by Kate Gordon
‘They’ll tell us in chook language?’
‘They’ll communicate it, somehow,’ he insisted.
‘If you could have any name, what would it be?’ I asked him.
He thought for a moment. Then, he smiled. ‘Robert. Lots of good poets called Robert. Robert Frost, Robert Browning, Robert Graves ... also, Robert DiPierdomenico, Hawthorn legend.’
I rolled my eyes. ‘Always comes back to the footy.’
‘What about you?’ he asked.
I just shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I guess I’d keep the names I have. I have a few, already. More than enough.’
‘But if you could have just one name?’
Then and there, I couldn’t honestly think of anything. Wally answered so quickly; with such certainty. I wasn’t certain about anything. Not even my own name. Not even my choice for a name. Not even my self.
‘I dunno,’ I’d said. ‘I’ll go with Franklin. In case Franklin rejects the name.’
Franklin hasn’t rejected the name yet. At least, not that we know. She’s gone on to assert her femininity by being the most prolific layer in the shed. She kicks up a stink every time Rioli tries to come near her; makes it perfectly clear that any egg-fertilising is going to be done on her terms. And definitely not until she’s finished eating.
Then, she makes him work for it; makes him court her; makes him value her.
And he does. Rioli loves Franklin the best of all the chooks.
As if energised by his love, she gives eggs aplenty; big, golden-yolked and delicious.
Wally and I have already collected all the eggs, today. We’re sitting in the hay, watching our grown-up babies prance and flirt and eat and gossip. Wally is turning an egg round and around in his hand, like it’s a precious stone.
‘Thanks for coming over this arvo,’ I say. ‘Grandma T appreciates it.’
Grandma T asked Wally over, to help her with ‘something on her computer’. We both knew it was just a pretence. Grandma T is a scientist. Back in the seventies, she used to build computers.
She just wants to check that Wally is okay.
I told her about the big game tomorrow and Wally’s knee and the fountain and everything. She had to make sure he is happy. And stuffed full of ginger cake.
He ate three pieces. He’s fine.
‘I like your grandma so much,’ Wally says, licking his fingers. And then, slowly, he brushes a hair off my face. The skin on my cheek zings. ‘I like you. You know that, don’t you, Resey?’
‘Of course I know that,’ I say, quickly. ‘We’re best friends.’
I say it because I’m scared if I don’t say it, he might.
And then I say, ‘We should get in. Grandma T has more food for you. She’s going to heal your knee with butter and golden syrup.’
I wait.
I wait for him to say, ‘No, I want to stay. I want to stay here with you, alone. I want to sit with you, here, and pick apart all the mysteries of the universe. You’re the only one I want to be with. The only one I can talk to, like that.’
But he doesn’t, of course. Instead, I get, ‘Great, I’m starving.’ And then, as we walk back towards the house with our baskets of eggs, he says, ‘You’ve still got chook poo on your face. I thought I got it, but I didn’t.’
The wind drops. I’m with it.
Chapter Ten
I look at myself in the bathroom mirror full of sighs.
It’s Saturday morning. Big game day. I still look the same.
I make a checklist of pieces of me. Scattered, incongruent, missing the glue that should make them match—that should make me into a person.
Limp, faded-brown hair.
Freckled nose, bent and swerving sideways.
Lips like a knife edge.
Goggly, staring eyes like that slow loris in the meme.
And below the eyes, below the face, a body made by Picasso.
Skinny chook legs, wide hips, boobs that still struggle to fill a crop top made for tweens. Boobs that made Emma Houston look at me with that smug little smile. The one that says, You’re faulty.
Emma Houston has boobs like a painting by Rubens. Emma is shaped like a figure-eight. Emma has wavy, strawberry-blonde hair like a Pantene ad and pillowy lips like Scarlett Johansson. And her nose is straight. I saw the photos from last year’s best-and-fairest: she looked like a goddess. She had a spray tan. A spray tan. Like a freaking Instagram model.
She looked like the sort of girl the players take to the Brownlow. She’s glossy and perfect. Nobody takes girls like me to the Brownlow. I’m the girl who had chook poo on her face last night. I’m the girl who makes him scones.
