Lessons from the Heart (36 page)

So my hair's all right, in the mirror I can stand that, and the overall shape of my face – it's not too cowlike – and even my brows, if only they stayed over my eyes and didn't grow down over the rest of my face and threaten to join up with my moustache, and I can see myself in twenty years with a beard like Yiayia Irini's and having to go to the barber's more often than my husband who'll probably have moved out anyway cos he prefers his carpets on the wall or the floor and not in his bed.

And anyway we write these descriptions in class, and hand them in, and it must have looked so stupid to anyone going past in the corridor, fifteen Year 12 girls staring in a mirror and then writing stuff down – only half the time, I notice, people aren't writing at all, they're just looking at themselves and going, ‘Oh no,' or picking their spots or squeezing a blackhead, which you're not supposed to do because it just spreads any infection, or licking their fingers and making their eyebrows blacker or straighter than they are, or putting the mirror at an angle so they see themselves only in profile, and I see Miss Temple watching this and getting madder and madder, and the next day, instead of handing our descriptions back, she tears them up in front of us, and then chucks a spazz, a total spazz.

‘You girls make me sick. You couldn't describe a zucchini,' she says, while we look around for who looks most like a vegetable, ‘without focusing on its broken stem. You're a cosmetic surgeon's dream.'

And she's only warming up, and she explains how we've all been conned by advertisers and how we've internalized their ideology and imagery, and then makes us listen to her while she reads pages and pages of stuff from Betty Friedan and then Naomi Wolf,
The Beauty Myth,
and that, and by this time we've forgotten all about the first person and even mirrors and hubcaps, and know we're going to spend the next six years discussing constructions of beauty, beginning with the Greeks. Though none of the ones in my family.

‘Can't you girls see,' Miss Temple's so frustrated she nearly spits, ‘you're stuffed full of false consciousness.'

‘I haven't even had my lunch,' Toni says from behind me, and she keeps up this constant whispering all the time Miss Temple's spazz lasts.

‘Beauty, for a woman,' she says, ‘is actually a curse.'

‘You hear that, Laura?' comes from behind me. ‘You've got the curse.'

‘The cult of Beauty,' Miss Temple says, ‘is crippling. It makes rivals of women, and it falsifies the discourse between men and women.'

‘Why?' asks Jenny Cosgrove. Who's a pain. And sucks for marks.

‘Because it forces women to compete for men,' Miss Temple says. ‘That's why.'

‘No, not that bit,' Jenny says. ‘I understand that about the women competing. I meant the men and the women, how it … what did you say?'

‘I said it falsifies their discourse.'

‘Ohhh,' says Jenny, who obviously has no idea.

‘It means,' Toni says, ‘they'll tell you any sort of lies to get into your pants.'

‘It means,' Miss Temple says, ‘you can't be certain whether any statement a man makes to a “beautiful woman” – quote, unquote

- isn't made with an ulterior motive. And so no true communication is actually possible.'

‘Oh,' says Jenny. ‘I see. Thank you, Miss Temple.'

‘You don't have to worry, Jenny,' Toni says, as the siren goes for lunch. ‘No man will ever tell you anything but the truth.'

Which is why I stopped sitting next to Toni in class. And why I now miss her so much.

Sundays, we have dinner early, in the kitchen, just soup and bread or something simple like tomatoes and eggs, and then we all go off to our rooms to get ready for the week, for school. Philip reads through his papers for the morning. We don't even switch on the TV. But Mum likes us all to be together first – you can't just grab something and go. She's not running a take-away shop, she says. And you don't say anything back to that. She just wants to hear our
plans
– she means our plans for the week of course, but sometimes, like tonight, it does seem like an opportunity.

‘How would you feel,' I say casually, as I spread honey on a piece of toast, ‘if I didn't go to uni next year?'

‘What?' Katie says. ‘And not be a doctor after all?'

I screw the lid carefully back on the honey jar, knowing Mum and Philip will be looking at one another, their faces conversing.

‘You could still be a nurse,' Katie says, ‘and mend people.' She's thinking of her dolls.

‘That'd be just fine, darling,' Mum says eventually. ‘In fact,' she says, and I hear her voice warming as though she'd thought of it herself, ‘I think it'd be marvellous. I think you're too young anyway, you're just seventeen. And this year has been so hard.'

And she's getting so enthusiastic, I'm starting to think it must be a bad idea.

‘And Philip agrees,' Mum says. ‘Don't you, darling?'

‘Does that mean she won't be a nurse?' Katie's the one who's really disappointed.

