The Last Thread

by Michael Sala

  Simon has started coming by their place a lot. He is large yet unobtrusive. He doesn’t even raise his voice. Mum is happy. Michael can see her gums more when she smiles, like she is growing younger.

  And it is strange how quickly he has become used to Dirk’s absence. The terrace feels alive, with its narrow, creaking stairs and wooden windows that rattle on windy nights. The bedroom Con and Michael share has an enclosed balcony. The ageing terraces on the other side of the street are nearly the same as theirs, although they are all painted differently. Some have stained glass while others have wooden shutters, and Michael almost imagines that he could jump across, so narrow is the street, and the sounds of people talking or playing music in other houses come at him as if from another room.

  Simon drops by one day, and stays for dinner. Michael, his legs crossed, his elbows on the table, watches Simon and Mum talking and laughing. Simon makes him laugh. Or lets him laugh, and it is strange not to feel afraid for once of the man in the house. To not have reason to, even if a part of you is watchful for the smallest changes.

  Michael wakes up some mornings and feels a sense of doom like a weight on his chest. There is no explaining it, nothing obvious, but it is a belief that he has, a knowledge about the world. Bad things will come from nowhere, surging like the roots of fig trees through footpaths.

  And that part of him drifts but never sleeps. Lying on the floor, with the night against the windows, upstairs in his bedroom, Michael listens to the tape player he got for Christmas. He owns one tape, the soundtrack to Rocky III. The night is still warm enough to wear a T-shirt, although he can feel the steady descent of the city into cooler weather, the edge to the air. Michael lies with his head against the stereo and listens to ‘Eye of the Tiger’. In the middle of the song, he hears a loud banging. When he switches off the stereo, he hears only the usual sounds—the city, traffic, the ocean—and he thinks that he might have imagined it until the hammering starts again.

  ‘Open the door! Open the fucking door! I’m going to kill you! Let me in so I can fucking kill you!’

  It is Dirk’s voice, full of rage.

  Con’s face appears in the doorway. ‘Hide, Mike! Now!’ He runs downstairs to Mum, to defend her.

  Michael stares after him. Conan the Barbarian wouldn’t be trying to hide at a time like this. He’d be there, downstairs with Con, doing what he could, laying his life on the line. But Michael can imagine the headlines: family massacred, one survivor. There always needs to be a survivor. He rolls under the bed. Dirk yells and beats on the door with what sounds like a hammer. There’s murder in his voice, a sorrowful, desperate violence that makes the muscles around Michael’s bladder tighten inwards. The door opens. Dirk’s footsteps bend the wooden boards downstairs.

  Mum’s voice is rapid and pleading. ‘No one’s here. See?’

  ‘Godverdomme, you think I’m an idiot?’

  Back and forth their voices go. Stop, start, Dirk’s voice rising and rising towards the first blow. From where Michael lies under the mattress, he sees only a sliver of doorway.

  ‘I’m sorry, Dirk. I’m so, so sorry.’

  Then the door slams shut. A car roars off. Michael gets out from under the bed and goes downstairs. Mum is hugging Con. When she sees Michael, she beckons to him. They all hug. No one says anything. Michael is sick with relief, and shame because he did not defend Mum when she needed him.

  ‘Who wants hot chocolate?’ she asks.

  They sit in front of the television and drink their hot chocolate. Mum wanders off. On his way to the toilet, Michael overhears her talking on the phone.

  ‘No, no,’ she says into the phone, ‘you did the right thing.’

  ‘Hey, Mike,’ Con says furtively when he walks back. ‘Check this out.’

  They go up the stairs into Mum’s bedroom. There, shoved under the bed, are a pair of pants, a shirt, a belt and a pair of shoes.

  ‘Look at that,’ Con says, and Michael hears in his voice a sudden depth of feeling, pure contempt. ‘Just look at it. Where does she get these guys from? This one even forgot his fucking clothes.’

