The Astrologer's Daughter (2 page)

2

Since I’m in
no immediate danger
, two officers come out first thing in the morning.
A tall, heavy-set man with sandy hair and a compact woman who looks only a year or
two out of the academy, still fresh-faced and curious. Both are bristling with holsters,
gadgets, ripstop nylon.

They recoil when I answer the door, and my hand rises to my ear. But, of course,
it’s too late. The young woman’s eyes narrow thoughtfully on the melted, stumpy thing
that is all that remains of my left ear, then on the waxy-looking pattern burnt into
my left cheek that pulls my eye down a little at the outer corner. I see her thinking,
as clearly as if a thought bubble has formed over her neat, blonde head:
Abuse?

Then:
Motive?

Before two lots of official ID are even folded away, I find myself babbling, ‘Ipswich
house fire, late 90s; it’s on the public record.’

What’s also on record is that my father died trying to save both of us, but I don’t
tell them that part. They can look that up themselves.

‘Uh, come in,’ I add, belatedly releasing my messy topknot and finger-combing all
the wavy dark hair down off the top of my head and over my ruined ear.

I look like hell today. Like Hollywood-grade demon spawn in my fiery tartan pyjamas
with matching craniofacial scarring that grew and stretched as I grew and stretched.
A teen serial killer in faux-sheepskin slippers.

We all sit down, the male officer across from me in the orange tweed armchair, the
female officer beside me on the matching couch because it’s the appropriate thing
to do: I’m eighteen years and thirteen days old today, the least fully formed ‘adult’
you’d be likely to encounter. The front desk coppers who took my call at Melbourne
East station—passing me around like a hot potato—got that right away. When Constable
Lara Brand now tries to take my hand, it makes a panicky, crablike gesture of escape,
and she doesn’t try again. I’m striving so hard not to stare at the real live gun
she’s carrying in a thigh holster on her right leg that I’m practically sitting with
my back to her.

‘Sergeant Sam Docherty,’ the man says, rushing to fill the silence that follows.
And I’m glad he does, because I’m unable to frame in words the awful realisation
that I’ve somehow lost myself
two
parents. I only seem to have misplaced the most
important person in my life not once, but twice. A feat for anyone, surely.

Docherty summarises the specifics of my call-in, refraining from mentioning that
it was both hysterically brief and largely non-sequential. I nod and nod and nod
as he speaks, like a nodding doll.

They make me describe Mum in detail. How tall she is, dress size, skin tone, hair
and eye colour, and I’m racking my brains again over the vital question.

What had she been wearing yesterday morning? Had I even lifted my head to grunt as
she lingered by my bedroom door? I’m not what you would call a morning person. I
have not yet discovered the time of day at which I am optimally functional. But you
can’t find a person you can’t describe, so I say, ‘Dark blue?’ with so much uncertainty
I sound like an uncaring flake.

Docherty frowns. ‘Can you go one better than that?’

‘Some kind of pants-suit thing,’ I add hastily. ‘White blouse, with a foofy collar
or scarf?’ I fluff around at the base of my neck as if I have wattles, like a chicken.
‘Flat shoes because she was walking to work,’ I resume threadily, lowering my hand,
‘at the bank. She always walked.
Though she may have been packing heels for a meeting. Hair down.’

I only know that part because I have a vague memory of squinting through my open
bedroom door and seeing the early morning sun flaring in the ends of her hair, turning
them a pale red. That was after the bit where I’d pretended I was still asleep when
she’d said quietly, ‘Love you, my girl,’ and got no answer.

While I’ve been talking, I’ve caught the officers flicking surreptitious glances
at each other. I don’t blame them—I’m tall and broad-shouldered, dark and busty and
solid. The exact opposite of the woman I’m describing.
You wouldn’t even know you’re
related!
the TattsLotto lady in the shopping arcade across the road from our place
had exclaimed, the first time we’d met her.
No, you wouldn’t
, Mum had replied cheerily,
rubbing the back of her wounded hand against my face with affection. The unconscious
gesture had caused the TattsLotto lady’s eyes to flick away.

The sergeant underlines something in his small police-issue notebook. ‘Your mum have
any identifying marks?’ he asks. ‘Like tattoos? Evidence of childhood illnesses,
accidents? Scars, is what I mean. Someone may see them on her, jog something.’

