The Bookshop on Jacaranda Street

by Marlish Glorie

  ‘Hated the food,’ Gabriel replied. It was another subterfuge. ‘Where’s Mum?’ He looked around for his mother, as if she might be playing peek-a-boo, and could just jump out from behind any one of the piles of junk, holding a plate of steaming home-cooked food.

  Gabriel had managed to locate the sofa beneath a huge pile of old clothing. He dumped the clothing on the floor, and plonked himself on it. ‘Hey old man. I asked you a question. Where’s Mum?’

  Arnold looked at the garden gnomes again, hoping for some moral support. ‘She’s gone. She’ll be back,’ he said with little conviction.

  Gabriel sat up. ‘What do you mean, she’s gone?’

  Arnold gathered the few morsels of strength he had left. ‘Gone.’

  ‘Gone? Gone where? What’s happened to Mum?’

  ‘She left … me.’

  ‘She’s left you!’ Gabriel was taken aback. ‘She’s actually done it?’

  ‘Yeah. She left me a note. She’s living with those wretched Germans next door.’

  ‘Well I’ll be … and Astrid and Hendel are not wretched Germans. You just don’t like them, that’s all. When did Mum leave?’ Or make her escape, thought Gabriel.

  ‘This morning.’

  ‘You mean, this very morning, as in today’s morning? Geez.’

  Arnold nodded. ‘All because I brought home one little old photograph album. She went berserk. Gave me an ultimatum. Said if I didn’t get rid of my ventures and collections she was leaving!’

  Gabriel sat there, amazed that his father could be so incredibly stupid. How could he have chosen the junk over his wife of twenty-nine years? He gazed forlornly around the crammed room. It was a long time since anyone had eaten a meal in here. The one thing he’d missed while he was in the army. Swapped for crap. He wanted his mum back home. But he would have to bring her back to something better. Much better.

  Arnold, agitated, sidled into the hall. Gabriel followed him, watching as his father began fiddling in a box of old spectacles.

  ‘How many pairs of specs you got there?’

  ‘Lots,’ answered Arnold. He turned slightly, hiding his face from his son as he recalled Helen’s angry hiss. ‘Are we to be the beneficiary of every pair of spectacles from every person who ever dies?’

  Gabriel flicked up a pair, swinging it by one arm, which caused Arnold to flinch. He put them on. The opaque lenses framed by thick black plastic made Gabriel look like a cross between Buddy Holly and Henry Kissinger.

  ‘Why don’t you sell them?’ said Gabriel as he took off the glasses and handed them to his father.

  ‘Because they don’t bother me.’

  ‘Bit of a waste though, don’t you reckon Dad?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Give them away.’

  ‘Leave it alone son.’

  ‘Would it be that painful?’

  Yes it would be painful, thought Arnold, but he had not the courage to confess such a silly, selfish thing to his son.

  ‘No one would want these,’ he argued, waving another pair of ancient spectacles, which Gabriel snatched from him and waved back at his father.

  ‘Yes they would. Asian countries, Africa, all sorts of third-world countries.’

  The line of conversation was making Arnold anxious. ‘How about I cook you something? You love a fry up.’

  ‘How about we talk about your ventures and collections instead?’

  Arnold viewed Gabriel with suspicion. None of the family called his stuff ventures and collections. He cleared his throat. ‘One day, all this will be yours. And Vivian’s. It’s your inheritance. I’ve been thinking about your future.’

  Gabriel gazed around at his future and let out a long howl. Heir to this crap? ‘You’re making this shit up as you go along,’ he groaned.

  Shaking his head, he bent down and picked up a paperweight from a line of them on the floor. Wiping the dust off the glassy weight on his shirtfront, he passed it hand-to-hand. He surveyed the camping equipment and mountain climbing gear which looked like it’d last been used back in Sir Edmund Hillary’s time. More than likely, he thought, Hillary had climbed Mount Everest with some of it. Maybe there was even a collection of stuffed Sherpas somewhere in the house.

  He sank his body into a mound of old clothes, burrowing his head into the rough, odd-smelling clothing. Standing up, he dragged an old chequered shirt away from the pile and held it up to his father. ‘Reason?’ he asked, not expecting a sensible reply.

  Arnold felt like an innocent bystander being court martialled. ‘It’s a good shirt.’

