Everything in its right place

by Tobias McCorkell

  ‘We’re just going to have to make do, Ford,’ Noonie said, her face contorted by the disappointment of having minorly screwed one of her only jobs in our home.

  ‘That’s fine. They’ll be fine,’ I assured her. ‘They’re not that burned.’

  I took up my seat at the dining table and did my best to zone out the argument between Mum and Pop. Noonie leaned across the table to load my plate with charred pizza and a side salad of cucumber, tomatoes, red onion and vinegar. I liked the way the vinegar sometimes made the pizza base soggy. I liked vinegar, the sting of it. But I would also add a thin drizzle of tomato sauce to make my pizza that little bit sweeter.

  And so I took to cramming the food into my face, shovelling in the dough and grease and sugar and salty vinegar-dressed salad with its tiny round pieces of crisp Lebanese cucumber and crunchy onion strings, as I blocked out the weird energy engulfing that dining room. I was aware that Mum was storming out through the kitchen, that something had been broken there – a plate? a cup? – and that she was now in the laundry. And then, that the door was closed, slammed, that there was more smashing, more yelling. That the door had reopened and now the back door, a sliding glass one,was ripped open so vigorously it came out from its track. Aware that, in the backyard, my grandfather was watching his daughter punch the cement verge that bordered the garden bed, damaging the ring that still bound the fourth finger of her left hand. Aware that skin was peeling away from this hand, and that a sound, an animal sound, was being emitted from between my mother’s lips. And meanwhile my grandmother was sitting opposite me, offering me more pizza, attempting to smile, making the same little silly Deidre grimace.

  Despite my exhaustion – from my week at school, from my anxious guts pondering the whereabouts of my violin, from the sudden carb overload as I crammed in the pizza, more slices, more slices, still more slices; and from the too many emotions flying about this odd fortress we had constructed, emotions that I envisioned as shadowy witches astride brooms – I could not block out the thought that what everybody wanted most of all was to see the remaining part of him that lurked beneath my skin finally extinguished.

  Coming up for air, I said, ‘I think I might go ride over to Dougie’s tonight.’

  ‘Mmm?’ Noonie raised her head. ‘Poor bastard, with a father like that. Is Ned still playing those computer games?’ She laughed.

  ‘I guess.’ I crammed in a piece of crust. At least the chaos in my grandparents’ house had distracted everyone from asking after my day or my violin, and I considered how I might go about getting it back. Dougie would know, I figured.

  I wanted to ask my grandmother if they might take the wedding photo of Mum and Dad down, that maybe it wasn’t helping. But I didn’t. I knew what to expect. It had been over ten years, and this was all still going on.

  Dougie Jackett

  I hopped on my bike and rode round to Doug’s place. We often met last minute for quick bouts of boozing and bitching.

  Dougie Jackett was my best mate in the neighbourhood. I’d gone to school with him before being shipped across town. The guy knew every piece of local gossip, which he gleaned by osmosis working as a lifeguard at our local YMCA.

  Since we were old enough to go out on our own, he and I had spent most weekends riding our bikes round the streets bordered by Sydney Road, Moreland Road, Nicholson Street and Bell, cruising over the cracked bitumen. We’d scrounge money together for grog and nudie mags. Along the Southern Hemisphere’s longest shopping strip, we could get our hands on most things; Sydney Road was a goldmine for a couple of adolescent boys seeking to build an arsenal of illicit tat – novelty pens and lighters, knives and knuckledusters, marijuana pipes. We even bought do-rags the summer we got into the Wu-Tang Clan, but we weren’t game enough to wear them outside so just sat on Doug’s bed with them on our heads instead, listening to rap albums.

  ‘What’s happening, man?’ Doug was grinning when I pulled into the carpark out front the milk bar, where we always met for late-night rendezvous.

  ‘Not much, dude.’

  The routine was simple: milk bar for a nudie, then round the Turk’s for a bottle of bourbon-death, then hit the playpen to rip cones, ogle the nudie and down the spirits. Before I’d gotten hooked up with a fake ID, this little ritual was often more hassle than it was worth; with my fakie, things were all smooth sailing. At my new school I’d paid a boy in the year ahead to alter my learner’s permit. Darren Armstrong had done a masterful job using only nail-polish remover and the needle-like end of a compass.

