by Peter Carey
What would “that” be?
So she grovelled.
That’s all right, Mum, he said, it’s been a pretty rough night for everyone.
That “rough night,” said Celine, had presumably included recovering Peli’s body from below the Hoddle Bridge, and a session with Matty Matovic who, having been called in as Frederic’s father, had signed an autograph for an aging fan, and then got himself tangled in the investigation to the extent that his son had accidentally “assisted the police” with more inquiries than they could have made without his help. None of this information was provided by the sergeant at the time. Nor, for that matter, did he do what he was obliged to do, that is, interview Gaby with a parent as a witness.
Perhaps he wanted a drink or his wife had just left him or he simply would not have an actress order him around. Perhaps he already had what he needed to put Dad in Pentridge for two years. So why would he waste his time typing up a needless interview?
Did he think, I’ll “caution” her then fuck the rest of it?
In any case, he cautioned Gaby until she cried and then he gave her a Kleenex and opened the door. He did not quite tell them to piss off.
Mum, he said, you are free to take her home.
But you haven’t interviewed her.
The sergeant seemed too tired to laugh. Do you want to leave, or do you want to stay? It’s not a comfy way to spend the night.
Gaby said she could not leave till she saw her friend.
She’s with her family, love.
I mean Frederic Matovic.
Everyone was with their families now, the policeman told her. Fred was with his dad. Her mum would look after her. Nice cup of cocoa, something like that. And by then he was shepherding (shoving) them up the hall, through the waiting room which was crowded with German backpackers.
Why did this sergeant hate Celine? Did he know she had thrown marbles beneath police horses? Was it just because of this that he walked them all the way to the car and folded up Gaby’s police blanket so neatly?
Take care of her, Mum.
Gaby refused the front seat and climbed in the back.
The sergeant tapped sharply on the glass and waited until Gaby buckled her seatbelt.
As she pulled out into the road Celine still had no idea what had happened. She looked in her mirror and saw her daughter slip sideways out of her belt and lie on a hard bed of books and paper. Celine had no religion, no faith in anything much more than the fact that the lichen on a gravestone lived forever. She thought, God give me another chance to love my child.
IT WAS JUST on dawn when they got home, Celine said. Gaby went to her room and locked the door. Sandy emerged from his office, dressed for work. His eyes were always pale in love or fury but this morning they were glass.
So he was at me from the get-go, she told the stretchy tape, demanding I tell him who was driving the van. How old were they? Who was charged? With what offence? How could she possibly leave the police station without learning the circumstances of her daughter’s detention?
The sergeant had told her to go home.
So she did what the police told her to do? Since when?
On and on.
Years later, she said, this same sergeant was called before the court where the judge asked him why he took prisoners out of jail to eat at restaurants and visit “known criminals.”
I do what I want to do with my prisoners, he said.
Celine washed her husband’s cold, egg-encrusted breakfast dishes. There was no news on the radio. Sandy went into his office to take a call—in private. He returned to say that Matty Matovic (whom he had once called comrade) had been arrested for receiving. He was now on remand awaiting trial, but no-one could locate his wife with the result that Frederic, if Celine was even interested, was being held at Turana, aka, Parkville juvenile detention facility.
She shrugged.
He judged her for that, but why would the criminal Matovics be her concern?
Then Sando turned his attention to their daughter’s bedroom, kneeling at the locked door, whispering like a monk.
Why this was so intolerable Celine still could not explain, years later. Nor could she excuse her own behaviour, for she had gone to her bedroom and locked that door. Thus she had been a child and was doubly in the wrong.
They did not know how she needed them both. She could never tell them even now. She had sat on the bed, listening to every sound. She heard her daughter open the door and admit the supplicant. Then they had locked themselves against her.