‘It just means she won't start next year. She'll defer for a year. Or so.' Mum says, and I just catch the tiniest gulp. As she wonders. ‘That
is
what you mean, isn't it, darling? You do still want to go to university -?'

‘Oh, yes,' I say. ‘Though would it matter …?' I begin, and she cuts me off.

‘I want you to go. I want you to have that experience.'

‘No, I was going to say, would it matter if I didn't do Medicine?'

‘Darling, it wouldn't matter at all. Whatever you decided to do, I'd support. You know that. I just want you to go, that's all. Uni offers you so much. New friends …'

‘Just don't do Law,' is the only thing Philip's said so far, and I'm grateful. Philip can be so smart sometimes about when to say things and when not, and he knows this is basically between Mum and me. ‘Just don't do Law,' he says a second time, and it's a joke, but what he's really saying is, whatever I decide is fine with him too.

‘I think it's crazy anyway,' Mum says, ‘the marks you have to get just to get into Medicine.'

‘It's not the marks. I can get the marks.'

‘But if you're not going to do it, then you won't have to kill yourself like you're doing. You can afford to relax a bit – any other course you'll get into easily.'

‘Laura will kill herself
and
get the marks,' Philip says, and he can surprise you sometimes, because Mum's the mind reader, and you never think of Philip that way. ‘And
then
she'll decide not to do it. Not before.'

‘Oh,' says Mum, and looks at him, and then at me. ‘Oh.'

‘Just …' he says, and gets up to fetch more coffee from the bench, ‘as you would have done.'

‘You could still be a nurse,' Katie says. ‘You don't need high marks for that.'

‘What will you do?' Mum says, and her enthusiasm suddenly sounds like worry, or even fear. ‘Instead?'

‘I'll work for a while, I suppose,' I say. Anything. ‘To earn some money. And maybe travel.'

‘Of course,' Mum says.

‘What, go overseas?' Katie says.

‘Half your luck,' Philip says, bringing the coffee pot back to the table. ‘Wish I'd done that at seventeen, instead of going from one lot of books, one classroom, to the next.'

‘But you wouldn't go straightaway?' Mum says. ‘Not straight after school finishes?'

‘Can I come in?' Mum says. And is in.

I don't think Mum and I have ever
not
said goodnight, even after we've argued and hated one another. Not since I can remember. The only difference these days is she respects my privacy and says, ‘Can I come in?' though usually about two hours after she's already plonked herself on my bed. I can see from her face she's come to ask me something, but just for one moment she's distracted.

‘What's that?' she asks, nodding at a large jar on my desk. The jar's new, it has a hole cut in the lid, and there's just three lonely-looking twenty cent coins on the bottom of it.

‘It's a swear jar.'

‘But you hardly ever swear.'

‘I do sometimes.' We both look at the silver coins together.

‘And you've decided to stop?' Mum sounds disbelieving. ‘You're not going religious or anything?'

‘Like Grandma Vera?' We both laugh then. Because Grandma Vera swore more and more the older, and more frustrated, she got. ‘No,' I say, and we both sit for a moment with our separate thoughts.

In fact the jar's not for swearing at all. But I've decided it's time I learned to talk properly and stopped saying
and that
and
but
and
or something
on the end of every sentence, I don't know why. And so I have to put twenty cents in the jar every time I say one of them. But I don't want Mum to know because she'll say nothing but be secretly delighted and even start sneaking coins into it herself just to encourage me.

‘When did you start it?'

‘Today.'

‘Oh,' she says, and I can see her already calculating. ‘And what's it for? When it's full, I mean.'

‘I don't know,' I shrug. ‘Maybe if I do go on a trip next year …'

And I know that this is what she came about in the first place.

‘You're not thinking of leaving home, are you?' she asks. ‘I don't mean for a trip. I mean, moving out?'

‘No,' I say, and I'm just as shocked as she is. ‘No.'

‘Thank Christ. I had this sudden, awful –'

‘Mum, no. It's okay.'

‘I'm just not ready for that. I'll need plenty of warning.'

‘I'll count to ten,' I say. And we both sort of smile at that.

No wonder I find it hard to get to sleep some nights – not just tonight with everybody talking about Toni and uni and ‘plans' and Mum having a breakdown about me leaving home, when I've hardly just got here, and I haven't heard her asking Katie or Thomas or Philip about when
they're
leaving home, but all the numbers as well that are left chasing one another round and round in my head because somehow I always seem to leave Maths and Physics till last. Normally I play music, and somehow by midnight that sorts them out. But tonight it doesn't work. The numbers have gone, but the voices haven't.

When you saw her, how did she look?

Pretty.

Happy?

Yes.

And how did that make you feel?

