by Sofie Laguna
Early on Saturday morning Deirdre told Anne White I was sick. ‘He vomited and it missed the toilet, Anne. I cleaned it up with the hand soap,’ she said, smiling at Anne White. ‘Are you glad I cleaned it up?’
‘Yes, Deirdre, thank you.’ Anne White pressed her palm to my forehead. ‘But it’s not good news you are sick, Jim.’ No messages entered, as if her hand wasn’t connected to the rest of her. ‘Maybe you do feel hot.’
‘He just needs to go and have a rest, doesn’t he, Anne?’ said Deirdre, sweet as a lolly.
‘Yes, I suppose he does, Deirdre,’ said Anne White. ‘But it’s Liam’s game this morning. Maybe he can rest in the car while I watch the game and meet with his teacher.’
‘But he could vomit again and it smelled like the compost when Jake digs it into the ground. You need to wear a mask. Plus he could be catching,’ Deirdre said.
Anne White shook her head. ‘That’s true . . . It’s good of you to give it so much thought, Deirdre, but I have to see Liam’s game. The other foster parents will be there and so will Liam’s teachers for next year. Jim has to come. I can’t have him home alone.’
‘I could stay home with him, Anne. I could read to him if he can’t sleep. I don’t mind.’ Deirdre smiled up at Anne White.
‘Oh dear . . . oh no, I don’t think . . . Let me talk to Jake. Thank you for being so helpful, Deirdre. Maybe you can take Jim to his room now and I’ll go and speak with Jake.’
Deirdre took my hand and led me to the bedroom.
‘Get into bed and look tired,’ she whispered.
I got into my bed with all my clothes on, even my shoes.
Liam came in wearing his football shorts. His cheeks looked flushed and full with the plan. ‘What happened?’ he asked Deirdre. ‘Did she say yes? Can he stay home?’
‘I don’t know,’ she answered. ‘She’s asking Jake.’
‘He has to stay home.’
‘Anne has to talk to Jake. If he says yes . . .’
‘But if he doesn’t stay home he can’t get on the bus.’
‘Anne is –’
‘And then he can’t get to Point Paradise and see his dad. He’s got to see him, Deirdre!’
Deirdre pulled a book from the shelf and opened it on her lap. ‘We don’t even know if his dad is at Point Paradise. He could be anywhere. How do we know?’
‘We do know. That’s where he is. Where else would he be? It said it on the photograph.’ Liam frowned.
‘That photograph is a hundred years old, Liam.’ She looked up at him. ‘Get out! When Anne comes up to check on us she has to see me reading and being good and if you’re here she won’t. Get out. Quick!’
‘Okay, okay,’ said Liam, leaving the room.
Deirdre started to read but the words weren’t from the book; they were made up and the longer they went on the more they became a song instead of a story. ‘And then the man stood up and he looked tall, his shoulders were so strong he could lift a horse or a car and he said, Hello, hello, my little boy, I love you, I will never smack you, I will never take you into the garage, I will never say, Count everything on the shelves, that’s all you have to do, count everything on the shelves. Keep counting, keep counting, how many how many how many, that’s it, little boy, that’s it, lean forward a bit more, that’s it. I will buy you snacks and you can choose whichever snack, I will never say too expensive put it back, choose something else. I will just say eat up, eat up, because I love you . . .’
I felt my eyes closing, as if there was no plan anymore, it was just me and the song of Deirdre. I was with her in the garage. I took her hand and I said, Come away, come away, and she said, I can’t, he’s too big, and I said, You can, and she said, I can’t, he’s too strong, and I said, Yes you can. Look! Look! I took matches from my pocket and I lit one, then with the other hand I shook the open jerry can so the petrol sprayed up, and I threw the match into the shimmering air boom! and we ran and ran and we changed what happened so that it didn’t happen. We made it different.
Anne White and Jake were standing at the door. Anne White was smiling at Deirdre.
‘You’re a good girl, Deirdre. I wish all my children were as good as you. It’s lovely to see you reading to Jim.’
Deirdre smiled back and her eyelashes were like two fluttering wings over her visions. ‘I like reading, Anne.’
Jake took Anne White’s hand. ‘I think they’ll be fine. The important thing is that Liam will be out of the house with us,’ he said, as if we couldn’t hear.
