This Excellent Machine

by Stephen Orr

  Jen smeared Vaseline on his neck and face. ‘How wavy?’

  ‘Wavy.’

  She told me to sit, wrapped a towel around his shoulders, and combed his wet hair. ‘This to impress your girlfriend?’

  ‘Don’t have one.’

  ‘Tracey?’

  ‘She’s not my girlfriend.’ His eyes settled on the floor. ‘In digito clavus. Nail in my toe.’

  Another aspect of his growth. A Latin phrase book he’d stolen from the school library. Now, he’d set himself the goal of learning every phrase. He’d already started incorporating them in his essays, not that anyone was impressed.

  ‘Plurimus hic aeger moritur vigilando.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Jen asked, with her you’re-a-bit-of-a-tosser look.

  ‘Most sick people die from insomnia.’

  ‘What’s that mean?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘what does it mean?’

  ‘Whatever you want it to.’

  Jen split his hair into four sections and fixed them with metal clips.

  ‘Like a cuppa?’ I asked.

  ‘Piss off.’

  She rolled the strands onto the rods, smiled at me and said, ‘You’re next.’

  ‘Bullshit.’

  ‘Clem!’ Pop called, from the lounge room.

  ‘Vicky’d love you permed,’ Curtis said.

  Pop came in, went to the fridge and poured himself a Coke. ‘I thought you were joking,’ he said to Curtis.

  ‘No. I am very definitely in medias res.’

  Pop had never understood him. At least John could fit a tyre, but Curtis just talked bullshit. Seventeen years of garbage, and what did he have to show for it? ‘They’ll be calling you a nancy,’ he said.

  Jen and I laughed. Curtis replied, ‘Frontem tabernae sopionibus scribam … I will draw sopios on the front of the tavern.’

  ‘See,’ I said, ‘that has no relevance to anything.’

  ‘Helena amatur a Rufo.’

  Pop just shook his head and left. ‘Hope yer mother knows what yer doin’.’

  Jen finished rolling and said, ‘Right, let’s go.’

  Curtis sat up, determined.

  ‘Once I put this stuff in, that’s it. You’re happy for me to continue?’

  ‘Happy, and excited.’

  She popped the tab on the solution, drizzled it over his hair, then started rubbing it in.

  Curtis grimaced. ‘Burns a bit, eh?’

  ‘That’ll go, just doin’ its job.’ She said to me, ‘Vicky’s not so friendly to me.’

  ‘You weren’t friends.’

  ‘She wasn’t interested.’

  The two of them, standing in her room, Jen putting on Dancing Queen, showing her the moves, but Vicky just standing there. ‘She was always a bit stuck up.’

  ‘Bullshit.’

  ‘Language!’ Pop.

  ‘She was, wasn’t she, Curtis?’

  ‘I remember yers, Clemmy, on the shed roof,’ Curtis said. ‘And me saying, Can I come up? And you saying, I’ll see yer later. I’s sorta glad when she went.’

  ‘That’s horrible,’ I said. ‘Her dad killed himself.’

  ‘We don’t know that,’ Pop called.

  ‘She’d come in and sit as you made your models,’ Jen said.

  ‘Didn’t.’

  ‘I heard yers. You gonna stick the wing on, Clem?’

  The perm twins laughed.

  ‘D’you reckon I should? D’you wanna have a go?’

  ‘What a loada shit.’

  ‘Clem!’

  Jen finished. ‘Now, time to wait.’

  Curtis checked in the mirror Jen had provided. ‘You’re doin’ a good job, Jen.’

  She smiled, might’ve blushed, but we hadn’t seen the result yet. She took off her plastic gloves and threw them in the bin. ‘Half an hour.’ Setting the timer on the oven.

  Curtis and I sat with Pop, busy with Tony Barber. He’d given up on Baby Burgess and Adriana and the rest of the crooks on the Wheel. Sale of the Century, he explained, was classier. Intelligent questions. You had to have a few brains. ‘I reckon that Delvene Delaney’s not as good as Victoria Nicholls,’ he said.

  ‘Why’s that?’ Curtis asked, settling in with a magazine.

  ‘She was homely. This one’s vulgar.’

  Capital of Japan. I said, ‘The questions are pretty easy.’

  ‘They get harder.’

  A noble gas that glows in the night.

