Wordlessly, Lace holds out her glass for more juice. Her eyes are scanning the newspaper discarded by Aunt Jean, who is staring blankly at the wall.
‘Can I have some eggs?’ Chummie’s head pops out of his book like a spy from a manhole. ‘Scrambled, not fried? With a bit of parsley on the top but no pepper, please.’ He’s always specific about food preparation, even though he’s only eleven.
Aunt Jean, obliging even when white as a sheet, goes to the fridge. She looks enquiringly at Lace. ‘Eggs?’
But Lace shakes her head. She’s preoccupied with the newspaper. Page 5 yields nothing. Page 6 is useless. Page 7 is a full-page illustrated ad for a New Year’s sale at SportsWorld.
Crack. Crack. The eggs splat out of their shells into a plastic bowl, and suddenly Aunt Jean lets out a groan and runs to the bathroom. ‘Bill, can you take over the egg production?’ asks Chummie. To him, of course, Uncle Bill is simply Bill. As strange as it seems, considering that one has a crashing hangover and pays taxes while the other still takes a teddy bear to bed, they’re brothers. Or half-brothers, to be precise.
It’s not until Lace reaches the fashion section of the paper that she finds what she needs. The relief is so enormous that her head swoops forward into the plate of eggs considerately placed before her by Uncle Bill.
‘Not to worry, sweetheart.’ Uncle Bill helps her out of her breakfast. When the swoops had started happening, he was worried by them and had called a child psychologist friend for advice. But now —
‘Easily done, easily mended,’ he says, shushing Chummie’s exasperated sighs.
Lace’s fringe is clumped with egg and there are specks of parsley in her eyelashes. Normally she’d cry (albeit against her will) but the discovery she’s just made is so momentous — so perfect — that her tear ducts are stopped in their tracks. She accepts a tea towel and wipes herself off. A clean break. This is what it is. A clean start.
‘I wouldn’t eat those eggs, Bill,’ Chummie says as she leaves the kitchen. ‘I don’t think she washed her hair today.’
Now here she is, locked in her room with her books, in a midday as still and grey as a mountain lake. When she’d arrived at her uncle’s house with her life in cartons, she had a hundred and twenty books. ‘So many!’ exclaimed her grandmother, almost disapprovingly. It may seem a lot but Lace knows every one of the books intimately: their covers, pages, pencil markings, turned-down corners. They’re the only things that have stayed the same: words never change, no matter how long you’re out of the room, and she loves them for this.
Altering her name inside a hundred and twenty covers isn’t as big a job as one might think. She’s already put a lot of thought into her identity change. Kneeling at her dolls’ table with a ruler and green pen, she deletes neatly and amends with a swift touch.
‘Grace?’ It’s Aunt Jean, who isn’t truly her aunt, as she and Uncle Bill have never got around to having a wedding. ‘Gracie, are you okay in there? Do you want a sandwich?’
Lace sighs. It’s her own fault that Aunt Jean fusses about food because, when Lace first arrived here, she’d stopped eating for ten whole days. ‘Determined,’ said the children’s doctor. (Was there a smudge of admiration in his voice?) ‘Dangerously determined.’ When she came out of hospital, her legs were so thin that her knees clicked like a goat’s. She looked searchingly into the dazzle of the low sunshine but no one was there. She’d achieved nothing; she’d failed to bring them back. But at least she’d had her personality defined — by a medical professional, no less — which was more than most eight-year-olds could claim.
‘Gracie?’ Aunt Jean sounds closer now, as if she’s crouched by the door, stuffing anxiety through the keyhole like cotton wool.
Lace closes the last cover and dusts her hands on her skirt like a librarian. ‘I’m ready.’ These are her first two words of the year, and they’re certainly appropriate. She’s about to advance, walk boldly and firmly into a new life. ‘I’d like a peanut butter sandwich, please,’ she says, opening the door.
‘Good god!’ Aunt Jean jumps back in a way that, in a thriller, would be predictable. Her hand flies to her mouth in a similar cliché. ‘What on earth have you done to your hair?’
‘I didn’t like it. It looked like a Barbie doll.’ Lace smoothes down her new ragged bob. ‘So I borrowed your sewing scissors to lop it off.’