Her failure was unbearable. To her shame she took three sleeping tablets which provided a wet narcotic habitat. The earth moved around the sun. Satellites maintained their orbits. She heard the telephone, once, twice, a hundred times, who knows. When she dragged herself to the surface, she was astonished to find her husband was still in the house. He told her Peli Tuputala had drowned in the Yarra River. Did she know him?
No.
Neither of them knew the dead boy’s rank and status, but Sandy was the one to sigh, as if it was Celine’s job, only her job, to know their daughter’s friends.
Why do I make myself appear so ugly? Celine wished to know on tape.
The writer thought, she had never seemed ugly, only spirited, emotional. She had always been so beautiful, so brutally self-critical, he would have forgiven her for murder.
Sandy left for a meeting with constituents. Celine sat at the dining-room table and tried to not need anything from her daughter. When she finally knocked on Gaby’s door she was astonished to find herself wanted, even more surprised to see Gaby at her little student desk, already in a black dress and blouse, strapping on a high-heeled sandal. Her knees were bruised, her eyes were swollen and her mouth lopsided. Celine was permitted to make her sliced tomatoes on toast and Earl Grey tea.
Celine had not liked Frederic from the start, but she assumed Gaby had dressed like this to visit him in Turana. She asked would the girl like to be driven somewhere. Yes, she would, to Peli’s family in Thomastown.
They set off around four o’clock, that is, peak hour for the building trades, travelling north along roads lined with warehouses: auto parts, steel sheds, garden equipment, Melbourne transport, interstate transport. Behind these light-industrial ramparts she discovered clusters of false-bright optimistic houses with dying lawns. Celine had never been to Thomastown before. She did not wonder at the large number of cars parked along Peli’s street, signs that the grieving family was playing host to relatives, some of whom were approaching in that Boeing 727 presently leaving white scratch marks in the sky.
She was instructed to wait. She double-parked and watched the poor creature wobble on her unaccustomed heels. Celine had no idea of what was at stake. There were three steps to the front door and the girl tottered to the uppermost where, unprotected by a rail, she rang the bell. The street was quiet and empty, each house a mausoleum. In the Tuputala home a curtain moved. Gaby made her way across the front lawn, to the high side gate. She let herself in.
Then the front door opened and a solid grey-haired man walked down the steps and out along the concrete path. If he had been a Sikh from Kuala Lumpur she would not have known. He had a slow, wide strut, big thighs, pigeon toes. He walked diagonally across the street and entered another house and of course she had no clue of where she was or what was happening, not even that every human being inside those houses knew the dead boy had been the victim of his love for Gaby Baillieux.
When Gaby emerged from the side gate her mother recognised Solosolo, hobbling on crutches, behind her. Gaby pointed to her mother’s car and then Solosolo threw down her crutches. Sitting, crying, she flung a fist of dirt. Celine started the engine and unlocked the door. By the time Gaby was in the car the street was once more empty.
Celine asked her what was that.
Can we just go?
Celine stalled the car, started again and turned into a driveway, then reversed. At the same time she provided a handkerchief.
Shall we find
Frederic? she asked brightly.
She had been so bloody weak, she thought. She had made herself a doormat when she should have taken charge.
You can just drop me where he is.
Do you know where that is?
You know, Gaby said.
Once Celine had delivered her to the parking lot of Turana youth detention centre—like a suburban bank, she thought—she found herself dismissed.
How will you get home?
I’m not a baby, Gaby said, and followed the Volvo out onto Park Street and waited until Celine turned the corner.
Celine stopped at a newsagent in Brunswick and found Peli and Matty Matovic in The Herald. She learned the Tuputalas were sort of royalty. At home Woody’s assistant was calling on the phone. Then Woody made her wait and wait. When he finally came on the line he was beyond his normal smarmy “Mrs. Quinn” sort of bullshit. He “let her know” that he had been forced to squander a great deal of his “social capital” to keep Sando’s name out of the news.
This was a lie. Gaby was a minor. No-one could publish her name and her father must remain anonymous.
