“If we survive? Are you planning on dying or something?” he asked as we stopped at the Parramatta Road lights.
I turned to him and he was looking at me questioningly, his forehead creased.
“I just want it to be over. I want this year to be over, but another part of me is so petrified. God, John, we’re never going to be at school again. We were top dogs here in a way. At university we’ll be nobodies.”
“Just make your decisions and follow them through, Josie. That’s what I’ve done. I’ve got my whole future planned out the way I want it to be and there is nothing anyone can do to take that away from me.”
“You’re not going to follow in your father’s footsteps?”
He grinned, shaking his head. “No way, Josie. My father lived his life his way. I should have the same choice. The future is mine, to do whatever I want with it.”
He hugged me, swinging me around, and I thought that all I needed was Jacob to drive past and see us.
“You’re a psycho today, John,” I laughed as we crossed. “I wish I had your attitude. I’m almost there, but I don’t think I’ve come to my emancipation yet.”
“Good word. ‘The Emancipation of John Barton,’” he said, looking pensive.
“So what will the emancipated John Barton do with his life?”
“Anything he wants, Josephine,” he said, looking straight through me. “Anything he damn well wants.”
I couldn’t help thinking that everything was working out well with our lives, which had seemed so complicated at the beginning of the year. We chatted all the way to my place, and by the end of our walk I was feeling as optimistic and positive as John.
“Look after yourself, Josephine,” he said, hugging me.
I felt relieved walking up the stairs. The thought of law didn’t scare me so much with John there, and I knew that he and Jacob could be friends, hopefully.
I rang Jacob that night and we stayed on the phone for two hours. I even told him about being with John that day and he didn’t go crazy. He just said that educating him wasn’t going to happen overnight, so I had to be patient.
Thinking of the six years ahead of me at university, I figured that patience was something I was going to need plenty of, but somehow, having John and Jacob, Michael, Mama, Nonna and my friends, I couldn’t possibly go wrong.
So I slept without having nightmares that I was reading an HSC paper I knew nothing about, or that Dante’s Inferno was no longer written in Italian but in French. I slept with the knowledge that my life was going somewhere good because of good people around me. And no HSC failure could take that away from me.
Twenty-Eight
THE NEXT DAY I was walking down the corridor toward the steps that led to the homeroom when I noticed Ivy sitting there with her head in her hands. When she looked up and saw it was me, she stood up quickly, wiping her tears and taking my hand.
“Oh, Josephine. What are we going to do, Josephine?”
I thought to myself, how like Poison Ivy to work herself up so much about the first HSC exam.
“What’s happened?” I asked, thinking that maybe the school had given us the wrong novels to study this year.
“John’s dead. John Barton is dead.”
I looked at her in numb shock. My mouth opened to say something, but not a sound came out.
She sank back down on the step and began crying again.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I whispered, beginning to feel sick inside. “I saw him yesterday.”
I wonder now why I thought it wasn’t true. Maybe because people I knew didn’t die. Other people did. People I read about in the paper and could forget the next day.
“He killed himself.”
My hands started to shake first and I wanted desperately to vomit but I tried to keep it down. I sank down in front of her, grabbing her shoulders. “Don’t be stupid, Ivy. Don’t be stupid,” I shouted. “Who told you that lie.”
“He swallowed pills and they found him this morning.”
“This is a joke, isn’t it, Ivy,” I said angrily, shaking her. “A real sick one. John’s not suicidal. Some dickhead is having you on.”
“For God’s sake, Josie, he’s dead. My father wrote the fucking autopsy report.”
I remembered thinking how weird it was hearing Ivy say “fuck” and I knew hysteria was coming on because I wanted to laugh uncontrollably when she said it.
I shook my head, walking up the steps in a trance.
No, I kept telling myself. He tried to, and at that moment they were trying to pump out his stomach. But he wasn’t dead because people I knew didn’t die.
“I know how you feel, Josie,” Ivy cried after me. “He was my best friend.”
Anna came toward me with a worried look on her face.
“Oh, Jose, how terrible,” was all I heard her say.
I couldn’t keep it down anymore, so I rushed to the ladies’ and threw up nothing in particular. I sank down on the ground, closing my eyes and wanting to cry, but I couldn’t. I just felt so scared. I’m not sure of what. I couldn’t remember what he looked like. I couldn’t remember anything he had said to me or what he was wearing the last time I saw him.
All I could remember was telling him that if we survived the HSC we’d all have dinner together. I wrapped my arms around my knees for warmth, desperately wanting to go home to Mama. Instead I went to the homeroom and sat for my economics HSC paper.
When it was over I rang my father to pick me up. He didn’t ask any questions. I think he could tell by the sound of my voice that I wanted him there.
“It’s only an exam,” he told me when I got into the car.
I nodded, not looking at him.
“You want to talk about it? I know I’m not ready to handle your big-league problems, but I want to try,” he said gently.
“You can’t help,” I said flatly.
“Not even a bit.”
I looked at him and I realized then that I couldn’t cry because I was so angry.