‘Oh, well. Okay.’ Aunt Jean swallows gamely but her skin looks greenish, hopefully only because of the empty wine bottles stacked by the door rather than because of Lace’s new appearance. ‘How about I take you to Nancy on Thursday when she reopens the salon, just to tidy it up a bit?’ She removes her hand from her mouth. ‘If you’re agreeable to that,’ she adds, being unfailingly polite even to children thrust into her life by a quite literal accident.
‘One more thing.’ Lace places her hand in Aunt Jean’s. ‘I’ve changed my name.’
‘You’ve what?’ Aunt Jean sits down on the nearest object, which happens to be a stack of old encyclopaedias about to be donated to a charity drive. Teetering on her pile of facts, she looks smaller and less secure than Lace.
‘I’m no longer Grace,’ explains Lace, still holding Jean’s hand, which is easier now they’re on the same level. ‘My name is Lace.’
It’s the first time she’s said it out loud so it’s a risky moment — like parachuting from a plane or flying off a ski ramp. ‘Lace,’ she repeats almost wonderingly — and then ‘Lace!’
‘That’s an unusual… an unusually nice name.’ Aunt Jean’s hand is clammy but she doesn’t remove it from Lace’s grasp. In fact she remains a constant support until Lace is seventeen and Chummie is eighteen, old enough to look after themselves, at which point she follows Bill (who’s discovered a sudden passion for colonial history) into a southern Australian haze.
As often happens, once the news is broken, it travels with its own velocity. First through the household, then the neighbourhood and finally the entire world. Was Lace’s name ever changed officially? Later, she remembers a tidy brown office, wood-panelled walls, the sound of a stamp crashing down on paper, and her name pronounced as a query: ‘Lace McDonald?’ But that remembered room might easily have been the principal’s office, the headquarters of an after-school club, or the waiting rooms of a medical practice in Bill and Jean’s suburban neighbourhood.
Uncle Bill finds it particularly hard to adjust. ‘But your father chose your name with such care! He named you after Grace Kelly, you know.’
Yes, Lace does know this. She also knows how Grace Kelly died, and she wonders: was this the reason her parents ended up in a jumble of metal on a lonely road?
‘He nicknamed you Amazing Grace. That doesn’t work with your new name.’ Worry creases Bill’s face so it looks like a used paper plate. He seems to think a guardian’s duties are similar to those of a Vestal Virgin: to keep the flames of the past burning, no matter what.
‘You’re not responsible,’ Lace reassures him. ‘I’ll tell him so myself.’
‘You’ll — tell him?’ Uncle Bill scrabbles in his desk drawer for his cigarettes, even though he and Jean have strict rules about smoking inside.
‘Yes,’ she says in a calm voice. ‘Next time I have The Dream.’ She’s learnt to speak of The Dream as if it can be controlled; it’s the only way she can stop it from burning her alive in her bed.
Uncle Bill shoves his cigarette back into the packet and closes the drawer on the whole thing. ‘In a dream,’ he nods. ‘Good idea.’ It’s not often that he lapses into the ‘let’s pretend’ voice used by so many adults, but occasionally he disappoints. There is, of course, a vast difference between ‘a dream’ and The Dream, but Uncle Bill seems to have enough to cope with, so Lace leaves the room, white-lying that she’s promised to help prepare the vegetables for dinner (in truth, Aunt Jean has taken to the sofa with a bottle of aspirin, and has promised deep-frozen pizza). Over the following days, whenever Lace’s heart misses her discarded self, her brain commands her to go t
o her room and look at the sheet of newspaper pinned to the back of her door.
LACE IS FIERCE!
That’s the headline that first caught her eye, and beneath the words are beautiful lace leggings and sumptuous lace bows, racy lacy bodices and rocking lacy gloves. She folds her arms and pouts her mouth in the manner of the smoky-eyed models. Repeat after me: Grace is gone, Lace is strong!
By the time the school term begins, Lace no longer doubts her decision. ‘I’m fierce,’ she tells herself, smoothing her skirt under her thighs and sitting in the centre of the back row. She surveys the mousy heads in front of her: tufted, cow-licked, parted and slicked. Although these girls have previously called her Spacey Gracey, Spazzy Star, Cry Baby, and Orphan Girl, although they’ve looked on, wide-eyed, as her arms fly uncontrollably out from her sides (‘Simply a matter of nerves,’ reassures Uncle Bill’s child-psychologist friend), although they’ve laughed at her weeping before school and her uncontrollable shivering in the afternoon — from this point on they will recognise her as someone different. After this, they’ll call her only by her chosen name.
