by Michael Sala
‘Probably,’ she said, and jerked her chin towards the open door. ‘Now get out.’
After school, Freya got off the bus and waited for Daniel. He was the last to emerge from his bus, and barely acknowledged her as they fell into step.
She poked him in the shoulder. ‘How was your day?’
‘Not good.’ Her brother trudged on without looking up, hands jammed under the straps of his bag, pulling it forward, as if he were making his way up a steep incline.
‘Why?’
‘I lost it.’
‘What did you lose?’
He gave her an anguished stare. ‘The clarinet. I was supposed to have it for band today. I took it with me, and then I didn’t have it.’
‘You’re joking,’ she said. ‘How could you lose it?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Are you sure you took it?’
He bit his lip. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I mean yes. I don’t know.’
‘You’re hopeless, Daniel.’ Freya stopped and eyed her brother critically. He stopped too, his head bowed. ‘You’d better not have lost it,’ she said, ‘or Mum’s the one who’s going to lose it.’
He began crying. ‘I don’t want to tell Mum.’
She started walking again. ‘We won’t, if we can get away with it. She’s got enough on her plate.’
‘Mr Smith told me to bring it tomorrow or not to bother coming at all.’
‘Who’s that?’
His eyes were large and drowning. ‘He’s the boss of the band.’
‘Who cares about a school band, anyway? You probably just forgot to take it.’
Daniel shook his head. ‘But what if I lost it?’
The ache in Freya’s belly was wearing at her patience. She just wanted to get home and curl up in bed.
‘I’ll think of something,’ she said.
‘Like what?’ he said softly.
‘I don’t know, but I will.’
Daniel hunched deeper into himself. ‘I want to stay in the band.’
She hugged him and stroked his head like she’d seen Mum do. ‘When you’re in high school, you’ll look back at primary school and think how small everyone really was. Even the teachers.’
They looked when they got home but couldn’t find the clarinet anywhere. Maybe Mum or Dad had moved it without thinking, she said, to calm him down. She promised him she’d look again later, made him some toast with butter and honey mixed together into a paste, the way he liked it, then she parked him on the couch in front of the television and slumped down beside him. Monkey Magic was on. Monkey was, as usual, irrepressible.
After dinner, they were all in the living room, watching Sale of the Century. Mum and Dad were on the couch, Mum in her nurse’s uniform, ready to go to work, because she’d been called in early. Dad had a beer in his hand and took swigs of it in between questions. He never really drank that much, just a beer or two at the end of the day.
Tony Barber read out the next question. ‘To anticipate what someone else is going to say is—’
‘Is to be an impatient prick,’ Dad interjected.
‘To take the words out of their mouth,’ Mum said.
‘Ah,’ Dad said.
He offered the beer to Mum.
‘Not before work,’ she said. ‘You know that.’
He dropped his hand to her thigh. Mum moved her hand on top of his.
Mum got the next three questions right. Dad didn’t come close.
‘What specific time of day is sun-up?’ Tony Barber asked.
‘Dawn,’ Dad said quickly. ‘I’m a genius too.’
‘What kind of creature is an oxpecker?’
‘Ask the ox,’ Dad said. ‘Or maybe the ox’s wife.’
‘A bird,’ Mum said.
Dad laughed. ‘Yeah, right.’
But it was.
‘It is a bird,’ Daniel said, smiling at Mum.
Dad scratched his chin. ‘Seriously, how’d you know that?’
‘My father,’ she said.
‘He knew a lot of unimportant things, didn’t he. Is that a genetic thing?’
‘A trait.’ She lifted her hand away from his and ran her fingers through her hair. ‘A genetic trait. And no. My father was just a smart man.’
The phone began ringing. Dad got up and went into the hall to answer it. He came back in and stood inside the doorway, watching the television.
‘Who was it?’ Mum asked.
‘Hung up,’ he said. ‘That’s the seventh time.’
‘Oh. Since when?’
‘Since we moved in. Has it happened to you?’
