Floating Upstream

By Jo Vraca

Julia Marconi has a simple dream, to get out of Goldburne, the stinking hot town in rural Australia, where she’s followed the rules her whole life, and to take adventures far away from her violent father whose only goal is to maintain his old world values in changing times. But Julia can’t help herself. She longs for true love, and Robbie Ventura and a bunch of Carnies arrive in town to make a mess of things for her just as she’s getting ready to settle in and stay out of trouble. It’s all so tantalising. Just a taste here and there won’t hurt. After all, she’s an excellent liar. So with her brother’s motto stuck in her head – Don’t get caught – Julia tries to survive the last year of high school without getting caught (or getting knocked up like the other losers at school). All she has to do is spend the last year of the 70s with her head afloat, despite the currents dragging her away from her goals. But Goldburne and her father have eyes and ears everywhere, and her parents have made plans for Julia that don’t involve starting the new decade and new life in the city. Promises made before Julia was born and key to maintaining the lies that span three generations, a war and a secret that means Julia may end up like Maria Gervase – knocked up and married by 19.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jo Vraca
• Release date: Sep 4, 2015
• ISBN: 9780994198433

Jo Vraca

Jo Vraca (1969-) was born in Rosolini, Sicily to a seamstress and farmer. She grew up in Melbourne, Australia after her family immigrated in 1971. She is a born liar, and writing seems like the best outlet for all kinds of story-telling.

Book preview

PART ONE

Chapter One

The Tarantella

Once bitten by a tarantula, a woman may fall into a hypnotic trance causing them to dance frantically during the Summer Solstice in order to exorcise the affliction.

The day it all started, Julia tried her best to be inconspicuous in the back row, watching Grease for the third time. She found five dollars and a packet of smokes in the Ford’s glove compartment, giving her enough change for popcorn and a Choc Top.

As the water licked at Sandy and Danny’s feet on the last days of summer, while they rolled in the sand and waves crashed around their lovemaking, Julia remembered her grandfather’s words about love. He warned her that love came only once in your life, and that love, the once-in-a-lifetime sort of love, was boundless. It wasn’t the kind that you could hide in the third drawer along with the rest of life’s souvenirs.

Real love felt like you were riding on a rickety, old roller coaster. It made you want to throw up your breakfast and last night’s dinner. Real love gave you something to do on a Sunday, even when all you really wanted to do was turn over and go back to sleep. Real love, he said, could make you drunker than Father Gino’s wine at Christmas.

But, he warned her, in that way that made her sit up and take notice, You have to be on your guard, or true love might just slip past unnoticed. Even if you only look away for a second.

How could Julia deny he told the truth with those deep brown eyes full of nostalgia? Loneliness coloured the edges of his voice when he spoke, loneliness and the dark wine that stained her mother’s tablecloths. His wife disappeared more than thirty years before; disappeared without a trace, maybe abducted, murdered, or she ran after a new love.

But like a disciple, Julia kept her eyes open, and her nose at attention to sniff every breeze. She’d learned from reading 17 Magazine that it took the right kind of chemicals and pheromones to fall in love. It wasn’t easy to smell anything but cow shit in Goldburne. Cow shit and DDT. She did not want to miss the soft scents that were meant for her. True love didn’t go away; Sandy and Danny were proof of that, right up on the movie screen, bigger than life.

Summer love was forever, and Rizzo was totally misunderstood!

You’re in so much trouble, Jules.

Julia turned to look at the black figure hovering in the aisle, just as Danny Zucco tried to cop a feel of Sandy at the drive-in.

Come on, Joey, it’s nearly finished. She pointed the popcorn bucket at the screen. But there was no way her brother would let her stay now.

You’re supposed to be with Susie, he whispered. Mum’s going to beat the shit out of you if you don’t get home before Dad.

Julia rolled her eyes and took a long sniff of her sleeves for the tell-tale smells that would give her away to her mother. She turned back to the screen; maybe her brother would go away if she ignored him. But Danny Zucco’s plaintive cry to Sandy ended with Joey dragging Julia by the arm through the cinema doors and into the stark bright foyer.

****

Julia’s mother was a big fat drama queen. The fact she was big, but not fat, was beside the point. Nobody would ever doubt that she was a drama queen. What with all of her God willings, her "Thanks to the sweet baby Jesus," and grand sign of the cross at every car that backfired within a five-mile radius.

Julia regretted going home at the sight of her mother hunched over the kitchen bench, kneading a smooth white lump of dough. A blue-checked apron hung loosely from Connie’s neck, remaining untied at the waist as though she had no time for such frippery. Her usually smooth dark-auburn hair frizzed at the roots from the sweat of her labours.

