Something in the World Called Love

by Sue Saliba

  and esma raising her empty glass saw kara mouthing amongst the noise, ‘oh, and of course to esma,’ but no one heard her and it was just as well because even though esma was saying to herself over and over again, just be like the bird, just be like the bird, there were tears only a human could cry falling across her cheeks and she was grateful no one – not even kara – stopped to notice.

  the gardens, when she got to them, were dark and quiet.

  only her panting and her gasping from all that running broke them apart so they shattered – just for a moment – into the pieces she saw in daylight, twigs and grass and sky, until the night closed everything in again and she was smothered in blackness.

  what a relief, she thought, to be in a place so far away. and although it was winter and she should have frozen in her red fairy-light dress, she felt her way from one tree trunk to another until she knew she was beside the duck pond and she curled up in the raised roots of a special elm and slept.

  it was proving to be one of the most bitter winters. kara had warned, ‘i was born on the coldest day of the year,’ and esma shouldn’t have woken from her sleep the next day. perhaps that was her desire after all. to simply fade away and not have to wrestle with the forces of her life any more. she might have even wished kara would find her and feel the tiniest bit of sadness, or that simon might see her dead and lost, blue lips and brittle hands, and regret that he had sneaked around the house late at night in pursuit of kara.

  whatever she thought, esma dreamt of nothing. she only woke the next day to feel someone beside her, and realise something had changed.

  against the spine of her dress, she felt the outline of a body, feather-light and full of bones. it breathed with the softest breath but pressed against her with its warmth. it should have been her imagination, so full of nothingness did it feel but it was present and real. and when she turned to face it, she was suddenly not surprised.

  ‘rascas.’

  his eyes were closed and his face was burrowed into the space where her shoulder bones had been.

  ‘rascas.’ she bent towards him.

  he was sleeping, fast inside private dreams where the cold of outside couldn’t touch him.

  ‘safer you stay in dreams,’ she said, and lifted herself quietly and stepped across the grass, with its wetness and ice.

  how beautiful the gardens seemed, stark and deserted and absent of all that fuss and noise of the night before. the restaurant, chloe, kara’s drunken friends. the gardens seemed like an invisible space present only to her and rascas and, of course, to the possum with its night-time eyes.

  there was the house, number 22. a perfectly even number, across a sea of asphalt. iron-spiked fence, immacutely arranged rubbish bins and kara, chloe, simon inside. it all seemed so predictable, so set. but she was wrong.

  the bins were evenly spaced, the spikes were as pointed as ever, simon was sleeping behind his half-open bedroom door, and kara was standing inside the kitchen. but there was no chloe.

  ‘i thought you wouldn’t be back until later,’ kara said in a shaky voice, but she didn’t turn around. she was wearing her silk dressing gown but the collar of her jacket seemed to be poking over the top as if she hadn’t changed since the night before but only added another layer.

  ‘i didn’t think you’d notice me gone,’ esma said.

  and kara swung around.

  ‘esma. i thought you were chloe.’ her eyes were rimmed with red.

  ‘no, i’m esma,’ esma said and although she was standing half-chilled on a sunday morning in her red special dress of the night before, kara said nothing and looked at the brown of the lino floor.

  ‘chloe didn’t come home,’ she said at last.

  ‘really?’

  ‘yes, she went back with jonathan, to his place.’

  esma nodded.

  ‘i mean… i mean, i just hope she’s all right,’ kara said.

  there was nothing else to say. esma shrugged and turned to make her way upstairs, but kara called to her.

  ‘esma, why don’t you have some licorice tea? i can just make some… you looked so lovely last night…’

  but esma was already at the top of the stairs.

  ‘esma…?’ kara called after her.

  ‘it would be nice,’ esma said at last, after she’d found what she wanted in her room, ‘but i can’t.’ she was at the bottom of the stairs now and heading for the front door. ‘i have someone special waiting for me.’ and holding the sky blue blanket she knew rascas would love, she headed across the road to the gardens.

  she was right. he lifted his head to let her tuck the soft wool behind him, and twitched his whiskers in complete satisfaction when esma crawled in beside him and pulled the blanket over them. the ducks had disappeared from the pond, she noticed, from the coldness or the winter light, she wasn’t sure. perhaps there’s a time when everyone has to sleep, she thought. perhaps there are seasons inside us all, happening again and again. and it’s impossible to try to be summer – to pretend to be summer – all the time.

  she looked at rascas. he had his right front paw resting on her waist. his eyes were closed. she lifted his paw, then, held the soft pads towards her and studied their skin. how beautiful. she decided she’d never seen a hand so beautiful – or real.

  the mapping of his world there inside his paw. she held the picture in her mind, the single details, and knew that later she’d draw it in her book of sparks.

  and so she was, sketching a palm, a pad, a tiny burst of broken skin, when she heard something placed against the wooden floor outside her bedroom door. and the retreating steps of kara. esma had been in her room since the middle of the day when rascas had woken from their bed by the pond and set off, determined, to the boys’ house. he was full of purpose, it seemed. revived perhaps from his night-time in the gardens. he made esma smile.

  she thought of him as she sketched his hand – and how she’d once foolishly, ignorantly mistaken his vulnerability for weakness.

  and then the sliding of a piece of paper – a weighted piece of paper – outside her door.

  she wouldn’t have guessed what it was, although it was no surprise to see it.

  a piece of birthday cake on a perfect square of paper. and the words, written in gold ink, love kara xxx she should have simply accepted it, silently, politely – that is, if she wanted nothing to change. but something pushed her. some voice said, jump, move, leap into that place – if just for a moment – from which you’ll never forget the sight.

  and she knocked once, twice. ‘kara.’

  she knew kara was waiting by the door.

  esma waited.

