by Cath Crowley
The night wheels past us, lights and roads and trees. ‘You like that painting?’ I ask. ‘You know that painting?’
‘Don’t sound so surprised.’
‘I’m not, I just thought . . .’
‘That art’s a secret club only you and Shadow get to be in?’ Ed finishes my sentence.
‘No.’ Maybe. I don’t know. I am surprised. If he really liked art so much, how come he didn’t say something on our date? How come he quit school in the middle of our Jeffrey Smart assignment and left me to finish the work by myself? ‘Did you go to the exhibition?’ I ask.
‘Bert and me went to see that painting. Bert liked how it looks as if the woman in the painting is in love with a bad bird. “In love with the bad times,” he said.’
‘Who’s Bert?’
‘My old boss at the paint store. He died two months ago. Heart attack in aisle three.’
‘That’s awful.’
‘Better than a heart attack in aisle four, which is where they keep the floral wallpaper. Bert hated that aisle but it was the money-spinner. He died looking at the deep reds.’
‘I guess if you have to go it’s best to see something beautiful on the way out.’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Do you miss him?’
‘He was a good guy. Paid me more than he could afford but I didn’t know that till after the funeral. He taught me stuff. And he drew the coolest things. Stop for a second.’
‘If I stop pedalling you’ll have to run again.’
‘I know, stop for a second.’
I do and he gets off and pulls a book out of his pocket. The pages are bent and it’s dirty around the edges. We lean on someone’s fence and he moves in close. ‘Look.’ He flicks the pages and a little guy does a couple of kicks in the air.
‘That is the coolest thing.’
Ed flicks through all these animations. Two guys drinking beer. A dog rolling over and playing dead. A guy at a counter serving a woman. A man on his knees proposing. ‘That’s Bert asking Valerie to marry him,’ Ed says, and I like the little smile he gets when he says it. I like the way he holds the book. Like all those drawings add up to something more than money.
The last one is of a guy in a car waving and driving away. Ed hesitates over it. ‘He drew this one the day he died. That’s me. With my driver’s licence.’
‘How do you know it’s you?’
Ed holds the tiny picture next to his face. There is quite a likeness. Something about the eyebrows. ‘Plus,’ Ed says, ‘Bert was quizzing me so I’d pass my driving test.’ He flicks the pages and a guy smiles and waves a licence out of a car window. ‘I failed once but Bert was already making plans for me to take the test again so I could drive the delivery van.’
‘Everyone fails at least once.’
‘That’s what I hear,’ he says, and we look through the book again. He stops at the one of Bert drinking beer in the sun and flicks the pages to make him raise his glass a few times. ‘What do you think is on the other side?’ he asks.
‘I’m not sure. Jazz says we come back and get a second chance at things.’
Ed looks around him. ‘Hope I don’t come back to this place.’
‘You don’t like living here?’
‘You do?’ he asks.
‘I like how the place looks at night. I like the bridge, all those car lights moving in the dark. Mum and Dad and I used to drive over it because Dad likes the view.’
‘That’s a little strange,’ Ed says.
I nod. And that’s not the weirdest thing about us. We haven’t driven over the bridge together for a while. Dad and I still go sometimes. He took me over to get an ice-cream in South Melbourne after I found him nailing a number on the shed. ‘132a?’ I said. ‘We’re all 132.’ I pointed at the house.
‘Yeah, but the pizza delivery guy keeps getting confused. Don’t frown like that, Luce,’ he said, and we went for a drive over the bridge, and the world that was dirty during the day spread speckled and polished beneath us.
‘When are you moving back in?’ I asked.
‘Soon,’ he said.
‘Jazz says you’re getting a divorce.’
‘Well, Jazz is wrong. I’d tell Jazz if we were getting a divorce. Would I be living on the property and spending time with your mother every day if we were getting a divorce?’
‘No,’ I said as we drove past billboard signs that were disappearing too quickly to read.
