by Sue Whiting
Amelia had been trouble for a while, but since Dad’s accident, she had ramped it up a few gazillion notches, and it had been scary to witness. This particular night though, it was Mum who was scary. Her fury was raw. And there seemed no end to it.
She cleared the kitchen bench of crockery in one fell swoop. Threw her favourite crystal vase against the wall with such force that the family photo collage jumped off its hook and smashed to the ground also.
It wasn’t until Seth appeared in the doorway, rubbing his eyes and wondering what was happening that she seemed to snap out of it. She dropped to her knees then, wailing, and I ushered Seth back to bed with some bullshit story that I can’t even remember myself.
When I returned, I felt as though I was in the eye of the storm. An unnerving calm had descended. Amelia was nowhere to be seen and Mum was bent over, plucking tiny pieces of blue patterned china off the tiles and tossing them into a box.
“Leave this to me,” she said reasonably, as if talking about cleaning up a spilt drink. “Go get some sleep.”
The calm lasted for weeks. And it made me feel far from calm. It rattled me. When Gran arrived with takeaway pizza on a Friday night, I knew something was up. Friday is Gran’s busiest night with the Soup Van she drives round the inner city, feeding the homeless and destitute. Gran missing a Friday night is serious business.
So during an ad break in a rerun of The Big Bang Theory, with us nursing pizza boxes on our laps, Mum announced her plan for saving the family. She got it out in a rush, told us we were leaving straight after New Year’s, and that it was what Dad would have wanted for us. Then she grabbed her car keys and headed off to buy celebratory vanilla bean ice-cream before the ad break had even finished. She left the three of us on the sofa, thunderstruck.
I was aware we were in some kind of family crisis and that Mum wasn’t coping, that much was obvious; the pressure had been building for months – I simply didn’t expect this particular escape valve. None of us did.
And Amelia’s role in it all infuriates me still, my anger festering with each step I take along the street. She’s just selfish. Fine to chuck a tantrum. Fine to be shitty with Mum. Fine to quit school if that’s what she wants. But why take off? Especially when she knows what a state it will put Seth in. It would serve her right if we left her behind.
My T-shirt sticks to my back and I regret my decision to wear Celina’s jeans. I feel like a furnace on legs. I poke my nose inside each of the shops lining the main street. The buildings look tired, and many are more or less empty and easy to eliminate with a glance through the window, but they make me wonder what kind of town Mum has brought us to. It’s as if the heat has sucked all the life out of the place, and it occurs to me that the chances of getting any kind of part-time work is about zilch – in fact, I reckon it’s a bit of a miracle Mum got that job at the Wok and Roll. What are we doing here? Thanks a bunch, Amelia!
There’s a decent-sized newsagency with a couple of aisles filled with magazines and cards and a separate post office agency booth. I wander down the aisles of magazines and peer into the back section of the store, which is chock-full of dusty stationery.
No sign of Amelia, but there is a large basket filled to the brim with slim notebooks with swirling silver patterns on the covers. One dollar each, a sign above the stack says. I find myself leaning over the display, leafing through the pages of one of the books, smiling as I remember the journals I used to keep. Before Dad. Before it became too painful to write.
I go to walk away, but for some reason I can’t. The empty pages seem to call me and my heart thumps against my ribs. Before I realise what I am doing, I have grabbed a bundle and am handing over some coins to the cheery man at the register.
“Bargain, eh?” he says.
“Yeah,” I agree, though I am unsure what is driving me to buy them. Beside the register is a display of magazines: The Year in Design. “I’ll have one of these too, thanks.”
I slip out onto the street, conscious that I am really not myself today. I scan left and right for Amelia. Still no sign.
The final corner of the main shopping precinct is home to some kind of New Age craft, gift and crystal store. I step inside. A heady mix of pan flute music and the aroma of scented candles assaults me. This place seems very un-Tallowood-like.
A tall woman with wild orange hair sits at a high front counter. Reading glasses on the end of her nose, she is absorbed in some kind of crafty project, wielding a glue stick over a double page of a book. She looks up and smiles – though the smile doesn’t quite reach her eyes before her mouth flops open. She drops the glue stick and it clatters onto the tiled floor.
