Something in the World Called Love

by Sue Saliba

  ‘really?’ esma smiled and simon looked awkward, apologetic.

  ‘they’re proud of me, i guess. i’m the oldest child and they’ve worked all their lives at the toyota factory…’

  ‘and now their son’s studying law at melbourne uni.’

  ‘yeah.’

  ‘is that why you help out at the maltese centre? for your parents?’

  ‘i’d probably work there anyway, but, yeah, it’s a big thing for them. they’ve been involved with the centre for years. they’re on the committee. my dad’s been president and helped raise lots of money for the elderly people and a youth worker, different things.’

  he was staring at esma and then he moved and bent back down to the oven door. she felt the warmth as it swallowed him. ‘perfect,’ he said. ‘i was thinking you’d like these, esma, when i got them from my mum.’ and he sat beside her and offered her the plate of pastizzi, warm and ready.

  perhaps esma should have blushed now or gone silent or made herself completely still in a way that was not peaceful or in accord with the world, but instead she found herself ready to speak for the first time in a long long while.

  she found herself ready to say,

  and then the door blew open,

  and kara entered.

  it was not yet winter, but the wind had already begun to pick up around the house. you could hear it at nights, and sometimes during the day if you weren’t distracted by the sunlight, because although the coldness was coming, the summer was still draining away and it was a kind of in-between time,

  a time when one thing was struggling to arrive, and another to leave.

  kara appeared in the kitchen. it seemed odd to her, no doubt, to see the three sides of the table empty and esma and simon sharing the only side near the corner. ‘oh, you’re giving esma the leftovers, are you, simon?’ she looked at esma. ‘we ate them fresh when you were sleeping earlier. we couldn’t finish them all.’

  and esma felt the softness of pastry turn to stone in her mouth.

  simon stared at the rain that had fallen against the kitchen window. he would talk about it later, saying how amazing it was, that those tiny drops magnified everything.

  ‘you’re back earlier than i expected,’ he said at last. ‘there wasn’t much to check out. i know the place well from my birthday two years ago.’

  simon was silent.

  ‘it hasn’t changed much at all. afghan rugs on the walls, the cushions where we all sat. they even still have the belly dancing. remember when we did that?’ simon nodded.

  ‘oh, esma, you’re probably wondering what we’re talking about,’ kara went on. ‘simon and i have been discussing it for a while. it’s my birthday coming up, and simon came along to the afghan restaurant with us to celebrate two years ago – before he moved in.’

  there was meant to be something further it seemed, but everything stopped still. as if… what? as if esma were meant to fill in the rest herself.

  ‘good,’ esma said, and it felt like the most foolish thing she’d uttered all day. how could one simple word, one minute gesture be turned into a cavalcade of embarrassment, of awkwardness – and yet, this was how it so often was with kara. that is, how it was for esma with kara.

  except, of course, when they stepped together into some kind of unknowing. when they talked about love endlessly at the kitchen table or listened to cesaria evora sing her dusky portuguese songs or sat together silently, watching the gardens from the broken balcony upstairs.

  ‘do you think this yearning to know will ever leave us?’ kara said one evening as they watched the trees turn black against the sky. ‘do you think this curiosity will ever leave us, esma?’

  ‘if it does,’ esma answered, ‘everything will be completed and finished. everything will be over.’

  ‘don’t you wish for that, esma, that everything could be said and done, known, fixed?’

  ‘i guess part of me does, but then part of me knows something else.’

  ‘that there’s something alive about living in incompletion? about living life with its imperfections and rough edges instead of having all the answers, solid, tight?’

