake: nothing was going to happen except her fantasy intruding into reality, an uninvited guest.
‘Does she – does your mum arrange the flowers?’
‘Usually. I think. If she’s around. Let’s grab something to eat and go to my room.’
She didn’t want to leave the beauty, but managed a few muted tap-dance steps to relieve her feelings as she followed Billy.
The kitchen was another revelation. It looked like a glamorous laboratory. Perfect white tiles, stainless steel, and a woman wearing an apron emerging from a doorway. Vân Ước froze. Meet the parents? She wasn’t ready for that.
‘Mel, this is Vân Ước. Vân Ước, Mel.’
‘Lovely to meet you.’ Mel expertly jostled and slid the contents of the large baking tray she was carrying onto two cooling racks sitting ready on the bench. The oven must have its own room. ‘Cheese and chive scones – help yourselves. And those peaches are ripe.’ She nodded at the huge fruit bowl, which like everything around here looked like a prop in a design magazine.
‘Thanks, Mel,’ said Billy, loading up a plate. ‘How was your day?’
Who was this Mel?
‘It was wonderful, thank you, William, and if by how was your day? you mean what’s for dinner? it’s a Malaysian chicken curry with jasmine rice, fresh mango and mint chutney, and steamed broccolini. And I’m making a lemon delicious, but with limes.’
Billy smiled his wide smile. He looked like the handsome man in the wedding photo, with the champagne, but scruffy. ‘You are my hero,’ he said.
Mel pretended to be impervious to Billy’s charm, but Vân Ước could see that she liked him a lot. ‘I know it. Don’t let him eat it all,’ she said to Vân Ước with a brisk, friendly smile.
Vân Ước didn’t know who she was, and didn’t know what to say. The old dudes did, though. Look at her/She’s pressed the mute button again/Smiling, yes/But does she expect people to read her mind?/Apparently/Winning tactic.
Vân Ước followed Billy up the stairs, a view to the deep garden from the landing, along a corridor and into his room. ‘Who’s Mel?’ she asked.
‘Our house manager.’
‘What does she do?’
‘She runs the place. The parentals both work and they like things to run smoothly when they’re away. And when they’re here. They’re both pretty much control freaks.’ He saw the momentary look of panic on her face. ‘And don’t worry, they’re away till next week.’
‘So, she . . . cooks? Cleans?’
‘No, we’ve got cleaners. She cooks. She shops. She pays bills, coordinates other staff, like cleaners and gardeners, supervises homework – well, she used to – and does any picking up and dropping off of us kids when we need it . . . I mean, my sister’s not here, she’s at university now – I don’t know, shit like that. She gets everything organised. She’s lived with us since I was five.’
Billy was gazing at her again.
‘Okay, well let’s get on with it,’ she said in a matter-of-fact tone that she hoped concealed how overwhelming she found him and his world.
‘Scone?’ he asked, backing into his bedroom, holding the tray. The room was huge, on the north-east corner of the house. There was a double bed, drum kit, windows on two walls, sofa, cluttered desk, over which was a pinboard with a montage of photos – a few she could see were of crew members, including Billy, standing side by side, huge grins, index fingers thrust upwards in triumph, holding up medals, expansive book shelves . . . and no visible pile of dirty laundry, despite all the training gear he must go through every day.
She took a scone, and bit into it. Oh, god. It was an explosion of great flavour, light, cheesy, flaky, with fresh basil as well as chives. ‘Wow. You realise you live in the land of Take What You Want?’
He laughed. ‘I know. Mel is, like, the best.’
Vân Ước sat at Billy’s desk, and he sat on a comfortable-looking tub chair that he pulled close. They opened their laptops.
‘Let’s look at the session transcripts first, so we know what we’re supposed to be doing,’ she said. She’d already read them the night before, but she was prepared to go through the motions of being a regular, non-obsessive workaholic student.
This meant that she was at liberty to watch Billy as he read. He tucked a strand of hair behind his ear. She could see he was skimming and not particularly interested.
‘Poetry. It’s, like, there’s only so much you can say about so few words. Am I right?’ He glanced up. ‘Sorry, I’m wrecked from training. I’d rather sit here and continue through the catalogue of the Vân Ước facial expressions collection.’
‘You’ll see pissed off soon, if I end up doing all the work.’
‘Woohoo! The feisty face.’
She ignored him. Billy Gardiner might be Billy Gardiner, but nobody was going to stop her doing the work. ‘I think one of the things we are expected to do – if we look at this – is to help shape the discussion. We’re not just answering questions.’
Billy looked at his computer glumly. ‘Yeah. Okay, let’s go through and highlight some more of the requirements, and then we’ll talk about the text?’
‘Deal.’
‘So, there’s also this thing – some allusion to criticism, and some personal responses.’ He looked up. ‘Do you have personal responses?’
