“Do you think I haven’t looked into this?” he asks. “She doesn’t have a chemical imbalance. She doesn’t need to get addicted to something. She doesn’t need tablets giving her nightmares.”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about. I’ve done my research too. She needs to get on her feet. She hasn’t been outside, on her own, for three months.”
“Go do your homework.”
“Oh, fantastic argument, Papa. ‘Keep the house tidy. Do your homework. Be a good girl.’ That’s going to fix everything, isn’t it? That’d make me want to get out of bed if I were Mummy.”
It’s total silence after that. The food is cardboard in my mouth, but I race to finish it because I want to get into Mia’s room before he does.
Later, I snuggle up beside her. “Tell me the story about when I almost drowned?” I ask her, so then she can be the hero and it’ll make her feel better. But she says nothing and I switch on the television and I pretend that what we’re watching is funny. It’s a sitcom about a family, two kids, a mum, and a dad. Their idea of tension is an argument about who gets the cottage out back. At the end, everyone’s happy because that’s what happens in television land. Things get solved in thirty minutes.
God, I want to live there.
chapter 23
MS. QUINN SENDS me up to the counselor on Friday. Sometimes I wonder how I come across to these people. Is it written all over my face, or does the whole world just know every detail of my family life?
I stand in front of Ms. Quinn’s desk, unimpressed. I’m not interested in someone picking my brain. Me going to see a counselor is not going to make Mia any better.
“I send everyone up to him,” she tells me.
“No you don’t.”
“How do you know, Francesca? People keep counselor visits quiet, so it’s not as if they’re going to tell you they’ve gone to see him.”
“I don’t feel like talking. I’m fine, anyway. Actually, I’m better than I’ve ever been, and if I have to speak to anyone, I trust you.”
Saying that to teachers always works. The emotional ones like Ms. Quinn thrive on being needed.
She smiles. “I’m glad.”
“Thanks for your concern, though,” I say, turning to walk out.
“No problem at all. Come and see me after you’ve spoken to him. I’ll ring to tell him you’re on your way up.”
I turn back to face her.
“I thought we agreed that I wasn’t going.”
“No,” she says, in what I know is feigned confusion. “You go to Mr. Hector and I go on to be the least gullible teacher in this school.”
No wonder the guys say she’s a bitch.
“Would it hurt to speak to someone who is completely objective?” she asks.
“Objective about what?”
“Objective about what’s going on at home, Francesca.”
“You don’t know anything about what’s going on in my home.”
“We could do this for another hour, but I’ve got classes and you’re still going to the counselor.”
“That’s bullying!”
“Oh please, I’m nowhere near the bullying stage.”
I face her, arms folded. If this woman thinks she’s going to win this one, she’s sorely mistaken.
The counselor’s not that bad.
Not that I can see myself wanting to visit him again, but he doesn’t try to make me write things down or keep a journal of my pain, and he never once tells me that things are going to be fine.
I explain to him that my dad tells me that things are going to be fine all the time. Mr. Hector asks me how I feel about that, and because I sense he’s going to start analyzing me, I make it up and tell him what he wants to hear.
That every time my dad says that everything’s okay, I want to scream. Because everything’s not okay. The woman who has driven this family for longer than I’ve been alive can’t leave the house, so how can that be okay? “Okay” is coming home and your parents are having an argument. “Okay” is Mia picking us up from school and going grocery shopping and us dancing in the aisle to the pathetic music over the PA system. “Okay” is Mia telling me what’s best for me and me completely disagreeing, and it’s Mia telling my father to carry the load a bit more because she’s sick of having to do all the running around. “Okay” is listening to them have sex at night and blocking your ears because you think listening to your parents having sex is a form of child abuse. “Okay” is them bantering with each other in front of you and you not understanding a single word because they’re speaking in riddles they alone understand. “Okay” is knowing what to expect.
