by Cate Kennedy
She is not talking to you. Your brother holds her stare, like the sheriff of some lonely town. Marjorie turns away and hugs your mother again. You head for the front door.
Outside, you begin walking. You’ve forgotten your gloves but you don’t go back. Fingers curl into fists and find your pockets, and you follow your feet along the pavers. You stay away from the cracks. Bad luck in the cracks, worse luck if you fall through.
You think of the last time you saw your father angry. It was the last time you let him down. In anger, he never touched you, and rarely shouted, but his voice, his soft, dark, clinging voice, would come down like a drizzle that seeps into bones; a voice that made you regret everything.
Now you cannot remember that talk without knowing that it was the last one. At the end, he said:
—I feel as if you’ve learned nothing from me. As if you’ll never learn anything.
Those words left behind, washed up with the waves. Your father dropped his shoulders and walked off. It was the sense of defeat in him that moved you. And now it is impossible not to wonder whether he knew all along about all those other things you got up to. The delight you took in hiding them.
*
Your brother is the new man of the house. One day, when you are playing in the backyard, he corners you against the back fence. He gives you that empty, appraising glance as if he is not even there, as if you are simply looking at yourself, bound to condemn yourself, then begins punching you. Not in the face or the neck, but the arms, the ribs, the belly, the places where this thing can stay between you and him.
*
The only you place you have, where you can breathe, is outside. As you walk down the steps, past Rodney, he coughs. You keep on walking. He calls your name. You turn to look at him.
—How are you, Captain? he asks.
You tell him fine.
—I know you’re a busy man. He smiles when he says this, and when he smiles he looks afraid. I’d like a moment of your time though.
Knees flexed, the cold air settled on your neck, you stare back up at the house. If your brother were there, if you were walking out the door beside him, you would walk on without a backward glance. You would follow him, and he’d toss back comments like scraps to a dog, that Rodney is a fag, that he has a fag disease and should be left to rot. But your brother is not here, and you feel trapped enough by pity to follow Rodney inside.
The house reeks of incense and underneath it a soft, treacly smell like vomit and shit and urine all mixed up. There are all sorts of tablets on his dining table, arranged in packets and dishes between newspapers and stubbed-out cigarettes. You draw shallow breaths and feel your lungs pull at your chest.
—I know how you feel, he tells you. I know how you feel. I have something for you. Have to get rid of some of these things, yes. They’ll just get thrown out anyway, you know. Been meaning to give it to you for a while. It’s right here. Right here somewhere.
Ash drops from his cigarette as he searches through his bookshelf. You see trails of ash on the table, the arms of chairs, as if these are the places where shadows come to rest. He does everything quickly, with a nervous flick of his fingers and a strange womanly toss of his head, and he never quite stops moving, as if he is afraid that he will break apart if he stays too long in one position. He finally pulls free a book.
—My father gave this to me when I was about your age. My father wasn’t like yours. This is the only time that he wasn’t a cunt. I’m sorry. I’m fucking sorry for putting it that way. Fuck. God. Maybe they all are.
He appears out of breath and winces. He waves something away from his face, the smoke, but it drifts around him like a web, something so thin that it simply reforms around his fingers. He offers you the book. His nails look powdery and brittle against the faded cover. On the front, there is a picture of a boy in a scout’s uniform grinning as he bursts out of a forest with a snake dangling from a branch over his head. In yellow, above the coils of the snake, it says Adventures for Young Boys!
—This is how I escaped, Rodney says. This is how. It worked for me. Maybe it’ll work for you.
—I can’t, you tell him. It’s yours.
The truth is that you don’t want to touch an object that he has touched.
—I won’t need it. Rodney offers that thin, scared smile. I’m just in the waiting room, you know.
The book feels moist and you get outside as quickly as possible. The air has never smelled so sweet. In your own backyard, where you are sure that he cannot see, you put the book in the garbage.
*
At the threshold of your house, you pause, like a surgeon about to put his hands on someone’s heart. Your mother is crying and blowing her nose, and her grief is like damp that rises from the floorboards into the walls and makes the door swell up and impossible to close.
—It is a terrible thing, Marjorie says, her voice ringing through the house, a terrible thing to do to you and the children. Terrible and selfish.
Marjorie comes around too often, as if the space left by your father has pulled in a body of equal weight. Marjorie carries herself like a rock for your mother to lean on, but you think of her as hard and brittle, and the inward tug of her lips makes your gut tighten. She has her dark hair pulled up, so that you can see the wrinkled slab of her neck. They both turn to regard you. Your mother glances at Marjorie and you see a warning in her eyes.
—Well, heavens, it needs to be said, Marjorie says. Don’t you think so?
When you are alone with your mother, you think of touching her, but you are afraid that any gesture will disturb her.
—He didn’t do it because of us, she says, as if finishing off an argument.
The words hang in the quiet. Your mother will sometimes lie, to make you feel better, like the time your cat was run over and she claimed that it had simply run off. The thing is, you nearly always know when she is lying, but you pretend not to, because it makes you feel better for the lies you have told her. Your mother is staring down the hallway, out to the small, overgrown garden beyond it, but she is not seeing any of it. The long, pale fingers of her right hand move along the line of her jaw, a light, floating motion, back and forth, back and forth, and you know that it is not her hand at all.
