The High Places (20 page)

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They lived in a low wide white weatherboard house in a Greek part of Sydney, right next to an Orthodox church. On Sunday mornings the noise of chanting men rolled out over the ripe garden. Under the sound of it, Cara lifted a blue shirt against the clothesline and pegged it in place: now there were five Adam shirts floating on the line. She lay in the grass beneath them. It was November; the fierce magpie mothers were nesting in the gums and an ibis stood sentry in every palm. Cara thought Rachel looked like an ibis: long-legged, with a black curve of hair along the neck. Rachel and Adam were in bed. Every Sunday morning: in bed. All the children had shooed themselves from the house. The yellow bedroom curtains remained shut; the house was sweet, white, forbidding. Marcus and Elsa hunted lizards, Wallis stripped bark from a tree, Cass kicked at a ball. Cara lay curled in the sun with an arm across her face. She was too tall, with a rushed vertical look and no chest or hips to speak of. And black hair like her mother's. She curled to hide her height.

The children began to complain, as they did every week. ‘We're hungry,' they said, not so much to Cara as to each other.

‘Cass, go in, get us something to eat,' said Wallis. Wally knew she was named for a king's girlfriend and liked to issue commands.

‘Shit no,' said Cass, pleasant and slow, kicking his ball.

Cara lifted her arms above her head. A high laugh came from the house, which was worse than silence. Wallis sat on Cara's legs; Elsa came through the garden and collapsed over Cara's flat front. Cara could summon the girls like that, only by lifting her arms. Not the boys – but who cared? They only yelled all day and had a weird kicking way of walking. She used to love them blindly, with a vicious loyalty, but when Adam came she saw him size them up, laugh, and shake his head; then she knew their deficiencies. Sometimes she copied Adam's way of reaching out to mess their hair – a soft skating cuff to the rough backs of their heads that made them duck and grin when he did it. With her they only scowled.

‘Cara,' said Wally, and Elsa said it too. ‘Cara Cara Cara,' they chanted, and slapped their small hands against her feet and legs.

‘How long will it be?' asked Wallis. ‘It's hot out here. Is it hot?'

Cara wanted only to lie still and feel the sun and think about the church, which was white with a dome and a blue cross, and palm trees and ibises, so that it might be somewhere in the Mediterranean, and if that were true then Cara might be, also, somewhere on a foreign sea, maybe older, maybe beautiful, Cara mia. If Adam was out here, she thought, he would put Elsa in the laundry basket, or Marcus, and lift them high over his head. They would shriek and laugh and tumble into the grass. Then Adam would go away from them, from the garden and the house, to walk around the block and smoke. Rachel had told him never to smoke in front of the children. Cara thought of Adam smoking, the way his forearm looked as he lifted the cigarette to his mouth, the particular tense muscle that clenched in his golden jaw. She shivered in the grass. Wallis caught Cara's shiver and hugged herself.

The singing quietened down next door. The doorbell was ringing – on a Sunday? And who ever rang the doorbell? The postman with a special package, Cara's teacher the time she visited, men in suits who wanted to save everybody from hell. Didn't they all know: Don't make noise on a Sunday, not on a Sunday morning, and not with the doorbell, a real brass bell (brought back from India, from the neck of a sacred cow dripping with flowers, or from Switzerland maybe, a healthy Swiss cow in a high mountain pasture), so loud it could wake the dead. Cara lunged up from the grass so that Wally and Elsa slid and tumbled. She hurried around the side of the house, where weeks ago Cass had drawn a penis in blue chalk. The children followed. Who was at the front door, waking the dead? A girl with brown hair, a small wheeled suitcase, and an enormous belly. A pregnant girl. Cara pulled at the hem of her short blue dress. The other children pressed behind her, except for Cassidy, who was eleven. He slouched against the fence, pretending indifference. The church opened up behind him and people milled about.

‘Hi,' said the girl, and Cara said, ‘Can I help you?'

Oh, the girl didn't seem to know. She let go of her suitcase and began to cry. The crying made her red face redder, her hair damper, and there were rings of sweat under her arms and on the yellow T-shirt that stretched so far over her stomach; the rainbow on the T-shirt was twisted and wide.

‘Is this where Adam lives?' asked the girl, and because she said his name – this was how it seemed to Cara – Adam opened the front door. He stood there for a moment wearing only a pair of shorts, his hair in all directions. Then he stepped outside and held the girl – his arms were long enough to reach around her, despite her belly, and she pressed her face into his chest with her hands knotted under her chin, crying, crying, until all the children ran away and only Cara saw him kiss the stringy top of the girl's damp head.