  ‘See,’ Pop said, ‘most people wouldn’t know what a noble gas was.’ Staring at Curtis again. ‘Never heard of a bloke havin’ a perm.’

  ‘It’s all the go. Women love it.’

  ‘Couldn’t see John gettin’ a perm.’

  ‘Well, we’re different.’

  ‘Too right. Your mum heard anything?’

  ‘Not a word. Nice and peaceful. Hopefully that’s it.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It. Hopefully he won’t come back.’

  Pop shook his head. ‘Nice thing to say about your brother.’

  ‘Just being honest.’

  ‘Some of us make bad decisions. Bet you’d hope, if you did, people’d stand by you.’ He returned to the television.

  ‘It’s not that simple,’ Curtis replied.

  ‘He was brought up just the same as you. No different. Like Clem and Jen.’

  ‘But I didn’t steal from people.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘And I didn’t …’ He backed off. ‘This stuff’s burning.’ And called. ‘Is it meant to burn?’

  ‘A bit.’

  He returned to his magazine. ‘I guess you’re right, Doug. Ars longa, vita brevis.’

  ‘Yes, it bloody well is. You should try and remember.’

  We settled and waited as the solution did its work. I went to the dunny, and listened from the half-open door. The square root of 144. Flushed, came out, and remembered. Mum wouldn’t be home for hours, so I went into her room, sat on her bed and opened her bottom drawer.

  I remembered it from years before; the repository of everything old, yellow, mouldering. On the top, a few cookbooks to cover the past. Digging down through the years, birth certificates, the paid-off mortgage (they wouldn’t tell me, but I knew it was Pop, surrendering his final pay-out to make sure we’d never lose the house), family photos (the scissor marks of history), the letter. The story of my father’s fall from grace, and Callao. I studied the small, clipped letters, the dotted i’s and crossed t’s. I found a loose sheet (Clem was born on 10 June 1967 at Calvary …) and compared the two. It wasn’t the same author.

  So who’d written it? Who’d tried to convince my mother (or was it just me and Jen?) that my father had gone missing? What could be gained from that? I knew who’d come to my door; who’d shared ale with Bob Jones.

  The timer. I replaced every layer, closed the drawer and fled the room. Curtis was already sitting in the kitchen, and Jen was lowering his head over the sink. Pop had come in to watch. ‘We gotta wash up in there.’

  Jen filled a bowl with water and rinsed the solution, again and again, as Curtis said, ‘Imagine what Mum’ll say.’

  ‘She’ll kill you,’ I said.

  ‘Na, she’s used to it.’

  Then, the neutralising solution. Jen said, ‘This helps to fix all the broken protein in the hair.’

  Curtis didn’t care. He just wanted to be funky.

  Pop was grinning. ‘I got the clippers if it goes wrong.’

  Finally, it was at an end. Jen towel-dried his hair, sat him up and started to remove the rods. One by one the curls tumbled out, and Pop said, ‘Jesus fuckin’ Christ.’

  ‘Language,’ I said.

  ‘Come on,’ Curtis said, as Jen released the last of the rods, stood back, and smiled. ‘Not bad.’

  He grabbed the mirror, studied himself and said, ‘Fantastic.’ Half-hugged his stylist and continued his self-admiration. ‘You gotta admit, it’s pretty hot.’

  I held a box while she made a selection: glas
ses, plates and cutlery. We kept looking around the Gleneagles Vinnies. ‘But why now?’ I asked.

  Vicky led me around the shop. Maybe she’d always done this; but I felt happy to follow. ‘I’d had enough. I said to Mum, Either we go home or I find somewhere in town, or interstate. I knew she’d come.’

  Because, she explained, Tina wasn’t about to let her go. They’d started, and would finish, together.

  Vinnies smelled like Val’s house: naphthalene-dipped collections of old crap that’d survived the years. For sentimental reasons, I guessed. Easier to keep than throw. Maybe that applied to people, too. Racks of old jackets from the sixties: leather, velvet and denim.

  ‘You’d had enough?’

  ‘Nice place to grow up, but every day you’d go to the same shops and some old girl’d say, Hi, Vicky, how’s your mum? She got her knee fixed yet?’

  ‘Like Lanark Avenue?’

  ‘Much worse.’

  I waited as she put a few tablecloths in the box. ‘It’d be easier to get them new.’

