a fertile spot in a desert, where water is found
We found a place to live after a fortnight in Jo and John’s spare room, and it was freedom to leave, a freedom I had expected to feel the moment we arrived but hadn’t, perhaps due to jet lag, or because expectation often leads to disappointment. In that two weeks we had scouted some of the city and had decided where we liked and could see ourselves living.
Despite his calm presence, John had been impossible to get to know, and would either sit silently on the couch or retreat upstairs each night. It was Jo who Hetty and I became unexpectedly fond of—she tried so hard it was impossible not to want to help her along. And she did listen, once she got past the obvious urge she had to tell her part. We spoke about her late into some nights, fascinated by her bubbles, her spiked energy and the blatant sadness she was fighting to ignore. Hetty admitted first that she had begun to like Jo, that she might even hope that we kept in touch. As was Hetty’s way, she pioneered tenderness and helped me feel it too.
‘I’ll miss you two!’ Jo said into my hair as she hugged me goodbye the day we left.
‘We’ll miss you too, Jo,’ Hetty said, and we promised to see each other again.
From Jo and John’s to our new place wasn’t far and we only had our packs, so we walked. It was a beautiful morning—the sky was bright and there was sun across everything, but the air on our faces was cold. People were moving slowly; it was a Saturday, and we were in the part of Toronto that was mostly office buildings, so it wasn’t crowded. The old, slow red trams moved up and down collecting slow people. I couldn’t call them streetcars yet.
We were moving into a big share house in Chinatown, on a street off Spadina Avenue. Hetty had seen it without me—I had been sleeping when she found the ad online, so she wandered up on her own, saw the room and met the five housemates we would be living with. She told me when she got home that it was ‘messy’ and ‘perfect’.
We walked along slowly with our packs on our backs, beyond Queen Street and up Spadina. There were all sorts of people around us: a large man with a sign pretending to sell rugs on the corner, his guitar case open for anyone who wanted to throw him some coins; teenagers outside McDonald’s with large Cokes; women huddled in groups selling bamboo and aloe and mint leaves.
When we got to the house, down a leafy street off the main, Hetty said, ‘This is it,’ and I looked up and saw how tall it was. Three storeys, with windows all over and grand steps leading up to the front door and verandah. It looked like a house out of a movie, with a family and a basement and a big, soft dog.
Hetty rang the doorbell and we waited, pulling our packs off for relief. There was a small wooden sign next to the front door that read MARJORIE in curled letters. I had never lived in a house with a name. It seemed old-fashioned and charming.
The door was answered by a pretty girl with mouse-blond hair and a tattoo like a vine circling her neck. She told me her name was Ingrid, and smiled so I could see her small white teeth. I put out my hand to shake hers and felt it flat and warm in mine. We were welcomed inside, where it smelt like sandalwood and cooked onions. A quiet cat wound around my legs.
Steph, Ingrid, Dill, Clark and Robin. Two girls, three boys, one cat called Whitney. They told us when I bent down to pat her that her name had been Puss until the day after Whitney Houston died, when Puss retreated to her spot under Dill’s bed for three days, seemingly grieving, and they decided she should be called Whitney. They laughed at this, and so did Hetty. I found it hard to keep up with things when I was nervous and my laugh came slightly after, echoing a little in the honey-floorboarded kitchen. Whitney nuzzled at my legs as if to say: Don’t worry. Everyone smiled and seemed kind.
Dill helped us lift our bags up the two flights of stairs to our bedroom. He was chatty in in a reassuring way, as if he would like you no matter what, and he had soft brown hair and long eyelashes. Hetty bit her lip, her eyes straight ahead as we followed him. I noticed when Hetty’s face changed: she was squishing up her nose and her mouth and her cheeks a bit when he spoke to her, as if it was scary to let him really see.
We waited until he had set our bags down in the middle of the room before we went in. It was dusty and bright, with a big window and a big bed and holes in the paint where the posters of the last housemate must have been stuck up with Blu Tack. Whitney had followed us, and jumped up to circle the mattress and knead at the fabric. Her purring made my cheeks warm, and Dill and Hetty smiled and looked at each other and the floor until Dill said he would leave us, and he did, and we sat down on our packs and said nothing together for a while.
The house thrummed. I’d never lived somewhere where people cared for each other so much, and concentrated earnestly on the best things about being young and alive. Hetty had always been my window into this sort of thing, even though sometimes her eyes clouded over and she couldn’t see anything much at all. Now I was living in a space that was fuelled by an energy I’d never had. I was shy around it, and only started to feel close to comfortable after I had been alone in Marjorie a few times—after I’d had a chance to wander around without worrying who I would bump into and what I would say.
The day after we arrived, Hetty set out and got herself a job at a bar in Kensington Market. It was a dark place with two beers on tap and cheap spirits and house wine from a box, and there was a shop across the street that made hot greasy grilled-cheese sandwiches for the drinkers who had started early and needed food. Ronnie’s seemed iconic in that way that meant it would never change. The chairs were odd and broken, the toilets were sticky and smelly, and people came to drink there at lunchtime and stayed until close. I felt intimidated when I walked in, but Hetty suited it. She was angled the right way for something cool, and too dreamy to know it.
