A Girl in Three Parts

by Suzanne Daniel

  “Yeah, she is…a cool chick….She’s my best friend but she lives in Armidale now, so I don’t get to see her that much anymore.”

  “Guess you must miss her, then.”

  “I do, actually. I miss her a lot.”

  “Do you write letters to each other?”

  “Yeah. Every other week.”

  “That’s cool.” Lucinda is looking at me longer than usual, like she might have changed her mind about wanting to be invisible.

  “Are you walking home?” she asks. “I can wait for you, out here, and then…we can walk together.”

  I’m not so sure about this: walking with Lucinda Lister for all the world to see, now that she’s preggers. Matilde would be livid if she caught the slightest whiff of me doing that. But there’s something about Lucinda today, a look around her outline of lowered expectations and crushed opportunity that makes me feel sorry for her. Plus I’m a bit intrigued by her situation. So I whip in, buy the Perkins paste and join her back outside the shop.

  Lucinda unwraps a Cherry Ripe and we set off for home. “I liked your note too, Ally—no one else wrote me a note,” she says, taking bites between slow steps. “Except for my deadshit dad, but that wasn’t exactly what you’d call a nice one.”

  “What did your dad’s note say?”

  “Oh…you know, that I’m an embarrassment to him, that he won’t be helping raise a baby. And that I should just get rid of it.”

  “How do you do that…just get rid of a baby?”

  Lucinda stops chewing her Cherry Ripe and comes to a halt. She gives me a sharp look. “Ally, you are obviously smart, but deadset you can also be pretty bloody dumb. There is a thing you can have called an abortion, you know!”

  “Oh, yeah,” I say, but I didn’t know. “Are you going to have that…that thing?”

  “Nah, Mum says over her dead body. I think mostly because she’s so spitting mad that Dad left, and now she reckons that it’s all his fault that I’m pregnant, so she won’t be going along with anything he wants to happen.”

  “Is this your dad’s baby?” I ask.

  Lucinda throws her head forward and spits out chocolatey-cherry goop onto the footpath. “Jeez, Ally! No! Yuck…what do you think I am? It’s my boyfriend’s baby!”

  “Sorry…it’s just when you said your mum thought it was all your dad’s fault, I thought that…anyway…sorry. What does your boyfriend think you should do?”

  “I don’t know. Mum won’t let him anywhere near me. He’s tried calling me at home a few times, but Mum’s put the phone in her room. I’ve heard her say, ‘This has nothing to do with you—keep away—you’ve done enough damage,’ and then she just hangs up.”

  Lucinda no longer looks like the girl who has everything. That part of my heart that beats to another person’s pulse starts pumping out more Patricia than me and comes up with a sudden idea.

  “Hey, why don’t you write your boyfriend a note, and I can give it to him on the school bus? You could make a plan to meet him somewhere and, you know, talk about things. You could sort it all out.”

  Lucinda looks at me, impressed—actually very impressed—like I’ve just earned a permanent spot in her garage and maybe, if I wanted it, a drag on one of her Alpine Lights.

  “Come to think about it, I take back what I said about you being deadset dumb, Ally. For a First-Form Dropkick, that’s actually a pretty smart idea.” She punches my arm, which hurts only slightly, and quizzes me about what her boyfriend looks like—just to make sure I get the note to the right guy. Once I pass that test, she tells me his name is Rob…Robert Fuller. She chucks the Cherry Ripe wrapper into a bush and shoots off ahead, saying she needs to get the note written and dropped off to my place before her mum gets home from work, because before all this happened, her mum used to let her roam free, but now she has her on a tight leash…like a dog.

  “Don’t bring it to me at Number 23,” I call out after her. “Take it to Joy’s place, my grandmother next door, you know, the one who lives in Number 25. I’ll get it from her letterbox as soon as I can.”

  “Okay, Ally…First-Form Genius! You’ll be our Leo—our go-between.”

  I’m not sure what that is exactly, but Lucinda makes it sound like it’s something important. So I head home feeling thicker than an outline and more solid than a shadow, which is almost enough to eclipse the worry of Matilde finding out that I’ve been walking the streets for all the world to see with that Lister girl.