“Damn,” she says, sounding flustered. She swoops down to pick up the glue and knocks a couple of small bottles off the counter in the process. One smashes into tiny pieces on the tiled floor. “Lord, now I’m in for it. Break a bottle – misfortune’s your new best friend.” She flounces about picking up the shattered glass; all the while taking every opportunity to steal glances at me.
I give the woman a nervous grin and edge towards the nearest aisle, certain of a growing desire to escape.
“Go ahead, love,” says the woman whose eyes are now openly scanning me from head to toe. “Don’t mind me.”
My insides squirm. Something feels wrong. I head off down an aisle stacked high with sparkly beads and candles and knick-knacks, intent on getting out of this shop as swiftly as possible. But when I reach the end of the row, the woman reappears, blocking my way, her hair streaming behind her like a fiery mane.
She is flushed and breathless. “Sorry for staring, love,” she says. “You must think I’m rude. It’s just that scarf …” Her hand reaches out towards my head. I jerk away. “That scarf, it … it … it reminds me of something, someone … Actually, you remind me of–”
I don’t give the woman a chance to finish. I take a few faltering steps backwards, then hurry away.
“Sorry, love!” calls the woman. “I didn’t mean …”
I reach for the door and tug it open. But something makes me stop. I turn back to face the woman. “Celina,” I say, not knowing why. “It reminds you of Celina O’Malley, doesn’t it?”
The woman approaches. Her eyes are glassy with emotion. She stops a few paces in front of me and touches the scarf with shaky fingers.
“Yes.” Her voice is soft. “Celina … I tie-dyed and embroidered that scarf for Celina O’Malley for her fifteenth birthday.”
I pull the scarf from my head and pass it to the woman. She takes it with trembling hands and holds it to her nose. “Celina,” she says. Tears smear mascara across her face. She smooths out the scarf along the countertop and points to a tiny painted message along one edge.
Happy birthday, Celina. Love from Deb. Friends forever. XXX OOO
Deb. Meeting Suzie and Deb in town.
I go wobbly at the knees, the woman catching me before I flop to the floor in a faint.
I sit on a stool in the tiny crammed back storeroom and sip at the spicy herbal tea Deb has made me.
“Get that into you. Should do the trick.” Deb is so anxious, she doesn’t seem to know whether to laugh or cry. “When you walked into the shop, I swear, I thought I was seeing an apparition. A bloody ghost. Do you have any idea how much you look like her?”
I shake my head. “She was Mum’s cousin. Both my sister and I have the O’Malley hair and skin and–”
“No, love. It’s more than the hair. You are a dead ringer. Celina’s double. Why, these clothes – they’re just like something Celina would have worn. Miss Hippy Chick through and through. Oh, how I miss her. Even after all these years.”
Deb blows her nose and wipes the mascara from under her eyes. I am too embarrassed to confess the fact that these are indeed clothes Celina would have worn.
“Where was this scarf? Fancy it still being around. Lord, I must have made that nearly forty years ago. Maybe more.”
“It was in a wooden chest in Celina’s old ro
om.”
“Not the peace chest!”
“Maybe …”
“I can’t believe this. I felt some strange energy in the air today, the moment I got up, but this, this is too much.”
Tell me about it.
With one eye trained on the shop front, Deb quizzes me about my family and the house, the chest, the lake. She seems to absorb everything I say and despite a fair amount of mumbo jumbo about vibrations and omens and energy, I can’t help but warm to her.
“Oh Lordy,” says Deb. “Sorry about the language – you’re not religious or anything are you? Sorry if you are – I can’t help myself. Can’t believe this. It takes me back.” She draws in a deep breath. “It was so sad – so terribly, terribly sad …” Deb fans her face with both hands. “Sorry, love. You don’t need this.”