I had Dad drop me at Al’s that night and I started the fourth ship in my memory fleet. I built it out of toothpicks and matches. I crushed glass into black putty to make it look like lights in the night. I bought a toy car and made three tiny people to put inside. That bottle took me the longest time. Al couldn’t believe it when I’d finished. ‘It’s as if you’ve shrunk the world and glassed it in.’
Ed closes the book and we watch the street. ‘Do you ever hear from your dad?’ I ask.
‘Uh-uh. Mum said they had the biggest fight before he left. She was sixteen and telling him about me and he left a dad-shaped hole in the wall.’
I laugh and then stop. ‘That’s not really funny.’
‘Doesn’t seem to bother Mum. She says she expected it.’
‘It’d bother me if I loved a guy enough to sleep with him and then he left when I was pregnant.’
‘You don’t have to love someone to have sex with them.’
‘I know that,’ I say, and my face goes nuclear like the stars. ‘It’d be nice, though. If it happened that way. If people stayed together.’
‘Go visit Leo’s parents. Nothing nice about them staying together.’
‘Daisy said he lived with his gran.’
‘You guys did a lot of talking about us while you were in the toilet.’
‘Like you didn’t talk about us when you were in the toilet.’
‘We talked about the dangers of hanging out with you,’ he says, and it actually has a ring of truth about it.
‘That’s pretty much what we talked about,’ I say, which has a ring of truth about it, too. ‘Daisy said Leo had maybe been in trouble with the police once.’
‘No charges were laid. Leo’s a good guy.’
‘But his parents aren’t good?’
‘They drank too much, I think. He hasn’t lived with them in years.’ End of story, Ed means, and that’s fair enough. I might think my parents are weird but I get to see Dad every day. I want to see him every day. Sure, I had to read him the health regulations so he stopped using the lawn as his early morning bathroom, but it was a fairly minor fault.
Ed’s quiet for a while and then his laugh breezes over me.
‘What?’
‘Nothing. I was just thinking. You hit me because you wanted Mr Darcy and I wasn’t him.’
‘You know who Mr Darcy is?’
‘I exist therefore I know who Mr Darcy is. Beth studied the book in Lit this year. She made me watch the film with her over and over. She knew it back to front, that and all her other texts.’
‘She sounds smart.’ I try to make that comment seem casual but weirdly, anything I say about Beth comes out of my mouth dressed in a full-length ball gown.
Ed looks across at me and I can tell he’s heard the weirdness in my voice, but he’s not sure why it’s there either. ‘She is smart.’ He flicks through the book again, speeding up people and slowing them down. ‘Smarter than me, that’s for sure.’
I watch his flicking hands. ‘You’re smart.’
He gives me a little eyebrow action again. ‘How would you know that?’
I think about it. I know he is, I’m just not exactly sure how I know.
‘See,’ he says before I can answer. ‘You don’t know.’
‘You’re funny, which you can’t be if you’re not smart. Dad says it’s harder to make someone laugh than it is to make them cry.’
‘Because you can always punch someone to make them cry.’
‘Exactly.’
‘So would I have seen your dad’
s comedy act?’ he asks.
‘Nope. I mean, not unless you hang out at late-night clubs where they have open-mike nights.’ I look at Ed with his old jeans and steel-capped boots and think about him skipping class with the sheddies. ‘You probably do hang out at late-night clubs.’
‘I told you – I go to bed early. I have to open the shop at seven-thirty in time for the trade guys and to get deliveries. Bert didn’t get there till eight-thirty so I always had to be on time.’ Ed’s hands tap on the book. ‘I was never late,’ he says, and I get the feeling he’s not talking to me so I don’t interrupt. We lean on the fence and watch the street. ‘What’s the time?’ Ed asks.
‘Twelve-thirty.’ The night’s thinning out like he described before. There are a few people waiting for the last tram, some taxis moving past. Ed and me. ‘Don’t Beth’s parents care that you’re meeting her so late? Or early, I guess.’
‘I don’t knock on the front door,’ he says. ‘We have this place, down the back of her garden. There’s a huge tree that blocks the view from the house. I get in over the back fence and meet her behind it.’
‘Romantic.’
