Trust (3 page)

‘So, Sebastiano, you and Clarence won again today,’ Gerry said, once the first rush of appetite had been satisfied and everyone was slowing down. ‘Not that I expected any different, but thanks for the text. Quarterfinal next week, eh? Then, roll on the junior championship!’

‘Have to make it to through to the finals first,’ said Seb rather sullenly.

‘Of course you’ll make it to the finals,’ Gerry said. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

‘Depends if Claz’s
family
say he has to go to Hong Kong before then. ’Cause of his uncle and his massive stroke.’

‘No way is young Clarence going back to Hong Kong till after you guys have won that trophy, uncle or no uncle.’

‘And then that’s
it
,’ Seb continued gloomily. ‘Because he has to go and help run their business. Forget about next year.’

‘Then next year, we’ll just have to find you a new doubles partner,’ said Gerry with considerable energy. ‘If his family
do
insist on him leaving. Personally – I probably shouldn’t say this, but I think Clarence would do a lot better by staying here. You two are right on the verge of making it. You could be a world-class doubles team. You could be the next Woodies.’

‘Could’ve been,’ Seb said, poking at his food.

‘Lucky Clarence, I say,’ said Stella-Jean. ‘I’d
much
rather be managing a clothing business in Hong Kong than bashing a stupid ball around.’

Seb glared at her. ‘Who cares what you say? You’re just
weird
.’

‘Kids, please, not at the dinner table,’ said Susanna. ‘Now Seb, I know you’re disappointed, but please remember that this is a very stressful time for Clarence’s family. They have to make their decision, and it’s not for us to criticise.’

‘Fuck ’em!’ Seb muttered.

‘Sebastian!’ Susanna was shocked. ‘Don’t
ever
disrespect someone else’s family like that.’ There was a fraught silence around the table. Susanna took a deep breath. ‘Now,
I
think what needs to happen next year is that you concentrate on your study. You’ve got Year Twelve coming up, the most important year of your school life. We don’t want
anything
getting in the way of that.’

‘Well,’ Gerry said, after a diplomatic pause, ‘in further tennis news, you may be interested to know I’m going to be playing A-grade again. Starting next week.’

‘Really?’ said Susanna. ‘How did you —’

‘Bob Cummings called me earlier.’ Bob was their club president. ‘He’s got it all sorted. I’m filling a vacancy on the A-grade team, and he’s got another couple for the B. You’re off the hook, Suze.’

Susanna stared at him.
He knew there was a vacancy. That’s why he wasn’t cross when I told him I didn’t want to play any more.
The realisation made her feel stupid, somehow.

Gerry gave an abbreviated air-pump. ‘A-grade singles –
yes
.’

‘Go, Pops,’ said Seb. ‘But do you reckon you’re up to it? I mean, at your age …’

‘Watch yourself, you cheeky pup,’ said Gerry, grinning as he took a mock swipe at his son across the table.

As the two launched into an involved discussion about assessment and rankings, Susanna turned to her daughter, still ploughing her way through the meal.

‘How’s your day been, Stella-Jean?’ she asked. ‘Did you and Tessa do well on the stall?’

Stella-Jean swallowed and nodded. ‘Two hundred and eighty-three dollars, after the rent. I sold
heaps
of my new singlets, and Tessa sold lots of her felt dolls, too, but there’s way more profit in the singlets. For an outlay of …’

She rattled off numbers and percentages; her mother nodded, not even trying to follow. A decade-old memory waylaid her. Shopping with the kids in the local supermarket – five-year-old Stella-Jean dressed in her primary school uniform, brand-new and much too big for her – Susanna had been dithering over some product when Stella-Jean took a break from scrapping with her brother to pipe up, ‘Get the big box, Mummy, it works out nearly two dollars cheaper.’ And she was right. It was almost uncanny. Gerry had started calling her the Pocket Calculator. On their holidays in Bali they’d all come to rely on Stella-Jean to calculate the exchange rate from rupiah to dollars, and get a fair price. Not the
cheapes
t price; she always stopped bargaining at a certain point and the Balinese sellers always agreed: fair.

Stella-Jean had stopped her profit-and-loss summary now and was looking at her mother expectantly.

‘That’s terrific, sweetie,’ Susanna said, scrambling to catch up. ‘You’re, ah, doing very well, then.’

‘You weren’t
listening
to me, were you? I said, how soon after Christmas are we going to Bali? You have booked, Mum, haven’t you?’