  Gabriel threw the shirt back onto the mound of musty garments.

  Feeling let off, Arnold quickly made a renewed offer on his earlier suggestion. ‘Let’s see what I can cook you up.’

  He made his way to the kitchen, Gabriel following as though Arnold was some irresistible itch he had to scratch. In fact, he realised, he had left the army to come home and scratch — and scratch — until his father bled.

  History told him that getting his dad to part with his junk was impossible. But being in the army had taught him new tricks.

  ‘Only Mum can make a proper fry up.’

  ‘I can do a fry up,’ his father protested as he began fossicking through the fridge. Finding some leftover spuds he quickly hacked them up, lit the gas and threw the cold chunks into a fry pan, half full of congealed oil. The oil melted quickly and began spitting searing missiles in all directions. Arnold ducked.

  Gabriel was looking with revulsion at the towering cliff of tambourines. Of all things, tambourines! He’d never heard his father play one. Then again, his father never played tennis or golf either. And he never went hang-gliding or abseiling. Which, he supposed meant that the tambourines had as much right to be here as everything else. But how to deport it once and for all? The motivation had to be far greater than mere money.

  He looked at his father. Arnold had the physique of a giant wine barrel, with massive arms sprouting thick coarse hair and a wiry beard swelling from his face like a bush. Arnold appeared prehistoric. Who’d suspect such a creature of being so difficult?

  ‘Dad, you know what you got here?’

  ‘No. But you’re gonna tell me,’ Arnold complained while examining the spatter burns on his forearms.

  ‘The world’s biggest illegal tip.’

  Arnold tried to divert him. ‘Meet any girls in the army?’

  ‘Oh yeah, tons,’ scoffed Gabriel. ‘The army’s full of girls. Another reason I left. Arr … there’s some, but they might as well be blokes.’

  Arnold set a plate piled with fried potatoes in front of his son and loaded another for himself. They began to eat greedily, burning their mouths.

  Arnold looked with admiration at the young man before him. Chatty and open, fast and witty, the larrikin — this was his son. Qualities he could never possess but which he admired in others and especially in Gabriel. Arnold realised he had missed him. Missed the verbal jabs, the telling-offs. And he had missed the bear hugs, the rough play, the mimicking which stung and made Arnold smile at the same time.

  ‘Why don’t you hang about here until you find your feet?’

  Gabriel looked up from his plate and saw a sad, disorientated man whose wife had just left him. ‘Yeah, sure. Never did like Astrid’s cooking that much.’

  *

  Long after Gabriel had gone off to bed, Arnold was still unable to even contemplate sleep. He scuffled around the house in a fog of misery.

  He fossicked in his soap collection. Holding a musty bar up to his nose he sneezed violently, having inhaled more dust than perfume. But it also triggered a memory of long ago, when Helen and he used to hug one another. He had loved her soft yet reassuring embrace. He tried to conjure up the smell of her. Was it the soap she used, wondered Arnold, or her hair shampoo. She didn’t wear perfume. He realised her smell was a mix drawn from everyday life.

  He hadn’t been able to give her much of a life, yet her smell had always been sweet.

  He
began to fossick again, shifting the bars of soap around until he became aware of something moving behind him. He froze. Gabriel, who had learned the art of guerrilla warfare more from old war movies than from training or actual combat, ambushed him. ‘Halt or I shoot.’

  Arnold slowly turned around to see his son stripped down to his underwear, the scent of sleep about him, his short hair mussed up. Arnold looked at him in bewilderment. Did he really think his father was the enemy?

  ‘Shoot me? Why? And with what?’

  ‘Possession of illegal quantities of soap. Relax, I’m unarmed.’

  ‘Thank God. Thought I was a goner. Why aren’t you sleeping?’

  ‘Someone woke me up. Geez, it’s four in the morning.’ Gabriel pointed at the soap. ‘Why don’t you get rid of it?’

  ‘You never know.’

  ‘You never know?’ Gabriel yawned. ‘What is it that you’ll never know about this ton of soap that’s been sitting here for shit knows how long?’

  Everything, Arnold wanted to tell his son. Instead, he shrank back into his shell. ‘Cup of tea?’

  ‘I’m being serious here,’ said Gabriel.

