The Life and Times of Gracie Faltrain (8 page)

splinter
verb
: to break off from the
main body

Today is the first soccer match I've missed in three years. I got up this morning and kept thinking it was Sunday. Saturday means I should be in the middle of a game. I wait at home most of the day, hoping that I'll hear Dad's car. I press my face against cold glass, write
Hi Dad
in the mist my warm breath leaves on the surface.

Mum phones me from the nursery. ‘I'm pretty sure he's not coming home today, Gracie. Come down and help me close up?'

‘I don't feel like it, Mum,' I say, and hang up.

I ride my bike to the field. The teams have trodden their story into the ground. The score is still up on the board. We won. And I wasn't there. I imagine kicking the ball from the centre mark and watching it sail into the goal. The afternoon is slipping into darkness when I see Martin walking towards me.

‘Thought I might find you here. Want to have a kick?'

‘Nah. I'm just here to look.'

‘Faltrain, it's time you got back on the soccer field. Coach says there's still a place for you in the team.'

I stop dead. Feel sick. Soccer is the most important part of my life. I can't come back to the team. And if I can't play then I don't want it to exist.

‘I'm no good anymore. And anyway, the guys don't want me.'

‘Giving up are you? You're acting just like my dad.'

I know by Martin's voice, cut and bleeding and hovering, that he wants me to ask about his dad. He needs me to. For a second I remember the feel of the cold window on my cheek. I see the driveway without Dad's car. Somehow I know that if I ask Martin that question then the day will splinter around me like glass. The pieces will be too fine and sharp to put back together. Just leave, I want to tell Martin.

‘What's
your
dad got to do with
me
?'

He walks away. And the day splinters anyway.

 

Everything, Faltrain. He's got everything to do with you. I want to shout at the both of you, stop feeling sorry for yourselves. Why don't you ask how
I
am, once in a while?

Sometimes I just want to say, get up and get off the couch, Dad. I'm too tired to come home and cook dinner. I'm tired of looking after Karen when it's not my job. I want to punch the wall next to his head. I want to cover the walls with fist marks so he can see how sick I am of this place. How sick I am of him and the lounge room where we used to watch telly with Mum. It used to smell like home. Now it smells like old runners and I hate it.

I remember a talk we had when I was about nine. She was in the garden, watering the plants with an old bucket we kept in the shed. She'd splashed some water on her shoes and some had hit her dress. She started crying and I remember saying to her, ‘Don't cry,' and trying to wipe her shoes. I kept thinking she'd be all right when the sun dried her off.

Now I wonder what she was really crying about. Was she so sick of it all that she wanted to run out the gate and never come back? I remember holding her hand and pulling her back inside the house. Did she stay a bit longer just for me?

I want to read that letter so I know how she explained it. He should have read it to us. She should have told us something when she said that last goodbye. I think about what was in it all the time. Did it explain how she had time to wash our socks before she left but no time to write
me
a letter? I remember opening my drawer the morning after she'd gone and all the socks were rolled together. All the underwear was clean too. She'd put the washing on just like always. She'd hung it out and waited for it to dry. Sometimes when I can't sleep I try to
work out how long it would have taken for her to do all that stuff. So then I'll know exactly when she locked the door. Was she walking to the tram when Karen and me were on our way home? And the question that makes me feel sicker than anything, had she booked her ticket weeks ago, and was just biding her time with us? All her smiles fake. Every kiss goodnight a lie.

 

I notice things on the way home tonight that I've never seen before. The old man next door to us has shoulders that slope downwards. The guttering around the roof of our house is full of leaves. There are weeds all along our front fence.

I wish more than anything that Dad would come home. I imagine him making me dinner. The house is cold when I get there. Before I flick on the light I see the red blinking of the answering machine. That little red light makes the whole room look empty.

‘Gracie, honey, I'm sorry, I'll be travelling for the next few days but then I'll be home. I'll call you from the hotel. I love you.'

‘I love you too, Dad,' I whisper. I can't bring myself to press the clear button.