—He didn’t, she says again. It was never us.
—I know, you tell her.
She looks at you then, startled, as if she didn’t even realise you were there, and you hug her, because it is better than staring at her face.
*
After school you ride down to the cliffs overlooking the sea. You climb over the fence and walk on the grass. If your mother saw you, she would have a fit. You stand there, and the grey, dark sea swings from one edge of your gaze to the other. You wonder what he was thinking when he came to this place, whether the bottle was in his hand, whether he was singing in the place deep in his throat without opening his mouth, the pipe clenched between his teeth. This is what they brought back of him; the pipe, black remains in the chute, from the last knot of tobacco he teased to fiery life and slowly drained.
Your mother went to the hospital to see him. They spoke about him, but they meant his body. At home with your brother, you stupidly asked if your father would be okay, and at first he appeared not to have heard. When you asked again, your brother’s eyes slid across your face. He studied your features, forehead, nose, mouth, as if he were reading a difficult book. He lifted his right hand and dropped it again.
—Don’t you get it? he said.
*
At the funeral, you felt as if you should have cried, for the sake of everyone else, and that made it harder. Your mother cried, and so did some of your aunts and uncles. You sat there and felt as if you were being buried alive, your brother’s face as polished as the fake panelling on the walls of the funeral home, the electric falseness of the organ and all those wooden seats in rows, like an awkward imitation of a swell rolling in from the sea towards the lacquered darkness of the coffin. They did not have the l
id open.
*
Now you stand here alone. A breeze runs across your back, over your neck and flows out over the lines of swell rolling inwards, feathering the breaks with spray. The rocks below split the motion of the sea. A hawk hovers nearby. The subtle ripple of its wing feathers keeps it motionless.
They used to say you looked like him, but not these days. Not even your mother. You face yourself sometimes in the mirror, and hold his picture alongside. The same wide mouth with the fine edges, the long, slightly curved nose with an uneven turn at the end. The eyes, sunken, heavy and blue. How much of him is inside you?
*
In the classroom, you sit right at the back. On the first day back, most kids avoid you. Jerome comes up at lunch. His flat eyes flick onto yours then fix over your shoulder.
—Hey, what was the funeral like?
The way he stands over you twists something in your stomach.
—None of your fucking business, you tell him.
He looks stung. You’ve never seen him caught off balance before, but he recovers quickly.
—You don’t even seem upset.
You don’t answer him.
—You should be upset, yeah. But you’re smiling. Freak.
—Fuck off.
The grin cuts between your cheeks. You don’t know how this has happened. You know that he wanted to say something nice, and that you should have helped him.
—At least I had a father to start with, you say.
You push past him and he is a stranger.
—Freak.
He mouths the words to you from the front of the class, then whispers something to the boy sitting next to him. You realise that you hate him.
*
The word has gotten around that you had something to do with your father’s death. You know where it came from. Some of the kids follow as you seek out Jerome. And more are coming, as if there is a whisper, an electric current passing through the school, that only other children can sense.
—Take it back, you tell Jerome.
He gets up from his seat and doesn’t look at you directly. His chest sags between his shoulders. He straightens and steps closer, the freckles on his pale face livid, his arms limp banners dangling either side of his waist, the fingers curled and rigid. You know that this is all wrong, that he will never take anything back before an audience.
—You always lie, you say in a voice that doesn’t sound like you at all. You’re a liar.
Jerome shows his teeth.
—So, when is it your turn?
A groan erupts around you, and the other children back off. But Jerome stares at you with his flat, cruel eyes and says it again. You push him, feel the bony lightness of his chest. Someone shouts, Hit him! Go on.
Jerome grabs your shirt at the shoulder, twists the cloth, and you jab your fist at his face, and keep jabbing as he swings you around in a blind, quiet circle as if the two of you are dancing, the other children cheering and cheering and wildly cheering a song they cannot know.
*
The principal runs his eyes across the two of you and asks who started it. Neither of you answers. He slides a finger down his tie, and flattens the tip over his belly. He turns away.
—This won’t be taken further, he declares. But even so, he goes on, even so. When matters get difficult, you have to rise to the challenge. You have to move through the hardship and focus on the positives. His gaze never leaves the window, as if he’s reading words in the clouds. On the way out, Jerome tells you that he’s sorry. You tell him that it’s nothing.
There is a huge old fig tree at one end of the schoolyard, past one of the demountables. Two branches come together at one spot that you like. You climb up, hold on, lean back, and stare at the rippled sky, cut through with branches and twigs. You have heard that when you fall asleep with a hand curled around a branch, you’ll wake up still holding it.
You always wonder about that idea but never trust it, though you close your eyes sometimes and pretend. The heat of the fight has turned to stiffness. Sweat pools at your armpits. There is a tremor in your lungs, a quietness that makes you feel the blood in your fingertips and the grinding labour of your heart. The bark feels good. Your grip tightens. Eyes shut. The wood creaks around you. Wind stirs at your ankles. You imagine falling.
