‘You are really, really old.’
‘Trying to make it up to you. Always. To both of you.’
‘Me and Dave?’
He stared ahead, focused on the screen. ‘You and Fleur.’
‘How long will you do that for?’
‘As long as it takes.’
‘That’s cheese, Dad. Being at the drive-in doesn’t mean you can feed me shitty lines from a movie.’
He smiled and pulled me close. ‘Can we get back in the car, please?’
Fleur had reclined her chair right back and Dad couldn’t get back in, so he lingered by the door and we waited for the last few minutes of the movie to play out. ‘Now Santa can fly home, see, because the mean old dad decided he would sing the Christmas carol after all.’ The screen went black. Sylvia had fallen asleep with her face in her hands. Fleur slammed her cast on the door. ‘Oh my God, it’s a double feature.’
‘We can go, if you want,’ Dave said, his voice flat. Dad raised his eyebrows at me. Dave on the beach, kicking jellyfish. Dave in the kitchen, counting boxes of tea. Dave in the hospital, asleep in a plastic chair.
‘I’ll stay with you,’ I said.
‘You don’t have to do that,’ he said.
‘I want to.’
Dad gave Dave a little shove. ‘I can pick you up later.’
There he was again, my guy. Smiling. ‘That would be really nice.’
They rattled off in Sylvia’s old car, Dad behind the wheel and Fleur still with her leg out the window, shouting, ‘Merry Christmas, fuckers!’ and Sylvia’s face bouncing on the glass.
‘Just us then,’ Dave said.
‘Just us.’
We walked back up to the diner, where the girl from earlier was wiping down the counters.
‘I’ve got something for you,’ Dave said. ‘I mean, it’s for me as well. It’s to share.’
‘A gift?’
‘A gift.’ He reached into his pocket and pulled out a slim joint.
‘Is that weed?’
‘It is. Unless that kid I met at the playground was lying to me.’ He sniffed it. ‘It could be lawn clippings. That’s how they get you. Kids making a fortune selling lawn clippings to middle aged men.’
‘You’re not middle aged.’
‘Maybe not if I’m planning to live to be ninety.’
‘I hope you are.’ I snatched the joint from him. ‘Did you bring a lighter? How old are we?’ The lights flickered above us, bugs silhouetted in their coffins. Dave passed me an orange Bic. I took a deep drag, let the smoke curl down into my lungs and around my bones. A car revved its engine; the sound broke across the field. So far from the city, the sky opened up its blanket of stars again.
‘Pass it,’ Dave said, so I did, and lost him briefly behind the white curtain. ‘Shit.’ He coughed loudly. ‘We are old.’
The screen flickered on and a cheer went up. Familiar scenes: a plane coming into land in the sunset; a man afraid of flying. Die Hard – Dave’s favourite.
‘You chose this one though, didn’t you?’
‘Obviously.’
Under the awning I found a shiny beetle. Flipped it over with my straw and watched it right itself. Time after time it turned over its mirrored body and stared down the straw. Did it know? I flipped it again. Its little legs searched for traction in the empty air until bam, upright again.
‘Why are you doing that?’ Dave said.
‘Do you think it knows? Do you think it flips over and thinks to itself, ugh, that bitch with the straw is still here and she’s going to do it again?’
‘I think it probably wonders where it can get some poo to roll in, and you’re just interrupting it getting to the poo.’
‘Would it stop after a while, do you think? Give up because it kept getting flipped over?’
He put his arm around me. ‘I see through your metaphor. No, I think it would keep getting up until it died trying, actually.’
‘I would stop before that happened.’
‘Exactly.’
He pointed the joint at the screen. ‘John McClane would never waste time flipping beetles over. He’d just go in there and fuck that beetle up.’ He made his hand into a gun. ‘Yippee ki—’
I grabbed at his face, pinched his lips closed. ‘Shh!’ A mop of black hair went skipping past, little knock-knees carrying it along. ‘There are children present!’
His voice dropped to a whisper. ‘Imagine: all the beetles running for cover under their piles of poo.’ He pushed my beetle away into the grass.
