Wally studies me for a few seconds. He seems perplexed. His gaze, I notice, is just to the left of me, as if he is looking over my shoulder.
‘Anyway, in Australia, it’s Wally,’ I say.
‘Oh. Kay.’ He looks back at the toiletry bag. ‘So . . . the library provides these?’
‘No,’ I say, smiling wider. ‘I do.’
Under his glasses, Wally’s mossy green pupils travel right to left slowly. ‘You do?’
‘Yes. My sister gives these to me whenever she returns from international travel. Do you know they give them out for free on airplanes?’
‘I did know that,’ he says, which makes me wonder about the accuracy of my assessment that he is homeless. I have, in my lifetime, been known to get things alarmingly wrong. I examine him more closely. His jeans are both too loose and too short and appear to have been cut off by hand, judging by the frayed ends. His buffalo flannelette shirt is in better nick, nicely buttoned right up to the neck. And while he has an overall look of grubbiness, I haven’t detected an odour, even in this small vestibule. I look at his fingernails, which are clean. Spectacularly clean, in fact. Buffed and pink and round, each cuticle a perfect crescent moon. The man could be a hand model.
‘I apologise, I thought you were homeless.’ I don’t smile now, to indicate this isn’t banter, but a serious comment. ‘I’m afraid it was your jeans that gave me that impression. And the hat, obviously.’
He stares at me. Not being one to duck away from a challenge, I stare back. A few years ago, I read a book of tips for people who find eye contact difficult. It suggested staring competitions as a form of exposure therapy. To my great surprise, I excelled at it. As it turned out, staring competitions were nothing like the discomfort of regular eye contact. There is no need to wonder how long you must look at someone, when you should look away or how often to blink. With staring competitions, all you have to do is fix your gaze on the person and let your mind wander. I can do that for hours if I feel so inclined. In fact, I once beat Mr Robertson, a library patron and good contender, at thirty-seven minutes. I expect Wally, younger and wilier by the look of him, to be a better contender, so I’m disappointed when after less than ten seconds, he looks away.
‘Amateur.’
Wally opens his mouth at the same time as the door swings open, forcing me further into the vestibule. The boy in the orange jumper from Toddler Rhyme Time pushes his way inside. On his heels are his grandmother and another woman pushing a double stroller. Clearly, Rhyme Time has finished. Outside, the swell of toddler racket intensifies.
‘What’s wrong with my hat?’ Wally asks, as the door opens again and a small girl and her mother file into the small space. It’s getting quite cramped in here now. The boy in the orange jumper jumps up and down and announces, ‘I’m busting,’ to no-one in particular. Then he notices Wally. ‘It’s Wally!’ he cries, marvelling.
Wally looks at me and I shrug – a non-verbal gesture I’ve seen people use to indicate, Told you.
There are a lot of people in the little vestibule now and the acoustics are particularly irritating. I place my hands over my ears. ‘It’s a compliment,’ I yell over the din. ‘Wally is universally beloved, even if he is an odd sort of fellow. Though maybe he isn’t odd, maybe he just looks that way? Like you!’
Wally pushes his glasses back up his nose and I lip-read him saying, ‘Excuse me?’
‘You don’t need to ask to be excused,’ I shout, moving toward the door. ‘The library is a public space; you can come and go as you please.’
The door opens yet again; this time an elderly man, pushing a walking frame, comes through it. I grab the door and manoeuvre around the double stroller. I’m almost out the door when a thought occurs to me and I swivel around.
‘And if you belched or farted, I didn’t hear it, so no need to excuse yourself for that either!’
And with that, I give a little wave and take my exit.
When we were five, my mother took my sister, Rose, and me to the library every day for a year. A better education than school will ever give you, Mum used to say, and I quite agree. If it were up to me, every child would have a year in the library before they went to school. Not just to read, but to roam. To befriend a librarian. To bash their fingers against the computers and to turn the pages of a book while making up a story from their superior little imaginations. How lucky the world would be if every child could do that.
