by Scot Gardner
He did have a present tucked under his arm, roughly wrapped in second-hand paper.
‘Happy Christmas,’ he said.
Larry accepted the gift warily. Squarish and heavy in his hand, it probably wasn’t grass. In fact, it was a Game Boy Colour. The screen was scratched and greasy. The plastic shell was pecked and dented and closer to off-white than its original snow-white.
‘It’s my old one. It’s fully charged. I brought over my Advance I got for Christmas and the linking cord. If you want we can play Mario Kart together.’
Larry wanted to give it back. Even as a hand-me-down it was still too big to be given away. It complicated things. At best, Clinton was a dull ache, not a friend. A horsefly that hangs on for the ride, then bites you when your guard is down.
Clinton flicked the power switch and the machine chimed.
Larry’s resolve weakened. He could always give it back later.
When Denise found them they were sitting cross-legged on the lawn with their knees almost touching, deep in their game and barely moving. She watched for five minutes, all the while battling her urge to chase the stray child off and drag her own boy inside. Christmas was family time. She reached for the doorhandle and got a shock of static electricity that made her recoil. She wiggled her fingers and inspected her palm but could find no mark.
The zap made her stop and think, and for the briefest moment she could see her life from the outside. She only knew one way to be a child herself – heavy with grief and loss – and the death of the baby had blown a hole in the wall that normally protected her from the source of those memories. The heartbreak she felt had been piped through time and space from her first days. Even before the death of her father, she’d known loss. She couldn’t remember her mother’s face but she felt that gap where it should be. A dank and inexhaustible aquifer, her past had been with her all along. She’d been on the run all these years and never made an inch of ground. There was only one sadness, and she’d been zapped as she was about to share it with her only son.
It was Christmas, after all, and sharing was part of the tradition.
HAIR
MAL’S HOLIDAYS ENDED on the second of January 2002, the day after the euro was first traded in twelve European countries. He was glad to be out of the house, but bored with his job – shouting at the same dogs, dodging the same potholes and root-cracked pavement, knowing without looking which letterbox the plastic-wrapped gardening magazine belonged in – and the magazines wrapped plain and brown. With the work having such a worn and familiar rhythm, the highlights of his day were often the voyeuristic glimpses the mail gave – the scented letters, the small unmarked packages and the window envelopes with ‘final notice’ stamped in red. These whispers of struggle, joy and mystery momentarily distracted him from the monotony of his days. At lunchtime he secretly read the employment section of the newspaper, hunting for new dreams, but it left him feeling unqualified and inadequate.
The first hot day in 2002 – Friday 4 January – weakened Denise’s resolve as Larry’s prison warden. She was sick of him under her feet, sick of his theatrical sighing and the smell of his sweaty boyhood. She whispered her frustrations to Anita on the phone.
‘You need some adult company,’ Anita said. ‘Send your boys out and we’ll have the first film night of the year at your place.’
‘Sounds great, but Mal’s playing cards with Stan and the guys from work on Wednesday, remember?’
‘Ah yes. A sleepover at a friend’s place, then.’
‘Could work,’ Denise said, quietly excited by the idea. She hung up and thought that Mary Holland would be the person to call, but before she’d dialled the number, Jemma arrived with her older brother, Tim. They were talking with Larry in hushed tones on the doorstep.
‘I don’t know,’ she heard her son mumble. ‘I can ask.’
She pretended to be engrossed in the view of the garden from the kitchen window.
‘Mum, the Hollands are going to the beach and wanted to know if . . .’
‘Is Mrs Holland going?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then you may go. Pack yourself some lunch. Take a towel.’
‘Yessss! Thanks, Mum.’
Denise met Mary at the car and quietly arranged the sleepover for Wednesday. Mary was less than keen, Denise could tell, but she chose to ignore the tone of her voice and heard only the word she wanted to hear. Yes.
