by Claire Zorn
‘She’s got a lawyer, I’m gonna call him,’ Sam said.
Shane took his eyes off the television, wiped grease from his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘That’s Mum’s job.’
‘You let me sort it, love,’ Lorraine said.
‘I’ve got his number. I’ll call him.’
Shane straightened, pushed his shoulders back. ‘Mum’ll sort it.’
‘Leave it, Shane.’ Lorraine looked back to Sam. ‘We’ll sort it. Don’t worry, love.’
Minty sat in his boxers, chewing his food methodically, caught up in Home and Away. ‘Get some good ones today, Michael?’ Lorraine asked him.
Minty nodded, absorbed in the television.
‘Thatta boy.’
‘Gotta call the social worker, too,’ said Sam. ‘Work out where I’m gonna go, like, after the funeral.’
Lorraine swallowed a mouthful of chicken. ‘We’ll see.’
Shane put down his plate, shook his head and got to his feet. He gave Lorraine a warning look and muttered something as he stepped past her. She ignored him. ‘I talked to ’em on the phone. They don’t want you on your own yet.’
Sam knew why. The memory of the police station was crisp, even though he’d left it untouched. He felt his pulse quicken when he thought of it. He could see the image of his mum’s eyes when she’d come to pick him up. Not angry, just hurt. He looked at the chicken cooling on his plate. He could just take his mum’s keycard and get a train back to Sydney. Where though? Luke’s place? Minty took his attention from Home and Away and looked over at Sam with a glowing grin, the grin that greeted a jump on Pop’s driveway. You could see the pictures forming behind his eyes.
‘It’ll be sweet, brah. You’re good on the board, ay. You’re a natural, it’s in your blood. Nuthin’ else to it. You gonna love it here.’
She wasn’t even in the ground yet – the person who loved him most in the world. Where was she? Was she in a fridge? A big stainless steel thing with a label on her toe like you see in cop shows? Only in death do you wear a label on your toe. There was something degrading about it, like a labelled cut of meat in the fridge at Coles. He shifted the plate from his lap to the empty sofa seat beside him. He stood up.
‘What’s wrong, love?’
He lurched past the coffee table, knocking Shane’s can of drink over on his way to the front door.
‘What’s up?’
But he was gone, out the front door. Shane was sitting on the front step; he stood as Sam came out the door and stepped in front of him.
‘Oi. You’re gone, right. After the funeral, you’re gone. She doesn’t know what she’s sayin’. She’s cut up about Aunty Rachel. But you’re gone.’
Sam didn’t say anything. He was as tall as Shane. Not as broad, but as tall. He knew how to use his size and he was quick. Always quicker than expected. ‘At what point does an opponent become a victim?’ his mum had demanded. ‘Because to the law there’s no difference.’ He tried to shut down the thought as soon as it edged in. He took his skateboard from where it leaned against the wall and pushed past, heading in a direct line across the patchy sword grass to the bitumen.
He had to take the line down the middle of the road, the edges were gravelly shit. He pushed faster and faster. His frustration built because he couldn’t get the speed he needed to shut it all down in his head. To numb it. The southerly that had lashed the coast in the afternoon had died leaving a tranquil stillness. The sky wasn’t yet dark, the sun in the middle of its graceful exit from the stage. It was like a big ‘fuck you’ right in Sam’s face. A beautiful evening in a world that could inflict enough pain to make him wish he wasn’t here at all. The breeze caught behind him and he sailed along the silent street. He reached the headland and took the road down to the beach. Further down, there was a figure walking toward him. He took his eyes off her but his line of sight caught her again: swimsuit with a towel around the waist. Not a bikini. Speedos. Barefoot. The running girl. He sped closer toward her, looked away, didn’t see the stick in the middle of the road. The wheels caught and he was flying. The slowing of time that always comes with a fall let him see himself surge upwards and take flight, swooping below the overhead wires and into the pink clouds and away from it all. Instead, he hit the ground, left elbow copping the fall. Body rolling. He must have been caning it. He let a roar out of his throat realising, too late, that he was being observed. He sat up slowly in the middle of the road in time to watch his board rolling down the hill. And then the girl, turning and running after it, one hand holding up the towel around her waist. The board rolled off to the side, came to a stop in the dirt. She leaned over and picked it up. Sam examined his elbow, the skin ripped and gashed, little black stones stuck in the goo. He squeezed his eyes shut like a little kid trying to be invisible.
