One Long Thread (14 page)

23.

I was so relieved when the formal night finally arrived because it meant an end to Mr Grandy and Dad and Amona's attempts at persuading me to go. By the evening it was too late to reconsider, there was no way anyone could change my mind. Even if – by some deranged notion – I decided I wanted to go, it was too late. Tickets had been sold, places booked, tables arranged. There was no placecard at the Beachside High School Formal for Ruby Moon.

I had been anticipating this night, thinking about which video I'd choose to watch. I had been leaning towards something with Ginger Rogers because it seemed to be the kind of evening only her grace and poise could restore. I was standing in front of the wall of videos when Dad poked his head around the door.

‘We're going to Charlie's tonight, Button,' he said.

‘What?'

‘And you have to dress up.'

I was totally confused and turned away from the wall of videos to face Dad. ‘I don't want to go,' I said, crossing my arms. ‘And even if I did, why would I dress up?'

Dad held his hands up and shook his head. ‘Not an option,' he said, smiling. He turned and walked towards his room, whistling. I was furious. Who was this person? I was too confused with my father's uncharacteristic stubbornness to form any specific words to argue with him. By the time I had followed him to his room, he'd gone inside and the door had closed. So I did what anyone in my situation would have done. I sat down on the floor beside his door, my back to the wall. And crossed my arms for good measure. I was suddenly so angry. It felt like there was a vortex made of steel wool in my guts. It clouded my mind and thumped in my veins. This was not my dad, the man of predictable diplomacy. This was Amona.

Amona didn't move into our house straightaway after Dad and I came home. They didn't discuss it with me but I know they decided to ease into the change for my benefit.

After losing Sally I'd been finding it hard to adapt to anything new and it seemed as if the whole world was changing around me. School was finishing, my friends were all moving on and I had to scramble to catch up on work I had missed, as well as completing all the current work.

Even before Sally, I hadn't given all that much thought to what I would do with my future. I wasn't the kind of person to think too much ahead of myself. I was like Dad in that regard. We had a comfortable rhythm between us, treading small wheels to get us from one day to the next, one week to the next. But Sally had changed that for me. I knew I had to take responsibility, because I didn't want my life slipping by and falling away, but I didn't know what to do with that thought. I didn't want my world coming to a sudden end, but, if it did, I wanted to know I had lived every day of it.

I didn't appreciate Amona's presence in our house at first. The thing was I liked her, I liked her a lot, but I was trying not to like the situation, making myself feel sad and unwanted. I'd been taking every opportunity to turn what might have been a positive experience into a reinforcement of my loss. Inwardly, I blamed Dad for appearing too quick to move on and forget.

Amona made him happy; you could see that they both made each other happy.

I'd go to sleep with my thoughts turning black at myself and anyone I felt didn't understand. It was strange, part of me understood what I was doing, but the other part of me didn't know and didn't care. Dad and Amona never confronted me about it and I could think of a dozen justifiable reasons they should have confronted me with a parental lecture. But they didn't and I'm so glad. It would have only made it worse and harder to come back out of the small dark hole I was digging around me.

I heard Amona's car pull up into the garage. Her car door opened and closed, her heels clicked on the concrete and the door from the garage into the passage opened and closed in a rush. I didn't move. Amona scurried down the passage, her arms laden with bags. She stepped over me – as if I wasn't there at all – opened the door to their bedroom and closed it again. There was definitely a conspiracy.

The door opened again and Dad appeared. I looked up to find him dressed in his best black suit, bow tie fastened about his neck. He smelled of sandalwood and spice. He looked so handsome.

He stepped over me and headed towards the kitchen. I followed behind.

‘You either get dressed up and join us for dinner or I'll have to make you starve,' he said, the determination in his voice rattling me. It verged on scorn. He was toying with me.

‘Starve or feast on chow mein and curry puffs.'

I decided I knew how to handle this. If I had to go along with this half-baked idea, I'd change into clean jeans and T-shirt. For the sake of good Chinese and the semblance of a happy – if not demented – household, I'd go along with the plan. To a point.

I turned and stormed off towards my room. I heard Dad following me, so I stopped.

‘You have to wear that midnight-blue dress you've had hanging on your mannequin for months.'

I swallowed. No way. Absolutely no way!

‘You don't have a choice, Ruby,' he said quietly, behind me.

The shock of hearing my name, of Dad actually saying my name. ‘I think it's about time I called you by the name I gave you. Don't you?'

Something cracked inside. Like I'd been hit hard from nowhere. I turned and faced him and blubbered. I thought I was over all of that. I didn't think anything could reduce me to tears anymore. Certainly not in front of anyone. Dad pulled me close. ‘Oh my darling Ruby,' he said. ‘Tears are not going to get you out of wearing that dress.'

