Saving Francesca (25 page)

“Are you and Daddy going to be okay?” I ask her.

“Why do you ask?”

“Because people grow out of people. You’ve known him for over twenty years.”

“I’ve known you for seventeen and I haven’t grown out of you and I never will. Why should it be different for Daddy?”

“Because I’m your flesh and blood.”

“Oh God, Frankie, I breathe in rhythm with that man. You think that’s not my flesh and blood after all these years?”

We hold on to each other and she looks at me closely, as if she hasn’t seen me for a really long time.

“When I was seventeen,” she says, “I just stopped speaking to my father for two years. I thought he was a peasant, some kind of idiot. I was embarrassed by how simple he was. I was such a bitch. But all I can remember now is his face—his beautiful patient face, waiting for his daughter to start speaking to him again. He never questioned what was going on and he never pushed, and I saw that as a weakness. But he was just waiting.”

Her thought process is written all over her face. It creases her forehead and makes her mouth look hard and twisted. I try to press it out with my fingers. If I just smooth out those creases, she’ll go back to normal.

“I grew out of it and that was because of your father. Seeing the world through Robert’s eyes is incredibly soothing, though I have to keep on pulling myself away, because I need to use my own eyes. But thanks to Robert, I saw Nonno for what he was—this beautifully simple man who knew exactly what he wanted in life—and I envied him for that. . . . ‘Clarity,’ I think, is the word. But I never told him that. I thought that one day I’d sit him down and tell him how sorry I was . . . and I never did find the time. And if I could just have
one
minute, just to say goodbye to him, I would never complain again, Frankie.
Never
. And I thought when I got pregnant last year . . .”

One day I’ll ask my mum about that baby. If she already had loved it or what she imagined our lives would be with it around. And what’s missing in our lives without it. But for now I let her talk. I try to wipe her tears away, but there are too many.

“I just want to wake up in the morning and for the light to be on,” she sobs, “and I want to stop feeling like a success just because I can eat my toast and I want to be able to brush my teeth without throwing up and then when I get through all of that, I want to work at getting that look out of your eyes. That look of fear that I put there and I hate myself for that.”

“But when we’re happy, you put that look in our eyes as well. So you have to give yourself thousands of brownie points for that,” I tell her.

She lets me trace the scar on her stomach. The scar I put there when I was born.

“It’s because you were in such a hurry and I wanted to have you all to myself for just a little while longer,” she murmurs sleepily. “Even back then we were battling each other.”

When I grow up, I’m going to be my mother.

chapter 33

THE NEXT MORNING,
I see Thomas, Jimmy, and Siobhan off in Tara’s father’s car. Justine is meeting Tuba Guy and opts for the bus.

“Tara’s driving is a nightmare, anyway,” she whispers in my ear.

We stand on the pavement, listening to Thomas and Tara squabble.

“How about we don’t turn all this into a tragedy and you let me drive, Tara?”

“How about no.”

“You mean yes/no or no/no?”

“You just want to drive in my father’s Commodore.”

“No. I just want to live until my next birthday. Is that too much to ask?”

“Is it too much to ask that you guys don’t argue the whole way home?” Jimmy says.

Justine is laughing and I’m loving the sound of their voices.

Siobhan sticks her head out of the window.

“I love youse.”

Thomas leans over and beeps the horn, and I see Tara slap his hands away.

They drive off and Justine kisses my cheek.

“I’ll ring you later. Maybe if my dad lets me, we can meet down at Bar Italia for a gelato tonight.”

“Cool.”

I watch her walk up the road, and then she disappears and my anxiety returns, just for a split second. And somehow I find myself running, and by the time I catch up to her, the bus has pulled up.

“Justine?”

She looks at me, surprised, as the bus doors open.

I’m trying to catch my breath because I don’t have much time.

“You’re my rock.”

The bus driver is telling her to get on the bus, but she’s just standing there, an I-think-I’m-going-to-cry look on her face. But I grin at her and she grins back.

She gets onto the bus and walks to the back, waving, and I stay there until the bus is out of sight.

I’m about to walk into the house when Will pulls up, so I stop and sit on the step.

He has a relieved look on his face, and I can tell he wants to go into a question frenzy. He squeezes in next to me and we don’t say anything for a moment or two.

“Promise me that there will never be another reason for that Tara Finke chick to call me?” he says, taking my hand.

I don’t want to, but I laugh, and he leans over and kisses me on the side of my neck and he keeps his face there for a moment.

“I’m sorry,” he says, “for that time I kissed you at that party and for that time at the wedding and more than anything for the thousand times that I wanted to and didn’t have the guts to.”

“And for cutting out next year.”

“It was always part of my plan. Before I met you.”

“But your decision about going came
after
you met me. That’s what I don’t understand.”

He runs his fingers through his hair, frustrated, confused, everything. “We’re supposed to be talking about you and how you’re feeling,” he says.

“Me’s easy. Me got on a train and ended up in Woy Woy. You’s difficult. You’re planning on puking your way through Europe at a time that I thought you were . . . kind of interested in me.”

“Kind of interested in you,”
he laughs, as if he can’t believe what he’s hearing. “I’m
kind of interested
in calculus and ancient Roman warfare. You don’t use words like
kind of interested
to describe how I feel about you.”

“You always say it’s complicated,” I say, turning to face him. “Make it simple for me.”

He thinks about it for a moment.

