No. Sammy-K did burn them.
He burned them?
A long time ago Sammy-K was angered so he did pour them with petrol and they burned.
Sorry, Joyous, but this Sammy-K dude sounds like a total pig. You should report –
Mamma did be saying he was mainly beneficial.
Burning your photos is not beneficial.
Joyous does remember, he did say, Sorry-hun, to Mamma. Sorry-hun, I lost control. That was what he said.
I should hope so! What a loser! I mean, to burn … anyway. Let’s talk about nice things. Does your mum work?
Yes. Mamma does be growing flowers.
Oh right. In a nursery?
No. Mamma does be growing flowers at home.
And sells them? Like, at a stall?
No. She does be growing them in window-boxes then puts them in our rooms. My room and on the table of the kitchen and on the TV and her room and more flowers being everywhere now since the accident.
And that’s her – work?
Yes. And the cooking of meals and picking up of the poos which Joyous does try to be helping with.
Fair enough. My mother has a different kind of job. She’s an avoider, the best in the business. Avoids me, avoids what’s happened, avoids everything – except work. She runs an employment agency.
Joyous is not –
Employment agency. It’s a place where people go to get help with finding a job. Hey, maybe you could go there. I could –
Joyous is already be having a job.
What, here?
Mm.
But this is a –
Joyous is liking it here in Mister Santorini’s good place. It is safely for me. No big noises, no confusions, no hard pieces and mostly nice people, except for the Crew-cut Kid. But he doesn’t mean it.
Great name, though. What does he do that he doesn’t mean?
Sometimes the Crew-cut Kid gets angered and then he does do some pushy-shove but afterwards he is a sorry guy which is good because it helps to work things around a little.
So whatever he does, it’s okay as long as he apologises? Is that it?
That is being it.
And you’re happy with this? You’re happy here? The pin-cushions and that bloody classical music and the wooden stuff on Thursdays with Santorini?
Sometimes Saturdays. Joyous is being happy.
You do this every day then go home to your flowery rooms and the doggy-doo on the lawn and everything’s fine?
Yes, Moonbeam. Except the doggy-doo is stinkity on the carpet because of no lawn inside of our apartment.
On the carpet! Yuck! That’s revolting!
But Sasha is being a good dog, very bounciful.
I’ll take your word for it. Joyous, I wish you could meet my parents. Particularly my mother.
That would be okay if Mister Santorini did be agreeing.
I mean, they could both learn heaps from you. Absolute shit-loads. Starting with working things around a little.
Moonbeam –
And dealing with shit like stopping all the avoiding and actually talking to each other. Jesus, it drives me insane –
Moonbeam –
Joyous? Sorry, I –
Moonbeam, you sweared.
Oh. Did I? I did, too.
Two times plus the J-word. The blaspheme one.
Sorry. I forgot. Okay, Joy-ous?
Okay, Moon-beam.
Working it around a little?
Yes indeedy-do. Would Moonbeam be liking of another lemony lollipopsicle?
Thank you, Joyous. Thank you.
ASHLEIGH
One thing that Bracks said to me that did kinda stick was this, Sort out the past if you want to improve the future. I don’t think she meant changing the past – you can’t do that, unless you happen to have a spare time-machine floating around – but changing your attitude to the past. Dealing better with whatever has happened, after it’s happened. I’ve been thinking about that and, well, she’s right. Every event can be tracked back in some way, and until we know that tracking, or at least try to know it, then nothing will change, not really.
It reminds me of what Miss Qureshi said in English when we were talking about the book To Kill a Mockingbird. She said, You can’t understand why the characters do what they do unless you fill in their lives. The back-story, she called it, then she drew this huge line on the board with marker-points on it – birth, childhood incident one, childhood incident two, adult incident one, and so on. Made sense, even to idiots like Kyle Leggett. Then we did this group poster activity where we imagined pasts for Bob Ewell and Calpurnia and Atticus with his dead wife. It was pretty cool because everyone (including Kyle) had different ideas about what had happened so we had heaps of arguments and Miss Qureshi sat back like the cat that got the cream or caught the bird, whatever that old saying is.
