Painted Love Letters (4 page)

‘She'll wear it,' Dad said, ‘just cut the tag off.'

‘Shall I do her hair? The way you had it, sir? I've a comb here and I'm sure I could find a couple of pins.'

She brought out a comb and tugged it through my hair and when she was through I looked at a ballerina in the mirror, all eyes and bones.

‘You'll have to do something about the shoes,' she said looking down at my tatty black sandals, ‘they've got some new stock over in shoes. Just the right thing, little heel and a daisy in the front.'

‘Thank you,' Dad said, ‘thank you for all the trouble you've gone to.' And they smiled at each other as though they shared a secret.

The dress made me hold my shoulders back and the little bubble of hair seemed to pull my head straight and high, so I didn't stumble-kick forward the way I usually walked, scuffing my feet along, chin to my chest.

My new sandals made a satisfying clip-clop sound crossing the street and I felt very tall. We walked into the dark cave of a restaurant called Captain Cook's Cabin. There was a large aquarium at the front and fishing nets strung from the walls. It was all dark and blue and green, like being underwater. I wasn't sure if Dad was feeling ill or whether the light in the place gave everything a greenish tinge.

He sounded okay as he ordered two half dozen oysters au natural.

‘Oysters?' I asked.

‘Yes, Chrissie, there's a time in every person's life when they have to eat oysters. Long ago I promised myself I'd introduce you to your first oyster and now is the time.'

They looked like large jellied eyeballs, or the neatly bagged contents of a small stomach. They looked like shelled snails, turned inside out. There were six of them, still in their shells. There were six stomach-churning mouthfuls sitting smugly in front of me, resting on ice, garnished with a sprig of parsley, a lemon wedge and a couple of tiny pieces of brown bread. I opened my mouth to say that there was no way on earth I could possibly swallow something that looked as though it had been retrieved from a surgical operation, when I looked down at my dress, swirling to my ankles.

‘Now don't chew them,' Dad said, ‘you slide them down your throat, okay?'

He demonstrated, delicately dislodging one from its shell, squeezing it with lemon and then letting the whole thing disappear into his mouth.

I tried not to see the oyster. I tried to let the colours of my dress fill my mind. I squeezed the lemon, tipped and swallowed: there was the taste of the ocean, a slide of glob down my throat and only five to go.

After the oysters, Dad paid the bill and we left. I was still hungry but I looked at his face and didn't ask for fish and chips. When we left, I let him hold my hand as though I was a little kid again. We walked slowly back to the car and didn't say anything much for the rest of the day.

When Mum came home that evening, I did my catwalk strut for her, modelling my new clothes.

‘You shouldn't have done that, Dave,' she said.

‘I wanted to,' Dad said in a voice I had never heard before. It was final and almost angry and I looked at him, shocked. Mum didn't say anything more except that yes, the dress was beautiful, very beautiful and I looked very grown up in it.

‘We ate oysters,' I said, ‘because everyone has to be able to and they were okay. They tasted like the ocean, not half as disgusting as they looked. I ate six whole oysters.'

‘And now you're exhausted,' Mum said to Dad and her voice was different too, flat, as though it had been ironed.

‘And shall go to bed,' Dad said, getting up slowly, ‘I'm glad we found the dress, Chrissie, and I'm delighted to have taught you about oysters. Stop it, Rhetta love, exhaustion isn't the end of the world.

I wore my new sandals and skirt to school the next day and Dee said, that although my skirt wasn't leather, it was a good length and the cut suited me. She let me read her magazine during lunch.

‘Trash,' Ms Raskill said, walking past. ‘I'm not surprised at you, Dee, secretarial expectations are all you could aim for, but Chrissie Grainger I expected more from you with your background.'

‘She's a Women's Libber,' Dee whispered when Ms Raskill had gone, ‘That's why she's a Ms and not plain Miss like everyone else. Some days she doesn't wear a bra. I've seen her, you know, poking out.'

I didn't care about Ms Raskill or her nipples. I didn't even care that I nearly failed Art and had to go to the principal's office with Mr Chapman and listen while she said words like ‘sullen' and ‘uncooperative' until eventually they asked me to leave the office and I sat outside on the detention bench while they argued about me.

