The Minnow

by Diana Sweeney

  I jab Papa in the ribs.

  ‘C’mon Betsy, I’ll show you the hedge,’ says Papa, jumping to his feet. ‘Sorry sport,’ he says to me, ‘I was miles away.’

  Betsy smiles and pats my arm. ‘Thanks for coming, dear. It’s been a lovely service. That priest was wonderful, the things he said.’ She kisses me on the cheek, then squeezes past the Minnow and follows Papa out of the chapel. They duck between the columns and disappear into the garden. Relieved, I shuffle across into Papa’s spot at the end of the bench and Mavis and Jonathan take their seats.

  ‘This is Valerie Wolkolf’s granddaughter, Tom,’ says Hazel, holding my elbow. Hazel is always around old people, so holding elbows is second nature to her.

  Hazel is introducing me to one of Betsy’s relatives. Everyone is in the common room and, in line with Betsy’s request, we’re drinking tequila margaritas. I’m in my eighth month. I’ve checked with the Minnow and we can’t see how one margarita could hurt, so I’ve got a large salt-encrusted drink in my hand, and I think it’s upsetting some of the funeral guests.

  ‘Tom,’ continues Hazel, ‘this is Annabel, Betsy’s granddaughter.’ Hazel turns and leaves. Our cue to open the conversation.

  ‘We heard about the flood,’ says Annabel. ‘We’re so sorry. Our grandmother told us you lost your whole family.’ She keeps saying ‘we’ and ‘us’ and it is a bit weird.

  ‘I still have Nana,’ I say.

  Annabel is beautiful. She has long black hair and dark skin. Her eyes are such a dark brown that it is hard to distinguish the pupil. There are small bubbles escaping from her shoulders. Tiny little bubbles, almost blue in colour, although I realise that’s probably an illusion. They are most likely clear.

  ‘Of course. Your Nana. Betsy talks about her all the time,’ says Annabel.

  ‘Talked,’ interrupts a male voice.

  Annabel’s eyes widen for the briefest moment. She is looking at me, almost staring. ‘That’s my cousin,’ she says.

  I wonder if he is part of ‘we’.

  Annabel turns around and mutters something under her breath to a male version of herself. They are so alike they could be twins.

  She turns back to me. Smiles. Then she tilts her head a fraction, moves her eyes to the side and speaks over her shoulder. ‘Get me a drink, would you?’

  The cousin looks from Annabel to me. His eyes are cold.

  ‘Sure,’ he says. ‘But you won’t like the salt.’

  Annabel turns back to me and rolls her eyes.

  ‘Then see if you can get me a sugar-rim. Otherwise, just a clean glass,’ she says. Her eyes remain fixed on me.

  Strangely, it doesn’t feel uncomfortable.

  I’m guessing Annabel is twenty-something. She has the most perfect skin. And tiny fish scales on the sides of her neck. I imagine her hair hides them most of the time.

  She is wearing a long dress the colour of paua shell, with the thinnest iridescent shoulder straps. She isn’t wearing any jewellery except for a pearl ring on her right index finger, which she plays with while she talks.

  ‘I think Annabel is a mermaid,’ whispers the Minnow.

  I know what she means. I’ve never met anyone who belonged in the ocean more than Annabel. But that myth about mermaids being able to walk on land is just fantasy. They can never leave the sea.

  On the way back to Jonah’s house, Jonathan brings up our earlier conversation.

  ‘Once, and I have no idea when,’ he begins, ‘I listened to a radio program about sleep. I had forgotten all about it, but something that minister said jogged my memory.’

  Jonathan can be extremely formal. He has rules about what constitutes a conversation. I have to say something now.

  ‘What did the program say?’ I ask.

  ‘It was a documentary on sleep disorders. It cited the case of a man who had gone to sleep as usual, but who dreamed an entire lifetime in the one night. Apparently the dream began with his birth and ended eighty or so years later with his death. When interviewed, he said it was the most terrifying experience of his life. Apparently, day after day, year after year, he was at all times conscious that he was trapped in a dream. The whole ordeal rendered him rather fearful of sleep.’ Jonathan taps the steering wheel with his thumbs. It is one of the things he does.

  ‘Understandable, I suppose,’ he continues, more to himself, than to me. ‘The poor man must have dreaded the prospect of having it happen a second time.’ His thumbs have settled into a steady drum rhythm.