‘I can’t believe you keep count,’ Mum said.
‘Seven isn’t hard to count to. Has it happened to you?’
‘Maybe you answer the phone more than me.’
‘Maybe I do.’ He showed his teeth, large and white against his stubble-darkened face. ‘You don’t think it was your boyfriend, do you?’
‘Who?’
‘You know who.’ Dad was leaning against the inside of the doorway, his arms crossed. Even though it was cold, even though it was nearly winter, he was only wearing a T-shirt. ‘Next door. Richard. The one you’re always talking to. The one who comes over to borrow things and then doesn’t borrow them.’
‘Why would he call,’ Mum said, ‘if he can just knock on the door?’
‘Because I’m here right now. I don’t think he wants to see me.’
She shrugged. ‘He talks to you too.’
‘Not that way.’
‘Well—’ Mum looked as if she were about to go on, but then she shut her mouth.
‘What?’ he said.
‘Nothing,’ she answered.
He looked down at her with an unwavering stare. ‘Go on. Say it.’
‘You know,’ Mum said, ‘you can make people uncomfortable, Roy.’
Daniel was fidgeting, looking absently around the room. Freya caught his eye. He gave her a strange smile.
Dad was still glaring at Mum. ‘Did Richard say that?’
‘Of course he didn’t. I’m just speaking generally.’
The way Dad stood there, he filled up the whole doorway. ‘Now why would I make a man who’s talking to my wife uncomfortable?’
Mum gave a short laugh. ‘Roy, is that all you do inside your head? Make up these stories? A gay man talking to your wife? What are you so afraid of?’ She laughed again.
Dad bristled at that. ‘I’m not afraid.’
‘Right,’ Mum said.
‘Don’t,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘Use that tone.’ His gaze found Daniel. ‘What’s so funny?’
‘I don’t know,’ Daniel said.
‘What’s he supposed to have done now then?’ Mum asked.
Dad’s expression was hard and flat, his eyes narrow, chin jutting. ‘He’s sitting there with a smirk on his face.’
‘He gets nervous and he smiles. You know that.’
‘What reason,’ Dad said slowly, staring at Daniel, ‘would he have to be nervous?’
‘Leave him alone,’ Mum said. ‘You’re making everyone nervous, just standing there. Can’t you see that?’
‘Why do I sometimes feel,’ Dad said, ‘like this whole family is against me?’
‘Only you can answer that,’ Mum answered. The next round of Sale of the Century started. She patted the couch next to her and smiled, but the smile didn’t reach her eyes. ‘Sit down and relax, for God’s sake. I have to go to work soon.’
Dad looked from Mum to the television and back again, then came into the room and sank back down beside her. They all watched the next round together in silence. In the ad break, Daniel disappeared up into his room.
When Sale of the Century had finished, Dad got to his feet, surveyed the living room as if he were alone in it, then went without a word down into the basement, and the sound of hammering and sawing came up through the floorboards.
Mum went upstairs and put Daniel to bed.
When
she returned, she poked her head into the living room, where Freya was still sitting, watching television. ‘Do you want to walk me to work?’
‘Yeah,’ Freya said.
It was dark outside, and cold. They passed the brothel and Mum shook her head. ‘Your father told me all about the hospital, but not the brothel around the corner. That’s men for you. They know how to tell a story.’ She gave a short, tight laugh. They walked on for a while in silence, only their footsteps sounding between them.
Freya was tempted to tell her about the missing clarinet, but it was Mum who spoke first.
‘Do you think he goes there? The brothel?’
The question caught Freya off guard. ‘What?’
‘Never mind,’ Mum said. ‘How’s school going?’
Freya stared back behind them and then looked at Mum. ‘Fine.’
‘We’ve stopped talking, you and I,’ Mum said. ‘Don’t think I haven’t noticed. Ever since we came back to your dad.’
‘We? Since we came back to him?’
Mum looked at her sharply. ‘Since I brought you back to him. Is that better?’
‘What do you think?’ Freya said.
