Sheree’s stuck in her high chair, how can she help?
Ron could have helped before the neighbours came. But Ron couldn’t move.
He was a knife without a blade. Useless.
Can’t cut it. Ha, ha.
Ron’s no good now. No good for anything. Alive or dead.
What your daddy did to you, Ronny boy, no one will find out. No one will ever know because you won’t tell and neither will I.
I won’t tell, if you won’t tell, your daddy said too.
And now that’s all we know.
Stop running, Ron. Marjorie Door will get you! Stop running, stop flying, stop screaming, stop buzzing. Get out of here and get away.
Love your boys. Even now, dead as you are, hover, Ron, and love them.
Sheree loves you Ron, you hateful bastard. You put her here and now she’s never coming out but she knows her redeemer lives because he’s flying the sky in a cross-shaped ship.
And he loves her. Someone loves her.
Can you hear the whizz and roar of motors made of muscle?
Can you see the clouds breaking and the sky turning to fire?
Sheree can see it all, Ron.
She can see everything and darkness. She can see you.
19. Peter Stevenson
Tomorrow night Peter will finally take Celia, his wife of three years, who is now pregnant, to meet his mother and the rest of his family. But tonight he’ll go fishing. By himself. A stupid idea, really. He’s never been fishing by himself. He doesn’t know what to do. He checks another angling app on his phone.
‘Looking up places to go for dinner?’
‘I’m going fishing.’
They’re staying in a country cottage not far from Westmore.
Peter’s idea. A relaxing break before the family introduction stroke reunion stroke God knows what else. There’s a river five minutes walk across a paddock. Short grass, ornamental. No cows or sheep or dung. Farm tourism.
‘Going by yourself, honey? I’ll come.’
‘No, I need a bit of time out.’
‘But we’ve just had a lot of time out...’
Three months ago Peter had read her diary and discovered past lovers he’d known nothing about. That he shouldn’t have cared about. But he did care about them. He got obsessed and pissed off. Daily.
They had separated. Celia had wanted some time apart to see if that arrangement needed to become permanent.
My diary’s not your business, Peter. Why did you do it? Things were going so well. Why do you have to start fights? You undermine us. You do it all the time. And, God, you talk about your brothers having bad tempers! Why do you do things like this?
Because, Peter’s hastily acquired relationship counselor told him, he was a self-sabotager.
‘When things are going well, you can’t trust them to keep going well.’
His counselor was plump and she smiled a lot. Her room smelt of sandalwood essence.
‘Your family relationships, your moving towns, your first marriage—whenever things were going well they fell to pieces, didn’t they? So this marriage to Celia, the best relationship you’ve had, you say, will fall to pieces too? Won’t it? That’s what you think.’
Peter nodded. But he wasn’t sure. She went on.
‘So you have to get in first, don’t you? Peter, you have to stop getting in first.’
‘How?’
‘You have to recognise what you’re doing.’
Peter was picking the couch threads. He stopped.
‘You have to capture the moment,’ she smiled, ‘when you’re about to do something like pick up Celia’s diary or start an argument. See the problem. Freeze it. Change it.’
See it, freeze it?
‘How?’
The counselor leant forward. Her gold watch was too bulky.
And she didn’t have a single motivational poster in her room.
‘By self-soothing. You’ll lose your anxiety. I think meditation can help.’
Peter understood that he had to pull it together quickly or Celia would leave him for good. Cold prickles emerged on his forehead.
‘How can I sort through...all the reasons... I’d be here for years...’
But he wasn’t. Celia had come back soon after that session. His email had convinced her. He was okay, he’d written, about having a baby with her; the son they’d watched roll and squiggle in an ultrasound image a few weeks before. And he was okay, too, about introducing her to his family. So Peter had ended the counselling sessions, against the counsellor’s advice.
He put his phone away now and its diagrams of paternoster rigs.
