Metal Fish, Falling Snow

by Cath Moore

  I’ve also brought a photo of me and Mum sitting in the Beyen hand. A reporter from the Dry Gully Gazette took it when the statue was unveiled. We’re high-fiving each other and smiling so hard our cheeks look shiny. The photo didn’t make it into the gazette, but the reporter sent us a copy anyway.

  Pat doesn’t go around potholes, he goes straight through them at full speed, and my bum clears the seat for a moment. I take the snow globe out of my bag. The rising sun reflects off the plastic dome and sends a piercing light into my eyes. I can still see Mum’s fingerprints on the side.

  A bit of my heart catches on Mrs Devlin’s splintered fence at the end of Baker Street, trying to hold on even though nothing can ever be the same again. Because I killed my mum.

  4 Clouds moving too fast

  We’ve only been on the road for six kilometres so maybe I shouldn’t have told you that yet. Now you’re probably rippin’ all the pages out of this story and throwing them into the fire. Watching the words curl into themselves and float away. Please don’t go, not yet. Pat’s just about the worst travelling companion there is, so I need some extra company. When I close my eyes I’m under the waves, trying to come up to the surface but then I suddenly hit my head on the bottom of the ocean. No way up and out of something like this. If there was a God I’d be asking how he could’ve let me do what I did. Then again, you don’t have to be a bad person to do bad things. Half the people in jail say they didn’t mean to do it, that it was just a misunderstanding.

  Right now Classic Cougar 97.3 FM is playing eight from the eighties and, without even realising it, Pat’s tapping along to A-ha. He’s popped a piece of gum and I think his ticker’s calmed down. Me and Pat have never talked about what happened. Men drink and punch their way through feelings. That’s what Dr. Juno Nova Martinez said on Oprah.

  Even though we had to leave everything behind memories will still hitch a ride. Maybe if there’d been breaking news on the radio forecasting ‘a terrible day for terrible things to happen’ then obviously we would have stayed put. But it was beautiful weather with no clouds at all. Not a single one.

  Every Sunday we went to Margie’s place so Mum could give her a mani/pedi because Margie’s back might break if she tried to touch her toes. Her spinal cord was hollowed out and dry. Mum would put all the nail clippings in a sandwich bag because Margie said they reassured her. ‘Can’t keel over if the hair is flowing and the nails are growing.’

  We saw a lot of seniors, me and Mum. Everyone can look radiant if they know what their colour system is and attend to their roots on a regular basis. The oldies at the Best Intentions Nursing Home all liked Tina Arena. ‘She’s come so far,’ they’d say and pass the Woman’s Day mag back and forth. Tina’s big in France. She made Mum wistful.

  Before we left for Margie’s that day I’d dug up some potatoes for her Irish stew. I loved shaking in the Worcestershire sauce, watching all the little circles of oil float on the top and sucking out the marrow. Parfait. Digging up spuds was a game for me and Mum. We’d race ’em down the driveway; Mum gave them names and everything.

  ‘Spudtacular comes round the bend with Alligator-tater close behind. Mish-mash makes a last go of it, but it’s Spudtacular who comes away with a strong win!’

  Margie’s house is right across the road from the bus stop on the corner of Canon Street. She’d made me some pikelets for morning tea and that day I chose strawberry jam with cream. Mum got to work on Margie’s toenails, so I went outside and ran my fingertips along the rose bushes. Margie says they’re like the pretty girls at her school: nice to look at but prickly as all hell.

  Then I heard something. Scratch and scrabble, twist and turn as the baby birds wriggled closer to one another. They were in one of the big gum trees on the other side of the fence. The shadows came. Moved across the paddock like ghost horses that used to run wild across the fields when no one lived here at all. They came fast those shadows. I looked up and saw dark clouds swirling. Now, don’t get me wrong, clouds are usually good because they hold the rain. But magic is a powerful thing. Sometimes it can turn the world upside down.

