‘On Christmas Eve when the lights are low, all the alley cats know where to go. To where Santa makes his pit stop, puts down his sack, to a little dark club way out the back . . .’
The crowd would join in, parents holding their kids in their arms, boys hoisting girlfriends on their shoulders, and everyone’s arms in the air, a waving, neon sea.
‘He starts to swing and he starts to scat, because the man in red is a fat jazz cat . . . Santa was a jazz cat, Santa was a jazz cat, Santa was a jazz cat . . . purr, baby, purr.’
Florence felt her throat constrict and wondered if she had an actual hairball caught in it.
Looking at Isolde, hopping from foot to foot, Florence was irritated at herself that she hadn’t seen this coming.
She had known that Jazz Cat would top the charts once more, and she had known that her family would once again be in demand to sing it, the song rising Phoenix-like each year from her father’s ashes.
But she had underestimated the fact that the one song that would link the old and the new, the song that people would feel they could depend on amidst all the rumours about computers crashing and alien raptures, was the one her family sang.
‘We’re the closing act, Florence, in the biggest show of the year. They’re cross-broadcasting all the millennium concerts around the world. Do you have any idea how many people will be watching us?’ Isolde asked.
Florence knew, and wondered how Isolde could have no idea how it made her feel.
‘Now this is special – joining her family on stage is Lucas Saint Claire’s eldest daughter Florence, who has not appeared in public with her family for quite some time, not since the Jonathan Hammond Christmas Show, if I’m correct . . .’
‘Sorry Issy, sorry Puck,’ she said, ‘I’m really happy for you, I think it’s great, but I don’t want to be a part of it.’
Isolde’s arms stopped swinging. ‘You need to get over yourself, Florence,’ she said, ‘you really, really do.’
With that Isolde stomped up the stairs to bed, and Puck stretched out on the sofa for the night, so Florence went to her room too, lay on her bed and closed her eyes.
She had attended a one-day meditation course at one of those health retreats where they think breathing is the answer to everything. She had hated it, especially the teacher who wore his hair in a high bun on his head, like the knot on top of a balloon that Florence wanted to pop with a long, sharp needle.
The teacher told them to take themselves to the one place that soothed them, and Florence had immediately travelled on bare feet to the forest.
She went there again now. Feeling the canopy arc over her, Florence closed her eyes and slept.
*
Wednesdays at the library were the busiest days of the week, with the mother and bub morning, the East Elm Quilt-makers’ weekly meeting, Seniors Tech tutorials, the Historical Society meeting and, on some evenings, the Meet the Author events.
Arriving at work, Florence wondered how Albert’s own Meet the Author event had gone last night.
She also hoped that Lydia had raised her hand and asked about Stupid Women, Stupid Men during the question and answer session.
‘How are you today, Florence?’ Monty Rollins asked as she walked past his desk.
‘Good, thank you, Monty,’ she said, then added to show she remembered their previous conversation, and also because she had decided somewhere behind Victor’s front fence, Erika’s upper arm, and Sharon’s magnificent thighs, to be more involved in the lives that ticked on around her, ‘How are you? Been on any good hikes lately?’
‘Unfortunately Sharon slipped a disc when we were coming back from Barclay Falls, so we’re not strapping the old boots on for a while.’
Florence nodded. ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘It’s all right, we have been going to more live music though,’ he said, then added, ‘Actually, we saw your mother’s one-woman show the other night, she was very good.’
Florence nodded – most people at work, she assumed, would know her family background, but most people didn’t mention it. Isolde said it was because they knew not to poke the bear.
‘I’m glad. I’ll tell her you enjoyed it.’
‘Do you sing, Florence?’ Monty asked, and Florence wondered again whether he was letting her know that, as Amanda would say, he had her number.
She shook her head. ‘Not any more,’ she answered. ‘I haven’t performed for a very long time,’ which was, in a fashion, the truth.
Miss Suki had, but she, Florence, bare-faced and de-glittered, had not.
She heard Isolde’s voice, ‘You need to get over yourself, Florence,’ and wondered if perhaps Isolde was right.
