Painted Love Letters (3 page)

Dee took a step forward and then stopped, her eyes widening.

‘Maybe it isn't such a great idea,' I said desperately, ‘we could do something else.'

It was too late.

Dee shrieked a cockatoo shriek and then she turned on me, ‘Are you the Addams family or something! That's disgusting! You must be vampires. Who's in them, Chrissie, who's in them? Can I have a closer look?'

‘No.' I said, pushing at her to get her out of the shed, ‘No. My father doesn't like people looking at them. He's an artist, I told you. It's just a new line of work.'

‘That's so spooky. I bet you dream of them at night. I bet you dream of vampires coming to get you. I couldn't sleep if I were you. Not with vampires and coffins in the shed. God, it's so gruesome. Can I have a proper look?'

‘No,' I managed to shove her right out and then I shut the door. ‘I think you'd better go home now Dee, there's nothing to do round here, anyway.'

‘I'm going all right. I don't want to hang round with a freaky vampire. You might bite my neck,' and she tilted her head as though to offer me a better look at her long, tanned neck.

‘Yeah,' I said, ‘watch out!' and I lunged at her, baring my teeth.

She told the whole class. I knew she would. I'd have told if I'd been her. All I could do was lift my head a little higher and try not to look like the kind of girl who would have coffins in her shed, even though I was from the country and my father was an artist. I said in the clear confident voice Dad had taught me to use for bluffing at poker, that Dee was saying that just because she'd lost at table tennis and wasn't that typical. She was such a poor loser and spiteful. And I looked at them with my best bluffer's face.

‘Who'd keep coffins in a shed?' I said, and shook my head, ‘Gosh, Dee, what have you been smoking?'

I told Dee in front of everyone that lying was a sin, and she should know she'd go to Hell and burn forever. I said if you wanted gruesome, you should see the picture Dee had in her kitchen of Jesus with his chest open and blood seeping down.

We fought it out on the tan bark, scratching, kicking and pulling each other's hair with the rest of the kids cheering us on, until Mr Chapman came and broke it up. My face looked as though I'd put it too close to a feral cat but Dee's top lip was already swelling. As we were hauled off to the headmaster's office I looked down at my still clenched right hand and I wanted to shout a big victory whoop, high and wild enough to crack the windows. It was so good to feel my reliable heart pumping and my clean lungs grabbing all that good air.

Oysters

I couldn't do art at my new school the summer my father lay on the couch, slowly dying. I went to class and I dabbed away at sponge paintings, had a go at monoprints and I drew the cylinder shapes Ms Raskill put on the bench in the art room, but I couldn't do anything right. It wasn't like that at Nurralloo with Miss Hopkins. She thought Dad was a weird old hippy who couldn't draw to save his life. She liked landscapes with gum trees in them that looked like real gum trees.

Pine Hills was different. Ms Raskill knew David Grainger's work. She attended gallery openings.

‘Christine Grainger,' she said. ‘Well, well. We will be expecting great things of you.' She said that at the first art class and I knew I would never be able to paint in her art room, ever.

I would stand at my easel while she played the class music to create the right creative ambience and I would pick up my leaden paintbrush. Nothing worked. It was as though the Country Chrissie from Nurralloo whose paintings used to sing with colour was dead. In her place was City Chrissie, sorry – Christine – who killed a painting even before it got from her head to the paper in front of her.

‘Oh well, Christine, we can't all inherit the right genes, can we? Conception is a DNA lottery. I'm sure you take after your mother. She must be creative in her own right. What does she do, Christine?'

I wasn't going to tell Ms Raskill that my mother was waitressing at the Queen Victoria Hotel Bistro so I shrugged.

‘No need to be sulky, Christine,' she said sharply, ‘I mark on attitude, you know. One has to. Can't expect a class of budding Picassos at Pine Hills.'

I didn't feel like painting at home, either. I couldn't walk in from school and go to my room and take out the box of paint tubes Dad had given me for my birthday while he lay on the couch watching the telly, too weak to walk the length of the house to the little sun room Mum had set up as a temporary studio.

I had my Nature Journal. We did Environmental Studies with Mr Chapman. Like my Dad, Mr Chapman was a smoker, so we did a lot of nature walks down to the creek. He would light up, inhale deeply and point to the native grasses that had been planted, the tadpoles just hatched and the mozzie wrigglers they ate. We had to keep a Nature Journal to record our observations and yes, he said when I asked, of course you can draw in it, Chrissie. This is your book, your observations.

I wanted to tell him about smoking, but I didn't want to tell him about Dad, so I shut up and just moved downwind of his smoke.

I worked so hard on my Nature Journal, Dee said I was meeting boys at the creek.