The transistor squawked on the bench just inches from her hands and shuddered with every thwack of the dough. Julia reckoned there hadn’t been a candle burning in front of the Sacred Heart of Jesus for some time, until today. All because Mick Camilleri plunged to his death from the balcony on the third floor of the pub he owned, which overlooked the town he helped build after the war. The guy supposedly had a heart attack in mid drag while he was out having a fag at the end of his work day. Then he toppled over the balcony like a sack of fertiliser. Like the shithead he was, some said.

Julia and Joey waited for Connie’s histrionic sobs and tears to simmer. She rubbed her face with the back of her hand, wiped the tears that fell to the floured bench top and continued to knead the dough. It all smacked of theatre.

Joe finally waltzed to the fridge and stood staring at its meagre contents. He stuffed a wedge of fried bread into his mouth, with fingers blackened by car parts, before speaking. So Mick Camilleri’s dead. Shocker.

Don’t you dare talk about the dead like that. Connie Marconi pointed a floury finger at him.

Like what? The guy drank whiskey all day and smoked two fags at a time.

Julia shrugged. I saw him yesterday, she said. He gave me a lemon squash when I went in looking for Dad. He looked okay.

Stop eating out of the fridge, Connie yelled. Get yourself a plate.

I’m finished, I’m finished, Joe yelled.

Joey sounded like a real wog sometimes, but he was all right. Mostly. He gave her rides into town, didn’t tell their parents when she wagged school like today and gave her cigarettes. Julia saw why he gave girls butterflies, with his angled smile and thick black hair like their dad’s. At least he didn’t hit her if he found her talking to some guy. Not like other brothers. Joey left her alone with just a warning to not get caught. As though Julia was an idiot.

He wiped his hands on his jeans and waved goodbye with his cheeks full of greasy bread and olives. He could do that, Julia supposed. Just up and leave the house without begging first or even saying anything to anyone.

Julia sighed away the random thoughts, the ones where she’d been born a boy. The ones that dreaded having to clean the house with her mother on Saturdays before she was allowed to go to the pool.

Joey reckoned she was just like one of the guys, but Julia didn’t know whether to take it as a compliment or not. All she knew was that if she’d been born a boy, Julia would lop off her stupid, long girl hair and would walk the same carefree walk her brother enjoyed every day. Wishful thinking, she thought, loitering around the stove to check what was simmering.

Julia breathed deeply as the spiced scent of Benson & Hedges drifted back into the house from the veranda. Those cigarettes smelled like freedom. One day, she’d show them that she was just like him.

What floor was he on when he fell? Julia asked.

Third. Poor guy never had a chance. Connie slammed the dough hard onto the bench. Just like that.

Julia sidled up beside her mother and patted her arm, obliged by the show of sorrow.

It’s sad, isn’t it? Connie whimpered. He was a good man. He did so much for us all. Now he’s gone, just like that. One day, the same thing will happen to your father, and he’ll be gone, just like that. She waved a floury hand.

Dad’s going to fall off a balcony?

No, stupid, but he’ll die before me. I know it. And he’ll leave a big mess.

Julia knew better than to respond to her mother when she made those sort of solemn declarations. She poured a glass of water from the tap and sipped from pursed lips.

I wonder if Michaela will be in class on Monday? Julia asked.

Well, of course she won’t.

Her mother’s grim stare said both you’re such an idiot and I’ll kill you for saying something like that.

Connie straightened her apron as though realising for the first time that it was undone. She crisscrossed the strings around the back and tied them in a neat bow at the front. "Her father’s dead, Julia. Where do you get such stupid ideas? She straightened her apron. It’s as though you were brought up by those Skips or something. Even the Turks make more sense than you, sometimes."

Julia baulked at the words her mother spat so expertly while uncovering a small mound of resting dough and rolled it out until it was the size of a pizza tray. Connie Marconi was an expert with words; she couldn’t deny it.

Chapter Two

Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.

—Norman Cousins

Mick Camilleri’s body rested in the poolroom at the pub, ready to receive visitors.

Weird tradition, Julia thought. The last thing she wanted to do was go see a dead guy in a coffin, in the very room she and her friends hung out. What would he look like? Stuffed with cotton? Embalmed and wrapped in cloth? The whole spectacle of it was just weird, but she didn’t want to see the other end of a wooden spoon, so Julia accompanied her mother into town in the orange Falcon 500. She hoped they wouldn’t be pulled over by the police again for her mother’s erratic driving, which was the worst thing in the world for a woman without a license.