Next Monday morning Gaby went to school as normal. I most definitely, Celine told the tape, I most definitely encouraged her to “see someone.” Please don’t think I didn’t. I knew she had to be in therapy, but I could not force her. I could not make her change a shoe if she didn’t want to.
Meanwhile Sandy seemed protected by a carapace of blame. Fair enough, she thought. He was giving himself hives working for Bob Hawke’s re-election. She was an awful wife, but she made him a healthy breakfast and watched him leave for the electoral office in the rain.
How could I have left him then, even if I had the money?
It was only three or four days later she had a telephone call from a woman who introduced herself as “your daughter’s bookkeeping teacher.” Her name was “Miss Aisen” and she said she had just received some visitors and she hoped Mrs. Quinn would receive them too.
Who are they?
They are on their way to see you now.
They turned out to be two young men with “depressing zip-front track jackets” in “dead” colours, sad maroon, gloomy green. One or both of them were from the Parkville youth detention centre.
The young men placed a worn tennis ball upon her scrubbed hardwood table and showed her how it had been slit. They invited her to squeeze the ball and look inside where she discovered a note, written in her daughter’s hand.
Her daughter had been throwing balls into the Parkville centre in the middle of the night. Balls like this, the young men told Celine, normally contained marijuana but in this case they held letters addressed to a boy who had only stayed in Turana on a single night. He had been discharged from the facility before the balls arrived but the staff had been disturbed, they said, to recognise the “ink.”
Actually Miss Baillieux, it’s blood.
Whose blood?
They looked at her with pity.
Celine read: Hullo BFF.
She pointed out: Frederic’s initials were FM, not BFF.
She was informed that BFF meant Best Friend Forever and was normally reserved by teenage girls for members of their own sex. Hullo BFF, I will die without you, please let me in, please let me be with you. I am all alone in Aisen’s class at Bullshit High. I cannot stand myself. I cannot bear life without you. We can get married. Ask me again I will get high just breathing the air coming out your nose. XXXXXXXXXX
Celine paid no attention to the blood business. Her first thought was, he isn’t gay at all. She told the social workers it was romantic. Had they never done the same themselves?
Oh no, this was not romantic. This was self-damage. Her daughter was under severe mental stress.
Meaning what exactly?
She has been cutting herself.
Celine said, I thought they were ridiculous, but they left their business cards and a pamphlet about girls who cut themselves. I was such an idiot I let them take away her love letter.
Then Miss Aisen called again, basically ordering her to present herself at the school.
So, once more, she said, I was reminded Bell Street High was a dump. Also: I would never have sent my daughter here if I had known how huge the boys were, how they occupied all space, how smug and certain in their expensive sneakers and M. C. Hammer pants. No wonder her grades were so depressing.
I arrived in a sort of lumber room to discover Miss Aisen and a single Apple computer which turned out to be her own. She was less than middle-aged, wiry, a swimmer surely, with short grey hair, intense brown eyes, no makeup and a cotton frock she may have made herself. She had an unnerving gaze, a sort of uninhibited curiosity.
She said, I know you must get this all the time.
I thought, how have I fucked up now?
But she and her father used to see me at the collective. She could list the productions. She had been really upset to read I had been kicked out. Oh God, she was a fan. She asked me did I know who Solosolo was.
Yes.
Did I know they had had a fight, then she corrected me before I answered. It had been a physical fight. In the park, she said.
I see.
No, she meant the car park, the public park, the lane leading to the old man pub, where the big tree was, with the basalt boulders underneath. This was where the boys fought, and she said how much it disturbed her. What they fought about you could not tell, perhaps a wrong look yesterday, or a massacre centuries before. You would know there was to be a fight when you heard the audience gathering. Then, if you looked, you would most likely see the weaker boy, the one who knew he would be beaten.
Celine thought, too much information.