Usually, I don’t care much how I look, but on footy days ...
I want to look different today; better. I want Wally to spot me in the crowd, after he wins the bounce that makes the scout sit up. Wally will see me there … and see me.
Maybe want to take me with him when he goes to uni.
Would I go?
I think of everything I have here in the little town I love—Auntie Kath and this house and all the memories. Grandma T, Melody and Roz, Rhino and Flo. The musical and the school band. Writing, art, Woolies.
I like it here. I like my life. But if Wally was gone, there’d be moth-holes in everything.
Would I go with him if he asked me?
He won’t ask me.
Bent nose, freckly face, flat chest. He won’t ask me. Even though he and Emma have broken up, I’ll never stand a chance. Because there are other girls like Emma, and Wally will be with one of them. Even though the world seems screwy in many ways, there are some things that are certain.
I look at the picture I have of my mum hanging on the wall. I can see bits of me in her. The thin lips and freckles.
The eyes.
But while on me they look too round, too alien—on her they sparkle.
She was someone a boy would pick out in the crowd.
I tug on my team guernsey. At least it hides the non-existent chest and the way my waist goes out when it should go in.
I’m wearing my skinny jeans with it—the black ones, with the rips that Roz says are fashionable. I wish I looked as good in jeans as Melody does, or that I had the guts to wear some fancy sandals, or a pin-up dress like Roz does, or even high heels instead of my usual Dunlop Volleys.
The other girls wear their guernseys tight, and they wear strappy stilettos or glittery thongs; they wear makeup. When Roz wears makeup, she looks polished and fancy. When I wear makeup, I just look pretend.
This is me.
I’m stuck with it.
I’ll always be the girl with the chook poo on her face. Wally might tell me his dreams; he might tell me poetry; he might talk to me about clouds and the sea and God and the extent of the universe—the things he never talks about to anyone else—but sometimes I feel as if he’s talking to a wall. As if I’m just something blank and silent that he can throw his strange wonderings at; see what pictures they make on my pale surface.
‘Are you digging a hole to China in there?’ Auntie Kath calls over the top of the Pretenders CD she’s painting to. ‘I thought you wanted to be at the game at eleven?’
I look at my watch. Bugger. ‘Coming!’ I cry. I take a tube of lip gloss from the top bathroom drawer (a gift from Roz aeons ago) and I glob a bit on.
No difference. Still me, only with shiny lips now.
‘You look nice,’ says Auntie Kath when I emerge from the bathroom. I know she’s only saying it because I took so long in there. She must know I’ve been trying.
She wipes her paint-splattered hands on my old work shirt and passes me a Tupperware container full of energy slices. I baked them last night. On footy days I don’t cook for only Wally. I always try and bring the team something home-made. Something that isn’t oranges or Powerade. �
��Come on, Tiger,’ Auntie Kath says. ‘Let’s go and watch these boys of yours. Are we picking up Melody and Roz?’
I nod. ‘Yep. If that’s okay.’
‘It’s always been okay and always will be.’ Auntie Kath smiles.
‘You have paint on your cheek,’ I tell her.
‘Do I look like Siouxsie?’ she asks.
‘You look nothing like Siouxsie,’ I tell her.
‘Dammit,’ she curses. She grabs a flannel and wipes her face. She grins, cheekily, and turns up the song that’s playing on the CD player. I know this one, too. Whenever Auntie Kath needs a boost, she puts it on. I’ve never really understood why it’s called ‘Brass in Pocket’, but I can’t help admitting that the joy of it is kind of infectious. Auntie Kath shimmies her shoulders and pouts.
‘Yes, Auntie Kath,’ I say, rolling my eyes. ‘I get it. You are completely special.’
Roz is at Melody’s place. They’re eating noodles on the deck. ‘Mum made you some, too.’ Melody hands me a paper box, as she gets in the car. It smells of soy and lemongrass.
I look up at the Kwong’s lounge room window. Lexi is standing there, watching, dressed in a band tee and black leather pants. She waves. I grin and wave back. She moves towards the stereo and a recent Aussie hip-hop hit—all casual swearing and cheeky drug references—break-dances out the front door. I see Lexi, inside, shaking her hips and rapping along.
