The Last Summer of Ada Bloom

by Martine Murray

  And perhaps it had worked. Arnold’s visit hadn’t aroused in him anything except a distant sort of fondness. He was not as sharp or quick or startled; life had worn him down. He had even wondered if he and Arnold could be friends again. After all, here he was, the adulterer, on his way to see his lover. It was hard to be good.

  Susie opened the door wearing nothing other than a floral apron. He was more amused than aroused. His memory contained a select picture of Susie. It took him a moment to adjust to the embodied version. Did some hurt darken her eyes? She had seen his hesitation. But she rallied; she stepped closer and slapped him on the shoulder, lifting her chin, jaunty as a schoolgirl. She eyed him, challenging him. How dare he hesitate, how dare he temper this moment with doubt? Mike laughed inwardly at her defiance and, detecting this shift, she drew him towards her, holding his head with both hands, tunnelling her gaze into his.

  Over her shoulder Mike could see Toby’s drawings of a house and family stuck on the fridge. The dog lay in its basket.

  He suggested she take him to the bedroom. But there, he was even more uncomfortable. There was Joe’s side of the bed: a sachet of pills, a watch, a half-drunk glass of water. On her side, there was a pile of books, just like Martha had. He closed his eyes.

  He didn’t see Joe Layton walk in. He heard Susie’s gasp, like a fish dying in the air. She began to yank the apron off as if she would be more decent in just nothing. Mike lifted his head. ‘Shit,’ he said.

  Joe stared directly at him and then at Susie as if making sure they were both real. Susie said, ‘Joe!’ Then she started saying, ‘Honey, I’m sorry, honey?’ but she was fumbling with the apron tie and struggling to get her legs out from underneath her so she could go to him. He didn’t answer her. He wobbled like a skittle that had just taken a hit and then his eyes screwed closed and he turned away, his hand raised at her in a stop gesture.

  By the time Mike sat up, Joe Layton had left. The front door slammed. Then it opened again. Mike reached for his pants. For a moment he thought he was going to have to fight. But the door slammed again. Mike waited, listening. Susie was crying. Minutes passed before he was certain that Joe Layton had gone.

  30

  The afternoon light struck the trees, flung shadows down. Tilly walked silently next to Raff. The ground was hot and dusty; wind-roused leaves scampered over it like little animals. Ada’s brown arms swung and her singing drifted back towards them as she skipped ahead. She was eager to tell their mother that the fox wasn’t dead after all. She loved to be the one to tell, even if it was a lie. Ada’s problems seemed so enviably simple. Tilly couldn’t remember life ever feeling like that, solvable, answerable, reasonable. But it must have been. She must have been as happy and lucky as Ada was. Maybe Ada would change too when she got older. Maybe that’s what getting older was—realising the unwieldy immensity of your own interior. Then trying to make your inside match your outside, which was like trying to make a hand-drawn sewing pattern match up even though the inside seams are too large. She was always running fast over the mistakes, stuffing her big feelings in like toys in a Christmas stocking that no one ever opened. It made her feel untrue—her inner self was far away from the person who was representing her out there.

  The moment Ada was out of sight, Tilly missed her. Because Ada had made it easier: Ada made it three. Whatever was between her and Raff was diffused by Ada and also inconspicuously allowed. The air bristled with bird sounds and a sense of portent. She and Raff were alone, but the distance between them was stretched thin.

  ‘Well, I’ll be glad to get out of this town one day,’ Tilly said. She hadn’t prepared herself to say that at all, to create an impression of someone with direction, a false impression. Yet it didn’t feel like a lie, it felt like a reach for the self she wanted to be, the self that had tottered forward, without even a push.

  ‘Yeah? Where will you go?’

  ‘Ice skating first of all. At St Moritz.’

  He frowned.

  ‘I thought you meant you wanted to live somewhere else?’

  ‘Yes, I do. Ireland.’

  ‘Why Ireland?’

  ‘Because of their voices…’

  ‘You’re funny.’