A boy would turn up first and stand beneath the tree. His pride did not allow him to be saved. Then his assailant would arrive and he would cuff and punch the first boy until he was on the ground where he was punched and kicked in the head and the girls would call out, You guys are animals, you guys are sick. Then the boy would go away. Then the girls would go inside.
And the point was?
The point was that Celine’s daughter was the first girl to stand and wait in the shade beneath that tree, beside those jagged rocks. It was no secret: Gaby wished to fight with Solosolo, and each afternoon the staff had been pleased to see Solosolo walk straight past Gaby.
When Solosolo put aside her crutches Gaby spat at her, she whose family were now obliged to bury her brother Fa’a Samoa, and pay for airfares for their grand family, and feed them when they could barely afford to feed themselves. Solosolo slapped Gaby so violently you could hear it in the staffroom like a sound effect. Gaby was smaller, but always dense and solid. She ducked inside the tall girl’s reach. She hit her at the balance point and brought her down, bare limbs on the gravel, and the boys were ugly as hyenas, dancing, loose-mouthed, and it took the shop teacher Mr. Junor and Miss Aisen between them to pull the scratching girls apart.
I was gutted, Celine said. I pretended I had seen the wounds. I explained Gaby would not see a shrink, not anyone.
No, listen, Miss Aisen told me. She was kind to me. Listen, she told me. She laid her hand on my wrist and said my daughter was way brighter than her grades. She was attracted to the most difficult and interesting computer issues. She had a burning sense of right and wrong, of course I must know all that.
Of course, I thought, you are a socialist. Shut up, I thought. Don’t tell me who my daughter is.
If I was lucky enough to have a daughter like this, Miss Aisen said, I would want to know she spent most of her day hiding in a drain beneath Pentridge Prison. A teacher at the primary had seen her come and go. Stop. Swap. Play.
After Peli died, said Gaby.
Rewind play.
After Peli died I was spied on. Everything I did was significant. If a boy fights a boy no-one cares, but if a girl fights a girl she must be psychologically disturbed. My teachers were so clever. They knew without a doubt that I was imprisoning myself as punishment for Pel
i’s death. I was torturing myself by burying my body below Frederic’s father’s cell. I imagined Frederic was in prison so I had to be locked up too. If no-one would punish me, I would do it to myself.
I’m skinny, so I must be anorexic.
I’m a girl who eats lunch, so I must be fat.
I wear black, so I must be a goth or death punk.
I’m a death punk, so I must cut myself for thrills.
If they had taken the trouble to ask me I might have even told them I started sneaking down into the drain because of little Troy, my sole surviving friend. When the Samoans turned on us, Troy lost his protection. Now he was exposed e.g. to Jasim, a vast Lebanese kid who said he would execute him as a drug dealer.
No-one had ever stood beside Troy in his life. Obviously. Now we stood beside each other, at the midpoint of the drain or tunnel at a place where we could see the light at both ends. Troy said his father was a doctor. He said he was going to get a gang and bash Jasim. I told Jasim that Troy had renounced drugs. From that point Troy only sold after school from the lane beside my house. He stopped coming to the drain completely.
As for me, I was a person of interest to the authorities, so I went where no-one could counsel me or “get you through your grieving” (please drop dead). None of them could imagine what I lost, but if I had known it was Miss Aisen who had her sights on me, I would have asked her please come in. She had the only thing I wanted: a 1988 Mac IIx she lugged up and down the stairs once a week. She had cruel-looking magpie eyes and a squishy secret sparrow heart. I did not know she was full of love and yearning and plans to change the world, so I did not let her guess how much I wanted what I wanted.
That Mac IIx was my only plan for life. Plus how to get a phone line and a modem. Then find Frederic. He would be on Altos in Hamburg. Even if he changed his handle I would know my BFF.
Hi, that u?
Yup.
That would be enough.
It was raining on that day Miss Aisen sooled my mum on me. I was in the drain alone, talking to Frederic in my mind, on my screen. Five centimetres of slimy water pushed in around my wrinkly toes.