I didn't care because I had a growing list of things I now knew that would be useful in the high-heeled world Dee couldn't wait to join. I knew that sometime in the future I'd be nearly as pretty as my mother. Dad had shown me my future face and even if I couldn't get it to look like that all the time, it had once and would again. He'd promised that. I knew that clothes weren't just about how they looked, but also that you had to be able to touch them, the same way you touched flowers when you walked past particularly lovely ones. And bigger than all of that, I knew that sometimes you had to do the impossible, like eat oysters, or go shopping even when you could hardly breathe, because that's what people did when they truly loved one another, and it had nothing to do with freckles or anklebones or lipstick.

I didn't fail art. Mr Chapman came out and asked me to walk him to his car. He said that my Nature Journal was every bit as important an art document as Ms Raskill's dab and flick paintings, that to call me sullen and uncooperative said more about her than it did about me and that I shouldn't mind these things, but to continue being brave and strong and if there was anything I wanted to talk to him about, I was welcome to do so.

‘I don't think you should smoke,' I blurted out loud, watching him as he ferreted around in his pocket for matches, ‘I really don't, Mr Chapman. I don't think you should smoke at all.'

He put the matches back in his pocket and tucked the unlit cigarette back in its packet and opened his mouth but I didn't wait to hear what he was going to say.

‘I've got to go,' I said desperately, ‘I've really got to go. Thank you, Mr Chapman for that stuff, and I'm really sorry.' I took off, my school bag bumping against my legs as I ran.

When I got to school the next day there was a little note on my desk.

Dear Chrissie,
it said,
When I was a boy, growing up, we didn't know it was dangerous to smoke. You are quite right, though, now we do know the dangers associated with smoking, it is wrong to continue to do so. I shall try to give up this Christmas holidays. I think Christmas is a good time to try because I am home more and my wife doesn't like me smoking in the house because I make the curtains stink. Thank you for your concern
Yours sincerely,
William Chapman.

I folded the note up neatly and put it straight in my school bag before anyone, especially Dee, could see it. As soon as I got home, I put it safely under the flowered paper in my undies drawer. I knew I would keep it for the rest of my life.

Nan and Badger

I rang Nan because no one else seemed about to do it. Dad said it wasn't up to him, it had to be Mum's decision, and Mum refused point blank.

‘The last thing I need is her fussing around.'

So every Friday night we rang Nan but we didn't tell her. We talked in false cheery voices about everything except the thing we were all thinking about.

‘So, do you like living in the city?' Nan always asked.

‘Not much,' I always replied, ‘but it's okay.'

‘I don't understand why you all moved. I thought you were happy at Nurralloo?'

‘I don't know,' I always had to say. Mum stood right next to me when we rang Nan, so close I could almost hear her heart beating. I knew she was ready to grab the phone from me if I said a single wrong thing.

‘You make me tell lies,' I said to Mum, ‘you make me say things that aren't even true.'

‘I can't cope with her on top of everything,' Mum said slowly, the way she did these days when she was angry. ‘I have enough to do without looking after my mother as well.'

‘You wouldn't have to look after her,' I said, ‘she'd help. She'd want to help. You just hate her.'

‘I don't hate my mother,' Mum said, ‘you're just too young to understand.'

‘I hate you,' I said and for a moment I almost believed myself.

Mum sighed and stroked my hair, ‘I know,' she said, ‘I know.'

I rang Nan one Saturday afternoon when Mum was working at the bistro and Dad was asleep. I sat in the hallway and picked at the scabs on my legs, while I told her the whole story in a queer, little, flat voice I hardly recognised as belonging to me.

‘Good God,' she said, ‘why on earth didn't your mother tell me?'

I shrugged, but of course she couldn't see me. I couldn't really say anymore. It was as though everything I had said had used up all my voice. ‘You poor little girl,' Nan said, ‘you poor little girl.'

It felt like the first time anyone had stopped and looked at me and I started to cry, but silently, the tears leaking through my fingers as I listened to Nan sigh half a dozen loving noises at me and tell me that she was coming up on the fastest plane she could catch, and then I sniffed loudly to let her know I was still alive and hung up.

I knew what I had done was wrong and I didn't care. Nan was all our family. Dad's parents died before I was even born, killed instantly in some horror highway smash, and my other grandfather, Nan's husband, died when Mum was a teenager. His heart gave out. It seemed to me that we were doomed to die young.

‘She can't stay here,' Mum said, ‘I can't have her here. It's impossible.'

‘She'll have to stay somewhere,' Dad said, pouring a cup of lemongrass tea. As he poured it, the air was suddenly sharp with the smell and for a heart-stopping moment I missed Nurralloo, where we'd grown our own lemongrass just beside the back door.