*
When you get home, you go to the bin. You rummage until, under the stinking weight of a split garbage bag, your fingers touch the thing that you were looking for. You pull out the book and wipe away the moisture. Adventures for Young Boys!
Under the covers of your bed, you run the torch over each page, and breathe in the warm, dusty smell. The book doesn’t make any sense, but you like it. The stories make you feel as if you are overhearing conversations, as if you are looking in on something that exists outside your own world. Somehow, the ridiculousness of the stories makes your eyes water.
It’s not that you believe any of it. And if another boy had given you the book, you would have laughed at him. But it came from Rodney, and Rodney was a boy once, and in the simple words on the yellowed pages, you can imagine him before he knew what it was like to be in a waiting room.
*
That night, you dream that the ocean is washing up over your back fence, waves spearing through the carefully tended features of your mother’s garden. You lie in bed, hear the breakers tear at the walls of the house, feel the walls bend and shudder, and then come the footsteps, one after the other, a sodden beat up the stairs, to your door, and your door opens, and you smell something like dead fish and smoke and your father’s aftershave.
*
You wake into a cloud-filtered light that binds everything together, like threads left by some monstrous spider. Shivering, you throw on clothes and step outside. A snarl of untended bushes gathers around you. You cannot see the sun, but you know it will be there soon, rising over the fence, unfurling across the rooftops, spilling against dark windows.
The door creaks at your back. Your brother steps out, fishing rod in one hand, bucket in the other.
—Ready? he says. You push your feet into boots and drink a cup of the watery tea he has left on the kitchen bench. You will keep the door unlocked. The next time your father comes, you will try not to be afraid, you will think of how he could make you laugh, and the warm, smoky burr of his songs and you will tell yourself that the dead cannot touch the living. But you can never be sure, you can never be sure. You can never be sure.
Harvest
The Movie People
Fiona McFarlane
When the movie people left, the town grew sad. An air of disaster lingered in the stunned streets – of cuckoldry, or grief. There was something shameful to it, like defeated virtue, and also something confidential, because people were so in need of consolation they turned to each other with all their private burdens of ecstasy and despair. There was at that time a run of extraordinary weather – as if the blank blue sky, the unshaded sun and the minor, pleasurable breeze had all been arranged by the movie people. The weather lasted for the duration of the filming and then began to turn, so that within a few weeks of the close of production, a stiff, mineral wind had swept television aerials from roofs and disorganised the fragile root systems of more recently imported shrubbery.
My main sense of this time is as a period of collective mourning in which the townspeople began to wear the clothes they had adopted as film extras and meet disconsolately on street corners to re-enact their past happiness. I didn’t participate. I was happy the movie people had left. I was overjoyed, in fact, to see no more trucks in the streets, no more catering vans in the supermarket parking lot, no more microphones and boom lights standing in frail forests on corners or outside the town hall. The main street of town had been closed to traffic for the filming, and now the townspeople were reluctant to open it again. It’s a broad street, lined with trees and old-fashioned gas lights (subtly electrified) and those slim, prudish, Victorian storefronts that huddle graciously together l
ike people in church, and as I rode down the street on my scooter on those windy days after the movie people left, it struck me as looking more than ever like the picturesque period town, frozen in the nineteenth century, that brought the movie to us in the first place.
I rode my scooter to the disgust of women in crinolines with their hair braided and looped; men in waistcoats and top hats: citizens of some elderly republic that had been given an unexpected opportunity to sun itself in the wan light of the twenty-first century. I knew these people as butchers, plumbers, city commuters, waterers of thirsty lawns, walkers of imbecile dogs, washers of cars, postmen, and all the women who had ever taught me in school. They were so bereft that they stayed in the street all day. They eddied and flocked. Up the street, and then down again, as if they were following the same deep and certain instinct that drives herring through the North Sea. They consulted fob watches and pressed handkerchiefs to their sorrowful breasts. The wind blew out their hooped skirts and rolled the last of the plastic recycling bins down the street and out into the countryside, where they nestled lifelessly together in the scrub.
I rode my scooter to the home of my wife’s parents. She was sheltering there, my wife – Alice – because the movie people had left. She loved them, see. Not her parents – that tranquil couple of bleached invertebrates – but the director, the key grip, the costume ladies, the hairdressers, the boom operators, most particularly the star. The whole town loved the star. Even I succumbed to it, just a little – to the risky and unpredictable feeling we all had in the weeks he was among us, that he might at any moment emerge from a dimly bulbed doorway or unfold his long legs from a rooftop. We’d never seen anyone so beautiful. He shone with a strange, interior, asexual light; and his head seemed to hang in mid-air, as if there was no body to attach it to – nothing so substantial. Looking at him was like entering a familiar room in which you see everything all at once; and at the same time, nothing.
I rode to my wife and said, ‘Alice, darling, he’s left now, they’ve all left, so can you please come home and love me forever; entangle your limbs in mine on the couch while watching television; comb your eyebrows in the bathroom mirror when I’m trying to shave; go running with me in the gorgeous mornings; and dance guiltily, ecstatically with me to bad disco music in the kitchen?’