The Origin of Me

by Bernard Gallate

  ‘Just this once,’ Mum answered for me.

  ‘Goodie,’ Maxine said. ‘We’ll have to open another one. Could you do the honours, darling?’

  In the kitchen, I saw two empty Pol Roger bottles on the bench. I returned with a third, popped its cork, filled our glasses and asked Mum what we were celebrating.

  ‘Maxine’s thirtieth wedding anniversary,’ she said.

  ‘Cheers, Max. Where’s Don?’

  ‘Out woop woop, location-scouting for his next film. I’d rather he was here, but at least he came through with the goods,’ she said, bunching the pearls around her neck.

  ‘I’m also celebrating,’ Venn said. ‘Jessie and I found a place at North Curly, one street from the beach.’

  ‘Well done. Can you see the greenish shade of envy on my face?’

  Venn smiled and passed me the nuts. ‘Do you think you could help me move on Tuesday?’

  ‘Of course he can,’ Mum said. ‘He’s a man of leisure for another week. How was the dance? Did Penny enjoy herself?’

  ‘Naturally.’

  ‘I heard you like cougars?’ Maxine said with a wink.

  ‘I only asked her because there was nobody else who—’

  ‘Why do you men have such a difficult time making us women feel special?’ she said. Fuelled by booze, the women listed the major and minor disappointments with the men in their lives. My youth and lack of experience disqualified me from offering any sort of defence – not that I even wanted to.

  Rather than boring us all by ragging out Dad again, Mum turned to her most recent dismissal. ‘I have to concede that Grant was always very attentive,’ she said. ‘But it turned out that he was being attentive to other women at the same time.’

  ‘You cracked him off so quickly,’ Maxine said. ‘After all, it was only a friendly game of tennis with the Perch.’

  ‘Says the amateur sleuth who called to report the sighting.’

  ‘Just looking out for you, darling. Thought you should be informed.’

  ‘Exactly what you said last year when you caught Lance. And that turned out well.’

  ‘What?’ I said to Maxine. ‘It was you who busted Dad?’

  ‘Hardly “busted”, sweetheart. After a great deal of hand-wringing, I shared some concerns I had with my dearest friend.’ She banged on about the agony of being caught in a moral dilemma. ‘Don hadn’t wanted me to say anything, and if I’d kept quiet, everyone might still be playing happy families.’ She threw the remaining champagne down her throat.

  During dinner, the conversation revolved around Maxine’s submission for Sculpture by the Sea and Mum’s launch of the E-Radiata Serum™. She’d arranged for me to help out next week, so I asked if I could bring a friend.

  ‘As long as you both stay well away from the bar area,’ she said.

  When Maxine called for the game of Rummikub, I excused myself and went up to my room. Lying on my bed, I fell under the hypnotic spell of Barrenjoey Lighthouse. An image came to mind – the last family photo taken at Mackerel. It was the picnic shot with Maëlle feeding a goanna – the shot with Maëlle crossed out in Mum’s office.

  On Saturday morning, before the others had risen, Venn and I walked to the northern end of the beach then climbed the track towards West Head. Reaching the plateau, we sat beneath a scribbly gum and broke out the trail mix. Venn pointed to an impressive tattoo on the tree’s trunk, created by the movement of moth larvae between the layers of bark. ‘It could be a map of our lives,’ she said.

  ‘Which one’s you?’

  ‘This one,’ she said, tracing a line that zigzagged away from the others.

  ‘There’s a difference between being a free spirit and isolating yourself,’ I said. ‘You’re always talking about healing and harmony, but you can’t even forgive Dad. You think that somehow frees you from what happened, but you’re actually the most bound up.’

  ‘I can’t get over the betrayal.’

  ‘Everybody experienced that in some way.’

  ‘Mine was different because it was double.’

  Descending the stairs above Resolute Beach, Venn’s words continued to gnaw at me – her assertion that she’d suffered most because she’d been let down by both her father and her friend. She’d maintained the judgemental stance of the faultless, conveniently forgetting she’d once betrayed me. So, on reaching a section of the track that weaves between a cluster of grass trees, I drip-fed her a dose of home truth. ‘Do you remember when you first hooked up with Elliot Grobecker?’