  I went into the milk bar without Dougie and bought a Barely Legal. Then we rode round to the Turk’s, a bottle-o off Sydney Road close to the train station. When I walked in, the Turk shot his hands into the sky and cried, ‘Ah, my friend! You are back again!’ The old man was already pulling a bottle of Jim Beam off the dusty shelf behind him. He proceeded to wrap it in a brown paper bag, giving it a quick, exaggerated twist at the top – with that flourish, he turned the grim bag into a gift. ‘So much colour, my friend. Is good to see you. Such bright boy, very bright boy.’ He was gesturing at my head, smiling like the recently cured at Lourdes.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said, putting the cash in his palm. To the Turk, my red fro was like Buddha’s belly or something.

  ‘What you do tonight, my friend?’

  ‘Dunno, man. Just gunna get loaded, I reckon.’

  ‘Ah, you drink too much you no be play football en-more.’

  ‘Yeah. True, ey.’

  ‘But you like the bourbon, I know. I know this. Me, too. Love it, mate.’

  ‘Thanks, man,’ I said, making to walk out. ‘See ya next time, yeah?’

  ‘Yes, you know I be here. Ah! So bright! That colour, my god!’

  The back of my head took the compliment as I parted the fly-strips and walked to where Doug was minding the bikes.

  ‘He go on about your hair again?’

  ‘Whaddaya reckon?’

  ‘I reckon he’s bent for ya.’

  ‘Nah, man. I bring him good luck. You know this shit’s good luck.’ I dipped my head for effect, letting the long strands rain down my face.

  ‘Is that why you’re still on your V plates?’

  ‘Fuck off.’

  No families ever used the playground on Barrow Street between our houses. We sat in the tunnel that connected the sandpit to the monkey bars, flipping through pages of naked American girls, an assortment of strange objects crammed into the space between their legs, and passed the bottle back and forth.

  ‘How’s the olds?’ I asked.

  I was no longer welcome in Doug’s home, because whenever he came out with me he ended up pissed. Over the years Mr Jackett’s contempt for me had boiled over. But I didn’t care for Mr Jackett and only asked to scoop up any goss for Noonie, who hated the man with a passion as she did a lot of people.

  Mr Jackett, Ned, had been bilking worker’s compo for years. His false claims were regarding an injury he’d suffered to his right hand, specifically his thumb. If he’d injured himself doing anything, then it was either a wanking accident or from the hours he spent playing video games. Ned’s thumb handled his youngest son’s PlayStation pretty alright, and his hand worked fine bringing VB stubbies to his lips.

  ‘He’s awright,’ Doug said. ‘Up to the usual shit.’ He shrugged.

  I tipped the Beam into my mouth before packing a cone for us to smoke.

  Doug needed to get out of the house often, because of his dad. When Ned wasn’t drinking and playing video games, he’d taken to going round garage sales and swap meets, looking for items he could hock for a premium on eBay. Perhaps this was an attempt to cast off any aspersions that he might be work-shy. ‘The future’s online,’ he told anyone who’d listen, preaching about the limitless financial possibilities of the internet. He called it his ‘antique business’, and over time the Jacketts’ home had become crowded with tat and junk. Almost every room was lined with old vases and wooden pedestals and art and furniture and crocker
y, even a pinball machine, all of it cracked and broken and falling to shit. ‘But that’s what makes it antique, I guess,’ Doug would say whenever I bagged his old man out too hard – he could never bring himself to denounce Ned outright.

  ‘Anyway, what’s been happening with you?’ Doug asked now, wanting to get off the topic of his dad.

  I let Dougie know about Moose and the quad bike and the violin and how much shit I’d be in if I didn’t get it back. I took a hit off the pipe and passed it over to Doug.

  ‘Ya know, you keep getting around with that thing, people are gunna start thinking you’re a poof,’ he said.

  ‘They already do with this hair. And, so what? What if I was?’

  Doug’s face coarsened. I’d never told him about my father. He didn’t respond for a moment. Then he said, ‘What will ya do now?

  ‘Get in touch with Moose, I guess. Dunno his number, do ya?’

  ‘Yeah, sure,’ said Doug, passing his phone to me. Moose’s number was in the contacts; I entered it into my phone and dialled.

  When Moose picked up, he sounded pretty aggro. ‘Who the fuck’s this?’

