The Making of Christina

by Meredith Jaffe

  The photos from their life at Bartholomews Run still nag Christina – not the ones they found in Jackson’s drawer, she tries to never think of them, but the proper ones. Where did they all go? Not that it matters any more, or more to the point, as if there is a damn thing she can do about it. Either Jackson threw them away in a vindictive rant or the police kept them as evidence. She longs for photos from happier times, the ones that still withstand the scrutiny of hindsight. Bianca as a baby, the school portraits with gappy smiles and the annual photo on Santa’s knee. Christina opens the gate and herds the cattle through. Photos from when Bianca’s eyes were still lit with innocence.

  Bumping down the hill to the house, Christina parks the ute in the shed and heads back to the house. As she knocks the mud from her boots, the familiar melody of her father’s favourite Christmas carol drifts out on the breeze, bringing with it the clearest of memories. Christina can see her father, his full belly straining against his good shirt as he dusts off the LP of Italian Christmas carols, the one with a younger, thinner Pavarotti on the cover. The careful way he laid the disc on the turntable. How he’d cradle the arm of the record player on his little finger before laying the needle on the vinyl. Hand to his heart, Massimo would join Pavarotti in singing ‘Tu scendi dalle stelle’ – you come down from the stars. By the last bar, Massimo’s eyes were always shiny with tears. Not last Christmas, though; last Christmas the house was silent.

  ‘Hey, Mama,’ Christina shouts as she follows the music into the lounge. There she finds Rosa sitting in her favourite armchair and on her lap is the transcript of the trial, bound with red ribbon. Christina stops, watching her mother pat the rhythm on the stack of pages as she sings. The transcript belongs on the chest of drawers in Christina’s bedroom collecting dust. That her mother has trespassed is not new; Rosa doesn’t believe in personal boundaries, but what does Rosa want with the transcript? Then Christina remembers Rosa struggles to read at all any more and her English was never good enough to read a legal document.

  Nevertheless, ‘What are you doing, Mama?’ she says.

  Rosa maintains her rhythm. ‘Not much. I was thinking about Christmas.’

  Christina lowers herself onto the hard-backed chair near the window, her eyes stuck on the transcript. ‘Christmas is weeks away.’

  Rosa shrugs her economical one-sided shrug, ‘Because it will be nice having Bianca home again.’

  How can her mother think this? When Christina thinks of Christmas, all she sees is three damaged women sitting around a table piled with too much food and nothing to say to each other. Like last Christmas. The mere thought fills her with panic. What if Bianca doesn’t return? What if Rosa’s dogged faith that Bianca will be here is misplaced? Christina searches for a gentle way to temper her mother’s optimism. ‘I know that’s what she said originally but it’s hard to tell from her letters whether she still plans to be back in Australia by then.’ Letters she calls them, as if a few sentences scrawled on the back of a postcard are anything but a placation.

  Rosa nods along to the Christmas carols. Christina’s stomach growls but she is not leaving Rosa nursing the transcript until she knows why her mother has taken it from her bedroom. Recycling here is a besser block incinerator. That’s what she should have done with it the moment the solicitor sent her a copy. After the trial, a trial from which she was largely absent, she thought reading it would fill in the gaps, help her to understand the full extent of what had happened to Bianca, explain why she ran away. That this would be the way to bring Bianca and her together again. But the moment Christina signed for the parcel, she regretted her decision. The transcript has sat on her chest of drawers ever since. It warms her to think she could snatch it from her mother’s lap and within minutes the transcript could be floating grey ash. Perhaps Rosa is thinking the same thing. The problem is, it’s not Rosa’s decision to make.

  The song ends. Rosa threads her fingers back and forth along the red ribbon, as if testing its resistance. Over the hiss and crackle of the old disc, she says, ‘So have you read this?’

  ‘No,’ Christina licks sweat from her upper lip. ‘I’m not sure I want to.’

  Rosa shrugs. ‘Then don’t.’

  Typical of her mother’s black and white view of the world. On, off. Yes, no. Read it, don’t read it. How is it possible she is related to Rosa, she who worries every little problem raw? ‘I don’t know, Mama. I thought it might make things clearer, give me some sort of closure.’