‘I love Plath,’ she said. ‘I have more responses than they’ll want. I just don’t like talking.’ Oops. She’d said it.
‘Uh-huh,’ Billy said. ‘I’ve noticed that. How come?’
‘Shy, I guess.’
‘I don’t like talking in class either.’
She couldn’t help laughing. That was absurd. He did nothing but talk in class.
‘I mean, I can’t be fucked talking about the work. But I know – I know this is the year to knuckle down.’
‘You’ve managed without any knuckling so far?’
‘Yeah, but my parents will kill me if I don’t get serious about study this year.’ He sighed. ‘I’ve kind of been dreading it, to be honest. This is officially the end of fun times.’
He looked – grave, a look so uncharacteristic that she had to ask. ‘Why the pressure? You get okay results, don’t you?’ She had him placed in the top ten per cent, top two to three per cent if he bothered working, but she didn’t want him knowing she’d watched that closely. He was a brainy slacker.
‘I need better than okay to get into medicine. I’ll be a fourth-generation doctor. I have a contribution to mak
e! Supporting Panadol sales when I’m hungover isn’t enough.’
She was dying to blurt out: Me too me too me too, my parents want me to study medicine, too. ‘Is that a problem? You don’t want to do medicine?’
‘I don’t know. Probably not. Who knows? I don’t know what I want for breakfast tomorrow. Okay, that’s a lie – I mean, I eat the same shit every morning – but, you know, no. I don’t have a fucking life plan. Jesus, I’m seventeen.’ He shut his laptop. ‘Sorry. You don’t swear much, do you?’
‘Not particularly.’ Not out loud.
‘Is that like a religious thing? A. . . Buddhist thing, or whatever?’
‘I wouldn’t really know. My family’s Catholic.’
Billy had the grace to look embarrassed. ‘Sorry. Jeez, I’m a klutz. I haven’t even asked you stuff like that.’
‘It’s fine, we don’t really know each other.’
‘But after we share our innermost thoughts on “Daddy” and “Tulips” we’re gonna. Am I right?’ That smile contained something addictive. The snack equivalent of his smile the cheese Doritos. You always wanted one more.
‘We’ll know what we each think about “Daddy” and “Tulips”, which I guess is a start.’
After an hour of being lost in the complicated beauty and anger of “Daddy”, she stretched and stood up.
‘No!’ Billy said. ‘We’re just getting warmed up.’
‘But I’ve got to get going. My parents are expecting me home by dinnertime.’
‘Have dinner here – there’ll be heaps.’
‘Sorry, I can’t.’
‘Can I walk you home?’
‘No! Thanks.’
Billy looked crestfallen. ‘Are you coming to the regatta on Saturday?’
‘No.’
‘Please come – you can see me row.’
It was amazing seeing the whole Billy Gardiner unlimited-confidence phenomenon up close. Who in the world assumed that the rest of the world was ready and waiting to watch them, love them?
‘Oh no. The I’m unimpressed face. I guess that does sound arrogant.’
‘I work Saturdays, anyway. Even if I were the fan-girl type, I couldn’t come.’
‘I was thinking more “Go, school” than fan girl, but fair enough. Have a peach before you go?’
She shook her head. Peaches were not something she would venture to eat in public. One more inhibition of the kid from another planet. She dreaded being inadvertently loud, messy or unmannerly. She’d seen a table of whities looking askance at her own family happily slurping up bowls of noodles once, and had never quite got over the disapproval you could innocently attract just by eating your dinner.
Billy had no such qualms. He took a huge, dripping bite and wiped juice off his chin with the back of his hand. ‘Oh, man, that’s seriously good. You don’t know what you’re missing out on.’
Vân Ước looked at him, here, in his lush habitat. He was so wrong she thought as she left his bedroom; she knew exactly what she was missing out on.
chapter 22
It went like this: Make sure the tablets get taken. Be patient. Be nice. Shop. Help with dinner. And in a few weeks things should improve, recalibrate. She was so used to the annual slump, she was almost taking it in her stride, even though this year wasn’t shaping up as the big improvement she’d hoped for. They’d had a wobbly start, but having a proper diagnosis and a plan meant there was hope on the horizon. And her mother was sticking with the group therapy, still going, ten weeks in, a big win.
‘What did you talk about tonight?’
‘Things you children don’t need to know.’
‘Like what?’
‘I gave them my bánh chưng recipe.’ She shrugged. ‘They know mine’s the best. Some of them just buy it.’
Vân Ước knew when she was being diverted with talk of New Year rice cake recipes, but she didn’t mind tonight. Her mother seemed in slightly better spirits.
‘Brush your hair, Mama?’