  ‘Chill out, Moose. It’s Ford. From earlier.’

  ‘Fuck! Ford! What’s up, cunt?’

  ‘Not much. Yeah, listen, I left something on the back of the —’

  ‘Yeah, we got it. I’ll give it back tomorrow night at Ellie’s, awright?’

  ‘Thanks, mate. You’re a legend. Cheers.’ I had no choice but to attend the party, though I still wasn’t convinced it was the best idea. I handed Doug back his phone. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘All good?’

  ‘Not sure. I’ve gotta go to a party tomorrow night. You wouldn’t wanna come, would ya?’

  ‘Whose?’

  I filled Doug in, but he already knew about it and was planning to go. He wasn’t out of the loop like me. ‘Ya know Moose got expelled from Northcote, don’t ya?’ he asked.

  ‘Nah. That sucks.’

  ‘Maybe.’ Dougie shrugged. ‘He’s meant to be some big-time dealer now. That’s what I heard, anyway. Besides, wasn’t like he was gunna become some lawyer or some shit.’

  ‘Guess not.’

  YMCA

  On Saturday mornings, when I wasn’t playing footy or we didn’t have training, Pop and I swam laps at our local pool next to the ground. He woke me up very early, and we walked over through the bluestone lanes littered with dog shit, laughing every time we spotted a turd and hopping over them like they were landmines.

  ‘Your mother’s strong, ya know, Ford.’

  Here we go, I thought. Pop was about to slip, less than seamlessly, into a rendition of the story he always told when Mum’s PR needed a boost. After her freak-out the night before, she’d lost some face.

  ‘Ah-huh,’ I said.

  ‘Ya know, right after your father left, she got called into court.She had to be … Have I told you this before?’

  ‘Um, I dunno. Maybe?’

  ‘Well, she was called up to court to be a character witness in this rubbish case against one of her colleagues, ya know? Can’t recall the details, but I remember taking her in – and this is right in the middle of her divorce, worst time imaginable – and …’ The details of this court case were always unclear. From what I’d come to understand, a colleague, a teacher, had been raked over the coals for (maybe) reprimanding a student physically while on an excursion, and because a witness had reported the incident, the parents (maybe) had tried to sue. The point of the story was to illustrate two things: 1) Pop’s pride: under the scrutiny of a particularly hostile QC, his Deidre had given flawless testimony, making her someone who did not crack; and 2) Mum had done the right, Aussie thing and stood by her mates. ‘She stood by her mates,’ he said. ‘There’s an important lesson here. Even under all that stress, her life falling apart, she still stood by her mates.’

  Pop grew silent after telling this story. Of course, he hadn’t told it for me to hear, and we walked in silence the rest of the way to the pool, passing through the lanes, past corrugated iron and wood and brick. This time, he didn’t seem so convinced.

  For years, in private, my grandparents had often asked me what should be done about my mother. When it was just the three of us, they would occasionally give voice to their concerns and question me as to the full extent of life in Unit Two. My response was always the same: Mum wasn’t doing so well, she needed help. I had no understanding of mental illness, but even as a child I had a gut instinct that something was going on beyond anyone’s control or understanding. My grandparents would nod and acknowledge action had to be taken. Then they would say, ‘But ya know, Ford, she saw someone once, after your father left’, and for whatever reason this would solve the problem momentarily. Time passed, and nothing changed.

  Pop and I stripped down in the YMCA change rooms. He was still tall and straight, not yet beginning to stoop, but his belly was sagging and he was getting these hairy little breasts of flab. All his life he’d kept up a vigorous training regime, but time was doing its nasty work, and I felt a bit sorry for him. Time was a cunt. Plus, he had to live with Mum and Noonie. Life could be a cunt full-stop.

  ‘Ya know,’ he said, rolling up his trousers and shirt and placing them on the wooden slats, ‘this stuff with your father, I’ve tried all me bloody life to understand it.’

  ‘Yeah?’ I asked, unsure, scared as to where this was heading.

  ‘Yeah, ya know, I reckon I’m pretty broad-minded. Not the sharpest tool, mind, never claimed to be, but I swear on my life I just can’t get me head round it.’ He was taking off his socks, and I watched the fabric peel away from his feet, and then the way he balled them together and added them to the pile of rolled-up clothes. Pop never folded. ‘When you’re packing, always roll ya clothes. No creases.’

