Game Theory

by Barry Jonsberg

  I laughed so hard I nearly got my own nasal discharge.

  ‘I love you, Jamie,’ she said as I went to close the door.

  ‘Course you do,’ I said. ‘You might be dumb but you’re not insane.’

  CHAPTER 2

  Summerlee, Jamie and Phoebe. Maybe it was a private joke between my parents. Maybe they just liked names that ended in the -ee sound. Whatever the reason, it sucked but there’s nothing you can do about it.

  Phoebe loves Mum and Dad. I tolerate them. Summerlee despises them. Does it always work that way? Someone once said that you start by loving your parents, then you judge them, and rarely, if ever, do you forgive them. It’s clever enough to be true. But it’s also sad. I don’t want Phoebe to grow up and away from them. Up and away from me, too, I guess. Not because of Mum and Dad’s feelings or even mine, but because there’s something pure and innocent in her love. It doesn’t make conditions and it doesn’t expect disappointments. At some point we grow into that and I don’t know why.

  I am a mathematician and I am not comfortable with stories. I’m at a loss for how to tell this tale because words are not what I’m best at. And you have to use so many of them just to express a simple truth. Maths isn’t like that. Take E=mc2, the most famous equation in the world. Five symbols, but they tell a story of the universe and the laws that govern it that would take – have taken – volumes and volumes of writing just to scratch its surface. Energy, mass, the speed of light and the relationship between them. It is the story of everything. In five symbols. How concise, how beautiful, is that?

  There are no symbols to tell Summerlee’s story, so I’ll have to make do with the clunkiness of words. She is my other sister, eighteen years old. She used to be a stunner, when she was between the ages of about thirteen and sixteen, but in the last couple of years that’s changed. She’s dyed her hair, for example. It used to be dark and when it caught the sun it would explode with flashes and gleams. Now it is a dull blonde, leached of life. Like straw. Her eyes are like that, too. Not blonde, obviously, but a pale blue that seems to get paler as time passes. Sometimes I think she’s being dissolved as a person – all that vibrancy, personality and joy in life has been exposed to some kind of element that’s stripped everything away until all that is left is hard, yet brittle. Pale. It is like watching something baking in the sun and dying by degrees.

  I can’t recall when she changed. It appears a sudden transformation in my memory, but I guess it must have been gradual. I do remember one incident that made me realise the sister I knew was somehow lost. She was in Year Ten, about fifteen. I was in Year Eight at the same school. It was breakfast time and I was chowing down on a bowl of cereal, while Mum was getting Phoebe ready for kindy. It was a routine. Dad had normally gone off to work by then. He sorts out people’s mortgages which, apparently, involves long hours at an office desk. So Mum was left with three kids to feed, clothe, make presentable and then take to their respective educational institutions. I guess it was a ritual played out across the entire nation. And I also suppose it was a stressful time for Mum. But I was in Year Eight, when other people’s stresses, particularly your parents’, fly way below your radar.

  Phoebe was putting things into her little school bag – God knows what you need for kindy, but she was taking it all very seriously. I had my face in the cereal bowl. Mum was rushing around, as normal.

  ‘Where’s your sister?’ she asked me. I shrugged. Not my responsibility.

  ‘Still in bed, probably,’ I said.

  ‘God damn it,’ she muttered. ‘Give her a yell, will you?’

  ‘I’m eating breakfast,’ I pointed out. I think I even gestured towards my cereal bowl as if presenting incontrovertible evidence. Mum stopped rushing about for a second and looked at me, balancing decisions. Go off at me and create further conflict? Too hard; take the line of least resistance. ‘Watch the toast then, Jamie. Will you do that for me?’

  ‘Sure.’ Watching didn’t expend much energy.

  Mum ran to the foot of the stairs and bellowed up them.

  ‘Summerlee! Out of bed. Now. You are going to be late.’

  Mum reappeared just as the toast pinged up, which was fine by me. One job less. I returned to my cereal while Mum started spreading marg. She did it with practised efficiency. I took a leisurely spoonful of cornflakes. Phoebe unpacked her bag and started re-packing it. She’d always been fussy, basically as soon as she got out of the womb. Everything had to be just so. I finished breakfast and stuck my bowl into the sink. Mum had tried to get me to wash up as soon as I was done, but I skirted the chore whenever possible.

