Happy as Larry

by Scot Gardner

  But on that dog-in-a-boat Sunday afternoon as they turned into Condon Street, it was Larry who sighed. He’d spotted the form crouched on the kerb in front of their house: Clinton. He’d probably been waiting for hours. Larry knew that whatever personality the day had had up until this point, it would end up like Clinton, scratched and dented by his special brand of fun.

  Mal noticed. ‘You don’t have to play with him if you don’t want to.’

  ‘I know,’ Larry said, deflated. He knew if he didn’t play with Clinton, nobody would, and then Clinton would get madder and madder until he did a bad thing. Playing with Clinton was like keeping your room clean. You just did it or the nagging would start and it would never stop.

  Gilligan growled as they drew close. He cut across Mal’s path and almost brought him down with his chain as he distanced himself from the black-headed kid who smelled of old cooking oil and urine.

  ‘Let’s play on the slide,’ said Clinton.

  Larry looked at his father.

  ‘It’s up to you, Larry,’ Mal mumbled.

  Clinton grabbed the dog’s lead from Larry and dragged him towards the empty park. The dog resisted, tail down.

  Larry followed reluctantly and rescued Gilligan by letting him off the chain.

  ‘Stand back,’ Clinton said, and whirled the chain above his head. ‘Helicopter coming in to land.’

  The chain hummed and Clinton, excited by the sound, decided not to let it land. He spun it faster.

  ‘Stop,’ Larry mumbled.

  Clinton ignored him.

  Larry took shelter behind the slide.

  Clinton reached maximum velocity then let the chain go.

  It wheeled through the air like a solid stick and hit the paling fence at the back of the park with a protracted crack.

  Clinton laughed.

  Larry bolted to reclaim the chain but he was too late. Clinton was spinning it above his head again.

  Another throw. Crack, into the slide.

  The dog and the two boys raced, Gilligan swinging wide of Clinton and the boys grabbing an end of the chain each.

  ‘Give it to me,’ Larry said, through clenched teeth.

  Clinton yanked the chain free and began turning it like a lasso. He reached maximum velocity again and launched it high above his head. It arced behind him and landed on the powerlines that ran beside the road.

  There was an electrical snap and fizzle and a waterfall of orange sparks sailed groundward. The boys stood entranced by the fireworks for a full second before another bang erupted from further down Condon Street. The boys jumped and Clinton ran. He dashed straight across the road without looking and through his screen door.

  Larry’s feet felt as though they were nailed to the playground mulch. He stared up at the limp chain in the wires and thought of the dead boy on the stretcher for the second time that day.

  Slowly, people emerged from their houses and looked up and down the street. They saw the boy staring at the wires and converged around him to investigate.

  Vince Hammersmith’s television had gone black, and when he found Larry staring at the chain in the wires, he guessed what had happened. He whisked the little boy into his arms and carried him to the Rainbows’ Californian bungalow, with the dog hot on their heels. It had been more than a year since he’d had reason to pick Larry up and he was puffing slightly by the time he made it to the porch.

  The old man rapped at the door. It opened instantly. Mal must have been on his way out. ‘Oh! Hello. Is everything okay?’

  Vince nodded and lowered Larry to his feet. Gilligan skipped inside.

  ‘Is your power out?’ Vince asked.

  Mal frowned. ‘Yes, it is.’

  Vince beckoned Mal onto the driveway so they could see the chain in the wires.

  Mal’s knee cracked as he crouched. He held his son’s shoulders. ‘How did that get up there?’ he whispered.

  ‘I don’t know,’ the boy whispered back.

  They had a barbecue in the back yard that evening. The power hadn’t been restored and the hotplates in the kitchen were useless. They’d missed the news.

  Mal took a sip of home-brew. ‘You’re going to have to stand up for yourself with Clinton, Larry. You’ll have to find a way to let him know that he can’t boss you around.’

  ‘Sometimes I just want to punch him in the head,’ Larry growled.

  His father held his breath. He’d never seen Larry so angry. He’d never seen his body so tight with rage, though he knew how he felt.