  ‘Me too. Let it alone son.’

  ‘Dump it.’

  ‘This is part of your inheritance.’

  ‘Inheritance! Stuff that!’ Gabriel lunged forward grabbing a bar of soap and holding it in front of his father. ‘This soap is well and truly cured. Sell it. There are lots of dirty people out there.’

  ‘That’s why I started making it,’ explained Arnold. And stopped making it when he realised he had no great affinity for the stuff.

  ‘You could use a little of this yourself.’

  Arnold flinched at the insult. He wondered if the army had taught his son how to torture people, especially fathers. ‘Had a shower this afternoon. Like I do every afternoon, after work,’ he answered earnestly.

  ‘Okay. Sorry. But what is it with you and this soap?’

  ‘I want to keep it.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘A rainy day.’

  ‘Well, I’ve got news for you. The rainy day has well and truly arrived. Sell the goddamn soap.’

  ‘It’s not good enough to sell.’

  ‘Sell it cheap then.’

  ‘I’m … not selling inferior goods.’

  Gabriel studied his father’s face for clues to his obstinacy. He could find none; all he saw was that his father had aged considerably. Arnold’s face was a craggy plot with uneven furrows ploughed into his forehead.

  Gabriel suddenly wanted the younger version of his father back. He felt distressed; he’d been away too long, missed his father and his mother. He fought back tears, trying hard to think of anything but the family he’d missed in ways he couldn’t fathom. Yet oddly, he knew, he had been trying to punish them at the same time. It hadn’t worked, because if anyone felt punished, he did.

  ‘Let’s have a beer together, son. Tell me about the army,’ Arnold coaxed.

  Gabriel almost caved in, and only just managed to keep his sympathies at bay. ‘Sorry Dad, I’m pretty knackered. I’m going back to bed. Reckon you could keep the noise down?’

  He knew verbal negotiations weren’t going to work. In a war there are many ways of outwitting the enemy; he would have to think it out, plan, attack, and then regroup.

  Gabriel the soldier made his way back to his bedroom, tugging at the thin leather strip worn around his neck, on which hung his bedroom key. Like Vivian, he had a key to his bedroom. Each of them had managed, through great diligence and effort, to lock out their father’s junk.

  His room was an oasis of emptiness.

  *

  From his bed he rang Vivian on his mobile. It rang through to voice mail. Gabriel checked his watch, it was four twenty-five a.m.

  ‘Vivian, it’s me, Gabriel … Um … Mum’s left Dad. She’s gone to live with Astrid. She left him yesterday morning. Guess I don’t need to tell you why. I just got home to find her gone. It’s weird not having her here. Dad can be such a jerk. I need you to help me sort out this fucking mess. Tell the boss you’ve got a family crisis. By the way, I’ve quit the army. See you soon. Take it easy mate.’

  8

  Helen had been living with Astrid and Hendel less than forty-eight hours when Vivian turned up on the doorstep, dazed and apologetic, his dirty backpack by his feet. It was late evening, and he’d spent the day in the cab of a semi-trailer, having hitchhiked some nine hundred kilometres in eight hours straight. He’d come to stay. Home was wherever his mother was.

  Gabriel’s message had been timely. Vivian had been thinking of chucking in his mining job and the call for help was all he needed to get on the road. Known within the family as the ‘silent number’, his explanation for leaving his mining job was hardly expansive. ‘Had enough of being underground,’ he said when Helen pressed him.

  Ignoring his fatigue, Astrid rushed him to the bathroom where he was given strict instructions to undress, shower and get into some of Hendel’s clean clothes; his own were filthy. Vivian did as he was told and emerged from the bathroom in a pair of Hendel’s pyjamas, the pants he held up with one hand as they threatened to fall. Vivian was thin; he’d lost weight. Too tired to eat, he went to sleep in the spare bed in Hendel’s bedroom and slept for twelve hours solid.

  When he woke his clothes were sitting neatly on a chair, washed, dried, ironed and folded by his mother. Still half asleep he dressed, shaved, brushed his teeth and then went and draped his scrawny body over a kitchen chair.

  Slowly and silently he ate his way through a breakfast of fried eggs, bacon, tomatoes and toast that Astrid had made. He chewed each mouthful like he was retraining himself to eat, while his mother and Astrid watched and waited, ready to pick up any sound, any word Vivian might utter. They were expecting a report on the last ten months of his life. None came. The only crumb he gave them once he’d finished eating was, ‘Got a helluva sore tooth.’

