The Bogan Mondrian

by Herrick, Steven

  ‘Take it from me, kid. He’s not going to let you set up a camera in his own house.’

  ‘A hidden camera.’

  He scratches his chin. ‘Evidence.’

  I nod.

  Rodney takes another cigarette from the pack. He smiles as he reaches for his lighter. ‘You’re not as stupid as you look, kid.’

  I step towards him. ‘I just need a camera, for a few days.’

  ‘You transfer the footage to a computer. And the cops don’t see the camera.’

  ‘No cops,’ I answer. ‘I’ll send him the tape.’

  ‘He’ll fucking kill you,’ Rodney says.

  ‘Not if he knows there’s a copy.’

  ‘He’ll torture you, then still fucking kill you.’

  Rodney sees I’m not changing my mind, no matter what. He shrugs then takes out his mobile phone. ‘What’s your number?’

  He enters the digits as I tell him.

  ‘I’ll text you. It’ll be in a plastic bag, under the log at the reservoir.’ He laughs to himself. ‘You got guts, kid. You’d make a good thief.’

  He notices the bike leaning against the pole.

  ‘Someone should lock that bike,’ he says. ‘You can’t trust anyone nowadays.’

  He walks across the street and disappears down the tunnel.

  On Sunday evening, to take my mind off Buster, I write my short story for Ms Childs on family life. Visiting the Railway Hotel last night has given me an idea.

  Mum knocks on the door and enters wearing a dark green dress and high heels. She looks at her watch, as if she’s waiting for someone.

  ‘Are you going out?’ I ask.

  ‘We’re going out,’ she answers, smiling.

  I look down the hallway, expecting to see someone else. It takes me a few moments to realise she means me. Me and Mum.

  ‘Why?’ I ask. ‘What’s wrong with takeaway?’

  ‘Because your father used to take me out before we got married,’ she says. ‘You’re the only man I’ve got left.’ She stands, walks over to me and wraps her arms around my waist.

  I hold her close for a second, but it feels a bit weird standing there like that with my mum.

  ‘Do you want me to wear some proper clothes?’ I follow her into the kitchen.

  ‘Anything that’s clean, darl,’ she says, opening the fridge to remove a bottle of rosé.

  ‘Twenty-five years ago today, your dad and I got married.’ Her voice starts to waver. ‘It’s our silver anniversary.’

  I don’t know what to say. She stands there, holding the wine, looking lost. We both miss Dad more than we want to admit.

  I walk to the bathroom and take off my t-shirt, toss it in the laundry basket and splash some water under my armpits. I use deodorant so I don’t smell totally rank. In my bedroom, I choose an open-neck shirt. Mum will like that. I even change my socks. A new man.

  I don’t complain about Billy Joel on the way into town and we find a park right outside Mountain Pizza.

  ‘We’re going upmarket tonight,’ I say as Mum locks the car.

  ‘I thought you liked pizza.’

  ‘I do, Mum,’ I answer. ‘I was trying to be funny.’

  Mr Bursini looks as if he remembers me from the school assembly. I hope he doesn’t spit on our pizza. The waitress is a girl from year ten named Sigrid. She’s the tallest girl in school and captain of the netball team. I always thought Blake and her should get together, but Sigrid’s more interested in sport than boys.

  She leads us to a corner table overlooking Katoomba Street, pours water into my tumbler and opens Mum’s bottle of rosé, before filling her glass. She puts the bottle in a thin silver bucket of ice.

  I order a margherita pizza and Mum chooses one with ham, pumpkin and rocket.

  ‘That’s a strange choice,’ I say, when Sigrid returns to the kitchen.

  ‘It’s the most expensive pizza in the place.’ Mum smiles. ‘I thought I’d treat us.’

  ‘I prefer margherita.’

  ‘Since when?’

  ‘Since they started putting crap like pumpkin and rocket on a pizza.’

  Mum laughs and the people opposite look at us. They should wait to see how loud she is when the bottle of rosé is drained.

  ‘Your father used to make me laugh,’ Mum says, ‘in between me wanting to kill him.’ She realises what she’s said and takes a long sip from her wineglass.

