21

On Wednesday, straight after her oboe class and his training session were finished Vân Ước found herself leaving school with Billy Gardiner. She was side by side on a footpath with him. Billy Gardiner. On her way to his house. To Billy Gardiner’s house. She knew from the class contact lists that he lived within walking distance of the school. He’d showered after gym and his hair was still dripping, soaking his shirt. He smelled great. Looked great. She tried not to look, not to smell.

She had told her parents she’d be at a compulsory after-school English session. Her mother didn’t even bother asking to see the letter from school. She must have figured out years ago that her daughter was reliable to a boring degree. The benefit of all those years of perfect behavior was that she had a fair amount of freedom in daylight hours, though rarely anything to squander it on. She smiled. She was acting as though this actually constituted a transgressive activity, when what she was doing was walking to a real, compulsory after-school English study session. What a loser she was. Even when she was breaking free, she wasn’t.

Billy looked at her. “It’s the secret smile. The Vân Ước special.”

She immediately replaced the smile with a neutral expression. He couldn’t possibly interpret that any particular way. She thought of Mr. Rochester studying Jane Eyre’s expressions: There was much sense in your smile: it was very shrewd…

“It’s the Vân Ước is giving nothing away face,” he said. “I like that I get the faces to myself for once. Now I can ask you what you’re thinking.”

“You’ve had since year nine to ask what I’m thinking. You took your own good time.”

“You came in year nine?”

“Yup.”

“Huh. Who knew?”

He looked genuinely puzzled, and fleetingly unsure of himself, as he should, because wasn’t he really asking the question, Why am I suddenly fascinated by someone I never noticed before, even though she’s been in my class for two years?

He was unlikely to be speculating that his feelings might be nothing more than wish-induced hokum.

But she was.

Billy was quiet for a stretch of at least two minutes—unusual—before they turned into his street, which ran into a road that flanked one boundary of the Botanic Gardens. They stopped at a high brick wall covered in well-trimmed ficus. He unlocked a tall wrought-iron gate decorated with leaves and flowers and ushered her into his world.

On a sideboard crammed with photos of, she guessed, family and extended family and friends, in a forest of silver frames, there was one photo to which she was particularly drawn. Billy’s parents, presumably—a wedding-day shot. Straight blonde hair, a simple, collarbone-exposing neckline, thick fabric that stood a little way from the skin, casting a soft shadow. Eye-shining laughter, champagne flutes raised, a toast. The large square diamond. It could be a Tiffany ad. It could not be a more stark contrast to her own family.

She thought, inevitably, of something—not the worst thing, no, not by far—on the list of things she’d never dared to ask her father. On boats, in cases such as her parents’, when people sat crammed together like livestock, becalmed and dying, it wasn’t uncommon that they would resort to drinking their own urine, or giving sips of urine to their children, desperate to keep them hydrated. She’d dipped the tip of her little finger into a sample she had to produce at the doctor’s one day, when she was thirteen. It tasted funky and made her gag. Mouthfuls? No. No way. She would have perished, a weakling.

The sense of excess here flooded her senses. Space! The entry hall was bigger than her living/dining and kitchen area combined. One wall featured a gallery-huge piece of indigenous art. The entrance lobby of her apartment building featured unpainted redbrick walls, a line of missing tiles on the floor right outside the elevators, and a sign that said, NO SPITTING OR HAWKING. FINE $300 in three languages.

The stuff of which things were made! Curtains in the sitting room fell to sit heavily on the floor, slightly overlong. Windowsills were deep enough to sit on. She thought of Jane Eyre’s reading nook. In the library, the windows had solid wooden folding shutters, painted white. The books! They lived here—never had to be returned to a public library. The rug felt densely woven, thick and soft underfoot. Here was a sense of air and light, an environment controlled. Nothing intruded. Nothing unwelcome could find its way in. No cooking smells invaded this area. It had its own lovely smells: the glass vase of flowers, as big as a bucket; a hint of furniture polish, beeswax. But it smelled most of all like… cleanness, and fresh air.

Where she lived, there were pockets that would forever hold the ghosts of a thousand phởs. A lack of proper ventilation meant that their apartment held the heat for too long on summer days like this.

The walls here must be so thick. This room was quiet, and cool, despite the breathless heat outside. Maybe there were other people in the house, maybe not. You’d never know.

At her place, every conversation could be heard from anywhere in the apartment. Bathroom noises were all unavoidably shared. And, coming in from either side, neighbors’ phone calls, music, arguments, plumbing noises, and TV were constant visitors.

Here, she felt like a flower finally in its right environment, her petals opening one by one to absorb the beauty, and then folding back up to protect herself from the fact that this was not her world.