  ‘Jonathan, if he’d killed himself—jumped off a building or something—wouldn’t the fright have woken him up?’

  ‘Good question, Tom,’ Jonathan replies. ‘I don’t remember that being discussed.’

  It’s a cold Saturday afternoon. I’m mooching around at Fielder’s Pets and Supplies. Mrs Blanket is away for the week (visiting her daughter), and Clare is looking after the shop. I am having a conversation with a seahorse called the Professor, who, it turns out, is a Buddhist. I’ve just finished telling him about the man who had the dream that lasted eighty years.

  ‘Fish don’t distinguish reality as separate,’ says the Professor, after thinking it over for about ten minutes. ‘In fact, it would be safe to say that we dream our reality, quite literally.’

  ‘Does that mean you never actually sleep?’ I ask.

  ‘This is hard to answer.’

  He appears to have drifted off in thought. So I wait.

  ‘In simple terms,’ he says suddenly, ‘fish are always dreaming, but we don’t experience sleep as such.’

  He swims closer to the glass. I think he is staring at me.

  ‘For example,’ he continues, fluttering in a slow turn, ‘you dream in your sleep. If you dream while awake, it’s called hallucinating. If you’re awake within in a dream, it’s called lucid dreaming. These are quite different from the aquatic experience.’

  I try to take it all in. A customer walks into the shop. The screen door smacks against the bell. I turn to look, but it is no one I know. The stranger walks over to the bird section and picks up a bag of birdseed, has a brief conversation with Clare and pays for the seed. The screen door smacks against the bell as he exits.

  ‘Humans can’t conceive of life as a continuous state.’ The Professor stops fluttering. I watch as he drifts slowly to the bottom of the tank. ‘I imagine the need for sleep interrupts the human’s ability to understand the continuity of life.’

  He is motionless.

  The pet shop is silent except for the low hum of the fish tanks.

  I’m not sure I understand.

  ‘Most of you don’t,’ he answers, reading my mind.

  With that, he swims an awkward circuit of his tank, stopping just above the shipwreck. Mrs Blanket has a thing for shipwrecks. Every tank has one. Some are big, some little. The Professor’s shipwreck is quite grand; it has a filter that emits a small stream of bubbles. I wait for him to say something else. Finally, he speaks.

  ‘That man who dreamed a lifetime,’ he says, ‘is the closest you’ll get to my reality.’ And with that he turns and flutters to the back of the tank.

  The Professor makes me realise how much I miss Oscar.

  I have organised to meet Jonah at three o’clock outside Saint Joseph’s Anglican Church. It is a tiny red-brick building with an orange tiled roof and a front garden full of roses. Mum loved it. She said it was The Crossing’s prettiest building. She and Dave McKewen used to be on the garden committee. They tended the roses.

  Mum used to strike rose cuttings in a little raised garden she called the nursery. Dad built the garden with bricks he scrounged from Bunter and Davis. He built it up to knee level, which Mum said was the perfect height—and Dad said was damn lucky because he kept going until he had run out of bricks. Mum’s favourite rose was the harlequin and her second favourite was anything with a scent.

  Jonah is late, or I’m early. So I spend the time walking from rose to rose, trying to figure out which of the scented roses are Mum’s
and which are Dave McKewen’s. One of the harlequins almost has a perfume, but I think it’s just borrowing some smell from its neighbour.

  The church garden is full of colour. A few men from the Survivors tend it now. They made a little plaque to acknowledge the garden’s former caretakers. I used to think it was a good idea, but—looking at it now—it makes Mum and Dave look like lovers.

  Finally, Jonah arrives and we sit on the steps and share a sausage roll and a spinach pie and wait for Jonathan to collect us. It’s quiet. The Minnow is moving. I take Jonah’s hand and place it on my belly.

  ‘I wish you were the Minnow’s father,’ I say to Jonah.

  ‘Me too,’ says Jonah.

  ‘Me three,’ says the Minnow.

  ‘What did you say?’ asks Jonah.

  ‘He heard me!’ says the Minnow.

  Jonah’s expression can only be described as startled.

  ‘Are you serious, Jonah? Can you hear the Minnow?’

  ‘Say yes, Jonah, say yes!’ the Minnow shouts.

  ‘I think so, yes,’ he says. ‘It’s is a bit weird, though, isn’t it?’

  ‘Totally,’ I answer.