‘Your mum’s amazing,’ I say.
Melody nods. ‘She is. I am trying to school her on cultural appropriation, though. She won’t be told. She thinks Tkay Maidza is her homegirl.’
‘Who’s Tkay Maidza?’ asks Roz. She looks bashful. ‘Sorry, my parents hate hip hop. It’s twenty-four-seven Classic FM at our place.’
‘My mum would take great pleasure in commencing your education,’ Melody says. ‘I’ll get her to make you a Spotify playlist. Plug in your headphones and the Count and Countess of Grantham will be none the wiser.’
I open the box Melody brought me and inhale the noodles. I hadn’t noticed I was so hungry.
Then, swallowing, I realise there is garlic in there too, with the soy and lemongrass. ‘Please tell me one of you has Tic Tacs,’ I say.
‘Chewie,’ Melody replies, offering a battered packet from her jeans pocket. ‘Can’t have you breathing on Nick Wallace with garlic breath.’
‘And why would she be breathing on Nick Wallace?’ Auntie Kath sounds amused.
‘I won’t be,’ I reply, quickly. ‘Let’s just get there, okay?’
I look out the window at the ocean and the blue, blue sky. All the pieces of me are breaking apart; floating away. I am a shapeless, formless thing, waiting for someone to tell me what to be.
Maybe waiting for Wally to tell me.
Waiting for him to see that we’re the same. Waiting for him to see me. For him to catch me. For us to give each other a soft place to land.
Dear Dad,
Today I will fly.
Watch out for me below.
Today I might soar high enough
To just feel you again.
Chapter Eleven
Wally’s dad died in a building site fall. He was an engineer. It was raining. They told him not to go up so high. But it rains six days out of seven here in winter, and they were already behind time.
It only took a moment and a look to the left when it should have been right; a foot in the wrong place.
So Hannah lost a husband. Wally lost a dad.
Just an hour before, Hannah had made breakfast for her husband, Mike—peanut butter on toast and a tub of low-fat yoghurt. Mike was on a new health kick. The doctor had told him that he had high blood pressure. He’d decided just that morning to start running every day and to eat fewer bags of Jointley’s chips.
He had a growing son. He had to start looking after himself. He needed to be healthy for the boy.
But then it rained six days out of seven.
It was a tragedy—a huge one, in this small town. I may not have known Wally when he arrived in my Grade Seven classroom, but everyone knew who Mike Wallace was.
It was terribly, terribly sad.
He was a footballer. Like his son, he was a ruckman—height runs in the family. He won the best-and-fairest medal, for the Hawks four years running. He only retired when Wally was born. His face is in photos on the clubroom walls, just like his son’s.
When I met Nick Wallace, that first day in Grade Seven, I didn’t know he was Mike Wallace’s son. I didn’t know he’d lost his dad the same year I lost mine.
We had both been three years old.
One night, when we were down by the beach behind the Makers Workshop, eating Dave’s Noodles from cardboard boxes, I asked him what his parents did for jobs.
‘Mum’s a nurse,’ he said, picking a hard bit of fried onion from the top of his mie goreng. ‘She works at Doctor Jensen’s practice in town. My dad’s dead. Ages ago. I was only a little kid. I don’t remember him at all.’
‘Oh, bugger, Wally,’ I said, putting down my plastic fork.
He lifted a shoulder. He was going for indifferent, but his face was tense. It still hurt him inside. I could tell.
‘He was kind of a superstar,’ Wally sighed. ‘Captain of the football team, went to uni, got a great job, had this beautiful wife and new little kid. Everyone in town knew his name. Everyone loved Mike Wallace. Everyone remembers him.’
‘Wait, your dad was Mike Wallace?’
Wally gave me a small smile. ‘See? Everyone.’
‘He was a legend,’ I said, putting my hand lightly on Wally’s arm, wishing my fingers didn’t tremble so much. Wishing I didn’t feel my stomach fall to the ground every time my skin touched his.
