Golden Boys

by Sonya Hartnett

  It’s Monday evening, and the brothers haven’t spoken much since Saturday, when, with Garrick, they’d met Colt on the road, and left him standing there. The silence between them has caused Syd some pain, but it’s important that Declan understand how angry and disappointed Syd is with him. Nevertheless, he has only one big brother. It is time to reopen the lines of communication. ‘We finished putting up the tree,’ he says.

  ‘Hmm.’ Inch by inch Declan is feeding the tube through the water, having the hang of it now.

  ‘So Dorrie can stop pestering Mum.’

  Declan frowns: a bubble has risen but it is difficult to tell if it came from the puncture or was merely a breath of trapped air. Avery murmurs his opinion, and Declan’s search resumes. Syd scrapes the footpath, presses flat a leafy weed growing from a crack. From the house behind him comes a thump, a child’s incensed squeal. ‘Nice night for a swim,’ Syd remarks.

  ‘You’re not going up there,’ his brother replies.

  Syd stares at him – at both of them, Declan with his fringe over his eyes, Avery with his scabby knee. At school all the girls love Declan, he is so gallant, a sheriff from a midday movie; no one moves through life with more nonchalance than Avery. Syd has always been inexpressibly proud to have Declan for a brother and Avery for a friend: but on that Saturday morning, when they’d cruised away from Colt, he had been ashamed. ‘It was mean,’ he blurts out, ‘what we did!’

  A flotilla of pinpoint bubbles shivers in the water, and Avery says, ‘Mmph.’ Declan clamps the hole and lifts the tube from the bucket. He drapes it across the concrete and, taking up a cloth, carefully dries the punctured place. Without looking at his brother he says, ‘Avery had to come with us. No one can be there alone.’

  ‘You could have stood up to Garrick.’ Syd feels fervid and aggrieved, he can’t speak fast enough. ‘You could have said that we’d stay with Colt, and made Garrick go away.’

  Declan hunches to inspect the tube, the puncture that’s a mi­­nute dot. He has their father’s repair kit flipped open at his side, and he picks from it the metal file. Wrapping the tube around his knuckles, he scuffs the punctured area just enough to ruffle the rubber, and wipes the grit away. ‘I couldn’t,’ he says. ‘Garrick is our friend —’

  ‘No, I hate him!’

  ‘— and what Mr Jenson does is wrong.’

  Syd clamps his mouth shut. He watches his brother squeeze glue from a tiny bottle onto the scuffed place on the tube, then take the patching piece that Avery offers and press this into the glue. Syd wonders where he’s recently seen something so painstaking and clinical, and remembers the man tending Avery’s knee. ‘How long does the glue take to dry?’ he asks, although he knows from experience it’s no time at all.

  ‘A few minutes.’ Declan looks at Avery, who agrees, ‘About.’

  Declan lays the tube on the footpath and sits back, surveying his work. With one hand he tips the bucket over, and water washes into the grass. It’s still light, but if Syd were to look away for three or four minutes he would look back to find that night had arrived. ‘Colt is our friend too,’ he says, but lamely, the fight going out of him. ‘You like Colt, Deco. You like him more than you like Garrick.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘So you should have remembered whose side you’re on.’

  Declan probes the patch with a fingertip, and it shifts fractionally. He frowns, adjusts the patch back into place. ‘I’m on your side, Syd,’ he says. ‘Who else’s side would I be on?’

  And Syd doesn’t say he’s supposed to be on the side of the weak, because standing in the still yard with the upturned bike and the waning light it suddenly seems that everyone is weak, his sisters with their plastic tree, Syd with all his wishful dreams, Colt alone in the middle of the road, even Garrick Greene with his brutal brothers and surly mind and the money he needs to keep the friendship of his friends: they are, all of them, bumping along as helplessly as the silver balls in a pinball machine. And Avery, who’s the most helpless and unmoored of them all, yawns and says, as if it’s the most casual thing, ‘Garrick’s stolen the BMX.’

  The Kiley boys look up. ‘What?’

  ‘He stole it on Saturday night. It’s under his house. I’ve seen it.’

  ‘Holy shit!’ says Declan.

