Smythe's Theory of Everything

by Robert Hollingworth

  ‘He used to put his fingers between my legs.’

  I saw my sister stiffen and draw a deep breath. I sat back down.

  ‘When he was bathing me. He said I needed to keep myself nice and clean. So he’d work on that project for quite a fucking while. But I guess that just wasn’t enough. He started picking me up after school and parking the car on the way home. He used to lift my skirt and pull down my pants right there by the side of the road. To make sure I was clean.’

  ‘Oh, Kitty …’

  ‘Remember my white snow sleigh?’

  I nodded. It was Kitty’s escape route.

  ‘I used to shut my eyes tight and spend the time dashing down those white valleys, just letting my magic sleigh take me anywhere it wanted.’

  She straightened her back and sniffed again. She didn’t look at me.

  ‘He used to press my knees apart, and put his fingers down there and … and then he’d smell them.’

  I shuddered at the image of some pervert in a bad movie. But this was our father.

  ‘His brow would furrow and he’d say, “Hmm, not too good. I think we better keep an eye on that. You better not tell anyone about your hygiene problem or I’ll have to take you out of school.”’

  Kitty sighed and cleared her throat.

  ‘It went on for … it seemed to go on forever. I knew it wasn’t right. But what could I do? Then I realised Mum knew - I think she must have caught him at it.’

  ‘Couldn’t you have told … couldn’t I have helped?’

  ‘You were twelve, Jack. And later on, the only thing important was that you and I could muck around in our room without a hint of anything ulterior. If I had said something to you, we’d have lost that; it would have wrecked things forever.’

  ‘Well, let’s not let it now, Kit. Let’s bury the whole bloody thing.’ I watched her picking up the clumps of tissue.

  ‘He hurt me, Jack. He made me cry. He fucked up my childhood.’

  ‘The bastard. He was a real bastard. I’m glad that bastard’s dead.’

  ‘And he was also a real fucking mental screw-up. But you’re right; in the end he was just a bastard.’

  I suddenly remembered what she’d said the night before.

  ‘Do you think you’re still going to leave?’

  She didn’t look at me.

  ‘I think so, Jack. I think it’s important.’

  But she did not leave. At least, not immediately. She was still there a month later and things seemed to settle down. But something was never quite right. We still talked, though I was careful to avoid certain topics such as the past and the future. And I also avoided discussions about the big picture, the big theory, the true state of things that Milo and I discussed for hours. That was a subject that would put Kitty to sleep. But there were times when we shared stories just like we did as kids in the Daco. Yet even then I’d see her look past me as if gazing at some phantom object out of reach.

  One Saturday she brought home a new motorbike, a BMW. For the first time I saw a real smile again, the smile I was so familiar with when we were hiking half way across Australia as teenagers. It made me happy to see it and I imagined she’d at last found something that would bring her home.

  We chatted a lot then and one night Kitty suggested we take our dinner and eat it in the backyard. We sat under a sagging potato vine at the little table she’d mended and tucked into our risotto. Then Kitty stood up, lit a smoke and stepped away from the table. She blew a grey plume over the neighbour’s fence and turned to face me.

  ‘I’m going, Jacky boy,’ she said.

  ‘Where?’ I thought she meant to the shops.

  ‘I don’t know. Anywhere. Everywhere. I want to pack light and just head off around the country. Or maybe just up north. I don’t know.’

  I let the words sink in and a pain like heartburn nestled under my sternum. A light gust tossed our paper napkins and I felt an icy shiver, a real taste of fear. I realised later that it’s an emotion we rarely discuss: the sense of abandonment.

  Kitty just stared at me. I swallowed hard, I must have looked quite pathetic - at least, I felt that way.

  ‘Do you want to come too?’ she said. ‘Get a bike and travel with me?’

  As much as she was asking, I knew she didn’t expect me to say yes. It wasn’t just my legs - they ached badly if I sat a long time astride Kitty’s bike - it was the fact that I preferred to have roots, to be settled rather than travelling. It wasn’t like the first time we ran away, when we wanted to create a new life.