  I’m about to answer when Rodney walks down the street and sees me through the front window. He stops outside the restaurant, takes out his cigarettes, then casually walks over to our Mazda and stands there facing away. Smoke drifts above his head. Surely he’s not going to boost our car, right in front of us? He’s having a go at me for all the times I called him out on smoking.

  ‘Do you know that man, darl?’ Mum says.

  ‘Nah,’ I say, looking back into the restaurant. ‘Where’s our pizza?’

  ‘He’s not the man who hurt …’ Mum leaves the sentence hanging.

  ‘Him?’ I’m surprised by Mum making that connection.

  ‘He looks the type,’ Mum says.

  She’s right. Wherever Rodney goes he’s a marked man, while Charlotte’s dad sails through life with his Audi, his designer suits and luxury house.

  Rodney finishes his cigarette and stubs it out in the gutter. He picks up the butt and walks to the rubbish bin. Normally he’d just flick it into the street. He’s enjoying this.

  Sigrid arrives with our meals. When she leaves, Mum and I take one look at her pizza covered in green rocket leaves and start laughing.

  ‘That’s what you get for choosing from the gourmet range,’ I say.

  She picks up a bunch of leaves and starts eating them. My pizza oozes cheese and rich tomato sauce.

  ‘We can share if you want, Mum,’ I say. ‘Happy anniversary.’

  Mum stops crunching and smiles.

  I look through the window and our Mazda is still parked outside.

  Rodney has disappeared.

  19

  Two days later, Rodney texts at lunchtime. After school, I head to the reservoir and find a plastic bag under the log. Inside is a mini action camera with a built-in microphone and waterproof housing. I’m amazed at how small it is. No problem to hide.

  I text Charlotte. She still hasn’t spoken to me since last week.

  She answers in two words, one of them not very nice.

  My fingers are shaking on the phone as I text my plan.

  I sit on the log, looking over the reservoir. My phone beeps.

  I want to throw my phone into the water.

  She doesn’t respond for a long time. I track the ducklings circling the reservoir. I wonder if any other animal hurts their own family. Does the mother drown the weakest duckling if there isn’t enough food for the others? I’m sure if I tried to get near one of her babies she’d bite me or flap her wings wildly in my face.

  She’d protect her own.

  I keep hearing Buster’s bark over and over in my mind. I’m the cause of his death, just as much as Charlotte’s father. I walk up to his grave and sit beside the stones. From the soil, a native grass is sprouting.

  My phone beeps.

  Twenty minutes later, Charlotte walks along the bush track and emerges into the clearing. She’s wearing jeans, a black shirt and the shoes with silver buckles. When she sees me, she holds up her hands.

  ‘No weapons,’ she calls.

  I stand on the bank and when she gets near I hold out my hand to help her step over a boggy patch near the log. Her eyes are red. We sit together and look across the reservoir.

  ‘Buster should be here,’ she says.

  I don’t answer, remembering him chasing birds and jumping at bushes.

  ‘You looked so sad in English today.’

&nbs
p; ‘It’s my fault,’ I whisper. I suck in a deep breath for what I’m about to confess. ‘I broke into your house, Charlotte.’

  She touches the buckle on her shoe. ‘Where were you?’

  ‘Hiding under your bed.’ My voice is shaking.

  Charlotte rests her hand on my shoulder.

  ‘I brought Buster back here,’ I say. ‘And buried him over there.’ I point towards his grave.

  ‘That’s all he talks about. The missing dog and the broken golf club.’ She laughs, bitterly. ‘He thinks he’s being stalked.’ She looks at me. ‘He’s been so obsessed with it, he hasn’t … you know …’

  I lean down to wash my hands. Just thinking of him makes me feel dirty. I walk to a fern near the water’s edge and pick up the camera I’d hidden under a frond earlier.

  ‘It’s been filming us for the last ten minutes,’ I say, offering it to Charlotte. ‘Load it onto your computer to check it works.’

  Charlotte stares into the camera as if the answer is in the lens.

  ‘But to get evidence,’ she says, ‘Mum has to be hurt.’

