‘Bye, Buttercup,’ Maestro shouts up the stairs. His despondent tone tells me Jacob’s fed the flames of his inner demons. I grip my hands into fists. Even if Jacob is grieving, he shouldn’t make commitments and then walk out on them.
I bet Jacob doesn’t think about me as much as I do about him. I find myself speculating on if he cries himself to sleep and if he struggles to focus on the present, or if he’s lonely. Maestro said Jacob’s a surfer. Does he escape from his grief by surfing, as I did with singing?
An idea blossoms: what if I can persuade Jacob to come back for his lessons which, in the end, will benefit him anyway? Excitement fizzes through my veins at the thought of Jacob and I sharing our grief. Given he was in a band, he’s bound to love chart music too. And there’s a sense of heaviness lifting from me because if Jacob returns it’ll put out the dangerous fire he’s relit inside Maestro – and help Maestro forget about Mum’s note.
Before I change my mind, I check Maestro’s files for Jacob’s address and even though I’ve never done anything like this before, never even been alone with a boy, I jump into my car and roar up the driveway.
The radio loud, I sing along with Ariana Grande and Drake while drumming my hands on the steering wheel. The sensation of crawling insects, of being trapped in my own skin, vanishes. But when I get to Jacob’s house, I realise my unusual bravery was more likely boredom or wishful thinking. He won’t even remember me. I pan across the sparkling structure that is his home. It’s like a piece of cube art in a modern-art museum. I cut off the music and grip the steering wheel as if it’s a life preserver. But this is for Maestro. And maybe it’s a bit for me. I need –
‘Something more.’
Forcing myself from the car, I walk past a yellow Jeep with a surfboard strapped to the roof rack. But when I’m standing in front of a double-wide, double-high glass front door, my reflection staring back at me, I can’t make myself knock; I was stupid not to change out of my misshapen sweater. It’s baggy and reaches the hem of my wool skirt.
I’m almost back at my car when a large woman comes out the house and ambles up the path toward me, followed by a teenage boy in a loud shirt.
‘Can I help, dear? You want Jacob?’ she shouts, her Italian accent strong. Her hair is braided into a thick plait, shorter hair at the front hanging loosely around her cheeks.
I take in a deep breath. ‘Yes. I wasn’t sure if he lives here.’
She points a pudgy finger toward a gate to the side of the house. ‘His studio. Through the gate. You cannot miss it.’
‘Thank you,’ I say, but make no move to go. Neither does she.
‘He won’t bite. Well, not very hard,’ says the boy. He links arms with the woman. ‘Dai, Mamma. The bus.’ The boy tugs at his mother’s arm. I lock my car and cross the road. When I open the gate, she’s still watching me.
It’s easy to spot the circular building in the back garden. I can’t hear anything coming from it though, and decide Jacob’s gone into the main house and I should go home. I retrace my steps, but then spy the woman and boy searching for something in her handbag through the crack between the gate and the gatepost. I retreat, dragging myself back to the studio, and after staring at the door awhile, I knock. A minute ticks by. I push at the door. It makes a noise like suction cups coming apart and the sound of someone singing streams out. The room has to be soundproofed.
The voice is rich and low and powerful; one that could sound soft and soothing or loud and commanding. I bet it could sing anything, even opera. The words to ‘You Raise Me Up’ wash over me. The low notes produce goosebumps on my arms and legs. As the voice rises an octave, then two, its clarity, its purity, startles me. I can’t help but step inside to identify the singer, because it can’t be Jacob.
But it is him. He’s standing next to a grand piano as he accompanies a recording. His eyes are closed. Somehow, I expected boy-band music, given he was in an indie-pop band, although the open beer bottle on the piano isn’t a surprise. The blue cast on his hand is though.
Unaware of me, he keeps singing. Perhaps he’s remembering the person he lost recently, letting the grief course through him with the music.
I’m intruding on a private moment. If he discovers me, he’ll be embarrassed, and it’ll get awkward. Chickening out, I tiptoe backwards and leave.