  The day she left I was more angry than sad. I didn’t want to be, yet that was the emotion I felt. I didn’t make a speech; I didn’t want to hear one. I just sat on the couch pretending to read the paper. Kitty stood jangling her keys.

  ‘I’m going now,’ she said.

  ‘Yeah, see ya.’ I did not look up.

  ‘Jack …’

  ‘Yeah, what?’ She just stood there looking and I stared at the newspaper. She tapped her helmet. I found it really annoying.

  ‘I’ll phone you, OK?’

  ‘Yeah, OK.’ I would not look at her.

  ‘Just look after yourself, OK?’

  ‘OK.’

  She kept standing. Suddenly she came up behind the couch and kissed the top of my head. I felt myself shrink away. She turned and walked out the door.

  I went straight to the window and watched her through the curtains. She got on her bike, kicked the pedal and gave it a few revs. She put on her helmet. I noted her long limbs in tight jeans and boots, her strong thighs balancing the hefty machine. She looked behind her, checking her swag. Then she just puttered gently away from the curb. She did not look back.

  Just learned that Clem’s wife has kicked the bucket! Didn’t know he even had a wife, let alone one in here. Patricia Ryan told me. She actually singled me out to tell, God knows why. She said Clem’s wife was confined to her room and just faded away quietly in the night. I hope I go like that.

  Jean Stinson for some reason is in a foul mood, worse than usual. At breakfast she suddenly decides to take away Dooley’s beer stein. What for? He insists on his right to use it and most days brings it to the table. He transfers his tea into it and even his soup. An argument breaks out between Dooley, Ivan and Pistol Pete about the new TV show Sex in the City and that results in a lot of swearing and banging of cutlery. Dooley’s beer stein gets tipped over on the table cloth and Stinson immediately snatches it up and takes it to the office.

  Clem shouts, ‘Give it back! A cup is a cup is a cup.’

  ‘Here! here!’ I say.

  Poor old Clem. It’s the last word we’ve been able to get out of him. He just sits at the table staring into his soup like a man already dead. Can’t get a rise out of him no matter what we do. There’s a lot to be said about being the first to go - being left behind is worse than death; the pain eats your guts.

  I try to keep my mind off it. With the news about Clem’s wife and death going around in my head, this afternoon I decide to take a rod and tackle box over to Jim’s room. His bedroom is larger than mine - I think he might pay a bit more or perhaps they see him as worthy of something better. Jim’s little window faces more towards the west which means late in the day the sun shines right in.

  I should have knocked, but I thought he was asleep in his chair so I just wheeled right in. I was surprised to see that the old bloke was crying. He had tears running down his ruddy cheeks.

  ‘What is it Jim, you alright?’

  Jim doesn’t say a thing. I wonder if maybe I should just wheel myself out again. Then I figure, what’s the good of that? So I say, ‘Brought something to show you, old man.’ I hold out the rod.

  Jim glances up.

  ‘Fibreglass?’ His tiny voice breaks through the crackle in his throat.

  ‘The best,’ I say. ‘The best damn glass rod money can buy.’

  Jim reaches out and takes the handle. I’d put a reel on earlier to balance it. He just holds it out. Then he slowly
waves it about, the weak sun from his window gleaming up the shaft. I don’t see his tears drying.

  ‘Caught some big flathead on that rod, Jim. And a big nine-pound snapper once. Gave me a decent run for my money, I tell you.’

  Jim points the rod at the floor and then drops the tip to let it rest there. I wonder what’s going on in that old parliamentarian’s mind. I wheel my chair a little closer; I have the tackle box on my knee. I open it in front of him. Jim peers in.

  ‘What are those?’ he asks.

  ‘Lures, Jim. All sorts. These are the best all-rounders,’ I say, and take out a silver Wonder Wobbler. I hold it up and the hooks sparkle, the curve of the body gleams.

  ‘If nothing else works, the Wonder Wobbler will get a take every time,’ I say.

  Jim asks to hold it and I put it gently in his palm.

  ‘Watch the hooks,’ I say. ‘I once saw hooks like that in a man’s ear. His son was fishing off the Barwon Heads Bridge and when he did a backcast he hooked his father a beauty. Straight to the doctor.’