And I find I can't answer that because my feelings are so mixed.

‘You were happy for her, weren't you?' Mum had asked me that day we went to the pool.

‘Ye-ss,' I'd said. ‘But –'

‘But what?' she said, trying to do her mind-reading thing. ‘A bit envious as well?'

‘Envious?'

‘Of her freedom. Her experience?'

‘A little.'

‘Nothing else?'

And there is something else, of course, but it's too black and hateful to say, but I hate her for seeing Mr Prescott like that and all that time, and maybe even after that morning at the Rock, I'm beginning to suspect, all those days when they were pretending not to speak to one another, and she was cutting him dead at school, maybe they were still meeting then, behind my back, and discussing how smart they were and even laughing, with him saying, ‘But surely Laura must know, she must suspect?' and Toni saying, ‘Laura? She wouldn't have a clue, she's so dumb about some things and has no experience, and has only ever had one boyfriend, and he dumped her.'

And I hate her for that, and can't even tell Mum. So she keeps worrying and worrying about the wrong thing, about me leaving home, for instance, and going to live in a flat, and maybe with a married man, like Toni – though she doesn't know about that -or even going to live with Toni herself, and she doesn't realize that's the last thing I'd ever do, and I don't care if I never see Toni again in my life.

Though I do.

And all this is weird, because I must fall asleep then, and I haven't even turned my light off, and I come awake again with a gasp – or maybe it's the other way round and it's my gasp that wakes me – and I'm sweating and it's not even hot, and I know I've only been asleep for a few minutes, but in my dream I was back in the street again, in Glebe, and Toni was on the step and the blue door was closing behind her and one second it was her face and it was cold and hating me, and the next it was the baby's at the pool, screaming with terror, and then smiling, just seconds later, and then Toni's again, but her face had changed utterly, or not her face but its expression, and it was no longer cold and hateful but warm and pleading.

‘Don't judge me, Lolly,' it said. ‘Don't hate me. Please -?'

18

‘Can I come in?' a voice says, and my doorway's getting to be like the Arc de Triomphe or the Gateway to India or something, the number of people wanting to make speeches in front of it. Only normally they come in and make the rest of their speech from my bed – if it's Mum – or from the well of my beanbag with Yogi curled on her stomach if it's Katie. But Toni doesn't. She stands in the corridor, waiting, as if she's afraid the whole thing might collapse on top of her, or a door slam itself blank, shut, in her face.

‘How did you get in?' is all I can think to say.

‘Down the chimney. Where do you think all these ashes come from?'

‘But I didn't even hear the bell.'

‘I knocked.'

‘And Mum let you in?'

‘Miriam, yes. Your mother. Have you met Miriam?' she says, with her head on one side, and I still can't get over how assured and grown-up she is. ‘Miriam's the woman who opens the door downstairs, and if she recognizes the people standing there –'

‘But why didn't you phone first? To let me know?'

And for the first time her face is serious, and doubtful, and the way I've always known her. ‘Because I was afraid you mightn't see me. You might just make up some excuse, and say you were out, or too busy.'

‘On a Monday night? With Physics all Tuesday? Likely.'

And we continue to look.

‘Can I come in?' she says again.

‘Yes, yes,' I say. And I leap up from my desk and I'm even clearing a space on my bed, and next thing I'll be dusting or washing the windows – for
Toni?
– and we're both nervous and polite with one another, now the first visual shock's passed over. And, before she sits on the bed, Toni actually says:

‘I'm not disturbing you?'

‘Not my homework,' I say.

‘What is it?'

‘It's just some Maths. Probability and that.' I look in my bag for twenty cents which falls, plonk, into the jar. While Toni watches.

‘What was that for?'

‘I just … owed it.'

‘Who to?'

‘Myself. I just remembered.'

‘Oh,' she says, and finally sits. ‘I was never any good at Maths. You could do anything though.'

Which only leaves me strangely embarrassed.

‘Maths is just a trick,' I tell her. ‘A trick of the mind, that's all. And some people have it, and some don't. Mum and Philip …' I say – and I find I could talk about this for hours, in the circumstances … ‘they can hardly add up. And yet they're so smart.' And I'm about to say: ‘It must come from my Dad, from my Greek side,' and I can even talk about the Greeks and Geometry and Maths, but I find, instead, I've said:

‘Why didn't you tell me?'

Which could be a question about anything. But Toni answers:

‘Because I thought I might get you into trouble.' And she can see from my face I don't believe this – or not only this. ‘And because I was ashamed.'

‘Oh,' I say, and months of hurt disappear in a stroke. And I wonder what to say back to her. Which is crazy, because all these weeks and months there's only been one thing I've wanted to tell her. But now she's here, I find all I can say is:

‘Do you want to take off your jacket?'