It was low, low tide at Tuber Bay with acres of hard sand and Larry couldn’t stop running. It wasn’t like being released from jail; it was like getting up out of a wheelchair. There were kids from school playing beach cricket who welcomed the extra fielders. They ran and were grilled by the sun, they swam and they dug, until they had to stop and eat. Mary had packed Larry a cheese-and-tomato sandwich. He scoffed it and shared his own tuna roll with Jemma. Salt-crusted and stretched on his back on the towel, Larry covered his eyes with his arm.
Jemma’s fingers, feather-light, tickled his armpit.
Larry flapped and giggled.
‘You’ve got hair,’ she said.
Tim slumped onto the sand beside them. ‘Got any lollies?’
‘No. I’ve got a packet of chips,’ Larry said. ‘In my backpack. Help yourself.’
The zip rasped.
‘What the . . .’ Tim squeaked.
Larry and Jemma sat up.
Tim had Larry’s Game Boy. His teeth were bared. ‘It was you!’
He unplugged the Mario Kart game and revealed a sticker Larry had never noticed with the initials TCH. Tim dropped the toy on his towel and lunged at Larry, knocking him onto his back, fingers tight around his throat.
Jemma screamed. She tore at her brother’s arm.
‘Where’s my Advance?’ Tim shouted. ‘Where’s my Game Boy Advance?’
A frenzied barrage of swearing followed. Larry’s face reddened. He couldn’t breathe.
It was Mary who intervened. She wrestled her son to the ground and planted a knee in his back to hold him there. Her moves were swift and practised.
Jemma sat Larry up. ‘You okay?’
Larry rubbed his neck and breathed deep.
‘What’s all this about?’ Mary asked.
‘He stole my stuff!’ Tim wailed into the sand.
Mary looked straight at Larry. ‘Did you?’
He shook his head. ‘Clinton . . . Clinton gave it to me.’
Christopher Holland arrived at the Rainbows’ house that afternoon, when Mal was three beers down.
They shook hands – tight – and Mal invited the bearded man inside. He offered a beer and Denise suggested a cup of tea but Christopher wasn’t interested.
‘Somehow,’ he rumbled, ‘your son ended up with my son’s Game Boy.’
‘Laaaaarry,’ Mal called Larry had been waiting in the hall and came straight in.
‘Clinton gave me the Game Boy on Christmas Day. He had a Game Boy Advance. He told me he got it for Christmas.’
‘What colour?’
‘The Advance is black.’
Christopher nodded once. ‘He lives across the road?’
Mal led him to the door and pointed out Clinton’s house. Larry watched him leave from his bedroom window and couldn’t drag his eyes away as the big man lumbered across the road and up the front steps. He rapped on their screen door. The sound of his knuckles on the wood echoed along the street. Larry stared but there was no violent flurry, no blood. No fireworks. For a moment he thought that the door hadn’t been answered, then he heard voices. When Mr Holland crossed the road again, there was a purposefulness in his stride that unsettled Larry, even at a distance. He walked past his car and banged on the Rainbows’ door again.
‘How’d you go?’ Mal asked, all synthetic cheer.
‘The mother said Larry had them both. Do you mind if we have a look in his room?’
Mal didn’t hesitate.
Larry, listening from his room, climbed onto his bunk, his stomach locked with fear. They were coming. He drew the co
vers over his head then threw them off again. He didn’t need to hide. There was nothing in his room that could get him into trouble. Nothing. He padded to the floor and met them at the threshold.
‘I haven’t got it,’ Larry said.
Mal’s eyes were uncertain. ‘Sit there,’ he commanded.
Larry sat on his hands on the desk chair as every drawer and cupboard was opened and inspected.
Christopher watched to begin with, but it was he who lifted the mattress on the bunk. It was he who took the bottom drawer right out and inspected underneath. At one level, Larry wanted them to look. He wanted them to find nothing and prove him innocent. On another level he felt betrayed. Would his mother and father let that hairy monster check under their mattress?
He climbed onto his bunk again when the men left and was still there when his father called him for dinner. He didn’t move.
‘Larry!’ Mal barked. He was standing in the doorway. ‘Dinner’s ready. Did you hear me?’
‘Yes,’ Larry said through his teeth.
Mal saw the tension in his limbs, heard his breath all stuttery in his nose.
‘Larry?’