But curiously, I do need this – all of it: Deb’s emotion and memories and stories. They breathe oxygen into the enigma that is Celina O’Malley and send blood coursing through her shadowy veins. And I tingle with a growing new awareness; maybe I am here in Tallowood for a reason.
It is well over an hour before I leave Deb’s shop – a phone call from Mum to my mobile vaulting me back to the present and back to the search for Amelia.
Amelia, however, doesn’t want to be found. And I am not sure who is more frantic – Mum or Seth.
Around four o’clock, Mum is contemplating visiting the police station again, when Amelia moseys up, silent and sullen, to where the car is parked. She slips into the back seat without even a word of apology.
The car is filled with unvoiced anger. It is a long trip home.
seven
Celina O’Malley was sixteen years old when she disappeared in 1975, presumed murdered. She was a hippy chick: flower power and peace and all that; a free spirit with a heart bigger than most, who brought a little sunshine into the lives of those who knew her. When she vanished, the world was left less shiny because of it.
I stop writing and ponder for a bit – try to recall the other snippets of information I have gleaned from Deb. It feels good, writing it down, as if I am getting acquainted with Celina. And as wacko as it sounds, I like the feeling. I smooth out the pages of the notebook, pressing my palm firmly down the gutter, flattening it open.
Celina’s best friends were Deb and Suzie.
Writing this sentence makes me jittery. How did I know about Deb and Suzie before I met Deb? With a shiver, I continue.
Deb was the crazy one who saw life as one huge opportunity for mischief and adventure. Suzie was more sensible. The one who kept them all in check. But the three were inseparable – a sisterhood of sorts: the Peace Sisters.
It was Celina who decided upon their name and persuaded them that the Age of Aquarius was still alive and well, even in the Seventies. She inspired them; she was infectious. And you couldn’t help but follow her and get caught up in her plans.
As soon as they finished school, the Peace Sisters were going to travel the globe: singing folksy ballads about peace and love, trekking through forgotten lands, saving the planet.
I laugh, remembering how excited and gushy Deb was as she told me about the Peace Sisters’ grand plans – it all sounded like something from some old movie.
But of course that changed on that awful morning when Celina O’Malley walked out her front door, across the pebbly driveway, along the dirt road and down to the main gate to catch the school bus and was never seen again …
I shudder.
I recall Deb’s shock when I walked into her shop. Do I really look that much like Celina?
The photo album! I had almost forgotten about it. I leap off my bed and rummage through the contents of the peace chest to locate it.
But my fingers strike a hard edge below the album. I put the album on my bed and then dig out the object lying flat on the bottom of the chest. It takes a bit of effort, but when it lifts up, I am astonished to find a framed artwork. A collage made of bits and pieces. As I hold it with outstretched arms, I see it is a face. The tufts of long dark curly hair seem to be made from short snips of real hair; the eyes shaped from dozens of tiny pieces of icy blue crystals; the skin made from the odd mix of translucent insect wings and the fluffy bits of dandelion heads. And I wonder if it’s a portrait of Celina.
Whatever it is, it is beautifully strange but also strangely spooky. I put the picture facedown, back into the bottom of the chest and turn my attention to the album.
The pages are so brown and murky they appear tea-stained and are stuck together at the edges. They make a ripping squelch as I pull them apart.
The first shot is a small back-and-white of a baby in a long white frilly dress and knitted bonnet, smiling out of a wicker pram with gigantic wheels. A scrawling handwritten label underneath says: Celina, six months and three days. There are several baby shots, some with her parents, I guess – Uncle Pat and Aunty Mary? – holding her with obvious love and pride. Small tears form at the corner of my eyes. This is too sad. All of them gone. How could such happiness end in such tragedy?
I work through the album, scanning the school photos of unruly kids outside a small weatherboard classroom until I spot the girl with wild hair who I imagine is Deb. I wonder which one is Celina and which is Suzie.
By Year Six, the photos are in colour, and I almost whoop when I see the wild hair is flaming red. Yes! It is Deb, for sure. Beside Deb is a girl with a wide grin and a devilish sparkle in her eyes. Her hair is dark and curly, held off her face with a white headband. Celina? I flip through to a colour snapshot of a girl about thirteen in a crisp new school uniform standing on the front verandah of this house. The caption reads: First Day Tallowood High, 1971.