‘My only friend!’ I cried, and we both laughed together. ‘I haven’t been this stoned since our wedding night.’
‘God bless your friend . . . what was her name?’
‘Sophia. She was our friend.’
‘I inherited her.’ He leaned into me until our cheeks were touching. ‘I inherited lots of good stuff from you.’
‘Oh yeah? Like what?’
‘Teabags, for a start. Fuckloads of teabags.’
‘Sorry about that.’
He passed me the joint. ‘No need to be sorry. Water under the bridge.’ I dragged on it right down to the roach. Dave shoved my head into his armpit. ‘Now, shut up and watch the movie.’
Many nights ago, so many nights, we had sat on an overpass and watched the cars come out of the exit on their way to the city. All their lights blinking red and white. The air was cool and on it came the smell of kebabs from Swan Street and beyond that the shouts going up from the football in the park. Dave wore his favourite green scarf with the turtles; it was the first time I had seen it.
We counted each car as it came up around the bend and across the bridge. People alone or not alone, for the seconds on the ramp all driving in the same direction. All of them moving forward to their temporarily common goal. When we had counted two hundred cars, Dave wrapped his scarf around both of us and we stuck together like a Chinese finger trap.
‘Do you wonder where they’re going?’ he had said. That was the way of him, asking about my wonderment instead of telling me his own.
In the field, parents climbed on to the bonnets of their SUVs, watched the movie with their heads together and acres of children sound asleep. I thought of Jenny in the restaurant, how she’d looked at me from behind her menu and not known where I was, how to help me. Down in my guts, water rushed through. A tide going out. A man in a brown cardigan waited for me at the bottom of a garden. And though I clung to Dave until the credits rolled, I left my anchor behind in the dirt.
AFTER SCHOOL MUM takes us to a new shop on the corner. A café, she says. That’s a French word. It’s by the water so Mum likes it. She likes to be near the water. She says it makes her feel alive.
There’s a long table by the wall. It’s got tiny mice all over it. They look fragile so I pick them up carefully and don’t shake them, just put them down again. Some of them are old and the paint is coming off. There are a few new ones with price tags on them.
Look at all these mice, I say.
Yeah, Mum says. That’s why the café is called Three Blind Mice.
No it isn’t, Fleur says. The mice are there because the café is called that. They didn’t find these mice here and think, what would be a good name for a café?
Mum looks like her feelings are a bit hurt. Fleur yells too much sometimes.
We get a round table by the window. Some of the chairs are yellow and some of the chairs are blue.
That’s stupid, Fleur says. Why aren’t the chairs matching?
But I like it. I like sitting on a yellow chair and looking at a blue one.
At the next table there’s a woman and I know her because she has curly hair and I always see her in the driveway next door. Her mouth is down, like she’s having a tantrum.
Is that woman having a tantrum? I say.
Shh, Mum says.
The tantrum woman says she wants a coffee and carrot cake and she tells the café lady to hurry up. Her face is old. There are lines all over it and when she talks t
he lines move up and down.
She has a friend with her.
The friend says, I don’t know why you come here.
She has a fluffy pink scarf and round glasses. She looks like an owl.
Owls are wise, I say to Fleur.
That’s a myth, she says.
I don’t know what a myth is so I just nod a bit.
Mum orders milkshakes. I get a blue heaven milkshake, which everybody knows is the best flavour. Fleur gets vanilla. Mum says she’ll have a cup of tea but they bring it in a little brown pot.
Our milkshakes come in metal cups as big as my whole face. Fleur takes little sips of hers but I tip the whole thing upside down and try pouring it into my mouth in one go. It doesn’t work. There’s milkshake on the table and on the blue chair and the yellow chair and the lady has to come over with a napkin to clean it up.
Sorry, I say.
It’s okay, she says, and she smiles at me but with her mouth closed.
The woman with the old face says, Those poor girls.
Fleur looks at her.
I heard the mother went to hospital, the woman says.
Mum is pretending to look at the mice but I can tell she’s looking at the woman. I look at the woman too. We’re all looking at the woman.
She looks back at us.
