About a Girl (7 page)

Chapter Six

T
HAT WINTER
, as the richly coloured leaves of autumn mounded brown in the gutters, and the bare gardens struggled in the frosty, dry air, my mood changed. My crush on Morgan became a cause of disgust with myself – it was so stupid and childish, worse than an unrequited and impossible love for someone my own age. I started to avoid going around to my father's place, and I hated being at home as well.

I felt angry a lot of the time, and to fit my mood, I now dressed entirely in black. Old black clothes, faded, smelly things found in op shops: black wool skirts, black cotton blouses with buttons coming off, black jumpers unravelling at the elbows. Black suited the season, and my mood. I even dyed my hair black. To my annoyance, my mother had told me that the colour didn't suit my skin tones, that I had a redhead's skin. When I looked in the mirror I secretly agreed, though I would never have told her so.

My change in mood affected even my friendship with Michael. As usual, I would appear at the window of his room at all hours, clamber in, and lie on his bed without a word. When I wouldn't talk, he'd sit and hold my hand. He stroked me, the way you would a cat, but I could feel my body remain tense. It was impossible for me to soften. I was simply incapable of it.

One night, obviously fed up with the way I was behaving, he said, ‘Anna, what's the
matter
with you?'

‘The matter? There's no matter.'

And I flung myself off his bed and stomped out of the house, not worrying that I was probably waking his parents.

I saw pain everywhere, and developed a bitter way of looking at the world. Canberra in winter was cold and inhospitable. I saw a young man stumbling in the city, searching in the pockets of his torn coat for change, spilling the few pathetic coins all over the ground. His eyes were red, and his skin thin and as dry as sandpaper. Who was there to love him? A man with a racking cough begged on the pavement with a tin in front of him; when I dropped in a few coins I could not look at him when he thanked me. In the newspaper, it was reported that a man had died somewhere up on the slopes of Mt Ainslie. He had built himself a shelter out of stones, moving them around at night so he wouldn't be seen. He had lived there for years, and died in his lonely hut.

I felt that the entire world was black. I began to read Dostoyevsky –
Crime and Punishment.
It had a black cover. With a young man dressed in a black coat. And even though the picture was from an old painting, he looked as though he could have been a student now. With his scraggy beard and haunted eyes, he could have been the young man I'd seen in the city.

I took a job in a bookshop, to save towards the next year when I would go to uni. My mother reminded me that this was my
HSC
year, but it had been so disrupted anyway I couldn't care less.

I loved to handle the books. I relished their predictable oblong squareness, so similar and yet so different, their individual smells, the various cover designs and textures, and the secret power I had of placing the books I liked best face-out in the shelves, even though the manager often came along and asked me to change the display over to the best-sellers.

When I went to work I wore my most presentable-looking black clothes, and long black boots and black tights. Working in the bookshop almost dispelled my gloom. It almost made me forget how unlovable I was, that I would never be loved, that there'd never be a person in the whole world who would ever look at me in
that
way.

When spring arrived, my mood grew even worse.

My grandmother said, ‘I'm worried about you, Anna.'

This was my mother's mother. She was a doctor, a retired
GP
, and divorced herself. Her ex-husband, my grandfather, had been dead for years. She lived in a house close by with a beautiful garden,
all my own work
, she proudly told people. She was stout and old. There was something about her glasses and old-fashioned hairstyle that spoke of grim determination. She'd never been a cuddly grandmother. When I was small, she had taken me onto her solid, practical lap and I had not wanted to repeat the experience.

I told her, ‘Worry about Mum. Worry about Molly. I need to go and study.'

The final year of high school was meant to be a difficult one, and who was I to confound people's expectations?

It all came to a head at the party held each spring by some friends of my parents. There was always a band, and people brought food and drink to share.

I said I'd go, because my mother insisted I needed a break from study, and because Josh's band was going to be playing. I could see that my mother wanted someone to go with. Molly was visiting my father that day by herself – I stayed home, saying that I needed to work, but really it was because my father and Morgan made me so angry. They were obviously happy with each other – sometimes I think they flaunted it. But what about what they had done to
us
?

Josh's band had started to play, and I sat on a blanket spread out under a tree with my mother and a few of her friends, taking a few sips from her glass of wine and listening to the music. I looked across at my mother – Ruth, her name is – and Ruth raised her glass and smiled into my eyes. And really, my mother looked very pretty and young; she was starting to enjoy herself again. I could see that the bitterness was beginning to seep away.

Into all this, like gatecrashers into our lives, stepped my father and Morgan. Morgan looked embarrassingly as though she could be his daughter. And holding Morgan's hand, as though she belonged to her, was Molly – smiling, innocent, beautiful Molly.