Julia ignored her mother’s rambling and instead counted the ghost gums and wattles that lined Goldburne’s uneven streets. Cheery evergreens sprouted fluffy and spiky flowers in winter, each one planted by prisoners of war during the last big one. It was strange to think that there was a POW camp on a farm just outside of town, amongst the grazing cows and big red roos, in a country so far from the front line. Julia’s grandfather said the prison was full of his people: Italians who couldn’t care less about Hitler or Mussolini. Because the Skips had to put on a show, they locked up around twenty new arrivals to demonstrate they were part of the allied war effort.

The POWs didn’t just plant a few trees. They laid the roads and built the small church on Main Street with the stained glass windows that depicted the Virgin with glowing palms.

They did a nice job, Julia supposed. Of course, if she’d been one of the prisoners, she would have hidden landmines in the roads. Italian POWs in Australia; that was really stupid.

Connie parked a meter away from the curb and didn’t bother to look for any cars when she swung open her door.

She took Julia’s hand once they rounded the car.

"Mum," Julia cried and wriggled free her hand.

They waited as a leisurely wedding procession ascended the stairs into Our Lady’s. The Catholic church was still the only one in Goldburne, because why would you need another one in a town of two hundred? Julia got to see the inside of the Gothic-inspired building more than she’d have liked. Besides every baptism, communion, confirmation and wedding she’d witnessed inside the bluestone church, she also spent plenty of time in confession. All thanks to her mother’s phobia that they would go to hell if they didn’t confess at least once a week.

The bridal party and the small group of witnesses shaded the sun from their brows—the women with wide-brimmed hats, the men with newspapers—as they climbed the three steps into the church that occupied the north end of Main Street. It was as if you were walking up Swanston Street in Melbourne towards the Shrine of Remembrance, only a lot smaller.

Because the wogs had made it, the church boasted baroque columns covered with leaves and flourishes. In one of its chapels, the statue of Goldburne’s patron saint, Saint Lucia, held a small plate that contained her eyeballs. The very eyeballs that had been torn from her in the name of God.

Connie Marconi didn’t hesitate to remind Julia of Saint Lucy’s bitter demise. She ripped her own eyes out because some man made advances, and she was already promised to God. And if a man ever touches you before there’s a ring on your finger, that’s what your dad will do to you, too.

Connie Marconi rarely had a decent word to say about love and marriage, explaining that it was just a big effort to be endured. Despite that, Julia knew that love was something to aspire to, filled with feats of romance that rivalled the greatest works of art in any European gallery. Love kept you afloat, even when everything around you conspired to keep your head submerged below water.

Julia’s grandfather, Joseph Marconi, during one of his melancholy bouts, also said that love gave you the strength to walk over hot coals and even float upstream against the current. Julia never questioned a word that came out of her grandfather’s mouth. He was ancient as time itself, and he wore a gold hoop earring and his wedding band on his thumb. You didn’t want to question someone that old.

Oh, her, Julia thought when she focused back on the bride at the foot of St Mary’s steps. The bride waited at the door of the church until an angry middle-aged man clutched her arm and led her into the dim church foyer.

Poor Maria Di Silva—that’s how they talked about her now. Poor Maria lived near the milk bar with her varicose-veined mother, her aunt and uncle, grandparents and older brother in an extended miner’s huts.

Julia never saw Maria anywhere but out on the front veranda of her house, especially on a Saturday when she had detention or sewing class. Until a few months ago, Maria would be painting her toenails in shocking reds and pinks while Skyhooks played on the record player beside her.

Sometimes Maria would call out to her. Come here, she’d say with a flick of her ash-blonde hair. Do you have a cigarette?

Julia would shake her head.

No? Well, next time tell that brother of yours to come and give me one. Say exactly that. Maria’s broad grin hid hundreds of stories, and Julia wanted to be just like Maria when she was older and wear dark eyeliner and short shorts.

Julia’s mother leaned in and whispered, "I was wondering if she’d wear a white dress. What a buttana."

A round posy of yellow marigolds only served to emphasise the whiteness of the dress. Maria looked like an angel with billowing folds of tulle that hid what needed to be hidden.

She’s no angel, Connie Marconi continued as the bride disappeared inside the church.

Julia trailed behind her mother, trying to catch a final glimpse of Maria.

What a dickhead, she thought. Pregnant and married at 19.

The heat bounced off the bitumen, and Julia caught up with her mother. She wished she was tall like her, so she could walk with real purpose too. She came from horse folk, grandpa explained. In her village in Italy, you were either short, squat and milled wheat, or you were tall, lean and bred horses. The Rossi lineage died young, but they were all tall with long, straight spines and blood redder than a cardinal’s robe.

Giovanni, Connie called out to a trio settled into the bucket seats out the front of the coffee shop. Finished work already?

