Escape (33 page)

But he's living with Silvia in her one-bedroom apartment in the
city. It's only a few streets away from the Capitol Theatre, on the
seventeenth floor, which is a 'sure sign of rightful destiny'. Guido's
stars, apparently, forecast this address. Silvia is a Cancer, which is a
nurturing sign, unlike Libra which is all about selfish pragmatism and
balance. There is a voluptuous fountain in the lobby and a pink marble
floor like a 1940s film set. He tells me about his living quarters as if
I'm a kindly real estate agent he once had dealings with. Or maybe,
like a child telling his news to his mother. 'In our apartment there is
a little camera you can look into when the bell rings from downstairs,
is fantastic! You can see exactly who is it before you answer, or maybe
you don even look at all. I can write all day and not be interrupted.
Then at night, just downstairs, there is the city, people in the streets,
restaurants, music, life!'
Our
apartment.

'I go to live with Silvia, she believes in me,' Guido told me on
the phone, as if he were one of his own illusions. Like a god. Perhaps
because his voice was disembodied, the sliding sensation came and
tipped me into a sudden cloud of unreality. Did he think he
was
a god?
Did I? Did Guido want an audience, or maybe a faithful assistant?
But I could be that, I
was
that, wasn't I? Not in the full-time way he
required, I suppose. I didn't say anything more so he put the phone
down. I listened to the dial tone for a while, imagining Silvia coming
home from work, making his dinner, reading the words he'd written
that day, translating perfectly, praising his language, sitting close,
stroking his hair. But no, that was wrong, they would go out for dinner,
downstairs where there was music, and life!

You didn't believe in him
, says the voice.
You lacked faith and
commitment. You can't keep a man. You are selfish. You failed.

'Where do you think the voice comes from?' asked the therapist last
week. 'You weren't born with the voice, were you?'

It was something to think about. Especially sitting here in the
dark, night after night, where it can be as loud and alarming as a siren.
I have never talked about the voice with anyone. Sometimes I think
everyone must have it, and other times I think nobody is as mad or
bad as me. I remember the voice ever since I can remember anything.
The therapist asks uncomfortable questions. But
her
voice is not
uncomfortable. It rumbles often with laughter. Her voice has music in
it, high, bright notes as well as soft , low ones. 'If there's no music, then
life is just a bunch of dates by which the bills are paid,' I said last week,
quoting Frank Zappa. She laughed, 'I like that!' The therapist asks
questions, but she doesn't give the answers. Her face is like a cloudless
day, without judgement. But is that possible? Isn't there some kind of
god sitting on his throne in her sky, wanting his dinner?

I tell her about the dreams I'm having. When I start talking, they
recede and almost disappear, as if they never existed. I try to hang on,
bits of dream in my teeth. I see Clara, fragile flesh, things that shatter
but don't bend. Or mend. My mermaid dolls grow legs, Sasha screams
out loud, devoured by sharks. Once, there was blood dripping through
the ceiling. My parents couldn't work out where all that blood was
coming from. They weren't concerned, just irritated by the mess. My
father called in the plumber, who was Simon, and he led us all up into
the attic to show us where the trouble lay. There was Danny, bleeding
from a hole in his head. 'You wouldn't think a guy could have so much
blood in him,' Simon said. 'Well, better keep going.'

It was quiet in the room after that. The therapist nodded. She held
my gaze as if it were something important, but not burdensome.

'Tell me about Danny,' she said.

In her mouth his name sounded more ordinary. For a moment she
was holding him with me and the clouds lift ed a little. I told her about
the clouds and she smiled. 'Tell me about Danny,' she said again.

He was a hard worker, I told her. It was a few weeks after my tenth
birthday that Dad brought him home. Danny was courteous, bony,
fifteen. He'd run away from a foster home where he'd been abused,
Dad said, and he'd been living for a year on the streets of Kings Cross.
He slept under awnings of city shops and squatted in a condemned
terrace. I remembered looking at Danny's knees. I thought they must
really ache after all that squatting and wondered if he was training to
be some kind of gymnast or maybe there was just something wrong in
his head after all he'd been through.

For all his hard living he had kept himself neat. In the airways
bag he brought with him he had two shirts, a little frayed around the
cuffs but carefully preserved with the collars held in place by plastic
moulds. He was certainly an 'original', as my father fondly described
him. A good boy.

'Were
you
fond of him?' the therapist asked.

'I should have been,' I said. 'What was there not to like? Well, at
first, anyway.'

'Go on,' she said, as if she really wanted to hear.