This was not a moment Susanna had been looking forward to. ‘I, ah … I don’t know that we’ll be going to Bali at all this summer, I’m afraid. I’ve got to focus on work for this exhibition next year. And the article I have to write.’ What Susanna didn’t say was that, apart from these demands, she was also hatching a secret plan for a trip to Europe with her mother, after the dreaded exhbition was over. Europe was expensive, but if she put aside what she’d have spent on the family going to Bali, she’d be able to save enough. And Jean, who couldn’t cope with tropical humidity, had always longed to visit Italy. ‘I’m sorry, sweetheart.’

‘Mu-
um
!’ wailed Stella-Jean. ‘We
have
to go to Bali. I have to talk to Putu, about
business
.’ Seb sniggered loudly and she turned on him, suddenly furious. ‘What are
you
laughing at?’

‘
Biz-ness,
’ he mocked, putting air quotes around the word. ‘Look at you, you’re wearing a flipping tea-cosy on your head! What business is it again? Nutbar Enterprises?’

‘Shu
t up
,’ she shrieked.

‘Okay you two, that is enough!’ shouted Gerry. He thrust his almost-empty dinner plate away; it hit the cast-iron pot with a
clang
as loud as the bell at the start of a boxing round. Everybody jumped, and Tigger leapt from a chair where he’d been snoozing unnoticed and streaked for the backyard, the cat flap slapping behind him. In the sudden startled silence, the scrape of the screen door at the front of the house sounded very loud.

A woman’s voice called, ‘Hello-o-oh? Anybody ho-ome?’

‘Oh, great,’ said Gerry, rolling his eyes. ‘It’s the God Squad.’

Susanna hissed, ‘Can we all just pretend to be civilised, please?’, shooting a fierce look around the table as she jumped to her feet. ‘Come in, Angie, come in! Have you eaten?’

‘I’ll fire up the Gaggia.’ Gerry headed over to his pride and joy, the gleaming coffee machine on the bench. Almost the only thing he and his sister-in-law had in common was their love of good coffee.

Susanna’s younger sister, her figure set off by a vintage dress with a cinched waist and darted bodice, chattered nonstop all the way from the front door, while eight-year old Finn bobbed in her wake whining, ‘I’m
ti
red! Where’s
Stell
-a?’ He made a beeline for his cousin, pushing his chair up next to hers. Susanna was used to seeing big dark circles under Finn’s eyes, but tonight he looked almost too exhausted to eat. Stella-Jean, however, had already spooned a sizeable portion of curry and rice onto his plate, and Finn started wolfing it down. Where did that skinny little body fit it all?

‘Nice dress, Auntie Ange,’ said Stella-Jean. ‘Gotta love a sweetheart neckline.’ Her aunt made a little playful curtsey, hands tipped toward her sculptural collarbones.

‘So, how’s god today?’ said Gerry. ‘Omnipotent as always?’

‘And full of eternal love, even for you, Gerry,’ Angie answered gaily, lifting her wavy dark-blonde hair up and back with both hands. ‘Ready to receive you, any time.’

‘Good for him. Tell him not to hold his breath, though, eh?’

Susanna asked deftly whether there’d been something special this evening at Faith Rise.

‘Oh,
yes
, we had the most
wonderful
visitor this evening,’ Angie said, raising her voice over the throaty roar of the coffee machine. ‘Pastor Tim invited a marvellous musician to visit us. Gabriel. He writes the most
beautiful
songs – and his voice! And the way he gets
everybody
to sing! Finnie, wasn’t the music man fabulous?’

Angie’s glowing smile, her dancing eyes, made Susanna smile too. From the day her peaches-and-cream baby sister had been brought home from hospital, Susanna had adored her – to the surprise of many, who’d expected the older sister, stocky and plain, to be jealous. Instead she had always been Angie’s staunchest defender. Looking at her now, Susanna thought she was as radiant as a film star.
No one would ever guess what she’s been through
.

‘Everybody at Faith Rise just loves him! Helen told me – you know, Pastor Tim’s wife – she told me he might stay here and become our musical director. Pray God, he will.’

‘Musical director,’ Gerry mused, returning to the table with a frothy cappuccino for his sister-in-law and an espresso for himself. ‘I see. So, your outfit’s going to be Melbourne’s answer to Hillsong, eh? The happy-clappy mega-evangelists.’

Don’t bait her,
Susanna begged him silently.
Please.

‘No, Gerry, not at all,’ said Angie, smiling as she spooned in sugar. ‘For one thing, we are
not
Assemblies of God. I don’t expect you to understand this, but Faith Rise is a very different church to Hillsong.’

