by Dee White
“I’m afraid I have bad news, Matt,” he says.
What does that mean?
As Dad turns away, I see a tear in the corner of his eye.
“The left arm is healing well.”
What’s wrong with it anyway?
“But I think we may have to operate on your right arm. We don’t want you to lose the use of it, do we?”
I shrug. None of it means much to me. Everything’s happening all out of order. I’m still not sure if any of this is real.
Dad smiles. “We can’t have that, can we?” he says. “Can’t have anything stop you from painting – from being the next Leonardo da Vinci.”
I start vomiting and can’t stop. The pain’s unbearable. It’s like someone ripping out my insides. Leonardo da Vinci – that’s who the old man is!
Suddenly, I know for sure that Nurse Blue Cardigan is not my mother. The smell of vomit temporarily overpowers the smell of smoke.
I try to shut down my brain, but random thoughts spew out like lava.
Dad watches helplessly as Nurse Blue Cardigan rubs my back and swaps the bucket for a clean one when she needs to.
But no matter what she does, I don’t feel clean. Sweat pours out of me.
My memory has returned. And I remember everything.
28
I’m allowed out of hospital for the funeral. My arms are bandaged, and I still have this burning sensation inside my chest that makes it hurt when I breathe. Doctor Fredrikson wants me in a wheelchair, but I refuse. “It’s my arms that got burned, not my legs.”
The service is held at the waterhole – Troy’s favourite swimming spot – where I nearly drowned him that time.
So many people.
I lie facedown on the grass, using the pain in my arms as a barrier to everything else. People mill around – step over me. Nobody wants to disturb the grieving best mate.
Before the service starts, I go and lean against the old gum tree that Troy and I tied a rope swing to when we were nine. The swing is not there now because the council took it down – said it was too dangerous.
Steve Bridges puts an arm on my shoulder. “I’m really sorry,” he says.
Me too.
“I’m not coming back for art classes,” I tell him. Painting is what made Mum stop taking her meds. Painting is where all this started – back when I was five and Mum first went off her pills because they stopped her from painting.
“You’re not your mother,” says Steve. “Don’t turn your back on your art. That’s what defines who you are – not the people you were born to, not genes or family resemblances. It’s the essence of you.”
Maybe he’s right, and maybe I’ll pick up a paintbrush again, but not for now.
We all move forward for the service – to the water’s edge where the trees bow down their branches.
Tina does one of the eulogies. She talks about how Troy was one of those genuinely funny guys that made you laugh. “You had to look beyond the jokes to see who he really was. Troy was one of the most special people I ever met.” She breaks down and her mum leads her away. A mum looking after her kid like mums are supposed to.
Just like Mrs Daly, whose never-ending smile is gone. Her face is crumpled with sadness as she puts her arms around Angie and wipes away her daughter’s tears.
I turn away – and later, when I feel Angie’s hand in mine and her broken voice whispers, “Are you okay?” I bolt, and don’t look back. I can’t feel the pain in my arms as I hobble away, just the agony in my chest.
I hide behind our gum tree – Troy’s and mine. I close my eyes, and remember.
Troy would have liked what Tina said about him. Shows she really got him in the end. In my head I hear his crazy laugh – and his voice, “I knew you’d succumb to my irresistible charms, Tina. Everybody does eventually.”
Dear Leonardo,
I need you to help me understand. How could Mum have done it? How can your brain be that twisted?
I get Dad now – and his whole protection thing. I reckon if I’d looked at your Dreyfus Madonna – really looked sooner – I might have understood. The way she’s holding that baby – it looks so fragile.
But that’s because babies are fragile – and little kids – that’s why Dad needed to protect me from my own mother.
I’m not a baby now. I’m hurt and I’m changed, but not fragile. I’m going to get through this for Troy. I’m going to save myself. She can’t do any worse to me. I can’t do any worse to myself.
Some mistakes just can’t be undone, Leo.
Matt
Dear Leonardo,
I’m telling you this because there’s nobody left to tell. Ironic how my laptop was saved and Dad’s old squash trophy, but not Troy. I printed off all those letters I wrote to you before the fire and gave them to Mrs D today. She was rapt.
“Thought I was never going to see these,” she said.
Probably wouldn’t have shown her except there’s no point in keeping them to myself now.
Mum and what she did is newspaper headlines again, so my life is out in the open for everyone to read about.
You know what it’s like to be notorious, Leo. You made headlines because of the way you chose to love. I guess in a way, Mum’s the same.
It’s hard being back at school. Nobody knows what to say. Tomorrow I get an aide to scribe for me until my hands get better.
I can still work on the computer because it has voice activation, so I talk, and it writes down what I say. See, my world is very different from the one you lived in.
I can’t carry the laptop to class. Can’t carry anything yet.
At least when the aide comes, I won’t have to look at Troy’s empty chair all day.
Matt
Our house is gone. There’s not one part of my life my mother hasn’t wreaked havoc on. Some days I wish I hadn’t made her come here. I wish she’d stayed a hazy memory.