  ‘maybe,’ esma said. ‘there’s a poem of rumi’s i really like. it’s called “love dogs”. i put it on my wall above my desk the other night. it’s about a man who stops calling out to allah because someone says he’s a fool, calling and calling and never getting any answer. then khidr, the guide of souls, appears and asks the man, ‘why did you stop praising?’ and the man says, ‘because i never heard anything back.’ and khidr tells him that his longing is the return message, that just as a dog calls out for its master, the man’s yearning, his wishing, is the whole reason, the whole meaning – and there can be nothing more.’

  and it was later – though not much later – that esma, thought to be sleeping, opened her eyes in the near-dark to see kara, having sneaked into her room with a tiny torch, reading the last four lines of rumi’s poem:

  there are love dogs

  no one knows the name of.

  give your life

  to be one of them.

  and kara seemed to take something from this poem, or perhaps from esma’s words about this poem. it was as if she had gained a certain knowledge about esma’s way of thinking. she went about the house lightheartedly, smiling as she made the tea, turning up the radio as she washed the dishes. she was content, peaceful and would have gone on happily if it hadn’t been for simon.

  on a wet saturday morning, he made his announcement, simple and perfect, and unmistakably clear.

  ‘this is samantha,’ he said. it was the first girl he had ever brought home.

  over blueberry muffins and burnt coffee, esma watched

  kara stop. for the first time in fourteen days she stopped still as she entered the kitchen.

  esma was midway between coffee and muffin, a rare feast simon had provided.

  ‘this is samantha. we met at the benefit gig last month,’

  he said.

  esma had already met the blonde girl. bare feet and dressing gown, she’d been wiping a stray hair from simon’s forehead when esma clunked into the kitchen in her too-big shoes. red and unfitting, they’d come to her from her friend sally, who stopped seeing her three years ago when esma became too sad.

  ‘can’t you stop thinking about your sister?’ sally had said.

  they’d been friends – esma and sally – ever since they’d discovered they were the shyest kids in year eight. ‘imagine us,’ sally said when they were given the unlikely job of being publicists for the school magazine, ‘the two shyest people giving voice to the entire school.’

  whether it was because of their shyness or something else, esma and sally became bonded, locked, lost inside or around or between each other. there was no one else.

  but where esma curled in boxes, hid beneath beds and inside wardrobes, sally turned swirly cartwheels and spoke her wishes to the sun. she made capes of salvaged plastic, and smoked unlit twigs at her cardboard penthouse on the third unexcavated hill at the tip. she sat on top of her new-found sun chair, worn so thin esma was fearful her friend would fall through. ‘what happens if it tears wide open?’ esma had said. but sally only laughed. ‘you think i can be pulled by gravity?’ she said. ‘never.’

  and it was true, while the two were friends in one space of their life, they were always going in opposite directions. while sally’s exit from shyness was into patterns of light and wonder, esma’s was somewhere else. at least, back then.

  ‘when are you going to forget the sadness of jen?’ sally would say, but esma was impossible to shift even when she thought she was moving along. that is, even when she thought other people thought she was moving along. ‘you’ll stay forever stuck,’ sally said. ‘you can’t stay shut in sadness.’

  but esma could. she told herself she could plaster bits over the top and pretend to be somewhere else while all the time she stayed back in her world with jen. always connected to jen.

 
‘i have to let you go,’ sally said. ‘i have to say goodbye.’ they were standing in the rain at the school gate, the published magazines in their bags.

  ‘i can’t stay around your sadness.’

  and that was that.

  i need to change, esma told herself then. i need to become someone else, someone different, someone unlike me – so unlike me – that no one will ever leave again.

  and that was when she set her foot on the path to kara – though there was much in between.

  ‘did you see her feeding simon from her plate?’

  esma looked up from her shoes and there was kara.

  ‘did you see her wearing his dressing gown? really, it’s a bit inappropriate first thing in the morning, in our kitchen, don’t you think?’

  esma stopped herself from chewing the muffin crumbs from her fingers. simon had gone now, driven samantha to her house in kensington where she lived with three other zoology students.