  He crouched beside his son and felt suddenly powerful, a supreme being who had travelled through time to change the course of history. A real father able to hold his son where, in his own reality, there had only been shadows. It was a pointed moment. Mal felt impervious to his past and the air seemed to sparkle around him. He knew that if he could say the right things to Larry – the things he wished his father could have said to him – they’d both be free.

  He put an arm around his boy and drew the tense, small body under his wing. He kissed Larry’s forehead and felt him soften.

  ‘It’s okay, Larry. It’s good to get angry when somebody isn’t nice to you, but if you punched Clinton in the head, how do you think that would make him feel?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Larry looked at his fist. ‘Angry.’

  ‘Exactly. He gets angry and wants to punch you, and you get angry and want to punch him, and it goes on and on forever.’

  Larry’s mind threw up pictures of an endless punch-a-thon and he giggled. He play-punched himself in the nose.

  Mal turned him so they were eye to eye. ‘When you want to punch somebody, start counting. Count slowly up to ten, and by the time you get to ten, the feeling will turn to words and you can tell him how you feel. Shout if you want to, but no hitting. Okay?’

  Larry looked at his father and nodded.

  ‘Have a try. Pretend I’m Clinton. What do you want to say to me?’

  Larry smiled. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Come on, try. What do you want to say?’

  Larry’s lips wrinkled, his hands bunched into fists and his arms locked by his side. His breathing became shallow.

  ‘I hate you!’ he screamed. ‘You’re a stupid poof and I want to punch you in the face!’

  He ran inside, crying.

  Mal stood slowly, his heart heavy. It wasn’t going to be that simple.

  Larry had found his nemesis.

  DRAMA

  QUEEN

  DENISE COULDN’T SLEEP that Sunday night. She read by the warm glow of two candles until midnight. Maybe it was the candles. Maybe it was the service trucks moving on the street as they tried to restore the power, but something wasn’t right. The feeling was stark and foreboding, a black-and-white feeling, like something from an early Akira Kurosawa samurai film. She knew something was going to happen.

  The lights came on.

  The television came on in the lounge and Denise sprang from her bed, heart at a gallop.

  There, on the TV, were the mangled remains of a black Mercedes, crumpled by a high-speed collision with concrete pylon number thirteen in a Paris tunnel.

  Princess Diana was dead at age thirty-six.

  Denise had turned thirty-seven in February, and the pictures of the broken car cleaved her open like a butcher’s knife. She collapsed onto the lounge.

  She tore her way through a full box of tissues and felt a rage at God that she had kept lidded all her life. Why? Why take the innocent, the beautiful people? Her mother, her father, her babies, the princess. Whatever God’s plan was, it was flawed.

  Mal found her there when his alarm went off on Monday morning. She hadn’t slept. Her eyes were bloodshot and her face raw from crying. He sat beside her on the couch and she folded into his shoulder and sobbed. He rubbed her back and shushed in her hair.

  The news footage was on high rotation. Mal had to see it twice before the shock waned enough for words to form.

  ‘It doesn’t make sense,’ he said.r />
  Denise sat up, wiped her eyes and squeezed a tissue to her nose. ‘So unfair,’ she breathed.

  ‘True,’ Mal said. ‘But why does it affect you so much?’

  She shrugged, forced a smile. ‘I have no idea.’

  They stared at each other until Denise’s nose required more attention.

  Mal kissed her temple. ‘Come on. I’ll make you breakfast.’

  When Denise walked Larry to school that morning, there was unsettling warmth in the air. Larry insisted on kissing her goodbye at the corner of Johnstone Street – a full block from the school – and going the last two hundred metres to the crossing by himself.

  Denise felt shame. Obviously, Larry didn’t want her there when he met up with his friends.

  He waved when he was midway across the road. He seemed so small beside the imposing figure of Muriel Hammersmith. The wave turned Denise on her heels and sent her scurrying home through more tears.

  The world seemed beaten and lonely that week. Denise pined for Wednesday night and the distraction of film club, but when she got to Anita’s house there was nobody there except Anita. The other members were all wintering in warmer climes. Denise burst into tears again before they’d even started the film, and Anita fetched tissues and held her hand. She stroked Denise’s hair, listened to her blubbering about Princess Diana and, when the storm had passed, made tea and started the video.