Danny was eager to please. He was excessively polite and had
the manners of a helpful shop assistant. His sharp, clean features
and round blue eyes set far apart gave him an innocent, slightly
surprised expression. I was confused by Danny. No other boy had
ever acknowledged my existence, let alone paid me any particular
attention. But Danny asked me how my day was, if I'd enjoyed my
afternoon with Joanna. He made me uneasy. Something in his face.
Whenever he talked to me he never looked me in the eye and he wore
a far-off expression as if he was having another conversation deep
inside himself.

It was endearing the way he enthused about the bathroom and
the taps that worked and the instant hot water. I noticed he washed
his hands before and after eating. He reminded me of the doctors
scrubbing up at the hospital, the way he soaped up to his elbows each
time. When he put out the rubbish for Mum he wore washing-up
gloves. For a job interview at Woolworths, Dad gave him shoe polish
and a brush, and Danny polished the soles as well. He seemed to need
to do these things without being hurried and he looked more peaceful
once they were finished. I instinctively understood Danny's need to
perform these rituals, and certainly, as Dad said, such careful hygiene
hurt no one, but as I watched him I felt prickles of fear.

As well as needing to be clean, Danny depended upon a reliable
routine. Usually Mum arrived home at five o'clock to cook, I set the
table and we all had dinner at six. Danny took over my job and as he
put the last serviette down and the salt and pepper shakers dead in the
centre, he'd call 'Ready!' It would be exactly six o'clock. Somehow the
family just seemed to obey, and upon his call Mum would bring the
meal over to the table. A bit like cattle, we were corralled by Danny's
needs around the table.

But one night Mum was late. There'd been a problem with a child
at the Starshine Home. Mum missed her usual bus and had to wait for
a later one. As we waited, I noticed Danny's constant checking of the
clock. He turned the knives over and over on the table. He picked up
the salt and pepper shakers and put them down at least fifty times. At
last, at 5.45, Deborah walked in the door. Quickly, with her coat still
on, she began cutting up vegetables. She had to stop when the phone
rang.

At the little table in the hallway, Mum stood twisting the cord
around her hand, nodding, glancing at Danny. It was Liz, one of the
Starshine nurses, she mouthed in my direction. I went into the kitchen
to keep on with the chopping, but Danny began to pace. His trips up
and down the living room rug grew faster. His arms started to flail
oddly at his sides as he paced. Finally he rushed up to Deborah, took
the phone from her hand and banged it down.

'Ready ready ready ready
READY!
' he shouted, his smooth
face twisting into a mask of fury. He shouted from his monster face
until Dad came and took him by the shoulders, leading him into
his room.

A couple of hours later, Danny came out and apologised. He was
very quiet now, but I never forgot his sudden transformation.

'That would have been frightening, at ten,' the therapist said. I
nodded, but I couldn't say anything more.

Yesterday, when I walked into her room, I noticed the flowers on the
coffee table. Hydrangeas. The blue perm kind. The therapist asked me
what I'd been thinking about since we last met.

'Hydrangeas,' I blurted, still looking at them.

She smiled. 'You don't like them?'

'Oh no, I mean, well, actually, I've never really liked hydrangeas.
They're too tidy and self-contained. And . . . they remind me of
Danny.'

There was a waiting silence. 'We have all the time you need,' she
said gently. She didn't even mind that I hadn't liked her hydrangeas.
She smiled at me with her eyes.

After that scary night, I told her, Danny worked even harder at
trying to please. He got the job at Woolworths and helped clean the
house on Saturdays. His back was never quite straight, always a little
bent, like an old man with a burden. Dad took him to a physio who
prescribed exercises for scoliosis, and Danny did them religiously. He
conversed and smiled and said thank you a hundred times a day. So I
shouldn't have had this awful feeling about him.

'There's that old "should" again,' remarked the therapist. When
she said
should
, it sounded like a harmless old aunt in a good cardigan,
always reminding you of yesterday's mistake.

I told her that and we grinned at each other for a moment. It was
a good moment.

But it was strange, I went on, that even through all his politeness,
I always felt there was something remote about Danny. He didn't
react specifically to what another person was saying. A discussion
didn't ever wander in a direction that Danny hadn't planned. He
seemed like a politician on the news with his guard up, choosing not
to respond to anything difficult and only answering the questions
he knew.

'When's he going?' I'd ask Mum. He had been in our house for
much longer than any other boy. Every now and then there was
another small eruption, and Dad would take him into his room.

When Danny had been with us for five months, I came out into
the living room on a Saturday morning to find my mother and father
sitting on the sofa. I smiled and said good morning as I walked with
my clothes to the bathroom. But there was an uneasy quiet in the
room. Neither of my parents sat around in this casual way so early on
a Saturday morning. Only people like Mr Mulgrade the judge and his
wife had time to do that while their housemaid clattered in the kitchen
and the gardener clipped the hedges.