  ‘i don’t understand him at all,’ kara continued. ‘i mean, why he always goes for these little blonde girls. it was a different story two years ago, on the night of my birthday.’ a long pause. ‘he’s obviously intimidated by intelligent women.’

  and esma found herself agreeing, although she wasn’t sure she was speaking the truth. after all, samantha had seemed intelligent enough, and esma had felt soft and forgetful – even happy, if that was fair – around her, especially when she discovered samantha did voluntary work at the lort smith animal hospital and nurtured a house full of strays she couldn’t abandon.

  ‘you can’t get into bed some nights for all sam’s companions,’ simon had said before he realised he’d said too much.

  it was before kara had entered the room and turned the air to ice, but all the same he felt uncomfortable with his words, as if he’d sensed esma being drawn into kara and he wasn’t sure where the boundary ended. ‘it’s okay,’ esma said and smiled at simon with a heart that he knew came from esma and not the shadow of kara. ‘it’s great you guys have been seeing each other. i mean, you get on so well, it seems. you kind of look alike. i mean, it’s good you obviously spend a lot of time together…’ she was getting herself deeper and deeper into ridiculous sentences and hoped simon could simply understand that she was trying to say all was okay and she was happy for him and it seemed he understood and everyone was reaching for the coffee and muffins and raspberry jam, when kara appeared in the doorway.

  ‘i thought i smelt something burning,’ she said, after simon had introduced her.

  it wasn’t long until everything went silent and still – and samantha clutched the dressing gown to her throat.

  ‘we should be moving along,’ she told simon, and he made a polite fuss of clearing used plates and cups and buttered knives and had to scamper to catch up with her as she walked down the hallway.

  ‘bye,’ he shouted back to the kitchen as he finally ran out the front door, but esma, weighted by kara’s glare and her own confused guilt, said nothing.

  ‘see you,’ kara said but she didn’t take her eyes off esma.

  ‘i hope he doesn’t start bringing home all kinds of girls,’ kara said. ‘turning this into some kind of halfway house. after all, we all agreed we wanted it to be a home.’

  ‘that’s what i always missed growing up,’ she said.

  ‘at least after my father left.

  and i guess i’ve longed for it ever since – a safe place.

  like you, esma. i know you long for that too.’

  and kara was right, esma did long for that. although for different reasons perhaps.

  ‘we understand but simon wouldn’t,’ kara said. ‘the perfect family he comes from. i know you understand absence and loss, esma. and betrayal.’

  betrayal? esma hadn’t thought of that. she missed jen. she wished her mum was normal instead of always depressed. she was confused by ross edgar’s hatred of everything and, yes, she couldn’t quite believe her dad was now a million tiny bits sailing out past williamstown beach. but betrayal, that meant a promise broken. and esma, sad, lost and wishing for other as she was, had never really felt anyone had made her a promise.

  ‘for simon, all that community work he does at the maltese centre, it’s just that – community work. it’s good deeds. he wouldn’t know what it was like to really experience life, to love someone and have them leave you. someone who really mattered to you – and who you thought you mattered to.’ kara was wet with tears. ‘my dad would take me to the brisbane arts centre where he performed in the theatre company. he played all kinds of roles and he always had actresses following him around. but he said i was his favourite girl. i was special, he said. i was talented like him, creative. i was going to be an actor or a painter, maybe a musician. i was going to be part of that richer world, the world he eventually left for.’

  ‘he left your family for?’

  ‘yes. one day he told my mum he’d met a woman he felt his life was complete with. she was an artist.’

  ‘i can understand why security is so important for you,’ esma said. ‘and trust.’

  ‘yes. i want you to promise me, esma, that you won’t get involved with simon – i mean, that you two never become a couple in this house. it… it just completely erodes the other housemate’s sense of security when two of the housemates get together.’

  ‘we’ll make sure it’s a home,’ esma said. she was trying to put together all the pieces of kara’s revelations, but even without the whole picture she felt kara’s need and she wanted to help, she wanted to make things right. and she wanted things to be right for herself as well.

  a home. it was something she hadn’t let herself believe in for a long long time.

  it was before simon returned that esma filled the lounge with flowers. the kitchen table had a vase of carnations resting on it, and the upstairs landing between kara’s and her own bedroom was red with roses.