‘Till her dad catches me. I got my escape route all worked out, though, so no one’s getting hurt.’
‘Except Beth,’ I say. ‘Sure you get over the back fence, but you leave her standing there.’
‘Beth can take care of herself.’
Thinking about him jumping the back fence makes me think about him leaving, and that makes me wonder how long we can stand here till we run out of things to say and it gets awkward. I shuffle around so he knows I’m okay with him going if that’s what he feels like doing.
‘You flick that band on your wrist a lot,’ he says. ‘Some guy give it to you?’
‘Yep. Some guy.’ I flick it. ‘It’s my dad’s lucky band. Lucky things happen to anyone wearing this band.’
‘So how’s his luck since he gave it to you?’
I think of him sitting on the deckchair outside the shed. ‘His luck’s okay. You know, you can leave. If you want.’
‘That’s twice you’ve told me that,’ he says. ‘What if I don’t want to go?’
The heat rising from the takeaway place nearby makes the air look like satin, like I could touch it if I wanted, and I concentrate on that instead of looking at Ed. ‘Where do you think Shadow is right now?’ I ask, because I can’t make my mouth say that it’s okay if Ed doesn’t want to leave.
‘Waiting for you to come and do it with him,’ Ed says, and I don’t have to look to know that he’s grinning again.
‘It’s not like I’m searching for the tooth fairy or something.’ I get on the bike. ‘Shadow exists. And I don’t know that he’ll like me but I just want to meet one guy, one guy, who thinks art is cool. Am I asking too much to meet someone who can talk and who paints and who has a brain?’
He gives me his standard eyebrow action.
‘What?’
‘He’ll only be all those things until you meet him. Then he’ll be like every other guy. And for your information, a lot of guys have brains.’
‘Get ready, mister. I have a feeling you’re going to need a run-up.’
‘Uh-uh. I’m not running after you anymore.’ He balances on the back of my bike and pushes off with one foot to give us momentum. ‘Pedal now. Now. We’ve been doing it all wrong,’ he says.
We take off along the side streets and Ed puts his hands on my shoulders and I get a zing and a tingle and the small circle of bike light pearls the road ahead. I think of those Bill Henson photographs Mrs J showed us, of teenagers in the night. When I looked at them I felt like someone got it, like someone saw what it was like to be bare skin shining in darkness.
‘By the way,’ Ed says as we ride, ‘I think art is cool.’
Ed
I keep my hands on Lucy’s shoulders even though her skin’s burning me all the way up my arms. I don’t mind the feeling. The road rolls by and my brain rolls with it. Thoughts spill from my head to my hands. They’ll tap till I paint the thoughts right out of them.
‘I think art is cool.’ That’s thought number one.
Thought number two is about my plan to jump the fence and leave Beth if we ever got caught in her backyard. It made me feel better knowing I wouldn’t have to explain myself to her dad. I never thought of what it’d be like for her, staying behind.
Thought number three is about Lucy and her flicking band and shuffling feet. She’s always moving like she’s got somewhere to be. I want her to stand where she is for a while. Stand still and talk to me about the strange things she’s got going on in her head.
Thought number four is about her saying she’d do it with Shadow. It goes without saying that I wouldn’t mind doing it with her, but that’s not likely since as soon as she knows I’m Shadow that offer won’t be on the table anymore. What we have here is a catch 22. I can’t do it with her till I treat her right and tell the truth. And if I tell the truth and treat her right then she won’t do it with me.
‘You got to treat a woman well,’ Bert said one day when we were unloading paint.
‘I treat Beth okay,’ I told him.
He looked at me, those shaggy eyebrows moving round his face, and said, ‘You got to be honest. Valerie says all she wants from me is some goodness and the truth.’
‘I can’t tell Beth about me being Shadow,’ I said. ‘She’d get uptight about me doing something she thinks is dangerous.’
‘That’s not why you won’t tell her. You won’t tell her because what’s on that wall is what’s going on in there.’ He tapped my head.
‘Take a left,’ I tell Lucy. ‘That piece is here.’