‘I want Lace!’ they shout, when it comes to picking partners for gym. ‘Lace!’ they cry, voting for class captain, and a school representative for the local radio station. By the time mid-term rolls around —
‘She’s changed beyond recognition!’ her astonished teacher tells Bill and Jean.
Such is the power of a name. Nonetheless, Lace must remain vigilant at all times, so she implements a ‘three strikes and out’ policy. Anyone calling her by her old name once or twice is forgiven; after that, she turns them to stone with a single stare. ‘Love you, Gracie,’ says Uncle Bill occasionally, if he’s been working too hard or has just woken up from a nap. Because Lace loves him back, she lets this go, but it’s her only exception. If her future is to be worth anything at all she has to be strict, every single day.
Soon her arms stay obediently at her sides, her neck remains straight at the breakfast table, and her head is high. The only residue of Grace is the crying — ‘Every single day!’ she exclaims despairingly to Aunt Jean. But even this eventually becomes an acceptable — and later even a desirable — part of her. She’s no longer a cry baby. She’s the Princess of Tears.
And so she strides into her teens with pale cheeks but glittering eyes. Her long determined legs carry her away from early tragedy, her strong determined mind repeats the maxim Mind over matter! She sleeps with her first boyfriend, breaks up with him shortly afterwards, doesn’t suffer. She sleeps with her second boyfriend, and then her third. She discovers that most of the world desires her, but no one is allowed to get close without her permission.
Mind over body, she reminds herself as she takes chances, takes hearts, and escapes from unfamiliar beds. She is tender but direct, never tells lies or give false hopes, and for this reason she rarely makes enemies. She’s indomitable while being soft-hearted: cries only for others, never for herself. She rescued herself at the age of ten, and she’s been keeping herself afloat ever since.
‘Do you remember those nightmares you used to have when we were kids? Made you scream so loud the whole house would wake up?’ Chummie doesn’t usually waste time looking back; this is one thing that he and Lace share. But every now and then, since Bill and Jean left for Australia, he feels he has a legal duty to survey Lace’s past, present and future. ‘You don’t still have those dreams, I hope?’
‘All gone.’ This is Lace’s standard reply and it’s enough to satisfy Chummie, who’s newish to the job of guardian.
‘Good, good,’ he approves — and until now, against some odds, it’s been quite okay. Lace is surviving. Loving but detached, promiscuous but careful, loyal but surprisingly ruthless, particularly when it comes to reminders of her former self. Yet on some days, she glances into a mirror and then hurries from the room. For somewhere deep in her eyes she can still see Grace. Few escapes are so complete that you outrun your nightmares.
THE ASH CAN
WHAT HAS SHE DONE? Lace kneels on the floor in an unstaged gesture of grief. She rakes through the rubbish bin with both hands. The past hour is over without a trace, but the evidence is plain to see. Ashes.
‘I burned them. I burned them up.’ She looks at Gibby, aghast. Her heart feels as if someone is squeezing it; it hurts so much she can hardly stay upright.
Gibby is trying to wrap her in a rug. ‘You didn’t burn them. You burnt images of them. Anyway, that’s what newspapers are for. I should know, I deliver them.’ It’s a bad joke, as weak as the tea he’s made. As he flusters about with the rug, he knocks over her cup, and there’s more mess to clean up.
‘My hair.’ Now Lace is sitting on the edge of the sofa, running her blackened hands over her head. ‘I cut it off. Did I burn that up, too?’ She can feel the ends against her neck, blunt-edged and sharp at the same time.
Gibby looks around in a businesslike way, peering on the floor and then into the bin. ‘I suppose you did. Never mind. There was something weird about those girls at school who saved their ponytails after a haircut. Same as people keeping their milk teeth.’
Lace feels completely displaced. Nothing looks familiar, not even Gibby. His face is dead white and his features have slipped sideways: crooked nose, uneven eyes. ‘Why aren’t you at work?’ The tea he’s made is terrible: surreptitiously, she spits it back into the cup so as not to hurt his feelings.
‘Officially, I’m working now. Your local sandpit is currently stocking a stack of undelivered newspapers.’ He continues sweeping and mopping as if his life depends on returning the room to normal.