  ‘I’ll give our dentist a call,’ said Helen.

  ‘Mum, he’s useless.’

  ‘Well, can’t say I know of any others,’ said Helen, feeling snubbed.

  ‘I know an excellent dentist you can go to,’ said Astrid. As if to prove her point, she pulled back her lips to reveal a fine set of teeth.

  ‘Sure, I’ll go see him,’ Vivian replied weakly.

  ‘Her surgery is called the Tooth Fairy,’ Astrid uttered sternly as she whipped away the dirty plate.

  Helen examined her son for evidence of being a miner. Apart from his hands, which looked raw, she saw no real imprint. No roughness, no bulging muscles, no iron ore coating. There was nothing of the hearty miner. All she saw was a thin pasty body afraid of its own shadow. She wanted desperately to ask questions.

  Sitting there in Astrid’s warm kitchen, Vivian felt his mother’s interrogative stares and Astrid’s non-stop chatter. It all went into a blur; he was back underground. Quickly he turned and leaned over to vomit up the breakfast he’d eaten, frightening his mother and Astrid, who quickly shepherded him, despite his protestations, to the lounge room, and coaxed him to lie down on the sofa. He closed his eyes.

  Astrid went to get a bucket, damp cloths and some blankets. Helen watched over her son wiping his mouth and chin with tissues. He opened his eyes and looked steadily at her. A long silence followed, then he asked her, ‘You going back to live with Dad?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Have you been home? Did he tell you I’d left him?’

  Not wanting to let on that Gabriel had summoned him, he thought quickly. ‘You’re living here aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So why did you leave him?’

  Helen opened her mouth but another voice filled the room. Astrid was standing at the doorway.

  ‘You need ask?’ She sounded astonished. ‘Your poor mother. Okay for you boys. Off you go, and leave her all alone with your stubborn father and all his junk.’

  ‘Vivian,’ said Helen, looking at her son directly, ‘you know that. I’m baf
fled as to why you’d ask.’

  Vivian knew it was dumb question; he was putting off the inevitable. A brief silence lingered.

  Astrid, who hated silence more than going to church, turned back into the kitchen and collected the dishes, bashing them together, before taking them to the sink for a further bashing.

  Vivian broke the quiet. ‘Sorry. I’m the one who should be doing some explaining. I screwed up big time. Mining towns are shit holes.’ He shook his head before continuing on. ‘I’m broke. Did a lot of gambling, drank too much.’ He paused to look at his mother. ‘Want to hear the rest?’

  Helen nodded.

  ‘I blew most of my money on hookers.’ Vivian gave a sigh; the worst of his story was over. ‘I wasn’t just paying for sex, I paid for the company. Someone to talk to. Those hookers saved me,’ he explained as his eyes reddened, tears about to spill. He managed to blink them back. ‘I was getting wrecked. It was way past time to come home.’

  Helen looked at his gaunt face. She wanted to know more, but thought better of asking further questions. He was a mess. She felt defeated, and weary of the constant mess his life tended to drift toward. When was he going to get a handle on his feelings?

  She knew it was best not to criticise him for his failures. If she did, he’d clam up, afraid of censure, and stew on his problems alone.

  ‘Well, you’re here now, and safe,’ she replied. ‘Best we concentrate on getting some fat onto you.’

  ‘Couple days of Astrid’s food should do the trick,’ said Vivian. ‘Think I’d better go see a dentist soon though, and get myself a job.’

  ‘I can make the dentist appointment for you. Bit early to go job hunting, isn’t it?’

  ‘I’m just going for any bum job, Mum. Think I’ll leave the corporate world alone for a while.’

  Helen smiled; at least he hadn’t lost his wit.

  *

  Hendel was sitting in his bedroom, Bible in hand. With the arrival of Helen, and then Vivian who had been consigned to his bedroom, he found it difficult to read. He was staring at Vivian’s backpack at the end of the spare bed. Oh, to be young and free, thought Hendel. Then his thoughts turned to Leif. He remembered Leif clearly. Helen would bring him to the church when he was too sick to go to school, which was often.