Saving Francesca

And being that happy makes me feel guilty. Because I shouldn’t be. Not while my mum is feeling the way she is. How I can dare to be happy is beyond me, and I hate my guts for it.

I hate myself so much that it makes my head spin.

At times, the house becomes a thoroughfare of my mum and dad’s world, and as people pass through I hope that one of them has the secret to Mia’s recovery. Some of them we see almost every day. People like Freya, the “bastard magnet,” who cheerfully breezes through the house, chatting to Mia as if nothing’s wrong. I like it when Freya comes over. It reminds me of old times, when she and Mia would almost be speaking over each other to get a word in. Sometimes Freya takes her for a drive to get her out of the house and I find myself waiting for a miracle, like them walking through the front door, laughing hysterically over some story Freya has told. But it’s only Freya’s voice I hear each time and she and I will exchange looks and sometimes there are tears in her eyes because I know that she needs Mia to come back as well.

This is my theory. Mia’s not going to go out into her world, so I decide that I need to bring her world to her. She has so many people in her life and I don’t know where to start: school, university, work, family friends, colleagues, past teachers, past students. I begin with the people she works with, the ones my dad doesn’t relate to.

Sometimes she used to fight with him about them because, as independent as she is, when she went out she wanted my dad and her to be together.

“Go out with them on your own. I’ll look after the kids,” he’d argue.

“That’s a cop-out,” she’d say. “I go out with your friends.”

“Because my friends are our friends.”

“Mine could be ours if you gave them a chance.”

“I have given them a chance. I don’t watch enough public television and foreign films for them, and all they talk to me about is soccer and the Cosa Nostra.” He’d adopt an appalling polished Australian accent, and even Mia would fight hard not to laugh at that. He’d grab her mouth with his hand, making a smile out of it.

“Can we have a maturity moment?” she’d say. “Every time I go to one of these things, I feel like a widow, Rob.”

“That’s probably because I feel dead when I’m around them.”

They’re weird, in a way. Sometimes I used to hear them at night and they’d be killing themselves laughing after having a heated argument over di

“I can’t leave my mother,” she’d say. “They won’t give me time off work. Frankie just started Year Eleven.”

“There’ll always be an excuse not to relax, Mia.”

“It’ll cost us at least ten thousand in airfares alone.”

“We’ll leave the kids with my mother.”

Thanks, Dad.

“No way. I couldn’t do that.”

Mia hated being separated from us.

“Luca would be fine but Frankie would never cope,” she’d add.

Thanks, Mum.

My dad liked doing things with her on their own, whereas Mia always had an entourage. Luca, me, Angelina when she was growing up, my no

I’d hear her and her friends talk about men. Freya, the “bastard magnet,” would talk about her relationship with her current bastard. “I tell him my problems and he thinks he has to solve them,” Freya would say, “when all I want to do is verbalize how I’m feeling.”

“Robert doesn’t try to solve things,” Mia would tell them. “He just tells me, ‘Everything’s going to be fine.’ ” She’d say it almost critically, and I couldn’t understand why. It’d make me angry. As if she’d have to find something negative just to fit in with the whining.

Telling Mia’s world about what’s happening isn’t easy. They either don’t get it or don’t want to. Maybe I’m just not selling it well.

“Mia’s depressed,” I say.

“Tell me about it. I can’t get through this work and the department expects miracles.” (The any-problem-you-have-mine’s-bigger work colleague.)

“Mia’s depressed,” I tell the next one.

“Nothing to worry about. She’ll snap out of it. You know Mia. Thrives on drama. Tell her to ring me.” (The practical university friend who thinks you should be able to juggle everything and not complain.)

“Mia’s depressed.”

“Well, I can’t say I blame her, Francesca. She does everything around there.” (Another of Mia’s work colleagues. Hates my father.)

“Mia’s depressed.”

“That’s what happens when you take on too much.” (Mia’s school friend. Gloating voice—a “you sucker” to women who take on heaps and try to have it all. Crucify them! Crucify them!)

Some promise me the moon, others nothing. But by the time I get off the phone, I feel a hundred years old.

chapter 16

I GET STUCK with Thomas Mackee one afternoon at the bus stop. Luca’s at choir practice, and the girls have got various commitments. We stand alongside each other in silence for a while. Then our bus comes along and the psychotic bus driver chooses not to stop for us and we exchange glances. Suddenly we can’t pretend the other is not there.

“Why did you ask me to dance in drama?” I ask him.

He rolls his eyes. He does it exaggeratedly and I regret the question.

“Before your feelings get out of hand,” he tells me, “I have to warn you that you’re not my type.”

This time I roll my eyes.

“It was like you were asking me to,” he says. “Anyway, I felt like a bloody idiot out there on my own and I thought, who do I want to drag down with me?”

“So why drag me down?”

“Why did you say yes?” he asks.

“You made me laugh and I haven’t laughed for, like, ages.”

“Because you’re a gri

“Am I?”

“Yep. Not often, but once in a while you have this goofy grin,” he tells me. “Most chicks have great smiles, even Finke has a killer of a smile when she forces herself, but you have a goofy grin. See, you’re doing the goofy grin now.”

I try hard not to, but the more I try the goofier it feels.

“It’s not the way to go if you’re trying to attract a guy,” he advises me, but he’s not taking himself seriously and he makes me laugh.

For a moment I can’t help thinking how decent he is—that there’s some hope for him beyond the obnoxious image he displays. Maybe deep down he is a sensitive guy, who sees us as real people with real issues. I want to say something nice. Some kind of thanks. I stand there, rehearsing it in my mind.

“Oh my God,” he says, “did you see that girl’s tits?”

Maybe not today.

One of Mia’s colleagues comes and visits, and they’re in her room for hours. Sue is the head of Mia’s department at the university and kind of scares the hell out of us all. Like with my dad, Mia has this way of making people want to hog her, and I always feel that in the eyes of her colleagues, Luca and I are like the enemy who take up too much of her time.

Afterward, I make Sue tea and she talks to me as if I’m an adult and I want to tell her that I’m not.

“Why hasn’t she seen a doctor yet?” she asks almost reprimandingly.

“She has. At the very begi

“Has she gone back?”

“My dad says they’ll only put her on antidepressants.”