Looking for Alibrandi

  “You should get sunshades for your glasses. Like these ones I’m wearing,” he said, glancing over to me.

  “You look like a CIA agent with them on.”

  “CIA agents don’t go around looking after seventeen-year-old pests who think they’re smart enough to rule the world,” he said drily.

  “Well, they spent eight years looking after a seventy-year-old geriatric who thought he was smart enough to rule the world.”

  “And you could do a better job, I suppose?”

  “Naturally.”

  I stuffed four Lifesavers in my mouth, trying to avoid car sickness, and sat back in sufferance.

  “So how was Jake when you rang him?”

  “Jacob,” I corrected. “He’s fine.”

  Michael met him when he came to pick me up from the chambers. I’m not sure what he thinks of Jacob, but he keeps on asking me what Mama thinks of him and interrogates me frequently on what kind of person Jacob is. Mama’s first impression of Jacob has changed. He came over for dinner the other day and washed the plates. The way to my mother’s heart is through housework, so Jacob’s a hit.

  “He told me to call him Jake the other day when he rang for you at the office. We had quite a friendly chat after I told him he isn’t to disturb you at work again.”

  “Oh, did you? What did you talk about?”

  “Cars. If you know anything about the engine of a car Jake will like you.”

  “Wrong. I don’t know anything about the engine of a car and he likes me.”

  “Ah, but you’re smart and physically attractive. Of course he likes you.”

  I laughed aloud, turning to him and grinning.

  “Physically attractive?”

  “Good-looking, definitely. Like your mother at her age. Men have to beware.”

  “Wow. Do I remind you of her back then?”

  “She wasn’t as rude as you and better looking, but she had the same disdainful air about her. Wouldn’t look at me for weeks after I first tried to kiss her.”

  “I wouldn’t look at you either. You’re not that great looking.”

  “Oh, thanks a lot,” he said, looking wounded. “If you’d like to know, you look more like me than people give you credit. You managed to look a bit like everyone.”

  “Did you like her a lot?” I asked quietly.

  He shrugged. “I liked all girls back then and they all liked me,” he added with a mocking evil chuckle.

  It was funny seeing this part of him. He was usually so straight and practical.

  “Has she told you the story?”

  “Not really. A few bits and pieces years ago.”

  “Well,” he sighed. “She lived next door to me ever since I could remember. Naturally she hated my guts and used to bash me up. Broke my nose once. Made my lip bleed. I think she was also the one who knocked out two of my teeth.”

  “My sweet fragile mother? Surely you jest?”

  “The very same. Of course this was when she was a foot taller than me and I led a terrorist gang in the street. Then one day I grew taller and she decided to become a lady and all the guys in the street fell in love with her. We called her Prissy Chrissy. We thought she was a snob, but she was only shy. Deep down, of course, I knew she secretly loved me.”

  “Of course,” I mocked.

  “She did,” he argued. “We were fourteen and infatuated. Probably more mature than you are now.”

  “Fourteen,” I scoffed.

  “Uh-huh. Then, when we were sixteen I heard her crying in her garden shed while I was fixing my car on the other side of the fence. I asked her to come over and we sat in my garage and became best friends. She told me all her problems and I told her all mine.”

  “What were her problems?” I asked.

  “She was forever in trouble with your grandparents. God knows why, because she was such a perfect daughter. All I know is that she lived in the same house with a man who didn’t talk to her and she couldn’t understand why.”

  “And your problems?”

  “Maria Lucianni’s mother. I danced with the girl at a wedding and her mother saw wedding bells. She’d come and visit my mother all the time bringing over stuff from Maria’s hope chest. If I’d married Maria, Josie, I would be sleeping on purple satin sheets.”

  “Imagine waking up to them with a hangover,” I said, feeling green at the thought. “So you became friends?” I added, wanting to get back to the subject of my mother.