I was that lucky. These days, researchers seem to be saying that we don’t form explicit memories until the age of seven, but I have a number of memories from the year I was five. Memories of Mum, Rose and me waking up with the birds, scrambling into our clothes and racing out to the bus stop. Because of our eagerness, we nearly always arrived before the library opened, then passed the time by sitting on the bench out the front, or, if it was raining, huddled under the awning finishing our books while we waited for the doors to open. When we got inside, Rose and I took turns sliding our books into the return slot and then racing to select our beanbags for the day (I preferred the cotton ones – the vinyl could get so sticky after a while). Mum never sat on a beanbag, she preferred the armchairs or seats on the other side of the library. Often, we didn’t see Mum for the whole day. That was part of the fun. We went to the toilet by ourselves, we went to the water fountain by ourselves. At the library, we were in charge of what we did and when.
We’d been doing this for a few weeks when one of the librarians, Mrs Delahunty, began taking an interest in us. First, she gave us book recommendations. Then, she gave Rose and me worksheets on which to write the names of all the books we’d read. If we got to a hundred, she said, we’d be gifted a book from the library to keep! It was through filling out that worksheet that Rose and I learned to write. Some days, when we deliberated on what to read next, Mrs Delahunty, would come over and make suggestions.
‘Did you enjoy The Giving Tree, girls? If so, I think you would love Where the Wild Things Are. Sit down and we’ll read it together.’
Afterward she’d ask us questions. Do you think Max really went away? What do you think actually happened? Mrs Delahunty said that answering questions helped our brains understand what we’d read. As the year went on, Mrs Delahunty chose more and more difficult books for us, and by the year’s end, according to Mrs Delahunty, we had the vocabulary of twelve-year-olds! Because of this, the following year we skipped Prep and went straight into Grade One. Mum was very proud of this. Lots of people said things to us like, What a wonderful mum you must have! and Your mum must have spent a lot of time reading to you.
The first time someone said that, I started to point out that, no, it wasn’t Mum who spent time reading to us, but then Rose tapped her bracelet against mine. Mum had given us our bracelets when we were born – mine was engraved with a fern, and Rose’s with a rose. Somewhere along the way, they became our way of talking to each other without talking. Rose always taps her bracelet against mine as a warning. Stop. It’s a good system that almost always works. There’s only been one time that Rose couldn’t stop me from doing the wrong thing and that was a mistake that will haunt me for the rest of my life.
JOURNAL OF ROSE INGRID CASTLE
Today, my therapist and I dived deep on my yearning for a baby. I talked about how it felt physical, like hunger, like pain. Like loss. My therapist thinks this stems from my childhood – a desire to do right what my mother couldn’t. An attempt to heal myself. Maybe he’s right.
As conversation steered in this direction, he asked me to talk about my earliest traumatic memory. It took me a while to find it – it must have been buried a long way down in the dusty depths of my subconscious – but now that I’ve retrieved it, I can’t stop thinking about it. It is from when I was five years old; the year after Dad left, not that I have any memory of that. My first scraps of memory that I still hold are from the following year, the year Mum took us to the library. Fern had loved that year! She refers to it with such fondness – how the library became her h
ome, how she discovered the hidden worlds within the pages of books, how that year is the reason she became a librarian. It makes me want to scream. Sometimes I wonder if, like those choose-your-own-adventure books that we used to devour, the two of us were living parallel, alternate lives.
Do you know what I remember from the library year? Sleeping on couches that smelled of dog; being dragged from our old flat in the middle of the night and not being allowed to bring any toys, not even Mr Bear, even when I begged Mum to let me take him; hauling striped plastic bags out of strangers’ houses every morning and putting them in the boot of Mum’s little car to take wherever we were headed next; waking up every morning with a pain in my stomach; a combination, I realise now, of hunger and fear.
You know something funny? I don’t think Fern even knows we were homeless that year. She probably told herself it was an adventure, or a holiday or an experience. Or maybe she didn’t tell herself anything at all. She had a gift for accepting life the way it was, rather than questioning it. Some days – heck, every day – I envy her that.
