One Whole and Perfect Day Read online

  ‘Mum, I don’t believe I’m hearing this! You married someone because you liked their coat?’

  ‘Oh no, of course not. But the coat was part of it, part of everything –’ Her mother had sighed then, the sort of sigh a very old lady might give, recalling childhood summers.

  Lily skirted a row of icy puddles beside a construction site, and then stopped to consult the map she’d made from Mum’s street directory. The wind was vicious, stinging at her cheeks, flapping the piece of paper in her hand: Firth Street was next left, then third right. Lily walked on. Lonnie had probably moved out here because he fancied living in a boarding house for gentlemen, and 5 Firth Street was the only one left in Australia. Or perhaps, on the day he and Pop had quarrelled, Lonnie’s train had passed this place and he’d looked out through the window and decided, ‘I’ll live here!’

  Or he might have simply liked the name Toongabbie.

  Freakish, thought Lily; that was the word which best described their family. Not freaks, exactly, but – getting there. They were a family that somehow didn’t fit, at least not into the orderly suburb where they lived, a neighbourhood in which any human problem was tidied out of sight, clipped, wrenched out, composted, so that it seemed, like the vanished weeds in gardens, that it was never ever there. Sometimes Lily felt there was an aura about her; that a scent of danger as well as cooking smells hung about her hair and skin and clothes, so that people, without knowing they were doing it, backed off from her.

  People like Daniel Steadman. He probably knew about her family. Last week, in the courtyard of the library, Lily had seen Tracy Gilman deep in conversation with Daniel. Tracy lived in Lily’s street, just four doors down, in a perfect house whose windows shone, whose paintwork was glossy and whole, whose lawns were like brilliant green velvet even in the middle of a drought. Lily hadn’t been able to hear what they were saying, and it might have had nothing to do with her (having a crush on someone also seemed to make you paranoid), but she couldn’t help thinking Tracy could be telling him about that afternoon she’d walked home with Lily, and old Mr Roberts, one of mum’s lame ducks, had been in their front garden wearing Lily’s yellow dungarees.

  And you didn’t have to be paranoid to realise that there were people at school who remembered Lonnie. It was four whole years since he’d been there, yet teachers were still bailing Lily up in the corridors to ask, ‘How’s your brother doing, dear?’ and she could see a kind of avid goggle in their eyes, which meant they were expecting some disaster story. Okay, Lily herself got pretty fed up with Lonnie sometimes, but those goggle-eyed teachers with their fake air of concern made her angry because when you really got down to it, there wasn’t anything seriously wrong with Lonnie. It was simply that he could never seem to stick to anything, and hadn’t she once been like that? First she’d tried ballet and given it away, then Brownies, then there was the saxophone . . .

  Though of course she’d been little then. Lonnie wasn’t little anymore. He was fully grown. And why should he get away and leave her stuck with being the sensible one of the family? No wonder she’d gone funny about Daniel, spending her lunchtimes walking past the senior common room. No wonder Mum was getting weird.

  Lily skipped another icy puddle and a bunch of slimy leaves. Where on earth was Firth Street? She’d been walking down this road for ages and Firth Street never came. Perhaps that was how it was with Lonnie, she thought suddenly: he was like a person walking down a long, long road, waiting for the corner, the right corner, that led into the street where he needed to be. For a moment her heart softened, and then it grew hard again. Wanker! She was going to tell him off when she got there. She really, truly, was.

  ‘Gone?’ echoed Lily, gazing fearfully into the fierce blue eyes of Lonnie’s landlady. Although it had taken her such a long time to find the boarding house, it was still only 7.45, and her brother had never got up that early, even when he’d been at school. Poor Mum had had to call and call . . .

  A sudden panic gripped her, a panic she recognised as being straight out of her mother’s vanishing dreams. ‘Do you mean he’s left?’ she whispered. ‘Gone to live somewhere else?’

  Disappeared. Gone somewhere else, and then somewhere else, so they’d never ever find him again – Lily suddenly glimpsed how simple something unimaginable might be.

  The landlady smiled at her. ‘Of course not, dear. He’s just gone to an early tutorial at the university.’