  The baby birds were crying out loud. Hungry squawking babies calling for their mama to feed them. And I was scared they’d be lost in the storm, that the winds might tear their nest apart and send them flying. As I climbed the tree I could hear Mum’s voice travelling on the wind. I saw her in the distance out by Margie’s back door. Her hair was whipping round her face and she had to hold it back with one hand.

  ‘Dylan…DYLAN!’

  I felt her fear whooshing out like a flood, rising up and filling my lungs. But it was too late to do anything so I just held on. Mum started to climb the tree and my eyes locked with hers through the howling wind and the booming thunder. I looked up to the sky, begging the clouds to stop.

  In that flash of a second I took my eyes off Mum and she fell. The branch broke clean away and she went back towards the ground before I could scream, ‘Wait, sorry clouds, don’t hurt my mum, I was the one who made you angry! Throw me into the sky and toss me round like a ragdoll, but leave Mum alone!’ In slow motion my arm reached out to hers and hers to mine.

  As soon as she hit the ground the wind stopped blowing, the clouds floated away and the birds stopped their crying. Stillness bleeding through my ears. Margie standing by the porch, one hand leaning on the wall and the other on her bad hip. She didn’t want to move, didn’t want to see what had happened. I slid down the tree, fingers peeling off the bark in big strips as I went. Thud, I hit the ground, scrambled over to Mum. Her left leg was bent back the wrong kind of way. I brushed a strand of hair out of her face. How could she look so lovely and be dead at the same time? I tried to breathe life back into Mum. I pumped her chest, but beyond those beautiful glassy eyes everything was broken. A plague of cicadas was trapped in my head, a pounding drone. I wanted to run through the fields away from it all, back to the house where Mum was still humming to Serge Gainsbourg or calling that potato race.

  When that police lady came she tried to pull my fingers back off Mum’s arm, but I growled at her so loud it scared me too. Cars arrived and lots of people moved about, but all I could understand was Margie saying, ‘I don’t know, I don’t know. I need to sit down. Oh, my Lord.’

  The police lady sat by my side the whole time and talked softly. She wouldn’t let anyone else near me until the sun had set and a whisper on the wind told me it was time to go. It was getting cold and the heat from Mum had gone. I could feel all these eyes watching when I went with that police lady. She had to help me walk because I felt so tired and weak and I didn’t even care that I’d peed my pants.

  There were so many men and I didn’t know any of them. Some had police uniforms and others wore a shirt and tie. Some of them talked to the police lady quietly but none of them would look at me. They turned their faces away or pretended to read something on a clipboard. There was a big white sheet that someone was holding and I knew they were going to put it over Mum, but I didn’t want to see that. I didn’t want to see her disappear. I felt raw and cold—a back-door draught shooting up my back.

  We went through the house and Margie was sitting at the kitchen table with a hand over her mouth. She reached out to me but accidentally knocked over her cold cup of tea.

  I went in a police car. That is something I’d always wanted to do but it did not feel exciting. People in the street were staring at me. I could feel their eyes burning into the back of my head. I waited for Mum to walk into the living room but everything was already beginning to vanish. The last time she stood by the back steps to catch a break in the weather. The last time she sat on the couch and braided my hair while we watched Ghostbusters on TV. The last time she was in bed and let me lie next to her. When we were comrades against the world. So much emptiness it made me want to hide in the wardrobe and wait for the darkness that had taken her to take me too.

  The police lady said that Pat was coming and she gave me lemonade, which was warm so I didn’t drink
it. We just sat at the table and she kept asking me what had happened, but I didn’t open my mouth in case a scream came out and never stopped. Then Pat’s headlights flooded the room. My heart was beating so fast because I wanted him to help me, but I had broken Mum myself, and she had gone away from him too. I looked out the window and two policemen had to hold him back, trying to calm him down because he had a little pink bottle and said that everything was all right, that they were wrong, he had Mum’s favourite perfume and it was all okay now. The police didn’t know Mum and Pat had had a fight and he was trying to make it right again.