It was Dad’s fault we were homeless, apparently. After he left, Mum couldn’t afford to pay the rent on her own. She said the landlord was charging so much that no honest person could afford it. That was why we had to sneak out of there during the night with only the things we could carry. For the next twelve months, we stayed in the car or on the couch or floor of whomever Mum was friends with at the time. Luckily, Mum had a knack for making friends. ‘Girls, this is Nancy – we met at the hairdresser!’ she’d say delightedly. A few days later, we’d be living in Nancy’s house and calling her ‘Aunty Nance’. A week or two after that, we would never see Nancy again – but we’d continue to see the clothes and jewellery she’d lent Mum. We always had a roof over our heads though, and Mum was very proud of that. She’d remind us of this each night before bed.
‘I’m doing all this for you two, you know that, right? So you have somewhere to live. If it wasn’t for you two, I could easily find a place to live. That’s how much I love you.’
‘Thank you, Mummy.’
‘And who do you love?’
‘You, Mummy.’
The months wore on. The library during the day, someone’s couch at night. It wasn’t all bad. There were things about the library I liked. I liked having somewhere to go every morning, so we didn’t have to make small talk over breakfast with whomever was hosting us. Even back then, I understood the shame of taking up space in someone else’s life. I liked losing myself in the nooks and crannies of the library, imagining it was my home. I liked that the library was a public space, a space where we were safe, at least for a few hours. I liked Mrs Delahunty too, though not with the same ferocity Fern did. From time to time, while she was reading to us, I would fantasise that Mrs Delahunty was our mother. I remember the day she read us Clifford the Big Red Dog. After she finished reading, instead of asking us about the story like she usually did, she asked us if we’d had breakfast that morning.
‘Nope,’ Fern said. ‘Two meals a day are enough for anyone, any more and you’re greedy.’
She was reciting Mum’s words, of course, verbatim. I remember stealing a glance at Mum, over by the magazines and my stomach got a wobbly feeling.
Next, Mrs Delahunty asked where we’d been sleeping.
‘On the couch,’ Fern said. There was no hint of concern on her face. I remember thinking how nice it must have been, to be so clueless. And how dangerous.
Mrs Delahunty’s expression remained the same, but the pitch of her voice rose slightly. ‘Oh? Whose couch?’
Fern shrugged. ‘Depends whose house we are at.’
Mrs Delahunty looked at me. I looked at my shoes.
After a while, Mrs Delahunty got up and walked over to Mum. I buried my head in my book, too afraid to look. After a few minutes, Mum came over and told us it was time to leave.
‘Who told the librarian that we were homeless?’ Mum asked, after we had exited. We were on either side of her, holding onto her hands. I remember that detail because it was unusual. Usually Mum liked Fern and me to hold hands with each other – it made passers-by smile at us, and that seemed to make Mum happy.
‘Who told the librarian that we were homeless?’ she repeated. There was an edge to her voice, and I remember Fern starting to fidget, repeating the word ‘homeless’ in that strange way she repeated things. We turned the corner into a quiet street and Mum asked again. Her fingernails were digging into my palm.
‘Mrs Delahunty . . . she asked us–’ I started.
‘So it was you?’ Mum turned on me immediately.
I peeked at Fern. She was frightened and confused. She hadn’t told anyone we were homeless; she hadn’t used that word. She didn’t know she was the one to blame.
I nodded.
Mum let go of our hands and bent down low. ‘You stupid, stupid girl. That lady might seem nice, but she wants to take you away from me. Is that what you want?’
I shook my head.
‘Do you want to go a foster home, with a horrible woman who doesn’t love you? Never see me again?’
Her face was a contorted, terrifying mask of rage. Bits of spittle flew into my face.
‘No!’ I cried. All I wanted was to be with her. To be separated from Mum was my greatest fear. She was right. I was stupid. ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Mummy.’
‘Let’s go home, Fern,’ she said, snatching up Fern’s hand. I ran after them, grasping for Mum’s other hand, but she put it into her pocket. I scuttled after them all the whole way home, crying. Mum didn’t even flinch when I threw myself at her feet, grazing my knee badly in the process.