  Mum made sandwiches for all of us. She had to do different batches because we all had different fads. Phoebe was into Vegemite, providing it was the thinnest smear. Sometimes it was difficult to tell there was any on the bread. Waving the pot above the sandwich was probably the way to go. Let a few molecules drift down. I liked cheese and tomato. Well, I told Mum I liked cheese and tomato, but I’d normally dump the sandwich into a bin at school and buy myself a hot dog from the canteen whenever I could afford it. I feel guilty about that now. I didn’t then. Summerlee had to have something with meat, preferably salami. Mum sliced, filled and cling-wrapped.

  She placed the food into three separate lunch boxes, added a muesli bar each and an apple. I always dumped the apple. Then she rushed back to the stairs.

  ‘Summerlee, for God’s sake. We are leaving in ten minutes. Get down here now!’

  There was some kind of muffled response from upstairs, followed by considerable thumping and the sound of glass breaking.

  ‘Summerlee!’ Mum yelled.

  What happened next was not pretty. In fact, it was one of the ugliest things I’ve ever witnessed, and I have witnessed a few. The thumping sound increased, resolved itself into a girl coming down the stairs. Forcefully coming down the stairs. Phoebe stopped packing her bag. I stopped doing whatever I was doing – probably nothing at all. We watched the door to the kitchen. Some kind of energy was approaching. I could feel it on my skin and the sensation was hypnotic.

  At some point around the age of thirteen, Summerlee discovered the power of the F-word. In that she was not alone. Where she differed from the rest of us was in understanding that sanctions against the word were essentially worthless. Or rather, most of us knew that swearing was antisocial, that it upset people and was therefore best limited to your mates. I swore constantly around my friends. It was a badge of courage, a ticket into an exclusive club, some kind of passport to adulthood I was experimenting with. But I would never have dreamed of using it to a teacher, for example. Or my parents. Not because of any physical punishment. What could they do to you? But because I wanted to protect their sensibilities, as well as their good opinion of me, which was, still is, important. Summerlee didn’t recognise that limit on her behaviour. She simply didn’t care. So when she appeared at the kitchen door, hair mussed up, in a stupid nightdress pretending to be lingerie, she was something elemental. There was an aura of hostility surrounding her.

  ‘I am fucking sick,’ she screamed. ‘Why don’t you fucking leave me alone?’

  Mum had heard the swearing before. She didn’t like it, but nothing she’d said or done had made the slightest difference. Dad simply ignored it, like he ignored most things that might lead to conflict. Mortgages didn’t shout and he was comfortable with that. Now Mum tried to ignore the swearing as well, as if, in doing so, it would go away on its own. As a tactic, it was doomed.

  ‘You are not sick, Summerlee,’ she replied. ‘And you are going to school.’

  One of the reasons I stopped swearing so much around my mates was that after a while it became boring. Worse, it seemed not so much an imitation of adulthood as a permanent emblem of childhood. So I won’t record exactly what Summerlee said next, because the language would become tiresome. Suffice it to say she did not utter one sentence, often not one phrase, that didn’t contain an expletive. She told Mum that school was a waste of time, that s
he wasn’t going. She also informed my mother that those times when she had gone to the front gates, she’d skipped off anyway. The curriculum was dumb, pointless and had nothing to do with the real world. Who needs to know about Australian history or stupid short stories or algebra? The teachers were all losers. The school itself sucked. She was leaving and there was nothing anyone could do about it. No one could force her to stay.

  I’m conscious that this listing of points does not sound, in itself, dramatic. I’d made many of them myself over the years. But it was the manner in which she made them. Even without the swearing, there was no mistaking the venom of her remarks, like she was tapping into a vast reservoir of bile. And, once tapped, there was no stemming the source. It flowed from her, an incoherent outpouring of hatred. It battered against us.