Waddaya talking about? I’m working right now, Giovanni Marconi said and slapped a card on the table. Take that.

Julia’s father turned back to the card game, and his face creased with the smile he reserved for card playing. The other men showed their hands and pushed a few loose cigarettes towards him. He was a loser at horses, but nobody could beat him at Briscola.

Julia sensed intrigue in his low tone, words she wished she understood, but he kept his voice hushed. A cigarette moved through the air like Zorro’s sword. He turned to Julia and nodded as if to say, "See, that’s how you do it." He raised a petite glass of amber liquid to his mouth and acknowledged Julia with a grin.

The cafe owner, Sam Saltinboca, placed three small white cups of coffee on top of the discarded cards. The Turks drank coffee that smelled like mud cakes and foreign spices that made Julia screw up her nose. Black Italian coffee had a sharp, bitter aroma and always evoked the very scene before her now. Dark-skinned old men, smelling of horses and dry hay bales; kids riding their hand-me-down Malvern Stars to the weir at breakneck speed, kicking up trails of dirt; boys and girls avoiding one another’s glances on the way to the pool; and her father playing cards with the passion of a revolutionary.

Giovanni Marconi—John to the Aussies—could have been Dean Martin’s long lost twin. He wore his thick black hair with a slight kink that he greased with Brylcreem and an open shirt, revealing a bumper crop of hair on his chest. A red kerchief, tied around his neck, served as a reminder of where he came from, marking his political allegiance. A fat Cuban cigar poked out from his shirt pocket, waiting for the right moment. Giovanni Marconi was always waiting for the right moment, so he smoked Benson and Hedges cigarettes instead.

Where are you going, Julia? Is Mamma taking you to the wedding or to see the dead guy?

Julia caught her mother’s glance, as though she’d been asked for money by some bum. Instead, she accepted the Mintie her father pushed into her hand. She unwrapped the sticky lolly, saving the wrapper for later when he held out his hand again. A small oval pendant caught the sunlight. She admired the enamelled surface, which sparkled with the Madonna’s vibrant blue.

The Madonna, Julia said. It’s pretty.

Where did that thing come from? Connie asked in a suspicious tone.

Don’t worry about it.

With the chain secure around her neck, Julia pressed the enamel pendant between her fingers, cool and smooth as marble.

That’s alright, Connie said into the breeze. "I’ve already forgotten.

A breeze swept along the street and pushed away the heat for a welcome moment.

Giovanni Marconi considered the new hand he was dealt. If you ask me, that Gervase girl’s getting married a little too late.

Chapter Three

Man is not what he thinks he is, he is what he hides. 

André Malraux

The heat was loaded with stink from the tip down in Walton Town. You got used to it, and locals stopped the pretentious show of revulsion within a matter of days into spring, as all the waste heated up. Julia reckoned there were worse things in the world than the smell of a rotten tip.

She stumbled along Cook Street behind her mother; her clipped, short steps failed to keep up with the long strides. The midday sun reflected off brand new street signs. You didn’t need street signs in a town as small as Goldburne, but you did if you wanted to turn the place into a tourist destination. This was exactly what Mick Camilleri had tried to do before he fell off his balcony.

You especially didn’t need a sign on Cook Street. It was the stuff of legends, named after the famous explorer. They said he came through Goldburne one day in the 1800s and swept up Kelly Durkin, the stationmaster’s daughter, onto the back of his horse. He abducted her and the town named a street after him? He sounded like a paedophile as far as Julia could tell, But they were so proud to have Captain James Cook pick one of theirs to be his, that they even erected a bronze statue at the crossroads of Main and Cook Streets.

Connie Marconi slapped Julia’s bare arm, leaving a red welt that burned from her sweat. Come on, Julia. For God’s sake, stop daydreaming.

Julia focused instead on the weatherboard cottages with empty chairs loitering around the doors. Empty packets of eaten Samboy chips poked out of the top of empty longneck VB bottles. She followed her mother onto Smith Street and into the third house, a newer brick building with a beaded curtain across its open doorway.

Carla, Connie Marconi called out once she’d stepped inside the dark hallway.

Here, came a throaty voice from the back of the house.

A bare arm poked out from a room at the end of the hallway and ushered them forward. Julia slid past her mother and into the cheerful kitchen where Carla Ventura stood over the stove, tasting the contents of a pot with a wooden spoon.

Come and taste this, Connie, she said without turning around. Have you been over there yet?

We’re on our way now, Connie said, while Julia hovered over the feast on the table and sniffed the plastic-covered dishes. Rabbits poached in pungent white vinegar and dotted with green olives and capers; chickens