The Best Australian Stories

by Black Inc.

  Sometimes he felt he had died and woken up.

  How could he tell Ulla that to the end of his days (an end on which he now reflected daily), he would never pass a bus stop without looking for her, waiting in her dusty sandals?

  He was growing sleepy. He reached out one arm and switched Kancheli off. Out of music comes silence. Once he fell asleep (after listening to one of the Russians) and dreamt that he was walking down a snowy street at night, lit by glowing, old-fashioned lanterns. How could he tell them that what he remembered most was the pull he felt, strong as love or nostalgia, to give up, lie down in the snow, and close his eyes.

  Motel Morning-Star

  Liam Davison

  Angelo remembers this place. Even as his father turns the car into the forecourt of the Morning-Star Motel, he knows he’s been here before. He can’t say when: before his mother left, before the motel was built? He can’t be sure. But he’s been here before.

  He remembers the curve of the bay beside the road, the water shimmering in the distance. It touches something in him, some half-forgotten link with family and home and travelling together, the three of them in his father’s car, only it’s not the one he sits in now. It’s an older car. His mother sits in the front, her dark hair falling over the back of the upholstered seat, and he’s a smaller version of himself, cushioned in the back with the smell of his father’s cigarettes wafting over him.

  He remembers the statue of the Virgin lit up against the night sky by the side of the highway. It stood, perched on its column, sixty foot or more above the turn-off to the beach – the turn-off he looks at now from the carpark of the Morning-Star Motel. He remembers seeing the statue from a long way off, hovering above the road like an apparition. It drew the car towards it. And when they passed below it he remembers looking up through the back window to see it floating above the car, shining like nothing he’d seen before. The whole car was bathed in light.

  ‘The Big Virgin!’ his father said. ‘Like up in Queensland. The Big Banana they have, now this. The Big Madonna.’

  And his mother hushed him. ‘Don’t,’ she said. ‘What will Angelo think?’

  Further down the peninsula, they had passed caravan parks shut down for the winter months and beachside kiosks with flaking stucco walls. At the top of a hill, his father had stopped the car. Angelo remembers now, as his father shuts the car door behind him and walks slowly across the stones towards reception, how he’d looked back across the bay to where the shining Virgin seemed to float above the water.

  It’s not there now. Outside the car, the air is filled with light and movement. Insects with shining wings float past the window and he can feel the heat of the afternoon through the glass. The highway runs behind the straggling line of oleanders at the edge of the carpark and he can see the empty column at the turn-off to the beach. It’s not as tall as he remembered it to be. Lines of rust stain the white paint and he can see the empty platform at the top, the open expanse of sky where the Virgin used to stand. The monument rises like something out of memory, drawing him back to a half-remembered past which stops short against the sky. He thinks of his mother’s dark hair falling across the back seat of his father’s car, the light from the statue washing across her face. And he knows that, somehow, his memories end with her; that if he traces them far enough back he will come to the empty space she occupied before she left.

  Angelo sees his father walk from reception towards the car, a short, overweight man in a dark suit, shielding his eyes from the insects. As he draws near, Angelo can see his face and the beginnings of a relieved, self-satisfied smile, as though a weight has been lifted from his mind. He sees him peering in at him, the cigarette stuck to his bottom lip, and for a moment it’s the face of a younger man, the man who sat beside his mother all those years ago. She might be there even now in the room his father’s come from, pulling her hair back into a plait, putting her make-up on, getting ready to walk out into the bright light of the day as though she’s never been away.

  His father bangs the side of the car with the flat of his hand and moves round to the back. He throws the boot open and Angelo can hear his bags being lifted onto the stones – the same bags Nurse Bird had carried into the ward when his father arrived. Most of the others had already gone, their few belongings packed into similar bags by bewildered-looking parents. ‘Wicked shame,’ they said as they carried the bags out to their waiting cars. Angelo watched them go, wondering whether his mother would come. And when his father walked into the ward without her, with Nurse Bird carrying the bags, he thought, ‘She’ll be at home. She’ll be getting things ready.’