  ‘But he never goes to early tutorials,’ exclaimed Lily, the words springing to her lips before she had time to think. She flushed with embarrassment and Mrs Rasmussen smiled again. ‘I think you’ll find he does so now,’ she said, and then Lily was smiling too, because Lonnie was still doing his course and Mum was going to be thrilled about that, and Nan would be thrilled too, and even Pop might put away his stupid axe, and Nan could have her party without actual warfare, as if she lived in the kind of family where such celebrations passed off without a hitch. ‘Can I leave a message?’ she asked.

  ‘Of course you can.’ Mrs Rasmussen waited to hear what message Lily had to leave.

  ‘Um, I meant, would it be all right if I wrote him a note, and left it in his room?’ She wasn’t spying, Lily told herself, only there was no way she was leaving this place without seeing what Lonnie’s room was like. For Mum’s sake, anyway. Mum would want to know every detail. ‘It – it’s private,’ she said.

  ‘Ah, privacy,’ said Mrs Rasmussen softly.

  ‘I didn’t mean, um –’

  ‘Ah, I was young once too,’ said the landlady airily, taking a key from the ring at her waist and handing it to Lily. ‘Room number 7, first floor.’

  Up the narrow stairway, down a gloomy hall; Lily turned the key in her brother’s door and took a deep breath before she pushed it open.

  But there was nothing for Mum to worry about here. The room was an almost exact replica of the one Lonnie had left behind: the single bed beneath the window, doona tumbled to the floor, pizza boxes and takeaway cartons, old newspapers, a snowdrift of clothes by the door. Only the desk looked different: the single clear surface in the cluttered room, books neatly stacked on one side, notes and folders on the other, an essay with red comments scrawled angrily inside the margins. Lily took a step towards it, and then stopped short. No! She wouldn’t look. Lonnie, she realised sharply, would never spy on her. Lonnie let people be. It was one of his good points – how he hardly ever criticised.

  Lily sat down on the edge of the bed, twitched off her backpack, fumbled inside it for her notebook, tore out a page and scribbled: Nan’s party – Lon, you have to come. And for Nan’s sake, please, please make it up with Pop!

  As she placed the note on his pillow, a small square of paper escaped from beneath it and fluttered to the floor. Lily bent and picked it up. She didn’t mean to read it, did she? Only you couldn’t help but see how there was only one word on that sheet, a single name, written over and over again. ‘Clara,’ whispered Lily, and she didn’t have a clue why the sound of that name, and the idea that Lonnie had a girlfriend, should make her so happy, and then, almost at once, so sad.

  Sad? No, be honest, Lily told herself sternly, standing in the centre of the little room, gulping in a breath of freezing air. She was envious. Envious of Clara, or of any girl who had someone who would like her so much he would write her name like that, over and over and over.

  14

  LONNIE RECLAIMS

  THE MORNING

  Lonnie had forgotten early mornings; he’d forgotten the ice on winter puddles, the smoke of his breath on the air. He’d forgotten how sounds were clearer: the smart clack of his footsteps on the pavement, dogs barking, voices calling, the distant slam of a door.

  ‘Do they still have that early morning Lit Crit tutorial in First Year?’ Clara had asked him yesterday. ‘You know, the one at nine on Thursday?’

  There was such a tutorial, Lonnie had seen it on his timetable; he’d gazed at it with incredulity. What did they mean by holding a class at suc
h a criminal hour? Didn’t they have any imagination? Didn’t they know that students had actual lives?

  After some consideration, Lonnie had decided not to attend. With his part-time stacking job and all the reading and assignments, Lonnie rarely got to bed before twelve, and that was before he’d met Clara . . .

  Reaching the university by nine meant he’d have to get up before seven; he’d be worn out for the rest of the day. A total wreck. He wouldn’t be able to take anything in, and what was the use of that? Besides, there was this kid in second year who’d promised to lend him his notes –

  ‘Because,’ Clara had continued, ‘I’ve got a nine o’clock on Thursdays too, so I thought we could meet in the Union, at 8.30, and have breakfast together.’