Her mother nodded, and sat down on a kitchen chair. Vân Ước went into her parents’ bedroom, breathing in its mingled slightly peppery and warm camphor smell, the ever-present ghosts of her mother’s perfume and the Tiger Balm ointment her father rubbed into his finger joints to soothe the aching, and got the hairbrush.
She paused at the wardrobe mirror. When she was very little, two people used to stand beside her reflection in the mirror: a boy, and an old lady. They felt like a benign presence. She’d never told anyone about them, not even Jess, and she stopped seeing them when she was still young, about four; before she started school, anyway. For a while she had pushed her face into the mirror, trying to see them somewhere, at the most distant angle, deep in the speckled reflection, but they never showed themselves again. Now they felt like something she must surely have imagined, though part of her still believed in them.
She stood behind her mother’s chair and brushed her hair gently for about five minutes, drawing the brush smoothly from forehead to nape over and over in the way her mother liked. It was the only sustained physical contact she seemed to enjoy. Her usual mode of a kiss goodbye, for instance, was the kiss-and-push-on-your-way. She wasn’t a snuggler. No surprise, really, that this acceptable affection came via a prickly implement.
There was an envelope with the school crest on it on the bench. Already opened. That meant Jess’s mum must have been in today. Her English wasn’t as bad as Vân Ước’s mother, and she sometimes read a letter for her if Vân Ước wasn’t around.
‘What’s the note from school?’
‘A night meeting for information about art. Next week.’
‘Oh, right. You don’t have to go to those things. I can pass on anything important.’
‘This one your ba wants to go to. We want to make sure there’s no more art for next year. It wastes so much of your time. You need to study only sciences and maths for medicine. Everyone knows that.’
Vân Ước took a calming breath. Whatever happened she had to be allowed to continue with her art. Unfortunately, this early in the term, it wasn’t too late for her to change subjects if her parents made a big enough fuss and the school listened. If her parents, for instance, told the school that Vân Ước had implied that art was just for this year alone, and not a two-year course, which it was, she could be in trouble.
An even worse scenario would be if her parents went to the information night and met Ms Halabi and she gave them the big encouragement-talk about how Vân Ước’s folio plans looked good, and she could be confident about aiming for art school – something that normal parents might be thrilled to hear.
‘They don’t expect scholarship parents to attend, Ma. And they don’t like scholarship parents telling them what they should do. I told you: they want us to do a wide range of subjects. Not just science. That’s what IB is all about. If you complain about art, they will think you don’t understand the IB.’
Ack. She felt awful pulling the ‘scholarship parents’ line. She’d used it before. She kind of relied on it.
She knew it was cheating to soothe her conscience with the fact that her mother didn’t need any extra stress just now, but she always came to a dead end when she imagined how to breach the gap between her parents’ land of study hard, make money, be eternally secure, and her dream destination: artist, probable low income, no security. So, for now she had to keep a handle on the information flow.
When her father returned home after his game of cards, and her mother was safely in bed, Vân Ước decided, again, to try to find out some ‘things you children don’t need to know.’
‘Ba, we read at school that Vietnamese refugees from when you and Mama came out were mostly “economic” refugees. Is that right?’ Not strictly a lie, because she had read it in the school library, but a mention of school in the question might mean her father would be more prepared
to talk.
Her father looked at her for the longest time, as though deciding whether to talk, what to say.
‘If they mean the war was over, that’s right,’ he began. ‘But things were very bad. Your grandfather had served in the army; he was in a re-education camp. Everything we owned was confiscated. I was put in jail for no reason, for being “a person of suspicion”. We had no future there. No life at all. But, yes, I suppose if they say it, we were economic refugees.’ He shrugged. ‘The communists certainly took away any chance of making a living.’
‘Can I ask you about how you got out? The boat trip?’
‘Is this also for school?’ He was obviously becoming impatient, and she took her cue to back off.
‘No, ba, just me wanting to know.’
‘We made it. We got here. Now don’t go upsetting Mama with your questions. She’s told you she doesn’t like to speak about it.’
‘But why?’
‘It was hard for her. Now no more questions! Time for some study, or sleep.’
chapter 23
The next morning, as she left the flats early to be in time for Baroque ensemble practice at school, she tried to stop wondering about her father’s words, it was hard for her, and took a moment to breathe in the cool morning of what would be a melting-hot day. The sun shining at a low angle through the deserted playground, the damp grass, the stand of gum trees that, if she framed her eye line just the right way, could make her feel that she was back at Mount Fairweather.
Matthew, setting out for a run, minus beret, whipped past her, giving her plait a playful flick, a habit that had riled her seriously in primary school and still did, in a watered-down way.
‘Hey, wait,’ she called.
‘What’s up?’
‘What’s with Nick? Why’s he being such an idiot?’
‘Code of the bros. Can’t talk.’
Vân Ước rolled her eyes.