Saving Francesca by Melina Marchetta

  “We have an Alanis night.”

  I look at her, confused.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Siobhan Sullivan says. “As if that’s going to help. It has to be Pride and Prejudice. I’ve got the whole six episodes.”

  “I disagree. Food’s always good. It always helps,” Justine says.

  They talk about me as if I’m not there.

  “My place,” Tara Finke says.

  An Alanis night is listening to Alanis Morissette’s music, where there’s a lot of revenge and anger toward men. We move on to Tori Amos and then Jewel. So much hate and depression is making me feel sick, although that could also be attributed to the Pringles that I sandwiched between two Oreos.

  We watch Pride and Prejudice. Mr. Darcy is such a hottie that it depresses me because his sideburns remind me of Will Trombal’s.

  Tara Finke’s mother watches it with us. She talks through the whole thing, which gets very tense around the time Colin Firth, aka Mr. Darcy, comes out of his pond, soaking wet.

  Tara Finke has had enough. “Mum?” Tara puts a finger to her lips threateningly.

  We watch in silence, but I look at the others’ faces. All of them glued to the screen, a dreamy look on their faces. A hint of a smile on their lips. A sense of hope. They’re all the same. Cynical Tara, couldn’t-give-a-shit Siobhan, romantic Justine.

  And I want to cry. Because my face looks just like theirs and I haven’t felt like anyone else since I was in Year Seven and Siobhan Sullivan and I did the Macarena in the foyer of the chapel and got lunchtime detention for a week.

  Justine catches me looking and she smiles, and with tears in my eyes I smile back.

  chapter 14

  MY DAD COMES to see me at Nonna Anna’s, and we spend the afternoon on the front doorstep in silence. I keep on remembering what Mia asked him once. “Take us away and who are you, Robert?” Worse still, I remember his answer. “Is this a trick question, Mia? Am I dead?” I want to ask him a thousand questions, but somehow we’ve forgotten how to speak to each other. Does he miss her voice, like I do? Can he remember what she sounds like? Does he not know who he is anymore?

  “This is wrong,” I tell my dad. “What’s happened to Mum isn’t right, but Luca and I want to come home.”

  “She misses you,” he says.

  “We miss you, Papa. We miss us.”

  He nods calmly. “Then let’s get Luca.”

  Mia cries when she sees us. Although she’s out of bed, she’s still in her nightgown, looking a thousand years old. Later, my dad, Luca, and I sit around the table. It’s back to the horrible way it was before I went to Nonna’s. None of us knowing what to say.

  I get the calendar and put it down in front of my dad.

  “Wednesday, choir practice,” Luca says, clutching on to Pinocchio, who is beside himself with excitement. “Mum picks me up at five o’clock.”

  “I’ll stay after school,” I tell them. “On Tuesdays, you have to drop Nonna Anna off at the Italian women’s thing.”

  My dad begins writing. “Next.”

  “Nonno Salvo has an appointment at the podiatrist every Thursday. Mummy usually takes him.”

  “And Friday is cemetery day with Nonna Celia.”

  “Plus Mummy has two conferences this year.”

  “Frankie, you’ll have to ring and cancel them. We can do the rest, but the conferences are going to be out of the question.”

  “She won’t want them canceled. It’s taken two years of lobbying to get these conferences.”

  “What about the shopping?” he asks.

  “You do the shopping and we’ll work around the rest,” I say.

  Lots of nods. Lots of determination. And so much doubt that we can’t even hide it.

  My dad comes home triumphant from his first grocery-shopping assignment. As if he’s accomplished God Knows What. I want to remind him that my mum does it every week without fanfare, but I’m too shocked at what he’s unpacking.

  “What were you thinking?”

  “What?”

  He looks stunned. A bit hurt. He’s just conquered Coles. He feels like he deserves a medal.

  “What is this?” I ask, holding up the yogurt.

  “Yogurt.”

  “With six grams of fat per one hundred grams. What happened to nonfat yogurt or ninety-seven percent fat-free yogurt?”