I pause, diverted by Constable Brand’s light-hazel gaze skimming across all the surfaces
in our apartment. Her eyes fly up the smoke and grease-stained walls, taking in
the
knick-knacks, the dust, the general air of poverty and neglect. I’m sitting so close
that I catch her nose wrinkle minutely at the smell of old food and vicious rising
damp masked by an ambient layer of lavender oil. She takes in the books on astral
projection and
fate versus free will
, the tomes on reincarnation, Chinese astrology
and foretelling the future Occidental versus Oriental style, and I see more thought
bubbles quickly forming that say:
New Age fruitcake?

And:
Bad mother?

‘She wasn’t,’ I interrupt sharply, unable to stop myself. ‘She was the best mother
you could ever, ever have. She’s been through so much. You have to find her.
Please
.’

There it is again, the past tense, slipping out. Sudden panic squeezes my throat
closed.

Constable Brand averts her eyes and asks if she can see the rest of the apartment
but is gone before I can reply. I hear lights going on in Mum’s bedroom, mine, then
the combined toilet/shower/laundry room at the far end that almost always feels like
you’re stepping into the tropics regardless of what the weather’s doing outside.
Only one window opens in our flat—it overlooks the street—and I’ve broken more nails
than you can count trying to jimmy it open.

The sergeant clears his throat gruffly and repeats the question about identifying
marks. ‘Not that we hope it
will come to that, mind, but anything you can give us
is always useful.’

The room goes airless as I tell him about the small broken heart, inked onto her
right shoulderblade. ‘No colours,’ I whisper. ‘Just black. A heart with, like, a
white lightning bolt through it.’

Loved him, she did. Was cut through, just like that heart, when he died. None of
that’s
on the public record. They were both heroic that night. I shouldn’t have survived.
But I can’t make the extra words come out, to explain: the depth of her love, the
depth of his.

Docherty holds out his notepad, asking me to sketch the tattoo. I was there when
she had it done, my eyes wide, near fainting when the beads of blood welled up on
her white, white skin. I’m no good with blood.

‘Not that I’m likely to forget,’ was the only thing Mum said as the needle had bit
in.

‘That’s marvellous,’ Docherty mutters, studying what I’ve drawn, adding, ‘She was
a part-time, ah,
fortune-teller
, you say?’

He sounds disturbed, as if I’ve just declared my mother a nudist and notorious con
woman, rolled into one.

‘She was—is,
is
!—an
astrologer
,’ I cry, teary-angry, as he makes a
Whoa there, lassie
hand gesture at me. ‘An
astrologer
. Not a “psychic”, or some cheap tarot-reading
faker you call on a 1900 number. There’s a
difference
.’
I’m almost spitting, though I can tell from his face he can’t see it, the difference.

‘And she accepted monetary payment for these, these… services?’ he ventures delicately.
‘Routinely doled out bad news, did she? People not liking what they were hearing?
Enemies?’

‘She worked as a bank teller for money,’ I say, voice rising, ‘because we needed
to eat. Everything else she did from the heart. Ask everyone, they’ll tell you. PEOPLE
LOVED HER.’

I fling one arm out at all the stupid, ugly trinkets positioned lovingly around the
sitting room. ‘This! This! This!’ I shout, jabbing at two leaping crystal dolphins
forming a heart shape with their bodies; the porcelain ballet dancer with rose-filled
flower basket; the sad-eyed, clay bloodhound with the ginormous head, ‘is how she
got
paid
.’

Docherty glances down dubiously at a family of pink elephants marooned in the centre
of the cheap white cube we use as a coffee table, and I know I’m making no sense
at this point, everything’s disjointed, just like the call I made that brought him
to me. And I cry then, loud and gushing; I can’t help it, it’s like I’ve finally
been given permission.

At the raw, animal sound, Constable Brand shoots back out of whatever dismal corner
she’s been nosing around in and looks sharply into her partner’s face, before drawing
him into our cramped galley kitchen.

I hear everything, of course, there’s nowhere to hide in here. I used to sit in my
bedroom with the door shut, willing all the strangers with their desperate eyes to
go the hell away
. But I still heard it all: infidelities and breakdowns; miscarriages
and hasty marriages; accidents, crossroads. Death. All delivered in Mum’s calm, authoritative
voice, peppered by frantic outbursts across the table.

It’s always the women who overreact and imagine the worst. A man gets bad news? He’s
already trying to slide out from under it. But, by and large, a woman only hears
what she wants to hear, and then she’s never the same again. She twists it, it twists
her. The end.

