Surfing Mr Petrovic

by Colin Bowles

I watched them as they walked in. Dad looked younger than everyone else, even though he wasn’t. He looked young partly because of the way he dresses, and partly because he had Belinda with him. Belinda was dressed like one of those girls out of ‘Beverley Hills 90210’ or maybe even ‘Bay-watch’. She had on a short red dress that showed a lot of her chest and she was giggling a lot. Everybody was looking at her.

  I still think my mum looked better.

  As parties go, it was pretty boring. They all stood around in the garden talking because no one had thought to bring a football. There was a lot of music, and some of it was really old and nerdy, but some of it was all right, songs that groups from twenty or thirty years ago had copied from modern bands.

  I was supposed to help serve the drinks. I tried some of them and they tasted pretty bad. Only the ones with Coke were all right, because you could hardly taste the alcohol. I had a gulp of one with gin in it and I nearly chucked.

  As I was carrying the drinks around I saw Dad and Belinda standing by the rockery on their own. No one was talking to them much. I went over and asked them if they wanted anything to drink.

  ‘Have they made you the waiter for the night?’ Dad asked. I thought he might be angry at me because of the way I’d treated him the week before, but he seemed to have forgotten all about it. Dad is always like that. He never sulks, or demands that you apologise for something before he lets you off the hook. I guess that’s because he still gets into trouble himself a lot, and he knows what it feels like.

  ‘You look sweet in that shirt and tie,’ Belinda said, and patted me on the head. I hate that. I hate people patting me on the head. And I don’t want to look sweet. Telling a kid he looks sweet is a deadly insult, like telling a rodeo rider he looks cute in a big hat. I think Belinda knew that.

  I was going to make a face at her but I got distracted. From where I was standing I could see most of her chest. I’d heard a lot about women’s chests and I decided to take a closer look, to see what the big deal was.

  Belinda practically threw a fit. ‘He’s looking down my dress!’ she squealed.

  Sprung. I felt my face get really hot. Now I was in trouble. But Dad just laughed. ‘Chip off the old block,’ he said, whatever that meant. He handed me his glass. ‘Will you get me another beer, son?’ he said.

  Off the hook again. My dad’s a good bloke. When I got back with his drink Belinda was nowhere to be seen. But Dad was still there, talking to Mum. By the looks on their faces I knew it must be important so I kind of hung back a bit and watched. It was like it used to be, seeing the two of them together again, and I saw Mum laugh and Dad smile. Maybe they were going to get back together again.

  About then Belinda showed up. She had a sort of pinched and suspicious look on her face, like Samantha Winterbottom when I stole her ruler in maths class. Mum and Dad stopped talking and Mum went away and started dancing with Barry.

  I went to give Dad his drink but then I heard Belinda whispering something to him and I stood behind the flame tree to listen.

  ‘What was that all about?’

  Dad shrugged and looked confused. ‘What?’

  ‘Did I interrupt anything?’

  ‘We were just talking.’

  Belinda looked really upset that my dad was talking to my mum. This didn’t make much sense to me. I figured it should be my mum who should be upset that Dad was talking to Belinda, By the look on his face, I think my dad thought the same thing.

  ‘Did you talk to her about a divorce?’ Belinda asked him.

  I thought my heart had stopped. I even put a hand to my chest to check. I couldn’t believe it. Divorce.

  ‘I think it’s a bit early for that,’ Dad said.

  ‘But we agreed,’ she hissed at him.

  ‘You agreed. I said I’d think about it.’

  ‘You’re not going to go back to her, are you?’ Belinda asked him.

  Say yes, Dad. Say yes. Please, please, please say yes. Yes, yes, yes.

  ‘No,’ Dad said.

  ‘So what’s the problem?’

  ‘There’s a lot to think about. Tao, mainly. He’s a pretty sensitive kid.’

  ‘No, he’s not,’ Belinda said. ‘He’s a little …’ And then she used a rude word. I was shocked. Not because of the word – I use it all the time at school – but because I didn’t think fashion models knew words like that.

  Dad looked really angry. I’ve never seen him so dark. ‘That’s my son you’re talking about,’ he said.