  ‘I never really had a father,’ he says.

  ‘Me either.’ I remembered a conversation we’d had weeks ago.

  ‘Had a good wife, though,’ he says.

  ‘Has your wife … Did she …’

  ‘Dead now,’ he says.

  ‘Mine too.’

  ‘Poor old Clem,’ Jim says. ‘Poor old man.’

  ‘Do you think he remembers his wife?’

  ‘Probably not very well. But they’ll remind him of all that. And he’ll have to go to the funeral. Then he’ll know he’s lost something important, his whole life I suppose - all his memories, all his past.’

  I see Jim slump even more than usual. Then I get an idea.

  ‘Do you want a game of petanque? On the carpet?’ I say.

  He gazes up at me. ‘What do we have to do?’

  I wheel back to my room, stash the fishing gear and bring out my canvas bag with the petanque balls. Jim wheels out to meet me in the passage and I give him a run-down on the rules. Then I pass him the jack.

  ‘Chuck it up the passage,’ I tell him and Jim drops it a few metres away.

  ‘Now watch this,’ I say and I swing the steel ball at the side of my wheelchair. I let it go and it gives a decent thump on the carpet and rolls near the white ball.

  ‘Your turn.’

  Jim positions his wheelchair. I pass him one of the balls. He takes the weight and it almost slips through his palms. He hefts the shiny ball and I see a smile. He’s got something real solid in his hands. He works out how to hold it and then shoves it up the passage.

  ‘Not bad,’ I say, but in reality he doesn’t get close. You can’t expect too much.

  ‘You get to throw again,’ I say, ‘because I’m closer than you are.’ There’s a look of determination on the old man’s dial. His second ball is no better, thumping the carpet only six feet from his chair. I let him have another go. Now he’s used up his three balls. I throw my last two and they knock against Jim’s.

  ‘One point to me!’ I say. It is only then that I begin to see a predicament - how are we to pick up the balls? In the end I have to get out of my chair and down on my hands and knees. Jim sits by ready to receive the balls. Just then Matron Collier comes charging around the corner.

  ‘What on earth do you two think you’re doing?’

  I look up at the pale blue leviathan towering over me.

  ‘Are you aware that it’s a wooden floor under that carpet? Do you know the damage those balls can do? You are not in a sports park, Mr Smythe. This is a public thoroughfare.’

  I am still kneeling. She has her hands on her enormous hips. I can see up her nose.

  ‘Get back in your chair, Mr Smythe. And take those balls away before I confiscate them!’

  I am wondering whether I could successfully jam one of them into an unexpected location. She marches off up the passage. I look at Jim. He has a grin from ear to ear.

  This afternoon my mood slipped again. First, when Dooley got up from lunch he had a great patch of blood in his pants and I had to call the nurse. He just stood there and the patch crept down the back of his trousers and glistened red. It seemed forever before Nurse Stinson appeared. I wonder what’s wrong with him? Haemorrhoids? Couldn’t imagine anything worse. I’d tie a plastic bag over my head before I went through that.

  A little later I started thinking about Clem and his dead wife again - well, all of us with dead wives really - and the way Clem was treated. I wheeled out into the courtyard and there was young Pheona again.

  ‘Why aren’t you in there looking after your grandfather?’ I say.

  ‘And why aren’t you over there and leaving me alone?’

  ‘I thought you were here to do some sort of penance.’

  ‘Oh, fuck off old man.’

  ‘Standing out here puffing away, feeling sorry for yourself all day long.’

  She turns and gives me a savage look. I’m only telling the truth.

  ‘You are such a gromlet, Mr Smythe. I got my fingers crossed that you’ll drop dead before any of them.’

  ‘You’re still smarting from being caught stealing an old lady’s money jar.’

  ‘Money jar? What the fuck are you talking about? For your information, I just wanted some food. You have no fucking idea what you’re talking about.’

  ‘You were on the street?’

  ‘What do you care?’

  ‘Why didn’t you go to the Vic Market? You can pick up stuff there without stealing it.’

