Over spring last year, Agnes started venturing off around lunchtime without telling anyone. Usually she walked, but once she took the car keys and drove across town for thirty k’s. When Miles and his mum found her, she was standing in a stranger’s kitchen, stuffing a chicken.
‘I did get quite a fright when she walked in,’ said the lady who owned the kitchen, ‘but I could see she was just a bit lost and very keen on helping me with the roast. She told me she’s had 2000 years of cooking experience so not to worry. I thought it best not to argue with her.’ When Miles’s mum, Doreen, tearfully apologised, the woman patted her hand and said that actually Agnes had been a godsend because the entire family was coming for dinner that night and her legs had been playing up, what with her VARICOSE veins and all, and she welcomed the help Agnes had very efficiently provided. ‘Still,’ Doreen said to Miles on the way home, ‘it won’t always turn out well like this. We were lucky this time, but we’ll have to keep an eye on Agnes.’
But back to the arm-wrestle. When we’d cleared the plates, Hassan rolled up his sleeves. He leaned in, elbow on the table, his hand bunched in a fist.
‘Don’t be too disappointed tonight, mate,’ Dad said. ‘I’m feeling fit as a Mallee bull!’
‘What’s a MALLEE BULL? Does it come from Spain?’ I had my notebook out, ready.
‘No,’ said Dad. ‘So, you’re left-handed Hassan, aren’t you?’
‘Me too,’ said Miles, pulling up the cuff of his left sleeve. ‘Check out this baby.’ And we all watched the muscle in his forearm jump up and down like a mouse under his skin. Or, to be fair, like a big rat or maybe even a MONGOOSE (which is a carnivorous mammal with a slender body and long tail, notable for its ability to kill venomous snakes).
‘Impressive,’ Dad told Miles. ‘You been working out?’
‘Just push-ups, mainly. I can do forty in a row without stopping. Wanna see?’
‘Okay, give me ten on the spot.’
While Miles pushed, Dad arm-wrestled Hassan. They struggled hard for at least sixty seconds, Hassan’s knuckles straining white against my father’s. Hassan was going red in the face as if Elena had just walked into the room and asked him to go out with her. Singo and I held our breath. Actually, I don’t think Hassan was breathing either. But finally, Dad brought Hassan’s fist down on the table. He reckons if you let someone win, they can never trust you to tell the truth. And if you’ve lived a life like Hassan’s, you’ve got to know who you can trust.
‘Well done!’ said Dad, grabbing Hassan’s hand again and giving it a shake. ‘I had to work really hard! You have been practising. If you keep going like that, in a couple of years you’ll get tired of winning, you’ll see.’
‘Men never get tired of winning, do they?’ said Rosie from the hall. She was carrying a tall mirror, and she leaned it up against the wall under the fierce hall light. She stood in front of it, wrestling with the buttons of a tiny skirt that only just covered her bottom. Maybe you’d call it a scarf, not a skirt. Or a hand towel – a nice fluffy yellow one.
‘Hey, Monty,’ said Miles to Dad from the floor. ‘See I got a sixpack now?’ He pointed to his stomach. ‘That’s fifty sit-ups a day. Plus a run every night.’
‘How many k’s, Miles?’ said Singo with a smile to me.
‘Don’t you get bored doing all those exercises?’ Rosie called. ‘I get bored just hearing about it.’
But Miles just hunched down over his knees, ready to start some sit-ups. Soon he was panting and snorting like a Mallee bull. Whatever that is. When he’d done fifty he stopped for a breather.
‘That’s impressive,’ said Dad. ‘You see how fit your boyfriend is, Rosie? When are you going to play some sport instead of standing around in front of mirrors? Why don’t we all do isometric exercises in the morning together as a family? Of course, Louis, you need to work on your biceps to be effective in arm-wrestling, but if you concentrate hard on your triceps, forearms and shoulders as well, you’d really have the winning edge.’
I couldn’t help sighing. Loudly.
‘And then there are the tips I learned from my father,’ he went on, ignoring me. As if we hadn’t heard them all before. ‘See, it’s all in your mental approach. If you think positive thoughts, you’ll be more likely to win. And when you’re arm-wrestling, look the other guy in the eye and compliment him suddenly on his hair. That’ll distract him for sure.’ Now Dad sighed, shifting his gaze to Rosie. ‘Are you going to wear that bath mat out into the world, my girl? It barely covers your nether regions!’