  ‘Absolutely,’ says the Minnow.

  Jonah starts to laugh. ‘I thought you were crazy,’ he says.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Bet you’re astonished,’ says the Minnow, showing off.

  ‘Get her to say something else,’ says Jonah. His normally passive face is almost contorted with a mix of excitement and disbelief.

  ‘Oh,’ I say, as I realise what’s just happened. ‘It’s totallyrandom, Jonah. I can’t get her to speak.’

  ‘Oh, right, of course,’ he says. ‘…it’s just that you talk to her all the time.’

  ‘Jonah, all pregnant mothers do that. It’s called bonding. It doesn’t mean we’re having a conversation. But every now and then I actually hear her say something. And, just now, you heard her too.’

  ‘So, he can’t hear me now?’ asks the Minnow, the frustration in her voice rising to a squeak. But she doesn’t require an answer; Jonah’s lack of reaction says it all.

  We sit, side by side, thinking. Minutes tick by.

  ‘I wonder what’s taking Jonathan so long,’ I say. Jonah and I gaze down the street, his hand on my belly. No sign of the car.

  ‘Can we keep it our secret?’ asks Jonah.

  ‘Absolutely,’ I answer, borrowing the Minnow’s new favourite word.

  It’s quiet. We’ve finished the food, so there’s nothing to do now but wait for our lift. I decide I may as well pick some flowers. Jonah pulls me to my feet.

  ‘Coming?’ I ask him.

  ‘No, I’ll wait here,’ he answers, sitting back down on the step.

  I collect the secateurs from the post box and start with one of the Harlequins.

  ‘Jonah,’ I say, ‘can I ask you something?’

  ‘Sure,’ he says. He changes his mind about the step and moves over to the low brick wall so that he can sit facing me.

  ‘It’s about Bill,’ I say. ‘Should I tell Sergeant Griffin that I’ve been seeing him?’

  ‘Tom! What do you mean?’

  ‘Don’t get your knickers in a knot,’ I reply, wishing I’d kept my thoughts to myself, ‘I just see him sometimes. At the inlet, usually, but the other day he was at the boatshed.’

  ‘What, you mean you’re seeing him?’ Jonah’s face is actually going red.

  ‘No, no, no,’ I blurt when I realise what he’s asking. I make a two-fingered pointing gesture from my eyes to his. ‘I see him,’ I clarify. Jonah nods. But I feel hot, flustered, almost sick.

  ‘We don’t arrange to meet,’ I continue. ‘It’s not like before when he’d collect me from your house. But he knows my habits. He knows how easy it is to find me. So, yes, when I’m at the inlet, he turns up. It’s not like I have a choice.’

  ‘So when he was there the other day—and those two men with the rifles—you and he were…fishing?’

  ‘Yes.’ It sounded weird. ‘You don’t understand, Jonah.’ I couldn’t expect Jonah to understand—I didn’t even understand it. ‘Sometimes I miss him and it’s good to catch up. Other times he just appears.’ Like a bad egg.

  ‘Then, yes, you should tell Sergeant Griffin.’

  ‘But I’m scared, Jonah.’

  ‘Sergeant Griffin’s a pussycat, Tom.’

  ‘No, Jonah, I’m scared of saying anything against Bill.’

  Jonah looks at me. He can see the fear on my face. Just showing him how I feel, not hiding it for once, is terrifying.

  ‘Then we’ll speak to Grandpa. He’s a lawyer and he has to keep what you tell him confidential. He’ll know the best way to handle Bill.’

  ‘Okay. But let me think about it first.’

  ‘Sergeant Griffin is looking for you,’ says Papa.

  Papa has a habit of speaking to me whenever he pleases. At this very moment I’m fast asleep, but that doesn’t seem to matter to him.

  ‘Tom,’ he says, raising his voice. His tone tells me he’s getting agitated. If I ignore him for much longer he’ll lean down next to my ear and whistle.

  ‘Papa,’ I say, keeping my eyes closed and trying my hardest not to wake up, ‘I’m in the middle of a dream about Mum.’

  ‘Sorry sport,’ he says, ‘but I just passed Griffin on his way here and he was speeding.’

  ‘Speeding?’ I sit bolt upright. Sergeant Griffin only ever speeds if he’s in a hurry. I know that sounds like I’m stating the obvious, but this is the country. Outside the town there is no speed limit—at least not one that is enforced—and, even though the roads are in bad condition, most people drive at a hundred or more. Sergeant Griffin says the roads are too dangerous for such speeds and, to set an example, he sits on sixty.