  * * *

  ■ ■ ■

  Robert Fuller doesn’t look like anyone’s father.

  He’s short, with a sprinkling of pimples across his forehead and tufts of fluff on his chin, and he doesn’t seem in the least bit responsible. He’s playing corners in the back row of the school bus—laughing—grunting—snorting—as he pushes a slightly beefier boy off the seat and into the aisle.

  Somehow I’m going to have to get this note to Rob quick smart, but it’s looking like I won’t have a chance before we reach my stop, which is coming up soon. He’s surrounded by his friends, and they’d all be very suss if a First-Form Dropkick goes anywhere near a fourth former on the back row.

  I stay on the bus. Past my stop, and the next one and then a few more. Finally the kids thin out and Rob is one of only two boys left on the back seat. They’ve both settled down to looking at footy cards. The bus jolts to a halt; Rob collects his cards, jumps up, flicks his friend on the neck with an elastic garter and gets off on his own. I gather my bag and get off too. And now I have to follow him. This is weird, very weird, but it was my idea and I can’t let Lucinda down.

  Walking along the gutter with his bag slung over his shoulder, Rob has a different way about him now. I’m walking at the same speed a few paces behind. I wait a bit longer and then, after a deep gulp, I call out.

  “Robert…hey, Rob…wait….I have something to give you.”

  He stops, turns around and studies me. Puzzled, he says, “Yeah, what? What have you got to give me?”

  “It’s a note…from Lucinda…your girlfriend.”

  “A what…? Who says she’s my girlfriend?” He has a dismissive tone, but I see a definite flash of curiosity in his eyes.

  “Well, anyway, here it is.” I’m trying hard not to sound like a First-Form Dropkick. “I’m Ally—I live across the road from Lucinda,” I say, passing him the note. “If you want to write back to her, I’ll be on the school bus tomorrow morning.”

  I start the trek home, trying to think of an excuse for Matilde about why I’m so late.

  * * *

  ■ ■ ■

  It’s the first Wednesday of the month, so Matilde’s sister is here with us at Number 23, and like on all first Wednesdays she’s staying for dinner. She likes me to call her Aunt Helena and to greet her with a kiss on both cheeks. She always brings chocolates for me and mending for Matilde. Everything about Aunt Helena is long: her arms, neck and fingers, her nose and her scarves, but mostly her stories she likes to tell me about the luxury cruises she takes to exotic locations with her dear friend Marta, her adventurous travel companion, because her husband, Bence, is much too busy to leave the business.

  Things are always strained when Helena is here. I don’t even know why Matilde invites her or why Helena would bother coming, given the way things are between them. Matilde seems to put so much effort into her cooking and cleaning before Helena arrives that she hasn’t any energy left to be the slightest bit nice, or to respond with anything more than a tick of her tongue to the suggestions that her sister makes. And Helena makes a lot of suggestions.

  “I am telling you, Matilde, your hydrangeas would be a much brighter blue if you just took my advice and scattered your coffee grounds around them….” Matilde keeps mashing the potatoes—hard, from the shoulder—her eyes looking down and the sinewy muscles in her forearms flexing.

 
; Helena studies the floorboards and announces as she sits down: “I don’t know why you don’t put a little felt on the bottom of the chair legs to stop these dreadful scratches on your floor….” Matilde pulls her chair in—slowly, closer to the table, with a long screech—and picks up her knife and fork without so much as a word.

  “This sausage is better than the last time you made it, but it could still do with something—yes—I would definitely add a little caraway, and perhaps a good shake of nutmeg….” Helena lifts her chin slightly and narrows her eyes to a creative squint, the way she does when she talks about colors, travel, music or flavors. But Matilde ignores it all and starts clearing the table before her sister’s even finished her meal—scraping the other untouched sausage into a container for the fridge and clanging the dishes loudly at the sink.

  I’m glad to escape the one-sided conversation that seems to change the oxygen-to-nitrogen ratio in the dining-room air, with the excuse of taking Rick’s plate of dinner up to him in his flat.