‘Better watch yourself, Chrissie Grainger, you'll go to Hell if you do things at the creek.'

‘What things?' I asked.

I still hung around with Dee, not because I wanted to, but because she was there. We were stuck with each other because there was no one else.

‘Get off the grass. You know what I mean — kissing. Well, kissing isn't so bad. Letting boys see your knickers, letting them touch you. That's bad!'

‘I'm working on my Nature Journal,' I said, ‘I'm not down there with a boy. I don't want to be there with a boy.'

‘Then you must be down there smoking.'

‘I don't smoke,' I said, shoving my fist in my pocket.

‘Show us the journal then.'

She examined the smudged pages carefully, slowly reading my comments aloud.

‘Frog spawn! Gross! That's so disgusting!'

‘If you smoke,' I said, ‘your lungs turn to pulpy sponges and when they squeeze them, black stuff oozes out.'

‘You're so weird, Chrissie. I was talking about frogspawn, not smoking. Hey, this one's grouse. I really like this.'

She pointed to a page on which I'd drawn a little Willy Wagtail balancing on a thin twig.

‘It's cute.'

‘You can have it if you want?' I said.

‘Really? Do you really mean it? I'll get Dad to frame it if you let me have it.'

I tore out the page for her and after she had carefully put it between the pages of her maths book, she linked her arm through mine.

‘Tell you what, Chrissie, why don't you come to my place this arvo? Mum's taken Matthew to the dentist. Dad'll be home, but he doesn't care what I do.'

‘I don't know. I said I'd be straight home.'

‘So, you can ring from my place.'

Dee's house was big and although she didn't have a dog or a vegie garden of her own, she had a trampoline in the backyard and a basketball hoop was attached to one side of the double garage.

‘Okay,' I said, ‘so long as I can have a go on the trampoline.'

‘Oh, that's so boring,' Dee said, ‘I want to show you my bedroom.'

‘I've seen your bedroom, Dee.'

‘Only once. We can play some music. I've got a new cassette player.'

‘After I have a go on the trampoline.'

It took Dad fifteen rings to answer the phone.

‘Hey,' I said, in my bright public voice, ‘how are things going?'

‘Watching a Rock Hudson movie. Where are you?'

‘I'm at Dee's, okay? I'll be home in a little while.'

‘Whatever,' Dad said. He sounded tired. ‘Walk straight home, okay, baby? And don't talk to strangers.'

Dee was sprawled next to her father, watching a game show.

‘Is it cool?' she asked.

‘Yeah.'

‘Hey Puss,' her dad said as she slid off, ‘get us another can before you disappear, right?'

‘Don't you reckon my dad's good looking?' she said when we were in her pink and white bedroom, ‘he's a bit of a hunk, eh?'

‘I suppose. If you like moustaches.'

‘I love moustaches,' Dee said opening the top drawer of her white pine dressing table. ‘Look, I'll paint your fingernails, for you. I've got this new colour, Miss Pearl'

‘I thought I could have a go on the trampoline.'

‘Didn't I tell you? It's been put away — Mum thought it might rain.'

‘But you promised.'

‘I didn't promise, Chrissie. Anyway, I forgot.'

‘Can't your dad get it out again for us?'

‘But I don't want a go. I told you: it's boring. And anyway, we can't disturb Dad.'

‘I don't want my fingernails painted.'

‘Well, you can watch me paint mine then,' Dee said, and took out a little velvety bag. She spilled the contents on to the chenille bedspread. There was a pair of tweezers, an orange stick, an emery board, a pair of small gold-handled scissors and a bottle of pearly pink nail polish.

‘Mum lets me use her cuticle cream and her nail and hand cream every night, just a drop, to make my fingernails strong. She says chipped nails are a disgrace.'

I sat on my hands. I was a nail biter.

‘My mum says nail polish contains chemicals that just dry out your nails! And,' as Dee picked up a lipstick, ‘most lipstick contains beef fat.'

‘Beef fat? That's disgusting. It does not! You'd be able to taste it. Lipstick doesn't taste like that, it's sort of perfumey.'

‘They put that in, to disguise the beef fat.'

Dee dropped the lipstick.

‘So what happens when a boy kisses you?'

‘I suppose it depends on whether or not you're wearing lipstick.'

Dee looked worried, ‘Do you reckon they can taste it?'

‘I don't know. Anyway, so what. Who wants to kiss boys?'

‘I do. But you don't have to worry about it Chrissie Grainger. Look at you — no boy would want to kiss you looking like that.'