  Nurse Bird had told him as much. ‘You’ll all be going home,’ she’d said, with her small, sharp face daring them to defy her. ‘They’re closing us down. Back to your mothers and fathers. Back to the family unit. God only knows what they’ll do with you now.’

  But they hadn’t gone home. Instead, his father had driven around the bay, through the low-lying land where unfamiliar houses clung to the railway line, and out into open country. He kept the radio on and his eyes on the road. And now, it seems they have arrived. His father opens the door and Angelo steps out, onto the stone carpark of the Morning-Star Motel. He can smell the bay on the hot wind as he carries the smaller bag towards reception. His father walks two steps ahead with the other bag.

  Inside, the room is cool. The glare is cut by heavy drapes and an air-conditioner rattles against the panelled walls. Behind the counter, a woman with long, dark hair is leaning over papers with a yellow light beside her on the desk. Angelo starts when he sees her. She appears to glow with the reflected light and, when she looks up, he’s surprised to see how young she is, no more than a girl, with a vaguely familiar face. His father stubs out his cigarette in the Morning-Star ashtray on the counter as she moves towards them. The smoke curls around her face. She might be his mother looking across the back seat of the car at him all those years ago.

  ‘There’s just the two,’ his father says. ‘There’s not much else he needs.’

  She leans across the counter to look at the bags, and Angelo sees her smiling down at him with the light from the window across her face.

  ‘This is Lena,’ his father says. ‘She’ll look after you.’ Lena turns the smile towards his father as if some tacit understanding has been reached between them and his father smiles back. They’re comfortable with each other, as though they’ve met before. ‘She’ll show you where your room is.’

  Lena moves out from behind the counter and takes Angelo’s bag from him. He sees his father’s eyes drift to her legs and feels the softness of her hand against his.

  ‘Hello, Angelo,’ she says. ‘You’ll like it here.’ And the sweet scent of her perfume stays with him as she straightens up and moves towards the door.

  Outside, it seems hotter and brighter than it had been before. The light bounces off the white stones of the carpark as they follow Lena along a concrete path to a row of doors. Each door has a blue star with a number stencilled onto it. Angelo counts them as he goes. Seventeen is open and he can see a man lying on the bed in underpants. A television blinks in the corner with the music turned down low.

  ‘Victor,’ Lena says. ‘You won’t need anything to do with him.’

  At twenty, she stops and reaches for the key. She twists her body to get to the tight pocket of her skirt.

  ‘I’ve made it ready,’ she says as she pushes the door open, and Angelo can see a towel folded on the double bed with a miniature soap on top of it. Inside, there’s a vinyl couch, a chair and a television set, which Lena switches on.

  ‘Do you like the telly, Angelo?’

  The walls are the same wood panelling as reception. An air-conditioner makes the same rattling noise against it.

  ‘It gets hot in the afternoon,’ Lena says and stretches across the couch to draw the blinds. ‘Keep these shut and you’ll be all right.’ Angelo catches a glimpse of the bay before they close. ‘There’s cold water in the fridge.’
The room has a closed-up smell of Pine-O-Cleen and other people’s cigarettes.

  Angelo watches his father put the two bags into the wardrobe and close the door. The bed’s bigger than any he’s ever slept in, a bed like the one his parents used to share, and he moves away from it, intimidated by its size, unsure of what’s expected of him. He moves towards the vinyl couch. Lena laughs and runs her fingers through his hair as though she’s always known him, as though she can put him at ease by touching him.

  ‘He’s like you, Joe,’ she says, and it takes Angelo a moment to realise she’s talking to his father. ‘He’s a lot like you.’

  She walks to the bathroom at the back of the room and his father follows her in. Angelo can hear her giggling behind the door and the low sounds of his father’s voice.

  ‘Don’t,’ she says.

  He looks at the TV with the sound turned down until the toilet flushes and she comes out, smoothing down her clothes, smiling at him.