‘Please let that not be
me
,’ I wail through hot, salty tears, my fingers interlaced
over my mouth.

They are kind, and let me cry. And through the sound of it—which goes on and on and
seems somehow quite separate from my body—I hear Docherty rumble:
I didn’t say anything
I don’t say to all the others
.
But she’s only a kid. She’s got every right to be
taking it hard.

Brand replies, low, but harsh:
She’s an
‘adult’.
And it might not be a coincidence,
the timing. I mean, look at this place! Anyone would do a runner, honestly. There’s
something in this. They should see this while it’s fresh.

While Docherty excuses himself from the room to make calls, Brand takes my hand firmly
and will not let me pull away. Writing with her free hand in the notepad
she’s balanced
on one knee, the constable shoots question after question at me.

Jewellery?

Don’t know. Never wore much. Didn’t have much.

Aliases?

What? God, no idea.

Car?

No, no, not for years.

Medical conditions?

She had, like, a cold last year, but that’s it. She was good, fit. Happy.

(I howl out that last word,
Happy
, so that it’s got extra vowels in it, extra syllables.)

D.O.B.? P.O.B.?

Don’t know, don’t know, she would never tell me, though we celebrated in November,
different days, always.

Why? Why on earth would you do that?

Didn’t want me to do her chart and find out, I suppose.

The constable’s eyes fly to mine. ‘Find out what?’

I swipe at my nose with the back of my hand. ‘What was coming for her. Yesterday.’

Brand stares at me, astonished. ‘Sorry?’

I say, in a mad rush, ‘I didn’t know it was supposed to be yesterday, she never said
there was anything different about yesterday, but I suppose yesterday must have been
the day
. The day
the eventuality
was supposed to happen.
It was
the goddamned day
and she never said anything. She just woke up and went out
and met it—in a suit and foofy blouse. Head on.
God
.’

‘What are you talking about?’ Constable Brand insists, shaking me by the arm. ‘What
was
coming for her
? What
day
?’

I’m deep into an explanation of the Joanne Nielsen Crowe school of predictive astrology
when Docherty comes back through the front door with a hard-faced, kind-eyed man
in a dark suit and stripy tie. ‘Detective Senior Sergeant Stan Wurbik,’ he says.
‘Missing Persons Intelligence.’

3

Constable Brand, who hasn’t let go of my hand this whole time, says urgently, ‘Tell
Detective Wurbik—about the work your mother did.’

So I start in again, still sniffing into my cuff, about the astrological clock and
progressions and transits, the significance of solar and lunar returns, eclipses,
nodes and the significance of the Pleiades when directed towards the ascendant—and
he’s lost, she’s lost. Docherty’s got his mouth hanging slightly open.

After I falter to a stop, the detective says into the silence, ‘Could you maybe sketch
out what you’re talking about? It will give us a…better idea of what your mum does.’

I’m about to go in search of a pen and notepad when
my mobile phone goes off in the
kitchen. The sound of it makes me go cold, reminding me that time has not, in fact,
come to a standstill. I am due at school to do a witness cross-examination role-play
with my creepy Legal Studies teacher and two other sacrificial victims. On top of
this? I’m already the late-entry new kid with a tragic backstory no one can make
me go into. I stick out enough without sticking out more.

I have to shake Constable Brand’s hand off in order to get up from the couch. Conscious
of three sets of eyes on me, I turn my back on them and pick up.

‘
Frankencrowe?
’ Vicki hisses down the line. ‘Mrs Clarke’s ropable. You’ve been late
five days in a row. She’s gunna get the office to call your mum again. She’s talking
detention
s
, plural.’

‘Can’t talk, Vick,’ I say softly, hunching over to make my broad, tartan-clad back
less visible. ‘But you tell Clarkey and anyone else who asks that Mum’s gone missing…’
I make a weird mewling noise in my throat, swallowing to hold the tears down. ‘And
I’m not sure when I’ll be back.’

‘That’s rich, even coming from you!’ Vicki says
incredulously. ‘They’ll never buy that.’

‘Will if they log on to the Victoria Police media website in the next…?’ I glance
towards Wurbik.

‘Twenty-four hours,’ he replies, voice loud enough to carry. ‘Probably faster. Time’s
everything with cases like this.’

I hunch over the phone again. ‘You get that?’ I say into the sound of Vicki’s rapid,
open-mouthed breathing. ‘That’s the
Police
. Got a room full of them right here. With
guns. Remind Clarkey that I’m
fast
, the fastest she’ll ever have the privilege to
work with—she’ll still be talking about me when she’s in a nursing home—and that
I’ll catch up.’