Anne White nodded. ‘I think you’re right. I’ll drop back at half-time to check on them.’ She put her hand on my forehead again. ‘You don’t have a temperature, Jim. Could be gastro, but if you don’t feel better by this afternoon we’ll take you to see the doctor, okay?’
I nodded then closed my eyes, as if I was very tired.
‘Best idea is to sleep these things off,’ said Jake. ‘Come on, Anne, we don’t want to be late.’
‘Thank you, Deirdre, it’s very kind of you to stay home with Jim when you could be coming out with us. I’ll put a tick on the board and it will add up to a star.’ Anne White patted Deirdre on the head. ‘I’ll see you at half-time.’
‘Okay, Anne. And don’t worry – I’ll take care of Jim.’
‘Thank you, Dee Dee,’ said Anne White, then she and Jake went downstairs.
Liam put his head in the room. ‘Flick,’ he whispered. ‘Flick, you’re going. This is it – you got the all-clear.’
‘Get out, Liam!’ Deirdre hissed. ‘They’ll be waiting for you!’
‘I’m going, I’m going. And remember, Flick, if you come back I’m going to kill you.’ Liam’s eyes flashed green. I smiled at him. He smiled back and light came from his eyes in a ray. ‘Good luck, Flick,’ he said, and then he was gone.
As soon as we heard the front door close Deirdre pulled back my blankets. ‘Quick. Quick, Jimmy.’ She looked scared and happy. ‘You need to bring something to wear at your dad’s. You have to have pyjamas. You’ve got pyjamas, right?’ She didn’t give me time to answer. ‘We have to ring up the taxi now. We have to do it fast. Come on!’
I got out of the bed and followed her to the telephone.
‘Have you got everything? Have you got the money?’ she asked, pressing the numbers.
I nodded, gripping the pouch in my hand.
Deirdre tapped the table with her finger. ‘Yes please, yes please, thirty-five Cook Road. Yes, to High Street, where the buses go . . .’ she said. ‘Yes, alright, we’ll wait at the door. Thank you. He’s only small, so you have to take special care. He’s a high-needs kid . . . Yes a foster . . . Please hurry, he doesn’t want to miss the bus.’
She hung up the telephone, scribbled something down on a piece of paper and passed it to me. ‘This is Anne’s number, put it in your pocket. Ring it if you get lost or if your dad’s not there or he doesn’t want you. The taxi is going to be here very soon, Jim. The driver’s going to beep the horn, okay?’ Deirdre grabbed my hand and I could feel her network pulsing hotly through her skin.
We sat against the door, everything suddenly still and calm. I heard a single bird sing to its missing friend. Won’t you tell me that you love me? Won’t you tell me that you do?
‘What will you say to him, Jim, when you see him?’
I didn’t know.
‘If he’s not in the caravan you can come back, okay? I’m staying until my nan’s B & B is ready so it will be a long time, if I don’t drive Anne crazy. I will still be here, okay?’ She put her arms around me and held me. ‘I love you, Jimmy. I love you.’
Then the horn sounded from the taxi outside and she pulled open the door. ‘Quick Jimmy. Tell the taxi – quick!’
I went to the taxi waiting at the kerb and I pulled open the heavy door. A man was in the front and he said, ‘Hop in, kid.’
I climbed into the taxi.
‘Pull the door shut tight, okay?’ said the man. ‘High Street, right?’
I held the mone
y pouch and nodded. My heart pounded in the centre hurryhurry hurryhurry hurryhurry.
As the taxi moved away from the kerb I looked through the window at Deirdre, who stood at Anne White’s door, waving to me, smiling, and it was as if I was her little boy going on his first solo adventure. Goodbye, Deirdre, goodbye.
I looked out the window as the taxi drove along the streets. There were other cars, bicycles, houses, cats, clouds, painted stripes along the road, bins, lights, windows, fences, birds, wires from house to house but I didn’t belong to them. I was between worlds, like the horizon. The hum of the engine vibrated through my skin, quickening my cells.
‘So where are you going?’ the driver asked.
‘Point Paradise,’ I answered.