  Eight-thirty! This had once been deep, dark night to Lonnie, but finding Clara seemed to have put a whole new gloss on things: suddenly 8.30 was well into the morning and a nine o’clock tute didn’t seem quite so criminal. Breakfast with Clara! Though it was the word ‘together’ that undid him completely. Clara said it so naturally, as if the pair of them somehow belonged together, like – bacon and eggs, thought Lonnie, or fish and chips, apple pie and cream. ‘Together!’ he sang on Thursday morning in Mrs Rasmussen’s bathroom, while he showered and shaved and cleaned his teeth. ‘Together, together, together!’ It banished the dark at the windows, the icy touch of the linoleum, the cold intimidation of that sign up on the wall: Please leave this bathroom as you would wish to find it.

  ‘Together’ made the dark walk down to the station seem exhilarating, transformed the scowling early morning workers into human beings, and almost (though not quite) made you think that even a tute on literary criticism might hold secret charms.

  When had he last seen early morning? wondered Lonnie, resting his elbow on the dusty sill of the city-bound train, watching the suburbs roll by. Back at school, it must have been – the Year 11 camp, and that was five whole years ago! Five years that had trickled away like water into desert sand.

  On the track beside him, another train drew level, and for a second Lonnie thought he glimpsed his sister’s face. It couldn’t be Lil, of course; at this time of the morning she would still be at home – washing the breakfast dishes, checking the fridge to see there was something for dinner, frowning at the laundry basket, packing her homework into her bag. Something unexpected stirred in Lonnie then, something guilty and surprised: perhaps he should have helped her more when he’d been at home? But he was hopeless at housework and stuff, he’d only have got in her way, made things worse. Lily had always been the sensible one in the family, the efficient one, the early riser. She’d be amazed if she knew he was up and about so early, heading off to breakfast with his girlfriend, then on to a tute at nine. Nine!

  How glorious the city looked outside the windows, the sun on the rooftops, rimming them with gold, the small pink clouds melting into the blue. ‘Reclaim the morning!’ cried Lonnie, punching his fist in the air. People turned to stare at him. Lonnie didn’t mind at all. He was having breakfast with Clara! Everyone seemed beautiful today.

  ‘I think he’s got a girlfriend,’ Lily told her mother that evening. ‘There was a little sheet of paper with a name written over and over. Clara, it was.’

  Marigold swung round from the fridge where she was putting the shopping away. ‘Oh, I’m so glad!’ she said, and Lily felt almost resentful. If she ever got to tell Mum she had a boyfriend, Mum’s face wouldn’t glow like that, as if angels were descending.

  ‘I’m not sure, of course,’ she went on. ‘It might simply be some girl he’s got a crush on; some girl who doesn’t even know he’s there.’ An image of Daniel flashed into Lily’s mind. She shook her head and he vanished. Good! All you needed was willpower.

  By evening the news had travelled to the hills. ‘Stan!’ May called through the kitchen window. Stan was out there mowing again. ‘Stan! Guess what!’

  Stan turned the Victa off. ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Lonnie’s got a girlfriend! Her name’s Clara!’

  So the little no-hoper had a girlfriend, did he? So what! Stan started the Victa up again.

  May turned from the window and grimaced cheerfully at Sef. ‘Cranky old bugger, isn’t he?’ she observed.

  15

  HOSPITALITY

  Jessaline O’Harris lay in bed reading. It was ten o’clock and she was skipping her lecture in Old Norse. Jessaline had never skipped a lecture before, and it gave her a wild, delicious feeling that felt almost criminal. She was sure she must look different.

  Jessaline jumped out of bed, removed her industrial-strength glasses, and studied her face in the mirror above the tiny sink. There was a dangerous glint in her eye that hadn’t been there before, and surely her chin had changed its shape? Become more pointed and determined? Had it? Or was she imagining things? Jessaline twisted her head this way and that, trying to make up her mind. Then she put her glasses back on and skipped out into the hall. ‘Clara!’ she called, knocking on Clara’s door. ‘Clara!’

  No one answered, and then Jessaline remembered that Clara had an early tute at nine o’clock on Thursdays, so she went back to bed, took up her book, and began reading again.

  Bavarian Crème Perfect Love: Mix two cups sugar and eight yolks of egg until lemon-coloured. ‘Lemon-coloured,’ whispered Jessaline, enraptured. Slowly add two cups hot milk in which six cloves have been heated . . .

