Candelo

by Georgia Blain

  I had a termination once, and she looks out the window. It was not the simple choice that we always defined it as.

  I am surprised by what she says and I want to know when, but she shakes her head.

  It was a long time ago. A married man. Before your father. She turns back to the papers at our feet.

  Vi wants me to have a child. It has been something she has wanted for a long time. But even more so since she became ill.

  I have never told her that I did try once. With Marco. For about a year.

  It was more at his instigation than through my own desire. When nothing happened, he wanted to have tests, but by then I knew that it wasn’t right. That it shouldn’t go on.

  Vi tries to push a box of files towards the door, and I have to stop her. She is coughing and the hack from deep in her chest is fierce and rough.

  When I suggested clearing out her workroom, I was surprised by the enthusiasm with which she embraced the idea. And then I realised. She did not see it as a packing up, as an ending – she saw it as a clearing of the decks to make way for the new, for her next projects. And this is the way we have approached it.

  On the good days I am hopeful that this is in fact what it is, but on the days when I hear that cough again, I am fearful that we have just been fooling ourselves.

  Whenever I failed to get a part, Marco would try to cheer me up.

  Listen to how bad it is, and he would read out two or three of the worst lines in the script, usually so appallingly that I would have to smile.

  You should be relieved, he would say. Imagine having to suffer your way through this. He would read a little more, unaware of how truly expressionless he could make something sound.

  A pitiful opiate for the masses? I would ask.

  Exactly, and he would smile.

  But even when he made me laugh, it did not lessen the hurt that usually follows a rejection. The knowledge that you are, somehow, not good enough.

  And that was how it was on the afternoon of my audition. I knew I was not what they were looking for. There were five of us who had been asked to read. We were all the same height, the same build and had the same colour hair, but there was only one of us who was right. And although I had hated the role, it was as I had known it would be: once I did not have it, I wanted it.

  I rang work and told them I could not come in. My boyfriend was still unwell. Worse, in fact. They understood. They like to think of themselves as a supportive team.

  I caught the bus home and, with my head pressed against the window, I stared out at the grit of the day. The sky was swollen. Purple. Everything was still. Not a whisper of air. Against the vinyl of the bus seat, my shirt stuck to my back. I opened the window wide, and I closed my eyes, trying to imagine how I had felt before this nausea had overtaken me.

  If Marco were at home, if everything had not panned out in the way it had, he would tell me that things would change, that there would be a turn. I would be in more constant work and, what’s more, I would be getting parts I wanted.

  You’ll see, he would say.

  I promise, he would say.

  And as I thought about the possibility of those words, of his familiarity, I wished I could call him.

  But I knew that what I was remembering was not the way it had eventually come to be. As the years had passed, he would still try to cheer me up, but not as often and not for as long, and I would sense in the stiffness of his shoulders, in the tightness of his neck, that he had become impatient with me, and with my life.

  He once told a friend that there was nothing quite so difficult as an out of work actor.

  It’s your self-indulgence, he had said after I had thrown a glass at him. It’s so bloody boring.

  It did not stop me.

  When the bad weeks came, it was not just my work. I would barely speak, furious with him for not being able to follow me in the losses that I was traversing. I would find myself remembering the Simon Marco had never met.

  I used to have such a crush on your brother, my older friends would sometimes say to me.

  And they did. Everybody did.

  He was himself, I would say to Marco, but I knew I did not do justice to what my brother had once been.

  He was shy, gentle.

  Open.

  And then he had retreated.

  I don’t know how he can bear it, I would say, thinking of him living with Vi, never falling in love, driving buses all day.

  Maybe he’s happy, and Marco would barely look up from the book he was reading. Maybe it’s just you who can’t bear the thought of his life. Maybe it’s simply your expectations that have been disappointed.

  Not surprisingly, his words did little to arrest the downward spiral that I had carved out for myself, that I was determined to complete. I would force myself to go back to that night all those years ago at Candelo, and I would see things that I hadn’t really seen because I hadn’t been there at the time.

  And then there was Evie.

  Clutching her joke book, her legs in the arms of her T-shirt, and her pants worn on her arms.

  Why did the germ cross the microscope?

  This is how I remember her.

  Still.

  Because he wanted to get to the other slide.

  Marco would tell me that I should stop moping. That I should get on with things. That it did not do anyone any good to lie around. To wallow. And (most important of all) that there were countless people out there a lot worse off than me.

  I could see that he did not intend to be harsh, that he was simply trying to help.

  Are you all right? he would ask later, and as he leant forward to kiss me, I would find myself pulling away and I would see the hurt in his eyes.

  It was not that he did not care. It was just that his way was not my way.

  There’s no point to this, he would say. You just have to get on.

  Because that is what he had done. He had got on.

  Look at your life, he would say, and I would know that he was holding his own up for comparison.

  He had been a builder. He had run away from an alcoholic father and started work when he was fifteen. At twenty he took himself back to school and then on to university, studying at night and working during the day. His days and his evenings were full. He now works in industrial relations, and his climb up the union ladder has not only been rapid, it is also far from over.