‘Are you okay?’
‘Yeah.’ He opened his eyes and only looked at her face once. She was pretty. Of course. The humiliation of it flooded him.
‘You sure? Because, it looked like you fell pretty hard. I live just—’
‘I’m fine,’ he stood and took the board from her, dropped it and pushed away down the hill. He didn’t look back. The sting of the gash sliced up his forearm. Further down the road, out of sight, he checked the graze again. Bright blood trickled from his elbow to his wrist. His mum would have laughed. She always did: ‘You’ll lose a limb one day.’ He would shrug her away but she would insist on coating the wound with Savlon and taping him back together. She would have stitched this one up herself, the tip of her tongue sticking out in concentration.
He wiped the blood with his T-shirt.
A shout came from behind him. ‘Sammy!’ Minty caught him. Puffing after the run, shirtless. His Homer Simpson boxers two sizes too big. ‘Sam?’
Sam stopped, flipped the board up. ‘Sorry.’
‘Nah, s’alright. You right?’
Mars was high and twinkling in the sky. Or was it Jupiter? He couldn’t remember.
‘What happened to your arm? You stack?’
‘Yeah.’
They walked to the main road. Minty in his boxers, blood dribbling down Sam’s arm and dripping from his pinky. He took off his shirt and wrapped it around the gash. A car sped past and someone yelled Minty’s name out the window. Minty waved.
‘Where we going, Mint? Not the chicken shop.’
‘Nah. Not the chicken shop.’
They came to the supermarket and Minty wandered inside, squinting in the white lights. There was one checkout open, manned by a pale, lanky guy with long, greasy hair and glasses. He looked like a teenage J Mascis with a skin problem.
‘Mintaaaay.’
‘Jono, brah. Wassup?’
‘Working.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah. Till ten-thirty.’
Minty took a Snickers from the stand and ripped it open. ‘This is my cousin, Sam. Living with us for a bit.’
‘Hey.’
‘Hey.’
‘Jono’s at school still, aren’t ya, Jono.’
‘Yeah. Archer Point High. It’s a fine institution.’
‘Not bad there, ay Jono?’
‘Decent enough. Not everyone can be a pro surfer.’
Minty grinned. ‘You comin’ to Rickard’s?’ Minty asked. ‘Party before school starts,’ he explained to Sam. ‘Tradition. At Rickard’s Reserve.’
‘You’re not going to school,’ Sam said.
‘Not the point, brah. Big freakin’ party. Goes off every time. Gonna bring the tunes?’ he asked Jono.
Jono shrugged. ‘Sure.’
‘Jono knows heaps about music,’ Minty said. ‘Jono, you should see how many CDs this dude has, boxes of them.’
‘Oh yeah? What you into?’
‘Everything,’ Sam said. ‘Except teeny-bopper Hansen shit.’
‘Sam’s from Sydney,’ Minty said.
‘I’m jealous. Like, you’ve got the Enmore and the Horden. They all do underage gigs. Nothin’ like that down here.’
‘Ease up, Jono. I’m tryin’ ta sell Archer Point to him. Tell him how awesome it is here.’
‘Oh yeah. It’s awesome,’ Jono deadpanned.
An obese man with a noisy trolley pulled in to the checkout behind Sam and Minty. He coughed loudly.
‘Sea change, Sammy,’ said Minty. ‘It’s a good place, innit, Jono?’
‘Oi, you working here?’ said the man.
‘Yeah, he’s working, brah,’ said Minty, chewing the Snickers. ‘But we’re holdin’ the joint up.’ He picked up another Snickers. ‘I’m takin’ this, brah,’ he said to Jono. ‘You can’t stop me.’
‘Have mercy,’ said Jono.
‘We won’t hurt you, but we’ll be back.’ Minty tossed the Snickers into the man’s trolley. ‘There ya go, buddy. Have a good one. Don’t eat it all at once.’