I looked in the mirror. I looked the same as I always did. I was wearing an old soft T-shirt, perhaps a little short, and a pair of denim overalls. They were one of three pairs my mother had got from Toowoomba when we still lived in Nurralloo, and by now you could see my ankle bone, but that looked quite summery. I liked my ankle bones, they were thin and stuck out like a horse's fetlock. The tops of my sandals were peeling because I scuffed them when I walked, even though my mother was always telling me to lift my feet. I had scraped my shoulder length hair into a pony tail that morning and I thought, if anything, it looked a little neater than usual. I leant forward into the mirror. There was probably a new freckle on my nose, but really that was all I could think of that might make me impossible to love.

‘What's wrong with the way I look?' I asked.

‘Chrissie Grainger, if you can't see what's wrong, there's no point in me trying to tell you. It seems to me that you don't know diddley swat about anything important in this life, even if your father is an artist and you can draw willy wagtails.'

I knew things, I thought, as I trudged slowly home. I knew things Dee couldn't imagine. I knew how to sit quietly for hours at the creek, just watching as all sorts of things lived out their tiny lives. I knew what it was to wake up every morning and hear your father dying little by little, just down the hallway. I knew how it was to hold so much sadness inside yourself that you felt that even a drop more and you'd explode. The sadness would break you open, scatter tiny bits of you right across the floor and the whole you would be gone forever.

‘I want some new clothes,' I said to Dad when I got home.

‘New clothes, why?' Dad said, looking up from the book he was reading at the table.

‘Oh Dad, look at me! Can't you see? My overalls are too short, this top rides up all the time and I need a bra.' I stuck my chest out at him and waited for him to laugh. He looked me up and down and nodded slowly.

‘Yes, you're right, Chrissie. You're growing up fast. So, do you have any ideas about these new clothes?'

‘Not overalls,' I said quickly, ‘we're not in the country now. I want a skirt, a leather skirt. A short leather skirt. And a top with laces and big floppy sleeves. And sandals. Sandals with a little heel.'

‘Could we settle for a fake leather mini?' Dad asked, ‘after all, we're vegetarians.'

‘Sure,' I said, ‘I don't think Dee's is real anyway.'

‘Okay,' Dad said, ‘a fake leather mini, a top, sandals with a heel, a bra — anything else?'

‘A training bra,' I said, ‘that's what you call it, a training bra.'

‘A training bra,' Dad repeated, ‘What exactly does that do?'

I wasn't sure, I'd just heard talk of them at school, so I ignored him and continued with my list.

‘A pair of jeans,' I said, remembering running with Bongo and the creek. ‘Flares.'

‘Okay, let's note that flares are desirable according to budget. So we'll make a shopping date, Chrissie.'

‘You'll take me?'

‘I'll take you,' Dad said, ‘I like shopping and your mother doesn't. We might leave that training bra for her, though.'

‘I don't want you to get … I mean, will you manage?'

‘I'll enjoy it,' Dad said, ‘it's been ages since I've been shopping.'

‘I'm going shopping with my Dad,' I told Dee.

‘With your Dad?'

‘Yes, with my Dad. I'm getting a mini, like yours.'

‘You won't get anything like this in Brisbane,' Dee said, smoothing down her skirt and showing off her long pink fingernails. ‘My cousin brought this back from America.'

‘And I'm getting flares, a new top and sandals with a heel.'

I missed school for the day to go shopping with Dad. He drove carefully, like an old man, but when he got out of the car he was humming just under his breath.

We went straight to David Jones and he made me try everything on and parade in front of him as though I were a model. At first I was embarrassed but he frowned and said, ‘Shoulders straight, Chrissie. How can I possibly see what you look like when you're stooped like that? That colour suits you, there — look at that.' And he wheeled me around to face the mirror. ‘See how it makes your skin look warm?' He pulled my hair up to the top of my head and turned my chin towards him so I had to squint sideways at my face.

‘She's a pretty girl,' the shop assistant said, ‘and you are so right about the colour. What a lucky girl, having a dad who can take you shopping. And one who knows about girls' things.'

Dad didn't like any of the skirts. ‘Feel them,' he ordered, ‘they feel like — what?'

‘Plastic,' I said, ‘kind of hot and sticky.'

‘Revolting,' Dad agreed, ‘but the top's good. And it has the right sleeves and here's a denim skirt, much more practical. And here — oh Chrissie, here's a dress for you.'

It was long, with a sort of scooped neck and the colours were crazy, all jumbled up and dancing across it in pinks, oranges, greens and blues.

‘I can't wear that to school,' I said, ‘it's too good.'

‘Not to school,' Dad said, ‘but to my exhibition opening and to lunch with your old man, after we've bought it. Try it on.'

It went right down to my ankles. I could feel it soft against my legs when I walked.