  ‘Of course I do. The rest of the family had gone home.’

  ‘Do you remember what happened the day before?’

  ‘He snapped off the tallest spike,’ she said.

  ‘It was that one,’ I said, pointing to the plant that was now the shortest.

  Back then Venn had said nothing because she was smitten by the idiot, even though she knew the grass tree could’ve been over a hundred years old. Elliot kept prodding me in the back with the spike until we reached the sandy delta and I ran away. He chased me and hurled the spike at me, yelling out at the last second. I turned and the spear hit my right eye. They made me wash away the blood in the sea, and when we got back, Venn told all the parents that I’d copped the black eye and swollen nose from walking into a branch. The next day my eye was infected, so Mum and Dad took me home early to see Dr Finster. Venn was allowed to stay on at Mackerel with the Partridges, and that was when she got with Elliot.

  ‘Your relationship began with a betrayal,’ I said. ‘You broke our allegiance to impress that little turd, and the gang of three became two.’

  Venn hung her head and didn’t speak until we reached the other end of the beach. I thought she must’ve been formulating an apology – but no. As we were brushing the sand off our feet she said, ‘You know, I used to open my eyes in Fifty Steps.’

  Venn’s confession was punishment for my digging up and spreading historical shit. So I swallowed everything I wanted to say and shrugged as if not freshly wounded. For the rest of the afternoon we moved around each other with unusual caution. At 6.30 pm, the four of us, including Maxine, caught the last ferry home. As the Myra skipped across the gentle waters, Maxine told us that she and Don had put Amphitrite on the market. We’d just spent our final day there.

  ‘Everybody’s downsizing,’ she said. ‘Goodbye, paradise.’

  On Tuesday, Venn borrowed Jessie’s boyfriend Nate’s ute to transport her prized possessions to the Curl Curl flat and some unwanted household stuff to Vinnies. Halfway through packing she got stuck vacillating between keeping or dumping her boxes of thirteen years of schoolwork.

  ‘Just leave it here with Mum,’ I said, bristling with annoyance that I had to help Venn on my holidays and she didn’t seem very grateful.

  ‘The last thing Mum needs is more junk when she’s trying to sell the house. Could you please take them to the recycling bin for me? I can’t deal right now.’

  ‘Whatever you want.’ I carried the boxes to the garage and riffled through the contents for anything important-looking. Her reports reminded me of how much smarter and more diligent my sister was than me, having topped just about every subject. Surely she wouldn’t want me to trash them? Fifteen minutes later, though, she came down to find me. ‘Just dump them,’ she said. ‘We need to return the ute by midday.’

  ‘Perhaps you should keep a few of these?’ I handed her a drawing she’d done in Year 3. Our family was a line of stick figures holding hands, descending in height: Dad, Mum, Venn, me and then Gus, who was a little black ball. Nana and Pop Locke were waving from the top of a rectangle in the background – the Dee Why apartment they’d just moved into. We both laughed, which relieved the tension. Venn’s face softened.

  ‘I wish everything was back the way it used to be,’ she said, getting teary.

  ‘It can’t be. But things will improve.’

  ‘Hey, I’m sorry about everything I’ve said, everything I’ve done, eh? I’m not trying to make excuses, but
last year was so hard losing my grandfather, then my friend, then my boyfriend, then my dad.’

  ‘I don’t think you’ve lost Dad, though. I don’t think you could ever lose him, no matter how hard you tried.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking about what you said. I want to repair my relationship with him. It was unbelievably difficult having all of that business going on while I was studying for the HSC. The exams were gruelling. But I know I need to move past that.’

  ‘And as bad as it all was, you still fully smashed it and got into law.’

  ‘You know I’ve only deferred? I just wasn’t ready for it this year. Environmental Law is postgrad, so it’s going to take a while. But that’s where my heart is. I’d study for a hundred years to make restitution for that grass tree.’

  We drove to the flat in Curly. Carrying in the first box, I understood why Venn had been so ruthless in the culling process. The apartment only had one bedroom, so her domain would be the tiny sunroom. The living-room carpet was smelly and the walls were apricot, but it had a balcony and you could hear the crash of the surf. Perfect.

