Escape (4 page)

Clara must have understood the whole scenario in a second –
it is horrifying now to think how much she understood about our
relationship – and instead of her father she chose a boy in her class,
Sydney Shellcock. He'd had a crush on her for a year, so she knew he
would cooperate and do what she told him. The trouble was, Sydney
hadn't been prepared and he was probably stage struck too; he took
ages to follow her instructions. He nearly messed it all up but at last
Clara retrieved the dangling string. Everyone clapped, but it wasn't
the same awed, spontaneous clapping as before. Like me, they were
probably just relieved she'd managed to finish. I told her when we
got home that the problem was her timing – if she'd waited until the
audience was quiet again before she started, it would have gone better.
Your stage patter is just as important as the trick itself, I reminded her,
and correct timing is essential in both. But she was already stomping
down the hall and by the time I reached her she'd got into bed in her
costume and pulled the sheets over her head. Guido stood in the
doorway, glaring at me, so I went into the bathroom and closed the
door. I ran the cold tap because my hands were stinging from so much
clapping. I'd wanted to sound like an entire auditorium applauding. I
filled the sink and laid my hands in the water for a long time. They felt
as if they'd been burnt.

Clara told me, just last week, that if she'd had brothers and sisters,
they could have formed a protest movement. Or split things up. 'You
read the handcuff manual and I'll take the chain escape' – that type of
thing. As it was, she said, there was just her.

Guido says Clara learnt the S word,
slack
, way before she learnt
the F word. She was so busy learning how to get out of things, Guido
says, she never really understood how to get into them.

Well, that's his opinion.

Slack, substitution, subterfuge – this is the bible of escapology.
Whether you are escaping from a straitjacket or a Bohemian Torture
Crib, obtaining slack is the only way out. Without anyone seeing, you
must make space between your body and the restraint even as you are
chained, thumb-tied, or belted down.

Slack has been the single most important discovery of the later
years of my marriage. It saved my life. I give it a colour in my dreams
– blue. It is like an air bubble I can float in, secret, mine. It is like that
tiny space between water and ice that kept Harry alive in the Detroit
River as he swam around desperately searching for a hole in the frozen
surface. Sometimes I imagine I
am
that empty space, nothing else.

I put an Aretha Franklin song on the stereo before I go back into the
kitchen. If you turn up the volume and sing along, the music makes
you feel brave, at least as long as the song lasts. I open the oven and a
hot aromatic gush of roasting veal blasts my face. It smells wonderful –
as if I'm a real mother and grown-up woman cooking for her family. I
turn over the pumpkin and potato pieces, crisping them on both sides.
The eggplant and capsicums are caramelising nicely. But I'll have to
remember to check them again soon, setting the pinger, because in
just ten minutes they can go from juicy and caramelised to withered
and black. And then Guido will say nothing during dinner.

I peep down the hall. Guido's door is still closed. I can hear
laughter. The sound is unfamiliar, strange, like someone else's husband
laughing; a man I barely know perhaps, like the newsagent or the
doctor I saw last week. I check my watch – just fifteen minutes before
my parents arrive.

I wince at the thought of the doctor. He didn't comment when I
told him about my sliding sensations and disturbing dreams. He just
typed something on his computer. I hate silences. They fall like snow,
muffling your sense of direction – if you have one. Maybe it's the
menopause coming, I suggested, and tried to laugh. I told him I have
this hysterical feeling practically all the time, as if something is about to
explode. But as he was a gynaecologist just doing the usual check-up,
he said we ought to get a move on.
Men
-o-pause, I repeated, a pause
between
men
– ha! I must have sounded like some middle-aged harlot,
which is so unfair, because I've only been with one man for the last
twenty-two years. The doctor didn't answer. He was performing my
breast check. I felt myself go hot with embarrassment, and started to
sweat. It wasn't because he was feeling my breasts and no one else had
touched them for three years. I don't really mind about that any more;
after a while you close down like a lift permanently marooned on the
bottom floor. No, it was because lately, ridiculous, puerile things come
flying out of my mouth. I never know what I'm going to say next.

I decide to set the table with Great Aunt Leah's silver cutlery.
There are irregular black marks scattered like precancerous sunspots
on the soup spoons. Luckily we're not having soup.
Silver should be
cleaned regularly with a special silver cloth
, says the voice.
You don't
deserve Aunty's silver.

But I loved Great Aunt Leah. I remember her funeral and
shivah
,
the seven-day mourning period in which we all had to sit around at
her house with the mirrors covered. As was the Jewish custom, we had
to make a tear in our clothes to show our grief. You were supposed to
think about all the good qualities of the dead person, but I spent the
afternoons wishing that the poor orphan boy who was staying at our
house could be buried deep in the ground instead of my Great Aunt
Leah. This was a wicked thought, I knew, because Danny was only
fifteen years old with a lot of miserable times to make up for, while
Leah was eighty-nine and, as everyone kept saying, had enjoyed 'a
good long life'. During each night of
shivah
I pinched my arm till it
stung, but the wishing wouldn't stop.