When we got back to the house – I can’t remember whose we were staying at or why they weren’t there that night – Mum made dinner for two. When I asked if I could have some, she acted as if I wasn’t even there. Afterward, she bathed Fern and read her a story. It was rare that Mum bathed us, and she never read us stories. I clambered onto the couch to listen to the story, but Mum pushed me off so roughly I fell onto the floorboards, banging my bad knee. I cried so hard my stomach hurt, but she just kept reading. When the story was finished, she tucked Fern in and left the room.
I understood somehow that I shouldn’t get into the bed, so eventually I fell asleep on the floor. When I woke, Fern was beside me, her skinny arms wrapped around me, her face buried in my hair. She’d brought the blanket and pillow down from the couch and assembled a little bed around us. She held me like that all night.
Most people think of me as Fern’s protector. But the truth is, in her own funny way, she’s always been mine.
FERN
At 6.15 pm sharp, I open Rose and Owen’s white picket gate and walk down the red brick pathway. I have dinner with Rose on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, unless Rose is travelling or working late, in which case we forfeit. Attempts to reschedule to another night have not gone well, historically. These cornerstones to my routine are what keep me calm and grounded.
Rose and Owen have a lovely house, the kind that looks like it should feature in the pages of a House & Garden magazine, even though the lawns aren’t as neat as they were before Owen went away. Owen used to mow and edge the grass every other week during the winter months and weekly during the summer, but he has taken a job in London now. Still, the lawn is the only blight on the place. The verandah is swept and oiled, and there’s a wicker basket next to the door for umbrellas. There’s also a shoe rack bearing an upturned never-been-worn pair of shiny red gumboots. Rose takes great pride in keeping house, something she says is a direct response to our childhood home, which was chaotic to say the least. I too have adopted a high standard of order and cleanliness in my home, but I stop short of keeping my house to the standard of a magazine spread.
I take Rose’s three front steps in one leap. As I open the front door, I’m greeted by Alfie, whom I kneel to pat. Even the dog is picture perfect, with his glossy coat and a ridiculous red kerchief collar around his neck.
‘H
ello, Alfie,’ I say, as he leaps into my lap. When I stand again, he runs along at my ankles delightedly. When Rose and Owen got Alfie, Rose had insisted that he was going to be an outside dog. (‘How many cavoodles do you know who are outside dogs?’ Owen had whispered to me. ‘None,’ I’d replied. ‘But I don’t know any cavoodles other than Alfie, so your survey is flawed.’)
In the kitchen, Rose squats in front of the oven with two oversize oven mitts on her hands, watching a chicken under the grill.
‘I’m here!’ I announce.
Rose startles, almost falling forward into the oven. ‘Fern! You scared the life out of me!’
She stands, frowning at me. Rose is an excellent frowner. Even when she laughs, two little vertical lines remain between her eyebrows, as if her face is afraid to have too much fun. Owen used to say it was because she’s always worrying about everyone. I know she is worried about him. I can tell because whenever she talks about his job in London, she smiles extra brightly and then quickly changes the subject. Rose also worries about me a lot. I once heard her say to someone on the phone that I’d turned her hair grey (even though her hair isn’t grey and, besides, stress doesn’t actually turn hair grey, though stress can trigger a condition called telogen effluvium which causes hair to shed up to three times faster, so while I could cause her to go bald, I couldn’t turn her hair grey).
‘Did you get the milk?’ Rose asks me. She’s wearing a white shirt, black leather pants and bare feet. Rose is always in some variation of black and white, with the occasional flash of tan or beige. (If you ask me, her outfits could use a few diamantes here and there.) Rose is an interior designer, but ‘the type who designs office spaces, not the type who chooses scatter cushions’. I gather from the regularity and conviction with which Rose says this that this distinction is important to her. For this reason, I have never mentioned that scatter cushions are among some of my favourite things in the world.
The Good Sister Page 2
