Borrowed Light (17 page)

‘What is it? Don't jiggle about just where I'm working, Cally.'

My new voice wanted to say:
If you cared so much about the quality of Jeremy's life, you'd take him out yourself
. My new voice wanted to say:
Have you ever noticed how much time I spend looking after your son?

Standing there, fuming at Mum, I also wanted to ask what on earth had happened to that name of ‘Gany'. It would have been a terrible name to give anybody—much worse than Callisto—and I was very glad for Jeremy's sake that she'd changed it. But I would have liked to know
who
made her change it—Dad or Grandma Ruth?

I just jiggled there for a few more minutes, saying nothing.

She didn't even ask me where I was going on Thursday afternoon. Can you believe it? I imagined the scenario of other teenage girls who had to sneak out of their houses, inventing elaborate excuses of homework at a friend's house, and arranging it with the friend in case the parents rang up to check, and so on, and so on, forever, amen.

The peeled potato skidded out of her hand and bumped the book off the bench. ‘Now I've lost my place!' Mum scowled, bending down.

‘Look, Mum, I'm going out on Thursday, and you'll have to take care of your son for the afternoon, okay? I've got something to do.'

‘There's no need for that tone of voice, Callisto,' said Mum, straightening up. ‘I don't
have
to do anything.' I could imagine her adding, ‘And you're not the boss of me!' just like Jeremy. But her shoulders caved in a little.

‘All right,' she sighed, and opened the oven door. The chicken slid around in olive oil on its way to the oven. She put the dish in and banged the door shut.

I
WENT BACK TO
my room and lay on the bed for a while. I felt bad about Jeremy. Fancy his mother sighing about ‘having' to take care of him for an afternoon. What was wrong with her? Dark matter in the head, that's what. Impenetrable substances. How can she have been so obsessed with him as a baby, and so neglectful now? Sometimes I almost hated her.

I churned around on my bed. I felt so angry, I didn't know what to do with myself. Everything was so unfair. No one helped you with anything, no one cared about anything but themselves.

I turned on the radio. There was an interview with a woman who had just been made the new head of DOCS—that's the department where they look after orphans and abused children. It was so depressing. Budgets and staff had been slashed, and a hundred and thirty-six children had died in suspicious circumstances that year. The woman sounded a bit defeated already. You couldn't blame her. She said sometimes parents just can't cope with the demands of children. They need support themselves. She said she'd just visited one single mother who had smashed her twins together. One baby was dead and the other had brain damage. I slapped my hands over my ears, but it was too late. Sometimes you don't need to hear things like that. I wondered if that
single mother had wanted to be pregnant in the first place.

I lay there numbly until dinner time. I kept thinking of the baby who was still alive, the one with brain damage. I sucked my pillow. Could the child be aware of the loss? She'd never be able to express it. She'd be left lying near this icy draught, unable to move, and the wind would keep blowing. I changed the station and tried to concentrate. But when you have a mountainous obsession, you can't hear anything else. ‘Abortion laws in Western Australia challenged,' said 2UE. ‘Doctors striking over legal issues concerning abortion in Tasmania,' said 2BL. The bigger and heavier your problem is, I reckon, the more gravity it possesses. It attract little bits of matter, crumbs of information that come flying in from all over the universe, and the stuff sticks to it, confirming its mass, adding to its weight. Or maybe it's just selective hearing, as Grandma would say.

Jeremy knocked on my door, and called, ‘Hey, Cally, dinner's ready!' He gave me a big grin. I sat up and tried to grin back. He'd melt the ice off an igloo, old Jem.

He was hopping around in the doorway, shaking a piece of paper at me. When I pretended to grab it, he snatched it away and held it up high, dancing over to the table.

When Dad was away we usually had dinner on our laps, but Mum obviously thought the roast deserved a table. She'd gone to all that trouble with her anguished chicken, after all.

Next to the carving dish were two letters. Mum served our chicken and potatoes and pumpkin and we began to eat.

‘Guess what, Cally!' Jeremy blurted out with his mouth full. A spray of chicken fat landed on my placemat. He was waving the paper again. ‘I've got something here for you!'