It’s the one I painted after Beth gave me back my stuff. The ghost in a jar. Lucy does a quick search for painting shadows before she looks at the wall. I stand behind her, watching her watching my work. I feel like I’m shedding skin, feel like if she turns she’ll see a skeleton man behind her and then she’ll know.
But she doesn’t. She looks at me and then back at the wall. ‘You ever feel like that?’ she asks, and I don’t say anything because anything I tell her will give me away. ‘Like you’re stuck somewhere and the lid’s on tight?’
The lid’s on tight, the lid’s always on tight, but there’s nothing that can open that jar but smashing. That’s how I felt sometimes, in the shop after I left Beth. All I wanted to do was paint. But then Bert died and I was out of the store and into a worse place because I didn’t have any money coming in. ‘He’s got airholes,’ I say, pointing at the top of the jar.
‘That’s the worst bit.’ She wheels the bike around so the light hits me. ‘His paintings are never hopeful, are they?’
‘Maybe he painted that on a bad day.’ I don’t know if I ever feel hopeful when I work. I feel a high kick in and then sort of a floating ocean inside and then relief. Maybe that’s hope.
I look across at the line of the city. The nights are mean in this place, full of smog that eats the stars. ‘Who does feel hope round here?’
‘I do,’ she says. ‘Al offered me a job as his assistant. I’m going to uni next year.’
‘Maybe Shadow’s not going to uni. Maybe he doesn’t even have a job.’
‘But he’s good,’ she says. ‘Really good. And he makes stuff better, just by painting. I was sitting at a bus stop one time, getting annoyed that I was running late and then I noticed this small piece by him across the road. This bug looked at me with eyes that said, Can you believe this? I’ve been waiting here for half an hour. The picture didn’t have any words. It didn’t need any. The eyes were enough.’
‘How’d you know it was his?’ I ask her. ‘If there weren’t any words?’
‘I know,’ she says, and because of the way those words feel I keep my eyes on her hands.
‘This blue’s from his sky,’ she says, turning them over so I can see. ‘I brushed against a piece of his earlier. A guy who paints like this is doing something. He’s not sitting around.’
&n
bsp; Listening to her I feel like I did when Bert talked about where I’d be ten years from now. ‘Famous artist,’ he said, and I felt like I needed to run but my skin wouldn’t let me. I had this urge to throw cans at the windows so I could hear a noise that sounded like escape.
‘We should go,’ I tell her. ‘It’s not safe to stay in the one place at night.’
She doesn’t move. ‘What does he look like? In the glimpses you’ve had of him?’
‘Guys don’t really check out what other guys look like. I guess he’s tall. Dark hair. Muscles. Very big muscles.’
‘But you’ve never checked him out,’ she says.
‘It’s hard to miss this guy’s muscles.’
She still won’t drop it. ‘But what does he look like?’
I shake my head. ‘I don’t know.’ And she stares at me and I search around for a word to get her off the subject, grab the first one that comes into my head. ‘Lost,’ I say, without knowing that I’m going to say it. ‘I guess. I don’t know.’
That’s enough for her, for now, and she gets on the bike. I push off but I’m having real second thoughts about going further into the park. Leo and me can be out in the dark because he’s a giant and used to fighting. I know some of the other crews and they’re cool, but not everyone out at night is friendly.
Lucy won’t listen to me though and we go further into the park, on paths I’d rather not go with her. Twisted ones that lead to the centre and make me think of paths curving into the sky and stopping. It’s hard to see where we’re headed from where I’m standing. For all I know we could be on a path that ends and we fall into who knows what. Leo and me have fallen down a few hills around here before.
‘Maybe we should go back. Some of the path isn’t fenced. There’s a pretty big drop round here somewhere,’ I tell her. I want to go to Barry’s and have something to eat. Go somewhere with lights and other people. Somewhere far away from the things I paint.
‘We’ll feel gravel if we go off the path, won’t we?’ she asks.
‘I guess.’
‘Then stop worrying.’
‘Easier said than done,’ I tell her.