NETHER REGIONS! It sounded like a remote snowy spot on a map. Rosie just rolled her eyes.
‘Your dad’s right, it’s good to be fit,’ Miles told her, leaping up and lifting the big Macquarie Dictionary up and down to strengthen his right biceps. ‘You should come running at night with me. And if anyone jumps out at us, I can protect you with my right hook.’
‘Oh yeah, and who’s going to jump on me around here – Mrs Livid from Next Door?’ said Rosie, shooting a look at me. I didn’t know she knew about livid. Although, come to think of it, Rosie had taken Mrs Next Door to the hearing specialist, and they’d brought home a smart little hearing aid the size of a plum stone.
‘You never know who might be lurking around,’ said Miles wisely, cracking his knuckles. ‘You just never know.’
‘My sentiments exactly,’ said Dad.
‘So, Monty,’ Miles said, bounding forward as if he was about to do a Five Star Frog Splash, ‘let’s try that Walls of Jericho move again, it’s hectic!’
‘Okay, let’s do it!’ Dad yelled, his voice shiny with excitement.
And this is when it happened – the phenomenon, that is.
DAD whirled around the kitchen table and charged up the hall, just as Miles charged down towards him.
‘Jericho!’ shouted Miles, wanting to surprise him.
They clashed right in front of the mirror, exactly where Rosie had been standing just one minute before, checking out her hand towel. Miles grabbed Dad’s hands. Dad tripped and crashed headlong into Miles’s chest, then tipped over just like a vase of flowers and smashed onto the hard wooden floor. On the way down, his elbow struck the mirror, hard as a hammer. We all watched the mirror teeter in slow motion, as if trying to decide whether to go to all the bother of suicide, then die sideways onto the floor, landing heavily on top of Dad’s outstretched body.
Miles was the first to unfreeze. ‘God, I’ve killed Monty!’ He crouched over Dad, shaking his shoulder. ‘Monty, speak to me, speak to me! I was just showing off. Oh, why didn’t someone kill me first!’
‘Ohhislliskaysh,’ said Dad. At least I think that’s what he said – his face was still squashed on the floor. I thought he’d been RENDERED INSENSIBLE.
After ten seconds Dad stirred and slid out from under the mirror. He looked as if he wasn’t sure all these limbs belonged to him. Miles threw his arms around him in a fierce bear hug. We all rushed forward and helped Dad and Miles up and into the kitchen.
‘Sit down, sit down!’ yelled Miles, who needed to say everything twice when he was upset, probably because he lived with Agnes who didn’t ever listen the first time. Or the second, actually. Miles pulled out a chair and put an extra cushion on it. ‘Here! Sit here, Monty!’
‘I’m okay, don’t worry, not a scratch!’ Dad said merrily. But I noticed he sat down heavily, gratefully.
‘I’m so, so sorry!’ said Miles. ‘I just got carried away. Don’t know what was going on in my head.’
‘Nothing, as usual,’ snapped Rosie.
‘Don’t worry, it’s just because everything was so hectic,’ Dad said kindly. ‘But you forgot something essential, Miles. Never surprise your opponent in wrestling practice – that’s where you can get hurt. Another thing, The Walls of Jericho is a move you make when someone is already on the floor. It’s not a pounce attack, like the Shooting Star Press or the Backbreaker Submission. Look, see, I’ll just demonstrate— ’
‘Before you do that
, Dad,’ said Rosie wearily, ‘can we just check out this mirror?’
We all looked at the smooth wooden back of the mirror. It seemed fine. It looked completely INTACT.
‘Let me help!’ said Miles, leaping forward. ‘I’ll lift it!
‘No!’ shouted Rosie.
Before she could stop him, Miles picked up the mirror by both ends, his guns rippling. As it rose into the air, long heart-breaking pieces of glass separated from the frame and shattered on the ground, shooting out across the floor in a spray of tiny, deadly daggers.
In the APPALLED silence, we all gazed at the one small triangle of glass clinging to the wooden frame. It was like a whisper of hope. Rosie picked at it, trying to slide it out from the frame.