‘I have no idea.’ Mum faltered but then kept walking. ‘I really don’t. Certainty is something you lose as you get older.’
The hospital came into view across the park. The path was well lit and busy. A couple of nurses huddled on one of the benches near the fountain, talking and laughing in the shadows. The fountain lifted its five pillars of water one after the other to the sky, and one by one they dropped into nothing before it all started again. Spray drifted across the dark sky. Ahead, the North Wing with its turrets loomed over the Norfolk pines, the other sections of the hospital towering around it. Freya could see a few people on the balconies of the Nickson Wing, where Mum worked, looking out to sea, their faces small and blank. An ambulance crawled past up Ocean Road.
‘You know,’ Mum said, ‘if you really understood…’
‘What?’
‘Forget it. I don’t know why I’m always trying to explain things to people.’ Mum stared back the way they’d come, back towards the brothel, maybe, the muscles of her neck taut beneath her skin. Every line in her face was subtly altered, as if she were immersed in some silent argument with herself.
Freya had a startling thought. It wasn’t Mum she was looking at, not the Mum she knew or had known. But before she could pin the thought down, Mum was moving again, and soon they had reached the end of the park, across the road from the hospital, where the noise from the city and the harbour and the ocean washed together against the brick surfaces.
‘Go straight home,’ Mum said.
Freya nodded.
‘Make sure Daniel’s okay tonight,’ Mum added. ‘Listen out for him. He knows I’m on night shift, but you know how he is—he forgets sometimes. So listen out for him.’
‘You’ve told me that a hundred times, Mum.’
‘Yes, I know. I worry, that’s all.’ Mum took hold of her hand. Freya could feel the bones in her fingers. ‘I’m always worrying, about everything. All the time. I wish I didn’t. But whatever I do, in the end, it’s about you and Daniel. You realise that, don’t you?’
Freya nodded again. She felt sorry for Mum all of a sudden, having to deal with Dad, the thought she put into everything, the weight of that thought, all of it written in her face.
Mum crossed the road. Freya turned and began walking home.
‘Freya!’
She looked back. Standing at the entrance to the hospital, Mum waved at her and smiled—in encouragement, in consolation, or to apologise for something, she wasn’t sure. It took Freya too long to react. An ambulance passed between them, and then Mum was gone.
13
The next day, Mrs O’Neill was sitting at the front of her desk, talking, just talking, about her cigarettes, how she knew they were killing her. She’d just caught a couple of girls smoking in the toilet, the staff toilet no less, during class.
‘I have to say that I am utterly disgusted,’ she said. ‘I know, I know. I smoke too. I’m so upset about this that I could use one right now. But I just can’t help it. It’s how I was brought up, the only example I ever had. God, people thought it was healthy when I was young. There’s no question of choice for me, but for you girls, if I catch any of you smoking in the toilets, a good smack on the behind will be the least of your worries, believe me.’
‘I don’t think you’re allowed to hit students anymore, miss,’ one of the boys behind Freya said.
Mrs O’Neill fixed him with a glare, equal parts mocking and serious. ‘Oh, shut up. If I ever hit you, it’ll be for a reason. And it’ll be good for you.’
There was sniggering somewhere in the back of the classroom, but Mrs O’Neill either ignored it or did not hear, and then it was quiet for a moment, but not really. When the background muffle of noise died down in the room, you just heard it from somewhere else, further away. Mrs O’Neill began writing on the blackboard. A note was being passed across the room from one hand to another, turning over and over in the light. A girl unfolded it, read it carefully, cupped beneath her desk, and then looked over her shoulder at a boy at the back of the room and smiled. He winked at her and tilted on the rear two legs of his chair, hands behind his head, the buttons straining on the front of his blue shirt. When Freya glanced in Josh’s direction, he was looking at her. He offered a lopsided grin. She smiled back, and it felt good to do that, like she had a secret from the rest of the world—a good one.