‘When I saw you in the street,' she says, ‘all I could think of was how much I'd missed you.'

‘I thought you were telling me to go away. To mind my own business.'

‘If Dwayne hadn't been there –'

‘Does he live there?'

‘For as long as I hadn't seen you, it was all right. I could convince myself you were still here, nothing was different for you, and as soon as I was ready …'

‘It's been nearly three months.'

‘As soon as I'd got things sorted out in my mind … But somehow you never do, and then I saw you, on the bus, and I watched you follow me, and all the time I was in this blind panic.'

‘You looked so calm, so happy.'

‘And when I got to the door, and Dwayne was there, I suddenly didn't know what to do. So, I ran. I rushed inside before he saw you and knew, because if he knew then other people would know too and everything would get so –'

‘I felt like you never wanted to see me again.'

And it's weird because we're saying these things, and we're in my room, and we're only feet apart, and we've known each other forever, but there's still this chasm between us, and it feels like we're reaching back and forwards across it but our hands never seem to meet, and the next thing I'm offering her coffee because I've got this jug in my room now, and she's taking off her jacket at last and even folding it before she puts it on my bed, and I'm even asking if she takes sugar now, Christ. And she can't help it either and actually says:

‘Two, please.'

I swear she says – this is Toni, talking to me – ‘
Two please
.'

While we're waiting for the water to boil, she picks through the books on my bedside cabinet. Turns over the top one, glances at the blurb on the back.
‘Voss
?' she says.

‘It's wonderful.'

‘What's it about?'

‘This German explorer. In Australia in the nineteenth century.'

‘Is it history, or what?'

‘No, it's a novel – though you can read it slowly, as well, like poetry. Anyway,' I tell her, ‘Voss is this crazy visionary –'

‘What, like Peter Costello?'

‘And it's about how he tries to conquer the country just by the force of his own will. And he even gets to think he's God. But he fails, of course.'

‘So, what's it saying … ?' Toni says, tossing
Voss
onto the bed and stirring through the books underneath. ‘The meek shall inherit the earth, or something?'

And Toni, I find, can still take your breath. I look at her back, its vulnerability and strength.

‘Ye-es,' is all I can say. ‘Sort of.'

But she's not even listening. Having finished
Voss,
she's on to something else.

‘You're not still reading this,' she says, and I see, from the blunt spine between her fingers, it's Larkin,
The Collected Poems.
‘You were reading this when we went away.'

She stops then, realizing what her words point to. She starts to read the poem where the book fell open. Where the bookmark has lain untouched for months. She reads the opening lines aloud:

‘It's a pun on
lying,'
I remind her, as she reads on:

An emblem of two people being honest.

‘You know,' she says, ‘I'm sure I've read this before? We didn't do Larkin, did we? With Miss Temple, or something?'

‘I read it out to you from my journal. While we were out there.'

‘Oh shit, yes. The poem you showed Philip. That prick hasn't showed up again, has he?'

‘He did ring me.'

‘Don't tell me, he's woken up. He wants you to get back together again.'

‘I told him I was too busy. But actually I didn't want to. I'd sort of said goodbye to him already.'

‘Lolly, don't waste your time even thinking about him. There'll be a chain of guys for you.'

‘I'm not interested just at the moment. In anyone. I'm just –'

‘I know,' she says, as the jug clicks itself off. ‘You've got your head so far up your bum studying.'

‘I'm not doing Biology,' I say, and we can at least smile. ‘I'm doing Physics, remember?'

‘You still need leverage,' she says, ‘if you're going to get it any way up there.'

‘Or yoga!'

And we almost laugh then, as I stretch out my arm with her coffee.

‘God,' she says as she takes her mug, ‘what's that? A slave bracelet? It's a bit tatty, isn't it?'

‘Cheap but,' I say. And put another twenty cents in the jar. While Toni watches.

‘What is it?' she says, coming back to the bracelet. ‘String or something? Couldn't you even afford leather?'

‘It's just a kind of reminder.' I pull the sleeve of my jumper down so that it covers the white cord looped round my wrist. ‘It's for my grandmother, she's sick.'

‘Sick?
But I went to her funeral.'

‘The Greek one. Yiayia Irini. She's nearly blind now.'

‘Oh, sorry,' she says, and sups at her coffee, makes a face because it's too hot, and then starts guessing – wildly as usual.

‘So, you're going to see her,' she says. And she doesn't even phrase it as a question. ‘That's what the jar's for.'

