Trick of the Light

by Laura Elvery

  I have my jumper and, underneath that, the grey shirts we all wear. I could take the baby bird to dinner with me, and eat with one hand and warm the bird secretly with the other. None of the other boys has ever brought a bird to dinner.

  ‘We can’t just leave it here alone,’ I say.

  ‘But it’s nature,’ Neil says, sniffling. ‘If it’s supposed to die, that’s what’s meant to happen.’

  Neil likes to pretend he grew up on a big farm with horses and dogs, and sheep for shearing anytime you wanted. I tell him that he doesn’t know anything.

  The bird cries and cries. I lean down. It flops sideways and feels like a wet balloon against my skin. I should have washed my hands, but it’s too late. I untuck my shirt and fold it up to make a pouch, hoping the buttons won’t hurt it.

  ‘Martin, don’t.’

  ‘There, there,’ I whisper. ‘I’ll give you some of my dinner.’

  At the table, I lower my head and pray while Mr Jarrett tells us to nourish our bodies and be grateful. I slip a piece of beef into my mouth, chew it, and pretend to cough. I still haven’t washed my hands. The meat is soft in my fingers as I worm it beneath my jumper, above the waistband of my trousers, and into the pouch. I find the beak, but the bird is still, and my fingers can’t wake it. I leave the meat there just in case.

  On the wall near me are photographs of the Queen on her visit to Australia. In one, she smiles at a girl in the crowd handing her flowers. Beside the frame, a curtain flutters at the window and, outside, a bird lands and fidgets on a tree branch.

  Here is the mother, back to look for her baby that we took.

  I look at the mean and hungry faces of the other boys: they must’ve stolen birds before too. All the mother birds out in the garden must hate living here with us boys with our loud voices and heavy boots. And every time they have a baby to feed and love, one of us runs away with it.

  *

  I leave the orphanage before Neil does and I move to Sydney. One afternoon I’m sitting alone in the Botanic Gardens when a woman asks me for the time. Helen works at a big parking garage nearby, taking coins as people exit. She hates it, so she goes for long breaks out in the sun.

  ‘No one ever wants to talk to me in there,’ Helen says. ‘Everyone’s in a rush.’

  I thought Sydney would be a good place to know nobody, but Helen takes hold of me and talks enough for the both of us. In her voice – in her answers barked at ticket collectors and vows laughed at the altar of St Peter’s and sobs heaved when she gives birth to Danielle two days before my twenty-ninth birthday – there are pockets of relief.

  We buy the old house in Parramatta, certain that we’ll live there for the rest of our lives, taking the train to work, coming home for dinner, having a kid and a dog and a packed-up car in the driveway once a year for a trip along the coast. Except I have no family to visit up north in Queensland, no friends who are presentable enough for introductions – but Helen knew that before we got married.

  I keep the letter locked in a drawer in the study. Every few months, while Helen sleeps, I set my glass on the desk and take out the single sheet of paper. Its letterhead of names sounds like top-order batsmen: Benson Dawson Cleave.

  I have a case, they write. They will fight it and seek damages.

  They want to hear from me. There are others.

  *

  Danielle cuts her first tooth, learns to wave and clap and crawl and walk, and Helen and I don’t talk about much of anything except what the baby is doing, or what she needs, or what sort of mood she’s in. Dani chatters a little, and babbles constantly. She points at objects with the confidence of a magician. One day she finds a feather on the kitchen floor and lifts it to her mouth. She whispers a little message to it. She strokes it across her lips. My heart waxes with love.

  She says, ‘Bah.’

  ‘Not in your mouth, sweetheart.’ I run the feather along the soles of her feet. I say, ‘Tickle, tickle. Have you ever seen a feather before?’ Her fat feet writhe, nuzzling the floor. Dani flaps her arms at me. My head feels heavy and tight.

  Helen is convinced television is bad for children, so when she’s at work, I take Dani to the park, or over to see the ships in the harbour. Once, in the lounge room, with Dani on my lap watching Play School, I look up to see Helen framed by the door, holding something.

  ‘It’s just Play School,’ I say.