‘Uh oh,’ said Miles, in FUNEREAL tones. ‘We’re cursed. Breaking a mirror means seven years of bad luck.’
‘Ouch!’ cried Rosie, nursing a reddening finger.
‘See?’ said Miles. ‘Oh god, what have I done?’
‘Don’t anyone touch it,’ said Dad. ‘We’ll need gloves. Just wait a minute till I get my breath.’
Hassan made a choking noise. I glanced at him. His jaw was clenched hard against the sob in his mouth. I guess he was thinking he really didn’t need any more bad luck. When he was stuck in the detention centre, he thought he’d landed in hell. No one told him when he’d be released. If he’d be released. A curse has that in it – a foreverness. Like a dead end. No way out.
I didn’t need bad luck, either. None of us did. Singo’s face was pale yellow, like the hand towel Rosie was wearing around her bottom.
What we needed now was words. Comforting words. Words with no bad luck or magic mirrors or curses in them. Just words that would do a good job, like a sturdy broom that sweeps up and clears away.
‘Luck – who believes in it?’ I said boldly, spreading my hands. ‘Mirrors and bad luck, that’s just superstition, which is, as we all know, not true. People only believed in curses back in the Dark Ages. Now we have reasonable and rational explanations for practically everything.’
Dad looked at me and smiled. So did Rosie. ‘That’s right, Lou,’ she said.
‘Yeah,’ said Singo, putting a hand on Hassan’s shoulder. ‘Absolutely no scientific evidence for curses. Think of disease. Only awful funguses or bacteria or viruses cause illness. There is always an explanation we can see, festering away under a microscope. Little horrible wiggly germs multiplying to— ’
‘So,’ I said quickly, ‘it’s ABSURD, as in ridiculous, to even entertain the idea of a curse. It’s just someone’s pessimistic, paranoid imagination. Agreed?’
We all nodded furiously. Hassan and Singo smiled at each other in a watery way. Rosie hopped up to make tea for everyone. As I beetled off to the laundry to look for gloves and a broom, I was trying to ANALYSE what it was I was feeling. I mean, I agreed with Singo and all the rational world that curses were absurd. I agreed deep down in the truest, inside part of me. It was just the top layer, where there was a thin shiver under my hair, that prickled with doubt.
CURSE. Only whisper the word, I told myself. Curse was powerful, purple like a bruise. There are some words you shouldn’t even write down, at least not in your own personal notebook with your name on it.
5
THE CURSE
It was all Dad’s fault, really. As I swept and found a bandage for Rosie and tried to stop Miles from worrying, I was thinking that none of this would have happened if Dad wasn’t so obsessed with wrestling.
Of course it was Miles who technically caused the problem – he’s pretty obsessed himself, what with building up his guns and his Low Impulse Control, which means he doesn’t think things through, as Rosie is always telling him.
But really, things would have worked out differently if my father wasn’t always imagining dangers that might befall us. I mean, if, instead of wrestling, he’d taken the big Macquarie Dictionary that Miles was lifting to build up his biceps and actually used the book to look up the definition of Mallee bull, we might have got onto bullfighting, a really interesting topic, and the mirror wouldn’t have shattered. Do you see what I’m saying? I don’t really believe that stuff about broken mirrors and curses, but at least we wouldn’t have had such a horrible fright and Rosie wouldn’t have LACERATED her finger or Dad end up with a huge bruise the colour of a curse on his hip (which he didn’t show anyone, I only glimpsed it when he was getting into his pyjamas the next night).
However, the next week began well, so for a little while we forgot about the phenomenon and its curse. Rosie was ecstatic because Dad fixed a new long mirror in her bedroom. This meant she didn’t nag me about putting the bins out that night, but left the chore to Miles, who was busy trying to do anything to make up for Dad’s bruise.
And I had an English test and came first, and a maths test and came last, so everything seemed in balance in the universe. (Plus I found out what a Mallee bull was.)
I did my homework, fiddled with the faulty latch on the gate, and put up the three-man tent in the back yard in under nine minutes. Dad congratulated me on my timing and pointed out what an essential skill tent-putting-up would prove to be in the case of war, house fire, or general natural disaster.