  “It’s an especially good dinner because of Helena’s first-Wednesday visit, but it’s pretty tense down there tonight,” I tell Rick, plonking into the Jason recliner next to his TV. “I don’t get it. If I had a sister, I’d just be nice to her and make sure we had fun together.”

  “Reckon you would too,” says Rick, getting a beer from his fridge. “But some sorts of people…no matter what…they can’t manage to have fun together.”

  “What sorts of people?”

  “Sometimes the ones who have shared a hard past, Al. It kind of thickens the membranes that separate them.”

  “What do you mean?” I ask.

  “Well”—Rick takes a swig—“you know that Matilde and Helena survived the war together, right? But what you mightn’t know is that they were the only ones in their whole family who did….I have to remind myself about that sometimes.” Rick has a look like he’s suffered too.

  “When the war finished and they finally made it all the way home, they found out they’d lost everyone: their mother and father; their little sister, Elsa; their aunts, uncles, cousins, the lot. Those two women can busy themselves with their separate lives and distractions, but whenever they get together that’s the sad truth of things…looking them square in the face.” Rick’s going for another beer.

  “But wouldn’t that just make you feel closer to each other, Rick—you know, because you went through all that, the same stuff, and you survived it together and you’re the only two left. Shouldn’t you understand each other’s sadness?”

  “It doesn’t always work that way, Al,” Rick says quietly, tapping the side of his beer can. “Sometimes you just can’t bear each other’s sadness on top of your own.”

  * * *

  ■ ■ ■

  It’s been three days now since I got the note to Robert Fuller, but when I’ve seen him on the bus each day since, he’s looked more interested in playing corners and garter flicking than getting a reply to me to pass on to Lucinda.

  That is, until this afternoon. Rob struts down the aisle from the back row, and while I’m talking to Annabel Renshaw, he casually drops his shoulder into me and lets an envelope slip from his hand onto the floor at my feet. Lucinda will be relieved…it has her name written on it in small scrawly letters.

  Annabel Renshaw’s thick eyebrows shoot high as I scoop up the envelope and stuff it into my bag. I continue on like that didn’t happen, telling her about the runaway girls who leave messages on Whisky Wendy’s back wall. Thankfully Annabel’s sufficiently captivated by that story to be distracted away from asking what I just put into my bag. She says a quick “See ya—got to go to orchestra practice” and gets off at the next stop.

  And later, at mine, there’s Lucinda waiting with a Cherry Ripe and a Coke outside Dave’s shop. She’s been there every afternoon, looking hopeful, then disappointed when I’ve stepped up empty-handed. But now she’s beaming and mouths, “At last,” as I hold up the envelope.

  “Finally,” she exhales.

  “Yeah, finally,” I reply, sharing her relief and a moment of preggers solidarity.

  I wait in silence while Lucinda rips open the envelope.

  “Rob’s going to ditch school Friday and wants me to meet him…at lunchtime…when Mum’s at work. He reckons it could be a bit tricky, but he’s got a solution in mind. Ally, don’t tell anyone, will you? You got to promise.”

  “Mum’s the word,” I assure Lucinda.

  And so I learn exactly what it means to be a go-between, carrying notes for the next week between the girl who had everything and the boy who doesn’t look at all like a dad, sneaking the odd peek at what each of them writes. They are counting on me—they need me, in fact—and while it’s what Rick would call meddling and it’s certainly against Matilde’s rules, I feel my shadow solidify by being in on the plan.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Lucinda Lister is missing.

  The neighborhood kids are hanging out with her brother, Mark, now quiet in the garage, and their mothers are dropping off casseroles in CorningWare dishes and baked slices in Tupperware containers with quick awkward hugs for Mrs. Lister on her front porch.

  And now Mrs. Lister has crossed the road; she is standing at our door. I can hear her telling Matilde that she wants to speak with me.

  “Did she mention anything to you, anything at all, about plans to run away from home?” The flicks and wings in Mrs. Lister’s hair have dropped, matching her expression, which is lank and lifeless. She’s out of the crocheted pantsuit and into a gabardine skirt and flat navy espadrilles. I don’t know where to look. She’s staring straight into my face, hard and unflinching, a lioness hungry for morsels of information about her cub.