  “The very best. She forgot she was shy and I remembered that I had a crush on her and we became pals. Over the next few months it kind of changed. We became closer . . . and then we went into something we shouldn’t have.”

  He took his eyes off the road and looked at me gently.

  “We can look at it now, Josie, and say that you were a result of it, so it had to be worth it, and we can never regret you as long as both of us live, but it was a thing that we couldn’t handle. Kids shouldn’t play grown-up games. I don’t mean the having-the-baby bit either, because I wasn’t around for that so I don’t know how hard it was. I mean the sex bit. It was a whole new ball game for me, because I was involved emotionally and not just physically. What we did made her feel so ashamed and me so inadequate. I wasn’t making her feel good as far as I was concerned, so I hated her. When I think of it now, very few men know how to make teenage girls feel good emotionally as well as physically. They always lack something. It comes with practice.”

  “Not what I’ve heard. Boys are at their sexual peak at seventeen. Women at thirty,” I said informatively. “I’ve got thirteen years to practice. You’re definitely over the hill.”

  “Brat.”

  I dug into my bag and took out some chocolate. When I feel carsick I eat, but I knew that sooner or later I would feel like throwing up from all the food I was consuming.

  I looked out the window again and was met with the same scene and same feeling. Tree stumps. Bush. A road with two lanes. A radio that didn’t work because we were between transmissions. Heat that didn’t seem normal in the middle of winter. Boredom.

  “Do you have a girlfriend?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Hmm,” I said, the boredom vanishing. “Are we going to visit her?”

  “No, we are not going to visit her. I may visit her.”

  “Hmm. What does she do for a living?”

  “She’s an accountant.”

  “Hmm. What a pity. I would have liked to meet her. We could be great friends.”

  He looked at me distrustingly. “You sound really sincere,” he said sarcastically.

  “She’d have a nervous breakdown being my stepmother.”

  “I’m sure you’d try your hardest.”

  “My mother is going out with a doctor.”

  “How interesting,” he said in a bored tone.

  “An Italian one.”

  He looked at me for a second, and somehow I was kind of pleased with his reaction.

  “Great-looking guy. I adore him.”

  Okay, slight exaggeration. She’s gone out with him once and I threw the meat loaf down the sink when I found out, but my mother has had men after her for years.

  “I like you better. You’re ‘good people,’ as Zio Ricardo would say.”

  He looked over at me and smiled so beautifully that I began to fall in love with the idea of this man being my father.

  “If I had to choose a daughter, I would have chosen you.”

  I was touched because I knew, especially after our first few meetings, that I was a bit hard for him to take.

  “I have that effect on people,” I said in mock modesty.

  He laughed and reached over to touch my face.

  “You’re a good girl, Josephine.”

  “No. I’m a nice girl. There’s a difference between ‘good’ girls and ‘nice’ girls.”

  “Ambiguous meanings?”

  “Yep.”

  I offered him some of the chocolate and he shook his head.

  “You??
?re making me sick. Don’t eat any more, Josie.”

  “If I eat, I don’t have to concentrate on this shit scenery.”

  “Sit back and get some sleep.”

  “Oh, great. So if we have an accident and I’m asleep, my resistance toward fighting death will be down and I’ll wake up in a morgue.”

  “I won’t say the obvious,” he said, shaking his head.

  “Jacob told me that. Says that I should never read in the car either.”

  “We’ll be in Broken Hill soon, so get your clothes out if you want to shower.”

  “How could people live out here? I never could.”

  “You might have to one day.”

  “But I won’t.”

  “Maybe you’ll marry someone from out here.”

  “So”—I shrugged—“he can come and live in Sydney.”

  “You’ll want to compromise.”

  “No, I won’t,” I said frankly. “I’ll never do anything I don’t want to do.”

  He growled, opening the sunroof.

  “One day you’ll understand, Josie.”

  “You sound like Mama,” I said, standing up through the sunroof.

  “Get down,” he shouted.

