Chapter One:
His head is ripped off. In that photograph. Of him. Kit spots it buried amongst four years worth of university essays. It's the photo of her father she stole from her half-sister Ivy, and then misplaced in an effort to keep safe.
Kit pulls her bottom dresser drawer open further and it slips out of its casing, hitting the hot itchy carpet with a thud. She sits cross-legged and naked, staring at the photograph—at five-year-old Ivy's carefree grin and trusting arms wrapped around his knees. She stares at his hand gently placed on the top of Ivy's head, and her sideways and upward glance toward his non-existent face. Kit touches the top of her own head, and tries to imagine what his touch may have felt like; what it would have been like to be Ivy, those twenty-five years ago, before Kit was even born.
Kit gets up and places the photo on her bedside table, propping it up against the wall, behind her lamp. There's no time better than now. In determination, she scoops her university papers out of the drawer like an eagle catching prey, and with one swift movement she drops her entire collection of archaeological lecture notes, research method essays, and Cypriot artifact analyses into the cardboard box on her bed. But the postgraduate application form she has to fill out and submit before the month is out, silently prods at her brain; the application form that is folded six times over and stuffed into the smallest pocket of her handbag. Not now. Not yet.
#
“Kit?” calls her mother, Ailish, from the verandah. “Could you bring out a large spoon for the sour cream on your way out?” ABC News is blaring in the background, “ The annual Melbournian heat wave plagues homes once again. The bureau of meteorology declares it is Australia 's hottest summer on record …”
“And a ladel for the soup?”
“Yeah!” Gazpacho is too bloody spicy. What's the point in making a cold spicy soup? Kit leans against the kitchen sink, squinting at the sunlight creeping through the orange tree by the window. Over-ripe oranges are rotting on the concrete, and the acidic scent of trodden rind is wheedling its way through the cracks in the wooden frame. She thinks about her father rotting; staining every footpath she is bound to tread with his bitter memory; contaminating her mother's tongue with his tart taste at the mere mentioning of his name. But Kit wants to taste the fruit—a need that has been stalking her ever since Ivy moved away a little over a year ago. She wants to find the real ‘him'; she wants to know who he is below the rind.
Kit pulls out the drawer below the sink and sifts, with a clatter, for a spoon and ladle. She shoves the drawer back in with a little too much force and almost jams her thumb in it.
She grabs her sarong from the arm of the couch on her way to the front door, and secures it around the top of her breasts as she does with her towel after having a shower. It slips down after taking a couple of steps forward. Why did Ivy have to get the big ones? Clasping the ends of the sarong together with one hand and holding the spoon in the other, she swings the fly-wire door open with her hip and walks out onto the verandah.
“So, what's next on the ‘Kit Front'?' asks Ailish before shoving a proud forkful of homegrown lettuce leaves into her mouth. It's too much to swallow. Coughing and spluttering, Ailish signals for Kit to pass a napkin, waving her left hand erratically in the air, while feeling the pins at the base of her French twist with her right, to make sure none have come loose.
“Whydya have to go and call me Kit? It sounds like kid but worse. Kid with a Nazi accent.” Kit passes Ailish a napkin and sits down, scraping the chair as she pulls herself closer to the table. She wipes sweat upward from her brow and into her unbrushed auburn hair with both hands. Holding her hair away from her face, fingers woven into it like a comb, she blows upward to cool off her face.
Ailish wipes her mouth clean and clears her throat. “I think it's a very cute name,” she croaks.
“It's old fashioned. I should be on a farm milking cows in Woolloomooloo.”
“I've always liked your sense of humor. Dry, witty. Sweetheart, I often think you take after Ivy's mother more than me.”
“I'm not talking about my sense of humor, Mum. I'm talking about my name.”
“You're welcome to change it if you so desperately desire. But you'll still be Kit to me.” Ailish grasps the ladle in the big glass bowl and puts some Gazpacho into Kit's dish. She gestures toward the sour cream with her chin. Kit nods. “So?”
“So what?” replies Kit, tearing off a chunk of bread from the unsliced loaf.
Ailish glances down and frowns. “There is a knife there for a reason, Kit.” Kit shrugs. “Never mind. So,” continues Ailish, dragging out ‘so', “what are you going to do with yourself now that graduation is behind you?”
“I dunno. Should I know?”
“Well, yes, you're sort of supposed to be familiar with what you aspire to do before you select a field of study, not after . Perhaps you should look for some voluntary field work to prepare yourself for your postgraduate studies next year?”
“Who says I'm going to enroll? I never said I was going to enroll. Besides, I hate field work.”
“If you dislike field work, what on earth made you opt to study archaeology?” Ailish's voice rises in tone, hinting at frustration, yet maintaining her sarcastic spark.
Kit ignores her pun. “Ivy said I'd like it.”
“If Ivy said you should jump off a bridge, would you?”
“Mum, that's a bit cliché isn't it?”
“Well, sweetheart, like the talented Evelyn Waugh said, ‘to be oversensitive about clichés is'—.”
“… ‘like being oversensitive about table manners,' I know, I know … Anyway, Ivy said it was interesting.” Kit rests her left elbow on the table and drops her head into her hand, letting it swing a little.
“I thought you were really taking pleasure in your studies, Kit. And surely you have a mind of your own? I remember when you announced what you had decided to study. It appeared to me that you had some sort of revelation! Why did you need to follow in Ivy's footsteps? Why ever did you not make a decision on your own?” Ailish flings her arms into the air as if conducting an orchestra. As her arms come down she knocks her right hand on the edge of the table. She winces.
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