‘She can stay in my room,' I said, ‘I don't mind.'

Nan arrived with only one small bag. She looked different, too — less grandmotherly than she had two Christmasses ago, the last time I had seen her. She was thinner, sharper. She looked like a television older person. She held Mum closely for a long time and then pushed her away and looked at her face as though searching for something there.

‘You should have rung at the very beginning,' she said, ‘I know what you're going through. Oh Rhetta, it's so hard, I know. When Keith died I thought my whole life had ended. I know what you must be feeling.'

‘Dave's not dead, Mum.'

‘No, of course not. Oh sweetheart,' and Nan hugged Mum to her again, but Mum stood still and hard, the way I did sometimes when Mum hugged me when I was angry about something.

‘Let's take your bag,' Mum said, ‘you'll have to share with Chrissie.'

‘That'll be great, won't it Chrissie. You don't mind, do you darling?'

I didn't mind at all even though I had to sleep on a mattress on the floor. It was comfortable because I would wake up in the night and hear Nan snoring her faint, wet, snuffly snores. In the morning she'd get up with me and do the things Mum used to do, make my breakfast, make Dad a cup of tea and cut me sandwiches for lunch all while she talked, almost as though she was talking to herself, but out loud.

‘I knew,' she said, ‘I knew when Keith died — it came to me like a blow that this was all we had, this one puny life and we'd better make the most of it. But raising a child by yourself, worrying about decisions — I lost it again.'

‘What did you lose, Nan?'

She sat down at the kitchen table. Dad was watching her, drinking his tea slowly.

‘The knowledge of life,' she said, and when she smiled directly at Dad, she looked so like Mum I nearly dropped my toast.

‘I don't understand,' I said, hearing my voice whine upwards.

‘You have to be true to yourself,' Dad said, nodding.

‘Boldly,' Nan said, ‘without worrying what other people might think or how they'll judge you. Like you and Rhetta, Dave. You've always grasped your dreams.'

‘That's what you hated about me,' Dad said, ‘you wanted Rhetta to marry some up and coming accountant.'

Nan nodded, ‘Of course I did. I was wrong, though, wasn't I? You've made her very happy.'

‘Thank you,' Dad raised his mug of tea at her, ‘I have tried. I am sorry its ending like this.'

‘So am I, for both of you.'

When Dad and Nan talked like that together, I hated it. It was as though between them they were inviting death into our house. They discussed it so calmly, at the kitchen table of all places, where you sat eating toast and honey. Mum didn't like it, either.

‘You've changed,' she said one day, before she hurried off to work. ‘Look at you, sitting there on your second pot of tea and the washing-up's not even done yet.'

‘I'm learning that washing-up isn't that important,' Nan said, ‘why don't you take the day off, Rhetta? Do you have to rush off like this?'

‘Yes! Yes I do! Of course I do! Stupid question!' and Mum stalked off muttering.

Sometimes it seemed as though she was just plain angry at Nan spending time with Dad.

‘What do you talk about?' she'd ask Dad, ‘what do you both talk about?'

‘Just stuff, Rhetta, just stuff. Sometimes money stuff, sometimes the past. Sometimes we look at my art. She wants a coffin too, but she wants to paint it herself. She's going to get Bodhi to measure her up.'

‘Oh God,' Mum said, ‘it's like a different world here. At work they're all worried about — I don't know, pimples, half of them, and boyfriends and whether or not they are or want to be, pregnant, and who got engaged. And I come here and it's all coffins.'

‘You don't have to work, Rhetta, she said she's going to sell the house.'

‘I do have to work,' Mum said, ‘of course I have to work. I couldn't cope if I didn't work.'

Nan joined a yoga class and started Italian lessons. Some afternoons when I got home from school she'd be doing exercises in the lounge room or she and Dad would be sitting sort of together, sort of apart with their eyes closed and all you could hear was their breathing, Nan's steady and regular, Dad's all ragged and noisy.

‘What are you doing? Can I have some cake? I'm starving.'

‘Meditating,' Dad said, ‘that's what we're doing. Sitting quietly listening to nothing. Counting our breaths. Stilling the chattering monkeys.'

‘What monkeys? Can I have two pieces?'

‘One only, don't want to spoil your dinner.' Nan stood up, ‘The monkeys inside our heads, Chrissie, the ones that chatter on about all life's trivia. We want to be still enough so we disappear into our own hearts.'

‘Where's Mum?' my mother said, come home from the afternoon shift. ‘I thought she was supposed to be here, helping? How can she help if she's never home?'