  ‘Turn it off,’ she says. ‘I’ll take her.’

  In Helen’s hand is a flutter of oddly cut paper.

  ‘What’s that?’ I say.

  She picks up our daughter, who squeals and fights the end of her fun. Helen leans in to my forehead. A rare kiss. She passes me a newspaper clipping. The crease runs down the centre of a black and white photograph of boys seated at long tables, their heads bowed, their hands in prayer.

  ‘You should talk about it,’ she says.

  I open my mouth.

  ‘To someone.’

  But less talk. With the poverty of silence comes the richness of withdrawal. A relentless process to unhook the incident from my mind even at the shops or in the shower or, sometime later, by a beach on school holidays, while Helen digs channels with a stick so Dani can see the water approach and feel it spill onto her feet. Later again, driving on the freeway alone, unable to sleep, I crest a rise and a billboard emerges – an ad for toothpaste, a huge photo of teeth – that reminds me of danger all around. Here am I, a foreign object, a foreign body. I just need to do the unhooking. But aren’t I safe now?

  Helen and Rod meet at a Christmas party. Rod talks a lot. By Easter, Helen and I are separated, and they are engaged. For Dani’s birthday, Rod gets her a purple unicorn lamp for her new bedroom, and he tells me I’m welcome at the house anytime.

  *

  I get up early and catch the bus into the city, past the coffee place where I used to take Dani. She works in the city now, and I could give her a ring. Remember that Italian cafe where you’d sit at the counter and the owner gave you chocolate frogs? But she knows about the hearings and would ask if she could be with me, and I want her far away from all the damage. Through the windows of the bus, the city is raw and eager. To the fearless commuter beside me, I must look like a common flake, slumping into my seat with my head against the window, breathing strangely.

  On the steps of Macquarie Tower, just a couple of blocks from the Botanic Gardens where Helen and I first met, I feel people glancing at me, thinking, Is he one of those poor boys? I look old, and my jacket isn’t necessary in this heat. A charity bloke taps me on the elbow, makes it seem like I’ll be doing him a favour to take the extra coffee out of his hands.

  ‘Hey, mate. You want this?’

  I shake my head, but my hands feel empty and enormous, so I take the cup.

  He nods beside me, sharing my gaze towards the glass doors. He’s about Dani’s age, with a beard and a tattoo running the length of an arm.

  ‘Been to one of these before?’ he asks.

  He’s figured it out.

  They told me I was lucky to have a bed at the orphanage – that my mother had died. But she could be any one of these women going past on Farrer Place, clutching her handbag, pulling a grocery trolley through the peak-hour crowds, taking off her glasses to knead the tender points on the sides of her nose.

  Saying she’d died didn’t mean anything.

  ‘First time,’ I say, wanting to leave it there. But he’s given me coffee and not left me standing alone, so I add, ‘Long-time listener, first-time caller.’

  He chuckles, lifts the cup to his lips and cools it with his breath. ‘Well, if you need anything, I’d be happy to sit with you.’

  They’ve named him on the news. He died eleven years ago, so I guess they’re allowed. A file photo catches him stepping out of a white car. His face is slack, his mouth half-open, an unpleasant taste there.

 
I speak to the dark liquid in the cup. ‘I’m not testifying, or anything like that.’

  The young man smiles kindly and takes a sip.

  *

  I lick my fingers clean. The bird really is dead and I’ll need to get rid of it. If I wrap it in a shirt and leave it under my pillow in the dormitory, it’ll never stay a secret. Jeffrey or Graeme will say it’s theirs now. Terry will threaten to chop it up with the hair scissors, one snip at a time.

  I look up. Neil has gone, and one of the older boys is already wiping down his table. Placing the bird back beneath the tree might be enough to revive it. And tomorrow, when I go to check, maybe the grass will be empty – the baby bird gone, high above me, soft and fed and warm with its mother. But if it’s still there, still dead, then Neil and I can bring a paper bag and collect stones to make a cross.

  I touch my belly. A hand touches my shoulder.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Martin, what have you got there?’ Mr Jarrett’s mouth is filled with white dentures that are too big. His blue eyes are puckered around the edges. Terry reckons Mr Jarrett gave him the cricket score once, the time Meckiff had been no-balled four times and Benaud had given him the chop.