In the end I don’t say much to him at all, and I go back to Ms. Quinn, who’s speaking on the phone and eyeing me at the same time. I like her office. It’s incredibly tidy, but it’s got personality, not to mention a sofa. She has music playing all the time. Today it’s Counting Crows, and I feel as melancholy as the lead singer’s voice.
“I’m cured,” I tell her when she gets off the phone.
“Are you, now?”
“Isn’t that what you want to hear?”
“No. I want to hear that you’re happy.”
“Are you?”
She thinks for a moment. She’s almost my mother’s age, and they’re kind of similar in a way. If my mum were well, I could imagine them hitting it off.
“Most of the time I am,” she tells me.
“Why not all of the time?”
She eyes me suspiciously. “You’re trying to get out of Mr. Brolin’s class, aren’t you?”
I grin and shrug. “Maybe. I bet if you were in my shoes, you would too, but you’re going to plead professionalism and not put down a colleague.”
“Go to class.”
I kind of like her when she’s relaxed. She doesn’t have that tired, looking-for-something-better expression some of my Stella teachers had. When I grow up, I think I’m going to be a teacher or maybe even a counselor.
I walk to Brolin’s class feeling lighter in mood. He gives me a detention for being late without a note. Actually, I do have a note from Ms. Quinn, but he doesn’t really give me a chance, so I say, “If that’s what makes you happy,” and he sends me down to Ms. Quinn for being rude.
“So where were we?” I ask her, getting comfortable on the sofa.
chapter 24
ANGELINA’S WEDDING DAY comes fast, and the stress that I feel over the cleavage dress is further emphasized by the fact that even the priest looks down at my chest when he’s giving me instructions.
But I take a deep breath and I do the comparison thing. People are dying of hunger and terrorists are creating fear, and evil politicians are taking advantage of that fear and refugee kids are drowning trying to come to our country and Mia can’t even go to her favorite niece’s wedding, and the list goes on forever.
Suddenly a cleavage is nothing but me being pathetic. So Pachelbel’s Canon starts and it’s my cue.
The ushers open the door and I step inside.
And I step right back outside again!
Will Trombal is in the fifth-last row, third person from the end. I can’t breathe.
“Frankie?”
The whole bridal party is looking at me.
“I can’t go out there,” I tell them.
Angelina lets go of my uncle Rocco’s arm and steps forward. The others are stunned.
“Brides and grooms are allowed to have second thoughts. Not bridesmaids,” Vera explains in her duh-brain voice.
Angelina holds up her hands as if to say, I’m trying to stay calm.
“I’m in a pretty bad mood, Frankie. My mother-in-law’s from Queensland and she wants to toast the Queen at the reception and Angus doesn’t want to upset her, but he’s fine about upsetting me. I want desperately to have a cigarette and I’ve promised Angus that I’ll give up smoking on our wedding day if he gives up his Old Boys rugby shorts. At this exact moment, I feel like that cigarette. Don’t let me begin my marriage
as a liar.”
The others are looking at me pleadingly. One does not upset Angelina on any given day, let alone her wedding day. After a moment I nod. I’ve seen Angus in the shorts. They should have been thrown out fifteen years ago when he graduated from high school.
So I walk in.
Don’t look at him. Don’t look at him. Don’t look at him.
I look at him. We don’t make eye contact, because he’s looking at the cleavage.
After the ceremony, my nonna tries to pin my dress to cover me up, relishing the absence of my mother. Of course Will sees all this, and I begin to wonder when my humiliation will be complete.
At the reception hall, things get bad. Toasting royalty is a completely foreign concept for my extended family. Although they can relate to the fact that Queen Elizabeth doesn’t get on with her daughters-in-law, they’re just not interested in paying homage to her and they chat through the whole thing. Worse still, Vera the gym junkie is flirting outrageously with my father and he’s laughing with her. She’s attractive and uncomplicated, and she does the helpless thing well. Mia’s never been helpless until now.