‘It’s okay,’ he told Celia. ‘I just want to go fishing. Nothing else. No stress. I’ll meditate, too. I promise.’
‘All right. I’ll go and buy some pasta or something. Eat later?’
She kissed his head where his hair was thinning.
‘We’ll eat fish,’ he said.
She laughed.
‘We’ll eat pasta!’
Peter carried his fishing rod, bucket and eco shopping bag of tackle across the paddock. The sun was low. The gum trees and banksia bushes hiding the river were mauve, and the grass lead-ing towards them was a carpet. He should stop this ridiculous fishing mission, take his paints from the cottage and set up his easel. All very van Gogh. Then he remembered the Dutchman’s demise. And pressed on.
The river was idyllic; the water shone and the dragonflies were industrious. The reeds on the opposite bank were golden in the lazy sun. There came a twip-twip of birds he hadn’t heard since he was a kid. They sounded fresh. Just made. He wanted to shout for joy across the river. What a world!
But he didn’t. Because he didn’t believe in the world. Not exactly.
There was something else.
He didn’t know what it was, but this river and its birds and perfect dragonflies weren’t everything. There was more, and it shone behind the shine of things.
He’d once believed in UFOs. Now he believed in things he understood even less.
His dead father had been closer by his side this past year than when he was alive. Ron had shushed him, even helped him freeze those moments when he was all set to self-sabotage. Peter wouldn’t have believed it was his father’s voice unless he’d heard it. In his head and in his gut, somehow. Peter felt like his dead father had become his teacher. Helping him to settle, helping him to, it had to be said, feel loved. But his old man had never been that smart or bold or compassionate. So maybe it was just Peter’s own voice in his head.
Whomever it was sounded like the best version of his father combined with the best version of himself. And that would do for an explanation.
Peter hauled his meandering mind back to its surroundings. The actual world. The river was beautiful. It flowed regardless of rocks and fallen trees trying to block it. Tonight, the river and its smooth banks were enough of everything that was good.
Peter took the rod in his hands and skimmed his phone screen for instructions. The paternoster took a lot of work; he had to create two dropper knots for the hooks then seal them off so that the sinker was below them. He wasn’t sure if he got it right. And he wondered if it would be worth it. If there were fish in this river, wouldn’t there also be empty stubbies, abandoned fishing line and floaters all over the banks?
He threaded worms on both hooks. A memory or a voice, he didn’t care which, reminded him how to do it. His life was now all about getting things done. And he would soon know enough about fishing to take his next child with him. If not, he would at least make sure he got started with his new boy or girl better than he had with his seven-year-old, Will. Peter could already sense his first child might regard him as useless. Like Simon’s boy Ryan considered his old man. He felt for Simon, wondered where he was. Peter remembered his last phone chat with his mum.
‘You boys!’ she’d said. ‘You find trouble wherever you can. And if you can’t, you make it up!’
Then, as usual, she’d gone on ab
out all the other Stevenson blokes. Peter reckoned she talked about all the others because she’d never been able to get a bloody thing out of her husband. What made him tick. Or turn off. Whatever it was that she couldn’t find out, that’s what made her obsess about her family. Why hadn’t he understood that before?
Because you were too far buried up your own arse.
Peter laughed as he cast his line with a plop into the gentle creek.
Tell me that wasn’t Ron’s voice! he thought.
All those wedding photos in his mum’s house and everyone else’s. All that time framing and staring at what she considered her boys’ best days. Despite her own divorce. And now she had a new daughter-in-law and another grandson on the way, a fresh start for her stories.
Peter looked along the banks for a stick to rest his fishing rod in. Maybe he shouldn’t go and visit Jules tomorrow. Maybe he’d be best to sit here and fish. Let the family take care of itself.