Mum's face smiles out at me from the picture hanging on the wall in the hallway. She looked so much younger. She's leaning on Dad's shoulder and smiling. They'd just been to their first dance. Dad's arm is around her waist. Everything will be all right when she gets home. We'll eat dinner and watch the Saturday movie together. She will let me call Jane.

I can't stop thinking about her trying to take in the shop sign on her own. How will she hold her bag and lock the gate at the same time? I go to meet her.

Half the light in the day has escaped and so she doesn't notice me at first. I've never seen Mum cry before. She turns, silver rivers streaking across her face. She has a line running from her nose to her mouth. I think of all the nights I've left her to shut up on her own. I wonder if she's cried every time.

I feel like there's someone behind us the whole way home, but when I turn the street is empty. It's just Mum and me. And the quiet night around us.

fight
verb
: to struggle, to carry on

‘There's a storm coming,' Mum says as we eat fish and chips. ‘There's the smell of rain in the air.'

Usually I love the sound of the water hitting the windows. Mum always turns the outside lights on so that we can see the garden, wet with storm. Tonight I feel unsettled. I want the next day to be warm, calm.

Mum starts quietly. ‘The good news is that the business is better. Not much, but a little. The thing is, we need to do a lot better. I don't know if we can hold on much longer.'

Things are moving too quickly now.

‘You can have the money we've saved for New South Wales, Mum. I'll work harder too. I promise.'

‘Gracie, it's not your fault. It's going to take more than just you and me to save the nursery.' She eases herself off the chair and looks old. ‘Don't worry. I think I know what we need.'

‘A miracle,' I say.

‘Not quite, but I know a person who can help us.'

‘Can they help me too?' I ask.

She touches my hair. ‘Gracie, don't just sit back and wait for the next thing to happen. If you're not happy, then do something about it.'

‘What should I do?'

‘I can't tell you that, Gracie. No one can.'

I want Dad. I want to hear the sound of his keys in the lock, his bag dropping at the door. I want him to come home and stop the wind howling.

 

Don't let go, Gracie. Hold on. Fight.

ghost
noun
: a mere shadow

There's a tin shed at the bottom of the oval, on the edge of where the team practises. It's never locked. If I leave the door open a little and stand inside the door, I can see the whole field, but no one can see me.

I watch Martin running, arms held out for balance, his legs already kicking before he's at the ball. I watch and it hurts. I can feel it like a slow tearing across my chest.

Without soccer, life is a long Sunday afternoon with nothing to look forward to. It's weeks and weeks of not seeing Dad or Jane. It's nothing. Slowly creeping inside me. Filling me up. I hate the team for making me feel like this.

I want to run out onto the field, dots of mud flecking my legs, wind blowing at me like a sharp breath across a dusty shelf. I hate that I'd have to ask to come back. ‘I hope they lose the Championships,' I murmur to the tin around me. My voice sounds thin and I'm glad that no one can hear me say it.

 

I see her watching us, her face half hidden by the door of the old tin shed. Just ask, Faltrain. Why won't you just ask to come back?

 

There's another reason I go to that shed. To be alone without anyone seeing me. There are people I can hang out with, but I feel like I'm on the edge of them. Like looking out at the ocean and knowing it's too rough and cold to swim. After all the talk about my underwear and kissing technique, I'm just not sure what they really think of me. I miss Jane. She's always on my side.

I watch Alyce in the library today. She's laughing at a book she's reading. I haven't done that since before Jane left. I want more than anything to laugh with Alyce right now.

It's weird. Up until a few weeks ago, if you'd told me I'd be standing in the library, watching Alyce and thinking, she looks like she's having fun, I would have said you were crazy. ‘Life's unexpected, Faltrain,' I can hear Jane saying, and just as I'm nodding in agreement, Alyce catches me staring at her. And she smiles.

I've decided there's another category of kids. We're like those guys who go to jail but are really innocent: the wrongly accused loner group. I'm not sure where we belong, but we don't belong here.

As the bell goes for the end of lunch I raise my hand, and give Alyce a little wave.