He sat up abruptly and jumped off his bunk, landing on his feet.
Mal caught his shoulder. ‘What is it?’
With an unexpected show of strength, Larry tore free and ran along the hall.
‘Larry?’
He threw the front door open and sprinted down the driveway.
‘Larry!’ Mal shouted. ‘Stop right there.’
There was rage in his voice. He sounded like somebody else.
Larry froze and looked back, an expression of shattered faith in his eyes. ‘You didn’t believe me,’ he yelled.
Larry didn’t come home for a long time. He ran along the foreshore and back, he ran to the end of the jetty and back, watching his shadow grow and shrink under the streetlights, and finally he ran past the Hollands’ house. There were lights on, and the Toyota was in the driveway, but Larry didn’t stop, just shook his head and ran home again. His limbs ached and the sweat trickled behind his ear as he climbed the stairs, but the angry fizzing in his veins had gone.
His father met him at the door, didn’t say a word, just hugged him and kissed his salty brow. The stubble on his father’s chin felt like sandpaper on his forehead. He fought the desire to shove him off.
Denise looked on from the kitchen. ‘Dinner’s in the oven. You’ve got time for a shower.’
They ate their dry homemade fish and chips in relative silence, only broken by Mal’s outrage about John Geoghan – the American priest who was being tried for molesting more than a hundred children; in itself nothing new, but the church had tried to cover it up and been caught out – and the clatter of the knife he dropped in his enthusiasm to pass Larry the sauce. John Geoghan was guilty. Mal Rainbow was guilty.
Later, Larry’s mother pecked his cheek and wished him goodnight. His father took his hand, climbed to the second rung of the ladder and hugged his head.
‘Sorry about this afternoon,’ he said.
‘That’s okay,’ Larry said, automatically. ‘It wasn’t such a big deal. I’m sorry I made it into . . .’
‘It was a big deal,’ Mal interrupted. ‘I should have been on your side. I believe you. I do.’
Larry smiled. Mal might have been guilty of weakness, but he wouldn’t be going to jail for insensitivity.
SECRETS
THE FALLOUT FROM the stolen Game Boy continued. On Wednesday, Denise phoned Mary Holland to confirm it was okay for Larry to stay over.
‘I’m sorry, Denise, but it’s just not going to work.’
‘But . . . we agreed.’
‘Yes,’ Mary said. ‘Something’s come up. It’s not going to work. Sorry. I have to go.’
The phone landed heavily in its cradle. Fine, Denise thought, just don’t ask any favours of me. Then she shook her head; Mary never asked favours.
Denise realised she was the closest thing to a friend Mary Holland had.
Her smugness vanished in another flash of insight: friends weren’t thick on the ground in her own life, either.
She phoned next door but there was no answer.
She phoned Anita at work.
‘I might have to cancel tonight,’ she said.
‘No! Why? Are you sick?’
‘No, I haven’t got anyone to look after Larry. Vince isn’t home and the sleepover has . . . fallen through.’
‘Dear, dear. We can’t let that get in the way of a movie fix. Larry will be fine; he can watch the movie with us. He’ll love it.’
That’s not the point, Denise thought. This is time for me. Larry isn’t invited. ‘I . . . I’m not sure he’s ready for . . .’
‘Rubbish,’ Anita snapped. ‘If he becomes a problem, he’ll be my problem, okay? Don’t worry about it.’
Larry’s first taste of international cinema was Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Wedged on the couch between his mother and Anita Ward and surrounded by an eclectic mix of quietly spoken film buffs, he read the sub-titles until he forgot he was reading. He was swept up in the movie’s spell and their lounge disappeared. He was skipping – half-bird, half-cat – across the rooftops and bamboo forests of old China. He was on the edge of the couch, fighting with swords and poisoned darts and trying so hard to hide his tears, but there wasn’t a dry eye in the house. When the credits rolled, he joined the collective sigh and round of quiet lounge-room applause.
Anita laughed kindly as he dried his eyes. ‘You like?’
‘It was amazing. Amazing.’