  “ ‘I love a Sunburnt Country...,’” I recited.

  “I detest that poem, Jose.”

  “ ‘A land of sweeping plains...’”

  I spent the rest of the hour reciting poetry to him, just to see how much he could take, and discovered just how much of Michael Andretti I had inherited.

  We arrived in Adelaide three days after we left Sydney. I loved it on sight. The houses were absolutely gorgeous, with the most enormous front yards. Michael’s flat was in a suburb near the beach called Glenelg. It was on the third floor, so we could see the water, and no matter how cold it was at night, it was just fantastic sitting on the balcony drinking hot chocolate and just looking out.

  I must confess, though, that I did have preconceived ideas of what my holiday would be like. I imagined how my paternal grandparents would react. Maybe they’d hug me and cry and say that I looked exactly like Michael. But they didn’t. Michael had told them about me only a month ago, so it all seemed too unbelievable for them.

  But I adored being with Michael. Finding out what he was like was great. I mean, who really gets to know their parents as strangers first?

  He’s more of a fool when he’s relaxed. Tells the corniest jokes and hates all modern music, except Billy Joel. He doesn’t believe in commercial TV (Four Corners is his favorite program). He also doesn’t know how to cook, so we lived on take-out for two weeks.

  It was weird living in the same flat as a man too, because I’ve never been under the same roof with one. I mean, I’m not used to someone leaving the toilet seat up in the middle of the night, or seeing men’s undies, or whatever they’re called, hanging on the clothesline. Kind of weird. I just noticed the other day that you can buy the ones with Y-fronts, and others that are just normal.

  But the best thing about living with him was that he snored. Remember how I said that nighttime scares me a lot because I feel as if everyone could be dead? Well, just being able to hear Michael snoring made the nighttime sound so alive. Sometimes I’d just lie in bed grinning. I’m not sure why. Maybe because I really felt as if I had a father. I didn’t realize how much it would mean to me.

  As for his family, well, Paulina, his sister, took me shopping one day and I ate at her place that night. She has three children who were all over me like a rash. It felt great to have first cousins. I think, by the end, my grandparents halfheartedly accepted me. Paulina took me over one day and the kids brought out some photo albums.

  My grandfather pointed everyone out. He was pretty rapt that I spoke Italian and told me I should keep on with it, and at one stage my grandmother pointed my mother out in a photo of all of them down at Cronulla beach in the sixties.

  Mama was tall and skinny and Michael was short and looked like a devil.

  So by the end of my stay we had formed some kind of relationship, although my grandmother still tended to speak to me via Paulina as if I didn’t understand. Maybe I do understand how they felt. Just a tiny bit. All in all, I missed my mother heaps and was glad to be back with her.

  She lets me go out with Jacob now, on weekends, but I have to be home by eleven-thirty. How embarrassing. On Saturday night he told me never to go anywhere again because he’d missed me.

  We’ve only been together for a short time, but I feel as if I’ve known him for years. The same with Michael. I feel as if I’ve known him for years too. It kind of makes me glad that God didn’t take me up on my “I’d rather die than meet my father” statements.

  Eighteen

  THIS YEAR IS going by so fast. It’s already more than halfway through and I still feel unsettled. I always thought that I’d start university with a fresh mind and no problems. I thought it would be the beginning of a new life. But it’s six months away from university and things are just more confusing because of Jacob, and I still have hang-ups.

  I’ve come to terms with the fact that Poison Ivy, one of my greatest hang-ups, and I are never going to be bosom buddies, and Friday really put the lid on things.

  Both of us were reading the same paper while we were waiting for Sister Louise in her office. One of the stories was rehashing the funeral of an Italian businessman who was supposedly murdered.

  “You new Australians wear black a lot, don’t you?” she asked, looking at the picture.

  “New Australians?” I asked incredulously. “Me? A new Australian?”

  “Yes.”

  She had the audacity to look surprised at my outburst.