Luckily it was summer, and pretty nice out there in the garden. Singo and Hassan and I decided to camp in the tent over the weekend. Oh, and another good thing was that Hassan’s Uncle Mady got a job as chef in a new Afghan restaurant! So the curse obviously hadn’t started yet, or maybe it was just getting ready . . .
ON Friday afternoon, seven days after the broken mirror phenomenon, Mady brought Hassan over to our place together with the most delicious dinner he’d cooked for his lucky customers at the restaurant. Meatballs and chickpeas, lamb and yellow rice, vegie turnovers.
‘This looks yummy and also EXQUISITE!’ I told Mady, taking a deep sniff at each separate package. ‘Can you stay and eat it with us?’
Mady smiled and laid his hand on the top of Hassan’s head. I liked the way he did that. He just rested it there, as if there was no better place for a hand to be. Hassan always went still and peaceful under his hand.
‘Thank you, Louis, but tonight is big night. Food critic is coming, my friend tells me.’
‘Well, I wish I could write about your restaurant – I could use the word exquisite and maybe even tantalising.’
Mady laughed. People often laugh at me when I don’t even mean to be funny, but with Mady, I never get annoyed. His whole presence is like that hand of his – warm and still and accepting. I guess when you’ve seen so many bad things, maybe you enjoy each good thing as if it’s Christmas.
When he’d gone, we went out outside into the garden. The lawn had become a jungle, I noticed. Mowing was my chore. Dad gave me all the outside jobs, like hauling bricks and fixing the garden gate, so my precious muscles would get a work-out.
I didn’t like looking at the jungle so I looked instead at the pot plants, which didn’t need mowing, standing so neat and self-contained on our concrete porch. Jungle is a more interesting word than lawn, anyway. Lawn rhymes with yawn.
‘What do you want to do?’ I asked the guys.
Even with my best friends I get nervous sometimes at my place – that they’ll get bored or something. What I’d have liked to do right then was to go and see what other synonyms there were for exquisite, which I reckon is an amazingly excellent word, and maybe after dinner I could write a food-critic review about Mady’s restaurant, using exquisite and other new words that were just waiting to be discovered.
But somehow I knew the others wouldn’t want to do that. It’s not as if I just live inside my own world like a fish in a tank, as Rosie says.
‘Let’s shoot some hoops,’ said Singo, who I now noticed had a basketball under his arm. He jumped over the gardenia bush onto the concrete porch and started bouncing the ball with the palm of his hand, up and down, between his legs, up and under the left foot then the right. He was getting quite good at that. Now he was running and boun
cing around the pot plants, skirting the wooden table, dodging in between the chairs. I remembered he called this dribbling, which is a word I don’t have many feelings about except maybe a bit of nausea.
‘I brought my skateboard,’ said Hassan, bouncing the ball back to Singo.
Mady had given him the skateboard for his birthday, and it was pretty cool. Hassan had spray-painted ‘Jericho’ on the wooden part underneath, which in my opinion makes it even cooler. A word is always good for creating some atmosphere. Although I would probably have written the word exquisite.
‘My ollie is getting better,’ Hassan went on. ‘Do you want to see?’
‘Yeah,’ said Singo. ‘Can you do a kickflip yet?’
‘No, but I am working towards it,’ Hassan grinned, using old Mainprize’s favourite phrase. ‘Maybe later we can go to that school up the road – there are great gutters and rails. Good for grinding.’
‘Exquisite.’
‘What?’
I’d said it out loud. I didn’t mean to. Now it was out though, I couldn’t help saying it again. ‘Ex-quis-ite.’
Hassan and Singo stared at me for a moment. I waited to see if anybody wanted to know what it meant, but no one did.
‘So,’ Singo turned to Hassan, ‘let’s see your ollie.’
Hassan sprinted back into the house to get his board. In a flick he was out again, coming at us like a one-man army from the top of the path, riding down towards the porch and pot plants at our feet. I was hoping he knew how to stop when he did a sudden turn only centimetres from my big toe.
His ollie was pretty impressive. Singo had a go too and then we got thirsty. I fetched us some juice, and we sat around the garden table, picking off the dried bird poo.
‘Don’t do that,’ said Singo. ‘Birds carry bacteria and viruses. Imagine what their poo carries. And now you’ve got it under your fingernails.’
Louis Beside Himself Page 3