He found a vee-shaped stick and shoved it into the moist earth. He rested his rod in it then sat on a smooth rock that seemed set there for him. A perfect distance from the river. His line stretched straight into the water and the birds talked business. The river lapped the banks while reeds swayed in the gentlest of breezes. A pair of swallows skimmed the surface of the river and scattered the dragonflies. Peter wound his line in. Part of it had tangled behind the reel. He freed it and recast. The line pulled a little as it sailed through the air and plonked. He wound it straight but more line tangled again behind the reel.
Shit.
Since he and Celia had reunited, Peter had felt the need to start an argument every hour. Because things were so good between them. And he knew he’d want to start an argument when he got back to the cottage tonight. He’d have to hang on and listen to his father or himself and try to freeze another whole bunch of moments.
When the hell was it going to stop?
He had to go back to the counselor. But then Celia would worry, wouldn’t she? And they’d argue anyway.
His line was taut. But there were no bites. There were no fish here. Never would be.
He could be here for years. On these banks. Fishing and trying to sort out the mess he was in before he made a mess of his marriage. Another one.
Again and again. Casting and re-casting.
There was a rustle in the trees behind him. He ignored it for as long as he could. But it kept coming. He gave up pretending it wasn’t happening and hunted in the trees for whatever it was. But the noise stopped. He’d almost known it would. On his way out, he jagged his leg on a protruding branch. It hurt. He lashed out at the tree with his boot.
No one in the trees. Nothing to see, anyway.
He sat back on his rock with his line. There was another rustle but he didn’t turn around. A fish jumped from the river. A flash and it was gone.
‘Wow.’
A trout. It had to be. Did they jump? Peter knew how hard they were to catch. He’d heard his father talk them up. He knew he had no chance. And he liked it that way. Still, he thought, it was time to check his bait.
He wound his line in. It was a mighty effort. It had become entangled, he was sure, beneath a submerged log. A fish had probably pulled it there. That jumping fish, for sure. When he finally retrieved his line, the paternoster he’d created so pains-takingly was a circle of hell. There was fishing line looped over the empty hooks, and sinkers and swivels were tangled and embroiled in the mess. It looked like the busy part of a cyclone.
He picked at the tangle, but every pull on the line tightened it. There was no sign of a fish. No sign of anything. The birds were going home and the river was darkening.
He couldn’t untangle his rig. Celia would be back by now, probably already cooking. He gave another pull on the line and the knot firmed even more. The sun was giving its last wink to the day. There surely wasn’t enough time, for a man of his skill level, to build a new rig and start fishing again before night-fall. By then the trout would be gone and the eels would have arrived.
But Peter took a fishing knife from his bag and cut his line. He let the whirlwind fall to the moist riverbank. He let out a cry. And, by the light from his phone, he relaxed into the slow and careful work of building a new paternoster.
20. Peter, Simon, Terry and Ron Stevenson
His father would have called it a turn up for the books. Because it was Peter who rang his brothers and got them organised to go on The Famous Fishing Trip.
It had taken Peter years to pick up the phone, but only seconds to put it down.
‘Simon?’
‘Yeah?’
‘It’s Peter.’
Silence. ‘What do you want?’
‘To stop all the crap.’
‘What crap?’
‘You know.’
Long silence. ‘Yeah, well...’
More silence. Too much for Peter to deal with. He spat out his idea.
‘Let’s go on Ron’s Famous Fishing Trip.’
Silence of another, deeper kind. Years’ worth. Then laughter. ‘All right!’
Peter rang Terry.
‘Do you want to go on the old man’s Famous Fishing Trip? With me and Simon?’
Short silence. Younger sibling length. ‘Sounds a plan. Count me in.’
Ron would have loved it. His boys. Being no nonsense men.
Well, knock me over with a feather and whip me stupid with it!
‘You sure you’re okay to go on this trip, Tangles?’
They were in Simon’s garage at Point Cook, packing up the fishing gear. Ron had given Peter the nickname Tangles when he was young. Because that’s all he could do with his rod and reel.
‘I’ve been practicing. I’ll catch more than both of you.’