From my lonely spot at the main table, while the bride and groom are socializing and the maid of honor is breaking up my parents’ marriage, I watch as Will introduces his family to Luca, and I can almost hear them saying how adorable he is. Luca sits down and he’s the center of their world and I feel invisible and ugly and, more than anything, I miss Mia. I miss sitting with the grown-ups, the way she included me in their conversations. If it wasn’t her, it was usually Angelina, but she is too busy being a bride tonight.
My partner remembers that I’m alive and asks me to dance to “Nutbush City Limits,” and Tara Finke invades my body and I tell him that standing up and dancing the same steps as everyone else in the room, en masse, is the last bastion of conformity.
I don’t see him for the rest of the night.
I go into the toilet and sit on a chair, staring into space. In one of the cubicles a line of smoke comes over the top, and I look underneath the door and see the ivory dress.
“Angelina?”
The cubicle door opens and she ushers me in. Thank God she didn’t do the big poufy dress and there’s room in there for me as well.
Next to the toilet there’s a window, and we poke our heads outside. She hands me the cigarette and I take a drag.
“I’ll be gone two months,” she tells me. “So you’ve got to take care of Mia.”
I nod.
“Listen to me. It’s not your fault. It’s not Uncle Robert’s. It’s not Luca’s. And most of all, it’s not Mia’s. Sometimes your whole system just shuts down and you wake up in the morning and everything’s black and no matter how much people speak to you and try to talk you out of it and tell you everything’s okay, it doesn’t work. Mia is going to get out of this thing, Frankie, but it’s not going to happen on the day she gets out of bed or the next day or the next. And there are some days you’re going to find it hard, but you have to be there for her. Get her back into a routine and she’ll do the rest somehow. And whatever you do, don’t underestimate your father. He’s been married to the clueiest woman I know for eighteen years. That means he has to be cluey himself. Your parents’ marriage works because of your father as well, Francesca, not just because of Mia, and she’ll get out of this because of Robert and you guys. Just don’t give up on her.”
She takes out some breath freshener and sprays it in her mouth.
“You’re beginning your marriage with a lie,” I tell her.
“I went through his overnight bag in the limo. He’s packed the shorts.”
“Enough said.”
She washes her hands and wipes them and gives me a kiss, and then she’s gone.
I fix up my makeup and step outside. Will is standing there, as if he’s been waiting.
“Nice dress.”
I roll my eyes.
“No, really. The . . . the color . . . it . . . it . . . it looks great on you.”
“They’re called boobs, Ed,” I say, quoting Julia Roberts in Erin Brockovich.
He grins, and after a moment he takes both my hands in his. “Are you okay?”
I shake my head. Lying to Will takes up too much strength. I just want to blend into him.
He bends forward and kisses me and I let him. I love the rough feel of his suit against my bare arms and the smell of him and the bristle of his chin.
He presses me against the wall and I feel every part of him imprint itself on me, but after a moment I feel myself pushing him away.
“I can’t do this if you have a girlfriend, Will. I just can’t.”
He’s silent for a moment, but it’s like he can’t find the words. “It’s complicated.”
“How?”
“Whatever I say is going to make me sound like a bastard. It’s just not that easy.”
I pull my hand away. “Nor am I.”
But we’re still touching, our foreheads together.
“I’m supposed to be going overseas next year. Just to add to the complication,” he says.
“For how long?”
“A while. But I don’t know. . . . I kind of like my comfort zones, you know. I don’t really think I want to leave that behind.”
I wonder if he means “leave her behind.”
“Comfort zones are overrated,” I tell him. “They make you lazy.”
He smiles. “You come out with weird things.”
The MC announces the speeches and we walk back into the hall, where he introduces me to his parents. They’re a bit older than my parents, and very friendly.
His father looks inquiringly at Will. “Sophia?” he asks.
Who the hell’s Sophia? Even my mother, who doesn’t know what day it is, knows Will’s name because I talk about him all day long. His family have no idea who I am.