I sort Aunty's spoons into a pile on the sideboard for cleaning
tomorrow, and stand back to look at the table. Fresh white cloth –
unironed – but clean at least. A blank canvas, soon to be coloured in
by our last supper. Clara always loved that painting by Leonardo da
Vinci – now, of course, she can't wait to see the real thing. She says
that's one of the reasons she is going to Italy.

In the last two years of high school, Clara became very interested
in art. She was particularly fond of Italian Renaissance painting,
borrowing library books the size of coffee tables, with lustrous colour
plates of saints and madonnas and magnificent men who looked like
Guido. She read through the centuries, from Giotto to Michelangelo,
and used to follow me around the kitchen, trying to get me to look at
the paintings. 'See how the human face comes to life with Leonardo,
Caravaggio, Michelangelo? See how the people have grown expressions
you can recognise?' I'd have to wipe my hands to make sure I didn't
get grease on the lovely books, and clear a space on the kitchen table
while the beans cooked. I kept eyeing the stove because I didn't want
them to burn. Green beans get that nasty brown shrivelled taste if you
neglect them. I only run a little water in the pan so all the goodness of
the beans doesn't get thrown out with the water, but it means you have
to watch them.

Clara would set out the medieval pictures next to the late
Renaissance, and ask me to compare them. She said something that
struck me – she said those early static saints of Byzantine mosaics
were beautiful in an abstract kind of way, like fabulous bathroom tiles,
but their faces didn't make you feel anything.

The other day Guido brought up the subject of Clara's art. I was
in the bedroom, at my desk, and I'd just got a good paragraph going.
He picked up a book on my desk, his lip curling in disdain. '
Houdini
Lives!
' he read out the title, shaking his head. Then he put it down
again, losing my place. 'You never encouraged Clara in 'er hart,' he
said, as if we'd just left off talking about it, instead of being off in our
two separate worlds, surrounded by moats of silence. 'Maybe if you
'ad listened to 'er, she would be at hart school now instead of drifting
around like the lost ship. Remember 'er major work for the HSC?
Where is it now?'

I told him I didn't know, somewhere in the bowels of her room. He
shook his head again. 'Is probably rotting under the dust in this 'ouse.
She 'ad talent, and she was passionate, always looking at pictures.
Che
peccato
, shame!' and he wandered out again before I could reply.

I sat for another hour at the desk but I couldn't write any more.
Of course I remembered her major work. She'd got a very good mark
for art, better than any other subject. Her painting was based on
Mantegna's
Christ
. She said Mantegna had been revolutionary back in
1500, because his Christ was an ordinary man anyone could identify
with. The perspective was surprising, too, bold and confronting. The
man, foreshortened in the painting, was lying on the ground directly
facing you, so that your eye ran from his poor tortured soles right up
into his eyes. You felt you could reach right in and touch him. Clara
did a self-portrait foreshortened in the same way, but instead of lying
on the ground like Mantegna's Christ, her figure was nailed to a
Bohemian Torture Crib, belted down with leather restraints and metal
chains. She'd built up the paint in certain areas and used real leather
and scraps of metal for the chains. The goths at her school thought
it was cool. I didn't know what to think. Guido had looked more at
me than at the painting, shaking his head. We had a great unveiling
for my parents before she took it to school. They had been quiet, too.
Dad's eyes had filled with tears, although that happens quite regularly
to him.

I hope I told Clara how good her painting was. I wanted to,
because it impressed the hell out of me, even though it made me feel
uneasy. But maybe I was so concerned about everyone else's reactions,
I didn't show her my own. I forget sometimes that my presence has an
effect on others. So often, I feel invisible.

It's my fault, according to Guido, that Clara has become a drifter.
It's my fault the house is dusty, the chair covers are worn and torn, the
walls need painting, we have no money, the pasta isn't salty enough, the
fridge is empty, the
parmigiano
is from Kraft instead of Parma. Guido
is very good at criticising, but what does he ever do about anything?
Why didn't
he
encourage Clara? Why didn't he look at the books with
her, seek her out and talk 'hart'? Maybe then I wouldn't have burnt the
beans so often, and he'd have been happier.

But what would I know? The world inside Guido is still a mystery
to me, a locked door, and after all these years I no longer seem to have
the energy to pick him open. Just sometimes, when he smiles at me,
I feel warmed as if I've found myself in a sudden patch of sun. Blessed.

I'm tucking the red and green serviettes into the wineglasses
when there's the knock at the door. No one else in the house hears,
apparently, as there is no reaction from behind the closed doors.

I run down the hall, knocking my knee against the telephone table.
A stab of rage chokes me and the world starts to slide.
Bugger it!