  Phoebe left the room after a minute. I saw tears in her eyes. Like Dad, she hated conflict and ran from it whenever possible. I should have done the same, but I was paralysed. Only later did I think that standing there and listening to Summerlee’s rant was a further diminishment of my mother, that it must have been painful for her to know her son had witnessed her impotence in all its heartbreaking detail. But a train wreck is difficult to walk away from. And this was a train wreck.

  When Summer had spent her rage, she stormed back up the stairs. I watched Mum in the aftermath of the tempest. She hadn’t been given the chance to say a word. She wiped her brow and turned back to the chopping board. Took Summerlee’s lunch box and put it in the fridge. I swear it was the saddest thing I ever saw her do. Then she hustled me and Phoebe into the car. She drove in silence to kindy, ushered Phoebe through the door, kissed her goodbye. Then it was off to my school. She knew better than to kiss me, so she waved through the car window as I joined my mates in the yard. I waved back, in that self-conscious way that characterises a Year Eight student, before I turned away from her. One of the kids wanted to show me something, though I’ve no idea now what it was. I forgot about Mum, didn’t see her drive off to whatever world she inhabited. I had my own world and it demanded all my attention.

  Looking back now, I know what I should have done. I should have talked, I should have put my arm around her, told her I loved her and that everything would be okay. Even if it wasn’t going to be okay. Mum and Dad had been fine with childhood. They did all the right things, read us stories at bedtime, mopped our brows when we got sick, were fiercely protective and wrapped us in unconditional love. The problems arrived with adolescence, when their sweet children underwent a metamorphosis and emerged as strangers. And one of those strangers was hateful. The other was simply distant. Dad retreated, bunkered down at work. Mum was confused, hurt and powerless. I might have helped her. I didn’t.

  Summerlee never went back to school, not properly. She turned up to some classes in a fitful way, got into trouble because of her attitude, was suspended on numerous occasions. This struck me as monumentally stupid since her attendance was running at about twenty per cent anyway, so it obviously wasn’t a punishment. Eventually, she got a job at a local supermarket, stacking shelves. Naturally, she hated it and thought it beneath her. Her immediate boss, it transpired, was a moron.

  Then she met Spider and her troubles really started.

  CHAPTER 3

  Here’s the thing.

  Picking up highlights, or lowlights, of Summerlee’s behaviour tells a story, but it doesn’t tell the whole story. Three or four years out of eighteen cannot be truly representative of who she is. You see, beneath the facial piercing, the one visible tattoo, the dyed hair and the uncompromising make-up, there is a kernel of the kid she was and the adult she can still be. She is all style, Summerlee, but the style is something she occasionally hides behind; a mask, not always worn convincingly.

  So here’s another story, this time only six months back, and maybe it will redress a balance.

  Phoebe was involved in a dance performance at primary school. It was part of a broader show that the school was putting on to mark their twenty-fifth anniversary. Parents and local dignitaries were invited one Friday afternoon for drinks, nibbles and a demonstration of the school’s talent. It was a big deal, and Phoebe was heavily into big deals. She was almost sick with anticipation. Every time we sat down to dinner we were regaled with stories about rehearsals, what the teacher had said about the routine, the mistakes that the troupe were desperately trying to correct. Beneath all the nervous chatter was a sense of terror at the ordeal ahead. Phoebe did not want to screw up, but was terrified she would. So she did what she always did when she was nervous. She worked and worked and worked. It was her belief that disasters could be averted, provided you expended enough sweat.

  I used to believe that myself. I know better now.

  Part of Phoebe’s frantic determination to avoid crashing and burning involved constant private rehearsal, normally in our front room after dinner and after she had finished her homework. Sometimes I would watch and offer the occasional murmur of praise. But you can’t fool some kids and you could never fool Phoebe. She understood that what I was offering was emotional support, but she wanted more than that. She needed help.

  Summerlee gave it to her.

