Finding Grace (9 page)

I walked through the wardrobe. Grace's study is quite small. There are bookshelves on either side, going up to the ceiling. There are dictionaries, big thick tomes in different languages and law texts.

Anyway, I'd pulled out a couple of books, and then I noticed that there was something in the bookshelf, stuffed
behind the books. It was an old shoe box. We'd read a few books from that shelf. How could I not have noticed it before?

I peeked back through the wardrobe to Grace's bedroom. She was lying in bed doing the long blink thing. I turned on the desk lamp and sat down with the box on the desk in front of me.

The box must have once been white, but now it was gray. The lid was crinkly and loose and the sides were bowed, as if it had been squashed.

I looked furtively through the wardrobe door again. Grace's eyes were closed and her mouth had fallen open.

This was a spooky box for sure. “Spooky box,” that's a Kateism.

I went to see my friend Kate in her flat one day. She doesn't have a couch. You're supposed to sit around on big velvet cushions. Kate looks like a little elf or a fairy, sitting on a big velvet cushion with her skinny legs folded up underneath her. I just look uncomfortable and get pins and needles.

She was depressed about splitting up with Maxwell (again). Kate and Maxwell have been together since forever, but they break up for about twenty-four hours every couple of months. She laughs about it when it's not happening. But this particular time she was in the depths of despair. This time was
forever
.

Yeah, sure.

She said she'd been going through the Maxwell parts of her spooky box.

“What's a spooky box?”

“You know, the box from which you conjure your ghosts.”

“I haven't got a spooky box.”

“Yes you have, everyone's got a spooky box. Some people have a spooky drawer, some people have a spooky cupboard, or a spooky room. My grandma has a spooky house.”

I looked into Kate's spooky box. “A train ticket,” I say. “There's nothing spooky about that.”

“Not for you, maybe. When I bought that ticket, Maxwell and I had been fighting all day.”

Kate and Maxwell always fight all day—not that you can tell. Maxwell always stands around looking bored and surly, so it's difficult to tell if he's being grumpy or just cool.

I have always thought that Maxwell behaves like someone waiting impatiently to go somewhere else. I've had a drink with them a few times after work. Kate goes to a particular pub that is decorated with old-fashioned colonial-looking things like horse harnesses and crates and rusty farming equipment, liberally draped across every flat surface.

In
complete
contrast with the “homestead” theme, this particular pub plays ska to the exclusion of almost all other musical styles (except, of course, for reggae, which grinds alarmingly against rustic charm).

So, we went to this pub, and everyone's supercool, sort of wriggling to the music because they're too cool to dance with any vigor. Maxwell wouldn't sit down. He would stand a few meters away with his back to us, one hand in his pocket, waiting, even if it was for hours.

I found it really irritating because whenever Kate wanted to talk to him he couldn't hear her, and she'd have to say everything two or three times.

In every conversation I have ever had with him I have had the overwhelming impression that he's trying to wind
up the conversation so he can leave.
How are you, Maxwell? Fine, fine (quick look at his watch)
. No wonder they fight all the time. He would drive me insane.

Anyway, Kate is sitting on her velvet cushion with the contents of her spooky box in little piles on the floor in front of her. She clutches the train ticket to her bosom. “We got on that train so exhausted from yelling at each other …”

Maxwell yells?

“… that we fell asleep. When we woke up, we had slept through our stop and two hours of stops after that. We ended up in this tiny little town. It was freezing cold and windy and it was six hours before the next train would come through to take us back.”

Kate sighs. Her lower lip is quivering.

She's such a drama queen.

“We went to this little pub. We drank black beer. We played pool with the locals and we listened to this wizened old man. He had a face like a walnut. He must have been about a hundred. He read poetry and played the clarinet. He was one of the best performers I have ever heard in my whole life. That was one of the funnest afternoons I have ever had, even if we did get fined for fare evasion.”

Then Kate started to cry. So I struggled out of my velvet cushion and left.

Grace
was lying on her side, snoring softly now, so I wiped the dust from the top of the spooky box, took off the lid and laid it upside down on the desk.

The box was stuffed full of pieces of paper, some yellowing and wrinkly on the edges, photos in plastic sleeves, birthday cards, letters, just the sorts of things I had expected.

I felt a little bit guilty, but I picked up the first piece of paper, propped up my feet on the computer tower and read.