Despite this tone of instant sadness, I laughed.

It was still a stupid idea. But, inside my room, I told myself that wearing this midnight-blue dress, the one I made after Sally had gone, wouldn't be half as strange as wearing that apricot floral disgrace of Pearl's. I told myself it didn't mean anything. That all I had to do was undress and redress, get in the car and go out. I tried telling myself it meant nothing more than that.

I had not removed that dress from the mannequin, long before Sally's accident and it felt wrong in a way I still couldn't explain. But I was hungry and perhaps part of me really wanted to go because I unhooked the clasps and the zip and slipped the dress away from the mannequin. I had an overwhelming sense that Sally was in the room. I held my breath. I didn't want to breathe or blink or think anything that would make her disappear. I felt like I could almost see her, hear her talking to me, saying things like ‘What do you think you are doing? I can't believe you've made all this fuss over a stupid dress. Well, all right, it's beautiful but, jeez. Really? You always did hold on to everything too long. Your baby blanket, your dummy, your doll. I've been gone for ages, Button. I'd have already let you go.'

I felt her smile and there was that same sense of warmth and peace she could give you in that gesture. I knew then that she might say the kinds of things that made you think she didn't care or didn't take much to heart, but everything she really wanted you to know and feel and understand was right there in those moments when she looked at you like there was no other moment in the world. Her smile could wash away a thousand doubts as soon as light up a room. That was her; that was Sally.

I kissed my fingers, held my palm flat beside my mouth and blew it into the air that surrounded her memory. I closed my eyes, thinking this was one of those moments you see in movies or read about in books where everything comes together. I expected to remember seeing her in that white dress, my silk moth stitched to the bodice, but I still couldn't. What I could do, only just, was slip that dress over my own lanky frame, pull the zipper up and look at myself in the mirror. I looked like her. I did look just like her.

24.

We were an odd sight in Charlie's Chinese Restaurant
.
The three of us sitting in our finery around a lazy Susan filled with chicken chow mein, fried rice, garlic prawns, honey chicken and Mongolian lamb. The remains of our entrees of satay sticks, prawn toast and spring rolls were on one small plate in the centre. The restaurant was full, the rest of the patrons dressed in casual jeans, even thongs.

Amona drank green tea from a small cup that had no handle while Dad had white wine.

‘Ignore them,' Dad said as people turned to look at us.

‘We're multi-millionaires,' he said, ‘and it's our custom to dress like this and eat wherever we like.'

That brought the first laugh of the evening. Then Dad produced his joke book. ‘This took me a week of scouting in lunchtimes to find.'

I couldn't remember the last time I laughed so much. Yes I could. It would have been my birthday dinner before Sally's accident.

We grew full pretty quickly and I was aware of how fitted that dress really was. It wasn't like wearing my usual jeans and shirt, something comfortable that stretched and moulded to my shape. This dress felt prickly and awkward. It had me sitting straight, being careful about how I let my legs rest under the table. Dad pulled out his camera and we leaned into each other while Dad held the camera and took snaps. Of the fifteen or so that he took, there was only one where he'd managed to get us all in together. In all of the others at least one of us was missing a head, or all of us missing our heads entirely. I think we found those pictures funnier than the joke book.

Dad held up his hand to signal the waiter and I didn't think I could eat anything else, but Dad ordered dessert. I was thinking he'd gone a little overboard with the quantities until he announced that there would be two extra people joining us. I didn't think it would be anyone from school – there was no way any of my friends would have given up a moment of their formal time to come here. Surely. And neither should they. But I didn't have to wait long to find out who it was. I saw Mr Grandy accompanied by an older lady coming through the main door. He waved enthusiastically as he saw us and I waved back. I turned to Dad and Amona; they were smiling.

‘My dear Ruby,' Mr Grandy said, arriving beside me. He leant down and kissed me on the cheek before presenting me with a small bunch of roses.

‘Oh but you didn't have to,' I tried to say but he waved away most of it before I'd finished the sentence. He turned to the woman. ‘Ruby, this is my mother, Molly Goodweather.'

‘Hello,' I managed to say, holding out my hand. She took it – her fingers felt cold and fluttery, but her grip was firm. I felt as though the room was spinning around me. Molly Goodweather! One of the greatest names in the history of Australian fashion was Mr Grandy's mother?

‘I've been so longing to meet you, Ruby,' she said, pulling out a seat beside me and sitting down. Mr Grandy moved to a spare seat beside Dad. The dessert arrived and I looked at Mr Grandy for some kind of explanation. Why had he never told me?

‘Okay, Mother, how about you tell Ruby.'