  She regrets the choice of word as soon as it leaves her lips. Closure, a word the counsellor bandied about in every single session Christina attended. After Jackson’s arrest, Christina and Bianca went to counselling every week. Anne Rushmore said it would be a good idea, to help manage the stress and the guilt. Bianca seemed to benefit, becoming on good terms with her counsellor, Jocelyn. She of the harem pants, wrap-around cardigans and cow eyes. Christina knows she should be grateful to Jocelyn, and in a way she is grateful to her for supporting Bianca through the awful hell of giving her testimony. But there is a part of Christina still angry at a system that denied her that role.

  Closure. Although the trial was little more than a year ago, people expect her to have moved on. As if grief works to a timetable and that as the calendar clicks over to a new year and a new page, Christina is magically freed. She suspects, no she knows, her mother is in this very camp.

  ‘Since Bianca left, you’ve done nothing but mope about the house sighing like some,’ Rosa twirls her hand above her head, searching for the right word in English, ‘drama queen. So melodramatic.’

  Christina recoils from the sting of Rosa’s attack. ‘That’s not fair, Mama.’

  ‘Nothing is fair, Tina. But what you gonna do about it, hey?’

  Rosa’s once penetrating gaze might be milky but her words are not. ‘I’m your mother, Tina. You cannot fool me.’

  Christina’s arms burn. The rash flares. The urgent need to scratch makes her clench her hands to protect herself. She says, ‘Bianca worshipped Jackson when she was little, and why wouldn’t she? He was a better father to her than Jamie ever was. She loved him because I loved him. This is all my fault.’

  Rosa trembles, ‘You should hear yourself.’

  ‘Jackson is spending the best part of the next fourteen years in gaol, Mama. Society has judged him a bad man so he must have always been a bad man, right? But I was happy once, he was good to me. Can you imagine how that feels?’ Her hand spans her chest, repressing the sobs that threaten to double her over, but that is not what stops her speaking. When the perfect bauble of their life burst, the sharp fragments buried themselves deep inside her. Happy memories cut her to shreds. ‘If only we’d never gone to Bartholomews Run.’

  Rosa thumps the transcript down onto the coffee table and strides towards her. Christina flinches as Rosa bends down and lifts her under the armpits as if straightening a broken child.

  Rosa holds her there, her voice swollen with yearning. ‘No good comes from living in the past, Tina. You can’t change it. You must reconcile the truth with your heart.’

  Christina sobs. ‘I’m frightened I’ve lost her, Mama.’

  Rosa’s eyes slide to the transcript. ‘You have, or who she was.’

  Christina’s hand folds against her cheek as if Rosa has slapped her. Hearing these words out loud give them an awful truth. ‘What if she never forgives me?’

  Rosa steps back sharply. ‘She promised she’d be home for Christmas. Bianca always keeps her promises.’

  Christina sits on the coffee table next to the transcript. She is so very tired. Her mind will not leave her alone. If it were not for the farm, for the need to keep going, for this stubborn old lady and her failing sight, Christina is certain she would not have survived the past twelve months. ‘What’s wrong with me, Mama? Why didn’t I see what was going on, what kind of man he really was?’

  Rosa takes the other end of th
e coffee table. ‘I don’t know, Tina. Five years is a long time to see nothing.’

  ‘I thought he was so wonderful. I believed everything he ever told me. Did I choose not to look? I don’t know. I can’t explain it. Why was I so stupid?’

  Rosa reaches out for Christina’s hand and squeezes it tight. ‘Your father and I love you with all our hearts, Tina, you know that, si?’

  Christina nods. Although as a child maybe her mother’s way of showing love made less sense than Massimo’s generous indulgence. The moments Rosa squeezed Christina’s hand are few and far between. Far fewer than Christina needed.

  Christina sighs, her voice small and tired. ‘I just wanted to be happy. Like everybody else.’