She knew of people who lived like this, from magazines, but seeing at close range the vast span of difference between her life and Billy’s almost made her laugh with disbelief at the unfairness of it all. Who had decided that some should have so little and others so much?

She hoped none of this was visible on her face, especially the bit about tasting her own pee.

She turned to Billy. “What are these? It’s such a pretty scent.” She bent to sniff the big-headed yellow blooms made up of many small flowers threaded with delicate red stamens.

“Yeah, they’re ginger flowers, I think—my mum likes them, too.”

Billy leaned in, smiling. What? Was he going to kiss her? She heard a confused rushing in her ears, and felt a tug of desire so strong it was like being winded. She held the table edge behind her for balance. But he just brushed the tip of her nose softly with his little finger and said, “Pollen.” He stayed close, looking into her eyes. Whatever else might have been about to happen didn’t, because she sneezed five times in quick succession and had to fish a tissue from her pocket and blow her nose.

Classic mood-breaker.

She gave herself a stern mental shake: nothing was going to happen except her fantasy intruding into reality, an uninvited guest.

“Does she—does your mum arrange the flowers?”

“Usually. I think. If she’s around. Let’s grab something to eat and go to my room.”

She didn’t want to leave the beauty of this space, but managed a few muted tap-dance steps to relieve her feelings as she followed Billy.

The kitchen was another revelation. It looked like a glamorous laboratory. Perfect white tiles, stainless steel, and a woman wearing an apron emerging from a doorway. Vân Ước froze. Meet the parents? She wasn’t ready for that.

“Mel, this is Vân Ước. Vân Ước, Mel.”

“Lovely to meet you.” Mel expertly jostled and slid the contents of the large baking tray she was carrying onto two cooling racks sitting ready on the kitchen bench. The oven must have its own room. “Cheese-and-chive scones—help yourselves. And those peaches are ripe.” She nodded at the huge fruit bowl, which like everything around here looked like a prop in a design magazine.

“Thanks, Mel,” said Billy, loading up a plate. “How was your day?”

Who was this Mel?

“It was wonderful, thank you, William. And if by How was your day? you mean What’s for dinner?, it’s a Malaysian chicken curry with jasmine rice, fresh mango and mint chutney, and steamed broccolini. And I’m making a lemon delicious, but with limes.”

Billy smiled his wide smile. He looked like the handsome man in the wedding photo, with the champagne, but scruffy. “You are my hero,” he said.

Mel pretended to be impervious to Billy’s charm, but Vân Ước could see that she liked him a lot. “I know it. Don’t let him eat it all,” she said to Vân Ước with a brisk, friendly smile.

Vân Ước didn’t know who she was, and didn’t know what to say. The old dudes did, though. Look at her/She’s pressed the mute button again/Smiling, yes/But does she expect people to read her mind?/Apparently/Winning tactic.

Vân Ước followed Billy up the stairs, a view to the deep garden from the landing, along a corridor, and into his room. “Who’s Mel?” she asked.

“Our house manager.”

“What does she do?”

“She runs the place. The parentals both work and they like things to run smoothly when they’re away. And when they’re here. They’re both pretty much control freaks.” He saw the momentary look of panic on her face. “And don’t worry, they’re away till next week.”

“So, she… cooks? Cleans?”

“No, we’ve got cleaners. She cooks. She shops. She pays bills, coordinates other staff, like cleaners and gardeners, supervises homework—well, she used to—and does any picking up and dropping off of us kids when we need it… I mean, my sister’s not here, she’s at university now—I don’t know, shit like that. She gets everything organized. She’s lived with us since I was five.”

Billy was gazing at her again.

“Okay, well, let’s get on with it,” she said in a matter-of-fact tone that she hoped concealed how overwhelming she found him and his world.

“Scone?” he asked, backing into his bedroom, holding the tray. The room was huge, on the northeast corner of the house. There was a double bed, drum kit, windows on two walls, sofa, cluttered desk, over which was a corkboard with a montage of photos—a few she could see were of crew members, including Billy, standing side by side, huge grins, index fingers thrust upward in triumph, holding up medals, expansive bookshelves… and no visible pile of dirty laundry, despite all the training gear he must go through every day.

She took a scone, and bit into it. Oh, god. It was an explosion of great flavor, light, cheesy, flaky, with fresh basil as well as chives. “Wow. You realize you live in the land of Take What You Want?”

He laughed. “I know. Mel is, like, the best.”

Vân Ước sat at Billy’s desk, and he sat on a comfortable-looking chair that he pulled close. They opened their laptops.

“Let’s look at the session transcripts first, so we know what we’re supposed to be doing,” she said. She’d already read them the night before, but she was prepared to go through the motions of being a regular, non-obsessive workaholic student.