‘Never heard of it,’ the man said. ‘But it sounds alright.’ His elbow hung out the window. ‘Mind if I smoke?’
I didn’t mind.
He lit a cigarette and the smoke drifted around the car. I was an arrow in the middle, heading for the target.
I unfolded the photograph in my hand; white lines ran across my mum’s neck and my dad’s chest. The edges were torn. Deirdre had left a green cordial stain in the corner and Liam had left a tear.
‘Not far now,’ the man said. ‘See up ahead?’ He pointed and I saw signs and traffic and the cells of all the people through their skin. I saw their tubal systems making their legs move quickly across the streets as they ran to their trains and buses. The taxi driver dragged back his last mouthful of smoke, then blew it straight up into the air. I watched a slow grey snake wind its way around the body of the taxi.
‘Nice day for a trip,’ the man said. ‘Wish it was me going.’
The man drove the taxi to the gutter. The red numbers on the taxi meter said sixteen dollars. I gave the man two ten-dollar notes and he pulled out his box and gave me back four. ‘Good luck,’ he said. I stuffed the four into the pouch.
‘Thank you, thank you,’ I said. ‘Thank you, driver.’
The world outside the taxi was cold and brightly lit, as if the sun wanted nothing in shadow. Cells I had forgotten were speeding up inside me, organs I couldn’t remember having began to beat. I walked towards the sign that said buses with a picture of a bus underneath. I read the noticeboard, flashing with green lights matching the buses to the stops. I read down the list looking for Point Paradise. What did Deirdre say? Which bus? Was it all buses, or just one? I squeezed the pouch in my pocket.
People were rushing past carrying bags and suitcases, holding hands with their children, saying goodbye and hello, knowing which bus took them to Paradise Point.
‘You okay, lad? You look lost.’ A man in a green suit looked down at me. His cap leaned forward over his face, making shade for his eyes and nose.
‘Point Paradise,’ I said.
‘Point Paradise . . . hmmmm.’ He led me to the ticket counter.
‘Can you see him?’ The man asked the woman sitting behind the glass. ‘He’s a bit on the short side.’
The woman leaned forward and stared at me. ‘Where to, dear?’
‘Point Paradise,’ I said. ‘Midday.’
‘What?’ she asked, her voice muffled by the thick glass. ‘Point where?’
‘Point Paradise,’ me and the man in the leaning hat repeated. ‘Midday!’
The woman looked at a screen and pressed buttons. ‘Dock three, dear. You better hurry. The bus leaves in ten minutes.’
‘How much?’ I asked.
‘Nineteen dollars,’ she answered.
I pulled two more ten dollar notes out of my pouch. Two ones came out with it, falling to the ground.
The man picked up the ones and gave them back to me. ‘You right, lad? You got it?’
‘Got it,’ I told him. ‘Got it.’
He passed the money through to the woman behind the glass. She took it and gave me back a dollar.
‘Come on,’ the man said. ‘Dock three.’
I went with the man in his green suit as if he was the sergeant of the station, knowing every bus and every train and every sign and every shop for snacks and where was the toilet and which train passed through the tunnel at what time, making sure they never collided, sending passengers flying through the air, forcing them from the windows of the train as they shattered, flinging them against the hard stone walls, crushing them against the steel wheels and rails, sparks flying as both drivers hit the brakes, seeing the lights of each others wagon’s streaming through the darkness stop stop stop!
‘It’s okay, we’ll get there, calm down. You don’t have to race, lad,’ the man said as we trotted through the crowds. ‘I can hardly keep up.’
We came to dock three, the third bus in a long line, and the man stopped at the open door. ‘G’day, Eric,’ he said to the driver. ‘The boy wants to go to Point Paradise.’
‘Then he’s got a long day ahead of him.’ Eric grinned.
‘He’s all set. Go on, lad. Up you go.’
I climbed up the bus steps, giving Eric my ticket as I passed.
‘Just in time,’ Eric said, pulling a lever that sent the bus door sliding closed. ‘We’ll stop at the Point around seven this evening.’
The man in the leaning hat waved at me through the glass. Then he was gone from my vision, but in some other part he would never be gone and that’s a memory.