Sam and Minty left the supermarket. ‘You gotta stick around, brah, you’ll love it. Just like old times.’
‘Maybe.’
7
‘Do you wanna come with me?’
Lorraine was leaning against the doorframe. Pink lipstick, her hair pulled back into a blue toothed clip, clamped like the jaws of a determined creature on the back of her head. She was definitely dolled up. For what? The funeral home?
‘’Cause if you wanna come, you’re gonna have to get up. Shane’s lendin’ us the van, but gotta get it back by ten-thirty. He’s gotta job on.’
Sam looked up at the ceiling. The daddy-long-legs had caught one of the brown kitchen bugs and had it tightly wrapped up for later. It was moving very slowly, delicate legs picking across fine web.
Lorraine pushed away from the doorframe and approached his bed. She peered down at him. ‘You should probably come. If you want. I just … I think you should come. If you can.’
Sam didn’t say anything.
Lorraine pressed her lips into a grim smile.
‘I know it’s not what you want to do, plan her funeral, I mean. But, you gotta do it. We gotta do it. Trust me, love, you can’t pretend it hasn’t happened. Doesn’t work.’
‘Give me a minute.’
‘I’ll wait in the van.’
Sam figured this information was supposed to tell him she wasn’t going to wait around for him and he’d better get a move on. Sam got up and felt around in the pile of clothes by his bed for a clean shirt. There wasn’t one. He padded down the hall to Minty’s room. He knocked but there was no answer so he pushed the door open. The bed was made with hotel precision. The dresser top was clear of clutter bar one black and white photo of Minty, much younger, running toward the sea with a board under his arm. Sam slid open a drawer and found Minty’s T-shirts, each folded and stacked. He selected one and pulled it over his head. A horn sounded from out the front of the house. Sam left, pulling the door behind him.
He found Lorraine riffling through the glovebox, cigarette hanging from her lips. She pulled out a pair of sunglasses that Sam could only guess were Shane’s – huge mirrored wraparound Oakleys – and put them on.
‘Christ,’ she muttered. ‘Bloody bright enough.’ Lorraine shoved the van into reverse and swung out onto the road, narrowly missing the letterbox. ‘You right?’ she glanced at him. ‘You’ll be right. We get in there, we pick a box, set a date, hand over a shitload of cash and, hey presto, we got ourselves a funeral. Not ourselves, like, Rachel.’ She cleared her throat and turned on the stereo. A John Farnham tape whirred into life.
‘How you goin’?’ asked Lorraine.
‘Alright.’
‘Hmm. Well, I don’t know anything about you anymore.’ She cleared her throat and wound down the window. ‘Are you a good kid? You used to be a good kid. I got no time for trouble, right? I’m done with that. You want to mess around and get into trouble you can go sleep under someone else’s roof.’ She shot him a look.
Sam didn’t say anything. It was a clean slate, a new leaf, a new dawn, all of those clichés. He had to look at it like that or he’d disintegrate right there in the passenger seat.
‘Minty likes having you around, anyway. I mean, Minty likes most people but he’s always taken to you.’ The van rumbled and lurched and Lorraine seemed to have to put all her weight behind the stick just to change gears.
‘His room’s heaps neat. Don’t remember him being like that.’
‘He copes better with it like that.’
‘Copes?’
Lorraine sniffed loudly. ‘We had to start over again, down here.’ She didn’t offer anything else. They rode in silence for a bit, Lorraine humming along to the music every now and then. Sam rolled the window down and let the wind whip his hair around his face. His memory flashed a snapshot at him: the last time he’d seen Lorraine, barefoot on the driveway of Nana and Pop’s hissing words at his mother.
‘Lorraine?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Where’s Nana?’
She gave him a quick sideways glance, leaned forward a little, forearms draped on the wheel. ‘Aww. Your mum should have gone through this with you,’ she said, almost to herself.
‘She didn’t.’
‘Yeah, I’m getting the picture.’
‘So?’