  ‘Well, I try to be very normal.’

  ‘It wouldn’t suit you.’

  ‘I could pull it off—you’d be surprised. I have very good manners for one thing.’

  She thought if she could put her hands on his face she would hold it as if it was the most precious thing she had ever held. He picked up a stone and turned it over in his hand.

  ‘Do you sing?’ he said.

  ‘Only to myself.’

  ‘I do my best singing to myself.’

  Why had he asked that? Did it count for him? Was he checking off requirements? Could he only love a girl who could sing? And what if he asked her to sing and she really couldn’t after all and he would think she had told a fib just to impress him when she had just meant she sang in the way everyone sang, not in the way that real singers sing, the ones with lovely voices. Should she tell him right now, to clear it up so he wouldn’t be disappointed should she ever have to sing in front of him? Probably he could sing well, because he played the trumpet. That other girl probably sang, the one with the Shirley Temple hair. She looked like she was a singer. She was even sort of golden like a canary. She probably purred too. She’d have a sultry voice, and growl Nina Simone love songs with her flaxen curls and high heels. She probably had experience too. She wouldn’t be frightened of sex and all the other stuff that came before it. She was like a movie star, with her inviting smile directed straight at him.

  Raff was rubbing at his forehead, as if it hurt. ‘I got this song stuck in my head. It’s terrible. Because of the fox.’

  ‘What song?’

  He began to hum…She knew the song.

  ‘“Fox on the Run”,’ she told him straightaway. He was nodding and singing in a laughing way. She had got it right. There they were walking down the street past the house that overflowed with children and goats and odd bits of furniture, past Beryl Minister’s house with the lawn always closely shaved and past Doug’s copse of thin elms all swept clean because of fire risk, and beneath the flat, blue sky and glinting tin rooves and past everything that was always there. But now that the world had shifted into a bright unfamiliar perfection, it all seemed different: bolder, bluer, clearer, even astounding. Tilly chimed in on the chorus. And everything conspired to belong to it; the neighbours’ houses, the hot grey road, the heat and birds and air, she and him, their dance of voices, the brilliant dust. It was only when the song ended that she realised that nothing had really changed except that her own bedraggled soul now sauntered like a dandy past the shabby familiarity of her street.

  Home, when they arrived, clamped its old ways over it all. They paused at the door. She thought it was all over, but he kissed her—he grinned for a second and then just pulled her towards him and kissed her on the mouth. It lasted long enough that she knew it was a real kiss and she had time to blink and blink again, glimpsing his jaw, his ear and his neck. He looked at her in a tender way and then stuck his hands in his pockets. She stepped back to see his whole face and to see if she could tell what he felt, but he was already saying something, quietly and with a frown.

  ‘You know I’m moving to Melbourne next week?’

  ‘No.’ She deflated instantly.

  ‘It’s a shame in a way, but I planned it ages ago.’

  ‘Are you saying that was a goodbye kiss?’

  He laughed.

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Maybe I’ll move to Melbourne too. Once I get my results.’

  ‘Maybe you will. Look me up if you do.’

  ‘What will you do there?’

  ‘I don’t know. Explore. Play music.’

  She gave up then. She thought she might just sit down on the step and wrap her arms around her knees and feel sad. She stayed silent. He must have sensed it.

  ‘You can visi
t. I’ve got a room with my cousin. You and Ben are pretty different,’ he said as he turned to go.

  ‘He’s much more handsome,’ she said.

  He no doubt meant that Ben was more fun than she was, but the difference between her and Ben came out of his maleness, which made him special to Martha and to the world. None of it was true though, she could be just as sporting as Ben. She could also explore.

  He leaned towards her, but he didn’t take her hand again. He smiled. Did he mean to kiss her again? Once was enough. It was alarming. She turned quickly to go inside. She didn’t know how she felt. But here was her chance. Everything felt as if it depended on it. As if it was a test, as if Raff Cavallo’s unconsidered kiss had left him weightlessly but landed within her with all the bundled-up gravity of an imminent explosion. And now he was leaving.