‘Let's read these two letters first, shall we, Jeremy?' said Mum. ‘One is from Daddy and the other is from Grandma Ruth.'

‘Why should we read
their
letters first when they're not even here?' cried Jeremy.

‘He's got a point there, Mum,' I said.

Mum sighed again. ‘All right.' She went on chewing her potato. I noticed she didn't give herself any chicken.

‘Well,' said Jeremy importantly, ‘at our school today the teacher handed out this notice. See, it's from the Observatory. And it says that on Saturday the 10th it's Jupiter Night—children under eight can get in for free! That's
this
Saturday. Isn't that cool? We can look through these gigantic telescopes and there are guides and everything to tell you about it.' He looked around the table, expecting to set our hearts on fire. I tried to look as excited as I could.

‘I don't know whether I can on Saturday—' Mum began.

‘No, no, it's okay, Mum, I'm talking to Cally.' He leaned toward me and began whispering like a spy. ‘Then,' he said, lowering his voice even further, ‘there's going to be a party afterwards with chocolate biscuits and lollies and a cake in the shape of a star! Can we go Cally, please, please, please?'

‘Bees and peas,' I smiled. Well, I certainly wasn't doing anything else. I didn't have a hot date or anything. ‘Of course we can go. It sounds fantastic.'

‘Hooray!' cheered Jeremy. His placemat looked like a smeary
Blue Poles
.

‘Now that's settled,' said Mum, ‘I'd like to read you these letters.' She looked at Jeremy with an offended expression.

‘What, Mum?'

‘Oh nothing.'

What?'

‘Nothing. Eat your dinner.'

Grunt, swallow. Everyone expresses themselves so well in our family.

‘So let's hear this letter,' I said.

Mum read Dad's letter first. He wrote that he'd had a
‘major breakthrough' with the marketing department of his business. It was a bit like an annual report and I noticed how we all tended to play with the salt cellar or fiddle with the fringe on our mats. But I suddenly focused when he mentioned my name. ‘Last night I was invited to dinner at Steve's house—you know, Steve Markham, he deals with the Arts Council for us. I met his daughter, Julie. She's just about your age, Cally. She made me think of you. She's a pleasant girl, but she seemed so young. Not nearly as mature and capable as you. The whole evening made me homesick!'

I scrunched up my serviette. Typical. ‘Mature and capable'—the only things he approves of. My model citizen and child minder role. How ‘mature and capable' would he think I was if he found out about my current little problem?

Mum smiled at me. Jeremy knocked over the salt cellar. When I'd wiped it up, Mum went on reading. ‘Everything's gone so well, in fact, that I'll be home earlier than I thought, on Thursday the 15th. I'm really looking forward to seeing you all. And hearing all your news.'

‘Well, I hope he doesn't expect me to pick him up from the airport, because I'm busy that day,' said Mum.

So am I, I thought. It was like God the Holy Father arriving home for Judgement Day. I wondered if
he
would ask me questions about where I was going. Oh hell, I didn't need this.

‘And then the traffic is terrible on that route out to the airport,' Mum was worrying.

‘I'm sure he wouldn't expect you to be there,' I reassured her. ‘You never are.'

She gave an irritated snort, and looked at me sharply.

I'm sure he won't expect an enthusiastic welcome from your department, either, I thought to myself. It was amazing how just a word from my father could change the colour of my mother's face. Even when he wasn't here.

‘Let's hear the letter from Grandma,' I said.

Mum moved her plate to the side and unfolded the thin blue airmail letter. ‘I'm sitting at the Caffé d'Oro and I'm onto my second espresso,' read Mum. She made her voice go all posh and crossed her eyes. Her eyeballs swivelled so far into the corners I thought they'd get stuck. There was no doubt, Mum had the most rubbery face in the family. Jeremy let out a shout of laughter.

‘Mum's making funny faces!' he cried gleefully. ‘Do it again, Mum, do it again.'

‘Don't worry,' I told Jem, ‘she will.'

‘The conference has been
fascinating,'
Mum went on in the voice, ‘but sometimes I think you learn more over coffee, when you get the chance to chat with your colleagues. They're such an inspiring bunch, especially the physicist, Ennio Bagnadentro. Have I ever mentioned him to you, Cally? I've read his papers over the years, so it was very interesting to meet him in the flesh. I'll miss them all very much when I leave. It's rare that you get the opportunity to have such stimulating conversations—' Mum sniffed loudly.