  “Are we dieting?”

  “Papa, it’s not about dieting. It’s about keeping our fat intake down. Look at this,” I say with a cry in my voice, pulling out some crackers. “What happened to rice crackers, ninety-four percent fat-free as opposed to Chicken in a Biscuit, twenty-two percent fat per one hundred grams?”

  By this stage, my dad is looking a bit forlorn, but things only get worse.

  “Oh my God!” I hold up the Ice Magic. The stuff you put on ice cream and it hardens like a chocolate top.

  “Where did this come from? Do you know what this is? Luca is going to sneak out of bed in the middle of the night and squirt it on his tongue. It’s like drugs for ten-year-olds. Today it’s Ice Magic. Tomorrow, heroin.”

  We write out a list that he’s to stick to in the future. Luca is already pigging out on the Cheetos and looks disappointed as we eliminate any source of junk food.

  I make us dinner and take a big plate in to Mia. It comes back untouched. I throw it away before Luca can see it, and the cycle goes on.

  One morning, she’s throwing up in the sink. Nothing much, as usual. She’s leaning her head against the tap, retching, and the sound becomes as familiar as the music she used to wake us up with. I want to do what she did for me when I was a kid. Hold back my hair and make me cry, not from the feeling of having my guts ripped open, but just from the feeling of being taken care of.

  But I stand and I stare. She senses me there and looks for a moment. I don’t know what she reads from my face. Am I angry? Sickened? Ashamed?

  I want to say, Please, Mummy, be okay, please be okay, because if you’re not okay, we’ll never be.

  But I say nothing.

  I just go to school.

  It’s June, about six weeks into the term, and it’s getting cold, but they won’t let us wear scarves because it’s not part of the uniform. I walk through Hyde Park behind the rest of the students, where Luca is running around the fountain with his friends ahead of me, and for a moment there’s peace in my heart because he’s happy.

  After a moment, I realize that I’m not alone. Will Trombal is walking alongside me and I know he’s not there by chance. It’s been a week since the party. In front of us is Siobhan Sullivan, her arms draped over two boys beside her, her uniform riding up. She lifts herself up and swings her legs in the air.

  “I think you should speak to her,” he says to me.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “There’s stuff written about her.”

  I stop for a moment and look at him. “Would you ask me to speak to a guy about the same thing?”

  “Why turn this into a gender issue?”

  “Because you made it into one. Would you go up to a guy and warn him if there was stuff written about him?”

  “Listen, don’t shoot the messenger,” he almost shouts. “The shit that’s written in the toilets is awful, and if she were my friend I’d talk to her about it.”

  “Well, it’s not in my job description.”

  “You’ve made it your job. . . .”

  “No I haven’t.”

  “I’m trying to work with you here. . . .”

  “No you’re not. We haven’t got one thing on that list except for that humiliating basketball game, and now you’ve decided to be Mr. Moral Policeman.”

  “Forget it,” he says, walking away angrily.

  “And what’s the name for people who kiss other people when they’ve got a girlfriend?”

  He stops and turns around, looking me straight in the eye.

  “A weak, spineless prick.”

  Oh great, I think. Take the right to call you names
right of me, you . . . weak, spineless prick.

  “I’ve wanted to talk to you about that, but—”

  “But what?”

  At the moment his face is red, and he’s looking at me as if I’m at fault. “It’s not as if I planned you,” he blurts out.

  Planned me?

  “Oh, like you really plan drunken snogging at parties,” I say.

  He has the audacity to look hurt.

  “Is that all it was to you?” he asks.

  “Thinking about it now, yes.”

  Liar, liar, pants on fire.

  “Fine. Then I think I’ll stick to my plans in the future. I get results out of my plans.”

  “Really. Like your rugby game plan? That really works.”

  “Oh, that’s very low. Is that why you come along and watch? To remind me of my failures?”

  We don’t speak for a moment, but I’m not ready to walk away yet.

  “You won’t understand about that night,” he mutters.

  “Try me.”