  After filling practically the entire space with Venn’s stuff alone, we delivered some old but functional kitchen appliances, sporting equipment and clothing to Vinnies and returned Nate’s ute to his workplace in Dee Why. Then we bought some grilled fish, calamari and chips, and walked to Nana Locke’s unit for lunch.

  When we arrived Tippi went ballistic with excitement, running between us and pawing at our knees. Nana insisted on making a salad to ‘liven things up’ and while she was in the kitchen with Venn, I looked at her collection on the sideboard and mantelpiece – the strange little plastic dolls in the national dress of countries she’d never visited, the crystal sherry glasses and miniature family photo gallery. Nothing much had moved position in the ten years she’d lived there.

  Over lunch, Venn seemed determined to gain a better understanding of Dad by asking Nana Locke a bunch of questions about what he’d been like in his youth. Nana confirmed what he’d told me about busting his nuts to please Pop Locke. ‘Your grandfather was a little on the sterner side of virtuous back then,’ she said. ‘A good man, but very hard to please. Wanted the best for your father, or his idea of what that was. Proud as punch of everything your dad did, but didn’t often tell him. Things were different back in those days.’

  ‘Why did Dad take so long to tell us he was adopted?’ Venn said.

  ‘He struggled with it in his later teen years. Not the “being adopted” part, but being deprived of the opportunity to discover who his birth parents were. Sometimes he used to mutter away to himself in his room. One night I listened behind the door as he asked his mother why she’d abandoned him. Heartbreaking. Later, when he became a little reckless, he blamed his behaviour on character traits he thought he’d inherited from his birth father. In his mind, that man was the opposite of Pop Locke – more the scoundrel type.’

  It seemed that Dad’s imagination had got the better of him, and he’d reached a point where he had to accept that Nana and Pop were the only parents he would ever know. Until Nana Locke explained it to me, I hadn’t thought about the fact that Venn was the first blood connection Dad had known, and I’d been the second.

  ‘Pop adored each of you from the moment you were born. He softened almost overnight and spoilt you rotten when you were little. I think your father kept his own beginnings secret for Pop’s sake somehow. And I think it was also partly his way of building a safe and secure world for you.’

  ‘Ironic that he ended up blowing it apart,’ Venn said.

  ‘He was very foolish and he knows that. I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive him. It’s in the heart that connections are made and broken. It’s all about connections, which reminds me – Lincoln, darling, close your eyes because I’ve got a surprise for you.’

  She left to fetch something from her bedroom then returned and asked me to stand back-to-back with Venn, who was also told to close her eyes. I heard the sound of something being pulled from a plastic bag then felt myself being bound to my sister with Nana Locke’s knitting. We both laughed as she wound from our legs up. She hushed us and told us to keep our eyes closed, which was close to impossible because Tippi was yapping with all the excitement and nipping at the loose ends.

  ‘One, two, three – open!’ Nana said.

  She’d bound herself in the knitting as well, with a bridge of wool connecting us. ‘And now I’ve finally passed my DNA onto you,’ she said. There were metres and metres of the pink-and-green and yellow-and-blue double helix. ‘And some of Glenda’s for good measure.’ The madness of Nana out-ritualising Venn sent the three of us into hysterics.

  Then Nana Locke dealt us another surprise. ‘I hope it’s enough, darling,’ she said to me, ‘because I won’t be knitting anymore. Clarry from six-oh-five is taking me and Glenda and this little one for a trip to Tathra on the Sapphire Coast. It was Pop’s favourite holiday spot and he wanted his ashes scattered over the ocean.’

  The Jack Russell–Chihuaha yapped once. Nana scooped her up and held her close.

  ‘I’m glad Tippi’s going along to keep an eye on things,’ I said.

  Nana smiled at me and winked.

