Saving Francesca (12 page)

“This is wrong,” I tell my dad. “What’s happened to Mum isn’t right, but Luca and I want to come home.”

“She misses you,” he says.

“We miss you, Papa. We miss us.”

He nods calmly. “Then let’s get Luca.”

Mia cries when she sees us. Although she’s out of bed, she’s still in her nightgown, looking a thousand years old. Later, my dad, Luca, and I sit around the table. It’s back to the horrible way it was before I went to Nonna’s. None of us knowing what to say.

I get the calendar and put it down in front of my dad.

“Wednesday, choir practice,” Luca says, clutching on to Pinocchio, who is beside himself with excitement. “Mum picks me up at five o’clock.”

“I’ll stay after school,” I tell them. “On Tuesdays, you have to drop Nonna Anna off at the Italian women’s thing.”

My dad begins writing. “Next.”

“Nonno Salvo has an appointment at the podiatrist every Thursday. Mummy usually takes him.”

“And Friday is cemetery day with Nonna Celia.”

“Plus Mummy has two conferences this year.”

“Frankie, you’ll have to ring and cancel them. We can do the rest, but the conferences are going to be out of the question.”

“She won’t want them canceled. It’s taken two years of lobbying to get these conferences.”

“What about the shopping?” he asks.

“You do the shopping and we’ll work around the rest,” I say.

Lots of nods. Lots of determination. And so much doubt that we can’t even hide it.

My dad comes home triumphant from his first grocery-shopping assignment. As if he’s accomplished God Knows What. I want to remind him that my mum does it every week without fanfare, but I’m too shocked at what he’s unpacking.

“What were you thinking?”

“What?”

He looks stunned. A bit hurt. He’s just conquered Coles. He feels like he deserves a medal.

“What is this?” I ask, holding up the yogurt.

“Yogurt.”

“With six grams of fat per one hundred grams. What happened to nonfat yogurt or ninety-seven percent fat-free yogurt?”

“Are we dieting?”

“Papa, it’s not about dieting. It’s about keeping our fat intake down. Look at this,” I say with a cry in my voice, pulling out some crackers. “What happened to rice crackers, ninety-four percent fat-free as opposed to Chicken in a Biscuit, twenty-two percent fat per one hundred grams?”

By this stage, my dad is looking a bit forlorn, but things only get worse.

“Oh my God!” I hold up the Ice Magic. The stuff you put on ice cream and it hardens like a chocolate top.

“Where did this come from? Do you know what this is? Luca is going to sneak out of bed in the middle of the night and squirt it on his tongue. It’s like drugs for ten-year-olds. Today it’s Ice Magic. Tomorrow, heroin.”

We write out a list that he’s to stick to in the future. Luca is already pigging out on the Cheetos and looks disappointed as we eliminate any source of junk food.

I make us dinner and take a big plate in to Mia. It comes back untouched. I throw it away before Luca can see it, and the cycle goes on.

One morning, she’s throwing up in the sink. Nothing much, as usual. She’s leaning her head against the tap, retching, and the sound becomes as familiar as the music she used to wake us up with. I want to do what she did for me when I was a kid. Hold back my hair and make me cry, not from the feeling of having my guts ripped open, but just from the feeling of being taken care of.

But I stand and I stare. She senses me there and looks for a moment. I don’t know what she reads from my face. Am I angry? Sickened? Ashamed?

I want to say,
Please, Mummy, be okay, please be okay
,
because if
you’re not okay, we’ll never be
.

But I say nothing.

I just go to school.

It’s June, about six weeks into the term, and it’s getting cold, but they won’t let us wear scarves because it’s not part of the uniform. I walk through Hyde Park behind the rest of the students, where Luca is running around the fountain with his friends ahead of me, and for a moment there’s peace in my heart because he’s happy.