  “Okay. I—”

  “If you even dare say it was because you were drunk, I can’t promise you where this will go.”

  “Why not? You did. Anyway, I thought I was going to be justifying my actions without you interrupting.”

  “Then hurry up.”

  “I don’t want you to think I do that all the time,” he says, sounding a bit strained.

  He’s very stressed. I have caused that stress. I am jubilant that I have caused that stress.

  “Why would I think otherwise?”

  “Because,” he says.

  Because?

  “Don’t you do legal studies? Aren’t you in mock trial? Does the argument ‘because’ usually work for you?”

  He doesn’t even have the decency to be shifty-eyed. He just stares straight at me.

  “You were drunk, Will,” I say after a moment. “I wouldn’t expect you to even remember anything.” I turn to go.

  “If I was sober, you would have been impressed,” he says, repeating my words from that night.

  “But you weren’t. And I’m not,” I say firmly. “And if you think that I am praying at night for you to ask me out, just dream on.”

  I walk away, so proud of myself that I can hardly contain it.

  Dear God, please please please let Will Trombal split up with his girlfriend and ask me out.

  The prayer becomes my mantra all night. By 6:30 in the morning my eyes are hanging out of my head and I trudge to the bathroom, half-asleep.

  On the way back I pass the living room, where the CDs are lying around on the floor.

  They’re a combination of my mum’s and dad’s and mine and Luca’s, anything from the Jam to Britney Spears (not mine, I swear to God).

  I come across the Whitlams’ Eternal Nightcap, and it reminds me of being in the car on one of our road trips to the Central Coast, when the four of us would sing the whole way. Our favorite song was “You Sound Like Louis Burdett,” and we’d sing it at the top of our voices. My mum would even let us sing the line “All our friends are fuck-ups,” and Luca would sing it the loudest because it was the only time we were allowed to swear.

  I loved those times on the beach at the end of the day, when the sun was gone and our sunburn would make us shiver in the cool breeze. Luca and I would lie against my parents, licking the salt off their arms, and we’d stay like that until twilight. They’re the magical moments I remember. The moments of brown bodies and salt water– curled hair, of fish and chips on the sand, of sunblock smelling of coconut, of stinging cuts on our feet from jagged rocks, and mostly of the four of us not needing anyone else in the world.

  And I remember the nights of listening to their heavy breathing from the other room through the paper-thin walls of the rented house we were in. Listening to their cries and groans.

  “Why is Mummy crying?” Luca would ask me.

  “Because she’s so happy,” I’d answer.

  I put the CD on and lie back on the carpet, closing my eyes, but then I hear the thumping of running footsteps and I open them to see Luca standing at the door, a look of excitement turning to disappointment, and I know that he would have thought it was my mum.

  I beckon him over. “You put one on,” I say.

  He looks through the collection and then holds one up. “Not until tomorrow, though,” he tells me.

  My mother’s rituals become ours. One morning it’s You Am I’s “Heavy Heart,” and another time my dad puts on Joe Jackson’s “A Slow Song,” because that was their wedding waltz.

  We play Smashing Pumpkins and Shirley Bassey and Jeff Buckley and even Elvis. I try to find music that belongs to me, but I realize that Mia’s music has become mine. Mia’s everything has consumed us all our lives, and now Mia’s nothing is consuming us as well.

  After we play our music, we get ready for school, going through the motions, getting on with our lives.

  And then the worst thing happens.

  I get used to it.

  chapter 15

  IN DRAMA, MR. ORTLEY plays “Venus.” It’s the version by this sixties band, Shocking Blue. And suddenly, out of nowhere, Thomas Mackee starts to dance. Later he tells people that he thought he heard “I’m your penis” rather than “I’m your Venus” and that’s why he got up. But, as usual with Thomas Mackee, you never know the truth.