I excuse myself politely and walk toward my father, and we dance. Luca attaches himself to my waist, and the three of us sway as the Elvis impersonator sings “It’s Now or Never.” I remember when I was younger and my mum and dad would be holding Luca in their arms and I’d attach myself to them and we’d dance all night.
But tonight one of us is missing and, combined, we feel like an amputee.
chapter 25
I CAN’T GET the Will Trombal kiss out of my mind. No. “Kiss” is not the word to describe it. The Will Trombal experience. The Will Trombal extravaganza.
“Up against a wall?” Siobhan whispers during class.
“Shhh. And I said there was a wall there, I didn’t put it in those words. You make it sound like a sex thing.”
“As if it’s not.”
“Shhh.”
“Can you stop shushing me?” she says, irritated.
Mr. Brolin is speaking totems and serpent rainbows like he has no idea.
“Don’t let him use you,” she whispers.
I look at her, not believing I’m getting this piece of advice from someone whose experiences are well documented on the wall of the boys’ toilets. She is offended by the look.
“I do not let them use me,” she says forcefully.
“You go out with so many guys and it never works out and then you end up crying in a bedroom at a party.”
“So what? I need to be on the lookout for ‘the One.’ ” She does the quotation-marks thing with her fingers.
“Well, my ‘One,’ ” I say, wiggling my fingers back, “has a girlfriend.”
“You don’t know ‘the One’s’ girlfriend, so there’s nothing unethical happening,” the Queen of Ethics explains.
Our fingers are beginning to hurt.
“That’s not true. Because teenage girls who steal boyfriends today will be stealing husbands in ten years’ time. I’m a home wrecker in training.”
“Oh please. The guy can’t keep his hands off you and you blame yourself.”
“If I had a boyfriend,” I tell her, “and I felt for Will what I think we both feel, I’d split up with my boyfri
end. And he’s not doing that.”
“If he does, he might be losing a friend,” she explains. “The girl could have been a friend first.”
“So he and I don’t happen instead?”
She shrugs. “I went out with this guy once. Remember Nick Fox on my street? Best friends for years. We had the same taste in everything, and I just loved talking to him and making sense of everything with him. But I realized I just wasn’t interested in him romantically, so after an agonizing six months I broke it off with him, and he never spoke to me again. Very sad. Second time in my life that my best friend stopped talking to me.”
She gives me one of those meaningful looks.
“You’re the one who came back in Year Seven with the ‘you are so naïve’ attitude,” I argue.
“Yeah, but that didn’t mean you had to let the Body Snatchers invade you,” she snaps.
“Can you not call my friends the Body Snatchers?”
“Let’s not make them the point of this conversation,” she says with a sigh. “Let’s just focus on Will.”
Mr. Brolin stands in front of us.
“Twenty minutes, this afternoon,” he says coldly.
“Why?” asks Siobhan.
“Detention,” he says, putting it into quotation marks with his fingers.
As usual, Jimmy Hailler is on detention, as well as Thomas for listening to his Discman in class.
“Caught smoking today,” Jimmy tells us. “With Will Trombal.”
“What?” I so don’t believe him.
“That boy’s bad,” Jimmy continues. “B-b-b-bad to the bone.”
“Will Trombal and you were sharing a cigarette? Doubt it very much.”
“Go ahead, Thomas. Live up to your name.”
“Then why isn’t he here?” I ask.
“Why would he be?”
Jimmy speaking to Will is a dangerous thing. It makes me almost break out into a sweat.
“What were you discussing?” I ask.
“Weddings.”
I’m beginning to feel uneasy. I look at Siobhan, stricken.
Brolin pops his head in to see if we’re working, and then he’s gone.
“I love weddings,” Jimmy explains. “I don’t go to enough, and we were looking at it from a cultural standpoint and of course the music. Trombal feels that there aren’t enough Elvis impersonators in the world.”