“Okay.” He has that calculating-a-math-problem thing written all over his face.

“‘Simple’ is breaking up with my girlfriend. I thought it would be much more complicated but it wasn’t. I wish I had done it earlier, but there were tons of reasons, logical ones, for going out with her. Everything was
nice
. Not dramatic, not emotional, not feeling like a yo-yo or comparing someone you’re crazy about to stationery, it was just nice. I’d look at her and think, nice. Nice body, nice face, sex would be nice. . . .”

“Will,” I interrupt. “Do I need to hear the ‘sex would be nice’ stuff? I had a bit of a mini-breakdown yesterday and you’re not cheering me up.”

“Yes you do, because breaking up with her was so easy and breaking up with you would be like, I don’t even want to think about it.”

“We haven’t even started going out together and you’re thinking of breaking up.”

“But that’s it. When I think of you, I think of future stuff. I think of
this is it
and I’m not supposed to think
this is it
at my age. I don’t look at you and think
nice
. I look at you and think, oh my God, I want to hold her and never let her go. I think, sex—right here, right now—”

“Frankie!”

My dad is behind us and Will swings around in shock, instantly getting onto his feet and staring up at my father, who is glaring.

“We’ll be leaving in five minutes,” he says, eyeing Will.

“Papa, this is Will.”

My father nods, taking in every detail, and then he goes inside.

Will sits down, stunned.

“He heard the sex bit.”

“If you said the word ‘sex’ to me and I was standing a thousand miles away from him, he’d hear it.”

I laugh, because I can’t help it. I can’t believe I’m talking about having sex, and I know this sounds slack, but I just love it when Will’s all confused and rambling.

“Am I making sense?” he asks.

“Weirdly enough, yes.”

“Last year on Reflection Day we had to write down what our foundations were and whether we thought they were strong enough to get us through unfamiliar territory, and I thought, shit no. Go overseas and have my whole world back here change? No way. I didn’t even know who I was
here,
so what made me think that I’d know who I was over
there
?

“But we had to do the list again this year, so I went for it. I didn’t put down Sebastian’s, because school’s not going to be there next year, nor is being a prefect or choirboy or rugby loser or anything else. And that freaked me out, because I wondered, what am I if I’m not all those things? But I stuck to three truths. The first is that my family loves me. It’s unconditional, and I know this because of the way they’ve dealt with things in my older brothers’ lives that they don’t believe in but support. Secondly is that I’m good at building things, and thirdly is how I feel about you, but more than anything how I feel about me because of you.

“Sometimes you look at me and it’s like all the bullshit gets stripped off and I’m left with what’s underneath and I kind of like what I see. Someone who actually fails. Someone who has absolutely no self-control. Someone who says real dickhead things like ‘this is complicated.’ I like that part of me, you know. I like the fact that I know I can’t control you or how I feel about you and that doesn’t freak me out.”

“I love it when you’re demented like this.”

He’s unstoppable. “But sometimes I get terrified and think that everything may change and I won’t know where to fit in when I get back, after I’ve spent a whole lifetime fitting in. Or what if that dickhead Mackee and that psycho Hailler grow a brain and you start finding yourself attracted to them, if you aren’t already?”

“If you stay behind, the whole change thing might happen anyway,” I tell him. “The not-fitting-in stuff. Certainly not the part about me being attracted to Thomas and Jimmy.”

He kisses me softly and just stares. I get a bit embarrassed because it’s so intense.

“What are you looking at?” I ask.

“Why, I’m looking at you, miss.”

Oh my God. He’s quoting a romantic scene out of
The Last of
the Mohicans
.

“I thought you only watched it for the massacres,” I say, grinning.

“I watched it again. Although you can’t go past that last scene when he guts that guy.”

“Oh, I think I can.”

We laugh for a moment.

“Thank God for e-mail, right?” he says. “It’s not that far when you think about it.”

I shake my head.

“Write me letters, Will. Write me long letters.”

I feel sad. No matter what he’s said, I still feel sad and I want to cry because I’m losing him at a time that I’ve actually found him.

“If I asked you to stay, would you?” I ask later as we’re standing by his car.

“Maybe I would, but I don’t think you’d ask me. But I swear to God that I’ll be on the first plane back if you ever need saving from anything. . . .”

I shake my head again.

“You go and shake your foundations, Will. I think it’s about time I saved myself.”

chapter 34

IT’S ALMOST THE
end of term three and the Year Twelves are on their way out. I can’t believe that my senior year is about to begin, but I’m looking forward to it, despite Will going and even with my mum the way she is. I stand talking to Will and without thinking, we’re holding hands. Mr. Brolin approaches us and puts us on detention for breaking the “hands-off” policy, and while he’s writing in our diaries, we’re killing ourselves laughing, which makes him angrier.

Later, I’m standing in the middle of the courtyard, just watching everyone.

I love this school. I love how uncomplicated it is and the fact that we come from almost two hundred suburbs, so we have to work hard at finding something to hold us together. There’s not a common culture or social group. There’s a whole lot of individuality, where it doesn’t matter that we’re not all going to be heart surgeons and it doesn’t matter whether you sing in a choir, or play a piano accordion, or lose dismally at rugby league, or are victorious in basketball. I remember a poem we’re studying. I think it’s Bruce Dawe. About constants in a world of variables. That’s what this place is, I guess. And it might be mundane, but I think I need the constant rather than the variable at the moment.