  The news makes Syd clap his hands to his head. The insult – the very thought of it, Garrick’s grubby paws groping that beautiful bike – makes him almost dizzy. ‘Why?’ he asks, although as he asks he discovers he knows perfectly well why: ‘Because of what the man did?’

  ‘I guess. And because of Colt.’

  ‘Because of Colt? It’s not Colt’s fault —’

  ‘Nope.’ Avery shifts on the concrete; there’s no fat protecting his bones. ‘But Garrick is in love with Colt. That’s what’s really making him mad.’

  The Kiley brothers goggle: Syd feels his brain tumble like a pup running after something it can’t catch. Then Declan laughs. ‘What do you mean, he loves Colt?’

  ‘Don’t you reckon he does?’ Avery smiles beatifically. ‘He always wants to be around Colt. He’s always asking where Colt is, what he’s doing, when he’s coming home. He goes to Colt’s house all the time, even though it’s not the kind of place he’d usually be. He loves him.’

  Declan thinks about this, and says again, ‘Holy shit!’

  ‘He doesn’t want to love him. He hates Colt, because he loves him. And now he hates him even more, because if it wasn’t for Colt then he wouldn’t be anywhere near Colt’s dad. So it is Colt’s fault, see? So he has to make Colt sorry. He wants to be the boss of Colt, not for Colt to be the boss of him. He wants everything to be the way he’s used to it being. So he stole the bike.’

  Declan goes to answer, but no words come out: he spreads his hands in wonder. Syd, too, gapes at Avery, who sits with his bare arms looping his knees, skinny and slightly grimy, innocent as grass and as shrewd as a leprechaun. All Syd can manage to ask is, ‘How do you know?’

  Avery’s ashy eyes glance at him and Syd catches sight of it fleetly, the scarred and slick side of a world he’ll never live in. ‘It was just there,’ says Avery.

  When she hears the car pull into the driveway she gets ready; part of her was hoping he would never come home. It’s Wednesday, payday, early evening, not late for him. She listens as he moves into the house, his footsteps always random at first, as if he’s never been here before, and his greetings to the girls which sound as if he’s never met them: ‘Yes, hello Marigold, how are you, Dorrie.’ She hears her mother’s voice and, below all of it, the yammer of the TV. She sits on the edge of her bed, her hands under her thighs. She hears him go to the kitchen and inspect the dinner put aside for him. She sees it all happening in her mind but feels a kind of blindness, and a sense that she’s stopped existing as herself, Freya Kiley, and become instead a kind of sneaky insect whose squeezing in under the door brings destruction to the house. But it’s not, she reminds herself, only good things that can end.

  When he goes into the lounge room without bothering to eat the meal she stands up immediately and walks the length of the hall to the lounge, passing on her journey the bathroom, her brothers’ room, her parents’ room, the front door and the kitchen – the entire house. Her house, in every way. Bought because she had to be brought home. She’s endured such guilt, and now she must do this terrible thing to make amends: but really, she hasn’t only taken.

  ‘Hello, Dad,’ she says.

  He is standing with his back to her, propped against Syd’s armchair and watching the television. Her mother is there, and all her siblings, the three youngest stretched out on the carpet. It takes a second for her voice to register, and when it does he turns awkwardly. ‘Hello, Freya.’

  ‘Drunk again,’ she says.

  It’s as if she’s thrown a rattlesnake to the floor: there’s a collective recoil and intake of breath. Marigold looks at her with wide-open eyes, Syd yanks his feet up under him. Freya presses on; she had known it wouldn’t be
easy. ‘I don’t know why you come home when you’re drunk. No one wants you here.’

  Marigold cries, ‘Oh, Freya!’

  ‘Well, we don’t. He stinks. He’s revolting.’

  Joe says, ‘Watch your mouth, you little bitch.’

  She has never been sworn at by an adult, and it’s disconcerting almost to the point of being derailing. But she tightens her fists and holds her ground and says, ‘What a pig you are.’

  To Syd it must appear that his sister has gone crazy: he’s kneeling on the armchair saying, ‘Freya, no no —’

  ‘Be quiet, Freya!’ warns their mother. ‘Get out of here.’