  ‘Does it have a happy ending? I need a happy ending tonight.’

  Anita took her friend’s hand again, tucked her feet underneath her on the couch and drew a blanket over their knees. ‘You won’t be disappointed.’

  The movie was Ingmar Bergman’s Smultronstallet (Wild Strawberries) and at the end it showed Professor Borg basking in the love of his whole family, finally free of the dark world he had created for himself. It was a happy ending but Denise still cried.

  ‘Sometimes,’ Anita said, ‘I look at you watching a film and I can feel you going through the wringer with every character. Denise, sweetheart, it’s a movie. It’s all make-believe. Don’t take it all so seriously.’

  Denise fought back the tears. Anita was right – she was a drama queen and getting worse.

  ‘It’s overwhelming sometimes,’ Denise said. ‘I seem to have a chronic case of discontent.’

  Anita dismissed that thought with a wave of her hand. ‘You take everything to heart. Always have. You’ll think yourself to death.’

  ‘What are the other options? Don’t think at all? Don’t feel at all?’

  Anita shook her head. ‘Why can’t you let yourself be entertained? Why does everything have to be so serious and personal?’

  Denise knew it was true. Thoughts dug holes. She was constantly falling into them.

  Anita drove her home and kissed her goodnight. They shared a smile. Denise felt patched again. A night with her friend – including Vince, that made two friends she had – and a beautiful movie was precisely the medicine she’d needed. On Friday, when she heard that Mother Teresa had died, she teetered on the edge of tears for hours. She dug in the garden and talked to herself until she was free. Mother Teresa was old and had lived a life full of grace and goodwill. The film of Diana’s life seemed to have broken halfway through the first reel and so much of the world felt cheated. There was absolutely nothing anybody could do about that.

  MOMENT

  BEFORE

  SLEEP

  MAL HAD COMPLETELY forgotten his threat to leave Gilligan at home. On Sunday he and Larry packed and left early, as usual, and the dog with the hyperactive tail was with them, as usual.

  There were police on the jetty. A cross of blue-and-white plastic tape barred civilian entry where a bollard had been torn from its concrete moorings. Halfway along, a yellow car was poking through the splintered handrail and hanging precariously over the edge.

  Gorky was smiling. ‘Apparently they were trying to get to New Zealand.’

  Mal scoffed.

  ‘Wazza’s gone to get his four-wheel drive. We’re going out to Pincher Point. You boys want to come?’

  Mal looked at his son’s eyes. They were glowing with the prospect of adventure, but there was Gilligan to consider. ‘We won’t be able to take the dog.’

  ‘Yes, you will. Have you seen Wazza’s truck? I reckon your pup would be able to live for a month on the rubbish in the back of that vehicle.’

  One hour later, Mal and Larry, Wazza and Gorky followed Gilligan down the rough-hewn steps to the flat expanse of wet sandstone at Pincher Point. The air was cool and still. Blue-black swirls of water bustled through the mouth of the inlet away from Villea. The water was much deeper here than beside the jetty, and seemed to be alive.

  ‘We’ve got about an hour until the tide turns,’ Wazza croaked. ‘Might get a little jewie or a tailor.’

  Wazza was right. The fishwere hungry, and the men worked hard to give them their final supper. Gorky landed the lion’s share but they were mostly undersized, except for a beautiful dusky flathead that made the old man purr with satisfaction.

  Mal cast deep with the bamboo surf rod. He lost bait for a while, and then landed a two-foot gummy shark that he’d hooked near the nose. The hook came away easily and he handed the fishto Larry for release.

  ‘Give it a kiss before you let it go,’ Gorky said.

  Larry laughed and did as he was told. He lowered the gulping fish to the water’s surface and squeaked with delight when the creature, with one slash of its tail, rocketed into the deep water.

  Gilligan saw the fish go and his doggy instincts took over. He hurtled between the men, launching himself and Larry off the rocks and into the sucking tide.