After a moment, I realize that I’m not alone. Will Trombal is walking alongside me and I know he’s not there by chance. It’s been a week since the party. In front of us is Siobhan Sullivan, her arms draped over two boys beside her, her uniform riding up. She lifts herself up and swings her legs in the air.

“I think you should speak to her,” he says to me.

“I beg your pardon?”

“There’s stuff written about her.”

I stop for a moment and look at him. “Would you ask me to speak to a guy about the same thing?”

“Why turn this into a gender issue?”

“Because you made it into one. Would you go up to a guy and warn him if there was stuff written about him?”

“Listen, don’t shoot the messenger,” he almost shouts. “The shit that’s written in the toilets is awful, and if she were my friend I’d talk to her about it.”

“Well, it’s not in my job description.”

“You’ve made it your job. . . .”

“No I haven’t.”

“I’m trying to work with you here. . . .”

“No you’re not. We haven’t got one thing on that list except for that humiliating basketball game, and now you’ve decided to be Mr. Moral Policeman.”

“Forget it,” he says, walking away angrily.

“And what’s the name for people who kiss other people when they’ve got a girlfriend?”

He stops and turns around, looking me straight in the eye.

“A weak, spineless prick.”

Oh great,
I think.
Take the right to call you names right of me,
you . . . weak, spineless prick.

“I’ve wanted to talk to you about that, but—”

“But what?”

At the moment his face is red, and he’s looking at me as if I’m at fault. “It’s not as if I planned you,” he blurts out.

Planned me?

“Oh, like you
really
plan drunken snogging at parties,” I say.

He has the audacity to look hurt.

“Is that all it was to you?” he asks.

“Thinking about it now, yes.”

Liar, liar, pants on fire
.

“Fine. Then I think I’ll stick to my plans in the future. I get results out of my plans.”

“Really. Like your rugby game plan? That really works.”

“Oh, that’s very low. Is that why you come along and watch? To remind me of my failures?”

We don’t speak for a moment, but I’m not ready to walk away yet.

“You won’t understand about that night,” he mutters.

“Try me.”

“Okay. I—”

“If you even dare say it was because you were drunk, I can’t promise you where this will go.”

“Why not? You did. Anyway, I thought I was going to be justifying my actions without you interrupting.”

“Then hurry up.”

“I don’t want you to think I do that all the time,” he says, sounding a bit strained.

He’s very stressed. I have caused that stress. I am jubilant that I have caused that stress.

“Why would I think otherwise?”

“Because,” he says.

Because?

“Don’t you do legal studies? Aren’t you in mock trial? Does the argument ‘because’ usually work for you?”

He doesn’t even have the decency to be shifty-eyed. He just stares straight at me.

“You were drunk, Will,” I say after a moment. “I wouldn’t expect you to even remember anything.” I turn to go.

“If I was sober, you would have been impressed,” he says, repeating my words from that night.

“But you weren’t. And I’m not,” I say firmly. “And if you think that I am praying at night for you to ask me out, just dream on.”

I walk away, so proud of myself that I can hardly contain it.

Dear God, please please please let Will Trombal split up with his girlfriend and ask me out.

The prayer becomes my mantra all night. By 6:30 in the morning my eyes are hanging out of my head and I trudge to the bathroom, half-asleep.

On the way back I pass the living room, where the CDs are lying around on the floor.

They’re a combination of my mum’s and dad’s and mine and Luca’s, anything from the Jam to Britney Spears (not mine, I swear to God).

I come across the Whitlams’
Eternal Nightcap,
and it reminds me of being in the car on one of our road trips to the Central Coast, when the four of us would sing the whole way. Our favorite song was “You Sound Like Louis Burdett,” and we’d sing it at the top of our voices. My mum would even let us sing the line “All our friends are fuck-ups,” and Luca would sing it the loudest because it was the only time we were allowed to swear.