  My gut sank like a stone in the river because I knew that Pat would punish me for this. If I had more discipline, I would not have looked away from Mum and let her fall. Nothing truer than that. So I ran into that wardrobe. Inside I listened to them all talking until there was nothing left to say and the police cars had gone and Pat had stopped walking back and forth over creaking floorboards and the night finally took the noise. But the dark did not take my pain or Pat’s. Only hid it until the morning came. You wake up with a start and remember what sleep had let you forget.

  When I went to the loo early the next morning I watched Pat curled up on the couch holding the bottle of perfume he had bought Mum. Anais Anais. During the night his dreams had made him small. They don’t disappear you know; dreams and memories will float out of your head and go through other folk. And I walked right through one of Pat’s memories in that moment. He was sitting at the pokie machine, watching Mum behind the bar. Made a bet with himself that if triple cherries came up he’d ask her out. He can still see them falling into place: 1, 2, 3. The pokie machines are his kind of magic and they’ve brought her to him. He looks up, and Mum’s smiling. She already knows.

  Back in the living room I can see Pat’s pillow wet with tears. I want to hold Pat and share my sadness, but if I wake him up, everything will break again. I saw a painting once in a gallery. Mum stared at it forever. A sheep is crying in the snow and her baby lamb is dead on the ground. No one can help her and she is alone.

  5 Never-knowing

  That morning Pat sat in the kitchen still as a statue. I hovered by the door but didn’t open my mouth in case I accidentally screamed just to break the silence. Then he shoved a chair out from the table.

  ‘Eat.’

  And so I did. But my cornflakes were disturbingly loud and Pat didn’t talk to me for the rest of breakfast. When he put my bowl in the sink he turned around and said, ‘What happened?’ So I told him about the clouds but he just shook his head and said, ‘No, no, no, no. No!’ Clasped his hands together and said I shouldn’t have been up the tree, if only I hadn’t climbed the bloody tree. I didn’t know if he was praying or was gonna hit me so I put my boxer hands up just in case. Pat was the one who looked scared, like I’d just appeared out of nowhere. When he moved towards me I ducked to the left and ran out of the room.

  Hid in the wardrobe for the rest of the day and counted to 100 again and again and again. Mathematics is a discipline that keeps everything in line. At 7.47 pm my little sparrow friend came to visit. He only has one foot so I knew it was him. That’s what happens when someone dies, people come to pay their respects. He watched as I made and ate my grilled cheese sandwich that was not grilled. Put his head to the side like he was saying, ‘Just watch me. I am light and bouncy.’ As I ate my night-time lunch I laughed and said, ‘Hey, Mum, he’s back!’ Then everything slid away like a wave rolling back into the sea. I called it the never-knowing: when your mind pretends it’s never known that awful thing ever happened. There was another kind of never-knowing, which was all to do with Pat and his phone calls. He said he was making arrangements that DID NOT CONCERN ME but I was very concerned indeed. When people mumble on the phone I am always concerned because sometimes the next day things have changed for good.

  On the fifth night Pat came into my room and sat on the bed then walked around, pulled the curtains shut and sat on the bed again. He said the funeral was in the morning so I should pick out a pretty dress to wear because we were saying goodbye to Mum. I said, ‘Where will we be?’ And Pat said, ‘Well…we’ll still be here. You’ll be…’ He stopped and looked up like he was counting cracks in the ceiling. ‘I got a lotta things to do and I can’t do more than that, you know?’

  Even though I didn’t know, I nodded my head because I think that was the answer he wanted. One without words.

  The night before we buried her I had a dream Mum was the one stuck up the tree and I had to rescue her. I couldn’t climb up because the tide was coming in. Water swirling around my feet with a sea swallowing me slowly, creeping higher and higher. Then the whole tree lifted out of the ground, roots ripping and tearing like a tooth extraction. The tree just whooshed up into the air and blew away light as a feather.