  My life did not make sense to him. It never would. He secretly felt that my moods came from too little to do. He would tell me it was up to me. He would try to offer practical advice. Ways of getting out of the rut, possible career changes, and then, of course, there was the baby option.

  Why not? he asked.

  And as he moved to kiss me again, I would close my eyes, wanting to pull away, wanting to turn my head, but not wanting to see that hurt in his eyes.

  So, we tried, despite the fact my heart was never in it.

  And as I sat on the bus, I looked down at my stomach. There was no sign, no visible indicator, no evidence of what I knew was there.

  But it was there. And as I let the realisation seep in, I wished I knew what to do.

  ten

  In the dark of that first night, I woke and I did not know where I was.

  Candelo.

  I whispered the word to myself. Trying it. Rolling each syllable out, smooth and round.

  Next to me, Evie slept. Curled up on the mattress, covered by a sheet, the blanket kicked down to her feet, her thumb in her mouth.

  Outside I could hear the branches scratching against the window, rattling against the glass with each faint stirring of the breeze. The shadows on the wall drifted, floating backwards, forwards. From the room next door I could hear one of them snoring. Mitchell, or Simon. Each intake of breath. Each exhalation.

  I could not sleep.

  The floor was gritty beneath my feet. Years of dust and dirt, leaves that had drifted in through cracks beneath doors, holes in floorboards, twigs, sticks, cockroaches th
at darted into corners and a door that creaked as I opened it, the milky light of the moon spilling out across the corridor, crisscrossed by the branches tap-tapping against the window.

  I looked from one end of the hall to the other, the darkness on either side of me, the long worn runner only just visible as I made my way, quietly, carefully, towards the thin strip of yellow light under Vi’s door, letting myself in without knocking.

  Already her room looked like her room. Her papers laid out on her desk, the typewriter out of its case, her dresses hung in the cupboard, her transistor radio on, late-night classics in the stillness of the night.

  Who lived here? I asked her.

  She put her book down, the spine bent and worn, and took her glasses off.

  Some friends of some friends of some friends, and she pulled back the sheet on the other side of her bed, moving over to make space for me.

  Used to my insomnia, she did not question the fact that I was up at this hour.

  Why did they leave?

  She shrugged her shoulders. Who knows? The manager takes care of everything now and he has his own house. She smelt of soap and, beneath that, the faint trace of cigarettes and sweet cheap perfume.

  I sat on the bed next to her and looked at what she was reading. Women and Power. I rolled my eyes, and asked her if she was going to be working the whole time we were here.

  This isn’t work, she said.

  From next to her bed I could hear the faint tick of her father’s watch. I picked it up and held it between the palms of my hands, the glass cold on my skin. He left it to her when he died. Large and old-fashioned, it has always looked out of place on her thin wrists. But it is precious to her. She loved her father. He brought her up. A Polish emigrant who worked hard to make sure she had the advantages he never had.

  I held it to my ear and listened to its steady tick.

  Why did he have to come? I asked and I nodded my head in the direction of Mitchell and Simon’s room.

  She told me she thought I had got over that.

  I told her I hadn’t, but she could see from the look on my face that I was just bored, that I was just trying it on.

  The metal awning over the window of her room lifted in the breeze. A slow, mournful whine in the quiet.

  What happened to his family?

  She looked at me, and as she pushed her glasses back up onto the bridge of her nose, I could see she was weighing up how much to tell me. A lot of people find it exceptionally difficult to make ends meet. In Mitchell’s case, there were a lot of problems that made it impossible for him to be at home for long stretches at a time.

  It was, as I had expected, a totally unsatisfying response.

  She put on her glasses and picked up her book again.

  I leant over her shoulder: Gender inequity persists and will continue to persist. My mouth was pursed and my face was serious. You really find this interesting? I asked, and I yawned.

  She reached for the watch, now fastened on my wrist.

  Can I wear it? I asked. Just tonight?

  She shook her head.

  Her father had been a doctor in Poland. He was an orderly when he came out here. Cleaning floors, making beds. Too scared to fight. Too scared to change things, Vi once told me.

  He worked in the one hospital for over twenty years. Night shifts. Day shifts. Whatever was offered to him, until finally, at sixty-five, he retired.

  He came home that night, sat in his armchair, put his head in his hands and wept, Vi said.

  And that was how he stayed. For the next three months. Until the day he died.

  She told me it was time I went to bed.

  I tried to argue, but she took the watch off my wrist and shooed me away with her other hand.

  No more talking, she said. You either sleep here or you go back to your own room.

  I closed her door gently and in the darkness of that hall I listened to each sound of that house. Each shift, each creak, each groan, each rustle of each leaf, each insect darting along each skirting board, and the slow click of another door, opening and closing.

  Pressed against the wall, I watched him. Mitchell.