  A few hours later Jessaline crossed the highway and entered the place her parents and other snobby people from the university called ‘the Hinterland’: the place where the schools of Hospitality, Cosmetic Science, Phys Ed, and other nonintellectual disciplines had their being. Here even the landscape was different. Instead of well-tended gardens and lawns and courtyards, Jessaline passed through a simple strip of bushland, emerging suddenly onto a netball court.

  ‘Watch out!’

  ‘Look where you’re going!’

  Jessaline ducked and weaved between the players, ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean – I didn’t know – ’ she murmured. They paid her no attention; in the Hinterland, it seemed, people didn’t apologise. Jessaline crossed a small paddock of bristly unmown grass, heading determinedly towards a low red brick building which squatted by a narrow roadway, solid and foursquare. She stumbled on the steps. Her eyes were astigmatic: she could see out of each of them quite clearly, but it was hard to get them working both together. Captain Cutlass School of Hospitality, she read above the grey glass doors. Jessaline frowned – it seemed an odd name for a university department, even in the Hinterland. Wasn’t Captain Cutlass a character from a children’s picture book?

  ‘Can I help you?’

  The girl at reception looked terribly young to Jessaline. Could this be a sign that she herself was getting old? Perhaps she’d got here just in time; she’d be twenty in December, after all. Twenty! ‘I’m thinking of getting a changeover,’ she told the girl shyly.

  ‘Changeover?’ The girl stared at Jessaline’s unfashionable glasses, her flumpy mouse-brown hair. ‘You’re in the wrong place, then. This is Hospitality.’ She pointed through the window. ‘Cosmetic Science is over there.’

  ‘Changeover, not makeover,’ said Jessaline coldly. ‘I’m thinking of changing courses. Changing to Hospitality.’

  The girl leaned her chin on one hand. ‘From what?’ she asked, and Jessaline could see, from the computer closed beside her, and the copy of Bestie brazenly open at page 47 (Is Your Boss a Psychopath?) that the question sprang from nothing more than idle curiosity.

  ‘Linguistics.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  Jessaline smiled at her. She was beginning to like this girl; there was no nonsense about her, she was as solid and foursquare as the building that sheltered her.

  ‘The study of languages,’ she answered, and the girl pulled a face and grunted, ‘Aargh. Rather you than me.’

  ‘Precisely,’ replied Jessaline. ‘I’m not suited, that’s why I want to change. I want to do Hospitality. I want to coo
k, really cook. I want to work in a famous restaurant, and perhaps, one day, to have my own restaurant and –’

  ‘Okay, okay, I get the message.’ The girl waved an elegant white hand. Her nails were painted a deep and thrilling blue. Heaven’s Door, it was called. Years later, when Jessaline did have her own restaurant, she would have its doors painted that exact same shade of blue.

  ‘So I wanted to know if I could change over next semester,’ she said now.

  ‘Next semester? I think you can, but –’

  ‘But what?’ Jessaline trembled. She couldn’t bear to think that she might not be able to study in this deeply unpretentious place.

  ‘You’ll have to go over there.’ The girl flapped her hand towards another window, one that gave a clear view of the scrubland, and beyond it, the tall graceful buildings of the ‘proper’ university. ‘To Admin. They’ll tell you what to do, give you all’ – she wrinkled her small nose in distaste – ‘the forms and stuff.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Jessaline, and turned to go.

  ‘Look forward to seeing ya!’

  ‘What?’ Jessaline spun round.

  The girl was grinning at her. ‘Look forward to seeing ya. You know, next semester, when you get your course fixed up.’

  ‘Oh, yes!’ Jessaline’s face glowed. They were so friendly over here! The woman in the office at Linguistics never spoke to students if she could help it, except to bark at them to close the door. Emboldened, Jessaline pointed to the sign above the entrance. ‘Why’s it called Captain Cutlass School of Hospitality?’

  ‘Captain Cutlass?’

  ‘On the door there.’

  ‘It’s not Captain Cutlass. You must need new glasses.’

  ‘Oh, I do. I can’t see the edges on things.’

  The girl nodded. ‘Get contacts, then. Those glasses don’t suit you – they wouldn’t suit anyone. They’re gross!’