  31

  Ada arrived home from the windmill and raced in to tell Martha the altered version of story. Her mother hadn’t killed the fox after all. Ada sang it to herself as she skipped down the hall. But no one was there. She flopped on Martha’s bed, flat and wide as a star. She had rehearsed how she would say it: Mama, I looked everywhere but there is no dead fox in the garden, so he must have got up and run away after all. He was only playing dead. Ada had been looking forward to declaring it because there was the force of God’s thunder in it. Ada would deliver fate a blow, swerve destiny back on course. She could save her mother from the universe’s plans because she had undone life and done it up a better way. Her mother now had not really killed anything. Maybe Ada had outsmarted God. Just in case he should hear this impertinent thought, she began to sing a song very quickly to drown out her uncoverable thoughts.

  Hey, ho, nobody home,

  Meat, nor drink, nor money have I none

  Yet I will be merry

  Hey, ho, nobody home.

  But Ada couldn’t save the day if she couldn’t tell Martha. Ada was cross with her mother for not being there, for jeopardising the important moment. She lay very still on the bed. Maybe she could pretend she was dead. How still could she be? Almost immediately her nose itched. God was testing her.

  ‘Ada?’

  It was Tilly. ‘What are you doing, Ada?’

  Ada heaved a sigh. ‘I was pretending to be dead. A dead star. But you ruined it.’

  Tilly lay down on the bed too.

  ‘Where’s Mum?’

  ‘Gone to the hospital, I suppose. Anne Dresden was coming to take her.’

  ‘Poor Mum.’ Tilly sounded worried.

  ‘Don’t worry. She won’t die,’ Ada said with the kindly knowing tones of a doctor. But Tilly hardly noticed. She was already wearing a dreamy smile. It was as if she hadn’t heard a thing. Ada remembered she was still cross with Tilly but she didn’t know exactly why—it had something to do with this love spell she was under. She didn’t want to ask in case it made her feel lonely again. And, anyway, what about dinner? Ada was hungry. Who would make dinner if Martha wasn’t home?

  ‘Are you pretending to be dead again?’ Tilly asked.

  ‘No,’ said Ada carefully. ‘I’m worrying about dinner.’

  ‘We’ll just probably have baked beans,’ Tilly said. She sat up suddenly. ‘Actually, I’m going to cook something for dinner, but first I have to call Alice.’

  Ada frowned. She didn’t believe Tilly could make dinner. Dinner was Martha’s job. Tilly was hopeless. Martha always said she was.

  Tilly went to ring Alice. Ada picked up the receiver on the phone by their parents’ bed quickly before Tilly picked up the other end so that she wouldn’t hear the click. She lay on her back and crossed her feet. She liked listening to phone calls. It was like going to the movies.

  Tilly said, ‘Guess what,’ and then Alice said, ‘What?’

  ‘We pashed,’ Tilly said. Ada frowned. She wasn’t sure what this was, and it annoyed her that she didn’t know. Without knowing she couldn’t be properly disappointed.

  ‘Wow. You and Raff?’ Alice said.

  ‘Yes. He came over.’

  ‘Did you like it? Is he a good kisser?’

  Now Ada knew.

  ‘I guess so. What would I know?’

  ‘Well, you should be able to tell. Bad kissers are all mouth and tongue. Good kissing comes in slowly, like nudging…’

  Ada didn’t like this talk of kissing. She closed her eyes and imagined cheesecake.

  ‘When did you become the kissing expert?’

  ‘Did he try anything else?’

  ‘No. He just told me he was moving to Melbourne next week. Maybe I didn’t kiss him back properly.’ Tilly sounded pained.

  ‘Maybe he was shy,’ Alice said.

  ‘He’s not shy. He probably thinks I’m frigid.’

  ‘Oh, who cares what he thinks.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Are you scared?’

  ‘No. I don’t know what I am.’

  ‘Do you trust him?’

  ‘Trust? I don’t even know. I don’t know about trust.’ Tilly laughed, but it wasn’t funny.

