Chapter Six
Oh god, oh god, oh god. Christina moans as she rolls over and sees bright sunlight coming through her bedroom window. She’s slept in. Again. And she can’t blame jet lag any more.
It’s been two weeks since she returned to Sydney and her mother’s house on Kurraba Road in Neutral Bay. She hasn’t stayed here for this long since … When? She sighs and squints into the light, then makes out the lemon tree that has always been there.
Since she moved out. That’s how long it’s been.
There have been visits for Christmas but they’re usually short, Christina always claiming that there’s somewhere else she needs to be.
It’s almost always true. Her life is odd and changeable, and there are people who want her for things, and other people who need her for things, and other people who believe they want or need her for things.
That’s what happens when you choose a profession that puts you in the newspapers and on magazine covers and, most of all, on movie screens.
She would return home periodically, once she could afford to fly.
Her mother, Joni, seemed oddly impressed by her fame and sometimes talked to her as if she was a famous stranger.
Her father’s girlfriend too. Her old schoolfriends either didn’t return her calls to say hello or were overly eager to see her.
Only her sisters, Cecilia and Rosemarie, treated her the same. And her grandmother.
A knock on the door makes her sit upright. She shouldn’t have slept in. She’s taking advantage of her mother’s hospitality.
‘Christina, darling,’ her mother calls in a light tone, almost as if she’s serenading her.
The behaviour has been more odd this time because of what’s happened – because of the reason Christina is home. Before she landed in Sydney she was convinced her mother would be ashamed of her, but it’s almost like she’s glad. As if now she has a reason to cosset Christina more.
It’s not as if Christina could say that Joni was an inattentive mother when she was growing up, because she wasn’t.
If anything, Christina was the one who didn’t tend to their relationship in any way other than being a dutiful eldest daughter.
She was polite to her elders and careful with the twins.
‘Their second mum,’ Joni would tell strangers and family members alike, beaming with what Christina now recognises as pride, although at the time she found it irritating.
That’s because she was close to her father.
Before the split. He cheated on Joni, who was too Catholic to divorce him despite the betrayal, which means they’ve existed in limbo ever since, he living with his girlfriend – who is now far too middle-aged to merit the term – and the son he always wanted.
Joni kept the house that she and her husband bought when they married in 1958, when he was a schoolteacher on the way to becoming a headmaster.
Neutral Bay was a good suburb for a young couple to settle in – close to the city and to the harbour, with parks and trees and space.
Their house was modest yet big enough for the family they planned to have.
Christina arrived first, in 1959. The honeymoon baby, her mother used to call her long after her husband left her alone to raise not only Christina but Cecilia and Rosemarie.
It was just after he became headmaster at the boys high school nearby.
Christina was in her first year at the girls school, which was meant to be for brains, not a daydreamer like her.
Somehow she scraped through the entrance exam, then squandered the opportunity. That’s what the teachers said.
‘Yes, Mum?’ Christina calls. She shoves the bedsheets back and swings her feet to the floor as if she’s raring to go for the day, when in truth she would quite like to reverse the whole procedure and tuck under the covers.
Except she’s been doing little other than sleeping since she arrived.
Not that she can explain why she needs it so much.
‘Would you like some breakfast?’ Joni asks.
‘Um …’ Christina peers at the alarm clock next to the bed – the one she’s not using – and sees that it’s 9 a.m. Halfway to lunch already. Maybe she shouldn’t bother with food right now. She needs to keep slim in case her career can be rescued.
Not that her big, flashy Hollywood agent thinks that’s likely, as he told her the last time they spoke, which was just after she arrived in Australia. He hasn’t been taking her calls since.
She wonders whether anyone else in LA would.
There’s her boyfriend, Patrick – they’ve been together for two years, although, given he’s an actor too, they haven’t seen each other much in that time.
He has her mother’s home number, because she gave it to him the first time she came home for Christmas, and again when she left LA in full flight from the scandal. But he hasn’t called.
No one has. Not the other actors and actresses she’s worked with, socialised with, danced with.
Or the crew from the movie she just wrapped.
Or the girls at her favourite vintage shop on Sunset Boulevard.