  ~

  The road lifts and the coastal suburbs spread through the back window of the car. Cliffs and hills rise up to the distant white finger of the Obelisk, the ocean lies over the trees and the houses, and everything is caught in the dazzling glare of the sun. And then comes the lurch as the road enters a steep decline, as if something of your insides is left behind, and you can never be prepared and the ocean is gone. Michael sits beside Mum in the front seat. Jonno sits in the back.

  ‘Dirk has lost everything. Besides, how would I look after Jonno right now? He isn’t working and I am, so it just makes sense.’

  Mum is explaining again why Jonno lives mainly with Dirk a few suburbs away, while Con and Michael stay with her. Michael doesn’t know why she keeps explaining it. He really doesn’t mind. Things have settled down since Dirk beat at the door with a crowbar. But there is a rippling through Michael’s spine whenever they go to drop off Jonno, a sickly feeling that doesn’t abate until the homeward stretch. Mum usually takes Con as well, but he’s off spearfishing again.

  Con has a spear gun now. On mornings when the wind comes from the right direction, he gets on his bike, bag strapped to his back, brimming with equipment, gun in one hand, and he silently pedals out of sight. He brings back huge fish with tiny holes behind their dark, foggy eyes where the spear went in. Sometimes he talks about seeing sharks out there. Once he even tried to feed them.

  ‘Here we are,’ Mum murmurs.

  She pulls into the driveway. Dirk comes out to meet them, pale belly hanging over his jeans, hair oily and dishevelled. He runs one hand through his beard and waits. Mum gets out of the car and unstraps Jonno from the back. Michael climbs out last, extracting his limbs from the front seat as if he doesn’t quite know what to do with them. His joints have been clicking and aching of late, particularly his knees, which he notices more when he lies on the bottom bunk of the bed that he still shares with Con. Growing pains, Mum calls them.

  ‘Hi, Dirk. How are you?’

  Without answering, Dirk takes Jonno. Mum waits and stares up at his face. Her face is level with the dark jut of his beard. They stand there in silence, like the shimmering mirage of a family. Michael licks his lips and looks across at the bleak house behind them, the three-storey housing commission block beyond.

  ‘Well, we had a nice time,’ Mum says.

  Dirk gives a short nod of his head. Michael puts his hands in the pockets of his jeans and moves closer to Mum. Dirk’s eyes move across Michael without any recognition.

  ‘Your birthday’s coming up,’ Dirk says at last, looking at Mum.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Here.’

  Dirk gives her something all wrapped up. Mum takes it, undoes the carefully tied ribbon and peels away the crepe paper to reveal a white marble elephant the size of her hand.

  She looks caught off balance. ‘That’s very nice of you, Dirk. It’s really…really lovely.’

  Dirk doesn’t move. ‘For luck. The last thing you’ll ever get from me.’

  Something shifts in Mum’s face. ‘Well, thank you. We’d better go.’ She gives Jonno a hug and a kiss. Her hand stays on his cheek for a moment, then she turns away. ‘Bye then, Dirk.’

  They get back into the car.

  ‘He can give such nice gifts,’ Mum says as the car door closes.

  She bites her bottom lip tightly until a sob escapes. She drops the elephant behind her seat with a sigh and a rustle of crepe paper, rattles the keys, scrapes them against the ignition and presses the clutch.

  ‘Stupid bastard. He gives such good gifts and always finds a way to ruin them!’

  Michael looks towards Jonno, standing there waving as they back out of the drive. Jonno is three, a thin, blond-haired boy. Sometimes Michael feels affection for him and sometimes he is the enemy. But when he smiles, he reveals his gums like Mum, and he smiles now and waves wildly at Michael a
nd Mum in the car. Michael waves back.

  Dirk stands behind Jonno, arms at his sides, his eyes darkened by the weight of his forehead. Mum pulls out onto the street, up the hill. When they reach the crest, Michael sees the sea and the tension tumbles from his chest.

  Mum wipes her eyes with the back of her hand. ‘It’s hard. It’s too hard.’

  She shakes her head. They keep on driving.

