by Emily Paull
‘Si, si. In Catalan, you say Tia. It means “auntie”. Tia Sofia.’
So, she hadn’t been forgotten. Grace was almost disappointed. She wanted things to go terribly wrong—for the plane to go down over the ocean and for her mother to feel guilty about making her go.
Sofia reached for the handle of Grace’s suitcase. ‘Come, come,’ she said, with a smile so big that her eyes closed a little, enveloped in crow’s feet. She wheeled Grace’s suitcase through the airport, which was empty because it was morning, and because flights seldom came to Barcelona, unlike the airports where people stopped on their way to other places.
Taking sluggish steps, Grace followed her aunt. She tried to listen as Sofia chattered in broken English over her shoulder, but the voice in her head was louder.
At the car, Sofia helped her into the passenger seat with a degree of care usually reserved for the old and frail. Grace drew her knees up to her chest and folded her arms. It was like she had shrunk in the wash. She blinked hard. Then she realised the steering wheel was on the wrong side.
Behind her, Sofia opened the hatch. ‘I take you to your accommodation,’ she said as she moved things around. The car bounced as the bag was settled in.
Grace leaned around her seat. ‘You mean, I’m not staying with you?’
Red curls shivered as Sofia laughed. ‘I live in tiny mountain house. You don’t want to stay there. You will stay with my daughter Joana. In the city. Is okay, all sorted for you.’ She slammed the hatch shut.
Grace sat back in her seat and crossed her arms again.
‘Okay, this is gonna be fun, yes?’ Sofia said, as she climbed into the driver’s seat.
But Grace didn’t want fun. She wanted Perth—safe and boring. Without replying, she leaned her head against the window and tried to sleep.
* * *
He’d walked into her lecture on the first day of semester, all inky palms and elbow patches. Stephen Cartwright, PhD, he’d written on the board, as if those three little letters would instantly make the class respect him. In a way, he reminded Grace of her late grandfather. In another way—a primitive, sexual way that Grace did not fully understand—he did not.
She’d been with boys before, but they were all the same. Stephen was different. Every week, he would bring an apple to class, and he would eat while they talked. He took big bites, casual bites even, as he sat back in his chair and listened. After a few weeks, Grace began to decipher those bites. A big, slow chomp meant he was dissatisfied with the answer. Fast, tiny, ravenous nibbles meant he was excited. Soon, Grace was unable to study without the sound of chewing, and the bin in her bedroom filled with fragrant cores.
It was a small class, made up mostly of students who’d learned about history from watching The Tudors. Only one other girl seemed remotely serious, a dull-looking brunette named Melanie. Grace would answer a question in class and find Melanie watching her, leaning her sharp little chin on her fist and nodding like a psychiatrist. It was like she thought they were colleagues, but Grace found her irritating.
Melanie was always the last to leave the class. She would hover by Stephen’s desk, handing him his leather briefcase and offering to carry essays back to his office. Seeing them together, Grace always felt flattened. She didn’t understand it until the day her first essay was returned.
Brilliant essay, as was to be expected from my star pupil! he’d written across the front page of her work. For a moment, it had been difficult to breathe. Her cheeks tingled.
Melanie, mistaking her reaction for disappointment, leaned across the desk. ‘Don’t worry, Grace. History isn’t for everyone.’ She smiled and fluttered her eyelashes.
Grace wanted to tell her that the shade of lipstick she was wearing made her look like a clown. ‘What did you get?’ she asked.
‘Distinction,’ said Melanie, matter-of-factly. ‘But, of course, teachers like Professor Cartwright never give above a D.’
Grace looked down at the High Distinction on her page and grinned. ‘You’re probably right,’ she said, tucking the paper into her bag.
On the last day of the semester, Grace was too distracted to take notes. Beside her, Melanie scribbled furiously, stopping only to adjust her headband with the end of her pen.
When the class ended, students began to mill out the double doors like cattle, but Grace stayed seated. She took everything out of her bag and repacked it, arranging it neatly. As Melanie thanked the lecturer for his truly insightful lectures, she kept her head down. And then, Melanie left.