  ‘If he never touches her again, we forget all about it,’ I say. ‘But if he does …’

  Charlotte tilts her head slightly. ‘Before we moved up here, Mum went to see a counsellor. It took her weeks to work up the courage.’

  She polishes the lens on her t-shirt, before looking at me. ‘The counsellor told Mum we should leave Dad. And go to the police.’ She frowns. ‘Dad sensed something. Every night for a week, he came home with a single rose, as if he knew what Mum was planning.’

  A pair of dragonflies hovers over the surface of the reservoir.

  ‘Mum thought things had settled down,’ she whispers. ‘A new town, a new man.’

  She turns away, as if it’s all too much.

  We sit in silence for a long time, until Charlotte rises and reaches for my hand.

  We walk through the afternoon streets and stop at Frank’s Corner Store as the rain starts to fall. Betty is behind the counter. When she sees me enter, she claps her hands and smiles.

  ‘Where’s your friend,’ she says, ‘with the unfortunate name?’

  I try to smile. ‘He’s locked up today,’ I say.

  She looks sad. ‘Dogs should run free, like children.’

  ‘Two sausage rolls please, Betty,’ I say, to change the subject.

  ‘Did I tell you they’re made by my husband?’ She winks at Charlotte. ‘Always marry a good cook.’

  ‘This is Charlotte,’ I say.

  Betty bows slightly and Charlotte offers a nervous wave. Betty hands me a brown paper bag.

  ‘You two go sit outside. I’ll bring you a surprise.’ She smiles.

  Charlotte and I sit on the bus seat under the awning and watch the rain thunder down. The gutters overflow with stormwater as cars slosh past.

  ‘They really are great sausage rolls,’ I say, handing one to Charlotte.

  She takes a bite.

  Betty brings out two takeaway cups.

  ‘Coffee,’ she says. ‘We’ve got a new machine. I’m practising. You’re my guinea pigs.’

  Charlotte and I look at each other, confused.

  ‘My taste-testers,’ Betty says.

  She waits for us to try the coffee. It’s hot and strong.

  ‘Betty the barista,’ I say.

  Betty looks at Charlotte. ‘He’s a good man, your boyfriend. You’re a lucky girl.’ She walks back inside.

  Charlotte leans close and takes another sip. ‘You hear that? I’m lucky.’

  The rain eases slightly and Charlotte looks at her watch.

  ‘Do you have to be home?’ I ask.

  She shakes her head. ‘They’re eating out tonight in Sydney. We’re back in the happy period.’ Her mouth crinkles and she looks at her shoes and sighs.

  ‘Italian leather,’ she says. ‘I chose them because of the buckle. I imagined kicking him with it.’ She takes a deep breath as if she wants to tell me something.

  I wait.

  The rain stops. A white Toyota van pulls up outside the shop and a man in overalls gets out, runs around to the rear door and carries a carton of soft drinks into the shop. He returns in a minute, nods at both of us and drives away, the tyres spurting water across the road.

  Charlotte grips my hand and squeezes. ‘After I … I threw those things at you,’ she begins.

  ‘It’s okay. You missed.’

  ‘After I missed,’ she says, ‘I spent two days wandering the house. Trying to understand why I did that.’

  ‘I should have helped you.’

  She shakes her head. ‘My father is violent. I’m his daughter. Maybe …’ She hides her face in her hands.

  I don’t know how to respond.

  ‘What if I’m violent? Like him?’ Charlotte says, her voice hushed.

  I toss the coffee cups and paper bag in the rubbish bin and hold out my hand. ‘I want to show you something,’ I say.

  We wave goodbye to Betty.

  The streets are washed clean after the rain. We walk a few blocks across the suburb, past houses with scrappy lawns and plastic toys scattered among the weeds, all the way down to the end of Woodlands Road where the eucalyptus trees border the town cemetery. I push open the rusted gate.

  I lead Charlotte down the slope, past the overgrown stone graves. She grips my hand as a kookaburra calls from a cedar tree in the far corner of the cemetery. Beside a newly tended grave, a patch of daisies blooms. I reach down to pick a bunch.