I could not swallow my ice-cream. Molly Goodweather? My hands were sweaty. All those times Mr Grandy and I had rolled our eyes toward one another during her phone calls. Molly Goodweather! Tell Ruby what, exactly?

‘I've set up an interview for you with the Melbourne School of Fashion, Ruby,' Molly said. ‘You can thank me when you've made a name for yourself.'

Molly dipped her spoon into her dessert. She consumed a considerable amount of wine and engaged us in a lengthy discussion about everything wrong with our country, politics and the general state of affairs.

‘Mothers,' Mr Grandy whispered as we were leaving.

Not long after school finished, five boxes addressed to me arrived at our house, all from Tonga. Inside were all of the damaged rods, cocoons and throwsters waste I had seen in the baskets in the silkhouse. Kilograms of silk waste, collected and saved over those seasons when something disturbed the equilibrium of those worms and their cocoons were improperly formed or they emerged too early in the season, ruining the cocoons by biting through the ends before Pearl had time to boil and spin them. She had boxed all of the raw, unspun silk and sent it to me. There was a brief letter.

Dearest Ruby,

Life is about taking what's given to us and creating something wonderful.

Love always,

Grandma Pearl xxxx

I stuck the boxes back up with masking tape and stacked them in a corner of the garage.

I hadn't heard from Becky or any other of my friends much at all. There was a phone message, left hurriedly, from Becky saying she and Rachel had been accepted for work on Hayman Island and would be off in a matter of weeks. I was relieved she sounded happy and there was no trace of the bitterness that existed between us since the formal and I was so glad she seemed to have forgiven me. I managed to catch her before they left and we chatted happily for an hour and it felt good to be connected to her again, even if I could feel us drifting apart, inevitably, as we found worlds of our own. We reminisced about school, the musical and made each other promise that no matter where we moved to, wherever life took us, we'd always find time to catch up. I don't know how much of that either of us actually believed, but it was more important that we really meant it. She promised to write and tell me everything that happened. I reminded her that Casanovas were a trap. She owed it to females everywhere to resist their evil ways and pursue the true Romeo. Becky assured me that her life held no greater purpose than that.

I hung up, musing on the notion of a Valentine and considering – to my shame – whether there was any truth in what Mr Grandy had said. I know I hadn't called Barry since returning from Darwin, but he hadn't called me, either. It was easy to interpret this as his general disinterest. Surely he'd rather put the entire Moon family far behind him, but Mr Grandy may have had a point, too. What if he thought I needed space? After all, by his own admission he'd given Sally exactly that.

One day, a few weeks before Christmas, I spent longer than usual at the beach. I walked along the shore, my jeans rolled up to my knees, my Converse knotted around my neck, letting the water rush over my feet and between my toes. I trod on shells and dug footprints in the sand, watching them slowly shrink and dissolve into the sand as if they had never existed at all. I forgot about Sally and Mum and Dad and everything definitive about my life. I felt the sun caress my skin and the wind whip against me and I was no more or less in that moment than any other one thing. Creativity and ideas fired between every synapse underneath my skin and I felt radiant from the inside out. I walked home barefoot, feeling every rock and pebble, every patch of broken asphalt and paver, every ounce of soft grass and broken ground.

I threw my shoes in the corner beside the front door and ran a bath. While the tub filled with hot water I dug out every candle I could find in the house and covered the floor, the shower top, the soap holder, the basin and the floor with them. I stripped free of my clothes and balled them on the floor in my room. I switched on the CD player, turned the volume up and let Vivaldi fill every crevice and space, every inside and out of the house. I lit every one of the candles and sank my body under the hot water, bubbles clinging to my skin, the sudden change in temperature sending goosebumps radiating along my arms and neck. I sank beneath the water and closed my eyes and Vivaldi was muted inside my cocoon. I held my breath for as long as I could, felt my need for breath build fire inside my lungs. I lurched out, gasping, sending water slopping onto the floor and pooling around the candles. I laughed. Without reason.

I let my hair hang lank and wet around my face, drips of water falling free and sliding along my skin, sliding my arms into my bathrobe and knotting it around my middle. In the sewing room I opened the cupboard and took every dress from its hanger, spreading them across the floor. I fluted the skirts and bent the bodices as though invisible mannequins were wearing them. They overlapped and bumped and danced one into the other. I stood on the sewing table and photographed them from different angles, narrowing the zoom and widening the scope until I had, perhaps, a hundred photographs.

That night I printed and cut and pasted and drew. By the time the sun rose and Dad and Amona had stumbled out for their morning coffee, I had a folio of sketches and photographs, material swatches and descriptions linked by an unbroken silk thread which I had sewn, ducking and weaving around every carefully placed picture, on to every black page.

The next morning I took my folio and attended my interview for the Melbourne School of Fashion.