Hetty was there a lot those first few weeks and needed to sleep when she wasn’t, so I walked around alone each day trying to find somewhere I thought I could see myself working, looking up at things and counting the weird dogs everyone seemed to have with them on brightly coloured leashes. It was the beginning of May by then, the weather was warming up and on my own I got to know how beautiful spring could be in Toronto. Trinity Bellwoods was bare one day and when I came back the next, flowers had bloomed everywhere. They grew where no one had planted them, like our russet-coloured ones back home, but they were blue and purple and pink, like lollies.
I walked all the way to High Park one morning, huffing along in a parka until I had to take it off and tie it around my waist. I had never been in such a beautiful park—it was impossible not to get lost, because it was so wild and thick, and there were hills and large neat green spaces and thickets where dogs were allowed to jump and run. I wished so much that Hetty was there; it seemed less special on my own, though I was trying hard to be happy and in the moment and free, like everyone around me seemed to be.
I sat down on a bench in the middle of nowhere—tall thin fresh trees standing all around, and a damp forest floor—and had a little cry. I was glad I was there, in High Park, in Toronto. It wasn’t that. It was just hard sometimes to keep smiling, to keep moving and looking and trying, when you sensed you were being left behind.
One night I was in our room in bed early, trying to sleep, when someone knocked quietly on the door.
‘Ness, are you there?’ It sounded like Steph, who had a voice that was dry and close. ‘We’re having drinks downstairs if you’re awake.’
I loved how the Canadian accent came out gently, no matter who was speaking. It was easy to say yes, to say no, to a voice that didn’t ask anything of you. In Australia I avoided conversation to avoid the commitment that came with it. Here, I felt more like I could speak. I sat up and said I was coming.
In the living room there were bodies lying or sitting on every bit of comfortable space. I was handed a mug of wine by Robin, who was wearing a pretty cardigan that looked like it was made out of lichen or wool mist, if there were such a thing. I reached out to touch it, then asked if I could, the wrong way around. He laughed and rubbed the sleeve against my cheek.
Robin was so beautiful he seemed to glow when he walked into the kitchen in his pyjamas in the morning or when you came upon him in the hallway. He was the only one of us other than Dill who could pick up Whitney—I had tried every day since we had moved in, and she was only now starting to let me tug and scratch at the soft hair behind her ears. Robin had pale hair and pale skin and pale eyes and thick, dark eyebrows that moved more than the rest of him did. He touched and kissed often, and never interrupted, only speaking after he had waited and heard properly what the other person was saying. His careful attention made me feel a little anxious, though I wished that it didn’t.
‘Were you sleeping?’ he asked, smiling and watching me.
‘Just resting,’ I answered.
He pulled me down to sit next to him on one of the big green couches. It sank low, and smelt like moss. Everyone seemed to be talking at once. I took a gulp of the wine, which was sweet and cold. It travelled through me, lighting up parts along the way. I could see Hetty wasn’t here, and for once I was glad. Maybe I could forge my own friendship with the house and all the people that visited it so often. It was tiring to need Hetty by my side. Especially now that she was so often nowhere near me.
I sat and listened to the voices of everyone—all different but all with the same lilt. It seemed like I might be able to sit without talking for a while. It was nice to be warm and down deep with the fabric all around and voices keeping me company. There were people I had seen and met before, and others I hadn’t.
A very attractive girl with long, tangled ash-blond hair was sitting on the floor opposite me. When she laughed I noticed she had a gold tooth, nestled back behind her front ones, and that she was a little too on, like a supermarket bulb. I watched her until she looked over at me, probably feeling the heat of my eyes on her face, and then I pretended I was lost in thought. I was looking at the edge of someone else when I heard a voice ring out above the others. I looked over and saw the gold-toothed girl looking straight at me, her eyes hard and clear.
‘Are you Ness?’
I nodded, after a little while, and tried to smile. Sometimes when I was nervous and I tried to say something or move my face it was as if the corners of my mouth were being pulled back and forth, up and down by an invisible string, like I was a puppet and someone else controlled me. I held my hand up and a little bit over my face and looked back, trying to sit larger against the sagging foam.
‘Where’s Hetty, then?’ the girl asked.
Someone laughed, then someone else. I couldn’t tell if everyone had stopped talking and the laughing was because of me and Hetty and because it was embarrassing that I was never apart from her because I relied on her so much and needed her even though she didn’t need me.
Robin touched my leg and looked over at the girl, who was taking a long drink from a tall beer can.
‘Hetty’s not here, Sylvie. Ness is our favourite, anyway.’
I smiled with embarrassment at how untrue that must have been, and Robin scooted an arm around my waist and leaned in, whispering hot in my ear. ‘Ignore her. Sylvie loves being a bitch.’
Sylvie, was all I could think. Sylvie. It was a beautiful name. Hetty wouldn’t like her, but wouldn’t say she didn’t. It would be one of those times her nose would wrinkle up, pleats appearing on either side of the length of it. No narrow words, no heated opinion. Just that disapproving nose. I heard words again around me that I didn’t need to make sense of and felt Robin next to me, his voice responding slowly to questions and suggestions. The wine warmed against my leg. I let the voices fade.