This meant that she was at liberty to watch Billy as he read. He tucked a strand of hair behind his ear. She could see he was skimming and not particularly interested.

“Poetry. It’s, like, there’s only so much you can say about so few words. Am I right?” He glanced up. “Sorry, I’m wrecked from training. I’d rather sit here and continue through the catalog of the Vân Ước facial expressions collection.”

“You’ll see pissed off soon, if I end up doing all the work.”

“Woohoo! The feisty face.”

She ignored him. Billy Gardiner might be Billy Gardiner, but nobody was going to stop her doing the work. “I think one of the things we are expected to do—if we look at this—is to help shape the discussion. We’re not just answering questions.”

Billy looked at his computer glumly. “Yeah. Okay, let’s go through and highlight some more of the requirements, and then we’ll talk about the text?”

“Deal.”

“So, there’s also this thing—some allusion to criticism, and some personal responses.” He looked up. “Do you have personal responses?”

“I love Plath,” she said. “I have more responses than they’ll want. I just don’t like talking.” Oops. She’d said it.

“Uh-huh,” Billy said. “I’ve noticed that. How come?”

“Shy, I guess.”

“I don’t like talking in class, either.”

She couldn’t help laughing. That was absurd. He did nothing but talk in class.

“I mean, I can’t be fucked talking about the work. But I know—I know this is the year to knuckle down.”

“You’ve managed without any knuckling so far?”

“Yeah, but my parents will kill me if I don’t get serious about studying this year.” He sighed. “I’ve kind of been dreading it, to be honest. This is officially the end of fun times.”

He looked grave, a look so uncharacteristic that she had to ask, “Why the pressure? You do okay, don’t you?” She had him placed in the top 10 percent, top 2–3 percent if he bothered working, but she didn’t want him knowing she’d watched that closely. He was a brainy slacker.

“I need better than okay to get into medicine. I’ll be a fourth-generation doctor. I have a contribution to make! Supporting Panadol sales when I’m hungover isn’t enough.”

She was dying to blurt out: Me too me too me too, my parents want me to study medicine, too. “Is that a problem? You don’t want to be a doctor?”

“I don’t know. Probably not. Who knows? I don’t know what I want for breakfast tomorrow. Okay, that’s a lie—I mean, I eat the same shit every morning—but, you know, no. I don’t have a fucking life plan. Jesus, I’m seventeen.” He shut his laptop. “Sorry. You don’t swear much, do you?”

“Not particularly.” Not out loud.

“Is that like a religious thing? A… Buddhist thing, or whatever?”

“I wouldn’t really know. My family’s Catholic.”

Billy had the grace to look embarrassed. “Sorry. Jeez, I’m a klutz. I haven’t even asked you stuff like that.”

“It’s fine. We don’t really know each other.”

“But after we share our innermost thoughts on ‘Daddy’ and ‘Tulips’ we’re gonna. Am I right?” That smile contained something addictive. The snack equivalent of his smile was cheese Doritos. You always wanted one more.

“We’ll know what we each think about ‘Daddy’ and ‘Tulips,’ which I guess is a start.”

After an hour of being lost in the complicated beauty and anger of “Daddy,” Vân Ước stretched and stood up.

“No!” Billy said. “We’re just getting warmed up.”

“But I’ve got to get going. My parents are expecting me home by dinnertime.”

“Have dinner here—there’ll be heaps.”

“Sorry, I can’t.”

“Can I walk you home?”

“No! Thanks.”

Billy looked crestfallen. “Are you coming to the regatta on Saturday?”

“No.”

“Please come—you can see me row.”

It was amazing seeing the whole Billy Gardiner unlimited-confidence phenomenon up close. Who in the world assumed that the rest of the world was ready and waiting to watch them, love them?

“Oh no. The I’m unimpressed face. I guess that does sound arrogant.”

“I work Saturdays, anyway. Even if I were the fan-girl type, I couldn’t come.”

“I was thinking more ‘Go, school’ than fan girl, but fair enough. Have a peach before you go?”

She shook her head. Peaches were not something she would venture to eat in public. One more inhibition of the kid from another planet. She dreaded being inadvertently loud, messy, or unmannerly. She’d seen a table of whities looking askance at her own family happily slurping up bowls of noodles once, and had never quite got over the disapproval you could innocently attract just by eating your dinner.

Billy had no such qualms. He took a huge, dripping bite and wiped juice off his chin with the back of his hand. “Oh, man, that’s seriously good. You don’t know what you’re missing out on.”

Vân Ước looked at him, here, in his lush habitat. He was so wrong, she thought as she left his bedroom; she knew exactly what she was missing out on.