Did she need to get over herself? Because if she did, she had no idea where to begin, and for the first time in a very long time, she thought perhaps she should ask her mother.
There was something unsettling going on, Florence felt; all sorts of people waiting in the wings to be let in and life edging its way towards her and whispering its approach in her ear.
She sometimes felt that being in the Saint Claire Swingers had been like being caught inside a huge wave that had spat them out again after Lucas’s death. The rest of the family had eventually staggered away from the beach, but she, Florence, was still lying on the damp sand, its cold creeping into her bones.
And she thought that maybe Amanda might be able to help her get up.
‘That’s a shame, dear,’ Monty was saying. ‘I wouldn’t be at all surprised if there’s a glorious nightingale resting in your breast.’
God, no wonder she had stopped talking to people.
The Green Team office was quiet. Albert was on a rostered day off, and the other members were in the field, so it was just Florence, catching up on paperwork and deciding that she would pay Amanda a visit. If anyone could teach her about picking yourself up and dusting yourself off, it was her mother.
‘Darling, what a lovely surprise,’ her mother would say.
*
Later that evening, Amanda looked up from the magazine she was reading as Florence entered her bedroom.
Bedroom, not boudoir as Amanda sometimes called it, always irritating Florence when she did. It was one of her mother’s affectations, to sprinkle her conversations with French terms like ami, even though she was not remotely French – ‘not even un petit peu,’ Isolde said.
Amanda was wearing her silk kimono, its cream background splashed with red and green flowers, the sash tied loosely around her waist, its deep pockets filled, Florence knew, with the caramels Amanda tried very hard not to love. Florence adored that kimono; her mother had worn it for years, handwashing it in hotel rooms and draping it over chairs to dry, and once over a bar heater, giving off a strange, steamy scent until Lucas had asked her if she wanted to burn the place down.
Its colours remained vibrant and it smelt, always, like her mother, years of Shalimar trapped within its fibres. When she was smaller, Florence had loved to breathe the fabric in, tucked beneath Amanda’s arm as she sang to her or let her tunnel into her body, Florence always finding, one way or another, a quiet place for herself.
Seeing Amanda in the kimono, Florence felt a strong and strange compulsion to dive right back into its smoky vanilla folds.
‘Darling, what a lovely surprise,’ Amanda said. ‘I didn’t hear you come in.’
Florence smiled. ‘There are no locked doors between the Saint Claires, remember.’
Amanda nodded, then patted beside her on the bed. ‘Come,’ she said.
Florence put her bag down on the floor and settled in beside her mother.
‘Are you lonely?’ she asked, surprising both of them with her lack of preamble.
Amanda took a caramel from her pocket, unwrapped it, then popped it in her mouth.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘un petit peu, are you?’
Florence considered. ‘Yes,’ she answered, realising it was true.
Amanda nodded. ‘Thought so,’ she said.
To care for someone so deeply that even when they died, when there was absolutely no chance at all of them coming home again, you left a key under the mat, just in case.
What would it be like, Florence wondered, to be like Leon and Victor? Or Monty and the magnificently thighed Sharon? Or Amanda and Lucas Saint Claire, Amanda’s long legs striding in white, knee-high boots on the cover of Lucas’s album, Love Walked In.
‘I’m not lonely all the time, Mum,’ she said, and she felt Amanda’s small ripple of pleasure beside her.
Amanda loved it when she called her Mum instead of Amanda, and especially instead of Lamanda, and Florence wondered why she didn’t do it more often. Such a little thing to give, and yet she, Florence, rarely gave it, some part of her enjoying the tiny thrill it gave her to withhold it; the small, guilty jolt of power.
Florence looked around the room and felt as she always did when visiting Kinsey that she could just tumble straight back into her childhood and teenage years.
In her mother’s room, Amanda reading on her bed with the caramels stuffed into her pockets, she could see her father entering it, a page of music in one hand, a pencil wedged behind his ear, saying, ‘Two of my favourite girls together!’