  ‘Fuck off, Mr Smythe; I’ll do what I like.’ She takes out another cigarette.

  ‘When I was exactly your age I ran away from home with my younger sister. We lived in an old building only a tram ride from here. We got a lot of food at the Vic Market.’ I think about going on but decide against it. I turn my chair around and head back.

  ‘Big deal for you!’ she calls.

  Then I see Jean Stinson standing just inside the glass door which forces me to stay on the concrete a while longer. I wheel back to Pheona.

  ‘Do you have a spare smoke?’ I ask.

  She rolls her eyes and points the packet at me. Her thin little hands tremble, and there’s a star tattooed near her thumb.

  ‘How long you got to go?’ I ask.

  ‘What?’

  ‘How long before you don’t have to hang around with all these dying people?’

  ‘A week or two, I guess.’

  ‘Why don’t you try and do some good with it? Isn’t that what you’re here for?’

  ‘I’m here to be punished - or hadn’t you noticed?’

  ‘You used to being punished, Pheona?’

  ‘Oh, just get fucked, Mr Smythe.’ She looks away.

  ‘Are you used to scrounging for food in other people’s houses?’

  She glares at me.

  ‘Can’t you just drop it?’

  She looks away again. I study her profile. If she lost the attitude she’d almost be attractive - to some people, at least.

  ‘You think life is pretty crap, don’t you?’

  ‘Don’t you?’ She jabs a look in my direction.

  ‘I’m sixty-two, stuck in a wheelchair parked in a third-rate nursing home with a lot of geriatrics. Whereas your life is …’

  ‘You’re a whinger, Jack Smythe. Do you know that? Everyone says you never stop complaining.’

  ‘Maybe I have reason to complain.’

  ‘Maybe I do as well.’ She glances at me. ‘You think it’s all about you, don’t you.’

  I stare at her. She’s offering me textbook stuff. It’s all about you, straight out of some magazine or soap on the TV. People don’t think for themselves these days. They look at pictures in magazines or on the TV to find out what to like and what to say. And what’s a gromlet?

  I’ve lost more than a week. Ambushed by the dull mor-bidity of ‘Eden’. I lapsed into a state of inertness until this morning when I measured my room again with my fish knife. I found that it is mo
re accurately 2.55 metres x 3.10 - I don’t know how I got it wrong last time. That makes the area 7.90 square metres if my calculator serves me correctly, a little more if you allow for the skirting boards.

  But now that I have decided to resume my story, I find a new bout of interruptions. I include these daily antics because I like to keep a record of the chronological events just as a good scientist might do. I have an excellent memory for it, which sets me far apart from all the others in this place - and I’m not just talking about the inmates.

  According to the Oxford: Inmate n. Occupant, prob. orig. inn + mate p. 415.

  This afternoon, I found myself in yet another round with ‘Phe’. Thought I’d seen the last of her. I was gazing out the window because The gardenia of Eden has suddenly got a lot of flowers on it. Earlier I saw Collier arrive and just stand there, staring at the bush. You’d think it was her first litter! She bent down and sniffed those poor little blossoms that I’m certain were shrinking away from her. There were almost tears in her eyes.

  I put my petanque balls out on the bed and I was looking in a carton for something to polish them with when I found a tin of white hobby paint and a little brush with about twenty hairs left on it. I decided to paint my little cochonnet instead. So that is what I am doing and looking out the window when suddenly there is a voice behind me.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  I turn around. There’s Pheona in the doorway.

  ‘Don’t tell me I left that door open,’ I say.

  ‘What’s that thing?’ she says.

  ‘A white ball.’ I put it gently on the window sill. She looks at my petanque balls on the bed.

  ‘I’ve seen those. My brother has a set. He’s got a set of six too.’

  ‘Well, bully for your brother,’ I say. She doesn’t go away.

  ‘I’ve been given orders.’

  ‘What?’

  She leans in the doorway and looks bored.

  ‘I’ve been instructed to push you around the place. Take you up and down and around. Wherever.’

  ‘Well, I don’t want to go “wherever”.’

  ‘You have to. Boss’s orders.’