I swallow hard.
Scroll.
Up.
The words blur.
Pip’s bedroom door bangs and he thump thump thumps downstairs.
Scroll.
Up.
My throat is growing tight – am I allergic to bees? Even imaginary ones?
Focus, Marlowe.
Scroll.
Breathe.
Scroll.
And then . . .
My son Luis passed away in a car accident on February 24. He was sixteen. Multiple donations. This is what they quote for recipients: ‘a man in his early twenties who has been unwell for years, a woman in her early twenties who is looking forward to getting back to fulltime work and a teenage girl getting back to her studies.’ Is it you?
February 24. That was the day we got the call.
The shock is a punch to my gut. I cover my mouth. I practically double over.
A teenage girl.
A teenage girl getting back to her studies.
My mouth goes dry. I can’t even gather enough saliva to swallow.
Breathe.
I look at the man who posted: Armando Castillejo. His picture is too low res to make out completely. All I can see are glasses, the shadow of a beard, dark hair, skin and eyes. A smile. I click through to his profile but there’s barely anything on there. Stupid privacy settings.
I click back to the group and read the message again.
My son Luis.
Luis.
Luis Castillejo.
My heart aches, aches like it’s homesick, like it can see a name it knows intimately. I clutch my chest.
I push my laptop off my thighs and stand. For a long moment I can’t do anything. Can’t feel anything, can’t say anything, can’t move.
I try to push down my hope but it won’t behave, won’t let me contain it. Is it him? Is it really possible? Was I right? Is there one person – one wonderful, glorious person – in my donor’s family who wants to connect with me, despite the message Hannah passed on?
‘Luis,’ I whisper, just to test it out. It’s a smooth sound and I like the way my tongue pushes against my teeth to say it. ‘Luis Castillejo.’
‘Marlowe!’ shouts Mum. ‘Get your butt down here.’
There’s a roar in my head but it’s nothing to do with Mum shouting at me. It’s the same two words over and over: Luis Castillejo, Luis Castillejo, Luis Castillejo.
I can’t stop the hope – the belief – from overflowing, overwhelming me.
Because I think . . . I think my heart has a name.
I grab my laptop again and before I can chicken out I comment on the post – It could be me. DM?
‘Marlowe!’ Mum shouts.
‘I’m coming!’
I close the laptop and all I can do is stand there, hand over mouth, trying to steady my breathing. I try not to let hope get the better of me – it might not be my donor after all – but it’s hard.
So hard.
My son Luis.
Luis Castillejo.
________
I’m still asleep when Mum and Pip burst through my door with cake and singing and presents. Because today is my birthday; I am eighteen. Something I never thought I’d say.
‘Go away. It’s too early.’
‘Nonsense,’ says Mum, as Pip bounces up and down on my bed. ‘It’s your birthday.’
‘Let Marlowe eat cake!’ yells Pip and, yes, he’s dressed as Marie Antoinette. But with zombie face-paint so I assume this is post-guillotine.
I grumble and moan but I manage to sit up and open my presents – art supplies and books from Mum, and op-shop finds from Pip. I smile and say thanks, but inside I can’t stop thinking: Luis Castillejo, are you my donor?
Am I saying it right? Cas-te-ay-o? Cas-till-a-o? Cas-till-a-joe? And is it Lou-e or Lou-es? At least we have one thing in common – the kind of name you have to say twice. But however you say it, I can’t stop thinking about him.
The trouble with wanting something so badly that it eats your insides out is that when your wish comes true it doesn’t lose its appetite. Because all I have is a name and a gut-churning, lung-squeezing need to know more. Who was he? What kind of person? What did he love and hate and what made him laugh?
Armando hasn’t responded but I’ve googled. I’ve googled the hell out of Luis. I found a handful of Luis Castillejos who were not my Luis Castillejo. They were too old or too alive. So a name is all I have and I never thought I’d say this but a name is just not enough.
I try picturing him in low slung jeans, an oversized hoodie, Stan Smith shoes and a baseball cap. He’s a little too short, a little too thin, but with a smile that could melt a toasted cheese sandwich. A kid teachers love, even though he always mucks up in class. He wants to be a hip-hop artist but knows he’ll end up as his dad’s apprentice, painting houses, making up rhymes in his head.