  ‘Then there’s your answer.’

  chapter five

  One minute Bianca was posing outside the gates on her first day at big school with her new uniform swamping her tiny frame and the next she was waving goodbye to her mother without even a farewell kiss. Christina took last year’s school portrait off the fridge and compared it to the one that had arrived home in Bianca’s schoolbag. She loved the way the gummy smile and the baby teeth had given way to gappy smiles and two enormous front teeth Bianca had yet to grow into. She peels another photo off the fridge, this one of Bianca, Christina and Jackson riding the rollercoaster at Funworld, hair everywhere, arms in the air and faces captured mid-scream. Bianca must have been about four in that one. It’s not just in looks that Bianca has changed. She used to be quite clingy, a real Mummy’s girl. Now’s she’s into everything. Ribbons for swimming, ribbons for athletics. Gymnastics after school on Fridays. Credit where credit was due, Jackson had a lot to do with it. In the few short years they had been together, he’d been a big influence on Bianca. He really challenged her to be the best version of herself. Truth be told, he had the same positive effect on Christina. The only fly in the ointment was that he wasn’t around full-time, but Jackson had made it clear right from the start that leaving Sarah whilst the kids were still at school was not an option, so Christina had learned to live with it. Happiness had its price.

  Not to say she didn’t enjoy their girl time. Especially this year because Christina had negotiated to leave work early two days a week so she could pick Bianca up from school rather than sending her to after-school care. Bianca was thrilled; she hated care.

  Christina waited for Bianca outside the Year 3 classrooms. The poor Year 3 children had drawn the short straw when it came to classrooms, getting the hot demountables with inadequate airconditioning. Bianca didn’t need much persuading that they should detour via the beach on the way home.

  Christina stood in the shallows up to her knees watching Bianca catching the small waves with her boogie board and making sure she stayed within the flags. A group of teenage girls ran past carrying whip-thin boards, wetsuits dangling from their narrow waists.

  They zipped up each other’s wetsuits and, tethering their boards to their ankles, ran into the surf further up the beach. Christina watched them paddle hard against the break. They rode the crests of some waves, others they pierced with the tips of their boards before spitting out the other side. Once past the break, the three girls straddled their boards, chatting and laughing, until united by some instinct they lay flat, heads turned, anticipating the rising wave. They paddled fast, first one, then the other, finding their place in the water. The smallest girl jumped to her feet, shifting the rails of the board along the wave until she was gliding down its surface. One girl dropped out, falling behind the wave as her friends twisted and turned until the wave sank beneath them and dropped them in the shallow water. They stood, tossing their hair out of their eyes, droplets of water fanning out from them as if they were mermaids rising from the deep.

  ‘I wish I could do that. It’s so cool,’ Bianca said, her boogie board bobbing at her feet.

  Christina tousled her hair. ‘They’re a lot older than you, Busy Bee.’

  ‘No they’re not!’ Bianca dug her toes into the sand, her mouth a tight line. ‘I’m nearly eight.’

  Christina regarded the stubborn figure beside her. No was so much easier to say than yes. Her face must have looked just like Bianca’s when she was a similar age and Rosa said no to her latest desire. Papa was the yes man. Yes, she could learn to ride a horse. Yes, she could help him fix the fence. As it was, Christina didn’t learn to cook until she left home because Rosa never let her in the kitchen. That she might be behaving like her mother was enough for her to relent. ‘Maybe Jackson can teach you.’

  Bianca’s face lit up. ‘Will he?’

  Christina had no idea but she said, ‘It doesn’t hurt to ask. He’s home for dinner tomorrow night, why don’t you ask him then?’

  The moment they arrived home from school the following day, Bianca flung her backpack on the kitchen bench and set about her chores. Christina didn’t even have to remind her. She unpacked her lunchboxes, finished her homework and set the table for dinner. Then she disappeared downstairs into the communal garden, returning with a jumble of flowers she arranged in a vase. Christina stifled a smile. Bianca was certainly no slouch in the sweet-talking stakes. When the kitchen clock ticked closer to seven, Bianca kept an eye on the front door, waiting for the echo of footsteps in the stairwell. At the sound, she rushed to let Jackson in.