I walked down the almost-empty bus looking for my place. Just behind the driver there was a mother holding a baby wrapped in a blanket. She stared out the window over the top of the baby’s head. There was a small brown bear, a coloured ring with bells, a packet of cigarettes and a bottle of milk on the seat beside her. The mother, eyes as empty as caves, jiggled the baby.
I kept walking and I passed a woman halfway down whose hair shone silver-blue. She held onto her purse and nodded at me. The lenses of her glasses were so dark I could only just see the shadows of her eyes. Behind the old woman was a sleeping man with yellow and green skin. He leaned against the window, his yellow face pushed up against the glass. There were beer cans beside him sliding out of their paper disguise. Mosquitoes had bitten his fingers and left them red and itchy. Some of the bites were scratched open.
Further back were two teenagers touching in every part they could. Arms touching legs touching cheeks touching bottoms. They looked at each other as if there were hardly the words to be found for what they felt – only touch could tell it.
At the very end of the bus I found my seat.
Eric drove out of dock three and into the traffic. The bus was a solid box with edges that held me up over the cars and the people and the roads, like a building that had tipped over and been given wheels and mechanics. The engine hummed and vibrated as it moved through the city. I could see the side of the mother’s face at the front of the bus close to the window, still jiggling the baby, her nose almost touching the glass, as if she wished herself through it, closer to what she was leaving behind.
I leaned back and felt the warmth of the engine through the walls as it charged the lights and the automatic door and the windscreen wipers. Nobody looked at me. I didn’t belong to the mother or to Eric or to the sleeping man or to Deirdre or the taxi driver or Anne White or Liam or Jake or the bus guard. I was separate, with no memory of being joined. My recollection reached a fence and was stopped, as if what was on the other side was dangerous.
Soon we were out of the city and driving down a wide highway with six lanes of traffic. Sometimes two cars would be driving in opposite directions and if you looked far into the distance it seemed as though they were being drawn to each other, each vehicle generating its own horizontal gravity. Each vehicle was a magnet for the other and the force was beyond human power – it didn’t matter if the drivers pressed the brakes, they couldn’t stop the collision or prevent the fatalities. I held my breath as the car sped towards the bus faster and faster and then when I was sure it would hit, the car would miss and there was air between the vehicles and one more time we would live until the next car.
I sat mo
tionless. There were my organs, my eyes, my hands, my sensory receptors, but it was as if they were accidental, not belonging to me, like an experiment made to happen, but not my choosing.
I don’t know how much time passed. I never did. Sometimes one minute was longer than one year. Sometimes a morning was longer than a night. Time was increasive, like elastic. The bus drove on and on and on, though time itself could have been stopped, or moving so fast it couldn’t be counted. The white lines on the road repeated, one after the other after the other. I was in suspension, riding the spaces between the lines, waiting to end or begin. It was the same with my eyes open or closed. It could have been a dream at night or it could have been real living. The bus rocked to the sound of its own deep rumbling. Nothing hurt. Not a single part. I was hurtless, weightless. I rested against the side of the bus and it rocked me like a cradle. Outside the light changed, moving from midday to afternoon.
Some time before dark Eric stopped the bus at a petrol station and the mother with the baby and the man with the bitten fingers and the old woman, tired from sitting, climbed slowly down. I watched through the glass as they walked into the light of the petrol station, the light glowing but at the same time sad, as if it couldn’t reach far enough or bright enough to show what was there. I watched as everyone lined up for snacks then I got up and went into the bus toilet and, keeping my eyes closed, I used it. After, I flushed bright green and it smelled sweet and sick. I washed my hands in the small sink.
Back in my seat I watched Eric through the window. He was sitting at a table inside the petrol station. Eric looked down at his dinner then up at a television high on a wall, then down at his plate then up at the television then down at his plate. He shook salt and pepper over his dinner. My mouth felt dry. Soon the people walked back to the bus and Eric wiped his mouth and paid, eyes still on the television. When he came back onto the bus he said to me, ‘I’ll be dropping you off in an hour, okay? Make sure you’re awake.’
I nodded.
We kept driving, the bus warm and darkening, and then the shining sea appeared before us, the night falling quietly over the top. I expanded as the sea entered my vision. I met the body of water with my inners; my linings stretched. ‘It’s always here,’ I said to nobody.