Grace’s stomach thrummed. She wiped her sweaty palms on her skirt and stood up. The chair scraped on the floor.
He looked up, staring dimly over his reading glasses. ‘Don’t you have another class to get to?’ She shook her head. The words were a lump in her throat that wouldn’t budge. ‘Do … do you?’
Stephen laughed. ‘They’ve only let me teach the one this semester. I’m on probation.’ He rounded the word, mocking it.
‘But you’ll be teaching again n…next year?’
It occurred to her that they weren’t having a conversation at all. It was like she was interviewing him, standing half an entire lecture theatre apart. She took a deep breath and picked up her bag. Trying to be casual, she made her way down the stairs and paused by him, as if on her way to leave.
‘Elizabeth the First,’ he said. ‘Are you enrolled?’
She shook her head.
He picked up his briefcase and threw his apple core into the bin. ‘Shame. I would have liked to have had a bright girl like you in my class, Grace.’
The recognition warmed her, and she bathed in it secretly like a cat on a sun-soaked ledge.
‘I could enrol,’ she said, finding her tongue much looser. ‘I get electives.’
He raised both craggy eyebrows. ‘I have to say, I love the way you talk. You’re like a newsreader. None of this clipped consonants rubbish that your classmates have all adopted. It’s very mature. Very sophisticated.’
The tips of Grace’s ears grew hot.
‘Do you want to get a coffee with me?’ he asked, tucking his briefcase under his arm.
‘Yes, please,’ she breathed.
They had coffee again after exams, and then again the week after that. Stephen described it as two intellectuals discussing a shared interest, but Grace knew that wasn’t it. He invited her to see his beach house where he spent most of his time ‘for solitude’.
The house was about an hour’s drive from Perth. It was full of books and sand, and had a well-stocked wine cellar.
It was there in the cellar that they had sex for the first time. They undressed each other like they were unwrapping bandages, and then fell breathless onto an old couch that smelled like the sea. Afterwards, he held her on top of him, with her mouth pressed against his freckled shoulder. The secret filled her; nothing could ever be as satisfying again— not food, not alcohol, nor conversation.
‘Are you sure you’re okay with this?’ Stephen whispered in the dark.
She kissed his shoulder and sat up. ‘Everything is perfect.’
In the dim light from the high cellar windows, she saw his grimace turn into a wolfish grin.
* * *
Warm and relaxed, and smelling of citrus, Grace stepped out of the shower and reached for the towel she’d left folded on the counter next to the sink. She wrapped it around herself like a tube dress. The tiles were shockingly cold underfoot.
She stood in front of the mirror to brush her hair. After the roar of the shower, everything was still. Somewhere in the building, a door slammed. The sounds of an argument began to carry through the apartment.
‘You didn’t even change the sheets, Joana!’
‘I made up the spare bed in Marc’s room.’
‘Good! Because that’s where you sleep!’
Grace recognised Sofia’s voice, deep and rolling like thunder. The other voice was new. It was almost Australian. Only the ends of certain words, like ‘room’, sounded Spanish. An
d they argued in English. Grace wondered why.
‘If the self-important little whinger doesn’t like the spare bed, then she can sleep on the couch. At your house.’
‘Joana, I will not tell you again. Grace is to have your room while she is here.’
‘Ma, I don’t want her here. Didn’t you hear her when she arrived? “Oh, I’m so terribly tired. Sorry to be such a huge burden, but, you see, I’m feeling a little fragile.” She’s such a phoney!’
‘I don’t want to hear it! I change your sheets myself, then. Come move your things, or I throw them into the street.’
Footsteps rushed past the bathroom door. Grace put the hairbrush down. Her hair hung heavy and flat over her slumped shoulders. Taking a deep breath, she pulled her clothes on. They stuck to her where she was still damp.
Coming out of the bathroom, she nearly bumped into Joana.
‘Oh, sorry,’ she muttered, an arm full of dirty clothes in front of her.
Joana turned. Her dark eyebrows knitted together, and one well-manicured hand sat on one jutted-out hip. Grace waited for the fizzing in her stomach to stop.