‘She cooked dinner,' I said. ‘Look — lasagne.'

‘Where did she go, Dave?'

‘I don't know,' Dad said, ‘yoga or Italian probably. Or maybe to the movies with that old bloke she's met?'

‘What bloke? Why doesn't she talk to me? Why doesn't she tell me what's going on?'

‘You're not home, Mum,' I said, setting the table. ‘How can she tell you anything when you're not here?'

‘Thanks, Chrissie, thanks a lot. That makes me feel very good, I don't think. I have to work you know. I have to work.'

‘You don't,' Dad said softly reaching out to her, ‘you don't have to work, Rhetta. Your mother's offered us money.

‘You don't understand do you,' and Mum jumped up from the table. When she came back later she'd washed her waitressing make-up from her face and her hair hung loosely around her face.

‘I'm just not used to a mother who goes to yoga and speaks in Italian.'

It was true Nan was starting to talk in little bits of Italian. She had a cassette tape she played. She had to answer the voices on the tape. It sounded like rain. The words lilted away from me, I could hear them but I didn't know what they meant and I was always a little bit disappointed when Nan explained that she'd just asked where the nearest supermarket or railway station was.

‘Not to mention, goes out with a bloke,' Dad said, watching Mum.

‘I'll have to talk to her,' Mum said.

‘That would be a really good idea, Rhetta. That might make things a lot easier for both of you.'

‘About the bloke,' Mum said, ‘that's all, Dave, just about this bloke.'

‘Have you changed, Nan?' I asked when she got home late that night.

‘Good heavens, Chrissie, I thought you'd be sound asleep. What do you mean have I changed? I've still got my good trousers on.'

‘No, other stuff. Like inside.'

She didn't talk for a while. The room was filled with other night-time noises, her zipper being pulled down, the rustling sound of her shirt, Dad coughing down the hallway and Bongo dreaming of rabbits.

‘Yes,' she said finally, ‘yes, I think I have changed. I should have done all this years ago. It's too easy to get caught up in the stupid little things of life, to make them all that matters. It shouldn't take death to make us see that, but often it does. Do you know, Chrissie, when I first met your mum's father, we'd drive off in his car, he had an MG then, very smart, and we'd drive down to Watson's Bay or Coogee. We'd sit for hours watching the waves. Sometimes we'd kiss, but a lot of the time we'd talk, planning our life. We were going to have five children, three boys and two girls. We were going to build a big house somewhere and I was going to have a garden full of roses out the front, vegies out the back. I was going to have chooks, too I loved chooks. He was going to drive off every day and come home every evening when the children would be all rosy from their baths. We'd sit in the evening and read, or listen to the radio.'

‘But you only had Mum, you didn't have five kids.'

‘No, that's right. In the end I could only have one child. We didn't need a big house after all. Keith drove off every day, and came home as he promised and there were his girls, that's what he called your mother and me, and Rhetta would be all rosy from her bath, but we didn't sit together in the evening because there was always some work to do. And then Rhetta went to school and I did this and that. She grew into a leggy girl with a mind of her own, always shouting at me. And then Keith keeled over, just crumpled up one day.'

‘Oh Nan,'

‘Don't cry, Chrissie, that's not the point. The point is that once upon a time, I was a dreamer and somewhere along the way I forgot how to be. Your father's helped me find that girl again.'

‘Is it true that you've
met
someone?'

Nan laughed and bent right down to my mattress and slipped her arms around me, lifting me into a hug, ‘I've met a lot of people,' she said, ‘I've met my yoga teacher, I've met my Italian teacher. Do you know, I've talked to more people this past month than I do all year round in Sydney?'

‘That's not what I meant.' I could smell her perfume. It wasn't the powdery scent that clung to her during the day, but a deeper smell, with roses.

‘Yes. Yes, I have met someone.'

‘Is that why you've bought jeans? Mum said she's never seen you in jeans ever in her entire life. Dad said that was a shame, because they looked good on you.'

‘That was nice of your dad and no, I didn't buy jeans because of Badger, I bought them because I've never worn them and I wanted to, just to see if I liked wearing them.'

‘Is Badger the bloke? And do you like wearing them?' I was feeling sleepy now. I'd felt sleepy the moment Nan had put her arms around me, as though her perfume was a spell, a sleeping spell winding into my brain.

‘Yes, Badger's the bloke, and yes, I like jeans. Good night, Chrissie, good night.'