Lace notices that his fingers are purple. How long was he standing outside in the cold? He’s also limping. ‘What’s wrong with your ankle?’
‘It’s nothing. Sprained it earlier this evening. Tripped over some damn boxes in the loading zone.’ Gibby carries the rubbish bin into the kitchen with a semblance of nonchalance.
The unseen tap runs, water is sluicing away ash, Lace grips the edge of the rug. What has she done? She lies down against the scratchiest cushion and rubs her face deliberately back and forwards, so the prickly pile scratches her skin. Take that. You deserve it. You burnt them up.
Gibby is back, still visibly anxious. ‘Drink some more tea. You’ve barely touched that.’
Lace sits up. Her right cheek is flaring, her left is stone cold. She’s split in two and might never merge again. Mutely, desperately, she looks at Gibby.
He’s not very good at holding people as he hasn’t had much practice, but he tries. His arms clasp around her as you might hug a tree: tentatively, unsure if your action is commendable or laughable. Clumsily twisting his head, he checks his watch. ‘Don’t worry, I can stay another fourteen minutes. Seventeen, if I run faster on the way back and the lights aren’t against me.’
His jumper smells of perspiration, printer’s ink — and ash. Lace holds tightly onto his woollen wrists and closes her eyes. She can feel the slight puffing of his concern on her bare neck. ‘You hadn’t called me, and you wouldn’t answer the phone,’ he says, between breaths. ‘I had to check that you were safe.’
Safe. It’s a relative term spoken in a room still whirling with charred particles, and they both know it.
‘Maybe Chummie will get home soon,’ suggests Gibby, as if the arrival of a well-meaning but obtuse relation will bring back Lace’s destroyed possessions and restore her equilibrium.
‘Not till six,’ says Lace, ‘but don’t worry, I’m okay now.’ She pauses. ‘There was a — a lurch.’ It’s the only way she can describe it, but the word slips off the experience rather than defining it. ‘I felt it coming but I couldn’t stop it.’ She’s not surprised when Gibby says, ‘Oh, right, a lurch,’ in the vague positive voice people use when they don’t understand but are trying to.
Later, when he’s left and she is taking a bath, she sees the chain of events much more clearly. Lying still in the filmy water, her fingernails still rimmed with black, she sees that a fau
lt line has opened in her life every few years, shaking her to the core, sending her reeling, bringing her to her knees.
SIGNIFICANT QUAKES
At the age of eight, the ground split open and she lost them all.
At the age of ten, she stopped believing that they would come back.
At the age of sixteen, she became determined to forget.
At the age of twenty, she’s finally realised.
The ground will never be solid.
They will never return.
Forgetting isn’t possible.
The cold tap drips quietly onto her toes. If she presses her hands hard against her eyes, she can still see some of the words flaring on the back of her lids: ‘Ivan McDonald was just twenty-four when he made this influential, sui-generis masterwork.’ ‘The third collaboration between film-maker McDonald and his wife Cathy. Artistically audacious: a heart-warming tribute to marriage.’ ‘Five months after the birth of their second daughter, Esme, the filmmaking duo have produced a shockingly intimate yet strangely tender portrait of domestic life.’
She opens her eyes for a second, closes them again and sees nothing at all. Newsprint is disposable, and it’s also replaceable. These were Gibby’s words as he tucked the rug around her again and left, with only twelve minutes up his sleeve. ‘We can track down copies of those articles and photos again,’ he’d told her. ‘Don’t worry.’
In spite of his reassurances, Gibby seemed to have left smudges of anxiety behind him: on the teapot, on the table, on every surface he’s touched. Once he’d gone the room had darkened further. Lace had watched the blackness creeping up the walls, spreading like mould, reaching long fingers towards the ceiling. Finally she’d understood: the blackness was emanating from her. From Lace herself, who, in a desperate acknowledgement that nothing will bring her family back, had burnt all remnants of them.
FUNERAL MEATS AND GAMBLING TABLES
DEATH BRINGS ALL KINDS of logistical problems in its wake: personal possessions, incomplete wills, unfinished work, never-fulfilled promises. When a death is a near-death, however, the logistical problems end up on your own doorstep — and in Bright’s case this happens literally.
Suicide Club, The Page 9