But I don’t want to return to my empty house with its grandfather clock marking off sameness one minute at a time, with its piles of scores waiting to be learnt, and with Mum’s dresses hanging like colourful ghosts.
I drive around aimlessly and end up at the beach. After last night’s storm the surf’s big. It’s a windy winter’s day, and only a few walkers brave the weather. A coffee shop entices me out of the car and, cradling the takeaway cup, I sit on the sand under a sky crammed with grey woolpack clouds. With each sip, I hold the coffee on my tongue, savouring its bitterness. When it’s finished, I loosen my ponytail and let the wind flog my hair. I grin into the chilly breeze.
To my left a surfer in a wetsuit arrives. He drops a red towel on the sand. His blond hair whips around as he bends to attach his leash using one hand; a light blue fibreglass cast encases the other.
Jacob.
My whole body gasps. I sit upright. But he doesn’t notice me and trots into the surf, pushing his way through the whitewater to the bigger waves. His fluid motion as he mounts his board, surfs the wave, then goes off the back of it, becomes another piece of the Jacob puzzle.
It begins to drizzle and then the sky splits open. Rain pelts down like bullets, leaving dints in the sand and the smell of wet wood. I run to my car, stripping off my heavy jumper. I ramp up the heat, but the windscreen has fogged and I have to watch Jacob through the small patch of clear glass that grows as the car warms up. I rub my hands together in the stream of hot air and spot the yellow Jeep I’d seen earlier in Jacob’s driveway two parking spots over. Perhaps he’ll come out soon and I can say hello – pretend it’s a chance meeting.
But Jacob appears to relish the building waves; the sound as they crash on the beach is now thunderous. He takes on a wave that slams him into the whirling ocean. I lose sight of him and need to flick on the windscreen wipers. His head pops up in the whitewater. He fights to get back out to the bigger green waves. Everyone else has gone home.
Something feels off. I lean into the windscreen to keep sight of him.
Jacob surfs a couple more waves before getting pounded into the ocean by another breaker. His orange and blue striped board swerves through the waves until his body emerges and he paddles out again. A thought comes, but slips away. I grab at it again. I recall the wild look on Jacob’s face after his lesson with Maestro, the grief he’s dealing with, and then I remember how in the early days of my own grief I wanted to join Mum and Savannah in heaven.
I throw open the car door and race across the beach, waving my arms to catch his attention. If I can make him understand that what he’s feeling is natural, then one day he’ll be glad he can still surf and sing. One day he’ll be glad he didn’t die today.
9
Jacob
The ocean’s giving me a battering today. Being pounded by something so powerful and certain as these waves somehow fills the hollow inside – for a while. It gives me something to hold onto, instead of forever groping at emptiness.
I size up another wave, but with only one good hand, I’m too slow. I’m thrown forward into the washing machine. Saltwater floods my nostrils, stings the back of my throat. My ankle jerks. The leash snaps from my board and it’s as if my tether to the beach has vanished. Letting myself hang under the waves, I release the air out of my lungs and drift down, arms out sideways, the leash drifting like an umbilical cord. I stare up at the muffled crashing of the waves above me. When my toes skim the sand, in a reflex action I push off and whizz toward the sky.
Rain pounds my cheeks before I dive into the foam of the next wave. T
he cold bites my face. In the break between waves, I cast around for my board. It’s almost back on shore, but between it and me swims a girl who’s being clouted by the surf. I duck through the next wave only to surface and watch her get tumbled by it. Her head bobs up eventually. She gulps at the air. She’s not wearing a wetsuit, just a white T-shirt, and I’m suddenly certain she’s got herself in trouble. Stupid. Swimming on a day like today.
Grumbling to myself, I bodysurf toward the girl. There’s a sandbank practically next to her. She suddenly makes a determined effort to swim toward the sandbank, though she resembles a demented turtle. When I reach her, she’s just struggled to her feet in thigh-high water. She’s panting and coughing.
I move in beside her, pulling my stare away from her clinging T-shirt.
‘You okay?’ I ask. She wraps her arms around herself. I nudge her to warn of another approaching wave. We jump it in unison. ‘What are you doing? Trying to drown?’