  He was in his underpants and T-shirt, the gap between the two revealing the sharp line of his hip bones. He was looking at me looking at him. Seeing me, but not seeing me. Eyes open, but not awake. Walking towards me but not walking towards me.

  Mitchell, I hissed.

  He didn’t turn his head.

  I reached for him and then I stopped. I had heard about sleepwalking. Stories of people who walked miles, trying to find their way home, crossing cities, rivers, even state borders.

  Vi, I whispered, opening her door just a few inches, careful not to let too much light spill out, careful not to wake him.

  She looked at me impatiently.

  It’s Mitchell. As I spoke the words, she was up immediately, anxious that something was wrong, wrapping her cardigan around her shoulders as she followed me out to the hall.

  See, and I pointed to where he stood, rocking slightly, from foot to foot, down near the entrance to the kitchen.

  She told me to get back to bed, but I stayed where I was, watching her as she took his arm and guided him, slowly back up that corridor towards the open bedroom door, her hand resting gently on his forearm.

  The door creaked as she opened it a little more and he started.

  Can’t go in there, he told her as she tried to lead him back in, and she jumped at the boom of his voice. Spiders, and he leant forward, serious, intent. Thousands of them.

  As I started to giggle, she turned around and glared at me.

  It’s okay, she told him, and she was stroking his arm awkwardly.

  I listened as she pulled back the sheets for him, as she opened their window a little wider, as she came down the hall towards me. He stayed quiet.

  He’s all right, she said.

  Opening the door to our room, I could see Evie, there on the floor in the moonlight. The blanket still at her feet, her thumb still in her mouth, the slight flicker of her eyelashes as she dreamt.

  I lay down on the mattress next to hers and I wondered whether Mitchell did this every night. Whether he got up and tried to find his way back to somewhere. Or whether it had just been a one-off. The strangeness of this place. The strangeness of us.

  eleven

  Vi rings me often, but never about anything important. She calls to tell me about a film she saw the night before, an article she read in the paper, a distant friend who has found out she has cancer.

  I ring her for similar reasons.

  Nothing of significance.

  Neither of us ever really listening to each other, one of us ending the conversation abruptly, suddenly bored with it, only to call the other back a few hours later.

  Every so often it irritates me.

  I wonder why we bother.

  But I do not stop. It is like a reflex action. A blank moment in either of our days and we pick up a telephone and dial each other’s number. So much so that if a significant amount of time passes without us speaking to each other, I become anxious, distracted, aware that there is something important missing, out of place, but not quite able to pinpoint it. And then I remember. I haven’t spoken to Vi.

  Mari, on the other hand, never calls me.

  And that is why when I came home from the audition and heard her message on the machine, my immediate reaction was one of alarm.

  Mari and my mother met seven years ago.

  On their five-year anniversary, Mari organised a party. Lunch in Vi’s garden for thirty of their closest friends. She cooked for weeks, an extraordinary Italian feast, crowned by a magnificent almond cake, three layers high and covered with crystallised violets.

  Standing under the crepe myrtle, Mari gave a speech. She told the story of their first meeting. It was a story I had heard before.

  It all began, and she tinkled her glass for full attention, in a women’s refuge.

  I looked across at my mother,
expecting her to be uncomfortable with this public show of affection, and I was surprised. She was sitting at the end of the table with her chin resting in her hands. Her cigarette burned untouched in an ashtray by her side.

  Her dark eyes were focused on Mari and she was smiling, just slightly, with a shyness I had never seen before.

  I looked away, quickly.

  Through the glass doors, I could see that the kitchen table was piled high with gifts and I wished I had thought of bringing something. I felt ashamed for not having recognised the occasion for what it was.

  She was, I think, the only woman I had ever seen in that place with such ridiculously high heels.

  Everyone laughed. Vi loudest of all, cigarette-husky and deep.

  But what made them even more ridiculous was the fact that we were all there to paint the place.

  Vi picked up her cigarette and waved her arm in the air. It was the only way I could reach anything, she called out to shouts of laughter.

  I could see Simon on the other side of the garden, sitting on his own with his plate balanced on his lap, the only man in a sea of women, eyes fixed on the ground.

  I remember, and Mari smiled at my mother, watching her balancing on that ladder, proselytising about the superiority of a pastel wall compared to the brilliant yellow the women had chosen, and thinking that she was truly something else. When she actually managed to convert the entire committee into choosing pale pink for the bedrooms, I knew I had met a force to be reckoned with.

  Vi clapped her hands and called out, but Mari continued: Five years later and I still have no hesitation in calling her extraordinary, although I am thankful to say that the taste for pink has mellowed somewhat. She raised her glass, and I watched as they all lifted their glasses in the air. To five wonderful years.

  It was difficult to believe it had been that long.

  I remembered when I had first met Mari and it seemed so recent. She had been sitting in the garden, wrapped in Vi’s dressing-gown and reading the paper.

  We had introduced ourselves.

  I had been awkward.

  She was unperturbed.