He drank sweet tea and felt very adult as they dissected the film, but really he was lost in his own world. Guillermo would love that film. Jemma would love that film. A love story with a broken heart – that was a sadness he realised he knew. He was crying noiseless sobs in the kitchen, like his mother after the news.
‘You okay, Larry?’ Denise asked. His sadness echoed sweetly inside her – she was pleased he felt for the world the way she did.
‘Of course,’ Larry chirped. He wiped his face. ‘Good movie, that’s all.’
The sadness faded before he went to bed that night, but the love story haunted him for days. He wondered aloud to Gilligan if he was in love with Jemma, and if he could tell her that. If he was and he could tell her, what would Guillermo think when he found out? If Jemma had to choose, where would her heart lead her? In a way, he hoped she’d choose Guillermo. The sadness he felt at the thought of being second choice was as comfortable as his weathered running shoes. Besides, the idea of kissing Jemma made him feel peculiar. He was buoyed by the notion that his parents were probably in love and they never kissed. Never.
On the Saturday after George W. Bush declared Iran, Iraq and North Korea an ‘axis of evil’, Mal was ferreting in the shed for a tap washer when he discovered a black Game Boy Advance tucked behind a cardboard box full of plumbing bits. It was glossy and nearly new.
He made sure nobody saw him from the kitchen window as he buried it beneath the bags of kitchen rubbish in the wheelie bin. When Thursday came around, the garbage truck would take it away, and hopefully the heavy mess in his heart would go with it.
He blamed himself. If he were a better father, a better hunter-gatherer, a better provider, then his son would not go wanting. He wouldn’t have to lie and steal to acquire the things that made him happy. But even then, Mal knew these were feeble thoughts. They were psychobabble beside the deep, cold understanding that Larry had stared him in the face and lied like a crim.
A GENTLE
MAN
THE FOLLOWING MONDAY saw Larry dressed and ready for school an hour before it officially started. It was his last year of primary school. Denise watched him jog out the gate and listened to his feet slapping on the concrete long after he’d disappeared. She sighed as she closed the door, content to have the house to herself again.
Vince arrived mid-morning. He had a signature rum-papa-pum-pum knock and Denise heard it from the kitchen.
She had a smile on her face before she’d opened the door. ‘Good morning!’
‘Top of the morning to you, neighbour.’
He handed her a plastic shopping bag. ‘Apricots,’ he said. ‘Muriel doesn’t eat them and I’ve bottled and jammed as many as our pantry can hold.’
‘Thanks.’
Vince shifted his feet.
‘Got time for a cup of tea?’ Denise asked.
‘If it’s not too much of a bother.’
She pushed the door wide with her foot, and as Vince stepped through she reached up and kissed his cheek.
Vince blushed. He coughed into his hand.
‘Thanks,’ Denise said. ‘Thanks for the apricots. My boys will love those.’
‘It was nothing. Couldn’t see them go to waste.’
The conversation continued in the kitchen – a little awkward and inconsequential – as Denise fussed tea into cups.
It had felt good to kiss him, she realised. It was just a peck, after all. Besides Anita, he was her best friend. She hadn’t meant to embarrass him, and there was nothing hidden in the gesture.
Vince didn’t really relax until they’d taken their tea to the shaded table in the back yard. Betsy barked at the fence and he growled at her. Gilligan wandered over, tail fanning. Vince stroked the dog’s head and Denise could feel the tenderness of his touch from across the table. Her gentleman neighbour was exactly that – a gentle man.
‘What’s Muriel up to today?’
‘Gone into the city to meet up with her sister.’
Denise nodded. ‘You seem more relaxed when she’s not around.’
Vince straightened, pursed his lips then sighed.
There was an uneasy silence. Vince stared at his cup. ‘You’re more relaxed when your boys are elsewhere, too,’ he said, and rubbed his cheek.
It was true, of course, but it still knocked Denise off balance for a moment, and she held her breath.
‘Sorry,’ Vince eventually said. ‘I love my wife dearly but she can be hell to live with at times.’
Denise exhaled.
‘Seems like the older she gets, the harder she gets. It’s been years since I’ve heard her laugh.’