  ‘looks beautiful,’ simon said when he finally came home, although he sounded a little groundless as if he sensed something had shifted but he couldn’t quite be sure.

  ‘is kara okay?’ he said. ‘her bedroom door’s closed and it’s very quiet.’

  ‘she must be studying,’ esma said. and they both knew she was lying.

  kara had told esma to lie, to make something up. ‘i just don’t think i can see him for a few days,’ kara had said. and esma, slowly convinced of simon’s crime, agreed to the task. ‘i’ll make something up,’ she said. ‘good,’ kara replied. ‘that’ll make him realise.’

  esma, perhaps a little like simon, wasn’t exactly sure what he was meant to realise. all the same she followed orders – kara had a psychiatric illnesses exam, kara had a migraine headache she couldn’t get rid of, kara had a distressing phone call from her sister in brisbane.

  esma became kara’s trusted servant, apportioning blame and delivering punishment on an errant simon. and simon, for his part, played his role admirably, calling before leaving uni on tuesday night to see if there was anything the house needed from the supermarket on the way home, refusing an extra gig at the empress hotel that would have kept him out all night on the evening of the unofficial weekly house dinner, remembering to hang the used tea towel on the oven door rack immediately after use instead of leaving it a crinkled ball on the sink to gather water, coffee stains, and all manner of unacceptable matter.

  he was wonderfully quiet and present and apologetic for all kinds of things which until then had been invisible.

  things that esma – in between her moments of delicious, near-evil intimacy with kara – had to admit still remained invisible.

  did it really matter that he pulled the front door a little too hard when he left for uni in the morning? or that he spoke on the telephone in the passage instead of taking it into the lounge room? or that he left six pieces of jonathan’s rainbow cake on the toilet window sill for mother possum – exactly eight centimetres apart so she could enjoy each one without losing her balance?

  ‘sorry about the cr
umbs on the toilet floor,’ he said. kara walked past him with her morning cup of coffee. he was standing, awkward, behind one of the kitchen chairs. esma was watching the carnation stems, black with mould, in the vase on the table. she’d forgotten to change the water.

  ‘did jonathan have one of his bake-ups again?’ esma said when kara had climbed the stairs away from the kitchen.

  ‘yeah, his old famous rainbow cake. alain was the taste tester.’

  simon paused then and looked at esma, but she continued unaware, ‘and scott?’

  ‘scott made his stella artois slice.’

  ‘what!’

  ‘his own personal recipe. it’s a secret, and he says if the band doesn’t take off, he’ll put all his energy into corporatising the s.a.s.’

  esma couldn’t help smiling – although she tried to hide it. she looked at the wall outside, through the window, to where she knew a snail shell empty of its occupant had clung, but the shell was gone.

  ‘why don’t you come down the road sometime, esma, to the boys’ place? actually we’re having a barbecue this friday night to celebrate the new demo tape. i know kara’s going to the medical ball, but do you want to come along? eight o’clock, all you can eat, and rascas will be there. you have to come if rascas is there – he loves you.’

  rascas was jonathan’s greyhound, too slow for racing but too shy to be a pet. he spent most of his time hiding behind jonathan’s – or jonathan’s ex-girlfriend tamara’s – legs. unless he spotted esma and then he’d come out from his hiding place and rub his whiskers against her ankle, or the back of her hand if she bent to him – as if he sensed someone more timid in the world than himself and it made him feel okay and suddenly brave.

  ‘i’d love to come, simon,’ she said. and it was the first time in thirteen days she’d looked him in the eye. ‘great,’ he said. ‘we’ll all love to have you there.’

  how strange it may have seemed to hear simon say that: ‘we’ll all love to have you there’ as if he owned another place, as if he belonged somewhere else and inhabited it with an enthusiasm, a joy he couldn’t quite find for 22 starling street. and therein was part of kara’s grief. simon’s other residence, his other home, his other heart.