  “How dare you call me a new Australian.”

  “You’re Italian, aren’t you?”

  “I’m of Italian descent, thank you,” I snapped. “And I’m also two months older than you, if my records are right, so if anyone is a new Australian, you are, because you’re two months newer than me.”

  She rolled her eyes and shook her head. “You know what I mean. You’re an ethnic.”

  “I’m not an ethnic,” I spat out furiously. “I’m an Australian and my grandparents were Italian. They’re called Europeans, not ethnics. ‘Ethnic’ is a word that you people use to put us all in a category. And if you’d really like to know, Ivy, the difference between my ancestors and yours is that mine came here one hundred years after yours and mine didn’t have chains on their feet. They were free and yours weren’t.”

  “Your ancestors were on the German side in World War Two,” she yelled. “They probably killed my grandfather and John’s grandfather. They were friends during the war.”

  “My grandfather and uncle were in a labor camp in Adelaide, so I doubt very much that they killed your grandfather or John’s.”

  “Well, one of your other thousand uncles could have. My grandmother had to bring up ten kids all by herself.”

  “All Italian families don’t have one thousand members, and my grandmother had to fend for herself in a country where she didn’t know the language and the people were ignorant.”

  “She should have learnt the language then.”

  “Well, maybe she didn’t have a chance and your grandmother should have said no to your grandfather more often so then she wouldn’t have been stuck with ten children. Anyway, I’m sure she would have had John’s grandmother to help her.”

  “I’m sure John would be very unamused about you being glib about his grandfather’s death.”

  “I don’t think John gives a damn, Ivy. I don’t think he gives a damn about anything.”

  “Oh, you think you know him so well, Josie? What are you hoping to achieve by assuming you know him so well?”

  “You may have known him all your life, Ivy, but I think that I know how he feels a bit more than you do.”

  “Don’t presume that you know anything about my relationship with John. It’s deeper than you think.”

  Sister interrupted us at that point and gave us a f
unny look because we were both sulking. But I’m past the caring stage with Sister Louise. She doesn’t like me, so big deal. But I thought it was just like Poison Ivy to consider me a new Australian. I wonder if Jacob thinks of me as one. Or his family.

  I think if it comes down to the bottom line, no matter how smart I am or how much I achieve, I am always going to be a little ethnic from Glebe as far as these people are concerned.

  Do you know how frustrating it is? Why can’t these people understand that this is my country as well? Why do I feel like cursing this country as much as I adore it? When will I find the answers, and are there ever going to be answers or change?

  It was a great relief seeing Jacob that afternoon when he picked me up from work at the chambers. I needed to be reassured by his presence, to know that he accepted me. He bent down and kissed me in the elevator, but stopped when the doors opened.

  “Close your eyes,” he said as he dragged me outside.

  “What are you doing? Everyone will see us.”

  “I got a surprise for you.”

  “I’ve got a surprise for you,” I corrected.

  “You mean you’ve got a surprise for me too?” he asked, astonished.

  “No,” I said, shaking my head. “It’s ‘I’ve,’ not ‘I.’”

  “Whatever,” he said, with an irritated wave of his hand. “I’ve got a surprise for you.”

  “What is it?”

  “If I tell you, it’s not a surprise, dummy, so guess.”

  “Give me a clue.”

  “It’s roomy,” he said, kissing me. “It’s got windows,” he added, hugging me hard. “And it hasn’t got bucket seats,” he yelled, lifting me up and swinging me around.

  “A car,” I screamed, oblivious to those around me.

  We ran down the steps of the courthouse to where an old metallic-blue Holden was parked.

  “Someone dumped it at Darren’s garage a couple of weeks back, so we put in a new engine, played around with it for a while and gave it a paint job.”

  “No more motorbike?” I asked, looking at the interior.

  “I’m still keeping it, but you never have to ride on it again,” he said proudly. “So what do you think, Lady Josephine?” He bowed.