So, back-story. Mum was twenty-one when I was born, Dad was twenty-four. They were already engaged but Mum got pregnant so they got married a bit earlier than expected, then I came along. Perfect child apparently – slept well, fed well, goo-ed and gaa-ed, hardly ever cried. Saving it all up for later, I suppose.
For a long time it was just me, and then, a bit over a year ago, Mum came into my bedroom and said that she was going to have a baby. I’ll never forget that day. It was really gloomy outside, rainy and windy, cold, but Mum had this look like, I am the sunlight. She was radiant. Sounds corny but it was true. She let me touch her tummy and I could actually feel the extra warmth coming out of her.
I had just turned fourteen and I remember thinking, hope it’s a little boy because I’d love a baby brother. I could hold him and take him for walks, dress him up, stuff like that. I didn’t care that there was going to be such a difference in age between us. We were all so excited. Every weekend since they invented the game Dad has watched the footy on TV but for weeks after Mum’s announcement he’d stare at whatever was happening and you could tell he wasn’t really seeing it. Instead he was dreaming of the new baby which made his eyes go glossy.
We were happy, we really were. I think, when you’ve known that kind of happiness, that level of anticipation, it’s even harder to see it destroyed.
I still don’t know the sequence. Kinda random, like cloud-bursts. Everything was good for a few months, home was calm and we were like people in a waiting-room, flipping magazines, whispering our days away – then Mum had a couple of episodes (Dad’s word) and there was bleeding, heaps of it (I saw the sheets in the washing-machine) and night-time visits to the hospital, scans, worried faces, silences. Eventually Dad told me my baby brother had died inside Mum and she would have to give birth to him before they had a funeral. A stillborn. They called him Jamie, after Dad’s father who got hurt in the war in Vietnam then passed away in a home. I never knew him either.
The rest happened because it had to happen. It was unstoppable. Mum and Dad away for a few days in hospital, me with Uncle Paul and his new wife before this tiny white coffin at the funeral and my parents returned as ghosts. They were pale and shrunken, as if all the blood and water inside had been drained. There was nothing left but skin draped over their skeletons like dust-cloths on chairs. It was horrible.
Looking back, my naïve little-kid brain thought that the funeral would mark the end, that Jamie would be buried and we’d be sad but we’d go back to being our old family again. But it never happened. Instead there was this gradual taking-away. A few months ago I saw this story in the newspaper about beach erosion, with before-and-after photos. The after shot showed how the beach was a different shape, hardly any sand, huge holes as if a giant had munched them. I remember thinking, that’s us. That’s our family. Eroded and full of holes, re-shaped into – nothing.
Mum threw herself into work. She’d been part-time, now she was full-time plus some, home late, drinking wine, not caring. Dad went the other way, shuffled around, stopped talking. He started eating heaps so of course he put on weight and became what he is today, a big old pillow
but too lumpy and musty and distant to hug. He took leave from his job and he’s never been back. I’m sure the leave must have run out. He’s probably unemployed. He was in sales – hardware – although he’s always wanted to be a musician. He’s got this golden saxophone that he used to play on Sundays before the footy. I’d hear it sounding through the walls like happy elephants or cows, so I’d go in and ask, Why don’t you play in a band? And he’d say, Gotta pay the bills, sweetpea. On Monday morning he’d be back in hardware, talking up taps and toilets. He was never that successful but at least he was there. He was doing something and being someone. Whereas now, like I said … nothing.
Two alternatives – they stay mute or they argue. Mum will say, Get a grip, and Dad will answer, Why, what’s the point? And I’ll think, It’s us, doofus, the point is us.