With an exasperated sigh, Joana stalked towards the kitchen. Grace cuddled the bundle of clothes close and followed.
‘Um … hola,’ she said. ‘Mi nombre es Grace.’
Joana scoffed. Her impossibly long black hair shone under the fluoro lights. Without turning around, she said, ‘Did you translate that on Google? It’s Spanish. Idiota.’
Grace shifted all her weight onto her back foot. She’d wanted to like Joana, but she was beginning to understand that would not be possible.
‘I know. I didn’t know how to say it in Catalan.’
‘El meu nom és Grace,’ said Sofia, entering the room with a washing basket full of shoes. She narrowed her eyes at Joana as she placed the basket on the table and took the dirty clothes from Grace. ‘But don’t worry about learning Catalan. Joana likes to speak English at home, like her father, God rest him.’
Grace looked at Joana. ‘Oh, your father was Australian?’
‘Your mother’s cousin,’ said Sofia, pinching Grace on the cheek, as if to say, You knew that already, silly girl.
Grace blushed and wrapped a wet mass of hair around her hand. ‘I wasn’t sure how we were all related, actually.’
‘I’m still not convinced we are,’ Joana said. She forced past Sofia and Grace. ‘I have to pick up Marc.’
Grabbing her keys from a hook next to the light switch, Joana pecked a kiss on her mother’s cheek, almost violently. Her biker boots clomped on the laminate floor as she walked down the hall. The front door slammed.
Sofia clucked her tongue. ‘Impossible girl.’
Grace sucked on her bottom lip. ‘Is she going to be like that the whole time?’
Sofia smiled, but only with her mouth. Her eyes were wide and worried. ‘I take you for some lunch, okay? There’s a sandwich shop not far. Hungry?’
Grace sighed and looked down the hall. Pursing her lips, she nodded.
* * *
A few months after her exams, she came home late one night and had been surprised to see the light on in the home office. Shoes in one hand, Grace pushed open the door. She leaned on the frame for a moment, watching her mother’s lips move as she read, pencil in hand.
‘Are you going to ask me where I’ve been?’ Grace asked. Her body was buzzing with happiness.
Laura didn’t even look up. ‘At university, I assume.’
‘Do you know who with?’ Laura took off her glasses and pinched the bridge of her nose. ‘I’d love to be able to pretend I didn’t. But, yes. I know.’
And just like that, Grace was nervous. Perhaps it was the way her mother had said ‘I know’, like she’d been making some sort of accusation. Like Grace had committed a crime.
‘Professor Cartwright is very esteemed—’
Grace was interrupted by the scrape of her mother pushing her chair out from behind her desk. She picked up her mug—the one with her firm’s name on it—and walked towards Grace, who shrank with every step.
‘He also sleeps with students. I know you’re very interested in what he has to say, and I know that he makes you feel special, Grace, but there is something wrong with a person who does that.’
The reek of sex and aftershave was rising from Grace’s skin. Her head spun. She was dirty, all of a sudden, tainted.
‘I’m capable of choosing who I sleep with,’ she said.
Her mother took one final step towards her. She hadn’t even changed out of her suit. ‘Stop seeing him, Grace.’
‘I don’t want to.’
Laura put the mug down on the edge of a bookshelf. She held Grace’s face in two hands and pressed until her daughter’s lips puckered.
Grace saw her measuring out her words.
‘Now you listen to me, young lady. You have changed. And I don’t like it. You’re always alone or with that man, and I don’t understand …’ Grace shook her head free. Nails scraped at her skin. ‘Stephen says—’
Laura slapped her, hard. ‘I don’t give a fuck what Stephen says. Do you hear me?’ Her voice filled the room, pushing all the oxygen out. ‘I’ve had enough! I pretended nothing was going on, I waited for this little phase of yours to run its course, but when a colleague of mine asks me what I am thinking letting my daughter see a known … sex offender … that’s it, Grace. I’ve got family in Barcelona. Maybe you should go there.’
Grace bit her teeth together and narrowed her eyes. ‘This isn’t the first time you’ve threatened me with Barcelona. You won’t really do it.’
She reached behind her for the doorframe, to steady herself. Her arms trembled.