“You can’t blame yourself,” says Dad. “None of this is your fault.” He’s got no books left, so whatever he says comes from the heart of Dave Hudson, not the pen of a self-help guru.
He’s always looking at me these days – looking for signs that I’m okay. When it first happened, I think he was afraid I’d top myself. But no way! I’m not my mum and I’m not my dad. I’m me, Matt Hudson. And I can’t let what happened to Troy be for nothing. Besides, you can’t do much with two dodgy hands.
Mum has to stay in hospital longer than me, but I can’t bring myself to visit her yet. Dad has gone to Gardenvale a couple of times. Mum’s burns are pretty bad and the doctor says she might never paint again.
Why should she get out of all this without an aftermath? Troy doesn’t even have that. The best he can hope for is an afterlife. He’s never going to paint a masterpiece that the world recognises as truly great. He’s never even going to finish secondary school.
“I don’t see why she should have it easy when you look at what she did to everyone else,” I say to Dad.
“Matt, I know you’re angry with her. I know she’s done terrible things. But don’t let the anger eat away at you. It will only cause you more pain. Your mother’s sick. She never meant to hurt anyone.”
“Well, she did!”
“Matt, her life has never been easy – dealing with her illness. She’s not evil, she’s just a person with a problem.”
“She is the problem!”
Dad wants me to feel compassion for her. I’m working on it – and the weird thing is that the person I’m doing it for is Troy. It’s what he would have wanted. Troy is here in my head: his lopsided grin and his voice like a fairground ride; the quick up-and-down way he had of talking, excited to be living and being and doing.
I reckon the colour of Troy’s voice would have been rainbow – bending light and making it as spectacular as it could be.
Dear Leonardo,
I think I’m really doing this for you. To finish it! I’m not going to leave sketchy lines that don’t have definition. Things sh
ouldn’t be left unsaid. I guess that’s one of our differences, Leo. I reckon things have to be complete – no matter how difficult it is to apply the last coat.
I guess it was different for you though – with your paintings, I mean. You always had so many things on the go and you never thought your works were finished, even when everyone else did. You were such a perfectionist – everything had to be just right. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned from all this, it’s that life isn’t that simple. A few brushstrokes just won’t make things right.
It’s been a while since it happened but it doesn’t seem like it. I feel like there’s never going to be a time when it’s not new and terrible and unreal – when I don’t have this sick feeling in my stomach and feel like I might start to cry.
But you need to finish things, I reckon. It’s the only hope you have of moving on. And that’s what I have to do. I’ve seen what happens when you get stuck in the past. It’s what made Mum do what she did.
Troy would have forgiven Mum. He always said it wasn’t her fault – just that her brain was wired wrong.
Dad wired our trailer back to front once. When you put your foot on the brake, the blinkers started flashing and when you put the blinkers on, the brakelight came on. Dad changed the connections around and the problem was fixed.
Not so easy to do that with a brain.
You reckoned that the learning you get when you’re young “arrests the evil of old age”. Yeah, well it sucks. If this is the sort of learning I have to do, then I’d rather not grow old.
I guess this letter is for our sake as well – for Troy and me – to help me understand and move on.
Matt
29
As soon as the bandages are off, I go to see Troy’s family. I’ve been wanting to for so long.
I miss eating chocolate cake in their kitchen, talking to Troy’s mum about global warming and why we should walk to work or ride our bikes. I miss trying to do homework with the hysterical squeals of Angie and her friends as a backdrop.
I couldn’t talk to them before now. Told myself, I didn’t want the bandages to remind them of what happened to Troy.
But the truth is I was too ashamed – and scared. I deserve for them to hate me, but I couldn’t take it if they did.
Angie tried to speak to me at the funeral, but I ran away. I could hardly look at Mrs Daly, her head bowed in grief, trying to be brave and together, trying not to focus on the fact that she’d never see her son again.
Finally, six months after the fire, I get the courage to walk up the front path and knock on the door of Troy’s house. I try to walk normally, as if it doesn’t mean anything important. I half-expect to see Troy’s cheeky face peering through the curtains at me. There are cobwebs above the front door as if nobody cares as much about anything any more.
Mrs Daly opens the door. She doesn’t say anything when she sees me standing there. Just puts her arms around me and we both howl.
It’s hard going inside and knowing that he won’t be there.
Doesn’t feel awkward like I thought it might though. It feels right. Mrs Daly doesn’t hate me, although I wouldn’t blame her if she did. Nobody could hate me as much as I hated myself after Troy died.
Mrs Daly makes me a cup of tea and we talk for hours about Troy.
“I miss him. It’s all my fault.” I start bawling again.
Mrs Daly puts her arm around me. “Troy made his own decision. He was the one who decided to go into that burning house to look for you.”
“But I was the one who brought my mother back in the first place.”
“Matt, nobody blames you for any of this. Of course you wanted to know your mother. It’s perfectly natural.”
“I really miss him.” I sniff.
“We all do.”