So Mum works and Dad sits in a room if it’s raining or messes about outside with a bunch of never-to-be-finished projects if it’s not. And me? At first I stayed in my bedroom, playing music, reading Harry Potter, playing games on the computer, waiting for it to end. When it didn’t, I left my bedroom, left the house, came back as little as possible. I’d go to Kadie’s place until her mum got sick of me, then I’d go to Tara’s or Sog’s, anyone’s, even Patricia Handley’s once, that’s how desperate I was. Or I’d just walk around, because at least by walking I was getting somewhere different, and not at home with its left-off lights and silences that hung like velvet curtains and dust gathering on all the shiny surfaces. Because it’s not a home anymore, it’s just a house, with rooms that sound old and cold, and I crave more than these grey strangers who come and go and sleep in separate spaces.
There were other things, too. I think Mum might’ve had an affair because I heard Dad ask, Who? And Mum said, Pete, from work. But there was nothing more, no anger, nothing. I snuck past the door for a look – they were in the kitchen – and he was sitting there, slumped and soft-looking, hands on his knees. She was waiting for the kettle to boil. They were so – still. It was scary. When I asked her about it she told me to mind my own business. We had this huge fight and, typically, she turned everything around to being about school. She said, I’ll look after the fees, Missy, you look after the results, that’s all you need to worry about. I thought, Eff-you, bitch. And that’s when the school stuff started, leading to That Night In The Library and all those things that Bracks lectures me about, cries about, whatever. The things that ended up taking me to the workshop and Room 12 with ol’ Joyous.
Joy-ous. He’s this huge bloke, big as a truck, with hair the colour of cornflakes and boggley eyes and hands that don’t always do what he wants them to do. He’s got a rosy-coloured mouth that kinda falls off his face when he talks in that funny way that he has. He makes pin-cushions all day, sounds like he has a totally screwy life at home, carries a bag of lollipops and sits placidly like a walrus on a beach. Strange then, for someone like him, someone so separated from the real world, to seem so gentle, seem so wise.
MARGARET
Joyous, My Special
More than once you have probably wondered why I decided to allow Sammy-K into our lives five years after the death of your dadda who was such a different man. It’s a fair question and one that I am often struggling to answer because I don’t always know myself. What I mean is, it’s hard to recall exactly how we came to be together, there’s just a feeling of the time or a set of moments that added up to make a whole.
After Dadda’s accident I was very lost, very lonely, feeling very empty. I didn’t go out with anyone much, it was just you and me on the Kinsville farm getting to know each other through sharing. You were a comfort to me and the only way I could defeat my sadness was to remember Thomas Bowen through you, you being the same tallness and with eyes deep and strong and snow hair and lovely smile that showed your inner beam reminding me of him. I suppose you and me we were like two hermits, or those ducks waddling along at their own pace, but nevertheless it was simple and good although I didn’t know it, just working the vegetables and keeping the animals happy like our extra family members and being in our own space, which I still miss being stuck here in the city in this apartment but that’s just how it is.
Then after about five years of same-old day-in-day-out, a good life but quiet for me, then Sammy-K came calling. He was selling property at the time, mainly land, and said he could get a good price for the farm if I was interested in selling because five-acre blocks by the river were becoming a precious rarity and much sought-after by people looking for a change in their lives as well as for development. He was different looking then too, healthier and more muscled, tanned like a saddle and confident with it. But I suppose we were both different, me much thinner and still good-looking in my own kind of way. Least that’s what he said over and over. He was a real flatterer in those early days, turning my head by calling me My Darling and even My Exotic, like these were my names, never Margaret or Marg, but My Darling or My Exotic. Anyway it wasn’t just flattering and looks so much, what he had, Joyous, was a sense of going somewhere, going some place and that’s what first attracted me, especially since I had been so much alone for five years, apart from you, of course, My Special. You need to know I wasn’t trying hard looking for another man, because I knew that no man could ever replace the wonderfulness of Thomas Bowen, but Sammy-K had direction which I did not and that’s what got him over the doormat in the first place.