And then it was the first day of winter. Instead of going to school, she went with Josh to the pharmacy at the mall. While she approached the front counter and bought a packet of throat lozenges and some batteries and asked a question about a sore throat she didn’t have, he found a glass cabinet with a key still in the lock, leaned across the counter, quietly slid aside the door and pulled out a bright red display Walkman that they’d been eyeing off for the last couple of weeks.
He was already gone by the time she walked out. The girl at the front counter gave her a look, but no one stopped her. At the edge of the mall, Josh slid a tape into the Walkman, pressed play, gave it to her and gently put the headphones over her ears. She listened to ‘Over the Hills and Far Away’, by Led Zeppelin.
They took turns listening to songs, walking together in a kind of comfortable silence. The beach was flat and clear, the waves large and perfect. There wasn’t a wisp of cloud in the clean winter sky. A westerly wind poured a near-constant sheet of icy air over the buildings at their back. They turned, followed the concrete promenade, so close together that their hands brushed by accident every now and again. It was pleasant, the unexpectedness of it. They ended up on a bench overlooking the sand, the Walkman stowed away in Freya’s bag.
A surfer came dripping out of the water, his wetsuit glistening, hair slicked back from his face, and walked up the sand past them with squelching steps. It was only after he’d passed that Freya realised it was Mr Hind. She stared over her shoulder at him as he climbed up the stairs and walked over to the shower.
‘Isn’t he meant to be at school?’ she said.
‘Freya, so are we.’
‘But he’s supposed to set an example.’
‘He is. Look at the surf.’
‘Do you think he saw us?’
‘Trust me,’ Josh said, ‘he’s not going to want the hassle.’
‘It’s weird, isn’t it. Seeing teachers outside of school.’
‘Yeah.’
Mr Hind was under the shower now, his wetsuit stripped down to the waist, angling his head against the water.
‘Anyway,’ Josh murmured. ‘Mr Hind is all right. Half the time he’s wandering around the school, he’s totally stoned.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Look at his eyes next time you see him.’
‘Maybe he’s just thinking.’
‘You reckon he’d be at school if he was actually thinking? No, if a teacher looks like they’re
thinking, they’re probably just stoned.’
She laughed. ‘Maybe.’
They watched Mr Hind walk off to the car park, board under his arm.
‘You know,’ she said, ‘I’m glad it’s you and me here together.’
‘Yeah?’ He leaned slightly towards her, made a silly face, puckered his lips.
She pushed him away with a laugh, jumped to her feet and got down onto the sand. That wasn’t what she’d meant to say at all. What she’d really wanted was to talk about Mum, the walk with her to the hospital. The dreadful feeling she’d had of not knowing her, of not knowing what lay ahead of them. She laughed again, broke into a run, and waited for him to catch up.
They left the beach and went to a shop on Hunter Street that had a wall full of Doc Martens, and bongs under a counter, and silver jewellery, and she bought a small ring to put through her lower lip.
Later on, back at Josh’s place, she sat on his bed while he prepared everything.
‘Hold still,’ he said.
‘Now?’
He drew close to her, pinched her lower lip between his fingers, held it out. She tried not to wince as he pushed the needle in, and then as he threaded the ring through her lip.
‘There,’ he said.
She looked at herself in the mirror, wiped a spot of blood from her chin. ‘That wasn’t too bad at all.’
‘Nah,’ he said. ‘Easy. You’ve got good lips for piercing. Full.’
‘Liar.’
‘They are. What do you think?’
She studied her face in the mirror. ‘I like it. It’s like damage or something, but good, like I get to choose it. Mum’s going to go psycho about it.’
‘Do you want to take it out?’
‘No. I hope she does say something. I dare her to. She’s already mental anyway.’
‘So’s my dad,’ he said. ‘In his own way. It’s not his fault.’ He leaned in again and carefully dabbed away a drop of blood.
Afterwards, they went up to the cathedral that sat above the city. They wandered among decaying headstones on the side of the hill, the mall and the harbour beneath them, the afternoon winter sunlight beating down.
‘What are the things you’ll remember,’ he asked her, ‘when you look back on all of this?’