  That’s it, Dad, I thought. Hit her. Kick her in the nuts.

  Belinda must have known she’d gone too far. She went really red. She covered her mouth with her hand. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean that. It’s just that … I have to know where I stand with you, Greg. I can’t go on like this.’ She produced a Kleenex from somewhere, and wiped her eyes. ‘What’s going on here, Greg?’ She was shouting now. ‘Is this relationship going somewhere or am I just a bit on the side?’ When Dad didn’t answer right away she threw the wet Kleenex at him – yuk! – and ran off.

  People were staring. ‘Mind your own business,’ Dad said to them and they all looked away again. Then he sat down hard on the little wooden bench seat under the flame tree.

  I wanted to go and say something to him but I couldn’t think of anything. So instead I gulped Dad’s drink – all of it – and went off to find Blooch.

  Blooch had been Dad’s dog originally. Dad had had him since he was a puppy, and he was about four when I was born. Since then Blooch had sort of adopted me. He had just sort of been there, looking out for me, as long as I can remember. As soon as I learned to walk he followed me around everywhere, keeping me out of trouble. The family joke had been that, like most children, my first word had been ‘mum’, but that I was pointing at the dog when I said it.

  But Blooch was pretty old now, about one hundred and five in doggie years. He was also getting pretty smelly, and he had arthritis in his back legs, and when he tried to do a widdle against a tree he fell over on his side and sprayed it up in the air. He had started letting off in a big way too, so that he had now been banished to a cane basket on the front porch.

  Blooch looked up as I walked past his basket. It was getting towards evening and the trees and houses threw long shadows across the street.

  ‘Come on, Blooch,’ I said, ‘let’s take a walk.’

  Blooch didn’t look that enthusiastic. It took him a while to drag himself out of his basket. But he knew where his duty lay. I’d taken him for walks enough times when I didn’t want to go. Now it was payback time.

  ‘I don’t want Mum and Dad to get a divorce,’ I said to Blooch.

  Blooch tried to look sympathetic. Then he stopped beside a tree and was about to cock his leg but decided it wasn’t worth the effort. We kept walking.

  ‘Why do parents have to split up? It’s not fair. They could damage me for life. I don’t suppose they care about that. All parents ever think about is themselves.’

  Blooch whined and sat down hard on the footpath.

  ‘Come on, boy. What’s the matter?’

  Blooch got up slowly and padded after me.

  ‘What am I going to do?’ I said to him. ‘I want my dad to live with us again. I want things the way they were.’

  The thought of my dad never coming back home to live with us made me feel sick. Well, I thought it was that at the time. The street was starting to move around and my stomach felt like it did that time I ate two whole family blocks of chocolate during an episode of ‘Friends’.

  I leaned against the wall. ‘I think we’d better go back,’ I said to Blooch.

  Now some people think that dogs can’t put expressions on their faces, but they can. At least Blooch could. I swear he looked relieved.

  We slowly made our way back to the house. I was feeling really sick now. I was also beginning to suspect that the way I was feeling had less to do with Dad leaving and a lot to do with me tasting everybody’s drinks all night.

 
By the time I got home I knew I was going to chuck. I charged through all the people hanging around in the hallway and headed for the toilet. Just as I got there Belinda appeared from the garden and got in front. I tried to push past but she just elbowed me out of the way.

  ‘You’ve got no manners, have you?’ she said.

  ‘I have … to go,’ I said.

  She bent down so her face was level with mine. She was quite tall, so she had to bend a long way. ‘You are such a rude little boy,’ she said. ‘You’re spoiled, that’s your trouble. Everyone spends all their time worrying about you. And all you do is mess things up for other people.’

  I had no idea what she was talking about. All I knew was I had to get in the toilet fast. I tried to push past her again but she shoved me back, even harder this time. ‘Just don’t try and get between me and Gregory, you understand?’

  I had never heard my dad called Gregory before and I had no idea what she was talking about. And I wasn’t trying to get between her and Dad, I was trying to get between her and the toilet. I felt like I’d just had ten consecutive turns on the Gravitron at the Royal Show. ‘Got … to go,’ I mumbled.