  The following week, when they go to pick up Jonno, Dirk isn’t waiting for them out the front. When they knock on the door, he doesn’t answer. Michael peers through the window; his breath fogs against the glass. He looks back at Mum and no words come into his mouth.

  Something rises in Mum’s voice. ‘What? What is it?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  She puts her hand on his shoulder. ‘What? Don’t just stand there. Let me see.’

  He stands beside Mum as she presses her face against the glass.

  ‘It’s empty.’ Mum tries the front door and it is open. What little furniture Dirk possessed is gone. The place smells of detergent and the carpet is tacky underfoot. Sunlight pours through flimsy white lace curtains. Mum walks from one end of the house to the other without saying a word. There is a note under a stone on the kitchen counter. Mum reads it, crumples the paper, throws it to the ground. Michael picks it up. There aren’t many words on it:

  I’ve taken Jonno away from here. You’ll never see

  him again. Come after us and I’ll kill us both.

  ~

  From Mum’s bedroom window Michael can see the back fence over which Simon jumped that night in nothing but his underpants. This part of the town has an older feel, a bit like Europe—the sprawling cathedral above the mall, like something medieval, the ruins of Fort Scratchley on the headland, with cannons that once fired on Japanese submarines. Near the remains of the fort is the breakwall and above it the lighthouse. Back from this extend the narrow streets and century-old terraces ravaged by salt. Past that, hidden on the top of a hill, is the school where he first went as a boy six years ago, when he didn’t know a word of English, walking with Mum towards the sky through the corridor of figs.

  It is never entirely still in this part of town. The fountain built into the nearby park is always alive, the five roaring columns of water much higher than a boy or even a man, and twice as wide. The columns take turns to rise to their full height and then recede and bubble away into the dark-tiled circular surface set into the grass. After he has gone swimming alone, he steps from grate to grate and waits for the water columns to rise and hide him from the world.

  Across the park, looking out over Newcastle Beach at the end of a busy mall, sits the hospital. At night, it is all lit up, endless rows of narrow windows. Mum will work there when she has finished her studies. There is a brothel in an old wooden terrace around the corner in Zaara Street, with the solitary red light that goes on at night. That means, Con tells him, that they are open for business—he knows because he checked. Down another narrow street, all the way to the end, between two rows of old terraces, on a patch of grass, stands a lonely bench, and there are often needles lying around, or broken beer bottles. Beyond the bench, a cliff drops to the ocean. The baths are there, carved out of stone, the headland to one side, and an inlet directly below composed of rock and seaweed and restless currents, facing the container ships on the horizon. Michael sits there some mornings, staring over the sea and watching the first swimmers, most of them white-haired locals, gather for their daily ritual. The tones of their conversations drift up to him.

  Gezellig.

  When he gets home, no one asks where he has been. Mum’s grief fills the house. She has hired a private detective to track down Jonno—she is too afraid to call the police—but a month has passed and there isn’t any news. Late at night, Michael hears her crying: long, soft sobs muffled by closed doors and the noises of the city. He falls asleep and awakes with the sea pressing against his ears, and for a moment there is nothing else.

  He can hear another voice sometimes in the bedroom with Mum. Simon returned after that night and not a word was spoken about what had happened. More of his things turned up around the house. He started staying longer. Now it’s as if Simon has always been living there. Despite her grief, Mum studies with Simon every day. They sit side by side in exams and she copies his answers. They go halves with the shopping and the rent, although Mum is the one who keeps the house tidy and cooks dinner.

  Soon Mum will be moving them again, to another place, with a garage, so that Simon has somewhere to put his motorbike. On weekends, Simon and Mum ride together, across the harbour, to work at the mental hospital.

  Mum sometimes says that she could never make it through this terrible time without Simon’s support and that they should be happy for her that she’s found someone. She’s really talking only to Con. He looks at her, gives a shrug, and something hard and grey creeps into his gaze. Con doesn’t dwell on many things, but he remembers weakness.