  The dog belly-flopped and began paddling the moment he resurfaced, but Larry hit the frigid water shoulder-first and was swallowed by the current.

  It all happened so fast that Gorky barely had time to swear. Mal threw his rod on the rocks and dived.

  The cold hit Mal a body blow and the air erupted from him. He clawed to the surface and tried desperately to fill his lungs. Something brushed his leg. Larry? The men were shouting and pointing at the water. Gorky was taking off his coat. In a fractured second, Mal’s cold-shocked mind had regrouped, his lungs were full of air and he was powering through the water after the blurred shadow of his son.

  For an indefinably brief moment, Larry knew what the boy on the stretcher had felt. The boy who’d been killed in the Kobe earthquake. It wasn’t a bad feeling at all. It was a peaceful sigh, like the moment before sleep. It was like knowing that his parents were in the next room as he snuggled under the covers, only a hundred times stronger. He sensed dancing curtains of vivid colour emerging from the shadows, shifting through a complete spectrum to become pure lustrous white. Fish skin, abalone shell. For a moment, being dead was more beautiful than being alive. And then the sound of distant wind chimes broke through the quiet and became louder until they were the voices of frightened men.

  Something was digging into his back. Lips and stubbled skin pressed against his face. Something was filling him with warm breath and suddenly he was alive again, exploding with wet coughs, and crying. Crying against the pain in his back. Crying for the peace he’d lost.

  His father was holding him, dripping on him and staring at his face with big eyes. The other men were cheering.

  ‘You okay, Larry? You all right? Please be all right, matey. Speak to me.’

  With his whole body shaking from the inside out, Larry vomited on his father’s wet sleeve. ‘I’m cold,’ he said.

  Mal moaned with relief.

  Gorky draped his coat over Larry and kissed him on the forehead, noisily and a little roughly. ‘Thought we’d lost you for a minute there, Larry. That would have been no good. No good at all.’

  Gilligan bumped Mal’s leg and Mal shoved the dog with his boot. ‘You, you mongrel.’

  The dog shook and sprayed the men, sending the dry ones scurrying and cursing.

  After they’d bathed Larry and put him to bed, Mal told Denise t
he full story, stammering and stumbling over his words. She’d never seen him so lost. He’d stopped talking by the time they lay in their own bed, but Denise could feel it in his body as he stared at the ceiling, his hands clamped behind his head.

  Mal was punishing himself, reliving the horror.

  ‘You saved his life.’

  ‘But if I hadn’t taken him down there in the first place . . .’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. You’ve never had a problem before. You saved his life.’

  Mal sighed.

  ‘We can’t wrap him up in cotton wool. As much as I might want to . . . he has to understand where he fits in the world. Remember the housewarming? Remember when he fell off his bunk and bumped his head?’

  Mal rubbed his face. ‘I just feel like such a useless, neglectful, irresponsible father. What if he had drowned?’

  Denise knew the feeling. It walked with her every day of her life. Something clicked in her head.

  They were a family. They had each other. They would survive.

  ‘He didn’t drown.’

  ‘Yes, but . . .’

  ‘I have a confession to make.’

  Mal looked at his wife. ‘Oh?’

  ‘I left Larry in the supermarket.’

  Mal laughed, and when she finished telling him the story, they kissed, embraced, and found the peaceful sleep of the redeemed.

  MAGIC

  FINGER

  LARRY CHANGED. AT first Denise thought it was shock – the after-effects of coming so close to death – and then she blamed the cold that had rendered Larry unfit for school on Thursday and Friday. He just didn’t seem as happy.

  Larry’s death hung in his limbs. He kept imagining how sad his mum and dad would have been if he’d not come back. He thought about Gorky, Vince and Jemma and all the tears they might have cried. To die would have been the meanest thing he could do to the people he loved.

  When Sunday arrived and Mal geared up for a return to the jetty, Larry’s cold was at its thickest and greenest and after a brief but tumultuous battle of loyalty – Mal feeling loyal to his son, Larry feeling sick but loyal to his father and their Sunday ritual – Mal left on his own.