  Pestered by a smidge of guilt that Nana Locke’s contribution to the DNA project would be far greater than mine, on Wednesday I signed up for a VIP card at Spotlight and purchased twenty balls of the cheapest synthetic yarn. I hadn’t spoken to Isa since the dance and the confession session with Pericles at International Velvet. His belief that she liked me wasn’t exactly a green light – more a tentative amber. So for the next four days, between catch-ups with my schoolwork, I knitted alone. On Saturday, which was Anzac Day, I went down to visit Bert but he wasn’t home. Maybe he’d gone to the dawn service and hadn’t returned. Perhaps he’d served in the armed forces and lost his eye in battle. Who knew?

  Back at school on Monday, I showed Isa a photo of Nana Locke and Glenda’s 12.3-metre stretch of double helix and the four metres I’d completed. She gripped my shoulders and shook me. ‘This is going to be beyond incredible,’ she said. ‘Are you excited? I’m excited.’ Those green eyes. Splinters of golden light in rainforest. Though we hadn’t discussed the school dance or my talk with Pericles, something between us had shifted.

  Ms Tarasek requested that the collaboration pairs write a description and creative rationale for our work, along with display preferences. As our work was a guerrilla operation, neither Isa nor I had anticipated having to reveal its meaning before installing it – that would have defeated the purpose. ‘I’d thought we’d get Mr Jespersen to let us into The Labyrinth late one afternoon before security arrived,’ I said. ‘Now it seems we’ll have to go through official channels.’

  ‘Ms Tarasek won’t have a problem, but Dashwood probably wouldn’t approve of an artwork about the school being founded on eugenic ideals being wrapped around the nutbag who came up with them.’

  ‘We could omit the specific reference to eugenics and use some irony. Say it’s about Millington Drake’s dedication to the advancement of science for the betterment of humanity.’

  ‘I think we should be completely honest with Ms Tarasek.’

  ‘That puts the onus on her,’ I said. ‘This way we take responsibility for our own work. Once it’s up, we can tell people what it’s really about.’

  ‘I see your point. You’re as passionate about this as me now, aren’t you?’

  ‘After all the work we’ve put into it – yes.’

  ‘So we agree. We have to make sure it goes up.’

  Together we wrote out a description of the knitted DNA that sounded more eulogy than indictment of Joseph Millington Drake. We submitted it, cautiously optimistic.

  At lunchtime I met Isa, Phoenix and Pericles in the grove. Phoenix was explaining why she’d already ditched Kirk Shepard. ‘He was a terrible kisser. Too much pokey snake tongue.’

  ‘Maybe you could train him,’ Isa said.

  ‘What am I, a c
harity?’

  ‘Send him to me for a lesson,’ Pericles said. Then to the girls, ‘Don’t worry. I’ve told Lincoln.’

  ‘At long last,’ Phoenix said. ‘It was becoming such a hassle keeping it secret. Starkey’s already telling people anyway, and you’ll be the pink elephant in the classroom if you don’t come out soon.’

  ‘That’s a helpful way of putting it,’ Isa said.

  ‘It’s the truth. Nathan Trammel asked me if you were Pez’s beard.’

  ‘What’s that?’ I said.

  ‘The fake girlfriend or wife of a gay guy to make people think he’s straight. Big in Hollywood apparently. Even Heather Treadwell came up and asked me if it was true. She wanted to know so that she could pray for you, Pericles.’

  ‘Shit! Why is this even an issue?’ he said. ‘What am I supposed to do, call a special assembly? “Yes, it’s true. I am gay. That is all.”’

  ‘Maybe you should start with your family?’ Phoenix said.

  ‘Are you running for president of the Crestfield Gay and Lesbian Acceptance Group or something?’

  ‘No. But I do believe our school would benefit from more diversity. And I’d do anything to support you. We all would.’

  ‘Okay, then. You’re right – I’m sick of keeping it a secret.’ He took a deep breath. ‘I’m telling my parents tonight.’

  ‘Do you really think it’s the right time?’ I said.

  ‘There is no right time.’

  At the end of the day, Starkey manifested like a tormenting spirit at the racks again, cigarette glowing on his lip. He blew smoke in my face and said, ‘How’s your bum chum going, trashman?’

  ‘Get lost.’

  ‘Little bit tetchy, are we? Had a lovers’ tiff?’

  ‘Piss off!’ I turned my back to him as I dialled the lock’s code.