‘Me?’ she shouts. ‘I thought – your leash snapped – your cast and the waves.’ Her words rev, fast and clipped. ‘Only a suicidal idiot would surf in this.’
I shrug and check out to sea. ‘Sounds about right.’
Another wave crashes toward us and I bodysurf to the beach. The girl wades and jumps toward me in the shallows, ringing out her long hair. Her T-shirt is see-through and she uses her arms to shield her breasts. The only other item she’s wearing is pink undies.
I pluck my attention away from her, scan up and down the beach. My board’s been washed up a few metres away. ‘Where are your –’ Jeez, she’s insane. ‘– clothes?’
She searches around, baffled. ‘Probably halfway to New Zealand by now.’
‘So you came to the beach on this awesome day.’ I lift my face to the grey sky, which has stopped raining. ‘And the ocean was so inviting you stripped off and jumped in.’
‘And you came to the beach with a broken wrist on this awesome day and thought you could handle the surf.’
‘Easy if you do one-hand pop-ups to get up. But yeah, I’m usually a lot better at it.’ I pretend to check my cast, maybe slightly embarrassed, then inspect the girl, trying to figure out her story. There’s a graze on her forehead. Grey eyes. Full lips. I check her feet. Dainty. ‘Aren’t you that opera chick, I mean, um – Astrid. What’re you doing here?’ Didn’t peg her for the adrenaline-junkie type.
‘Maybe I’m after a little adventure.’ She sounds a bit flirty, but then she rubs out those words by blurting, ‘And you didn’t come to your lesson.’
Snorting, I turn away. ‘Did your dad send out a search party?’ I unzip my wetsuit, edge it down over my hips. I should be mad she came after me.
When I turn back to her she’s wrapped her arms around herself more tightly. ‘I smell beer on your breath,’ she says. ‘Please tell me you weren’t surfing after you’d been drinking.’
‘Drunk in charge of a surfboard. Guilty.’ I’m only joking, but the words come out hard, like I’m throwing stones at her. She’s pressed a button now, and I wish she’d scram. I lose my gaze in the horizon, hoping she gets the message.
She doesn’t. ‘Alcohol strains your vocal folds. Beer’s the worst. It dehydrates you.’
I swing to her with a retort, but she’s shivering uncontrollably. She’s like a drowned kitten. I fetch my towel, pass it to her. ‘Lucky I don’t sing anymore then.’
She accepts the towel and wraps it around herself. ‘Sounded like you were singing okay to me. You’re a skilled vocalist.’
‘That goes against your argument that beer’s bad for the voice.’
‘Touché.’
‘Touché? Who says touché?’ She’s like a girl from a seventies movie. But wait. What the f– ‘Hang on. What did you say?’
‘Alcohol strains –’
‘When did you hear me sing?’
Her cheeks burn a dark shade of red. She makes circles in the wet sand with her big toe.
Something’s off. ‘When did you. Hear me. Sing?’ I repeat.
‘I have a confession,’ she says. She bites her bottom lip, then sighs. ‘I saw you leave my house before your lesson and I came to your studio before I came here.’
‘You what? Why?’ This girl’s unreal. I cross my arms over my chest, which is now covered in goosebumps. Before she can reply, I stalk off to retrieve my board. When I near her again, I say, ‘Don’t worry. Doc’ll get paid for the lesson.’
‘That’s not why I came. I – um. I –’ She pulls the towel tighter around herself. ‘But back to the point – you sing beautifully.’
I kick once at the sand, as though it’s a football. It fans in the air. She needs to let this go. ‘I told your dad I won’t sing anymore. He should give up on me. No-one can force me to sing. Go tell him that.’
‘If you don’t want to sing, I don’t think anyone should make you.’
What? Her words stop my next tirade. I check back, but she appears to mean what she said. ‘Right.’
‘But –’
I’m not sure if I should laugh or yell at her. ‘Yeah?’
‘You were singing. You have an amazing tone.’ She’s shivering again, despite the towel.
‘Coming from you, I’ll take that as a compliment.’
Her cheeks flush again. ‘If you won’t sing at my house – why is it all right at yours?’