She could see Isolde in her leotard, demanding they watch her spin, her long body turning, arms raised above her head. She could see Puck, wandering in with his clothes never quite tucked in or zipped up properly, a little boy who looked, Lucas would laugh, ‘like a travelling hobo’. She saw Richard unfurling his glittering costumes from bags, shaking them out and saying, ‘Yes, yes, my pretties.’ She heard other voices too: Amy’s sing-song tones from across the back fence, ‘Florence, can you come over?’; their cleaning lady Mrs Winters humming while she vacuumed, and Leticia and Nancy’s snatches of long-ago conversations from the lounge room.
‘The problem with Florence is that she’s too prickly.’
‘Like a prickly pear.’
‘It kills me that she won’t sing.’
Then Nancy’s voice faded out, until Florence could hear only Leticia’s American drawl. ‘Come on, honey, you’ve been wearing that uniform all day.’
Florence shifted a little on her mother’s bed. An extra scene was unfolding in her memory, not one she had replayed before.
She was in her own room the night of her father’s death, Leticia’s back was to her, the older woman’s hands in Florence’s chest of drawers, plucking out Florence’s flamingo pyjamas. ‘We need to put these on, sugar,’ Leticia was saying, and Florence remembered thinking, We don’t need to do anything, but Leticia was leaning over her, her mouth so close that Florence could see the red wine stain outlining her lips.
And then Leticia said: ‘Here, Lucas would have wanted you to have this.’
A bright blue feather floated from Leticia’s hand.
‘Mum,’ Florence sat up, her whole body suddenly compelled to sit forward, ‘Mum . . .’
‘What is it, Florence?’ Amanda said. ‘Are you choking on a caramel?’ and when Florence didn’t answer, she began hitting her on the back, in decisive, short, sharp chops.
Florence began to cry the tears she had not shed for Lucas Saint Claire and the knowledge that she had found the source of her prickle.
Amanda put the back of her hand against Florence’s forehead, as if Florence was very small again and her mother was checking to see if she had a fever.
‘I’m going to make you a cup of tea,’ Amanda said. ‘Very strong and very sweet tea.’
Florence sat on the bed while her mother went downstairs to make it, thinking of all the other times Amanda had done so, very strong and very sweet tea being Amanda’s solution to any kind of trouble.
‘You’ve had a shock,’ she’d say when Florence had fallen out of the tree in the front yard; when Florence had cut her hand badly on a knife, blood caught between her fingers; when Florence had been dumped by her first and only high school boyfriend, Bradley Wagner, via a note passed under a desk.
Florence smiled a little. Bradley Wagner was an idiot, but she had cried hot tears when he dumped her in grade nine, and there was her mother, spooning ladles of sugar into a mug, saying, ‘You’ve had a shock, darling.’ Amanda had read somewhere that sugar was the solution for those who found themselves cut loose from their bearings, and it had been the elixir delivered in spoonfuls through all of their childhoods.
Amanda came in bearing a tray with two cups, then set it down on the dresser, her back to her daughter.
Florence thought Amanda seemed to be moving very slowly, taking her time to pour the milk and spoon in the sugar. Florence didn’t take sugar, she wanted to remind her mother, she hadn’t for years. Instead she found herself saying, ‘I’ve had a shock, Mum,’ and then added, ‘I think I’ve had a very big shock,’ as Amanda turned around, cup outstretched.
Amanda sat on the bed very still and very quietly, looking, Florence thought, like someone else entirely. It was not so much that her face appeared different but that it had stopped moving, stopped smiling and winking and arching its eyebrows. Her mother’s face seemed to be like Isolde’s limbs, always moving in some way. But now it was flat and calm, as if it had settled into itself at last, as Amanda said, ‘Tell me, darling . . .’ and so Florence began.
She started with the boy in the yellow jacket, then the stiffening of her body on stage, and the growing chorus of – literally – catcalling, the meows that followed her in the schoolyard. She told Amanda how Lucas had sat with her on the window seat, their feet touching, Lucas rubbing his chin as he apologised for there not being enough of him to go around, and his plans for the two of them to meet. ‘Four pm. Java Lounge. Blue Feather. Odd Socks.’ She repeated her father’s words to Amanda, who smiled and said that sounded like him.