  ‘Hello, Busy Bee!’ Jackson swept Bianca into his arms and twirled her around. She kissed his cheek, rubbing her nose afterwards to stop the tickly itch. When he let her down, Bianca picked up his briefcase and carried it two-handed down the hall, the leather bag banging against her calves. Jackson raised an eyebrow at Christina. She shrugged and smiled, returned to peeling potatoes, thinking that Jackson’s children must have been equally obvious in their desires at Bianca’s age. He shed his jacket and kissed her before helping himself to an Indian tonic water out of the fridge. Christina pushed a bowl of pistachios across the counter and fetched another bowl for the shells. Bianca wiggled onto the bar stool next to Jackson.

  Jackson cracked a nut between his teeth. ‘How was your day, Bianca? Did you make the boys cry?’

  She giggled, drawing the word ‘No’ into a long dismissal.

  Christina rolled her eyes, thinking, Here we go again.

  ‘A good-looking kid like you? Are the boys at your school all deaf, dumb and blind?’

  ‘I’m only seven and three-quarters, Jackson,’ Bianca reminded him, eyes solemn.

  ‘Never too early to start practising, Busy Bee.’ Jackson signalled the end of the familiar routine by shaking the ice to the bottom of his glass and pouring in more tonic.

  Bianca brought a lock of hair to her lips before realising what she was about to do and dropped it. A casual conversation at school about how someone’s cat had to have an operation to remove a massive hairball had disgusted Bianca and she was now trying hard to break the habit. Drawing a deep breath, she worked up her courage and asked the question she had been dying to ask since Jackson arrived. ‘Can you teach me how to ride a surfboard?’

  Jackson snorted tonic out of his nose and Bianca’s face, tight with expectation, collapsed in confusion. Christina handed Jackson a paper towel and glared at him as he dried his face and blew his nose. She held her palm out to retrieve the used towel and inclined her head towards Bianca.

  Clearing his throat, Jackson said, ‘Surfing is much harder than it looks you know, Bee. It takes dedication and resilience, not to mention lots of practise. There’s no wussing around, you know.’

  Bianca nodded.

  Jackson examined her from head to toe. ‘You’re only a little thing. The sea could snap you in two if it wanted. Are you sure you’re up to this?’

  ‘Yes!’ Bianca pleaded. She gripped her pyjama pants so tight, her knuckles turned white.

  Jackson knew how to play his audience. He let the silence build. Bianca’s forehead creased further with anticipation. Christina rubbed a cloth over and over the same s
pot on the kitchen bench.

  Jackson cracked a nut between his front teeth and spat the shell into the empty bowl saying, ‘Well then, answer me this. Can you swim fifty metres freestyle?’

  ‘Yes!’ Bianca erupted.

  He held up a finger. ‘Can you swim fifty metres freestyle without stopping?’

  ‘Yes!’

  Surprised, Jackson turned to Christina. ‘Can she really?’

  Christina nodded, biting back a smile.

  Jackson made a show of digesting this information. Poor Bianca’s eyes were as round as saucers.

  ‘Right then,’ he said. ‘Have you ever gone bodysurfing?’

  Bianca’s shoulders fell. ‘No.’

  ‘Ah. But you’ve got a boogie board, right?’

  Hope lit up her little heart-shaped face.

  Jackson sucked in his bottom lip, as if weighing up Bianca’s answers.

  No longer able to fight the urge to intervene, Christina said, ‘She’s a good swimmer, Jackson.’

  He waited a heartbeat longer than comfortable before saying, ‘Okay, we have a starting point.’

  Bianca shrieked and jumped from her stool, knocking them both off balance. A grin spread across Jackson’s face as she hugged him tight.

  ‘First things first, Bee,’ Jackson said, pushing her out to arm’s length so he could look her in the eye. ‘We’ll get you catching waves properly on your boogie board but you have to promise me you’ll practise when I’m not around. Now here’s the thing. A private lesson with an instructor will set you back about seventy bucks an hour and you’ll probably need between five and ten lessons before you can catch a wave confidently. That adds up to somewhere between three-hundred-and-fifty and seven-hundred bucks.’ He expelled a low whistle.