‘Really? So why the name change? What was wrong with St John the Boring?’

‘Nothing was wrong with St John of the Cross, but Pastor Tim wants people to know we’re not the same old church: we’re young, we’re informal, we’re
engaged
with today’s community. Our faith rises up to meet the challenges of the modern world.’ Angie lifted both cupped hands, face glowing.

Gerry leaned toward her. ‘Branding, Ange,’ he said in an instructive tone. ‘Tell me, why is a McDonald’s quarter pounder better than a traditional Aussie hamburger, with real meat and a slice of beetroot and a pineapple ring if you want it? Well, guess what – it isn’t.
But it’s a Macca’s!
Golden arches; Faith Rise.’

Angie looked at him with pity. ‘Gerry, this is what I know: that God loves me, and my saviour died for me that I might have eternal life. Nothing to do with hamburgers.’

‘Wow, that’s very cool, Ange,’ interjected Seb politely. ‘Mum, I’ll get the ice-cream out, yeah?’

‘You adored Gabriel too, didn’t you?’ Angie said to Finn. She started singing, rollicking from side to side in her chair. ‘
Put your
hand
, in his
hand
, I’m with Jesus, he’s mah man …
All the kids were singing along. Weren’t you, sweetie?’

‘I was not singing,’ Finn said, looking stern. ‘I don’t like people who makes you sing.’

Angie laughed and leaned across the table to caress her son’s face. ‘Of course you liked him,’ she said. ‘And no one ever
makes
us sing, sweetie, we just
do
it, because we love singing. Make a joyful noise unto the Lord!’

Finn pulled his mother’s hand away from his cheek; he was focused on the ice-cream Seb was scooping into bowls. ‘Se-eb? What’s that one? Not the chocolate – the other one?’

‘Hokey-pokey,’ Stella-Jean told him. ‘It’s good, you’ll like it. Give Finn some of the hokey-pokey too, Seb, don’t guts it all yourself.’

Angie bowed her head for a moment, and then cast a radiant smile around the table. ‘How blessed we are,’ she said, ‘to share this time together.’

‘Blessed,’ repeated Gerry, with impeccable irony.

Susanna steered the conversation away into neutral territory, and for some minutes, at least, calm prevailed. Finn, whose ice-cream had disappeared so fast he might have inhaled it, suddenly deflated, slumping against Stella-Jean’s shoulder. ‘I’m
ti
red.’ His thumb slid into his mouth.

‘Why don’t you —’ Angie began, and Susanna knew what she was about to suggest: that Finn go to sleep on the couch. Then the two sisters would have a long talk as they cleaned up the kitchen together, while Gerry either watched TV or worked on his laptop, and the kids skulked off to their rooms to do whatever teenagers did therein.
The whole weekend gone,
thought Susanna a little desperately,
and I haven’t done a single sketch or had one worthwhile idea.

‘School and work tomorrow,’ said Gerry firmly, standing up. ‘How about I carry the little fella out to the car for you, Ange? And, kids, here’s the good news: you get to clean up the kitchen tonight.’

Seb and Stella-Jean made glum faces, resigned to their fate. Angie was looking crestfallen, and Susanna remembered that her sister’s most recent tenants had moved out. Her poor sister, who did not like solitude or silence, would be going home to exactly those things.
But Gerry’s right.

‘Good night, Angie,’ she said, bending to hug her sister, who turned sideways in her chair toward her. ‘I’ll call you during the week, okay?’

Angie kissed her cheek and nodded dolefully. Gerry hoisted Finn’s angular body lightly to his shoulder. The child looked down at Stella-Jean, his small face blank with exhaustion.

‘Will you be at school tomorrow, Stella?’ he asked scratchily. ‘Will you come and get me tomorrow?’

‘Aren’t I always there on Monday, Finnster?’ she said, patting his bare calf. ‘Mondays and Thursdays – aren’t I always there?’

The little boy nodded solemnly as Gerry toted him toward the front door, Angie trailing behind. Finn raised one grubby hand in a farewell salute, and Stella-Jean raised her own in return.

THREE

She’s just like Mum
, Angie thought, as the principal of Finn’s school went on and on, lecturing her.
Always criticising, always trying to make you feel small.
And Finn’s teacher, who’d seemed so nice at the beginning of the year, just kept nodding nonstop at everything the dry old stick of a principal said. As if Finn being late to school sometimes was some sort of crime!