I stood up as though I'd been stung, and heard my mother say my name, pleadingly.

But I couldn't stop myself. I walked straight to my father and demanded, ‘What do you think
you're
doing here?'

‘Why – I come to this party every year. Stephanie and Pete are my friends.' He said it uneasily, but laughed, trying to make light of it.

‘But you must have known Mum would be here! If you ask me, you have a bloody hide. You and your …'

People were staring at us, but I didn't care. When I look back on it all, I wouldn't have minded so much if they hadn't come flaunting Molly like that.
Did he have to let Morgan come in bloody well holding her by the hand?

‘You don't care what you did to us – to Mum, and Molly, and me – even Josh has suffered. You're hateful!' I spat out. My head felt woozy and light; I thought I might be sick all over them.

Molly started to cry.

I heard Morgan drawl, ‘Anna, grow up.'

As though
she
was so mature and sophisticated, stealing our father like that!

My hand shot out and slapped her in the face.

I fled before I burst into tears. I went to Michael's place. No one was home, but I let myself in through his window, and crawled into his bed, pulled the covers up over my head, and cried so much I thought I'd die.

Chapter Seven

N
OT LONG AFTER
the drama of the backyard party came the horror of the
HSC
. As everyone expected, and despite the disruption of my parents' separation, I did extremely well. A lot of people at my school went away after the exams, but I stayed in Canberra.

Michael and I continued to prowl our territory like restless animals, and after the long, parched days, we lay about on the dusty ground in parks and listened to the earth tick over. The city seemed to sit so lightly and provisionally on the land; the earth below it was so close, the film of civilisation so thin, that it was not like living in a city at all, but in an imaginary place that might disappear without notice. Sometimes I lay with my head on Michael's belly and listened to
him
tick over; he seemed as elemental and necessary to me as the world.

‘What I'm really scared of,' I confessed to him one night, ‘is that I'll go through the whole of my life alone, without anyone to love me.' I said it looking up at the stars, and it seemed to me that they drank my words in and accepted them. The words didn't sound stupid or self-pitying at all, but honest and clear.

‘You have me,' Michael said mildly. ‘I'm sure your mother loves you,' he added. ‘And your father. Don't know about Josh. Molly loves you.'

‘I'm not talking about family love, or friend love. I'm talking about lover love.'

And for the first time, I told someone what I had never uttered to another person. ‘Michael, I like
girls
. I always seem to like
heterosexual
girls. How on earth will that work out?'

I didn't tell him about my feelings for Morgan, which I'd almost banished from my mind. But there had been other girls, ever since I was very young. Ever since I was about six, I had known this thing about myself.

Michael didn't seem surprised by my admission; it was as though he'd known all along. But he said, curiously, ‘I didn't know you liked
heterosexual
girls. Which ones?'

‘Oh … heaps,' I said crossly. ‘Just crushes, you know. Unrequited. From afar. All that stuff. They'd be ill if they knew.'

Deep down, underneath this worry was my conviction that I, Anna – alone in all the world – was unlovable.

When I told Michael that I liked girls, I didn't mean that it was simply a trivial matter of choice.

My
liking girls
was a fundamental part of my nature. It had been acquired involuntarily, the way I had red hair and pale skin. Even my liking for books like
Finnegans Wake
and
Crime and Punishment
seemed to be something I had no control over. Sometimes I wondered whether free will existed at all.

The following year, as everyone expected, I went to university.

Growing up not far from the campus of one of Australia's best universities meant that it was familiar to me. Michael and I had often roamed around there, attempting to feed the wood ducks, who preferred to graze on the grass, and sunning ourselves on the concrete benches while we watched enviably older, more sophisticated people walk past. But it felt like a different place now that I had legitimate reason to be there. I chained my bicycle up each morning and casually strolled down the broad central plaza between lectures. I hoped that, at last, I might have found a place where I fitted in.

I saw little of Michael during the day because our classes were in different parts of the campus and we were both so busy, but I still climbed in through his window at night, or took him off for rambling midnight adventures through the streets. We started going to pubs together to hear bands, and the louder the music the better, as far as I was concerned. I submerged myself in the noise.

Once, we went to a gig held in an abandoned building, an old community centre. Everyone, including the band with all their gear, had to climb in through a single window. We'd heard about it through the grapevine. There were rules in order to avoid detection: cars were to be parked a long way from the venue, and there was to be no standing around outside. About a hundred people were packed inside.

It was a cold night, but the place was warm from all the bodies, and the noise gave off its own kind of heat. The building was on a ridge. There was a bush reserve behind, and I wondered if people in the houses below could hear. But no one disturbed us, and we stayed far into the night. I think that was almost the happiest I'd ever been, losing myself in the crowd, becoming part of what seemed to be a single organism. It was a pity, in the misty small hours, to be hoisted one by one out of that small window and go our separate ways.