‘Don’t push me, Grace.’
‘Well, I won’t go.’
‘Don’t go then. But if you don’t, you can’t stay here. Not until you stop seeing that filthy old pervert.’
Grace widened her eyes. ‘So where am I supposed to live?’
‘That’s not my problem, Grace.’
That evening, she had turned up at the beach house. Stephen hadn’t been expecting her; his hair was wet from the shower and his bed was unmade. She pushed past him and dropped her handbag on the floorboards in the bedroom, before dropping onto the corner of his bed.
‘What happened?’ he asked, putting one hand between her shoulder blades.
He was wearing nice jeans, but no shoes. A clean, warm man-smell filled the room and tired her out.
‘She’s sending me away to Barcelona. My mother. She knows about us.’
His jaw tensed. He scratched at his stubble with his hand. ‘She objects?’
‘She thinks you’re molesting me, or something.’ Stephen winced.
Kicking her shoes off, Grace sighed. ‘I’m not going, of course.’
He stepped forward and picked up the shoes. For a moment, he just held them, then he took them to the shoe rack next to the door. He went back for her handbag next. That, he hung on the door handle. Grace watched him tidy around her like she was a fixture. Like a lamp, or something.
‘There is a catch,’ she said, following him with her eyes.
He looked at her with one eyebrow raised. ‘Oh, yes?’
‘If I refuse to go, I can’t live at home anymore.’
Straightening his spine, he exhaled through his nose like he was thinking. ‘So you’ll need to find a place then.’
Grace got up off the bed and wrapped his hands around her waist. ‘I was thinking I could stay here.’
In an instant, his arms were back by his sides, as if they’d never touched her in the first place. Like the arms of a stranger.
His lips twitched. ‘Grace, you know that’s not … appropriate.’
Frowning, she said, ‘You sound like my mother.’
‘Be rational. Our relationship is not orthodox.’
‘So?’
‘I could lose my job, Grace.’
Stephen walked over to the cupboard and pulled out a blazer on a wooden hanger. He laid
it across the smoothest part of the bed.
She looked at the thing: crisp lapels, navy blue. ‘Are you going out?’
‘Dinner with a colleague. You’re welcome to stay here while I’m out.’
Her nostrils flared. ‘Oh, so I’m welcome to stay here tonight, but I can’t move in? What about all the other nights I have nowhere to go?’
‘Grace, can we talk about this later?’
She snatched her handbag off the door and took out her things one by one. Lipstick on his dresser. Diary on the bedside table.
‘I barely take up any room, see? It could be good, Stephen. I’ll cook. You can spend more time researching.’
He continued to put on his jacket, taking his time to stretch his arms through the right holes. In the driveway, a car honked its horn.
‘Say something!’ Grace screamed.
Hanging his head, Stephen muttered, ‘I’m not going to babysit, Grace.’
‘Babysit?’
‘Grace, I’m in my sixties. If I wanted to cohabit, I would fucking cohabit.’
The floor rose to meet her as she sat, legs bent either side like a dropped puppet. She sucked in air but still couldn’t breathe.
‘I didn’t mean it,’ he whispered. ‘The thing about babysitting. You know I care about you, Grace.’
Sniffing hard, she nodded. ‘Where am I supposed to go? I won’t give you up.’
He sat on the bed so his legs were beside her. As she leaned her head against them, he rested his hand on the top of her head.
‘Go to Barcelona, Grace. Call her bluff. I’ll be here when you get back.’
* * *
On the train to Sofia’s, Grace sat next to the window. She watched the countryside play out for her in a panorama; hills grew out of the ground like the curves of a body, with the train tracing a spine down the centre.
Joana didn’t own a car. The keys she always carried were for other things. There was one tarnished key for each of the four deadbolts on the apartment door, one for the door itself, and one for the door into the downstairs lobby. She’d installed the deadbolts herself: one for each year she had lived in the city. One for each year of her son’s life.
Marc was a quiet child with round cheeks like a Kewpie doll. His hair was blonde and fine—angelic. He pointed to things out the window of the train with his middle finger as they passed.