  ‘come in,’ kara said at last, as she opened the door after the time she pretended it took her to reach it from her desk. ‘i’m just preparing for my physics exam.’

  ‘thanks for the cake.’

  ‘that’s okay. you weren’t around last night when we were cutting it.’

  esma offered no explanation.

  ‘do you want to come in?’ kara said, stepping back.

  it was different from her usual tone. this one was tentative, hopeful rather than confident.

  ‘thanks.’ esma stepped inside.

  she hadn’t been into kara’s room since chloe had moved in there. it was different from how she remembered it, from how it had been that first time kara had touched her, held her hand, told her she could see why prasit loved her. it was messier, grubbier. it lacked the essence, the promise of otherness, that esma had glimpsed in kara that day, back in march, of the house interview.

  ‘so what’s going on with chloe?’ esma said.

  for a moment, she couldn’t believe her own bluntness.

  but she persisted.

  ‘is she still down at jonathan’s?’

  ‘i guess so,’ kara said.

  ‘well, i suppose she’s free to do what she wants,’ esma said at last in a kind of carefree way.

  ‘no, she’s not,’ kara said. ‘not if it hurts other p
eople.’

  ‘how’s her spending the night with jonathan hurting anyone else?’

  ‘it’s not about sleeping with jonathan, or anyone else.

  i’m happy for her to… do whatever… it’s about her… lack of ethics.’

  ‘what?’

  ‘she lied, esma, that’s it. and it’s not the first time. she tells lies.’

  esma was silent.

  ‘and it’s hurtful,’ kara went on, ‘when you trust someone and they lie to you, they break that trust. how can you create a safe, loving relationship when someone does that?’

  ‘how did she lie to you about jonathan?’

  ‘she said she wasn’t interested in any of those boys, the ones up the road, at number 30.’

  ‘at the boys’ house? at simon’s second home – or first?’

  ‘whatever.’

  there was a kind of stand-off then, esma facing kara in the room.

  ‘i just don’t want her going down there all the time, being distracted from her studies. i’m kind of responsible for her here in melbourne,’ kara said.

  but esma was unconvinced.

  ‘what else has she lied about?’ esma said.

  ‘i don’t know.’

  ‘what else, kara?’

  ‘… her illness, that’s the most obvious, i guess.’

  ‘so she didn’t have abnormalities of the heart and have to cope with a boyfriend back in brisbane leaving her because he couldn’t handle the illness?’

  ‘no, he left her because she slept with someone else.’

  ‘and what other lies has she told?’

  ‘it doesn’t matter, esma.’

  ‘so, what about you and simon sneaking around the house and sleeping together behind my back?’

  she couldn’t believe she’d said it, but she had. and kara’s eyes were like saucers.

  that was when there was a knock at the door.

  ‘hey, esma.’

  it was simon.

  ‘hey, esma. i’ve found it, the case of the state department of animal welfare versus wilson, 1994.’ he had a huge book open in his hands.

  ‘sorry,’ he said, suddenly caught in the awful space of kara’s bedroom. ‘sorry, i… just heard you up here, esma… hi, kara.’

  silence.

  they were both staring at him, esma and kara.

  ‘you guys are obviously talking about something.

  i didn’t mean to burst in. sorry, i was just…’

  ‘passionate?’ esma said.

  he looked at her, half-amused, half-puzzled, and she smiled.

  ‘it sounds great, simon. promising. i’ll come down in a minute.’

  and as she left kara’s bedroom, almost straight behind simon, kara rushed to her and whispered, ‘it only happened once. one night two years ago… he didn’t want it to go on.’

  and esma paused. she felt a little stop to her heart, but then she continued. she went down the stairs and along the hallway. she was thinking of those puppies and those concrete floors, and the government department and samantha and the wire prisons they’d free those dogs from. wire and concrete and stale, rotten air. they’d free them and they’d prosecute that man and they’d make sure it never ever happened again.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Thank you so much to Tegan Morrison, my

  wonderful editor, and to Pippa Masson, my agent

  at Curtis Brown whose support and enthusiasm

  has been tremendous. Thank you also to Allison

  Colpoys for her design work on the cover and

  throughout the book.

  A special thanks to Ann Shenfield whose friendship

  continues to be invaluable and to the members

  of my Writers’ Workshop Group: Jim Bott, Phil

  Canon, Rosemary Fitzgerald, Chrissie McMahon

  and Isabella Torriero.

  And, of course, thank you to my husband, Bruno,

  and to my special animal friends: Minou, Sally,

  Charbon and Flash, Missy, Chirpies and the

  memory of Tori.