‘Look. It’s complicated, love. God knows. Your nan … it was all such a mess. We all did things we shouldn’t have. Your nan, I was angry at her for a load of reasons. We all say things we shouldn’t. She had to take off. She calls it a breakdown. Says she couldn’t cope with it anymore. The stress. Something had to give. So …’
Sam couldn’t frame it in his head so that it made any sense. Pop made scones, Nana made the jam from fruit Pop grew in their garden. Nana had a full set of Golden Books, kept in numerical order, on the shelf for the grandkids. Sam had shown her how to play Space Invaders and Wimbledon Tennis on the Atari. Nana was good at it. She kept framed photos of her three grandkids crowded on the top of her dresser. She had been there with his mum when Sam was born. Why did she leave?
‘Did you know she had left? Or did you think something had happened to her?’
‘Yeah. Nah. Your pop kept goin’ on about how something nasty had happened to her.’ Lorraine sighed. ‘He told people that. But nothing bad happened to her, he knew that.’
‘Mum didn’t tell me anything. Only that we wouldn’t see you guys anymore.’ Sam changed tack. ‘Do you talk to Nana, like now? Do you know where she is? She needs to know about Mum.’
Lorraine eased the van around a corner. He couldn’t see her eyes through the sunglasses.
‘Yeah, I’ve tried to call her. Got a number. But haven’t spoken to her yet, keep getting the answering machine.’
‘She doesn’t know?’
‘Well, I wanna tell her myself, don’t I. I’m not leaving it as a bloody message.’
‘Where does she live?’
Lorraine pressed her mouth into a firm line and didn’t reply.
‘Where does she live?’
‘Up north.’
‘Where?’
‘I’m not telling you. Don’t want you skiving off up there with some idea about her in your head.’
‘I’m not going to.’
She pulled the car into a small car park out the front of a benign-looking beige brick building and killed the engine. She turned to him, pushing the sunglasses onto the top of her head. ‘I don’t believe you. She doesn’t …’ Lorraine sighed. ‘I don’t want her getting into your head.’
Sam didn’t reply. He looked up at the big sign above the building. Bob Crapp Funerals.
‘You’re kidding?’ Sam said.
‘What?’
‘Not here. Bob Crapp? No. I’m not getting it from here.’
‘Everyone goes to him.’
‘No. Not here.’
‘I’ve got an appointment.’
‘Why are we having it down here anyway? We should have it in Sydney. She’s not from here. Everyone she cared about is in Sydney …’ Sam caught himself too late. ‘Sorry.’
Lorraine looked away and took a piece of gum from her
bag, popped it in her mouth.
‘I’m not going in.’
‘Yes, you are.’
‘No, I’m not.’ He opened the door of the van, got out and took his skateboard from where it was stowed at his feet.
Lorraine was out of the door, striding around to him, her jaw set in determination.
‘You’re not pissing off! Got it? I’ll mow you down with the bloody van if I have to.’ She had him by the arm. He tried to shake her off but she was stronger than she looked.
‘Let me go!’
She pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes, honing in. ‘No. You wanna fight me, kid? Go ahead. I’ve danced with bigger blokes than you.’
Sam tried to control the breath as it caught in his chest, the hot blood thud that coursed down his neck. He squeezed his eyes shut to try and stop it. It was a feeling that had come and gone for so long that he’d grown accustomed to it and he didn’t question it anymore. He felt like one of those racehorses you see on the television before a race, jittery, all his senses amplified like he needed to fight something he didn’t understand. Or bolt.
‘You can’t run away like a little boy. She’s gone, love.’ Her voice was softer now. ‘She’s not coming back. You gotta accept it or you’ll lose your bottle. This is what you gotta do, go in there, we’ll have the funeral then you can get on with it.’
*
Just after his family had fractured apart he’d stood in front of his mother full of hurt and anger and confusion, hands in fists, his scrawny little body desperate to lash out. He’d wanted to see Minty and Lorraine, or Nana, and she refused him, telling him there were things that had happened in his family that he was too small to understand. It was complicated, she’d said. The same words Lorraine used. It had only made him angrier. The implication being that he wasn’t old enough. It had magnified that horrible feeling of inadequacy that only a boy who is his mother’s one remaining protector can understand. He’d screamed at his mum that he hated her and she’d burst into tears covering her face, defeated and deflated by this child who didn’t understand. Now, he didn’t know what it was he was supposed to be getting on with. There was nothing left.