Her friend says, It’s a wonder poor Bruce gets anything done.
And the woman looks right at mum and mum keeps touching the mice and she drops one and it smashes on the floor.
The woman says, They shouldn’t be allowed to have children.
Fleur jumps right out of her seat and Mum is saying, Sit down Fleur, but Fleur rushes over to the woman with the old face and the woman who’s an owl.
Stand up, she says.
The old faced woman ignores her.
Stand up, Fleur says again.
They both ignore her. They talk to each other about how their coffees are bad.
Fleur gets this look on her face like her brain hurts and she lifts up her hand and slaps the woman’s face and all its lines fly right off.
Everybody shouts. The owl woman starts hooting and screaming and Fleur stands at the table and tells her to shut up.
Mum is looking at the price tags on the mice. Maybe we could take a couple home, she says. They’re only two dollars.
Fleur says, You have to drive me to netball.
The next day the woman with the lined face is in her driveway. She’s watering some plants next to her car but she doesn’t see me.
IT WAS EASY to think of her at Christmas. Years spent sitting around the tree, waiting for her to get up. Some years she did, breezed into the lounge room with her hair like spun sugar, and the gifts came in torrents across the floor. But not every year. Later on, she spent the day in a medicated fog, pawing at the air around the bed.
Sylvia had put Dad to work in her garden. I saw him from the window, pulling weeds from a flowerbed, bent down on his crooked knees. Sylvia sat at the end of the path under a large hat, and she waved when she saw me but he didn’t look up. His mouth moved; she spoke back to him. The two of them laughed. I imagined them talking about me, hidden and ridiculous inside my old house, drawing pictures of spider webs. Had he told her about the shells? Had he told her about the woman on our beach in the orange running shoes?
Dave pulled into the driveway. ‘Sylvia, Bruce.’ His voice carried into the kitchen. ‘Nice day for it.’ Something from Sylvia. ‘I don’t know if she’s up to it. I can ask her.’ He came inside and plonked newspapers on the bench. ‘Sylvia wants to know if she can come for Christmas. Her treat. Says she can make a roast if it’s not too hot.’
‘It’s probably too hot.’
‘We can put the air-con on.’
‘Why isn’t she spending it with her sons? What are their names again?’
‘They’re taking their kids to Fiji or something,’ he said. ‘Nice for some.’
‘They must really love her.’
He rubbed my shoulder. ‘Well?’
‘Sure, Dave. It sounds nice. Maybe Albert can come too.’
He raised his eyebrows. ‘I don’t think Albert will be able to make it.’
‘That’s a shame.’
At the front of the house, a sugar gum tree towered over everything else. It was a hundred years old – Dave had found it in a book entitled Hastings and Surrounds: a tour of flora, with a black and white man standing next to it – and it was pockmarked and gnarled but very beautiful. The bark was a tapestry, swirls of rusted brown and stark white. At dusk we strung blinking lights around it, and Dave climbed almost to the top to add a laughably small angel. I walked to Rupert’s and bought bunches of blue wax flowers and stalks of dried willow branches, and linked them all together with a garland of red and white felt baubles.
The time passed in the way it always did in the summer holidays, with food and television and board games. Dave read books with his feet on the coffee table, and I brought home bits of couverture chocolate from Rupert, at whose shop I did all of my Christmas shopping. ‘You’re getting a hamper this year,’ I told Dave, ‘and so is everyone else we know.’ I made a smaller version in a ceramic bowl for Noel, but I wasn’t sure if he preferred stuffed olives or pickled leeks, so I took it all out and wrote him a card instead.
And still Dave watched me.
‘What are you thinking about?’ he said.
‘Cheese,’ I said. My fingers moved on their own, picking tiny pictures into the vinyl bench tops.
‘How are you going without Jenny?’
‘Good,’ I said. ‘Fleur’s stuck here for ages. And I have Dad, and Sylvia. How many more people could I possibly need?’
‘You have me.’
‘I know. You are a marvel.’
He watched me, even when he didn’t watch me. And the ground moved under my feet and I stood as still as I could so it wouldn’t carry him along with it.