  ‘I’ll see you this afternoon,’ she says to Angelo. ‘Just to see you’re settled in. You’ll like it here.’

  His father follows her to the door. As she opens it, Angelo sees him rub his hand along the inside of her leg. She pushes him away and shuts the door. Angelo hears her footsteps on the path outside and his father turns to face him. The two of them are alone, with the television blinking in the corner.

  ‘Your own bed,’ his father says, pushing the mattress down with his hand. ‘Your own TV. A clean towel every day.’ He picks up the miniature soap and smells it. ‘Those buttons there,’ he points to a console beside the bed. ‘That’s a radio. A radio and TV’ And he turns it on to prove the point. The music sounds like the piped music from the hospital, and already Angelo can imagine the slow hours he’ll spend listening to it or watching daytime television.

  His father is like a salesman. He moves from feature to feature in the small room, opening the wardrobe to reveal the bags again, pointing to the half-sized fridge beneath the bench, the jug of water.

  ‘It’s comfortable,’ he says. ‘Your own bathroom.’

  He looks everywhere but at Angelo, who stays seated on the vinyl couch and looks, not at the things his father shows, but at the man in the dark suit who’s brought him here.

  ‘You’ll like it here,’ he says, taking Angelo’s shirts from the bags and hanging them in the wardrobe. ‘Lena will look after you.’ The hangers are fixed to the metal rod and he struggles to keep the shirts straight. ‘I’ll be back in a few days. I can’t stay long today.’ There are only four hangers and, when they’re full, he folds the clothes back into the bags. ‘I’ll bring some hangers when I come.’

  When he leaves, Angelo turns the television off and pushes the buttons on the console. Each channel is the same – the same music, the same pre-set volume. He switches it off as well and settles back into the vinyl couch. Outside he can hear the wind off the bay and the occasional crunch of car wheels over the stones – the same noises he will hear for most of the night, along with the opening and closing of doors, the footsteps on the concrete path, the muffled voices from the room next door. He will lie awake in the dark room watching the glowing numbers of the digital clock in the console by his bed.

  *

  When the cars swing in off the highway their headlights flare into his room, shining through the curtains and lighting up the back wall like a screen. He sees, for an instant, the tray that Lena brought him, still sitting on the couch with the sausages half-eaten on the plate, the box of Panadol she calls his medication, the glass of water she’s placed beside his bed.

  ‘There, there, my angel,’ she’d said to him as she ran her fingers through his hair again. ‘My sweet little angel,’ and she’d tucked him into bed as if he was a child. ‘Lena will look after you.’ He’d felt her soft lips against his cheek and resisted the urge to nestle into her.

  Then it is dark again and the numbers float before his eyes. He drifts into uneasy sleep and wakes with the headlights to see the shapes of people moving outside his room. Their shadows are thrown up on his wall. Lena’s shape is there. He wakes in the middle of the night to see her, surrounded by light, floating in front of him, shedding a yellow glow across everything in the room. He watches as she hovers above him then drifts away. And when he slides into unconsciousness again he takes her image with him – a shining figure watching over him as he sleeps.

  *

  Angelo comes to recognise the cars that pull in each day to the Morning-Star Motel. He recognises the particular sounds their tyres make on the stones and the slamming of their doors. He knows which ones will leave their engines running outside room seventeen while their drivers disappear inside; which ones will park around the back and leave an hour later, nosing innocently out into the traffic. He knows the men and women who arrive in separate family cars for the afternoon; the women who arrive in taxis, dressed as though they’re going out at night. He knows the sales reps’ cars with placards in the back which park outside reception, waiting for Lena to unlock a room and slip inside, leaving the phone unanswered for half an hour or more. And he knows the sound of his father’s car. Once a week he hears it pull into the carpark to check that things are working out.

  He smooths the bed and waits for his father to come into his room. Sometimes his father comes before he visits Lena. Other times he goes to reception first and Angelo hears the rattle of the key in one of the empty rooms. He turns the television on and waits for the two of them to walk into his room together. His father puts whatever he has brought onto the bed – a magazine, a tube of shaving cream, a box of handkerchiefs – and sits down on the couch.