But his face is blurry – like those people on TV who don’t want to be identified so they pixilate the face – and I can’t hold the image in my head for long. He can’t settle into one, definable, knowable person so he’s every possible version at once, but at the same time he’s none of them because he’s nothing more than a blurry-edged boy from my dreams. The only thing knowing this name has given me is more questions, more possibilities.
Because he can’t be just a name. He is more than that.
Mum squeezes into bed beside me and tells me the story of my birth. She does this every year – one time she showed us the video but that was too graphic, even for Pip, and we begged for it to be burned in a ring of holy fire.
‘At first they said I was going to lose you,’ she says, swaddling me in her embrace. ‘I was terrified that you’d slip away but you held on – we both held on – and when it came to your due date you were still holding on and even after they induced you, you wouldn’t let go so the doctor pulled you out with forceps.’
This is Pip’s favourite part. He always makes a claw with his hand and mimes sucking me out, complete with alien-style sound effects. It’s gross, and even stranger when he’s dressed as Zombie Marie Antoinette.
‘Was her head all bent in from the forceps?’ asks Pip. ‘Like a squashed grape?’
Mum cups a hand to my cheek and draws me in for a kiss. ‘She was perfect,’ she says. ‘Still is.’
‘Mum,’ I groan, as she pinches my cheeks. ‘Stop it.’
‘I’m not making a big deal,’ she insists. ‘The real party will be for your transplant anniversary. Think of this as the entrée.’
‘I told you I don’t want a party for that.’
Mum waves my words away. ‘Pish posh.’
They sing ‘Happy Birthday’, Mum goes for traditional but Pip, as always, sings, ‘You look like a monkey and you fart like one too,’ and collapses on the bed in a fit of giggles. But I can’t bring myself to smile because my brain is too full of a boy I’ll never know but can’t stop thinking about.
I didn’t know it would feel like this. I can’t stop thinking that, no matter if Luis is my donor or not, he’ll never be the one blowing out candles and pretending to love the psychedelic jumper his brother brought him from Savers and hearing about his birth. While I get older, year by year, Luis will only ever be a memory, an epitaph, a face in someone’s photo album that never grows up.
He’ll only ever be sixteen.
‘Make a wish,’ says Mum. She lights the candles and holds the vegan beetroot flourless chocolate cake out for me to blow. I place a hand over my heart and wish for more than a name.
I want to know if Luis is my donor and, if he is, I want to find a way to thank him. The right way to say it. And a right way to say sorry.
And a way to do him justice.
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over but expecting a different result. That’s a quote from a motivational poster stuck to the wall of the senior common room. Large block letters over a photo of a kitten dressed in a lab coat with a hamster running on a wheel. They s
hould stick it on a poster of me refreshing my Facebook page over and over, expecting that this time Armando Castillejo will have responded to my comment.
I don’t feel insane, though. Just sad.
I fall asleep in Maths. One moment it’s Pythagoras’s theorem and the next it’s Zan’s elbow in my gut.
‘Wake up,’ she says. ‘You’re drooling and it’s gross.’
I wipe the corner of my mouth with the back of my hand and sit up. ‘Sorry,’ I say. I steal a glance at the teacher but she’s got her back to me, helping the three-headed dog-beast.
‘You can copy my answers,’ says Zan. ‘They’re wrong but you can copy them.’ She slides her worksheet over:
x - 1 = 5x + 3x - 8
x = elephant balls
-18 - 6x = 6 (1 + 3x)
x = your mum
‘It might be suspicious if we hand in the same, wildly inaccurate answers,’ I say, but she shrugs because she’s Zan.
How about: 6 = 1 - 2x + 5 where x = my crippling disappointment that Armando Castillejo hasn’t responded yet.
I pull out my phone, holding it under the table so the teacher can’t see, but it’s a big fat zero for the number of notifications from Armando Castillejo. So I try for the seventy-billionth time to google Luis. Maybe I am going insane. I mean, he might not even be my donor.