  “Allegra was forbidden to have any contact with your daughter,” announces Matilde, as though that’s a perfectly reasonable thing to say. “I don’t think my granddaughter can help you.” She is obviously offending Mrs. Lister but thankfully saving me from having to lie or, worse still, confess that I was a go-between. “Perhaps if Lucinda is missing, you should contact the police,” continues Matilde, matter-of-fact.

  “That was my next step,” responds Mrs. Lister sharply. “But I wanted to check with Lucinda’s friends and the neighbors first. Most of them have been very helpful, but clearly that’s not the case here.” She marches off, heading back down the path, but stops at the gate, fuming. She turns around and lobs squarely at Matilde: “I don’t think with your family history, Mrs. Kaldor, that you, of all people, have any right to sit up there on that high horse.”

  If I had the saliva to speak right now, I’d ask Matilde what family history Mrs. Lister is talking about. Instead that part of my heart that writes a vocab list for my brain is sending up a whole lot of M words: Meddling, Meeting, Mum’s the word, Missing and…My fault.

  Less than an hour later, a police car pulls up outside the Lucky house. The garage clears of teenagers, the porch clears of mothers, and my heart is trying to pull back from its nervous canter to a keeping-it-under-control trot. I can’t say anything to Matilde. She would be beyond livid if she knew I’d had any contact with that Lister girl—and worse still, that I might have actually played a part in her going missing. Instead I wait for Rick’s van to arrive after work and follow him up to his flat.

  “Why the gloomy face, Al Pal?” says Rick, looking like he’s had a good day.

  “I need to tell you something.”

  “Really? This sounds serious.”

  “It is pretty serious—I think.”

  “Well, come on in, Al, step into my office, pull up a chair.”

  Sitting at Rick’s Formica table, I shake my head no to the can of Passiona he offers and the handful of beer nuts he holds out with a ready-to-listen grin. Instead I go on to explain that over the past week Lucinda had been dropping off envelopes for me in Joy’s letterbox and that I’d been passin
g them on to her boyfriend, Rob Fuller, the guy on the school bus who’s—“you know—the father of her baby.” I tell Rick that they needed my help to get the notes to each other because Lucinda’s mother had her on a tight leash, like a dog, and she wouldn’t let them have any contact, not even over the phone, ever since Lucinda got preggers.

  “I was their go-between, if you know what that is, because they couldn’t see each other face to face. I was the one in the middle passing their notes back and forth, just helping them a bit, so they could sort everything out. And I know I shouldn’t have been a meddler, Rick, but I read the last note, the one from Rob right before Lucinda went missing.”

  “Hold on…when did Lucinda go missing?” Rick looks up midnut, surprised. Worried surprised, not good surprised.

  “Her mother found out she’d gone yesterday morning, but I know that she left the night before because they were meeting down at the beach…down there at midnight.”

  “Crikey, Al. She went to the beach on her own at midnight? How old is this girl?”

  “Fourteen. Going on fifteen,” I assure him, but as I look at Rick’s expression, that doesn’t seem so old anymore, even to me.

  “Anyway…Rob’s dad is standing for council elections and he said that if his parents found out about Lucinda having a baby, they’d kill Rob, because any sort of scandal would kill his father’s chances of ever becoming mayor. Rob got the money together so they could travel to Canberra and Lucinda could have this thing called an abortion. Do you know what that is, Rick…the abortion thing?”

  “Yes, Al,” says Rick, looking down at his thongs. Then, giving up on the nuts altogether, he says, “I do know what that is. So…how long ago was all this?”

  “They were going to leave early yesterday morning, but then Lucinda found out that her mum was taking the day off work, and she wanted somewhere to stay the night before they left, after they met at the beach, so she could still get away early. I told Lucinda about Whisky Wendy’s, and that she helped girls in trouble, but I told her not to tell Wendy that she’d found out about her place from me. They were meant to be back on Wednesday night, and now it’s Thursday night and Mrs. Lister is going mental.”