In the shower I kept the window closed and let the steam matt
around me. The warm water rushed over my face like kind rain and
I remember wanting to stand there forever in that soft world hearing
only the
shish
of the shower and feeling my skin grow rosy. This was
going to be a good Saturday, a wonderful Saturday, because I was going
ice-skating. I wasn't going to let any bad thoughts darken the day.

When I came out, wearing the new paisley flares my mother had
made, my parents were still sitting in the same position.

'Rachel?' my mother said as I walked past. 'Could you sit a minute?
We have something we'd like to discuss with you.'

'Where's Danny?' I asked, my feet frozen to the floor.

'Woolworths rang and asked him to work an extra shift this
morning,' Dad said. 'So we thought we'd take this opportunity to
talk. Put those pyjamas down on the chair there, sweetheart.' And he
smoothed a place next to him on the sofa.

I glanced at my mother's face. She was sewing, looking down at
her lap, taking up a hem. A saggy patch drooped on either side of her
chin. I hadn't seen this before and hoped it was only because her lips
were all pursed up as she pulled the thread through the tough cotton.
But she looked old, and her shoulders were bent.

I sat on the edge of the sofa. The clock pinged on the wall.

'We've been thinking,' Dad began, 'about Danny.' He touched
Mum's knee and smiled warmly at her.

I held my breath. I pictured the skating rink and those little
chocolate cakes they gave you afterwards.

'What would you think about Danny staying here permanently,
sweetie?' said Dad. 'It seems possible that we could adopt him, give
him a decent start in life.' He looked at me expectantly.

'But what about his own mother and father?' I burst out. 'Haven't
you found them? Can't you work things out?'

Mum sighed. Her lips disappeared into a thin line.

'You know his mother died when he was little,' Dad said patiently.

'Well, his father – you'd think after all . . .'

'You would,' Dad agreed. 'But I've been checking on his history
and the man's been in and out of hospital all these years.'

'A mental problem,' Mum put in. 'He hears voices, talks to himself.'
She went red and looked back down at her sewing.

'So he's not really equipped to take care of a teenage boy,' Dad
interrupted.

'There is an older brother,' Mum said, looking up. She cut off the
thread with her teeth.

'But he hasn't been in touch for two years.' Dad looked hopefully
at me. 'Danny is a good boy, Rachel. I know he has his problems, but
I think with security and a loving home, with people he can depend
on, he has a real chance to heal, and go forward with his life. I for one
would love to give him that chance.'

The new fridge down the hallway whirred into action. Mum said
once it was the best invention of mankind, after the washing machine.

'I don't know,' I mumbled. 'It's your decision, isn't it? You're the
parents.'

Mum put her hem down and took my hand. 'That's right,
Rachel, but this family is a true democracy. If a decision affects us
all, then we should all have a say. We can take a vote, just like in a
real parliament. It's only fair,' and Mum smiled at me, the droopy
pouches at her mouth lifting. I saw something else in her smile – a
pleading, an uncertainty, maybe a kind of hope. But what for? What
did she want from me?

I stared at the hydrangea picture on the wall. I'd caught Danny
gazing at it once. I'd told him it was painted by a man with no hands
or legs. The man had held the brush in his mouth and had to get
upon a kind of scaffolding to do the top part. 'It gives me the shivers,'
I'd confessed to Danny. 'It's sort of dead and closed-looking, like
the flowers you'd put on a grave. But my parents bought it to help
the man.'

'It's called a still life,' Danny had hissed. 'What do you expect
– flowers jumping around?' He'd thrust his face into mine. He
smelled of Lux soap. 'Could
you
do a painting like that? You don't
know anything. You have the best parents in the world. You should
be so grateful to live under this roof. I don't think you realise that,
any of it. You're just a stupid girl.' He'd glared at me and those wide
surprised eyes narrowed. I imagined him transforming, darkening,
with a scary hollow laugh.

Sitting next to my parents, I looked away from the painting and
down at my lap. I was careful not to catch their eyes. I twisted my
hands. Danny was really a good boy, wasn't he? My father said so
every day. And my parents were saints, everyone agreed. And Danny
helped around the house – he did far more housework than lazy me.
He was clean and neat and usually he was polite, much better behaved
than any of the other boys who stayed. And perhaps if we adopted
him my father wouldn't bring any more of them home. But my chest
tightened. The thought of Danny breathing forever in the room next
to mine made me feel like I was drowning.