“John Barton killed himself last night.”
He expelled a breath, shaking his head.
“What?”
I shrugged, trying to control my fury as much as I could. I tried to clench my mouth as tight as possible because I was afraid I was going to cry and I didn’t want to.
“Josie, I don’t know what to say to you.” He seemed desperate to get me home, looking over at me whenever he could.
He stopped in front of the terrace but I didn’t get out.
“I hate him,” I said, as controlled as I could. “He’s a bastard.”
He turned to me, waiting.
“Do you know something? I hated being illegitimate. I always did until the other day when I realized it was nothing. I never admitted it out loud because I was scared to hurt Mama, so I hated you instead because I didn’t know you.”
I looked out the window and leaned my head on the glass.
“In primary school I was so confused because kids will always be cruel and there was always some shithead who knew about me so they’d tell me what their mother said. Children are so honest. I swear to God, it drove me crazy at times. Sometimes I wished I was dead. I wanted to kill myself.”
I looked at him wanting him to understand.
“Do you know how many Italian girls weren’t allowed to play at my house, Michael? They wanted to, I know that, but their mothers wouldn’t let them. The Australian girls were the worst. They’d come up to me and say, ‘What nationality are you, Josie?’ and because I spoke Italian at home and I ate spaghetti and I lived like an Italian I’d say, ‘I’m Italian,’ and they’d put on a reprimanding voice. ‘No, you’re not. You were born in this country. You’re an Australian.’ So the next day the same girls would come up to me and ask, ‘What nationality are you, Josie?’ and I’d think to myself that these smart-asses weren’t going to get me twice so I’d say, ‘I’m an Aussie,’ and they’d say, ‘No, you’re not. You’re a wog.’ And I wanted to kill myself because
I was so confused.
“But then I reached high school and I think that it’s no big deal that I don’t have a father and I think it’s no big deal that I’m on a scholarship. Then I hear someone saying that their mother reckons that people who can’t afford the school fees, smart or dumb, shouldn’t be allowed into the school, especially if they don’t know who their father is. I’d get so depressed because I was confused and I felt like killing myself. But I didn’t . . . and he did.”
I looked at him, taking his hand and shaking it.
“How dare he kill himself when he’s never had any worries! He’s not a wog. People don’t get offended when they see him and his friends. He had wealth and breeding. No one ever spoke about his family. Nobody needed to because everyone knew that his father was the man they wanted down in Canberra. Nobody ever told their kids they weren’t allowed to play over at his place. Yet he killed himself. How could somebody with so much going for him do that?”
“A person doesn’t necessarily have to be happy just because they have social standing and material wealth, Josie.”
“How could he do something like that, Michael?” I asked, almost begging for an answer. “You’re an adult, tell me.”
I felt tears in my eyes, but I refused to cry. My hands shook as I wound down the window.
“I’ll walk you up,” he said quietly, opening the door.
We walked up in silence. I felt him take my hand, and only when he squeezed it did it stop shaking.
“He was my friend,” I whispered as we walked in.
He closed the door behind me and looked around.
“Chris, can you come out here?” he sighed, looking down at me.
Mama poked her head out of her room and smiled until she looked at me closely. “Josie, what happened?”
“Mummy?”
She hugged me and I grabbed her as close as I could. “I don’t want you to ever die,” I cried.
“What happened?”
“John Barton died,” I heard Michael tell her.
“Oh my God,” she gasped. “Oh, Josie,” she said, cupping my face. “Oh, darling, I’m so sorry.”
“How about you get her into bed and I make her something warm to drink?” Michael said.
“What happened? How?” she asked.
“Just get her to bed, Chris,” he said.
“He killed himself, Mama. I saw him yesterday and he was happy.”
“Oh my God. His poor mother. His poor family.”
I lay in bed and she lay next to me and I wanted her to hold me, because whenever she didn’t I felt petrified.
“I’m scared to die,” I whispered as Michael walked in.
“He was scared to live,” he said, kissing my forehead.
“He said to me once that life was shit. But I said it wasn’t.”
“And you were right.”
“I should have realized.”
He sat down on the floor, leaning against the bed. “Josie, Josie,” he said. “You can’t think for other people. Nor can you feel for them or be them. They have to do that for themselves.”
“But you have to be there for them,” I said angrily. “You have to look for the signs.”
“How can I make you understand?” he argued.
“I don’t want to understand. I want to talk to John Barton now. I want to see him and tell him that he’s a dickhead. I want to debate against him and graduate with him and beat him in the HSC and I want to be a law student with him. I want to know him in ten years’ time,” I cried. “But I don’t want to go to his funeral. What am I going to do, Michael? What are we all going to do?”
“You’re going to go on living. Because living is the challenge, Josie. Not dying. Dying is so easy. Sometimes it only takes ten seconds to die. But living? That can take you eighty years and you do something in that time, whether it’s giving birth to a baby or being a housewife or a barrister or a soldier. You’ve accomplished something. To throw that away at such a young age, to have no hope, is the biggest tragedy.”