'Oh boy, something smells good!' cries Dad as I open the door.
His smacking kiss explodes right on my ear, so I'm briefly deafened.
'Why are you holding your head like that, sweetheart, have you got an
earache?'

'The world is sliding,' I say.

'Veal roasting,' says Mum. 'How lovely!'

She's spot on. This must be one of her good days. They enfold me
against their comfortable chests and my shoulders relax. I remember
the island of peace they brought to this living room all those years ago
when there was the war. I smile and kiss them both. Standing beside
them I feel small and at the same time very old.

As we settle in the living room Clara rushes in, a shoe in her
hand.

'Clara!' cries Dad, leaping up. 'All ready for your adventure?'

Clara laughs and shrugs and throws her arms around him. The
shoe she's holding waves in the air as he twirls her around. Good old
Dad. Adventure, that's right. Not funeral. My heart lift s and I bring out
the champagne. 'Open it, will you, Dad? Champagne scares me, ever
since that boy got the cork in his eye like a bullet.'

Clara rolls her eyes and links arms with her nanna. I see Mum
giving her hand an extra squeeze. We all toast Clara, beaming. Our
Clara, she ignites a hundred-watt smile in all of us. The love of my life,
she is. And tomorrow she will disappear.

'So, Clara,' my father says, 'Rachel tells me you'll be studying
Italian over there. Nothing like being in the country, using the language
every day. And you'll have accommodation there too?'

'Yeah, the centre provides it. It's called the Centro di Cultura
per Stranieri – I should show you the brochure. It's great! An old
nineteenth-century building, surrounded by gorgeous gardens. I've
signed up to do a three-month course, and there's free accommodation
for a month. The school is right in the middle of Florence, so you
couldn't get a better location, I reckon. And the fees are low – it's run
by the government.'

'Italy had a proper communist party,' Mum suddenly declares. 'Not
like here – it was illegal when I was young. Wasn't Guido a member of
the socialist party back in Italy, Rachel?'

'Where is Guido, by the way?' asks Dad.

'It's very hard to imagine him ever being a committed socialist,'
Mum says to no one in particular, 'what with his political apathy and
refusal to vote.' She takes a swig of champagne.

'Go easy on that, sweetheart,' says Dad. 'Best not to mix alcohol
with your medication.' He turns and looks at me.

The pinger on the wall oven shrieks from the kitchen.

'He's on the phone,' I say, jumping up. 'One of his students rang,
needing help. You know how he is, can never say no. Actually, I'll just
go and tell him dinner's ready. That'll get him moving.'

Bastard.
How can he sit in his room, locked away from the family
on Clara's last night? He must have heard my parents at the door, must
know that we're all sitting in the living room celebrating Clara's coming
adventure
.

I knock on his door. The voice pauses, but there's no answer. I
knock again, more loudly.

Silence.

'Dinner's ready, are you coming?'

'Soon.' He resumes his conversation.

The breathless, starry feeling explodes in my chest. I take a deep
breath to get rid of the stars and go in.

Guido is lying on the doona, one foot crossed lightly over the
other. He's smiling into the phone but when he looks up at me, he
frowns. I've broken the rules, entering his room while he is 'working',
but I keep standing there.

He puts his hand over the receiver. '
What?
'

'This is Clara's last supper, Guido.'

'
Cristo dio
, stop using that expression!' His hand darts to his crotch
and his bottom does an awkward little jump in the air. The evil eye. He
manages to keep his feet crossed.

'Everyone is sitting out there waiting for you – the food will be
cold on your plate.'

He murmurs something in Italian into the phone, smirking a little,
then covers the mouthpiece. 'I told you, I will come soon.'

'Well, I'm going to stand here until you do.' I fold my arms across
my chest like a sergeant major. I can feel my heart thumping in fright.

'Look, I won't be long. This is what brings money into the house,
Rachel. I have to help my students, you know that. Why are you doing
this?' His face shows mild irritation, as if he's just discovered a rash
that he'd thought he'd got rid of.

'What about
my
job? What about my deadline? How do you think
I fit
that
in with all the work that needs doing round the house? And
then there's the extra cooking for Mum since she put that detergent
in the banana cake – yes, snigger why don't you, as if
you'd
ever do
anything for anyone else, as if
you
won't ever get old!' My heart is
practically storming out of my chest. Bastard! Any minute I might say
it.
Bastard!
What if I did? The word would burn in the air between us.
Maybe I'd suddenly burst into flames like that poor tortured religious
man who set himself alight outside Parliament House.

'Oh don't be such a martyr, Rachel. I am so tired of this.'
I stare at him. I try not to drop my gaze. His eyebrow rises and
falls as he stares back at me. I see myself standing before him, prim
and righteous, not like the tortured religious man at all but just a dull
soldier who's only ever had a desk job. I look away, at the notepad
beside the phone. 'Silvia,' says the notepad. There are sensuous curves
doodled around the S.