  Too late. It was one of the biggest hurls I’d ever done in my whole life. It splattered Belinda right in the middle of the chest and I swear the chuck hit her so hard it knocked her backwards. I don’t remember much after that. Belinda got really hysterical and was crying and jumping up and down and there were other people standing around not doing anything, just saying things like, ‘Oh, yuk!’ and, ‘What a smell!’ Then Mum came and grabbed me and dragged me away. All I can remember is looking at Belinda standing there all covered in sick and wondering to myself why there were bits of carrot in it. I never ever eat carrots. But that’s the thing about chuck, isn’t it? No matter whether it’s you or the dog or the cat, there are always bits of carrot in it.

  The party was still going on but a lot of people had drifted home. I could hear the music playing downstairs and a few people talking. I sat on my bed in my pyjamas, knowing that when it was all over I was really for it. It was like I had a cold bit of lead sitting in my chest. Mum was going to kill me.

  After I’d vomited over Dad’s girlfriend, Mum washed me off and told me to go up to my room and stay there. At the time I just wanted to escape, so I was happy to get out of there. But the longer I had to sit there and wait, the worse it got. I thought I knew what it felt like being one of those prisoners in America on Death Row, waiting to find out if they were going to the electric chair or not. I think the dying must be easier than the waiting.

  I just wanted to go to sleep and try to blot it all out, but I couldn’t. I was still feeling pretty bad – not as bad as I had before I up-chucked over Belinda – but still pretty bad all the same. Every time I moved my head it was like someone sticking needles in my brain.

  And the guilt made everything seem a lot worse. What kind of kid throws up all over his dad’s girlfriend?

  I heard footsteps on the stairs. This was it. Brace yourself, Symo. I’d only seen Mum really angry a couple of times – once when I set fire to the laundry basket when I was in grade one, and the time when she found one of my toenail clippings in her salmon mousse at a dinner party – and for a generally quiet sort of woman she’s pretty awesome when she’s mad. I wasn’t looking forward to this.

  I started breathing really fast. Perhaps they’d think I had asthma or something and take me to the hospital and forget about how I hurled all over Belinda. Nah. I’d tried that before after the salmon mousse incident and Mum was still yelling at me in the casualty room while I had the oxygen mask over my face.

  The door opened. Oh, God.

  It was Barry.

  ‘Oh, you’re awake,’ he said.

  He seemed surprised at that. He sat down on the edge of the bed. Barry wasn’t a big bloke, like my dad. He had a grey beard and thinning grey hair and a very quiet and gentle sort of voice. Like a hypnotist I saw on television once. He looked every bit a maths teacher. Which was confusing because what he actually taught was physical education.

  He looked at me with an expression on his face I couldn’t quite make out. He didn’t look angry, just sort of sad and bewildered. ‘How much did you drink?’ he said.

  ‘I didn’t,’ I lied.

  Barry looked even sadder when I said that. I realised I’d underestimated Barry. He might be a physical-education teacher, but he wasn’t stupid.

  ‘I can’t remember,’ I said. ‘I had the whole of Dad’s beer and sips of a lot of other stuff, mostly the ones with Coke in them.’

  ‘I see.’

  I thought: If he tries to ground me, I’ll tell him to get stuffed. He’s not my dad and he can’t tell me what to do. I’ll cop it from Mum, but not from Barry. But instead of giving me a hard time he did something I really didn’t expect. He put out his hand and ruffled my hair. ‘You’re having a hard time with all this, aren’t you?’

  I didn’t know what to say. So I didn’t say anything.

  ‘You know, it really isn’t a good idea for a boy of your age to drink alcohol. You could make yourself very, very sick. You could even end up in hospital.’

  ‘I feel terrible,’ I said.

  ‘I’m not surprised.’ He sighed and looked at the wall, which was covered with posters of Ben Allan and Winston Abraham and Stephen O’Reilly and other Dockers players. But I knew he wasn’t actually looking at the posters, he was thinking what to say next. ‘Your mother’s pretty upset. She was going to come up here and really chew you out, but I told her to let you be. I think we can talk about this in the morning when everyone’s had a chance to calm down.’

  Jeez, I thought. On ya, Barry. What a nice bloke.