We talk about how he died. I’ve been too scared to ask the question until now. Back when it happened, when I was in hospital, nobody would talk about it. After the shock had worn off, and I’d started to feel the full pain from my burns, I was terrified to think about what Troy might have gone through. Was too afraid to ask the question in my head. Did he burn to death? I couldn’t think of a more terrible way to go. I’d lain awake thinking about it – my best friend dying in agony. I’d seen his eyes, his physical pain and my own guilt reflected in them.
“They did an autopsy,” says Mrs Daly. “He was killed instantly when the roof landed on him. It was quick.”
Too quick for pain?
She seems to read my mind. “He wouldn’t have suffered.”
We both howl again – arms around each other, sitting at the kitchen table where Troy and I sat so many times after school since we were little.
We sit there quietly for a while, just remembering Troy.
“I’m glad you came,” says Mrs Daly.
“Me too.”
“Promise you’ll come again.”
I nod.
Mrs Daly smiles then. It’s Troy’s grin, lopsided and full of good will. “He’d want us to keep an eye on you – make sure you’re staying out of trouble.”
I don’t say anything. I’m scared I’ll start crying again. I don’t know what to do next. I should go, but I want to stay – I want to absorb everything that’s left of Troy.
Angie walks in carrying a box of spray cans. It’s so full that the cardboard sags at the sides. I get a flashback to burning cupboards sagging off the kitchen wall. I feel sick. I close my mouth to stop the bile coming up in my throat. I try to smile, but I don’t think it comes out right. Angie doesn’t seem to notice.
“These were Troy’s. You can have them if you like.” She holds them out to me.
“What a great idea,” says Mrs Daly. “Troy would want that.”
“If you’re sure it’s okay.”
Angie pauses. “Could you show me how he used to paint? What he used to do?”
“Sure.” I look at Mrs Daly.
“If you two would like to go now, that would be fine with me,” she says.
“I know just the place.”
We go to the water tank on Mather’s Hill – where Troy and I could go and just be us.
The trees around the tank have been chopped back so you can get a clear view of my Uluru mural – the one I nearly got arrested for. I look at my art – my copy of Mum’s painting. It’s not relevant any more – and it was never really mine.
I take out three white cans and sit them on the ground. I pick one up and hold it in my hand. It hurts to close my scarred fingers over it. When I bend them, the pain makes me breathe in sharply. Angie watches me trying to hold it in.
I think of Troy – make my brain go into another zone – the one where I’ve been hiding for the last six months. The place where I don’t feel the full force of the pain.
It takes a while and I’m sweating when I finish, but eventually I’ve sprayed over the whole painting. It feels good.
Angie and I sit on the hill and talk while we wait for the paint to dry. We talk about school and what it’s like to live in Brabham. But most of all we talk about Troy.
Finally, the white paint is dry and there’s no sign of the Matt Hudson version of the Zora Matthews’ painting. It makes me feel kind of free – like there’s hope for a new beginning.
I take Angie’s hand in mine. Show her how to hold the spray can, just like Troy showed me all those years ago. I show Angie how you change nozzles to get a finer spray.
Together we paint a picture. It’s not a famous landmark or something spectacular. It’s not anything most people in the world would even recognise. It’s the view of Brabham from where we sit. It’s the view that Troy and I looked at so many times – out over the houses and across the river.
Each layer of paint seems to bury the pain deeper, make it more bearable.
When the picture’s almost finished, we stand back to look at what we’ve done.
“It’s amazing!” says Angie. “Troy would have loved it.”
“Yeah.” I look at the painting,
then back at Angie’s awe-struck face. “I reckon he would have.”
I’m just applying the finishing touches when I hear footsteps and smell garlic.
“PC Huggins,” I say, before I’ve even turned around.
“You’re not defacing public property again, are you?” he says.
“No.” Even though the water belongs to the whole town, I feel like the tank belongs to just me and Troy. “Just doing an update,” I say.
PC Huggins takes a step back. “It’s good,” he says. “Really good – and much more relevant.”
Angie grins.
PC Huggins moves next to her. “Hope you’re not planning on following in your brother’s footsteps,” he says.
Angie shakes her head. “Troy was the painter in the family. I just want to know how he did it – to understand what it meant to him.”
“Behave yourself then, you two.” The PC hops back in his car and drives off.
“We’d better be getting back,” says Angie.
I take one last look at the water tank – at the best painting I’ve ever done. Like Leonardo once said, “Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art.”
“Hang on a minute.” I take out the red can (Troy’s favourite colour) and in the bottom right-hand corner of the picture, I write my dedication to Troy.
Dear Leo,
So you see, Leo, I’m back painting again. Like Steve Bridges said, it’s part of who I am.
I reckon it was Troy who got me back into it though. Felt his spirit up there at the water tank with Angie. He was there inside my head, telling me to pick up his spray can – to do it for him. It was his paint, Leo, and in a way it was really Troy’s painting.
There was a lot of comment in town about it. Most people said it just seemed to belong.
Steve liked the new painting too. Reckoned it was my best work yet. (Mind you, he always says that.) For the first time ever he agreed with PC Huggins. “It’s much more relevant. Your art has really matured over the last twelve months,” he said.
Life does that to you, Leo, doesn’t it? Whether you want it or not, life drags you forward.