‘And that’s the way everyone remembers him,’ Wally said. ‘So it’s not all bad. Dying young, when everyone still thinks you’re a hero, before you get old and grey and bent. There’s advantages to that.’ He stared for a moment out at the sea. ‘It’s why I like poetry,’ he said, after a while. ‘Because he did, too. He took a unit in it at uni. But he only ever read it in secret because, you know, “footy players don’t read poetry; they don’t have feelings”. He never told anyone about it, except Mum. She kept all of his books. I read all of them, soon as I learned to read. I liked them better than my picture books. Anyway ...’ He shook his head, curls bouncing. He poked at his now-cold dinner. ‘I’m so over these noodles. Let’s go to Jointley’s. Healthy food sucks.’
So we went to Jointley’s and ordered egg-and-beetroot burgers. We stopped talking about sad stuff and I didn’t tell him then about my father.
When we walked home along the beach, our chins sticky with sauce and beetroot juice, Wally slowed, took my hand again and pointed at a seagull pestering some small kids for a chip.
‘I’d like to be him,’ he said.
‘A seagull?’
‘That seagull,’ he said. ‘All it knows is food and sleep and warmth and the wide blue sky. I’d like that.’
‘No worries, you mean?’ I asked. ‘Besides where your next chip is coming from?’
‘Wouldn’t it be sweet?’ Wally said. ‘Just chips and the sun and all the empty nothingness.’
‘Do you know any poems about seagulls?’ I asked him.
Wally shook his head; shot me a shy grin. ‘Maybe I’ll write one,’ he said.
Dear Dad,
I read somewhere that your soul has a weight;
That when you die your body lessens.
When you went my body got heavier.
I am too heavy now.
I want to be a soul;
Seagull light.
Chapter Twelve
As soon as I see him, I know the knee isn’t better.
It’s not that he’s hobbling or limping or favouring his right leg over his left one. It’s just … he’
s running different. Wally doesn’t run like that. Wally runs like he has springs in his legs, like there’s joy in every stride. Today Wally runs like he’s made of stones.
He’s not smiling.
Wally always smiles when he’s coming onto a footy ground.
I wave to him as he passes. He doesn’t wave back.
He doesn’t see me. He’s inside. And I know that what’s in there is dark today. Wally knows that his knee isn’t better. He knows that the AFL scout is here. Holland spotted him, and told the boys, and Faulsy told Peter, when they were lined up for pies. And Peter told everyone.
The scout’s the bloke in the black hat. He has a little notepad, and a look on his face like he’s important. There’s a girl next to him, in a navy suit, who’s already brought him three coffees and a Chiko Roll. He didn’t eat the Chiko Roll. He only sniffed it and gave it back to the girl. She ate it, looking like she was going to cry.
That guy’s the scout for sure, and Wally’s knee’s not better.
For the first half things go well. A new guy is up against Wally instead of MacMichael. I’ve never seen him before—must be from the reserves. He’s terrible. Wally wins every single bounce and there’s a flicker of joy on his face, dancing on top of the determination. There’s still a tiny wince whenever he hits the ground.
At half time, the boys are four goals up. I give Wally a muesli slice and he says, ‘Thanks, Champ. You see me out there? Do I look okay?’
‘Wally, you look amazing!’ He is looking good out there, despite everything.
‘Thanks, you,’ he says, and his fingers brush my cheek.
‘Chook poo?’ I ask, my own fingers searching for wetness on my skin. I didn’t feed the chooks, this morning, and I checked the mirror fifty times, before I left. ‘Sauce?’ I sigh, thinking of the noodles.
‘No,’ he says. ‘Just you. Just … thanks for saying I’m doing well. When you say that it makes me believe it.’
Peter’s at my side, his scarf wrapped twice around his neck, against the August chill. I’m not even feeling it.
‘You’re doing awesome, mate,’ he says, and for once there isn’t that hint of envy—that undercurrent of, Man, I wish I was out there. Peter is happy for Wally. We all are. Melody even brings him a Powerade. This is a big deal. Usually Melody sends us to the soft drink van. She prefers the coffee stand. It’s run by hipster activists.