‘Don't be stupid,' I feel I have to say. Toni'll have me on the plane next. ‘That,' I say, nodding at the jar, ‘wouldn't get me the bus fare to Mascot.'

‘But you are going,' she says. ‘Aren't you?'

‘
Tha itane kala,'
I asked Katina Xyrakis, who's only in Year 11 but is Greek Greek. Proper Greek. ‘Does it mean,
It'd be nice?'

‘It depends,' she said, and pulled a string of hair across her mouth. She sucked it, and then drew the wet strand out in front of her face, and started to untangle it. Katina is large and slow. Her father's a builder, and Toni says Katina looks like one of his constructions. Which, in a way, she is, I suppose. ‘It could mean that,' she told me.

‘Does it normally?'

‘I'd have to see the –'

‘The what?'

‘The thing.'

‘Jesus,' I breathed. I was starting to feel like Miss Temple.

‘The letter, you mean?'

‘No, the sentence,' she said. ‘The –'

‘Context?'

‘Yes.'

‘Well, here's the sentence,' I said, and showed her what I'd copied.

She read it – for an age – her hair sawing back and forwards through her teeth.

‘Does it mean,' I said, ‘
It'd be nice if you could see her?'

‘Not really.'

‘What then?' I said, on the point of shaking her.

‘It means you should. You've got to.'

‘I've
thought
of going there,' I say to Toni now. ‘If I can work over the summer. And save the money.'

Our eyes rest on the jar. On the small pile of silver barely visible at the bottom of it.

‘Miriam would give you the money,' she says. ‘You know that.'

‘I want to save it myself. Besides, I don't know how she feels about me going.'

‘Why wouldn't she? Want you to go, I mean?'

‘I think it's tangled up in her head with Dad. With Stavros … my father. Somehow it'd be like going back there herself, and it kind of frightens her.'

‘Oh.'

Which reminds me. Because I haven't forgiven her yet. And she still hasn't said sorry or anything.

‘I saw your Mum,' I say. ‘When you left …'

She sips her coffee, without speaking, and her face closes against me.

‘She was really upset.'

‘Yeah, well.'

‘She was just by herself. Drinking. I don't know if your Dad was even there.'

‘Turd,' she says.

‘Turd yourself,' I say, and she pulls her head down, protectively, between her shoulders. ‘Not telling her where you were going like that.'

And then I'm caught because one part of me's glad to see her hurting, acknowledging at last, and the other part of me's cringing and disgusted at what I'm doing. Getting my own back like this.

‘Do you know what she said to me when I was going?'

‘Lolly, please –' Toni says. ‘Don't.'

‘No, no, it's all right.' I go over and sit on the bed beside her. ‘It's all right,' I say again, ‘it's funny – or sort of funny.' Toni looks at me as though, even this close, I could still lash out at her. But I never would. ‘It's sort of funny and sad at the same time. Do you want to hear it?'

‘Yes,' she whispers, and her eyes, inches away now, are gigantic and blue. And still absolutely clear, despite the water I can see in them.

‘She said: “If she was going to leave home, the least … ” ' I have to hold myself round the ribs just to get it out.

‘Go on,' Toni says. ‘Go on. Don't stop now. What did she say?' ‘She said: “If she was going to leave home, the least she could have done … ” '

‘Lo-lly!'

‘ “Was take me with her”.'

And at last we can touch. We have no choice anyway, clinging and rolling against one another in our helplessness. It may only be relief from the last few minutes, but Toni laughs until the tears come. And we lie side by side on my bed then, looking up at the poster pinned to my ceiling, Doisneau's
The Kiss,
the famous one with the two lovers kissing on a Paris street. And, looking at that, we gradually recover.

‘Is that where he lives?' I say at one point. ‘At that place in Glebe, with the blue front door?'

‘Would you like to see it?'

‘Does he live there?'

‘No, only on weekends.'

‘But –'

‘It's true, Lolly. On Saturday, when you followed me, when I was so desperate to get inside, I'd just forgotten my key. That's all.'

‘Oh,' I say. And realize how weird it is, I didn't even have to ask her.

‘I've got two rooms at the front, and there's this couple, Peter and Erica, but they're out all the time, I hardly see them.'

‘And the rest of the time he's with Mrs Prescott?'

‘Yes.'

‘And his children?'

‘Yes.'

‘And you?' I say. Because I have to. Because it's her.

‘At first …' she says, and suddenly she's much older again, and it's like she's discussing a period of her life that's past now but still painful, and her eyes, I see all this time, are searching the poster of the lovers kissing, moving from detail to detail within it, which is weird because I'm not sure she's looking at it at all, but at something else, years or miles away.