  ‘Pre-loved’s the go. Like me.’ And smiled.

  ‘By whom?’

  ‘He knows his grammar. We’re all pre-loved, Clemmy.’

  ‘God, don’t call me that.’

  ‘Clemmy.’

  I remembered this streak: like being tied down before something pleasurable.

  ‘Like your dad,’ she said.

  ‘How?’

  ‘He doted, didn’t he?’

  ‘Like Ossie?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  Coincidentally, we came to the old books: car manuals, romances with broken spines and an old Planet of the Apes. ‘That was such a bummer how …’ It took a while to choose the right words. Ossie had always said that, too: choose the right words. ‘… how your mum sold all his books.’

  ‘I told her not to.’

  ‘Swiss Family Robinson one day, Tolstoy the next. Not that I got beyond the first chapter.’ I studied the titles. ‘I always looked forward to getting a new book.’ Robert Graves. I’d heard of him, checked the price, and read the back. ‘Compared to the cultural wasteland of number 31.’

  ‘But yours was the best place in the street. Everyone’d just pop in. Mum, me, Wendy. Saturday morning scones. It seemed a happy place.’

  ‘Happy?’

  ‘No stress. Doug clanging away in the shed, your Mum and Val in the kitchen.’

  I studied her arm and wrist. Not too bony, or fat. Just the right length. Long, piano-playing fingers and short nails, the sign of a smart woman. Leading up to strong shoulders and a pre-loved ebony neck, with one little freckle, and I remembered this too. Ears, not too small, or big, and whispy hair that curled in and around the lobes. ‘You loved coming over for scones?’

  ‘And books?’

  ‘Not just that. For your mum … and you.’

  ‘Do tell.’

  ‘You were more intelligent company. Curtis was for climbing trees.’

  ‘You liked to talk?’

  ‘Are you trying to get me to say something?’ I remembered this. You had to stop the conversation, and send it off in another direction.

  She said, ‘I had other friends.’

  ‘Me too. Just the scones?’

  ‘Yep. Then you’d drag me into your room, to show me your models.’

  ‘That’s not how I remember it.’

  ‘Well, you remember wrong. You stickin’ bits of plastic together. Look at this. A Stuka. The Germans used to dive-bomb everyone.’

  ‘Like that? I spoke like a spaz?’

  ‘I’d ask to have a go and you’d say, Na, I gotta do it properly, cos the glue sets quick.’ She laughed.

  I suppressed a smile, but it did sound like something I’d say.

  She stopped in front of the dresses. One, a light, summer frock. ‘I reckon this’d fit.’

  ‘Try it on.’

  I stood with my box as she went into the change room, re-emerged, modelling it. I noticed the tag and told her and she said, ‘Why not?’

  She returned, took it off, and I could see through a gap in the curtain. Skin. Peach-coloured, flawless, glowing. The valley down her back, not too deep, too shallow, the bra strap with its metal clip. Jesus. Shoulder blades designed by the gods. Like I’d filled out a requisition, and been given exactly what I’d asked for. The dress slipped to the floor, she turned ten or fifteen degrees, and I could see part of the covered breast. Nothing wasted, or denied.

  A few moments later, she emerged, put the dress in the box, and continued. We passed the men’s jackets, suits from wartime weddings, glossy vests that reflected every bit of sun coming through the window. ‘What a loada shit,’ she said.

  ‘I feel like your butler.’

  ‘You want me to take them?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well …’

  I’d been put in my spot. I didn’t mind. Vicky Rosie could punish me all day, every day. The high forehead, full of brain, the high cheeks, full of breeding, the perfect teeth, and lips, that I’d kissed. Or was I dreaming? I could remember a time when she’d said, Come on, just so we can see what it’s like.

  I hadn’t taken a lot of persuading. The slow coming-together of faces, the warm breath, the touching lips. No, I must have been dreaming.

  She said, ‘Curtis came over.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To say hello.’

  What right did he have? He’d fancied her too. This was something I’d have to deal with immediately. Unless she was saying it for effect? ‘And?’

  ‘Came in for a drink.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘That’s it. A drink. That’s okay, isn’t it?’

  She put a salt and pepper shaker in the box.

  ‘Why should I care?’

  She smiled. ‘Why should you?’

  ‘You used to like him.’

  She didn’t like the game she’d started. ‘He was an idiot. He’s still an idiot.’