I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to block everything out. “I’m so scared. I keep on wondering where he is. I can only think of him lying in a morgue, dead,” I sobbed. “I feel cold and I want to vomit, but I want to hate him.”
He leaned over and kissed me.
“Josie, I would rather die than ever see you suffering this way. I don’t want you or any child I ever have or any woman I ever love to go through or feel what you’re going through, but it’s happened and I don’t know what to do.”
“Stay here. I’m scared.”
“I’m here, Josie.”
“Try to sleep, darling,” Mama said.
I felt a kiss across my brow and clung on to her for dear life.
“How does it feel to have a daughter, Mr. Andretti?” I heard her ask him.
I didn’t hear the answer. I just closed my eyes and dreamt of the worst things possible.
I woke up suddenly during the night. It was as if I had been shaken awake, and I lay there taking deep breaths to get over the shock. Then it hit me and I leapt out of bed, stubbing my toe on my shoes and hopping to the jewelry box.
The white sticky-taped paper that contained John Barton’s thoughts lay exactly where I had placed it months before. My hands shook so much. I wanted to throw it away. To tear it up or burn it. But I didn’t. I pulled off the sticky tape, tearing a bit of the paper, and walked to the window where the streetlights showed up the writing. It was a poem written in beautiful small handwriting.
Can you see what I see?
No I don’t think you can
I see images of nothing
and I attempt to make that
nothingness mean something
As hard as I try there is
still nothing and that nothing
is meaningless
I am somewhere else now, outside
I am surrounded by people and
the sky. I see the people and the
blueness of the sky
but still nothing has changed
Everything remains the same
I am still alone.
I sat on the floor under the window trying to remember what I had written to him. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t remember one word of it. I wondered if I had forgotten because what I had written was so unimportant. Slowly I stood up and tore up the poem. I tore it once, twice, three times and then four. I opened the window and held my hand outside, opening my fist and letting the morning wind take the pieces away. As soon as I did it I wanted to run outside on to the street and put the pieces back together, but I realized that was impossible. So I watched them fly away. One lone piece flew back onto the windowpane. I took it and I wondered if, like that piece of paper, John Barton was still alone.
Jacob took the death worse than me. We sat in the park near his place the next day on the merry-go-round, and I could tell he was upset.
“We had someone in common, him and me,” he said, looking pale.
I put my arm around his shoulder and stayed close to him.
“Why did he do it, Jose? What have the rest of us got to look forward to if he had nothing?”
“They’re saying he was schizophrenic,” I told him.
I was scared to let go of Jacob. I had dreamt that it was him who was dead and not John, and all morning I felt unsettled until I saw him again.
“I’m glad you’re not dead, Jacob,” I whispered against him.
He kissed my lips and hugged me hard.
“You know something, Jacob, I’d hate to be as smart as John. I mean he was really, really smart and to be that smart means you know all the answers and when you know all the answers there’s no room for dreaming.”
He nodded.
“There’s nothing to look forward to anymore if you don’t have dreams,” he said. “Because dreams are goals and John might have run out of goals. So he died. But we’re alive and one day I want to own my own garage and you want to be a hotshot barrister and it’s not going to hap
pen today or tomorrow, it’s going to happen in years and it’s something to look forward to. Promise me you’ll never stop dreaming.”
I nodded, stunned by the passion of his words.
“You promise too.”
“I promise.”
He kissed me and we held on to each other. I didn’t realize until those few days how much a hug meant. To have someone hold you could be the greatest medicine of all.
The funeral was packed with people, young and old. I wanted to stand up and scream, “See, John, see all these people who loved you.” Ivy stood on the pulpit and gave a small eulogy, and I remembered then what John had said to me the day he died. “I want you to be there for each other.”
Later on, when eight St. Anthony’s boys carried the coffin out of the church, I cried. It wasn’t just a physical burden on their shoulders, it was an emotional one. The pain and grief on their faces was indescribable.
Sometimes an hour has gone by and I haven’t thought of John. Sometimes two, but then I remember that not a minute will ever go by when his mother won’t think of him.
The teachers have all gone berserk and we’ve had special talks with them regarding the HSC. They seem to think the pressure killed John, but I know it didn’t. John, I think, knew for years that he was going to die. That’s why he never committed himself to Ivy or me. Maybe he didn’t want to drag us down with him. Maybe it was the strongest thing he ever did.
Sometimes I feel like a junkie. One minute something happens in my life and I’m flying. Next minute I take a nose dive and just as I’m about to hit the ground with full force something else will have me flying again.
But the day John died was a nosedive day and I hit the ground so hard that I feel as if every part of me hurts. I remembered when we spoke about our emancipation. The horror is that he had to die to achieve his. The beauty is that I’m living to achieve mine.
Twenty-Nine
I SUPPOSE SPEECH Night was pretty emotional.
HSC was almost over and it was really one of the last times we’d ever wear our uniform for a school function. I received three awards that night for English, Italian and Science. Ivy was valedictorian, but then I never doubted that. Simply because I guess she deserved it more than me.