  ‘Why?’ Freya whirls to her. ‘Why do I have to be quiet? Why can’t I tell him he’s disgusting?’

  But even as she speaks she is taking small steps in reverse because her father is advancing on her with equally small steps, and her heart has become a sparrow in a cage slamming at her ribs for escape. She sees how much bigger and stronger he is – much bigger than when they fix the station wagon together, much stronger than when he cooks her pikelets for breakfast. Not the same person: the knowledge both alarms and whips her on. He’s closer, just three steps away, near enough that she can see the button undone on his shirt. ‘You make me sick!’ she cries. ‘I’m embarrassed to have you as a father!’

  ‘Get out,’ he sneers. ‘Get to bed —’

  ‘No!’ She shouts it as loudly as she can. ‘You get to bed! Get out of this house! I’ve had enough!’

  His arm flies out, swinging as if to smash her from his sight but colliding with the Christmas tree, which collapses sideways without any resistance at all, hitting the carpet with a spiritless huff. Decorations spill from it, the angel capsizing from the peak. The entire family stares at it, the stubby upended cone of plastic suddenly seeming the worst of omens. Then Dorrie unleashes a godless wail, and Peter throws his head back and howls too, and Freya screeches at her father, ‘Now look what you’ve done!’

  Joe glares, his head tossing as though he’d shake off what he hears like bees. Then, ‘Get out!’ he yells. ‘Out of my sight!’

  ‘Freya, stop!’ says their mother, and there’s no fear or pleading in her voice, just an iron intolerance Freya hasn’t heard before. Declan has jumped up from the couch, Dorrie and Marigold and Peter are shrieking a noise like a whirlwind. Joe swings a splayed hand, and Freya darts out of reach – but she’s misjudged something, her house has turned against her, the yellow-eyed monster that hunts her suddenly snags her in its claws, because instead of slipping lithely past the door she hits the doorframe and for the tiniest instant she is trapped, unable to take the step that would carry her beyond reach. And this man whom she has never seen looms in front of her before she can raise her hands, a man who so clearly despises her that it sucks the air from her lungs and the strength from her legs. His fist is up, a solid mallet aimed at her drained face. ‘Oh no,’ she gabbles, ‘no, don’t —’ and then the room itself seems to roar. ‘Do not!’ says their mother. ‘Don’t you dare! ’ And Elizabeth is there, gripping her husband’s arm and pulling him back with irresistible force. ‘Don’t you dare hit her!’ So Freya’s father hits her mother instead, an unhesitating punch to the jaw which makes a deadly sound and slings their mother like a soft doll into the wall. And the cries of the children become colliding screams of terror, Freya glimpses them scuttling on their knees as her mother buckles to the floor. Declan dives beside her, but Freya does not wait to see more: she turns and bolts from the room, out the front door and across the garden and into the open street. She’s young and fit, she can run like an animal and that is how she’s imagined it, flying up the hill the way a deer would sprint the distance in an effortless gallop: in fact she runs in agony, tears streaming down her face, sobbing into herself great painful gallons of air. The evening is hazy, the streetlights are on, but it isn’t yet dark and some birds are out, swooping and weaving ahead of her as she stumbles along the path. She struggles to go faster but it’s the running of a nightmare, her legs are as heavy as anvils, each stride requires all her strength yet seems to propel her nowhere. She’s turned the corner and is labouring uphill and she can see the front fence of the Jensons’ house, their porch light beyond the trees, but it’s almost impossible to haul herself closer and she understands the monster has curved its paw around her heel and is toying her inevitably into its embrace. Something has gone disastrously wrong, her poor mother thrown to the wolf, and Freya is nothing but a stupid child who pulled the bolt that held back something infinitely more ferocious than she.

  And then she is charging up the concrete steps and hammering on the Jensons’ door. In her mind she’s always seen Rex but in real life it is Tabby who opens the door. Her pretty face drops at the sight of the girl: ‘Freya! What’s happened?’

  ‘My dad is killing my mum!’ she bawls.

