It was Eddie and it wasn’t Eddie. He had gone from himself. There was nothing left except the terrifyingly familiar outline of him. I drove my eyes over his face; I was looking for him, but he wasn’t there. I remember there was the sound of sobbing. It was like a song, the weeping, the way one would start and then everyone would join in.
We had to go and see Eddie’s dead body, otherwise we wouldn’t have believed it. I wouldn’t have believed that he was never coming home again. There’s two types of believing: one is the believing you do with your mind, the other you do with your heart. I had to let my heart and soul and body know that he was really gone.
Dad and I took Mum to the airport. It wasn’t ever said that she was leaving. It was said that she wasn’t well and she was going back to be looked after. Perhaps, it was said, she was homesick. Perhaps, it was said, she would get better and return in the summer. But I could tell it was all just being said. You couldn’t know anything with her because she wasn’t there; she wasn’t in the room, she wasn’t in the car, she wasn’t in her body, not even in her eyes. She stared out of her eyes as if they were a window overlooking another view, a view we couldn’t see. She sat in the front seat, looking straight ahead. The radio was on. None of us spoke. Not until we got to those forever-gone doors at customs. Suddenly she became alarmed. She frowned and stiffened. Dad put his arm around her, as if she were a child needing encouragement for a first day at school. But then he drew her to him and held her and I turned away, because it seemed private, a thing between a husband and a wife. And when it came to my turn, I saw that she was really looking at me and she said the strangest thing. She said, “I love Manon.” As if she were speaking to someone else. And then my mum just went back to where she came from.
When the morning finally came, I felt as if I was watching something sailing away. Maybe it was just the dark color draining out of the sky. Or it was that thing: the world’s unuttered speech, the in-between of night and morning, the place where one thing gives way to another thing and for a moment there is neither. Then the kingdom has no king, and it isn’t knowing that counts, it’s unknowing. Even as I sat still there on the beach, my heart opened and closed like a fist and blood slid through my body, and I knew I was older in that moment than I was in the one before.
An old black-haired woman wearing a brown trench coat and dirty sneakers came hurrying along the esplanade. She was saying da da da, over and over, as if testing the sound of it, but when she saw me she stopped and put her hand over her mouth. She looked at me as if I were a curious object. I was just sitting on the pavement with my feet on the sand. I was a little bit cold from my swim and I had my arms wrapped around me. She said, “Listen, love, you got a ciggie?” I shook my head and said sorry.
“I know you’re telling the truth, lass, but you know, you shouldn’t wear red around here. Never mind, I can see you’re sensitive,” she said, and then she hurried on.
Was I telling the truth? Once the truth had seemed like a clear thing, a yes-or-no thing, an easy rule. That was when simple things mattered, like getting a good mark, not annoying your mother, making it onto the A-team, being as good as your brother—but later those things didn’t count at all. Later it mattered that you had T-bar sandals, that you didn’t limp, that you had a best friend, that you could know something worth knowing, or win the Thin Captain—and then that didn’t count anymore either. Then in the end, I thought, it won’t matter that I didn’t do the things I planned. Maybe nothing ever really matters, you only think it does. And all the notches on the belt that you run around madly gathering—as if the world will count them up and reward you, declare you human after all—they won’t count either. All that time you could have been lying there under a tree, under a sky, bewildered only by the beauty above you. And still the world would declare the same thing: You are alive. Yes, you are.
chapter thirty-two
I was suddenly so tired, all I could think about was going to sleep. I didn’t want to have too many other thoughts until I was awake enough to think them properly. The problem was that I could tell I was getting truer thoughts by not being able to think them properly. It was as if the ocean was just giving them to me.
I walked my bike up toward the shops. To tell you the truth, I was feeling bad about my dad. I felt bad that I’d run away on him. When I looked back over what had happened, I could see it from another view, now that I was farther away. I saw that we were a sinking ship, Dad and I. We were the only ones left on board and neither of us was being the captain. Ivy was pushed off a while ago, Eddie fell overboard, Mum went in after him, and I sat in the cabin and waited for someone to make it float again. And when no one did, I jumped off too. So I’d left Dad manning the sinking ship on his own. He would never have done that to me. He wouldn’t just abandon me, the broken-down bit of family that was left. He didn’t say much, my dad, but you could lean on him when you needed to. And Nora, the horse woman, was in love with him. He wouldn’t have noticed it himself, because he didn’t notice anything much. He was too preoccupied with his animals and too worn out by the love he had for Mum. After Mum left, Nora sometimes brought over a lasagna or some fruitcake or a home brew, which they drank together on the veranda. Now, you wouldn’t bother going to all the trouble of making a fruitcake if you didn’t fancy someone.
I wheeled my bike to a phone booth and called Dad at work. Veronika, the vet nurse, answered the phone. She said my father would be very relieved to hear from me. He was very worried, she said, and then asked me if I was all right. This is going to sound selfish but I was a little bit happy that Veronika was concerned about me, since Veronika was placid, like a cow, and rarely got in a flap about anything. Did that mean I was worth getting in a flap about? Dad came to the phone. I said I was sorry for causing trouble. He mumbled something in an uncomfortable way, and then he just wanted to know where I was. He said he’d come and get me. I said okay. It just came out. Okay. So it was like that. I hung up and I knew where I was going next. Back on board.