  This was sex, thought Ada. This is where it was going. Sex wasn’t one bit funny and neither was trust. Ada knew what it was. Why didn’t Tilly? You could not trust a fox. You could not trust the headmaster, or the windmill. You could not trust the weather. You might not be able to trust Raff Cavallo, just like you might not trust Ben, or their dad—even he couldn’t be trusted. But you could trust William Blake. You could trust PJ. Ada suddenly wanted PJ. She hung up the phone and went to find him.

  Ben was in the kitchen. He was drinking a can of beer and reading the newspaper—the sport section. Ada forgot about PJ because she realised that Ben was just sitting there and that he didn’t know what she had just found out. In fact, he didn’t know anything. She leaned into the bench and began to hum. He didn’t know what they’d done with the fox. He didn’t know that Tilly was going to have sex with Raff. She liked the feeling of having a secret that Ben didn’t know. If there was anyone to keep a secret from it was Ben, because he was the one who always knew everything.

  ‘Mum went to hospital with Mrs Dresden because she got bitten by the fox.’

  Ben looked up and took a swig of beer.

  ‘Seriously? How the hell? That dead fox?’

  ‘You swore.’

  Ben wiped his mouth.

  ‘Okay, well, what happened? Were you there?’

  ‘Nope. Tilly and I put it down the windmill hole, so we can tell Mum it just ran away.’

  Ben shook his head.

  Ada realised she had given too much away. She sat down on her hands.

  ‘Ada, why do you want to tell her that?’

  ‘I know something else, too.’ Ada took her hands out from underneath her and leaned forward. She wasn’t going to explain about the death coming in the garden. Ben wouldn’t understand. She was going to taunt him instead with her other secret.

  ‘I bet you do.’

  ‘It’s about Tilly.’

  ‘Uh huh.’

  ‘And Raff Cavallo.’

  Ben jiggled his beer can to see what was left. He leaned forward, grinning.

  ‘Are you going to tell me? Tilly was showing off wasn’t she?’

  Ada wasn’t going to tell. No way on earth. She shook her head and pressed her lips together. Shut. But then she couldn’t help saying just a little bit.

  ‘It’s to do with sex.’

  Tilly walked into the room. They both turned and stared at her.

  ‘What?’ said Tilly.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Ben.

  Ada shouldn’t have told Ben anything at all. She wished she could take it all back. Now that she saw Tilly standing there, looking so scared and so happy with her eyes so wide open anything could sail into them. What if Ben said something, something that would crush her, because that’s how she looked, as breakable as glass. Tilly wouldn’t trust Ada again. And Ada wanted to be trusted.

  Where was PJ? She jumped up and flung the flywire door open, calling to him. Inside the phone wa
s ringing. Everything seemed so urgent all of a sudden—as if Tilly was about to do something terrible and Ben was about to say something crushing, and the fox was dead in the forever hole. PJ hobbled up to her. She bent down and put her face close to his.

  ‘PJ,’ she gulped. She pressed herself close. She was going to have to tell him her big secret. Because it had all accumulated within her and now she had to get it out of her. But she didn’t know what to tell him. Actually, she didn’t want to tell anything anymore. She just wanted to be Ada and PJ. And nothing else.

  Tilly came out and stood looking at the sky. It wasn’t yet dark but the day was in shreds, the blue drained away, the shimmer of the evening welling up. Why would she stand there and stare at the sky?

  ‘What are you doing?’ Ada dreaded the answer, but she had to ask.

  Tilly turned. She blinked. Her hands just seemed to drop down as if she had let them go.

  ‘Well it’s so strange. Mum just rang and she isn’t coming home tonight. She is staying with Anne Dresden. Of all nights.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Nothing. It’s just such a strange hot night.’

  Tilly felt it too. This was so wonderfully reassuring that Ada wriggled out of her turmoil and sank her head onto PJ and listened to his body heaving. This always made her sleepy. The cicada chorus had started up. The strange hot night was underway.