I loved those times on the beach at the end of the day, when the sun was gone and our sunburn would make us shiver in the cool breeze. Luca and I would lie against my parents, licking the salt off their arms, and we’d stay like that until twilight. They’re the magical moments I remember. The moments of brown bodies and salt water– curled hair, of fish and chips on the sand, of sunblock smelling of coconut, of stinging cuts on our feet from jagged rocks, and mostly of the four of us not needing anyone else in the world.

And I remember the nights of listening to their heavy breathing from the other room through the paper-thin walls of the rented house we were in. Listening to their cries and groans.

“Why is Mummy crying?” Luca would ask me.

“Because she’s so happy,” I’d answer.

I put the CD on and lie back on the carpet, closing my eyes, but then I hear the thumping of running footsteps and I open them to see Luca standing at the door, a look of excitement turning to disappointment, and I know that he would have thought it was my mum.

I beckon him over. “You put one on,” I say.

He looks through the collection and then holds one up. “Not until tomorrow, though,” he tells me.

My mother’s rituals become ours. One morning it’s You Am I’s “Heavy Heart,” and another time my dad puts on Joe Jackson’s “A Slow Song,” because that was their wedding waltz.

We play Smashing Pumpkins and Shirley Bassey and Jeff Buckley and even Elvis. I try to find music that belongs to me, but I realize that Mia’s music has become mine. Mia’s everything has consumed us all our lives, and now Mia’s nothing is consuming us as well.

After we play our music, we get ready for school, going through the motions, getting on with our lives.

And then the worst thing happens.

I get used to it.

chapter 15

IN DRAMA, MR. ORTLEY
plays “Venus.” It’s the version by this sixties band, Shocking Blue. And suddenly, out of nowhere, Thomas Mackee starts to dance. Later he tells people that he thought he heard “I’m your penis” rather than “I’m your Venus” and that’s why he got up. But, as usual with Thomas Mackee, you never know the truth.

Thomas Mackee on a dance floor is totally uninhibited and hysterical to watch. Despite his lanky slobbiness, he moves well. He makes the most ridiculous faces as he twists, his mouth in an O shape, and we’re laughing so much our stomachs hurt. He manages to combine the most outrageously physical moves, and they work. At a dance party you wouldn’t want to be anywhere near him, but here he has the whole space to himself and he relishes it. I look at Mr. Ortley and he’s laughing just as much as we are, and I wonder if this is one of those perfect teaching moments he tells us he’s been waiting for.

Thomas Mackee loves music. I can tell by the way his body reacts. For a moment I feel a bit of envy because I think I want to be out there making a fool of myself as well. His rhythm is erratic, and in my head I just can’t follow the groove. And then somehow we make eye contact and it clicks.

Don’t do it,
I tell myself. My ex–Stella friends, like Michaela, would think I was a dickhead. A show-off. A loser. I can just imagine them, exchanging looks that say more than enough. It’s how they’ve stayed popular for so long. By not doing anything that will make them look like fools. They never leave home without their safety nets and I think, good for them, but the thing with safety nets is this. I got tangled in them so many times and the Stella girls always seemed to leave me dangling, upside down, to the point where I almost couldn’t breathe anymore.

So I dance.

Thomas makes aV with his fingers and he turns it around and points to his eyes as if to say “focus,” and I do, matching his moves, swaying to his beat. The guitar arrangement on the song is fun and it’s easy to change direction. Everyone is clapping the beat, and there’s something so uncoolly cool about it. It’s like geographical humor. You just don’t get it unless you were there. Thomas Mackee has a sense of the ridiculous and it’s contagious, and I’m sure if he were forced to, he’d admit that he’s spent a lifetime making up these moves in his bedroom. Was he hiding in there as well? Was he shaking off an image he’d constructed for himself?

He tires, and I catch Siobhan Sullivan’s eye and then I take her hand and we’re in Year Seven again, making up the moves that made so much sense at the time. There’s a recognition in her eyes, and being best friends with her is the most vivid memory I have of St. Stella’s, and for one split second I can’t remember being friends with anyone else.