  She spent hours watching Phoebe, and she didn’t just tell her she was good when she wasn’t. I’d do that all the time, particularly since, even to my inexpert eye, Phoebe wasn’t any good. She had no sense of timing, for one thing. She would put the music on – Phoebe had got Mum to buy the dance music the school would be using – and then she would go through the routine, time after time. I tried telling her that she needed the other kids there, that doing it by yourself wasn’t ideal because she couldn’t follow leads. Phoebe understood and acknowledged the point, but it was herself she was most concerned about. She worried she would let the rest of the troupe down and any work she could do in advance would help avoid that embarrassment. I couldn’t see the plan working. Phoebe didn’t get any better, despite her best efforts. I’ve got two left feet myself, so I understood. If you’re just naturally shit at something, no amount of practice will make you significantly better. Phoebe tried to force her body to make the right moves, rather than relying upon a natural timing she simply didn’t possess. When all was said and done, Phoebe was just crap at dancing.

  ‘You’re not doing that side shuffle properly,’ said Summerlee. ‘You need to take two steps, like this.’ She showed her. Summer did have natural rhythm. ‘See? Go with the beat. At the moment, you are off the beat. Listen to the music, mouse, and let your body react to it.’

  Phoebe tried again. I couldn’t see any improvement, but Summer nodded.

  ‘Yeah, better,’ she said. ‘Do it one more time and remember your arms. You’re concentrating so much upon what your feet are doing, you’re forgetting everything else.’

  I left them to it. To be honest I wasn’t that interested and I felt like a fifth wheel, anyway. But they didn’t give up. When I came down from my bedroom an hour and a half later, I heard them through the door. Summer was saying, ‘Don’t forget your arms, mouse. Think about your arms and listen to the music . . .’ She showed patience to her sister that had never been extended to me.

  The day of the show arrived and Phoebe was up at some ludicrous hour. I’m not sure she’d slept at all. When I came down for breakfast, she was trying on her costume in the kitchen.

  ‘Yo, poo for brains,’ I said. ‘The big day, huh?’

  Phoebe frowned.

  ‘Does my bum look big in this, Jamie?’ she asked. ‘I want the truth.’

  It was just as well I’d had a pee as soon as I woke, because I might’ve pissed myself on the spot. But I knew better than to laugh. Phoebe would have disembowelled me with one stare. There’s a gene in our family responsible for that, but it’s limited to the female side. So I put a finger to my lips and looked her up and down, all serious.

  ‘Turn around,’ I said.

  The costume was like a fist in a black eye. She had on a tight top, a bit like a singlet, but made of something si
milar to spandex. It was bright green and covered in glittery specks. In fact, all of the costume was covered in glittery specks. A little gold flouncy skirt and red tights completed the outfit. I have no idea what it was meant to represent, but it was in appalling taste. Phoebe gave me a small twirl. She was stick thin, like so many kids her age, chest a narrow tube, legs resembling bamboo poles. It was difficult to spot her bum, it was that small.

  ‘Nah, all good,’ I said, after a suitable pause. ‘You look hot as.’

  ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘I’m just going into the front room to have one last practice.’

  ‘Do not put the music on loud,’ I said. ‘You wake Summer and she’s going to make you regret it for the rest of your life.’

  ‘Okay.’

  I ate breakfast to the muted sound of bad dance music. I was a little worried. This performance was so important to her and I had a niggling suspicion it was all going to turn out disastrously.

  Dad could not get any time off work, though he said he tried. But Summer had rearranged her shift at the supermarket and Mum picked me up directly after my last lesson of the day, so we all met up at Phoebe’s school. The place was buzzing. There were hundreds of parents there, obviously, but they’d also dragged out various dignitaries, including the mayor and a selection of local members of parliament and even a past student who had made the final of Australia’s Got Talent a couple of years back. She’d been eliminated early on, but she was the closest we had to a celebrity in the area. Some of the little kids were scrambling around her trying to get an autograph. They had no idea who she was, but there was a kind of hysteria going on.

  Tiny tackers in school uniform ushered all the guests into the auditorium and we took our seats. First up was the Talent finalist, who sang the national anthem. Badly. Then there was an address by the school principal, who told us how proud she was of the students, and threw in an appeal for volunteers for School Council. This was followed by a brief but enthusiastic opening of ceremonies by the mayor, who gave way to the local MP, the shadow minister for education. He droned on about something forever, while people in the audience shuffled in their seats and muttered. The pollie stopped when it became clear we were on the verge of storming the podium and possibly running him out of town, tarred and feathered on a pole.