  ‘Nothing, Mr Jarrett.’

  He stands me up and prises my hand from my stomach. The dead bird dives to the floor.

  ‘Did you take it?’ he asks.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Was it dead?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘And now a mother bird has lost her baby.’

  ‘Yes, sir. But it’s nature.’

  ‘You have to make this right,’ he says. ‘Pick it up. Come with me.’

  We walk the halls till we’re outside, heading towards Mr Jarrett’s cottage at the end of the garden. Maybe the bird needed something other than the beef from my plate. The corner of a washcloth dipped in milk. A worm wet with dirt, writhing in the centre of my palm.

  Mr Jarrett’s blue eyes drop down to mine. He pulls a handkerchief from his pocket and takes the bird, lays it on the table and palps my shoulder.

  ‘You shouldn’t have taken the bird,’ he says.

  All the doors and windows in the cottage are open. Through the doorway I see a bathroom, where I can ask to wash my hands. The place smells like mothballs, and the quilt on the bed is stretched tight.

  Taking Things Back

  It’s the twentieth of December and Kayla’s little brother, James, finds a department store bag abandoned. Kayla is in a nearby shop, browsing leggings and sports bras. James’s hands are sticky from his Bubble O’ Bill. Kayla comes back out into the shopping centre, having bought nothing.

  ‘Whose is that?’

  James looks up from where he’s crouching beside the metal bench. ‘I saw it when you went in there. No one’s come back for it.’ He moves the wad of gum around his mouth.

  ‘Well, leave it,’ Kayla says.

  ‘Wonder what’s in it.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter. Leave it.’

  ‘Let’s return it and get the money.’

  It strikes Kayla, as she watches her brother stand up, that he could in fact be a total petty criminal at night, out with his friends, and she wouldn’t know.

  Still. ‘You reckon?’ she asks.

  Shoppers move around them, in and out of stores. Scalloped green wreaths stuck with red and gold baubles hang above their heads. Kayla moves to the bench.

  ‘Give it.’

  She peers inside the bag and pulls out a book, then a long grey box. She finds a receipt.

  James is thrilled. ‘Did they pay cash? How much?’

  ‘Seventy-one ninety. Cash.’ She knows how easy now it is to get the money. No real obstacles; it’s as good as having the notes and coins in her hand. Maybe the department store will make them sign a bit of paper to be sure they aren’t criminals (which they are), and ask questions to check they haven’t stolen anything (which they have).

  In an hour, or a bit less, Shannon will collect them outside the pet shop on Sullivan Road. Shannon made it clear she’d rather not have to fight for a car park at this time of year, and Kayla wants to stay on her good side. She and James are eight foster families in, and Shannon’s house has a pool and two TVs and a sweet white dog and a nasty ginger cat that Kayla secretly plans to win over. Unlike their last three placements, Shannon has no kids of her own. Kayla and James have a bedroom each. Kayla has to share hers with a filing cabinet that blocks the balcony – a Juliet balcony, Shannon says, whatever that means. But for once: privacy. Kayla wanted to warn Shannon about James and all his newfound masturbating. But her New Year’s resolution is to let her brother become more independent. If he were a baby he wouldn’t need all those boxes of tissues.

  James twists the handles of the carrier bag around his fingers. ‘We could buy something for Mum.’

  Kayla looks longingly at her little brother. The blood is pooling at his fingertips. He’s the only person in her life she can hold eye contact with, comfortably, endlessly. Often, on the days when there wasn’t enough food for a proper lunch each, James would find her in the playground – Kayla made friends no matter where they turned up – and hand over chips or part of his sandwich. Her habit was to try to hide it, but James never cared who saw and who knew.

  Something for Mum. The flimsiness of such an idea – boxed chocolates, a pot plant, a set of bath towels embroidered with daisies to impress visitors – alongside the enormity of what, exactly, their mum needs.

  ‘Fine,’ Kayla says. ‘Done by two-thirty. Okay?’

