I left Eliza in the living room and went back to the kitchen. The armchair groaned behind me as I bent beneath the drying rack to let the plug out in the sink. She must have been curious, bewildered even. She was obviously not going to explain anything but all the same it was nice to have a change of company. It was not the same. The dishwater gurgled off in a nacreous slew of grease and detergent as I dried my hands and lit the burner beneath the kettle with a damp safety match, then I carried two cups on their saucers into the living room.
Some things you can do without thinking.
Eliza smiled again, her broad back to the bookcase that stood between the kitchen door and the sofa. We had too much in common to be embarrassed but it was hard to begin with nothing to go on. She had been looking at a photograph that sat locked among the knick knacks in the bookcase. The photo was small enough for a passport but gave back the full length of a girl buried to the neck in a fur coat, her glossy brogues spliced awkwardly through a moraine of rubble and bright frost while one hand gripped at the edge of a kind of vertical ice sheet, perhaps a squirt from a frozen waterfall or the shard of a glacier that had come to pieces. Her felt hat had been turned up at the brim so her face would come out in the developing fluid. Her eyes shrunk by the sun. A blur of arrested speech.
The kettle whistled. Eliza blinked and followed me into the kitchen saying I got lost on the way here. I came through the Botanic Gardens with a guy who told me they once built a glass palace in it full of giant furniture. He said it was the first building to be raised under electric light.
And the first crops grew there I said. Seeds and plants in the ship, instant botany.
Eliza clapped her hand to her mouth. I have to make a phone call she said. Do you have a phone.
There was a candlestick in the dining room I showed her how to use. When she came back she had taken off her jacket and let her hair out. She stretched the red elastic between her fingers. Mum says Bernard called. We can go and see him tomorrow at ten. Her voice faltered. Something obvious appeared to be beginning to dawn on her and she frowned until the elastic had slowed to a stop and her thought come home. She turned back to the bookcase and her finger slid as if longingly over the glass, tracing the xylonite frame. Is this my aunt.
She used to say so.
Eliza wrinkled her nose. Puny us. Looks like a mouse stuck to an ice cube. She squinted in at the dark little mirror, repeating odd points of the room behind her in a glance the chairs their torqued legs and the broken arabesques in the carpets, the coffee table and the writing table beside the window, the acorn lamp suspended from the ceiling on a brass chain. In the base of the lamp a pile of dead moths made a star shaped smudge in the frosted glass. No offence. She frowned. I didn’t know her. Outside some kids had begun to play in the street and the impact of their basketball ricocheted up the walls like aftertouch. Eliza squatted to open her bag.
Could she smoke. I gave her a saucer to ash in. She rummaged through her clean clothes and I poured the tea. The steam looped around my wrists. She picked a strand of hair from the corner of her mouth with her free hand then she lit her cigarette and said you didn’t say a lot in your letter. I have no idea why Mum and Dodge stopped talking but it must have been before me because I never heard about her.
Did your mother know about me.
Don’t think so. I read her the letter but you know she isn’t well and the drugs keep her quiet. I guess if you don’t remember there isn’t a lot to tell. What did Dodge tell you.
The usual garbage at first, until I couldn’t be bothered asking anymore.
My mother told me I came from Heaven.
Told me I came from Hollywood.
Eliza snickered. Why.
The building was full of entertainers when Dodge was growing up. Some of them used to play the piano and have parties in the flat. A magician pulled a chocolate coin from behind her ear. Left an impression. She used to talk a lot about them. It could have been something she remembered hearing. New girl. Babe from Hollywood.
Have you met Bernard asked Eliza. A glow between her fingers and a jet of smoke. They have the same lawyer.
I said I met him at the funeral. There was a bit of money left over in the house so I put an ad in the paper but the only person who came was Bernard. I think he was drunk. Wildly groping man lurching out from between the pews. Maxine. You were, a surprise. Here we go. Look around you. Flebile principium melior fortuna. Jackey Jackey. He told me about you. He said your mother had given you power of attorney so I wrote you that day. I didn’t have a phone number for you and he didn’t have it on him.
Eliza smoothed a crease in her jeans. Mum told me he would handle things well. He’s worked for the Roses forever. From the deepening sky a split second of lightning lit the window. She turned and looked over the acacias still shaking their green leaves, then got to her knees and stubbed her cigarette in the saucer.
2
The new day fell in sheets of rain. We had breakfast facing one another along the cracked window of a diner in Kellet Street, the collar of her stonewash jacket folded up to her ears, an abortive gulf of coffee, almost, almost inedible toast and a cigarette between us. Fifteen members of the Canadian Black Leopards Karate Club had recently demolished a house with bare hands and feet on the radio and the planes were still crashing and there were wars. Eliza had not slept well. Dodge’s feather bed had given her a bad sinking feeling. She drew circles in a pile of spilt sugar and stared out the window at the wet traffic. Never thought the city would be so dirty she said.
We ran under awnings and then down the hill from Potts Point in the rain and the shattered pollen to the solicitor’s office at the corner of Bland and Bourke Streets in Woolloomooloo. Succeeding a resplendent flight of linoleum stairs, Eliza struck the open door, at which lesser adventure two small disks of glass flashed out from then disappeared among the piles of cartulary greying in the morning light. Excuse us. He waved us through with his spare hand, nodding into the phone as he signalled it for the benefit of the other side in a run of significant noises, then dropped the receiver so the bell clanged, pressed both hands to the desk and lifted himself above his files to face us.
The Rose girls. You should have warned. Good morning come in. He looked from one to the other, a bemused smile abandoned on his mouth as he stepped forward with his hand outstretched. You must be Eliza. How is your mother. I am sorry about Dodge. We go back an age but the last time I saw her was. I went to the funeral. It was a closed casket. If it had been an open casket I might have started reminiscing but I’m too old for a closed casket. St. James’ really is a lovely church. Very austere. All that marble. Cleansing. Makes you feel clearheaded. He gestured vaguely for us to sit then went back behind his desk. Eliza perched on the arm of a chair piled with empty springback binders.
The room was very small and full of both opened and unopened boxes and there were piles of paper on the floor as well as on the desk. The shade had been pulled down over the window and through it the sun made soft shadows of the backward letters that spelt out the firm for the street. Bernard took off his glasses, pulled a handkerchief from his breast pocket and began to clean them. He was large, in the chest and the face and the elbows of his cheekbones shone blasted pink. Two thin sheaves of white hair swept up from his temples to his bare skull and wrapped it. Still blind, he cleared his throat and nodded in our direction.
It really is unfortunate he said. You must borrow an umbrella when you go. Maxine I met last week. Very interesting, very glad to meet her. As soon as I read the ad in the paper I went straight for the Rose file but the fact is I haven’t found it yet. Of course it ought to be in the safe but it isn’t. He pointed at the piles on his desk. I’ve been looking ever since. Not normally such a mess in here. I didn’t mention it earlier because I hoped I might get lucky before you arrived but it seems to have disappeared. Mea culpa! We had an accident a few years back. Some documents were lost but they’ve all been accounted for. Your family’s file, I frankly just don’t know where I put it.