Annabelle is sitting at my bus stop after school this afternoon. Life would be so much easier if people who hated each other got together and compared diaries. You wouldn't run into them outside of class. You'd never have to sit next to them.

I mean, what do you say when you're faced with a person who's made the colour of your undies the hot topic of school conversation for weeks? Talking about your undies says more
about her than you, Faltrain, Jane wrote to me last week. She's right, but what does right and wrong matter when you've developed a nervous habit of walking with your hands gripped to the back of your skirt?

I lean against the side of the glass shelter, cracked and covered with graffiti. If I move forward a little I can see Annabelle's face in line with mine, reflected in the glass. Part of me expects her to speak, to fill the space around us with all of the things that she has been saying behind my back. Part of me is dying to say something too.

She doesn't. I don't. We've seen the enemy out of uniform. Up close. What's there to say?

She folds her arms. Bends forward to see if the bus is coming. A woman sits in between us and blocks Annabelle's face. I listen to her feet shuffling, her hands rubbing together to fight off the cold.

I think of Alyce and her shaking hand, of making her cry in class and not caring. And then I go over all the things that Annabelle has said about me. And how they cut. Deep. Jagged.

I squash myself further into the corner of the shelter. There's only a seat length's difference between Annabelle Orion and me. And I hate that.

heart
noun
: the most important part
of anything

Susan takes a huge pile of envelopes out of her bag before class starts today and hands them around.

She gives out the last one and then notices me. Empty handed. I don't think she left me out on purpose. She just didn't think to invite me. That's the worst part.

Even Alyce has an invitation. She's doing something unexpected, though, and for the first time in weeks I exist. She gives her invitation back.

 

‘I don't think I can make it,' I tell Susan and hand back the envelope.

‘Um, another thing,' I say quietly. ‘My name's spelt with a “y”.'

 

‘Right class,' the teacher says in science, ‘listen in. Today we're dissecting rats. I want you in pairs.' My stomach clenches – not at the thought of the scalpel slicing through fur and skin, but because there is no one in the class who will want to work with me. I ask to work alone.

‘No, Gracie, you will need a partner for this.' I feel sick. I'm in the waiting room. I stay here until either someone feels sorry enough for me to ask me to join them or the teacher makes someone work with me. Either way it's about as enjoyable as the prospect of twenty fillings at the dentist's.

I feel a tap on my shoulder. I know Alyce is asking because she's in the waiting room too. I don't care. ‘That would be great,' I say.

We take our rat and tie his legs and arms to the nails that are sticking out of his flat wooden bed. I watch Alyce's scalpel open his stomach like the zipper on a winter coat.

‘Alyce? I'm sorry, about what I said.' She looks up at me, her eyes blurred by the plastic glasses she has on. The point of her scalpel is aimed at my heart. ‘It's hard, isn't it?' she asks. Her tone isn't kind, but it's the first time I've spoken to someone who knows exactly how I feel. I nod.

‘Take out the heart now, class,' our teacher calls. We look at our rat. Everything that is in him out on display.

Alyce and I put down our scalpels. She closes his chest and I untie his legs.

 

The light wakes me this morning. It moves in through the slats of the dusty venetian blinds and draws bars across my face. The first thing I see is my old dressing gown hanging on the back of the chair. Gracie gave it to me for Father's Day, years ago. She was nine.

She slammed into our room and landed face down on the bed between Helen and me, squashing the present underneath her. ‘Guess what it is, Dad,' she yelled, her hands ripping at the paper with mine. ‘Do you like it? Put it on!' We ate breakfast together, and I kept it on all day, over the top of my clothes. I wore it just because she wanted me to.

I open my wallet and look at their faces, smiling at me from the worn paper. We took it the day of Gracie's first soccer match. Helen is hugging Gracie so tightly that the match has rubbed off on her: she has mud on her face. I smooth the edges out and hold it for a while. It is my map. Tattered, old. I will follow it home.

I'll call Gracie today. I want to tell her that I love her.