  Relief. Second kiss, first encounter, marriage, second encounter, babies, new house, as the whole thing repeated, everyone in someone else’s house eating their scones.

  ‘Why’s that?’ I asked.

  ‘He has a perm.’

  ‘Jen did it.’

  ‘What boy gets a perm? Is he a poof?’

  ‘No. He thought it’d look good.’

  ‘See, still an idiot. He looks ridiculous.’

  ‘I tried to tell him.’

  ‘Does stuff just to annoy people. He told me he has a list of things and people he hates.’

  I waited. It was all music to my ears. I was everything Curtis wasn’t (hopefully).

  ‘But he said I’d never be on it. How creepy’s that?’

  ‘It’s his way of telling you he likes you.’

  ‘Jesus. Keep him away from me.’

  ‘I don’t see him much any more.’

  ‘And his creepy brother.’

  I brought her up to date. She said, ‘We’re getting new locks on the doors tomorrow.’

  We paid, and started walking home along North East Road. ‘So, what now?’ I asked.

  She shrugged. ‘Who knows? Do you know?’

  ‘Arts, journalism, something with writing.’

  She didn’t reply. I struggled with the box. Maybe I’d always be struggling with the box, but that was okay.

  ‘Swiss Family Robinson?’ she said.

  ‘I guess.’

  ‘After all these years. That’s nice.’

  ‘Well, I didn’t have a dad.’

  ‘You had Doug.’

  She wasn’t going to help. I said, ‘I’d look forward to Saturday morning. Your dad must’ve thought I was a pain in the arse, standing there for an hour: What’s this one about, Mr Rosie? But he’d tell me, then he’d read me a page, put it in my hand and say, Next Saturday, come back and tell me what you think.’

  We continued: the smell of fried chicken, curry from the Paki place, sirens up and down the road, a couple of wogs arguing out front of the newsagent.

 
; Vicky said, ‘Maybe I shoulda read a few. End up smart, like you.’

  Good sign. Only a few days in and she was already impressed. ‘He just sat, read, and you never knew what he was thinking.’

  We crossed the stadium car park, passed the Sharpes’, the Donnellans’, and I said, ‘Come in, for a drink.’

  ‘Mum’s waiting.’

  ‘A few minutes.’ They all counted.

  We went in and Ernie was sitting in our lounge room, beside Pop. It was another first kiss. Had Ernie even been into our house before? ‘G’day, Ern.’

  ‘Clem, Vicky. How’s yer mum goin’?’

  Like that. Like he’d sit there every day, and ask after everyone’s mum.

  ‘Good, Mr Sharpe.’

  ‘Me and Doug are gonna do some jobs for her, aren’t we, Doug?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘For Tina?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Ern had come through. Maybe it was Lasseter’s Promise. But what did it matter? Bernard King was trading pavlova for talent. A kid in a country outfit, yodelling. Bernard said, Can I take my earplugs out yet?

  Pop almost laughed. ‘Who’d teach their kid to yodel?’

  We went into the kitchen and shared Coke. I whispered, ‘Company for Pop.’

  She leaned back against a bench and gave me a sort of smirk-smile. ‘I prefer Diet Coke.’

  ‘Tastes like shit.’

  She didn’t reply. More smirk than smile. She hadn’t done her top button up, and it was easy to use a bit of imagination.

  Pop muttered, ‘Day three’s gonna be a bit of driving.’

  ‘How far?’ Ernie asked.

  ‘Five hundred, I reckon.’

  ‘We can do it. Clem’s young.’

  ‘Where you going?’ Vicky asked me.

  I wasn’t thinking. I told her. ‘Just don’t tell anyone. Mum can’t know.’

  She zipped her lips.

  ‘Tough country, but,’ Pop said, as Bernard laid on the camp.

  ‘Let a bita air outa yer tyres.’

  ‘That’s what they reckon.’

  Vicky said, ‘He doesn’t actually think …’

  ‘Why else would he wanna go?’

  ‘Why don’t you tell him he’s wasting his time?’

  ‘Is he?’

  ‘You’ve got exams coming up.’

  She said it like I couldn’t afford to fail. Like I’d need to pass, go to uni, get a job, if I was gonna buy a house for … us? ‘It’s so far,’ she said.

  ‘So?’

  ‘What if he gets sick? What if something happens?’