The telephone rang. I figured I'd let the answering machine get it. It's me! No, actually it's Mum. We have the
same voice. I need to answer that. She'll worry if I'm not here.

I could hear my own voice, but not, coming down the hall, “Are you there, Rachel darling?”

I put the lid back on the box and pushed it back in its place behind the books and shuffle down the hallway to pick up the phone. I think about telling her about the spooky box but decide not to.

I talk to Brody for a little while. That is, I talk. He grunts and then eventually he says, “You know, Rach, there's no pause on this game I'm playing… ”

I say, “This is relevant to me because …”

I love saying that. I use it at every available opportunity.

He says, “Well, it's a hired game and I only have it overnight….”

I get the hint and hang up.

Brody used to be a nerd too. I remember one morning there was a loud bang from his room. Mum and I rushed in and found him lying on the floor unconscious.

When he came around he told us that he was lying in bed half asleep when the wall started to shimmer. He said he lay there for a while looking at it. Eventually, he decided it must be a vortex into another dimension.

Of course! That sort of thing happens
all
the time.

So, naturally, he tried to jump through it. It turned out not to be a vortex into another dimension at all, but merely the sun shining through the trees and in through the window and creating a shimmering effect on the wall.

I thought Mum might ban science fiction for a little while, but she didn't. Mum said, “The boy is not silly enough
to throw himself headfirst at his bedroom wall twice, surely?” She was right.

Brody discovered coolness in his early teens. He found coolness and lost the power to string a series of words into a sentence. That's what being cool is, apparently, saying as little as possible. It gives one an air of mystique.

After I hang up the phone I start doing the washing-up and it occurs to me that I don't know anything about this woman who sleeps in the room next to mine.

Until now it has been as if she were blank, with no personality, except those clues given by her beautiful house.

Until this moment I haven't really thought about it as Grace's house. I know that it belongs to her, but I haven't really thought about the Grace who owns this house and the Grace I'm with every day as the same person. It has not occurred to me until this moment to wonder what she was like.

I put the dishes away and walk around the house looking for clues that would tell me more about her personality.

Who is this woman?

I look for clues that I might have missed. I know she had expensive taste. She has beautiful things. She used to wear beautiful clothes. Her wardrobe is full of dark suits and silk blouses, but they are all new-looking, like clothes on a rack in a shop and not at all like the clothes I have been dressing her in.

When I arrived she was dressed in a tracksuit and I have been dressing her in tracksuits ever since. There is a drawer in her wardrobe full of the things. But they are not at all like the suits. Firstly, they are cheap brands. Now I'm thinking that they must have been purchased postinjury for convenience. I don't think Grace picked them out for herself.

I open the drawers in the wardrobe, looking for something old and comfortable. Didn't she have a favorite jumper or cardigan? Everybody has a favorite cardigan that they wear around the house, don't they? It might be ancient and stained and threadbare, but it's comfy. There's a clue to her personality—Grace must have thrown things out when they became old and worn. I wonder if she did that with people?

The books in the house, except in Grace's study, are leather-bound classics or glossy photography or art books. Even all the cookbooks are hardcover. None of them look read or worn in any way. Didn't she have a favorite book? A favorite recipe?

Who is Grace?

I look at the pictures in the house. There is not one picture of Grace. There are pictures on every wall in the entire house. The hallway is lined with pictures, all in a nice neat row. There are lots of stylish prints, but no personal photographs displayed. If there were photographs then I could see the expressions on her face.

The whole place looks kind of contrived, like a home furnishings catalog. It could almost be a very expensive time-share house.

How irritatingly enigmatic.

I know why I haven't thought about Grace before. There is nothing personal about this house. While everything is beautiful and meticulously displayed, there is no indication of the life of the person who lives here.

I wonder if this had been done on purpose? Everything matches. Everything is ornamental. Everything from the tassels that hold the curtains back to the brass-backed light
switches. The whole house is like a stage set. It is as if Grace didn't want anyone to know anything about her but the veneer—the image that she had created for public viewing. Why is that?

I'm intrigued.

Now this—this box bursting at the seams with Grace's personality.

Before I go to bed, I sit next to Grace and watch her sleep. She lookes so peaceful and harmless and blank.

Snow White.

I wonder if she dreams?

I look closer. There are small creases around her mouth and between her eyebrows that I hadn't noticed before. So, she laughed and she frowned. I wonder if she will ever laugh and frown again?

Tomorrow morning I am going to ask the lime nightie woman next door if her house has ever been egged.