She told her about the waiter asking her to move seats, and how she had looked out the window, then at her watch, then out the window again as people stopped shopping, and started heading home, and knew he was not coming.
She told her about the man asking her for money and how she wished she had given him some. Because she’d wondered ever since whether, if she had, if she had smiled and nodded, yes, of course, and opened up her blue purse with the horseshoe stitched on it, it might have changed things.
It wasn’t so much, she told her mother, that she thought the man had somehow cursed her – ‘I know it’s ridiculous’ – but that if she had done the right thing, like Lucas would have, she might have bought them both some time.
The thought, illogical as it was, had tugged at her; the belief that if she could have altered one tiny moment of that afternoon, she might have somehow shifted things and might not have come around the corner to their street, its surface washed in blue and red.
Florence wriggled under the quilt and moved her body to feel Amanda’s limbs beside her.
Then she told her mother the new memory, the one with Leticia coming into her room that night and passing her the flamingo pyjamas – ‘I remember those,’ Amanda said. Florence paused, then told the part about the blue feather, not in her father’s hat but nestled in Leticia Pepsi’s hand. A cuckoo in the nest.
Amanda nodded throughout Florence’s retelling and kept giving her far-too-sweet tea, but when Florence finished, she looked not at all how Florence had expected her to.
Florence thought her mother would look upset or stricken – her mother was very good, generally, at stricken – or perhaps she would be wearing her ‘it’s all been a big misunderstanding’ look and suggest to Florence that perhaps she had been dreaming.
Instead, Amanda Saint Claire looked bloody furious.
‘So, Florence, you thought that day, and every day since for all these years, that your father’s death was your fault?’
Florence nodded, and Amanda shook her head.
‘Florence,’ she said, ‘I have
quite a lot I want to say to you, but first, enough of this ridiculously sugary tea, I’m getting us a wine.’
Amanda went downstairs once more, and Florence waited, hearing her mother making far too much noise for someone who was just getting a bottle of wine from the fridge. There were thumps, then a slamming sound, and then one loud thud and a shattering of glass that made Florence jump.
‘Are you okay?’ she called from the bed.
‘Fine, darling,’ Amanda answered. ‘I just dropped something. Up in a minute.’
If Florence had gone downstairs, she would have seen Amanda sweeping up the glass she had hurled at the floor.
She would have heard her mother ask, ‘What now, Lucas?’ as she opened the bin lid to empty the shards into it.
She would have watched her mother put the dust pan and brush back beneath the kitchen sink, take a bottle from the fridge, two glasses from the cupboard, and refasten the sash around her waist, pulling it in crisply.
‘Maximum wattage, Amanda,’ she would have heard her mother say.
Amanda returned to the room, carrying a bottle of wine and two glasses.
‘Let me tell you about Lucas,’ she said, as if he was not Florence’s father at all, but someone in a fairy tale.
Amanda Saint Claire took a sip of her wine and began, starting with meeting Lucas at the Conservatorium, watching him walk towards her and her friends outside the main rehearsal rooms, their collective intake of breaths as they realised he was heading in their direction.
‘Oh my fucking God, Amanda,’ her friend Lilian had said quietly, ‘I think he’s going to talk to us.’
And Lucas Saint Claire, wearing a three-quarter-length sheepskin coat, blue jeans and black boots, had talked to them, his eyes only on Amanda.
‘Amanda, right?’ he’d said, holding out his hand. ‘I heard you sing last night at the concert – I’m Lucas.’ And one of her friends, probably Lilian, had snorted, ‘Oh we know who you are.’
Two hours later Amanda was in his bed in his small room at Saint Patrick College, and she had thought, she had actually thought, she told her daughter, smiling, ‘If I died now, I would be happy.’ She had fully expected, Amanda continued, to be sent on her way, like so many other girls she had heard about leaving Lucas Saint Claire’s college bed to walk dazed back to their own rooms and think about what had just happened for a very long time.
The Best Kind of Beautiful Page 12