Not a single one of them has tried to make contact with her, and presumably her agency would have told her if they had.
Not even the ones who know her best; the ones who know that she’s as straitlaced as they come and would never do anything as racy as the tabloid stories have no doubt made out.
She glances at the crucifix on the wall opposite. There’s one in every room. It’s so curious, Christina thinks, that Joni has remained so devout. Surely the same God she believes in is the one who has let her down – with her husband, if nothing else?
Her stomach rumbles. Hunger is going to prove more powerful a force than the need to keep slim for imaginary roles.
‘Okay,’ she calls. ‘I’ll just get dressed.’
A noise that sounds like satisfaction comes from the other side of the door.
Christina pulls on the loose cotton pants she’s been wearing most days, and a UCLA sloppy joe that engulfs her. She never went to UCLA – or any university; she brought it with her because it feels like home. Or the home she used to have. Los Angeles seems like a parallel universe now.
As she heads downstairs she hears the telephone ring.
‘Hello?’ her mother says, then there’s silence for a few seconds. ‘No, she’s not here.’
A pause.
‘I told you, she’s not here!’
Another pause.
‘Even if she were here I would never let her talk to you!’
The sound of the phone being slammed down is louder than whatever is on the television in the sitting room. Christina flinches.
Joni appears at the foot of the stairs. ‘Come on, darling,’ she says lightly. ‘Food’s on the table.’
‘Who was it?’ Christina knows the call was about her.
Her mother goes into the kitchen and rummages amongst the cutlery, which seems odd as everything they need is on the table.
‘No one important.’
‘Mum.’
‘They have no right to call here.’
‘I’m sorry they’re bothering you.’ Christina tries to keep the tetchiness out of her voice but they’ve both been on edge, off and on.
‘That’s not what I mean!’ Her mother is uncharacteristically cross. Joni, the woman who can’t bring herself to say an ungodly word about her unfaithful husband. ‘You shouldn’t be pursued like this! You’re … you’re …’
‘A scarlet woman?’
Christina is joking. At her own expense.
For the whole reason she has fled LA to hide here, in little harbourside Neutral Bay, is because the story that came out in the press was a result of the director bragging about his so-called conquest of her to his friends.
And when his wife found out, he gave an interview to Variety magazine saying that Christina was irresistible and he’s only human, so how could he not yield to her charms?
That’s when the press started hunting her.
‘An adult!’ her mother says. ‘You’re allowed to not talk to reporters if you don’t want to!’
Joni huffs in such a way that Christina can’t help smiling, then she takes a sip of water to hide it in case her mother thinks she’s laughing at her.
‘You know I didn’t have an affair with him,’ Christina says softly. ‘I wouldn’t …’ She swallows. ‘Do that.’
She dares to look at Joni and they stare into each other’s eyes for several seconds.
Christina knows she will never tell her mother the truth of it, because that would be the end of her.
Or of them, because if her mother judged her for what happened – if she, in any way, implied that Christina deserved it – Christina would be so upset she’d have to leave this house, this suburb, this city, this country, and she could never return, never see again the woman who raised her through thick and thin.
And that would be the end of Christina for, through all the change in her life, all the travel and the different roles she’s played on screen and off, her mother has always been the one she loves.
‘You’re a good girl, Chrissie.’ Joni pushes the bowl of fruit salad toward her. ‘So of course I know.’
Christina is spooning fruit into a smaller bowl when the phone rings again.
‘I’m ignoring it,’ Joni says tersely.
‘What if it’s one of the girls?’
‘They’ll leave a message.’
No message is left, and Joni pours tea for them both from her favourite old pot that’s covered in a cosy her own mother crocheted many years ago.
‘I should probably make a new cosy,’ Joni says after a while.
‘There’s nothing wrong with the old one,’ Christina says, patting it. ‘It’s well loved, that’s all.’
Joni smiles sadly and nods. ‘May we all be,’ she says, then reaches across and squeezes Christina’s hand.
It’s one of many moments that makes Christina wonder if her mother has guessed at the truth of what happened to her. The reason why her world-famous actress daughter is now sleeping for longer than she’s awake, afraid to leave the house and letting herself become a shadow in this life.