Adam smiled at Cara after giving the kiss.

‘This is my sister,' he said, and the girl lifted her swollen face. ‘This is Danny. And Danny, this is Cara.'

Cara could see in Danny's soggy smile that she was more happy than sad; or that her sadness, now that she had been held in Adam's arms, was complicated by joy. So Cara felt savage and said, ‘Does Mum know?'

Adam only laughed and stepped back from Danny, which made him disappear into the house. Danny followed. Cara pulled the suitcase behind them as quietly as she could. She eased the front door closed. The door to Rachel's room was still shut, sealed by Sunday; Danny seemed to know to lower her voice. Adam didn't, but his voice was never loud, although it carried. In the night and on Sunday mornings it carried and carried.

He looked at swollen Danny. ‘Johnno?' he asked, and she nodded. In a shy way she seemed pleased with herself. Her face looked rubbed and sore but pleased. ‘And why'd you leave?'

‘Dad.'

Adam stood with his hands on his hips the way he did at barbecues and the beach.

‘Ah,' he said, and Cara, standing beside the suitcase, felt all the tolerant history of that ‘Ah' and hated it and found it lovely. Adam rocked back onto his heels. ‘You should sit down.'

Danny sank onto the couch in exactly the place Rachel had sat last night in her shining dress.

‘Well, here you are,' said Adam.

‘I'm sorry,' said Danny, crying again, and at this Adam knelt before her, he held her hands over her knees and kissed them, he said, ‘Hey, Dan Dan, Dannygirl, you've done the right thing, it's good, I'm glad you're here, it's fucking amazing to see you, Dan. Hey, it's beautiful.'

He pressed his face into Danny's knees. She looked at Cara over the top of his head; her face was so naked with relief and self-pity, Cara turned away.

‘Want to tell me about Dad?' asked Adam, raising himself as if to join her on the couch, but he paused before sitting. ‘Wait,' he said. ‘We need coffee. Coffee?'

Danny shook her head.

‘I'll just duck out and grab one for me, yeah? I'll be five minutes. Less.'

He went to Rachel's door and opened it; the light swimming out of the room was green and murky, and Cara noticed the way he entered without hesitation. He said something and returned with a T-shirt and thongs. He took his cigarettes from where he hid them behind the piano, winked at Cara, and said, ‘Back in a mo.' And left, shaking the coins in the pocket of his shorts. The house collapsed a little, emptier. The younger children crept to the doorway and peered at Danny, who peered back.

Now that she wasn't crying, Danny looked like Adam, but wasn't pretty: her mouth was too large, her eyes too small, and instead of his burning gold she was only an ordinary pinkish-brown. It was hard to think of her buckling under some loving man. She didn't touch her belly the way some women do; she only looked at it as if someone had put a cushion in her lap without telling her why. She would endure the cushion for the sake of politeness.

‘Are you hungry?' asked Cara, because she was hungry, and the girl said no.

‘Do you live near here?' asked Cara, and the girl said no.

‘How old are you?'

Danny placed one hand on her stomach. ‘Sixteen,' she said.

‘Mum was sixteen when she had me.'

‘I'll be seventeen when it's born,' said Danny, which meant her birthday must be soon, because she was big: as big as Rachel had been right before she had Marcus and Elsa. Then Danny said, ‘Your house is nice.'

The house was messy from last night: the cushions crushed, the carpet dusty with sugar, the finished candles now just blackened tins. The big wooden windows poured with light that revealed the age of the furniture and the stains on the walls. Someone had braided half the fringe on the tall pink lampshade.

‘It's my grandmother's house. It was,' said Cara. ‘Before she died.'

Rachel's door opened and she came out in her red kimono: it had a bird of paradise embroidered on the back in blue, yellow, and white. Her hair was caught in her hooped earrings. She might have been beautiful once, Cara conceded; maybe even last night.

Rachel pulled her kimono around her waist and said, ‘Come into the kitchen.'

The children fled the kitchen when their mother appeared. They pushed past Danny and Cara into the lounge room, wanting to be invisible, but near. Rachel didn't seem to notice. She stood by the sink drinking water from a green glass. Cara and Danny watched as she drank one cup and then another.

‘Have you fed the kids?' Rachel asked, and Danny started a little as if she might be expected to do the feeding. Cara prised bread from the freezer. Rachel sat at the kitchen table, sighing as she sat and pulling her hair out of her earrings. Danny sat too.

‘Adam's gone for coffee,' said Rachel, as if this were news. She stabbed one finger into the top of the table and picked at the Formica while Cara rattled the toaster.