  They went spearfishing together one day, Con and Simon, while Michael watched from the shore. After a couple of hours, Con emerged from the water carrying half a dozen fish longer than his forearm and glistening fat, each with a tiny, precise hole behind the eye, while Simon had caught nothing. They stood near one another and did not say anything.

  ‘I don’t know how you do it,’ Simon said finally, shaking his head.

  Con is nearly as tall as Simon, but leaner, more evenly proportioned. He showed his teeth for the briefest moment, then went off to a separate spot to gut the fish.

  Michael wakes in the middle of the night. On his way to the outside toilet, he finds Mum sitting on a step in the darkness of the stone courtyard, smoking a cigarette. He sits down beside her. A few stars glimmer through the air blown in from the factories and the orange glow thrown up by the city lights. A train gathers pace in the distance as it leaves Newcastle Station.

  ‘It’s such a lonely sound,’ she says.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The waves. Those waves just crashing against the shore. It’s so…restless. I just wish that it would stop for a little while.’

  ‘I like it. I love it.’

  Mum lights up another cigarette and stares at the tip. ‘I used to dream about it back in Holland, yearn for it, you know? Now I think I never want to hear it again. Strange how it seems to get louder at night. There is nothing kind in that sound. Just motion, endless motion. It sounds like loss.’

  ‘It’s just the sea.’

  ‘I’ll never forgive myself for abandoning Jon.’

  ‘But you didn’t. Dirk stole him.’

  ‘In the end it doesn’t make any difference.’

  ‘We’ll find him, Mum.’ Michael does his best to sound reassuring, to speak to her in the way that Simon speaks to her. ‘We’ll find him.’

  He puts a hand on her shoulder and notices how his arm is level when he does so, and it is strange to think that he is as tall as her now, and that he will keep on growing.

  She glances at him. ‘Do you think it was worth it?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Leaving Dirk.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you miss Holland?’

  Michael nods and feels something tighten in his throat.

  ‘What do you miss about it?’

  ‘Lots. I wish that I could go back. I don’t know if I want to see Dad again. I think about him, though.’

  ‘Every decision has a cost, one way or another,’ Mum murmurs. Stars slip across the sky and the fence swallows them one by one. ‘It was a different world back there,’ she goes on. ‘When I left your father, your grandmother made me see a priest. I rode on my bike to see him in the next village. I told the priest about what your father had done to Con. It was so hard to say those things. The priest said that I probably wasn’t satisfying him properly as a wife. I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. I knocked over the chair and cycled home in tears. My mother was furious at me for embarrassing her in front of a priest. Tha
t was always her biggest worry, being embarrassed. She’s more afraid of that than dying.’

  ‘I hope she does die.’

  ‘She’ll live a long time. Even if I didn’t love her, she’d be there inside my heart.’

  Michael understands. Dirk still haunts him like that. But Dirk is gone. And Dad is on the other side of the world. The memory of his father is once more growing dull.

  ‘You look like him, you know.’ She is watching him in the darkness.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Andreas. You look more like him than Con does. You shouldn’t be so shocked. Andreas was a very handsome man. You never knew him when he was young. That’s more what you look like—him when he was young. Yes, you should have seen him.’

  Something has come into her eyes. She walks every evening along the beach with Simon. They hold hands. They talk for hours in bed at night. But Michael never sees that look in Mum’s eyes when she speaks about Simon. Perhaps it is because she’s already had to start forgetting important parts of him, the way he jumped over their fence that night.

  ‘Do you still love him?’

  Mum hesitates. ‘Who? Andreas? No. Maybe a part of me does. It’s more pity, I think. And anger. I could have been happy with him. But it doesn’t matter. It’s not important. At some point, we really have to be here.’

  Michael smiles at her. He sits on the step, arms wrapped around his knees, hunched into himself. It is peaceful right now, except for the sound of the ocean rolling over every stone surface. He thinks of how the sea touches the other side of the world too, where so many of his memories and questions remain. You get used to it, the waves breaking on the shore, and the wind and the noises caught up within. And when you do, you can imagine, if only for a while, that there is no sound at all.