Simon had just told Peter that he’d worked fishing boats the length of the east coast. His brother must be joking. Terry thought so.
‘If we were trying to catch paint, you’d be fine,’ he said.
Simon put the last of the stubbies into the esky.
‘Ron’s Famous Fishing Trip, hey? Who’d have thought?’
His sons had named the trip years ago. When they saw him for Christmas, Ron would always promise to take them on a fishing trip. But he never got organised. Simon called him a gunner.
‘Gunna go here, gunna go there, Ron.’
But their father did pack the gear once, even if he didn’t make the phone calls. That was a few days before he was diagnosed with cancer. He was gunna take them before that, too. When Peter finished his degree and Simon got into trade school. Ron had been saying he was gunna take them since Terry left high school. Got booted out, actually; Terry had dropped his shorts on the diving board in the middle of the swimming sports carnival. A gold medal performance, Ron had called it. Then he’d cut his youngest son’s pocket money for six months. But it was all beside the point: Ron never took them.
But now they were going.
They carried gear to Peter’s silver Subaru wagon parked in the driveway. Peter had organized the trip so he thought it was only right to take his car.
‘It’s for lezzos,’ Simon whispered, and Peter said, ‘Don’t start’. Terry told them both to take it easy.
‘We haven’t even got in the car yet!’ he said and plonked the esky in the backseat. He hopped in with it, Simon climbed in the passenger seat and Peter got them quick smart up the road. Before any of them could change their minds.
Peter had planned out weeks before where they were going to camp: up at Ron’s home patch. Laharum way. Lake Wartook near McKenzie Falls. Where the family and all its ghosts had lived.
In the middle of the night, Peter’s feet were cold. He was standing on the concrete out front of the Wartook Fisherman’s Cam-pground toilet block. He could have just pissed near the tent, but he didn’t want to risk waking his brothers. He wanted everything to go smoothly and waking them up would only cause trouble. Or they’d poke their heads out of the tent and start up talk of dick sizes or something stupid. Peter watched hi
s penis now, doing what it had to do, and saw again why he hated them raising the topic.
Outside the loos, the array of stars he never saw from his Melbourne apartment rooted him to the spot. He never grew tired of the depths of the sky. He remembered the doco he’d watched just days before, all about the insane distances between stars. Still, he decided to get as close as he could to them; he walked past the shadow of the new Lake Wartook map sign and found himself on the concrete walkway. He wandered near the gushing gullet slipway where the water drained in and out of the lake. Where Ron was fishing.
Best time for eels.
Peter crept towards him.
‘Dad?’
‘Don’t look so bloody surprised.’
Peter’s breath came in gasps and he stepped back.
‘Don’t bugger off, son. Look, I’m sick of this bullshit I don’t know where I am. Or what I’m doing.’
Peter tried to convince himself he was dreaming, despite the sheer physicality of his surroundings; the chill on his skin and his steamy breath in the cold air. There was no steam coming out of his father’s mouth.
‘I wasn’t that useless. I don’t deserve this, do I? What was I supposed to do? You can only work with what you’ve got. And now, mate, I want whatever’s coming to me. Because it’s got to be better than this. Even if it’s worse!’
Ron laughed and Peter smiled.
It’s one of those waking dreams, Peter told himself. It has to be.
Ron put his rod down. He held out his hand for Peter to shake and his son did, surprised that Ron’s hand felt solid and warm.
‘I want to go, son.’ He wanted out of wherever he was, but he couldn’t move, let alone disappear. Peter saw something above his father’s head. A glow. He pointed, but Ron couldn’t turn to
look, no matter how hard he tried.
Then Peter was in the tent, on top of his sleeping bag and wide awake.
The next night, they were in their sleeping bags and Terry was already snoring when Simon decided he wanted to chat.
‘Pete?’
‘Yeah?’
‘You awake?’
They’d eaten the brown trout Simon and Terry had caught.
We. Are. Family. Page 20