  I waited in silence, hoping the conversation he was having with himself would end before I needed to wade in.

  He said, ‘I mean, I’m looking around this change room and there’s just nothing to see here. I dunno. They reckon it’s biological and all that, but I just dunno. I mean, when you look at a woman, ya just think phwoar. They’re so beautiful. How can ya go past that? You look at a man, a man’s body’s just not the same.’

  ‘Yeah. Fair enough, I reckon,’ I said, desperate for this not to continue.

  Thankfully, just as I’d slipped into my speedos, Benjamin Birch came out from the showers, a towel wrapped round his waist. ‘Blue!’ he cried. ‘Mate, how are ya?’ Ben marched toward Pop, and they shook hands.

  The Fitzroy Lions, before they’d gotten their guts ripped out and booted up to Brisbane, used to do their laps in the Coburg YMCA on weekends. Pop would find himself chatting with the players who knew him from around the traps, from the Goulburn Valley League and from his time at the Brunswick Football Club in the VFA.

  In the 1950s my grandfather had been a local footy star playing ruck and centre half-forward for the Echuca East Football Club, winning a bunch of premierships. At some point during this time he was invited down to Melbourne by the Collingwood Football Club to try out for their VFL team. But after days of scratch matches and training drills, he didn’t make the cut. When I’d asked him what he’d done in preparation, his response was simple: ‘Oh, not much really. I hung around a couple times after training in Echuca and I’d just run a few extra laps round the oval.’

  ‘That’s it?’ I’d asked.

  ‘I had bricks in me hands,’ he’d said flatly. After a pause, he’d added, ‘And I didn’t drink the night before.’

  Initially, my grandfather had not told anybody in the country of his invitation to try out for the Magpies, and at first I hadn’t been able to understand why. Noonie had told me; she’d said that when people inevitably found out after he’d come back from Melbourne, he was demoted to the reserve team in Echuca. ‘Why?’ I’d wanted to know. ‘Wasn’t he their best player?’

  ‘Nobody likes it when someone gets too big for themselves,’ she’d said.

  Ben Birc
h was retired, but he still came to the pool for laps on Saturdays.

  ‘Ford. How ya been, young fella?’

  I shook his hand. Said, ‘Yeah, awright. Good, thanks.’

  ‘That’s the way. Ya swimming this morning?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How many laps?’

  ‘Forty. I do a k.’

  ‘Good lad. Swim ’em hard.’

  ‘I will. Cheers.’

  This had always been Pop’s advice, too, ever since I’d started learning to swim as a boy. I liked the pool, because if I ‘swam hard’ I’d get Burger Rings after. And I always did. Always swam hard.

  ‘I’ll meet ya out there,’ Pop said, and I left them to it, taking my towel and goggles past the showers and onto the stone deck where the humidity and the smell of chlorine hit me in a glorious wave. I loved that smell, loved the warm vapour on your skin before you dived in.

  But when I hit the water my mind didn’t drift off the way it usually did when I swam my laps. All I could think of was Pop, what he’d said in the change room, why it was that conversations between my family members tended to get so thick and heavy, why Mum had punched the ground and torn open her hand.

  My grandfather had grown up poor. His family hadn’t been able to provide him with a coat for the winters, so he’d gone around with his left hand in the breast pocket of his only shirt and his right in the back pocket of his trousers, pacing the schoolyard in the mornings to keep from freezing while he waited for the doors to open. Everything I knew about Pop was parcelled up in neat stories like that. To me, that’s what his life was – a story – and I’d begun to think of my own in a similar way.

  I turned my arms over, driving myself through the water, pushing my lungs and trying not to raise my head for half lengths, while my mind kept recounting Pop’s story.

  *

  In 1947, when he turned sixteen, Pop left school to work seasonal labouring jobs, and in 1954 he married Noonie. As he’d done since leaving school, in the first years of their marriage my grandfather worked on a shearing station through the winters and packed wheat during the high heat of the summers, gruelling work that tired him quickly of the notion he would spend a lifetime repeating these tasks. Curious and intelligent, he took to reading. Under lamplight in the shearing sheds for months at a stretch, away from his home and new wife, and in the company of other hard-working men, he began to educate himself. In 1956, he hitched a ride down to Melbourne where he sat an entrance exam to attend teachers’ college in the city. He passed.