‘What do you think about the name Luis Castillejo?’ I ask Zan as the same old results roll out.
Zan doodles on the corner of my worksheet, a pattern of interlocking stars. ‘Sounds like a soccer player. Or a famous painter. Or the second-most attractive member of a boy band.’
She jabs me with her pen; it leaves a freckle of ink on my forearm. ‘He your boyfriend or what?’
I spell Luis’ name different ways. Nada. I try Luis Castillejo. Sixteen. Car accident. But that doesn’t work either, not even when I put the exact date in.
‘Remember I told you about my donor’s family not wanting me to write to them?’ She nods, and I tell her about the Facebook group and Armando and the very real possibility that a sixteen-year-old boy called Luis Castillejo is my donor.
‘Serious?’ she says.
I nod.
‘Wow. And?’
‘That’s it. I have a name but I can’t find anything else about him. And I don’t even know if he’s the one.’
I try: Luis. Brother. Son. Heart. Missed. Loved.
Zan fills in an answer on my worksheet:
2 (4x - 3) - 8 = 4 + 2x
x = The least attractive boy in a boy band.
I scroll through the results. I don’t expect to find anything but my thumb keeps swiping the screen. I just try: Castillejo.
‘What would you call a boy band made up of the least attractive members of other boy bands?’ asks Zan.
So many results pop up. Even a soccer player. And a writer. And Facebook profiles. And articles and blogs.
I snort. One blog is called: Carmen Chameleon. I guess it’s a play on the Culture Club song – ‘Karma Chameleon’. Pip once dressed as Boy George, with the hat and the braids and the ribbons and the make-up and then nothing but a Tarzan-style loincloth because he was ‘Boy George of the Jungle’. I was embarrassed at the time but thinking of it now makes me smile.
‘What about One Rejection?’ says Zan.
The little preview thing says: Girl about Melbourne. Loves her music, her friends, her donuts and her baby brother. Writes about anything and everything.
Brother?
‘Their first single would be “What Makes You Not All That Attractive”,’ says Zan.
I click through. The last entry was almost a year ago, entry after entry after entry and then they just stop. I click on the ‘About me’ tab and there’s a picture – a girl, maybe eighteen or nineteen, dark wavy hair and a nose ring and deep olive skin and the kind of smile that makes you feel like you just got bitten by a radioactive spider and you know it’s going to hurt but you also know you’re going to end up with superpowers.
Her name is Carmen.
Carmen Castillejo.
I wonder why the whole class doesn’t turn and stare. Because I think I just died. Again.
‘You okay?’ says Zan.
I nod furiously as I google Carmen Castillejo and this time I don’t have to worry about going insane because she is everywhere.
Carmen who wears high-tops and tube socks and strikes ugly poses while the girls around her are pouting and hip-cocking like their lives depend on it. Carmen who photobombs and stuffs her mouth full of M&Ms and gets tangled in tent wires and falls asleep with a magazine splayed across her face.
Carmen, who has to be Luis’ sister, right?
One picture shows Carmen leaning over a shop counter; I recognise the logo on her t-shirt. It’s Cheeky Chicken, a crappy takeaway on Nicholson Street. If Red Rooster hooked up with a bad case of salmonella and they shat out a baby, it would be Cheeky Chicken. And apparently my donor’s sister works there.
I swipe through the endless photos, mesmerised. There she is with an orange quarter smile. Swipe. Carmen with a polkadot apron and flour on her cheeks. Swipe. Carmen walking through scrub, running her hands through the leaves on either side of the path.
With a boy.
Crash.
In the distance, a boy.
Bang.
A smudge of a boy.
Bam.
A boy with his back to the camera.
Crack.
A boy with dark hair, blue backpack, red shorts, white t-shirt.
Boom.
Luis Castillejo? Is that you?
I run my finger along the smudge of boy. He fits beneath my fingertip. The whole of him. I could blink him in and out of existence with just my little finger.
A shadow falls across me and I jump. ‘You need a hand, Marlowe?’ It’s the teacher. I shove my phone between my thighs and look up. She’s frowning down at me.