‘I'm sorry to just show up like this,' said Danny.

Rachel only sighed in a hushing, regretful way, pressing down on the Formica she had picked. ‘Adam will be back soon,' she said.

A tear oozed from Danny's left eye. Cara saw it. Ah, then Danny knew Adam might not be back soon. He was out on the road somewhere, walking away, not thinking of any of them. Cara knew he didn't think of them when he was gone. He had a smooth, untroubled mind, he liked ease and cheerful noise, and small things caught his attention: a woman walking away from church in a pair of very high heels, the line of people waiting for tables outside the Chinese restaurant, the body of a baby ibis beneath a palm tree, a man on his tiny balcony, three floors up, pouring coffee from a Turkish pot. And that would remind Adam he wanted coffee. So he would keep walking, looking for coffee, happy to be out of the house and on the move; he accepted every errand, he went cheerfully to buy fish and bags of ice, and he would take Cara or Cassidy with him if they wanted to come, he would take anyone who asked, but he didn't care if he was alone or not. He might introduce Cara as ‘Cara mia' or, when she met his sister, only as Cara. He wasn't afraid of Rachel. He never hurried. He would take his time.

Occasionally a child would lift the heavy lid of the piano in the lounge room, consider the keys, and make an attempt at middle C; if Rachel heard, she'd cry out, ‘Who's that? Who?' It was only to hear her call that any of them ever played. ‘Who's that? Who? Who?' – like an owl. Today when middle C played Rachel only closed her eyes.

‘It was Marcus-Sparkus,' announced Wallis.

There was a soft, upholstered punching sound, then a crying out. Wallis ran in on spinning feet.

‘What are you savages doing in there?' said Rachel wearily, as if somehow obliged, maybe because of Danny; Cara didn't know. Danny sent a fuzzy smile in Wally's direction. Proud, savage Wallis leaned against her mother.

‘Marcus hit me,' she said.

Marcus sang, ‘Dip dip dog shit! Up your arse with a piece of glass!' from the lounge room, wild with the strange visitor on a Sunday morning, brave and wild. Rachel stood and went in to him. Cara didn't call out a warning; he deserved it. You had to know Rachel might be ready for anger and equipped, this morning, with her hard, low, violent voice. You had to know you might be punished, even with a guest in the house – if weepy Danny counted as a guest. Still, Cara's chest ached when she heard Marcus crying, when he was banished to the garden and all the children with him, and no breakfast.

But Marcus, once outside, didn't care; or pretended not to. Wally and the others cared for only a little longer. They were hungry, but Adam might come home with a bag of bread rolls, the way he sometimes did on Sundays, and maybe a barbecue chicken or a cardboard tray of baklava. That would be breakfast. Cara ate buttery toast at the kitchen window and watched the young ones roll in the grass. Cass was pressed to the back fence, where the Jouberts lived; they were South African and Cass liked their daughter, who sunbathed on the back deck in a bikini. Cara rolled her sickened eyes. Look what happened when you liked someone's daughter: look at Danny, puffed at the table.

Having exiled the children, Rachel didn't return to the kitchen; she went into her room, closing the door behind her. Danny seemed surprised by this and looked to Cara for assistance, so Cara fussed with a little silver toast rack that had belonged to her grandmother. Her grandmother had been a sensible woman who liked objects designed for specific purposes. There were those little silver scissors on their velvet ribbon, designed for nothing but cutting flowers. Cara's grandmother must have stood in the garden with her scissors and observed the neighbourhood and noticed the Greeks moving in (Rachel said her mother was never happy about the Greeks moving in). But she liked furniture
with multiple functions. You could lift the needlepoint lid of the piano seat and find sheet music: on top,
The Well-Tempered Clavier
. Cara thought of her grandmother as being well tempered. She died when Cara was seven. There had been a grandfather too, who lasted longer, but he only sat in the garden reading the paper and smoking; there was something wrong with his right leg and he couldn't speak without wheezing. All he cooked were blackened chops and baked beans from a tin, and he didn't count as an adult in the house at night – if Rachel was out you were scared lying in bed, even as he coughed in the lounge room. He died after Marcus was born. Then the house belonged to Rachel, and that meant Rachel had to live there all the time; no more India, no more Switzerland, no more going in and out at night. So she invited her friends home instead, nearly every night at first, and then, as she got older, as she ‘settled down' (Cara used this phrase with her schoolfriends), only on Saturdays. There were plenty of rooms in the house, but the children filled them. When friends stayed over they slept on couches or the floor.