I rub the back of my neck, trying to understand it myself. How did Dex get me singing again? And how come it felt so damn good? I track a drop of water that trickles down Astrid’s forehead, over her nose, and to her mouth. She licks her lips, which jolts my attention back to the horizon.
‘I was helping this kid with some voice lessons earlier – guess the singing overflowed from there.’ This is getting awkward. ‘So Astrid’s an unusual name.’
‘After Astrid Varnay, a famous opera singer. Both her parents were opera singers – the family business. And she grew up backstage at –’
I hold up a hand. ‘Whoa. No need for a frigging history lesson.’ Why am I still here talking to this girl?
She fidgets with her fingers. ‘My sister, Savannah, was named after the place she was conceived,’ she adds.
Laughter rumbles from the pit of my stomach until it’s a full belly laugh. It’s like she’s never talked to a boy before. She seems confused so I add, ‘Not sure we’re on friendly enough terms for you to bring up conception.’
Her face drops and she touches the graze on her forehead, then fails to control an all-over-body shiver from the cold.
‘I’m freezing my arse off. We should go,’ I say, putting down my board. I reach for the towel to get my car key, but she drops it, revealing her bare legs.
‘You can keep the towel.’ I hand it back to her. ‘But my car key’s attached to it with a safety pin.’ She wraps it around herself again and then, awkward, we search for the key, the towel continually slipping.
But the key’s not there. ‘Shit.’ I hunt in the sand around our feet. ‘I pinned it to a corner.’
‘Maybe you were too drunk to do it properly.’
She’s wrong, but her words find their mark. Is she suggesting I was drink driving? I pick up my surfboard and stomp toward my Jeep, shove the board underneath it. When I turn back to her, she seems surprised. ‘Seeing as you know the way now – drive me home, would you?’
10
Astrid
I hop into my car and tell myself this will be over in five minutes. When I suggested Jacob had been too drunk to pin his key onto the towel, he’d scowled and his annoyance had expanded across his face until it splashed into his eyes. I don’t think he likes me – at all.
Giving a ride to a fuming Jacob is worse than sitting in the same anteroom as your competitor before a performance.
‘I wasn’t drunk.’ Jacob’s voice cracks. ‘I would never drive while I was smashed.’ His words are fire
crackers discharged into the space between us. They ricochet inside the car, crackling dangerously. I keep saying the wrong thing, unable to figure out this guy. So I say nothing.
When I pull up outside his house he pivots to me. His chest is hairless and defined. I inspect a jacaranda tree through the driver’s window.
‘So. Opera,’ he states, his voice suddenly silky. I glance at him, but his body language doesn’t match his words – it hardly ever seems to. He’s impossible to work out.
‘So. The Con,’ I mimic.
‘This isn’t a good conversation, you know. How about I ask you a question and you answer without any history lessons, and then you ask me a question . . .’
‘Ha-ha. Très drôle.’
‘There you go again. You speak like someone out of another century.’
I whip around. ‘I do not. It’s French for very funny. But if you’re going to insult me –’
‘Keep your knickers on, Astrid Bell.’ His smile takes over his face. Yep, definitely laughing at me now. ‘So you’re not auditioning for the Con?’ he adds.
‘Maestro has other ideas for me in the professional music world. Festivals and competitions.’ I fiddle with the heat vents and shiver. I’m wet and wearing Jacob’s towel as a skirt. ‘Do you want your towel now, or will you be back for a lesson?’ What will Maestro say when I come home bedraggled and half-clothed? He’ll have a blue fit. I never lie to him, but I’ll have to about the going to Jacob’s studio part. I’m sure it’ll seem as unacceptable to him as it was to Jacob.
‘You’ve gone above and beyond the call of duty to get me back for lessons. But I’d rather get you a dress from my mum’s collection. What would you prefer? Gucci, Armani, Chanel?’
I giggle at the idea of wearing designer clothes. ‘I think I’m more of a Cotton On girl.’
He swings his long legs out of the car. ‘Come in for a drink. As a thank you for the lift. I’ll find you something to wear.’
The Astrid Notes Page 6