It wasn’t as though I was giving in either. I just knew I hadn’t quite finished things there. Not yet. I had some vague old notions and they were feeling good inside me. One of them was to get Ivy back on our shipwreck; we needed more crew. She could have the bungalow—Eddie’s bungalow. Ivy and I could clean it up, fold up his clothes the way we folded up hers once. We could talk about old times and cry a bit, and then give Eddie’s clothes to needy people. We would keep certain things of course, like the record collection. Or maybe we should give that to Harry, so he could have something to remember Eddie by too. There was also the guitar that Mum bought for Eddie as a bribe to make him give up smoking. Eddie’s soul once made a visit to me, carrying that guitar. It happened two nights after Eddie died. I was dreaming, but there was such a different feeling to it: a clear, deep, and true feeling, not murky like a dream, not so berserk. It felt as though it was really happening. He was really there: the real Eddie and the real me, saying good-bye.
I was on the oval at school. There was a footy game going on, but I was sitting on the edge, on the concrete step. Eddie came up, he came out of the field, wearing his footy clothes, but he didn’t have a football, he had his guitar. I started to cry when I saw him. He sat next to me and I said, “Eddie! You died. Did you know? You died.” “Yeah,” he said, “I know.” I said, “I didn’t even get to say good-bye. I didn’t get to tell you anything, I didn’t get to say what I wanted to say.”
What I had wanted to say was how much he meant to me, but we never once in our whole lives talked like that. You just don’t go ’round telling your brother those kinds of things; you expect that you don’t need to.
Eddie said it was all right, he knew, he knew what I felt, he knew it. I was so relieved that he knew it.
The thing about the guitar was that he had it then in that visit, but he’d never really had it before. He’d never played it, at least no one ever heard him. It just stood in the corner of his room: honey-colored, no scratches, shi
ning silver strings, as if it were part of a dream he couldn’t touch. He was scared of that guitar, scared of it showing him he wasn’t good at everything. It’s terrible to be bad at things, but especially when you’re meant to be good at everything. Mum was always saying how Eddie was a natural. But maybe Eddie couldn’t live up to the standards he imagined the world had set up for him.
So I figured we should give that guitar to Harry Jacob. We should see it get scratched and bumped and knocked over and lugged through life. Eddie would like to see that happen. Besides, the way it was, golden and unused, that guitar made me feel sad.
Actually, part of my vague old notions extended in the direction of Harry himself, but I wasn’t letting myself think too hard about it in case I got worked up, as I’m liable to. So, instead, I rang Ivy and explained why I hadn’t come back, and I said that one day soon me and Dad were coming together to visit. I didn’t tell her my plan yet. I wanted to clear it with Dad first. Then I went to a café and spent the last of the horse money on some fried eggs.
chapter thirty-three
It was good to see Dad. He put my bike in the back of the car, and he didn’t get cross. He didn’t even comment on the red dress, though I could tell it made him uneasy to see me wearing it. He said, “Mannie, where did you stay last night?” I said, “Well…” and then paused to think about what I should tell him and what I shouldn’t. In the end, I told him most of it, except I left out certain details, like my love for the Thin Captain (which I was mighty ashamed of), and I didn’t mention the bong and the red wine and the Travis attack. But even me being at Travis’s house made my dad feel bad. He didn’t say, but he looked so pained that I wished I hadn’t told him. I tried to make him feel better by claiming that at least Travis got what he deserved.
“What was that?” said Dad, and I realized that I’d got myself into a spot. I would have to admit what my hand did to Travis’s head.
“I hit him.” I got around it a bit.
“You hit him?” said Dad.
“Yep.”
“Strewth! Why did you do that?”
“Well, ’cause he’s a rat.”
Dad nodded understandingly, but he didn’t look happy about it. I guess you wouldn’t want to encourage your daughter to go hitting blokes over the back of their heads with bongs, not that he knew that particular weapon detail. Maybe that was what Eddie planned to do to Travis. Maybe it was what Mum should have done. Maybe it was what Dad wanted to do, but wouldn’t ever. Dad wouldn’t hurt a single living thing, if he could help it. He wouldn’t even kill a spider. I liked that about him. He wasn’t such a bad guy.
I changed the subject swiftly.
“Dad, have you ever heard of a D. Wolton?”
He nodded in an absent kind of way.
“I suppose you mean Dr. Wolton? He was your mother’s psychiatrist. Why?”
“Eddie had it written down on a bit of paper.”
Dad sighed. “Yes,” he said, as if it didn’t surprise him.
“Why?” I persisted.
There was a big pause from Dad, as if he was considering whether to tell me or not.
“Eddie called Dr. Wolton that night. For sedatives, medication, for your mother.”
“So you knew that Eddie was going to her?”
“Only afterward. When Dr. Wolton telephoned me.”
“Why didn’t you say?”
“Because it didn’t matter.” He looked at me again, kindly. “It doesn’t matter, Mannie. It doesn’t change anything.”
“No,” I said.