  Thomas Mackee on a dance floor is totally uninhibited and hysterical to watch. Despite his lanky slobbiness, he moves well. He makes the most ridiculous faces as he twists, his mouth in an O shape, and we’re laughing so much our stomachs hurt. He manages to combine the most outrageously physical moves, and they work. At a dance party you wouldn’t want to be anywhere near him, but here he has the whole space to himself and he relishes it. I look at Mr. Ortley and he’s laughing just as much as we are, and I wonder if this is one of those perfect teaching moments he tells us he’s been waiting for.

  Thomas Mackee loves music. I can tell by the way his body reacts. For a moment I feel a bit of envy because I think I want to be out there making a fool of myself as well. His rhythm is erratic, and in my head I just can’t follow the groove. And then somehow we make eye contact and it clicks.

  Don’t do it, I tell myself. My ex–Stella friends, like Michaela, would think I was a dickhead. A show-off. A loser. I can just imagine them, exchanging looks that say more than enough. It’s how they’ve stayed popular for so long. By not doing anything that will make them look like fools. They never leave home without their safety nets and I think, good for them, but the thing with safety nets is this. I got tangled in them so many times and the Stella girls always seemed to leave me dangling, upside down, to the point where I almost couldn’t breathe anymore.

  So I dance.

  Thomas makes aV with his fingers and he turns it around and points to his eyes as if to say “focus,” and I do, matching his moves, swaying to his beat. The guitar arrangement on the song is fun and it’s easy to change direction. Everyone is clapping the beat, and there’s something so uncoolly cool about it. It’s like geographical humor. You just don’t get it unless you were there. Thomas Mackee has a sense of the ridiculous and it’s contagious, and I’m sure if he were forced to, he’d admit that he’s spent a lifetime making up these moves in his bedroom. Was he hiding in there as well? Was he shaking off an image he’d constructed for himself?

  He tires, and I catch Siobhan Sullivan’s eye and then I take her hand and we’re in Year Seven again, making up the moves that made so much sense at the time. There’s a recognition in her eyes, and being best friends with her is the most vivid memory I have of St. Stella’s, and for one split second I can’t remember being friends with anyone else.

  At the end we take a bow, and for the rest of the day whenever someone from drama class walks past me in the corridor, it’s hard not to grin.

  And being that happy makes me feel guilty. Because I shouldn’t be. Not while my mum is feeling the way she is. How I can dare to be happy is beyond me, and I hate m
y guts for it.

  I hate myself so much that it makes my head spin.

  At times, the house becomes a thoroughfare of my mum and dad’s world, and as people pass through I hope that one of them has the secret to Mia’s recovery. Some of them we see almost every day. People like Freya, the “bastard magnet,” who cheerfully breezes through the house, chatting to Mia as if nothing’s wrong. I like it when Freya comes over. It reminds me of old times, when she and Mia would almost be speaking over each other to get a word in. Sometimes Freya takes her for a drive to get her out of the house and I find myself waiting for a miracle, like them walking through the front door, laughing hysterically over some story Freya has told. But it’s only Freya’s voice I hear each time and she and I will exchange looks and sometimes there are tears in her eyes because I know that she needs Mia to come back as well.

  This is my theory. Mia’s not going to go out into her world, so I decide that I need to bring her world to her. She has so many people in her life and I don’t know where to start: school, university, work, family friends, colleagues, past teachers, past students. I begin with the people she works with, the ones my dad doesn’t relate to.

  Sometimes she used to fight with him about them because, as independent as she is, when she went out she wanted my dad and her to be together.

  “Go out with them on your own. I’ll look after the kids,” he’d argue.

  “That’s a cop-out,” she’d say. “I go out with your friends.”

  “Because my friends are our friends.”

  “Mine could be ours if you gave them a chance.”

  “I have given them a chance. I don’t watch enough public television and foreign films for them, and all they talk to me about is soccer and the Cosa Nostra.” He’d adopt an appalling polished Australian accent, and even Mia would fight hard not to laugh at that. He’d grab her mouth with his hand, making a smile out of it.

  “Can we have a maturity moment?” she’d say. “Every time I go to one of these things, I feel like a widow, Rob.”

  “That’s probably because I feel dead when I’m around them.”