One Friday night very late Michael and I bowled into the café where Josh was working, the only one on duty at that hour. We were arm-in-arm and feeling light-headed and silly, having just stolen a sign that said
CONFINED SPACE
.
DO NOT ENTER
from a building site. On a whim, I presented it to Josh with a flourish to put above the door of his garage; I could hardly credit that it was my same grumpy brother when he laughed, and offered us both a milkshake on the house.

I sipped frothy milk through a straw, and savoured Josh's friendliness. There were no customers at that hour, and we stayed on, listening to music and talking to Josh while he cleaned down the benches and tables. Then a couple of Josh's friends dropped in and were also treated to free milkshakes. Josh introduced me as though he was proud he had such a crazy little sister. Then he introduced Michael as my friend.

Standing there at the counter with Michael, I felt almost as though I was with a boyfriend. It wasn't that I
wanted
a boyfriend, but I relished the appearance of normality. I could see our reflections in the glass; we no longer looked like daggy, outcast teenagers – we were attractive young adults with a kind of weird, groovy look to us.

One night I told Michael that there was a girl I liked in my English tutorial.

‘Her name's Laura. We've had coffee a couple of times, and she's invited me to call in and see her.' Laura lived in one of the university residences.

‘And you're attracted to her?' Michael asked. He put down his trumpet. He'd picked it up to begin playing it, but when I started to confide in him he decided to give me his full attention.

‘Well, yes,' I said. I thought it was obvious that that was the point of my telling him.

‘What's so special about her?'

‘Well … we have things in common. We both study Eng Lit. And she's very pretty.' I had the grace to blush – I had an eye for pretty girls, that was the truth of it. ‘And she likes me – at least, she's friendly to me. And … I just want
someone
!' I said with a groan, hugging Michael's pillow to my face in embarrassment. ‘Is that so bad of me?'

‘No,' he said.

He put the trumpet away in its case.

‘Actually,' he went on. ‘There's a girl I've been seeing.'

‘Oh?'

‘Yes. It's not very serious. She's in my year, and she's a bit older.'

‘How old?'

‘Nineteen.'

We were seventeen. Nineteen seemed ancient.

‘She's brilliant, actually. I mean, really smart. I'd like you to meet her sometime.'

‘Okay,' I said.

I felt rather jealous. I wasn't interested in Michael as a boyfriend, but he was my best friend, my only friend, and I was peeved that there was someone else he liked. Someone whom he'd ‘been seeing' for a while, and hadn't even told me about.

‘Her name's Anna,' he added. ‘I know. Strange, but true. But it's not such an uncommon name, is it?'

I met her sooner than I thought I would. Arriving at Michael's place one Sunday afternoon (climbing in through the window was a bit undignified for someone my age, but it was still a habit), I landed on the floor, and there was the other Anna just coming into the room with Michael, each of them with coffee cups in their hands.

‘Anna?' said the other Anna, crinkling up her eyes in a smile. ‘Michael said you might arrive unexpectedly like that, and I thought he was having me on.' She sent Michael a glance of affectionate complicity.

I resisted the urge to straighten my clothes or dust myself off; I knew my entrance had lacked dignity.

‘Michael's told me so much about you!' we both said at the same time, and stopped. She pushed her short brown hair behind her ears and smiled; she was a round-faced girl, with plump dimpled cheeks and almond-shaped eyes, plainly and practically dressed in jeans and shirt; I saw her sneakers had been discarded in a corner.

We all sank down onto the carpet, our backs against the wall or bed, and Michael went and got me a coffee, and then put on a jazz
CD
. Wreathed by the floating sounds of trumpet and piano, we talked. Anna and I did the usual sussing each other out, and while Michael had told me almost nothing about her, it seemed she knew quite a bit about me. I didn't know whether to be flattered or annoyed.

But I liked her. Michael had been correct about her being smart. She was one of those people who are quick on the uptake, and funny and nice with it. She was thoughtful and watchful, too, and I saw that she was a little unsure of me. But she looked so comfortable with Michael it seemed as though they'd known each other for ages. I didn't know whether they were lovers yet, but if they were, it was clear they'd been friends for a long time first.

After a while I felt like an intruder, but it was being made most welcome by them both that gave me this feeling, not the opposite. There were various politenesses, which I hated. So I said I must go, and went this time out the front door, pausing to have a few words with Michael's mother, who was doing something with the plants in the front garden.

And I felt sad, because it was as if something in my life was ending. My relationship with Michael would never be the same again.