‘I’m fine,’ I mumble. My cheeks are hot. I can’t hold her gaze because I feel guilty. I look down at my half-finished worksheet but all the numbers and letters blur.
I feel Zan nudge me.
‘I’m fine,’ I say, firmer this time. I pick up my pen. Okay. Maths. Sure. I can do this. I mean, I just discovered my maybe-donor has a sister who works ten minutes from where I’m sitting right this second and I still don’t know if Luis is my donor and if he is then I don’t know a thing about him but maybe his sister who is only ten minutes away from here does. So, sure, I can totally focus on Maths right now instead of freaking the hell out.
Breathe.
Just breathe.
The teacher taps her finger against my worksheet before she walks away. ‘Get on with it. Too many blank spaces here, Marlowe,’ she says.
Tell me about it.
________
Two Year Sevens knock on the door during Biology and hand over a stack of forms. Biology is my least favourite subject. I’ve seen enough of the human body and what’s inside it. Now it just feels like the universe is rubbing my nose in it.
The teacher hands out the forms and it turns out they’re permission slips for the swimming carnival and a note about signing up for events. No way. Not me. I shove mine deep in the bottom of my bag. I’ve never had to do them before and I’m not going to start now. I’ll get Mum to write me a note.
I shrink back in my seat and watch the clock above the teacher’s desk.
I doodle in the margins of my workbook, and before I realise what I’m doing I’ve drawn Carmen. Carmen with that electric smile.
She looked so happy. So friendly. So full of life. I know there’s every chance it was Carmen who said she doesn’t want to hear from me because if Luis really is my donor then someone in the family asked for no contact. But I can’t seem to connect that with the pictures I saw. She smiled too brightly for that. There was too much of a happy shine to her eyes. She looked like the kind of person who’d make you laugh. Like, so hard you think you might burst. She looked easy to talk to, and just think of all the stories
she could tell me about Luis.
No.
Not possible.
No contact means no contact.
The rest of the day drags and I know slow and steady wins the race but, come on, let’s get a little more rabbit and a whole lot less turtle, please.
Finally it’s home time and I walk to meet Pip at the school gates.
Eddie dumps his bag on the asphalt and stares at me. I can tell he knows it makes me uncomfortable; that’s why he’s doing it. And when I look over my shoulder at him he winks.
In the one or two or fifty romance books I’ve read, when men wink at women it makes them swoon and melt and blush and whatnot. But let me tell you this: No. Nope. Shudder. Ick. It’s scrub-my-skin-off-with-a-wire-brush-because-it-has-been-sullied-by-this-guy’s-repulsive-wink kind of gross.
‘See you tomorrow, freak,’ calls Eddie. And by god do I want to punch whoever said sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me. Words don’t just break your bones, they melt them down and the liquid bone dribbles out your ears and without a skeleton you crumple to the ground in a squidgy, squelchy mess.
I quicken my pace, wishing I had bones made out of Captain America’s shield. Eddie’s laugher follows me all the way to the gate where Pip’s waiting for me. He’s reading The Wizard of Oz. Again.
‘Do you know that guy?’ Pip asks, squinting at Eddie over his book.
But I don’t even pause to answer. I grab Pip’s arm and yank him through the school gate.
Pip’s thongs flip flop on the pavement as he hurries to keep up with me. Normally he’d be filling every second with ‘guess what happened and then guess what happened and you won’t guess what I did and can you guess what I’m going to wear tomorrow?’ But he’s silent. Except for the flip flop flip flop.
After a while, Pip looks up at me. ‘He’s not very nice,’ he says. ‘That guy. Eddie. He’s not nice.’
I take a deep breath before I speak because I don’t trust my voice to be steady right now. ‘Not nice at all,’ I say.
‘Yesterday he called me a weirdo. He says it’s not normal to dress like a girl.’
I stop dead in my tracks, grabbing Pip’s shoulder and whirling him around to face me. I am so angry it feels like someone shoved fireworks under my skin and set them off. When I speak, it’s through clenched teeth. ‘You are not a weirdo.’
Tin Heart Page 6