  At the bottom of the hole was my snow globe. I knew that if I went into the hole I might never come out again but I had to get it so I put one foot in and stumbled down, dirt going into my mouth and under my nails as I tried to hold onto the side, but I just kept slipping as the hole got deeper and deeper until the sky disappeared. A rumbling avalanche of brown snow fell on top of me. I screamed and screamed but no one could hear. Then Pat was shaking me awake. Sometimes dreams bring messages about what you have to do in your real life. And I knew that Mum was telling me she still had to get back home and it was my duty to navigate her spirit across the sea to Paris. I just had to find where the boat and her spirit were.

  •

  I felt sick all through the funeral. Pat had put Mum in the dress she’d worn when they first met. Made it all about him, and I felt thunder in my chest. Death is like the last glass of milk when there is no more in the fridge and the shop is closed ’cause it’s late Sunday arvo. When Mum went in the ground she should have been in something timeless but Pat said it was too late. I told him there’d be a royal commission and he’d be called as a witness. Pat apologised, but I said life was about deeds not words and told him to put it in the bank for safekeeping because I did not want to cash his sorry cheque right now. Then I walked into Mum’s room and folded her silk scarves. They were thin just like paperbark. I wrapped them all around, covering myself in swirly softness of light and colour. I was a butterfly. New and fresh from my chrysalis. Why do pretty things die so quickly?

  6 Barry

  ‘All right, keep ya shoppin’ list in ya head.’

  Now I’m back in the car. On the road with Pat. I’ve been talking to myself with the mute button on. For how long, I wonder? Memories drag you into the past whenever they like—I wish Pat knew that. He winces and shakes his head at me.

  ‘It’s a bloody distraction all that whisper talkin’.’

  I look out the dirty window; the freckles of dust look like a science riddle only Stephen Hawking could solve. And then I’m thinking about time again. Wish I could chuck all the hours left down a black hole. I want to be far away from the stinking heat and bloody blowflies, rattled nerves and desperate times where everyone is parched. Waiting for something to break, turn, shift and come good again. Out here this land is endlessly unforgiving. You think you can put a road through it and make it your own, but the bush will swallow you up whole if you get too cocky. It takes people in until they’re too deep to be found. I’ve been in their dreams too. Stumbling over rocks and caked in red dust. Following a dry riverbed to a sea they’ll never find.

  Sometimes I think Pat would like to disappear that way too. You see, that was the fight he had with Mum the night before she died. He didn’t want to go anywhere, especially not with me. But Mum always said we were a package deal and if he wanted to be with her, he had to learn how to love me too. The whole world was waiting for us if we stuck together. In Paris we’d eat chocolate éclairs at the top of the tower. Count the people below, dressed in their Sunday best even on a Tuesday, scuttling about being important and mysterious. Or watch the cafe tables on the footpath, where people blow smoke into each other’s faces and whisper secrets. No one would k
now I was black ’cause I’d speak their language too.

  Pat sure was surprised when those strangers with sweaty armpits came knocking on the front door a couple of days after Mum died. Thought they were God-botherers at first.

  ‘We’re sorry for your loss.’ The lady spoke so slow I thought there must have been something wrong with her.

  ‘Don’t do that, pretend like you know,’ Pat says with his right leg jiggling up and down under the table. I had to go outside and play while they ‘discussed matters’. That’s what adults say when they want to talk about the things you have done. Or what will be done. For your own good.

  When they were leaving the woman crinkled her eyes at me and talked real slow again like I was deaf. ‘You’re a very brave girl.’

  Pat made a lot of phone calls after that. I can tell you now, that wolf inside me knew what he was up to. It whispered soft enough so only I could hear: ‘Remember to forget kid, remember to forget. Now is not the time for unspoken truths.’ He was right. I didn’t want to know what was down the road, around the corner, where my ever after would be and who I might turn into once I got there. I worry about the things I don’t know yet. Surprises aren’t always fun. Like a birthday party no one comes to. Or when you find your dad asleep on the footpath one afternoon holding his own front tooth in his hand. To avoid any surprises like that I didn’t ask who Pat was talking to on the phone. I just decided to stick with the plan I’d made with Mum. Pat didn’t believe she had a spirit. Said God and the afterlife was a con for people too weak to see life for what it really was.