I hang up before Vicki’s breathing can turn into questions, because with Vicki Mouglalis
it always turns into questions. Sinking back down into the couch with a black felt
tip and a bit of paper, I pull the coffee table closer, upsetting the elephants walking
across it, and begin drawing the very first thing I think I learnt to draw:

Then around that I add two more wheels, making a mess of all the lines, leaving them
both blank.

I stare down at the thing my mother blithely called her
canvas
. She could draw this
blindfolded, every ring almost perfect, without even using a single one of her compasses.
On this diagram she could hang an entire life.

Brand, Docherty and Wurbik cluster around the series of shaky, concentric circles
I’ve sketched out. The detective pushes the felled elephants to one side as he crouches
beside me, tapping the centre of my drawing. ‘This some kind of clock?’ he asks.

‘Kind of,’ I say, voice back under control. ‘The centre wheel—the one with the numbers
around it—represents the natal chart, or
radix
. That’s where a person’s story begins.
Twelve houses, two-hour intervals, like a clock face with midnight at the cusp of
the fourth house, noon at the cusp of the tenth. It’s calculated based on the birth
information the client gives you: you fill the interior with a map of the heavens
as it was at the exact time, date, place of birth. It’s all about themes and influences,
Mum says, not specifics. They have to be teased out, or the chart will tell you very
little about how a person’s life will really unfold. Just writing up the radix tells
you nothing really concrete: probably unlucky, overly chatty, a bit of a stress head,
might have a career in finance. Why bother, right?’

I quickly trace the next wheel out from the centre. ‘It’s in the progressed chart
that the themes and influences come into their own,’ I continue. ‘Will you have the
male children your mother-in-law desires? Does your porkable secretary think you’re
hot stuff, or a bit of a bastard? Will your husband leave you for a man? Will you
lose your teeth, your lustrous hair, your fortune, win one? Mum’s been asked all
those things.’

Docherty shakes his head, flicking a finger at my sketch. ‘You can tell that from
this
?’

I look up into his faded blue eyes and realise he’s only seeing the blanks on the
page, not the possibilities, because
no one’s ever trained him to see them. The detective
crouched beside me taps my diagram again. ‘And the very outer ring? The thin one
without lines? What’s that for?’

‘Fine-tuning,’ I reply. ‘It’s like a kind of lens, or magnifying glass. It brings
what’s in the central wheels into sharper focus. It can help to foretell actual events.
To the extent you could have a specific question answered, to the date. They’re called
horary readings
.’

Beside me, Constable Brand inhales. Wurbik leaves the room and I hear the sound of
the filing cabinet in Mum’s bedroom opening.

‘Some people don’t move without them,’ I add quietly. ‘They’re the neediest. If they
could come live here with Mum and me, they would. Just to have her on tap.’

‘That so?’ says Docherty, leaning in, and I’m instantly defensive.

‘Mum told me that as far as she knew, she’d never been wrong. Maybe they wouldn’t
tell her themselves, but word got back if she was right and it seemed like she always
was
. People talk. Good fortune, misfortune, we all love hearing about it. People
always tried to follow her. No matter how many times we moved, or where we went,
clients from years back would look for her. She was spooky-accurate. Is,
is
.’ I could
punch myself in the mouth.

Docherty mutters, ‘I still don’t see it.’

‘You wouldn’t,’ Detective Wurbik replies, coming
back into the room, ‘because that
thing is missing quite a bit of…detail.’

He throws a stapled document onto the coffee table and I register with a jolt that
he’s got rubber gloves on, the disposable kind. The top sheet is dated roughly a
month before today and headed:
Carson Watters, age 59. Horary reading: move interstate?
There are the same three wheels on it, and a dense forest of numbers and astrological
symbols, or glyphs, laid over the top, that to the uninitiated might look like code.

‘I remember him,’ I murmur, scanning the top page before flicking through the typed-up
notes Mum stapled behind, without really seeing any of the words. ‘Big guy, booming
laugh, smelled like cigarettes. Said to call him
Cars
: “Cars by name, Cars by trade.”
He wanted to sell his business, move to Cairns. Asked Mum whether she thought the
stars were beneficial for the day he had in mind.’

‘And were they?’ Docherty interjects, sceptical.