‘Look!' yelled Jeremy, pointing at Mum, ‘there she goes again!' He dug me in the ribs, chortling.

‘Her own flesh and blood aren't interesting enough to bother with, of course,' Mum was mumbling to herself.

‘What?' demanded Jeremy. He still had his face all ready to laugh.

‘Nothing. Do you want to hear the rest? Or maybe Cally can read it.'

‘No, no!' cried Jeremy. ‘You read it, Mum, you do it best.'

Mum smiled in a gratified way, and picked up the letter. She read on for a while about the conference and the art galleries and dinners. She crossed her eyes a lot for Jeremy, and her eyeballs nearly disappeared when she came to another one of Grandma's jokes. ‘Ennio was telling us about
that old Zwicky character, you know Cally, the one who coined the term “dark matter”. Mum looked up from the letter questioningly. I nodded.

Mum shrugged. ‘I've never heard of him.'

‘Me neither,' said Jeremy.

‘He was a scientist who liked to argue.'

‘Sounds like your grandma,' muttered Mum. ‘He probably had her dreadful sense of humour, too.' Her eyes ran over the page. Her lips twitched for just a second.

‘What, Mum? After this, I can tell you a joke about bats,' said Jeremy.

‘Well,' Mum read on, ‘Zwicky liked to start fights, so he always took the opposite line to his colleagues. Edwin Hubble believed fervently that dwarf galaxies did not exist—Zwicky swore that they did. Funnily enough, Zwicky turned out to be right. He lashed out at his colleagues, calling them a pack of “spherical bastards”—meaning they were bastards whichever way you looked at them!'

There was silence for a moment while Mum paused in her reading. I snorted.

‘Is that the joke?' asked Jeremy.

‘I suppose so,' Mum said. ‘Side-splitting, isn't it?'

‘What's sfecular?'

‘It means circular,' I explained.

Jeremy thought for a moment. He played with his chicken wing. A new light came into his eyes. He began to smile. ‘Haha
ha
!' he spluttered, banging down his fork. His eyes disappeared into those crescent moons. Jeremy makes very little sound when he laughs. It's as if he wants to keep all the joke inside him, like something extremely precious that could leak. It's infectious, Jeremy's laughter, and soon Mum and I couldn't stop either.

It was good to have a laugh, it really was. But the next part of the letter brought me crashing down without a parachute.

‘So I'll be leaving Monday evening, and I'll arrive home Wednesday morning. I can't wait to see you all, and tell you my adventures.
Arrivederci cari!'

I pictured Grandma coming over on Thursday. She'd be rippling with news, rounding us up like her flock of sheep. She'd nip at our ankles if we were late. I'm her best audience—what an interrogation there'd be if I weren't present to hear ‘all her adventures'. What was so important, she'd demand, that I couldn't stay? Didn't I want to hear about the Black Taj—the shadow of the universe?

I'd have to lie. I hated lying to Grandma Ruth. She could spot whole new galaxies in the sky—imagine how quickly she'd spot a lie on earth. And anyway, just having her in the same country while I had to do this thing made me squirm. I didn't want her to ever know. I didn't want anyone to know. Then maybe, after a while, I would forget too. I could put it in brackets and get on with the next thing. Oh why couldn't she stay safely on the other side of the world—just for another week?

Then I had an idea. Perhaps we could visit her on Wednesday, the day she arrived home. She always goes on about her ‘coma'—that's her word for jet lag—but we could make it a sort of celebration. We could bring over a cake and champagne, and with all the noise and interest, she'd stay awake for sure.

I felt heartened at that thought, and helped myself to another potato.

‘Arrivederci, cari!'
Mum said again. She put the letter down with a flourish. Her Italian accent
was
perfect. She sounded like a different person when she spoke like that. Sort of confident and hopeful.

‘The Italian language is the language of the soul,' she sighed. ‘It's so musical, don't you think, so romantic. In my first life, I think I was born in Rome. I could almost tell you the street.'