Our front-yard Christmas tree came right up over the top of the house. I stood on the back lawn and watched the lights flicker in and out, wondered if they were lights or fireflies, remembered the first night at the house when we had sat and speculated on the nature of the lights in the pittosporums, and how we had held hands then, as tight as knots, and we had both been in the same part of space and time.
I drew a Christmas tree on my left palm. The real kind, with needles and a terracotta pot. On my right palm, clumsily, I drew an angel in a white dress, and waited until the house was quiet.
‘Did you know,’ I said to Dave on Christmas Eve, ‘that more people kill themselves at Christmas than at any other time of year?’ He looked at me over his book.
‘Is that something you’re thinking about?’ he said.
‘Not at this precise moment.’ I fluffed my pillows. ‘Maybe it’s because their counsellors all go to the Alps.’
‘Jenny’s going to the Alps?’
‘She’s going to Daylesford.’
‘Bit of a difference.’
‘Daylesford has snow, at least. That last night we were there. Remember we went out to that place that did the white chocolate mousse and the snow was falling? I tried to dance with you under the streetlight but you told me not to be a dickhead.’
He put his hand to my face. ‘You were beautiful. Like a painting.’
Maybe it had been a painting, the warm glow of the lights in the windows. ‘First holiday we took together.’
He wiped his glasses on his shirt. ‘So it does snow there. But not in summer.’
‘Maybe she’ll come back early,’ I said. He peered at me through the binoculars of his hands.
Most years we spent Christmas with Dave’s family. Hundreds of them. Nine, at least. Dave’s family embraced it with childlike enthusiasm – gifts and costumes and pudding with silver coins inside. This was to be our first one without them in as long as I could remember. His sister was getting divorced and his parents were flying up to be with her. I wondered what it was about getting divorced that was more palatable than thi
s.
It didn’t bear thinking about. Sylvia would help us.
‘I want Fiore to have nice day,’ she said, leaning hard on my kitchen counter. ‘This year is hard, no? You come, we buy ingredients.’
We walked together to Rupert’s and I marvelled at her enormous stride, stretching and contracting. She had made a list and followed it around the shop while I filled my basket with gingerbread and liquorice and chocolates shaped like puddings.
‘Rupert,’ I said, and he leaned in to listen. ‘I want to get something for Sylvia. Something she really likes.’
‘Brandy?’
‘Shh!’ Sylvia hadn’t heard us, engrossed as she was in a selection of jams.
‘Sorry.’ He whispered too. ‘The old bird loves her brandy.’
‘Right. Good.’ Then, louder: ‘Can you suggest something in a fruit mince? A plum pudding?’
He took my arm at the elbow. ‘Of course, madam. Right this way.’
Sylvia carried a bag of almonds. I carried everything else. ‘It’s my shoes,’ she said. ‘What you call them? Bunions. Shouldn’t carry too much things.’
‘Sure, Sylvia. It’s no problem.’
‘You okay, English Garden?’
‘What?’
‘You staring into outer space.’ She lifted her one bag. ‘My arms is tired.’
‘Yeah, it’s going around.’
She studied my face, frowning. ‘You not ready to cook. We go to beach.’
‘Now?’
She looked for someone or something that might be preventing us from going at that moment.
‘Yes, now. Why not now?’
‘Shouldn’t we get started, though?’
‘Beach will give us clear heads.’
It was the right kind of day for it, granted, with the sun strung high in the sky and the breeze coming up over the hill. We would need to take umbrellas and suncream and hats. ‘No need to bother with any of that,’ she said, and I noticed the leather of her skin and the bumps and scabs on her face.
‘Okay?’
‘Okay.’
She was smiling.
‘You take bags inside and I start car, yes?’
Sylvia took us rattling down the road at thirty kilometres an hour. The Saturday afternoon crowd was unexpectedly sparse: a man in a silver four-wheel drive with the windows down; a woman and an enormous spotted dog; a young couple wrapped in and around each other at the water’s edge. Between us we were old, frail, creaky, so we sat on a bench and took off our shoes.
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