  They enter the department store, passing throw rugs and shelves of rice cookers and green picnic cups stacked into the shape of a Christmas tree. They head to the nearest counter and wait. A round, black-clad woman motions, smiling, for them to go over to her register. Kayla lifts the bag to the counter. She releases the receipt from her fingers.

  ‘We’d like to return this, please.’

  ‘Oh.’ The woman’s smile thins.

  ‘We only just bought it.’

  The shop assistant slides out the book. It’s a romance, Kayla figures, noting the man in a cape beside a horse, and the windswept woman beside them. Rubbish, her mother would call it, forcefully.

  ‘There’s more?’ With her hand inside the bag, the shop assistant eyes them. A magic trick. A game of lucky dip. Her hand finds the box. She pulls it out: stainless-steel salad servers. ‘Anything the matter?’

  ‘Just changed our minds,’ Kayla says.

  ‘And the receipt’s all here, is it?’

  Kayla pushes it closer. ‘Can we have it in two halves?’ She thumbs towards James. ‘Like, half each, exactly? To spend?’

  The woman finishes with the receipt, circling and initialling and crossing out. She squints at them with the money in her palm, sliding the register shut gently. ‘Maybe the bank near the food court can help you. This is the best I can do.’

  They have seventy-one dollars and ninety cents. Kayla walks ahead of James, towards the food court. She turns around, hands him a twenty, ignores his protests. She heads to Tricky Donuts and buys a hot bag of fresh cinnamon ones where the grease has shone the outside translucent. The boy at Tricky Donuts agrees to give her the change she asks for, and she passes James the rest of his portion of cash. He salutes her and wanders off.

  Kayla stands by a heavy fern in a silver pot as she posts the doughnuts into her mouth one by one. She has twenty-eight dollars and forty-five cents left.

  Past the escalators there’s a young guy in a bright green T-shirt, collecting for charity.

  He reaches both hands towards Kayla, then presses them together in a soundless clap. Other shoppers weave past. ‘How’s it going?’

  ‘All right,’ Kayla says, stopping by the table. The photos pinned to the booth show newborns, pink and lustrous, stuck with tubes in humidicribs.

  The man arrange
s himself next to her. ‘They look so helpless, don’t they? But such fighters.’

  Kayla nods.

  ‘Imagine how frightening that must be. Can you imagine?’

  She can, but says, ‘Not really.’

  He brightens. ‘You’re good to stop. Anything you can spare will go straight to helping babies and their families, like these ones.’

  Kayla opens her purse and slides all her coins into the slotted bucket on the table.

  ‘Thanks so much,’ the man says.

  She has twenty-five dollars left.

  At a stationery shop, Christmas carols thread through the frigid, processed air. Jubilant children write their names in glitter on pads of test paper.

  ‘Here you go.’ A girl in an apron hands Kayla a toy-sized basket. ‘So you can keep your hands free while you shop.’

  Kayla sees a menu planner that comes with a free pencil. She wonders what her mum is cooking these days, what it’s like to cook for one, or if she even bothers with frypans and chopping up garlic and tasting sauces from the end of a wooden spoon. Shannon cooks Italian one week. Greek the next. This week it’s something she calls Tex-Mex and James is excited. Kayla drops the plastic-wrapped notepad into the basket.

  The girl returns and touches the basket handle. ‘Take that to the counter for you?’

  It had seemed inexpensive and sensible and sort of cute too, with its outlines of pies and cakes and bowls of spaghetti, but the notepad will take up more than half the remaining money. Kayla feels panicky.

  ‘Paying cash today?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  On her way out, with twelve dollars and five cents remaining, Kayla notices clear plastic tubs on a table. She rubs erasers shaped like watermelons and pineapples through her fingertips. The erasers are two ninety-five each. They make her think of the soft lollies her gran kept in jars in the pantry to be brought to the couch during the footy. Gran bit the heads off lolly pineapples and pressed their yellow bellies between the pads of her fingers, whispering C’mon, c’mon at the television. She offered the decapitated sweets to Kayla and James, a joke, because who would eat them after that? Gran wouldn’t give up anything if she could help it.