‘Yeah,’ I say, running my eyes again over the glyphs Mum annotated freehand onto
the top page. ‘Surprisingly good. He was lucky. A couple of afflictions, nothing
major. She said: “Do it.” And I think he took her advice.’

‘Come with me,’ Wurbik says abruptly to Docherty.

I hear them opening the filing cabinet again, their voices pitched so low I can’t
catch the words. When they
return, Wurbik picks up right where Docherty left off.
‘Bank account details? Place of work?’

I stand up and head towards the overflowing filing tray on the kitchen bench, handing
him an old bank statement of Mum’s and a pay slip with the bank branch she works
at, printed across the top. ‘Her work called me, yesterday, asking where she was.
But we’re doing a musical, at school, and I was painting the backdrop. Didn’t check
my messages all day, not until after five. I mean, who calls someone asking whether
they’ve seen their
mum
? I wasn’t expecting it. I’m still angry at myself.’

I should have said something, back when she was at my bedroom door. Regret is sharp
in me. I pivot, suddenly reminded of the accident-message Mum left. ‘Listen to this.’

Turning on the speakerphone, I let them all listen to the date and time stamp, the
static-filled call from Mum’s phone to mine.

Detective Wurbik hands me his card. ‘Can you forward that message? To the number
here?’

While he watches, I do it, then Wurbik goes back into Mum’s room and comes out with
an armful of charts, asking if he can take them. I shrug. ‘I guess,’ I say, feeling
like I’ve said the wrong thing because they’re not really mine to give.

‘They all look…finished,’ the detective says, holding
them out to me in a fan, like
an oversized deck of cards he’s just pulled out of his sleeve,
ta da
. ‘Am I right?’

I flip through them and have to agree. ‘Mum’s works-in-progress aren’t typed up like
this. When she was done with someone, she used my laptop for word processing, but
she always kept a handwritten journal for “open” cases.’

Wurbik’s eyes sharpen on me instantly. ‘There’s no journal in her room. You see one?’
he asks the others, and they shake their heads. ‘Where are the old ones? If you still
have any.’

‘In the hallway closet by the front door, stacked up,’ I reply. ‘I’ll show you. Half
our problem is Mum never throwing stuff away. Especially not info that might come
in handy down the track; if the client came back. And lots did.’

There are dozens of journals in the narrow broom closet in the hall, all different
shapes and sizes, going back years. After scanning the pile, Wurbik follows me back
into the living area and I finally remember to tell them about Mum’s hand.

‘Father’s name?’ Docherty interjects gruffly, still shaking his head at the fact
I could leave something so important out of Mum’s description.
Only just about half
her hand missing, wouldn’t you say?

‘Greyson,’ I say quietly. ‘Kooky, right? Greyson Zhou. But he wanted me to have Mum’s
name, I don’t know
why, so that’s what she had put on my birth certificate.
Avicenna
Zhou
would have sounded all right.
Crowe
and
Zhou
rhyme, which is weird, even though
they’re spelled completely differently.’

It’s turned into a stifling hot autumn day. Forensics people start trickling in,
with their gloves and brushes and flash-lit devices, asking me things I can’t remember
answering a second after the words have left my mouth.

Before all of them finally leave, spiriting away my laptop and armloads of journals
and paper, Detective Wurbik asks for a photo and her toothbrush. And that’s when
it hits me like a solid punch. It’s official: she’s really missing.

Numbly, I retrieve the toothbrush, also handing them the photo of Mum and me from
the fridge. It’s the most recent thing I have of her. Someone at school took it,
just after they told me I’d made it through the bastard-hard Collegiate High entrance
exam with flying colours, full marks—didn’t happen too often, I should be real proud.
In it, Mum’s beautiful, the way she’s always beautiful, wings of hair like white-gold,
and we’re both grinning manically. I’ve got my arm around her neck like I’m putting
her in a headlock.

Wurbik assures me I’ll be cropped out of it, and I say inanely: ‘I don’t mind, really,
it’s up to you,’ but of course I need to be out of the picture or it will be like
it’s me that’s missing too.

He gives me all the numbers I need if I can think of anything, promising to have
the laptop back to me ASAP. And all I can say is: ‘Thanks, you’ve been really… thorough’.

No one was talking homicide—
Not yet, early days
—but I could see them entertaining
the idea because I’m observant. They took so long tearing our place apart that I
knew, as if they’d straight out said it to my face, that they held grave fears for
Mum’s safety.