He was right in a way. But he was wrong too. It did change something. I’d always thought it was Harry’s idea to go to Melbourne, and Harry let me think it. He let everyone think it, just to protect Mum, to stop everyone knowing that she was mad and needed medication, that she was the reason Eddie was driving. Harry had covered up the disgrace, the stuff that Mrs. Mrs. Porrit would have gone to town on, and that was something.
We didn’t talk much more on the drive back to Blackjack Road. I stared out the window as we drove up the freeway. I watched the world outside. I saw brand-new suburbs with their grids of brick houses arranged like lines of perfect false teeth in an uncertain smile. I saw them give way to emptied-out blocks where the land got patchy, with a few straggly old gums left in a corner, like the tassels on the edge of a rug. It was as if the land was not sure of what it was, like a person who’s neither old enough to know nor young enough to be free of wanting to know, or someone who’s awkward and bony and bumped around by growth spurts.
The land slipped, though, without me seeing how, into a sprawling patchwork of scorched yellowed paddocks and lines of cypress and small towns with bakeries and old pubs. And the countryside was there. It was as if the rolling earth and the huge expanse of sky made way for something, as if it beckoned my mind to stroll gently, to gather up and hold the small sheltering of self that the night had tugged and stretched out of shape. The city flared up behind me in defiance, gray and tall, like a hungry lord, aching and bright and waving its flag for more. But I looked up at the sky, spreading out so blue and still, and my mind couldn’t help but empty into it. Were all the fragments of knowing that had come to me wrapping ’round me like a warm new jumper? I couldn’t say that it was quite comfortable and fitting, but the ill-fit was okay. It left room.
By the time we wound down Blackjack Road and hit the bend where all our houses were nestled, it was dark and the moon was rising. I couldn’t help noticing that there wasn’t a light on in Harry Jacob’s room. Dad saw me looking.
“Harry’s gone north. He left today.”
“Today,” I echoed dumbly. I stared again at the mint-chew colored Jacob house. It looked different. It suddenly looked just like any old house.
“Did you say he went north?” I said to Dad and my voice was not steady.
“That’s what Anne Jacob said. He’s driven up to Bellingen, to his brother’s farm, to help out. His brother’s got a broken leg. Then the plan is to travel around.”
“Well, for how long?” I frowned.
Dad was wrestling with my bike, heaving it out of the back of the car.
“I don’t know, Mannie. He must have got the idea from you, only you went south.”
He wheeled the bike to the garage and I was glad to be alone for a minute. I knew Dad wasn’t meaning to rub it in. He didn’t even know that Harry and I were once, for a moment, in love, but I sure felt rubbed in about it. Were Harry and I in love? I didn’t know what we were. All I knew was I didn’t like it that he’d gone. I sighed a long sad sigh. I didn’t like people leaving on me. I just didn’t like it. Why would you bother getting to like someone when you can just about be sure that they’ll go?
I couldn’t quite believe it was true. How could Harry have left? Harry wasn’t meant to leave and I could feel my mind was about to throw a big tantrum about it. Harry Jacob has gone from Blackjack Road, I said to my mind, over and over, as if I was training a dog to sit down. I even pictured Harry driving away. I saw him disappearing into the distance.
It’s as though you’re a certain shape: You’re like a small glass and life keeps pouring its stuff into you, and either you have to grow bigger, or it just splashes over the sides, or even worse, you crack. If I didn’t want to crack right then and there, I had to grow bigger. I certainly didn’t feel any bigger, but I knew that it was right. It all balanced up in a one-minus-one-equals-nothing kind of a way that Harry had disappeared into the north and I would forever and ever be longing for him to return.
I looked at his dark window and steadied myself, somehow. I just looked at it and for once I didn’t let my mind get going. I just let myself feel that Harry was gone. My heart was heavy, and I just took it quietly inside with me, as if I were carrying a big suitcase.
I went into my room and sat on the bed. Dad came in and sat with me. I thought for a minute he was going to make a speech because he sat there looking anxious and confused. He rubbed his chin with his finger and sighed.
“Mannie?”
“Yeah.”
“I know it’s hard for you living here with just me.”
“It’s okay, Dad. It really is. I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else right now.”
“No. I guess not,” he said, nodding in a sad way.
I felt bad about making him feel as if he wasn’t enough. He looked out the window for a while and the quiet between us was large. He took a big breath in and started again.
“Mannie?”
“Yeah?”
“How would you feel about Ivy coming to live with us?”
“Great idea.” I beamed. It wasn’t the idea that I was beaming at, since I’d already had it myself. It was the fact that Dad had thought it too. It meant he’d been thinking about me and about us, and about Ivy, our lives, the ship. It meant he’d been thinking about something more than his animals. Maybe he wasn’t always going to be a passenger. Maybe my short trip south had gone and started something in him, as well.
He was beaming right back at me and it felt that all that beaming back and forth was like a science fiction movie, with rays of white light issuing from our chests, binding us together on the ship, which kept moving through space, toward unknown empires.…But then Dad kissed me good night, just like he always did, and I knew I was out of Hollywood and back in my life, in my room, on my bed. At least there were some things you could know for sure, I thought.
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