  ‘You’re happy,’ he says, and Angelo is never sure if it’s a question or an order. ‘You have everything you need.’

  ‘Of course he’s happy,’ Lena says. ‘You’re happy, Angel, aren’t you?’ and she holds his hand or strokes his arm. ‘He likes it here.’

  His father looks uneasily about the room. There are no pictures on the walls, no photographs, nothing to suggest it’s his son’s room. He knows that if he opened the wardrobe door, the shirts would be hanging in a neat row, the bags would be where he’d left them. He thinks about bringing something from home, something of Angelo’s, but he can’t think what. His son’s not the boy he used to be.

  ‘What would you like me to bring?’ he asks, but Angelo doesn’t answer. He acts as though his father isn’t there. ‘Talk to me, Angelo. Don’t do this to your father.’

  They sit, the three of them on the couch or Lena will lie across the bed, and struggle for conversation. Eventually, his father stands and walks towards the door.

  ‘I’ll come next week,’ he says. ‘I’ll bring some socks for you.’

  Lena brushes Angelo’s hair when he’s gone and wipes a mark from his cheek with a tissue. When it doesn’t move, she rubs it with her tongue. Angelo feels the moist strokes against his skin and a tightening in his groin.

  ‘Your father loves you, Angelo,’ she says. ‘He comes all this way to see you. You should talk to him.’ He feels her hair fall across his shoulder and reaches out to touch it. ‘You should make more of an effort, you know.’ And she steps away from him. ‘You really should, my angel boy.’

  In the mornings, Angelo watches her move from room to room. She drags the linen from the beds and piles it by the doors for the laundry service. Her hair is pulled back and he can see the fine lines of her face as she goes about her work. When she’s finished she changes into bathers with shorts pulled over them and Angelo sees her walking towards the beach with a towel across her shoulder. Every day, she goes there. He sees her cross the highway and walk past the empty monument, down towards the shimmering water. When she returns in the early afternoon, there’s already sales reps’ cars waiting by reception and she walks past them with her hair shining wet and the towel wrapped about her waist. She waves her shorts at them and disappears inside.

  Sometimes when the cars have gone, he’ll see her knock at the door of number seventeen,
of Victor’s room, and hand him money or go inside with him and draw the blinds. He knows then that she may not come to him, or if she does she’ll lie on the bed with her eyes glazed and unfocused, giggling at him, saying stupid things.

  ‘You should talk to Victor, Angelo,’ she’ll say. ‘He has some medication for you. Victor has all sorts of medication.’ And she’ll roll about on the bed, teasing him, rubbing her hands along her thighs. ‘Give me an angel kiss, my Angelo. Come and show Lena how you love her.’

  Angelo stays on the couch. He doesn’t like her when she acts like this. He knows it’s Victor who does this to her. He’s seen him standing by his door with his shirt undone, showing the thin tattooed chain around his neck. He’s seen the blue stars on the knuckles of his right hand. He’s seen him blinking into the sun with the same dazed expression on his face that Lena has when she’s been with him.

  On those days, Angelo thinks of her as she appears to him each night, shining outside his window, filling his room with light. Sometimes she’s no more than a dim glow in the distance. Other times he wakes to find her hovering above him, so bright he feels the room might suddenly erupt in flames. He lies there, letting the light wash over him, knowing he’s safe with her.

  One day she comes to him, late in the afternoon, from Victor’s room. Her pupils are dilated and she stumbles in, rubbing herself against him, drawing him towards the bed.

  ‘My baby,’ she says. ‘My angel baby. Come to Lena. Come and lay with Lena.’ She brushes her lips against his ear and he can feel her warm body pressed against him. ‘How old are you, Angelo? How old do you think you are?’ And she laughs at him, pulling him towards the bed and falling onto it. ‘Are you old enough, Angelo? How much has your daddy told?’