  ‘I suppose you already feel pretty bad about what happened to Belinda.’

  I nodded. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I do.’

  He stood up. ‘Life can get pretty complicated. I think we’re all having a hard time adjusting to … things.’ He went to the door. ‘Try and get some sleep now. You’ll probably find it might help a little. But don’t expect to feel too good in the morning.’

  I got under the bedclothes.

  ‘Poor Belinda,’ I said, which was a token effort, I admit, but the guilt made me say it.

  ‘Yes,’ Barry said, ‘poor Belinda.’

  But as he went out and turned off the light I swore I saw him laughing.

  5

  It was Matt who invented surfing the Croat.

  We’d started taking our skateboards to school, riding them along the footpath and down the middle of the quieter streets. We avoided Cantonment Street for a couple of weeks after springing Mister Petrovic in the shower, but we knew we couldn’t avoid going that way for ever. It was the shortest route home for all of us, and besides, the lure of danger was irresistible.

  You hardly ever saw Mister Petrovic, but we figured he was probably inside the house, watching us. The curtains were always drawn, but I suppose we credited him with supernatural powers and assumed he could see right through them. Matt told us that he had heard Mister Petrovic was a war criminal, that he’d come to Australia because he’d been chased out of his own country for things he’d done during the war in Yugoslavia. It confirmed my worst fantasies about him. I imagined that if he could do really bad things to his own people, what would he do to some Australian schoolkid who turned off the water while he was in the shower?

  But knowing he was a war criminal made Mister Petrovic even more fascinating, in some weird way. It had got so that we couldn’t stay away. The first time we walked past his house after the Great Shower Showdown – as Matt had called it – we walked really fast. But then the next day we slowed down a bit, and the day after that we moondanced. And when he still didn’t come out and attack us with a meat axe or fire a shotgun at us, we got braver.

  And that’s when Matt had his idea.

  For some reason Mister Petrovic had left the driveway gates open, leaving a clear entry and exit point to the front garden. As we passed the hous
e Matt suddenly shouted, ‘Watch this!’ He skateboarded across the driveway and onto the concrete slabs in the front yard, cutting in and back between the little square rose beds in a series of right- and left-handers. When he reached the end he spun around and weaved back between the roses, across the yard and out again.

  We held our breath, expecting Mister Petrovic to come bursing out of his front door at any minute and grab him. But he didn’t. Then Matt finished the manoeuvre and stood there, grinning at us.

  ‘I just surfed the Croat,’ he said.

  Still no Mister Petrovic. He must have seen, must have heard us yelling.

  ‘Your turn,’ Matt said to Bluey.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Bluey said.

  ‘Don’t be a wuss.’

  Bluey looked panicky. Matt had cornered him. He didn’t want to be a wimp and he didn’t know how to say no to Matt.

  He put one foot on his board, hesitated and looked at me. I just shrugged my shoulders.

  He threw his schoolbag on the footpath. ‘Here goes then,’ he said.

  He took off too slowly, lost his balance on the concrete driveway and nearly crashed into the first rosebush. He came off twice on the right-handers. By the time he had reached the other side of the yard his board had made so much noise I figured Mister Petrovic must think that there was a truck reversing through his fence. I looked at the front door and prayed that he’d come out. Because if he didn’t and Bluey made it unscathed, I knew I would be next to surf the Croat.

  Bluey set off again. Twisted right, hard left again round the first bush, another right-hander, cut back, cut back, and caught his school jumper on the last bush and came off. He wrenched his arm free, ripping a hole in the sleeve. Then he picked up his board and ran out through the gate.

  Still no Mister Petrovic.

  Matt and Bluey both looked at me. ‘He must have heard us,’ I said.

  Matt filled his cheeks and made a noise like a chicken. I had no choice. It was so unfair. Wasn’t it enough that I had already vomited over my dad’s girlfriend? Life still wanted more from me.

  I threw down my skateboard and took off. If I was going to do it, I’d better get it done as quickly as possible, get it over with. I tried to pretend I was down at Port Beach, even though down at the Port I never worried about a big white hairy shark coming out of nowhere and hitting me with a meat axe.