  ‘What’s the urgency?’ I ask, rubbing my eyes. ‘And what’s the time?’

  ‘Don’t know. Eight twenty-three.’

  I haven’t seen Sergeant Griffin since he turned up when I was sneaking around Bill’s boatshed.

  ‘Maybe he has found out what Bill’s been up to,’ says the Minnow.

  ‘That doesn’t explain why he would be in such a hurry,’ I reply.

  But the thought makes me anxious. I’ve been trying not to think about Bill. Now I realise I haven’t prepared myself at all. The Minnow and I get out of bed and head for the shower.

  I’m eating toast when Sergeant Griffin knocks on the door.

  I can hear a small beeping sound—soft, constant, regular— as I walk through the backyard to the compost bin. I have a small colander of vegetable scraps and, even though I’m carrying it with both hands, bits of potato peel keep falling onto the ground. By the time I reach the bin I’ve dropped more than half.

  ‘You afraid you might lose your way back?’ asks Papa. It is a rhetorical question, so I don’t bother myself with an answer. I like the word ‘rhetorical’.

  I lift the lid with one hand and tip the scraps on top of the seething mass of worms. Jonah’s compost bin is nothing fancy, just an old plastic bin with a lid. The bottom has been cut out so that the worm castings enrich the ground below, but this has given the rats easy access. Exactly like our old one.

  Occasionally Mum would ask Dad to fix it, but he was always busy with something else. One afternoon, Bill arrived with some chicken wire. He pulled the bin off the mound of rotting vegetable scraps, rodent-proofed the bottom of it with two layers of mesh, repositioned the bin and shovelled the decomposing mess back in. The whole job took less than an hour.

  ‘No worries,’ Bill said. Mum handed him a thank-you beer.

  ‘You trying to get on her good side, mate?’ said Paul Bunter.

  Paul had been helping Dad with the truck’s brakes.

  ‘Reckon I am,’ Bill replied, and Paul laughed.

  Mum liked Paul. She used to say that of all Dad’s friends, Paul was the easiest to talk to. The two of them would often sit and chat.

  ‘Take no notice, Bill,’ Dad said, as he walked up the s
teps to the veranda. ‘I reckon I could die tomorrow and Paul would be first in the queue to take my place,’

  Dad loved saying stuff like this.

  ‘What queue would that be?’ asked Mum, standing in the doorway, a six-pack under her arm.

  ‘The Angie queue,’ said Dad, matter-of-factly.

  I love jam doughnuts. I prefer the hot-dog shape, rather than the round version, with real cream, not that horrible mock business. Sometimes I go to the pastry shop before I visit the pet shop. Mrs Blanket doesn’t like people bringing food into the shop. She has a sign on the door that says no food or drink.

  I buy my doughnut and walk across to the bus stop. There is no bus service at The Crossing. The government decided it was too expensive. But they left all the bus-stop seats. The one opposite Fielder’s Pets and Supplies is green and grey and has a small bin next to it. Mrs Blanket donated the bin and it has the shop’s logo on the side. I sit on the seat and open the paper bag. Bits of jam have stuck to the sides so I tear it carefully down the middle.

  Today is the perfect jam-doughnut day. You can’t eat jam doughnuts on the wrong day. Jonah thought this was a strange observation until I pointed out that the perfect day for pumpkin soup was overcast and cold, even better if it was raining. If you’re wondering what the perfect doughnut day is, it’s clear and sunny, but quite cool. And it’s better if it is autumn rather than spring, so that there is a crisp feeling to the air. It makes sense when you think about it.

  I finish eating the doughnut, wipe my hands on my T-shirt, and rummage around in my backpack for my pocket thesaurus. I don’t usually keep it in my pocket, even though it is small enough to fit. The pocket thesaurus is a recent find. I bought it from the op shop behind the Lutheran church on Holly Street. The Lutherans pronounce it ‘holy’ as a bit of a joke. Ha ha.

  The church is a simple wooden building painted buttercup yellow, and the parish residence, which is also painted yellow, has housed the Smith Family opportunity shop for as long as anyone can remember. It became a superstore after the flood. Clothes and toys arrived from all over the country and there are still quite a few unpacked boxes in the shed.