  Charlotte looks puzzled.

  I take the flowers to a polished granite headstone in the shade of a gum tree. I kneel down and lay them on the pebbled grave.

  ‘I want you to meet my dad,’ I say.

  The inscription lists his name, birthdate and the date he died. Underneath is the line:

  Quit while you’re ahead.

  ‘Dad wanted it on his headstone,’ I say. ‘He was never ahead, so he never quit.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Charlotte says. ‘No-one at school told me.’

  I shake my head. ‘It’s okay. What happens on this side of town doesn’t always make it across the highway.’

  The kookaburra flies from the cedar tree and lands on a headstone a few rows away.

  ‘Dad liked to gamble.’ I look at the inscription again. ‘I love him, but I’m not like him, not like that.’

  She looks at dad’s grave. ‘I’ll talk to Mum tomorrow,’ she says. ‘And suggest we go to the police, together this time.’

  I reach out to hug her. Dad would approve.

  ‘But if she won’t, we’ll …’ She doesn’t have to finish the sentence.

  The kookaburra flies away, embarrassed to witness such intimacy.

  ‘I want to show you something else,’ I say.

  I take her hand and lead her up to the ghost gum on the hill. On the forest side of the tree is a series of photos, pinned to the trunk.

  Buster by the reservoir.

  Blake potting a free throw.

  Mum when she’s sleeping.

  My selfie in front of the cloud in the valley.

  The Railway Hotel in the early morning.

  ‘I broke a bunch of tacks trying to pin them to the trunk,’ I say.

  Charlotte leans in close and looks at every photo. The tree bark is stripped to a smooth white hardwood.

  ‘I put up the first photo a few weeks after he died,’ I add. ‘It was a picture of my bedroom with a photo of Dad on the bedside table. I made my bed, packed my clothes in the wardrobe and placed an empty bottle of beer next to his photo.’

  Charlotte smiles. She reaches up and touches the one of my mum sleeping.

  ‘Dad would like that one,’ I say.

  ‘It’s an art gallery,’ she says, ‘for your dad.’

 
‘For me and for Dad,’ I say. ‘I don’t want to lose the connection.’

  It doesn’t matter that the photos are wet from the rain, fading or being blown away by the wind.

  There’s more where they came from.

  That tree will last a lifetime.

  20

  The next morning, I wait at the school gates for Charlotte. She leads me to the bench seat near the basketball court. Blake and Hayley don’t play so much anymore. They hang out together behind the canteen. Lately, whenever Blake’s not at school, neither is Hayley.

  ‘I talked to Mum,’ Charlotte begins, ‘about the police. She’s worried he’ll overreact.’ She attempts a smile. ‘I said it was even more reason, if she’s that scared.’

  The school bus pulls into the driveway. Dharma and Liberty hop off, sporting new hairstyles: cornrows on top, shaved at the sides. That’ll go down well with Pakula.

  Charlotte watches the boys walk through the gate, followed by the gang from up the mountain.

  ‘She offered the usual excuses,’ Charlotte adds.

  Willow takes a photo of the twins, ready to post it on Instagram.

  ‘She told me how Dad’s father treated him. Always belittling him, calling him names, even as an adult. It’s why Dad left home so early.’ Charlotte looks at me. ‘We should all blame Grandad.’ Her voice is bitter.

  She sighs. ‘I kept pushing Mum until she promised that if it happened again, she’d go to the police.’

  ‘That’s great.’

  Charlotte shakes her head. ‘When Mum left for work, I set up the camera in the spice rack.’

  ‘But she promised.’

  ‘If it happens again,’ she whispers, ‘I want more than Mum’s word.’

  She closes her eyes, as if she’s ashamed at what’s she said.

  ‘Are you sure it’s hidden?’

  She nods. ‘He hasn’t cooked a meal in his life. If Mum finds it, she’ll know I’m serious.’

  At lunchtime, I walk to the basketball court. Blake is taking on three year nine boys in a game of half court. The boys are lucky to touch the ball. Blake suggests two against three. The boys complain. I shake my head and sit against the retaining wall. Blake lets the year nines have the ball and joins me.