  And suddenly Rex is also there, appearing behind his wife with a frown across his handsome brow. ‘Calm down, Freya, just be calm —’

  ‘No!’ she yells. ‘You have to help us! It’s my fault, I didn’t mean it, he’s hurting her – please, please!’

  In her dreams he’d dashed out in a flurry of something like eagle feathers; instead he looks her up and down and she sees him hesitate. His mouth opens and closes over white teeth, and Tabby says, ‘Call the police, Freya. That’s what you must do.’

  Rex nods rapidly. ‘Yes, that’s the thing. Call the police. It’s not my place to interfere.’

  She rocks on her feet. ‘But Mr Jenson – I need you —’

  He says, ‘What specifically do you expect of me?’

  ‘Call the police,’ says Tabby. ‘Don’t get involved, Rex.’

  Freya looks from her, this miserable woman, to him, who should be rising on wings but instead is lurking – almost hiding – behind his wife. They stare back at her from the dark side of the door, their admirable faces empty. Expecting her gone, now they’ve told her what to do. Repulsed that she’s brought this to their doorstep, but ready to forgive if she will go away. Otherwise, it is over. She blinks into this new blond light, says, ‘There’s no time to call the police.’

  ‘I’ll come with you, Freya.’ It is Colt: he slips between his parents and out the open door. ‘No!’ says Tabby, and grapples for him, but already he’s beyond her reach; and although Rex says, ‘Colt, listen!’ he doesn’t pause, but takes the steps two at a time, and his father does not try to catch him. And Freya, her hands knotted at her mouth, gives Rex a last glance, because it is him she needs – a grown man – even if he’s not the man she came looking for, which is something she will never forget. And Rex looks pained and says, ‘Oh, for goodness sake,’ and follows his son out the door, and Tabby throws her hands up and spins away as if she’s witnessed something beyond describing.

  But Freya’s heart leaps – sluggishly, but it leaps. It leaps and lurches down the street with Colt and Rex, and part of her finds it blackly amusing that her plan is going so haywire while also managing to stay largely on track. Rex is coming to the rescue, but everything has been lost. She’s unbolted a castle door and found not only a monster, but that she’s a monster herself.

  At the white house the screen door is open, and Dorrie is standing on the veranda in her pink nightdress and bare feet: she bleats when she sees Freya, her arms reaching up, but Freya storms past without stopping. Her father is in the kitchen stomping about randomly, and he has made his usual mess – cutlery is scattered, food has been buffeted from its plate, chairs have fallen over, one cupboard door has been kicked off a hinge. The kitchen smells like he does, of cigarette butts and dregs. Elizabeth is on a chair in the lounge room, a wet cloth pressed to her jaw, and Syd and Marigold and Peter are clustered round her, Peter clinging to his brother, Marigold with her head on her mother’s lap. Declan is hovering nearby, gripping the neck of a heavy vase that was a wedding present to Elizabeth and Joe. His face is pale and he looks at Freya as if she’s unknown to him. The television is still loyally screening, ind
ifferent to being ignored. Freya halts in the hallway junction where the lounge and kitchen meet, and Rex steps up behind her. In his arms he’s carrying Dorrie, whose small hands push against his chest. He looks over Freya’s head to Joe, and Freya knows, although she can’t see and has never seen it, that he has no idea what to do. ‘Ah,’ he says. ‘Joe. Hello.’

  Freya’s father has barged into the wall near the stove; at the sight of Rex he plants a foot against the plaster and levers himself away. His hair is mussed but otherwise he looks like her father again. ‘Good evening, Mr Dentist,’ he says. ‘What brings you here? Bleeding gums? Rotten molar? Would you care for some dinner? A drink?’

  Dorrie squirms to be put down but Rex keeps her to him. ‘No thanks, Joe, I’ve eaten. And I don’t drink on a work night. Nothing worse than a dentist with shaky hands.’

  But Joe is not listening. He looks around at the smeared food, the listing cupboard, the newspapers on the floor. ‘It’s a mess in here,’ he says. ‘Is your house a mess, Rex?’

  ‘Sometimes, Joe.’

  ‘You’d think it wouldn’t be hard to keep a house tidy. I don’t know what she does all day.’