Once over he was very persistent, though not in a way that I found to be wrongful. I think at that time I was weakened by not having any sort of seeable future and worrying about you growing up in the style that you were, without a daddy or an understanding of anything else but the farm and me. So even though I knew Sammy-K was from time to time a bit harsh and sarcastic in his dealings with you and also with me I sort of pushed that backwards in my mind and tried to think of the good bits, like a sense of going somewhere. So you see, I was doing what Thomas Bowen always said, working things around a little and for a while it was okay and trusting and that trust made it easy for Sammy-K to persuade me to leave Kinsville and go to the city with him, a place filled with opportunity he said which was all he ever wanted. We’ll be rich, he said, a palace for My Darling, My Exotic. So we were married in the registry office quick as a flash and off we went.
You have to know that I have never been especially comfortable here but it’s always been my nature to make the best of what we have, no point in complaints now, just get on with it. When we first arrived the apartment was no palace but a mess and so gloomy but I fixed it as best I could and I grew flowers which was a hobby and selling them in those days gave me some extra bits and pieces. I was sure that Sammy-K would find a job, being in property as he was, and he used to go out looking every day. At least that’s what I thought until the smell and appearance of him helped me work out he was out drinking down the road at the Queens Head or Royal. I had some money from the sale of the farm and I had lent most of it to Sammy-K to set up business in property, or so I thought. I guess I was naive because he wasn’t doing that, not at all. After a year or two the idea of a job just went away in preference to the fortnightly dole money and we never talked any more about business in property because it made him angry and that was never good, Sammy-K being angry. The city was a hard place, a drain that seemed to pull away his sense of going somewhere and he sort of came into greyness and became less than what he once was. When that happened the anger was quicker to rise and I suppose it was to do with feeling a lesser amount of worthwhileness. But I couldn’t know these things when he first crossed the doormat.
I know it was often hard for my precious Joyous because he wasn’t always beneficial to you but Sammy-K truly was a decent if somewhat misled man. In those earlier days he would say sarcastic things that he shouldn’t have been saying and, yes, he raised his hand in anger on occasions and that was not good either. You have to believe me that until the accident I always tried my very hardest to keep Sammy-K away from you. Please remember too, that he loved me,
he really did, I heard it in his voice calling for My Darling, My Exotic. Besides which, Joyous, Mamma was lonely without Thomas Bowen and past finding anyone else and for all his faults Sammy-K stuck by Mamma through thick and thin, for better or worse. I especially know you didn’t like it when back then he raised his hand in anger at Mamma because you hid your ears and eyes but please understand, Joyous, that on some occasions it was my fault, like leaving those photos of Thomas Bowen lying around, which was not being in fairness to Sammy-K.
That is all there is to say this time. We are here now just as we have been for many years and despite what recently came to pass I believe that by and large it’s been good and we’ve done our best which is all you can ask of any body or soul. That is what I am proudest of with you, My Special, the way you do your best and are such a fine and decent, good-hearted man and with the same inner beam as your dadda Thomas Bowen. You are both forever in my heart.
With all of my love, Mamma
JOYOUS
Go back, you say, mister, go back to the after-the-farm. Joyous has lots of pictures in his noggin to be recalling. Like first I did come into the city in the seat of Sammy-K’s pride-and-joy, his car with the flaring silver sides and fresh paint coloured maroon, plastic on the seat so I didn’t cause a wet mark or vomit problem with coloured jellybeans. The city was big and smoky and smelling of bins, not like the farming house, and Joyous had never seen so much buildings before, grey tall ones and high skinny ones and ones with windows like a page of stamps from Mamma’s honkingly good collection now lost and gone. And I do recall the cars too, all around swishing and whizzing in lines then the traffic lights. Joyous had never been seeing traffic lights before either so I was wanting to stay and watch the changes from green orange red green orange red and getting out of the pride-and-joy to press the buttons on the posts to make it happen with fastness but Sammy-K did be saying, Shut the lunatic up, Mags, and kept steering along the streets past the shops and the broken-down Castrol service station now selling vegies and once-upon-a-time Mamma’s flowers towards the place that did become our home of so many years in the block three-storeys high.
Joyous and Moonbeam Page 3