The resemblance is uncanny. I have a photo of me on my first day at high school that is just like this. I flip through the next pages, my heart thudding harder and harder with each page as I witness Celina growing up before my eyes.
The last photo is of three beaming girls, standing on the end of the jetty, which is painted a glaring lime green, cheekily holding their fingers up to the camera in peace signs. The Peace Sisters: January 1975. The tallest wears a stripy bikini with a white shirt thrown over. Her orange hair is twirled on top of her head and I identify her easily as Deb. Beside her is a girl with a shy smile, large floppy hat and huge sunglasses. She is shorter than the other two and needs to stretch to sling her arms around the others’ shoulders. Suzie, perhaps? Then my eyes lock on to the image of the girl on the right – Celina – and study the long wavy hair, the round face and dark almond eyes, the smattering of freckles across the nose, the slim shoulders and long skinny limbs, the way she tilts her head to one side and tucks her thumb into the belt tab on her shorts. No wonder Deb got such a shock. I stare into Celina’s eyes and feel as if I am gazing into my own. And with a sickly feeling, I realise that there is no denying it: I am Celina’s double.
As I let this sink in, the photo seems to come to life in my mind. I see the three friends jostling for space, wiggling and giggling, screeching when they nearly step off the back of the jetty.
“Ow, that was my toe,” laughs Suzie.
“What’s your toe doing under my foot?” Deb shoots back, poking out her tongue.
“Hurry up, Robbie!” cries Celina. “Take it, for God’s sake, before these two drag me into the lake.”
“Say cheese, girls.” Robbie holds the camera to his eye and squints. “Come on, stop moving. It’ll come out blurry.”
“Cheese!”
The camera clicks and the three girls fall backwards into the water, creating a huge splash that swamps Robbie and his camera.
Celina climbs up the ladder and peeks her head over the edge of the jetty. “Whoopsie,” she says. “Hope the camera’s all right, Robbie.”
Robbie dries his camera on his T-shirt. “Me too,” he says, frowning.
Suzie and Deb clamber back up onto the jetty. There is much laughter, even from Robbie, who doesn’t seem too concerned about the camera.
The group
walk up a track worn through the front paddock. Robbie reaches for Celina’s hand and she smiles up at him. The sun is shining and a soft breeze mutters through the poplars. The easy sound of someone playing guitar wafts down from the house.
“Dad,” calls Celina, once they have reached the top of the driveway, “can you get us some towels? Robbie pushed us off the jetty.” The girls roar laughing.
“You mean, you lot fell and your splash was so enormous, you wrecked my camera,” counters Robbie, good-naturedly.
There is a feeling of enterprise about the house. A large vegetable garden takes up the space to the side of the barn, planks of wood are stretched across trestles, pots of paint open on the garden table, the smells of sawdust and baking bread scent the air. The Norfolk pine doesn’t yet reach the roofline.
Pat pushes himself out of the hammock strung from the verandah rafters, puts down his guitar and holds onto the stepladder beside the front door. “Reckon you’re all capable of getting towels yourselves,” he says. His manner is relaxed and there is a calmness about the way he moves.
Mary climbs the ladder, a thick blond plait snaking down her back. She carries a short length of decorated timber.
“What’s that?” asks Deb, shaking the water free from her orange mane of hair.
Mary holds it up with pride. “Like it?” she asks. “Made it this morning.”
“Karinya,” Suzie reads the word that sits amid a wreath of painted flowers. “What does it mean?”
“Place of peace,” says Mary. “Now that the house is finally finished, it’s time it had a name, don’t you think?” Mary places the sign above the door. “Is it in the centre?”
“Good enough,” says Robbie. “But shouldn’t it be beside the door?”
“Don’t go there,” says Pat. “My good woman here tells me we must walk under it, so that peace will pass over us each time we enter the house. And who am I to argue with such wonderful logic?”