We. Are. Family.

by Paul Mitchell

  He really wished he could’ve told his mum about his trip with Jesus. It didn’t exactly make Terry religious, but he looked at the crosses in her house differently, and he stopped getting pissed off when she played with her rosary.

  And he didn’t want as much green.

  Jules had called Terry on the Friday as well.

  ‘You better come to the hospital.’

  It was the fourth time in two weeks she’d got panicked. And every time it was the same: Ron was sleeping more than usual and his heart rate was down. Then a few hours later he was up and not dying at all.

  Bloody useless.

  ‘He’ll be right,’ Terry said.

  ‘The doctor isn’t so sure, Terrance.’

  She used his full name when something was important. But she reckoned a lot of things were important. His mother had a tendency to work herself up. And that was lucky, in one way, or she might never have got up the guts to leave Ron.

  ‘He’ll be right. You can’t get rid of the old bastard that quick.’

  She didn’t say anything. For too long.

  ‘You all right, Jules?’

  She still didn’t say anything. Terry didn’t know where to look. There was nothing to look at, really. Just his Back in Black album poster. It was coming loose at one end. The Blu Tack had lost its stick and he was pretty sure his mum had started crying.

  ‘Come on Jules...’

  ‘He’s your father.’

  ‘Don’t remind me.’

  Another silence he didn’t get to end.

  ‘And he’s going to die.’

  ‘Not at this rate.’

  Terry had to get to work. The digital clock on his kitchen bench said nine thirty-seven and he started at ten. Jules said something he couldn’t catch.

  She whispered like she was blowing out birthday candles.

  He did the right thing and turned up at the hospital with her later that day. And Ron did look crap. Terry put his hands in his overall pockets then took them out. He looked at the walls, the blue curtains that hung on one side of Ron’s bed. He checked out his mum’s back as she smoothed his blankets. He looked at the flowers in their vases, anywhere he could. Until he couldn’t avoid it any longer.

  His father was a skeleton with skin on it.

  The old man hadn’t exactly been firing the last couple of weeks, but he couldn’t have turned to shit so badly in a couple of days, could he? He was just a lump under a sheet.

  At the nurse’s station, women in pale blue uniforms hung around with their hair in buns. They laughed about some episode of Sylvania Waters. Terry watched them until he couldn’t ignore the bags under Ron’s eyes anymore. Bugger this: he couldn’t stand around and do nothing for the bloke. He was in pain. Heaps of it. And he knew he could give him a bit of relief.

  ‘Ron, I reckon I—’

  ‘—he came in mate...’

  His father’s eyes lost their bags. They were wide open and white. And the old bugger grinned. Sudden and scary.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Gazza. The great man.’

  Jules looked up from Ron’s blood pressure chart.

  ‘What are you talking about? I’ve been here all week...’

  ‘He was in last night, Jules.’

  Ron’s eyes were still bright. Like a campfire had lit up behind them. Terry didn’t know what to say to him.

  ‘He came in and he was wearing a big long coat.’

  Oh yeah, Terry thought. White, no doubt, with a halo above him. Ron slapped his sheet.

  ‘He came right up here and sat down. He said, ‘Ron, we’re lookin’ after ya.’

  The Geelong Cats?

  ‘You sure you weren’t dreaming, Ron?’ Jules asked.

  ‘Nah. I had me eyes open the whole time.’

  Gary Ablett: the ghost of Christmases yet to come! Terry wanted to ask Ron to find out if Ablett thought Geelong would get over West Coast. He could put a few bucks on them. But Ron’s eyes narrowed. His face looked shithouse again. Terry wasn’t sure if the old man was breathing, and Jules had the tears on. Even if it was just for her, which he wasn’t sure about anymore, Terry had to do something.

  ‘Ron, I reckon I can make things a bit easier...’

  He said it loud enough that his father at least turned his head. Ron let out a whistle that was probably him trying to say, ‘She’ll be right, get back to work.’

  Terry went to the nurse’s station. He bailed up a doctor in glasses who was built like a centre-half-back. He said he wasn’t in charge of Ron. Terry asked for the bloke who was, and the centre-half-back said he was a she.

  ‘Well, where is she?’

  ‘She’s a specialist. Not here all the time.’

  ‘Got to see her.’

  ‘I’ll do what I can.’

  Terry wanted to grab the bloke by the scruff. Burly or not. ‘Mate, listen. I have to see her. The old man’s dying. Or giving it a go.’

  ‘All right,’ the doctor said, quiet to his chart. ‘She’s in tomorrow.’

  Kurt Cobain was on the cross. Blood pissing out from his side. He was mumbling lyrics Terry couldn’t understand so he went up closer. ‘Stick with what you know’ was the song and Ron was singing it loud and proud. Terry could’ve sworn it was Kurt, but Ron was staring down from that cross now. He had thick hair again and his muscles were round and strong. No wrinkles. Blood was pissing out of him. Ron’s feet and hands. His dick hanging there, too.

  ‘Sallright,’ he smiled, but the blood was still gushing. Terry thought, No, it’s not alright, and he tried to say it, but his mouth was like a cold engine.

  ‘I’m free as a bird, happy as a lark...’

  Terry couldn’t remember if it was in the dream or later, but he thought ‘happy’ was not a word you’d use to describe Ron. He’d barely seen him after he and Jules had split, but Ron had sometimes picked Terry up from parties when Terry was drunk and stoned. And said nothing to him. Didn’t tell him off or even ask if he was okay. But at least he wasn’t around to whack Terry and his brothers and yell like a clapped out rockstar.

  It must have been in the dream. Because even though Terry wasn’t saying it, he was definitely thinking it, that little word.

  Dad.

  The dream went on and Ron hung there, bleeding. He talked Terry through a heap of stuff, but Terry couldn’t remember much of it later. He did remember the soldier. He came in and gave Ron a belting. With the butt end of a rifle. Terry tried to drag his dad away, but Ron said: ‘Let him keep at it!’ That soldier had a young body but an old bloke’s motley face. Terry had never met his dead grandfather, but he wondered if that was him. Then the old bloke was a farmer in overalls trying to punch Terry, but Terry thumped him. His dad laughed, his hands still nailed down. So Terry didn’t know how they ended up around him, and he couldn’t tell what was on his face, blood or tears.

  His or Ron’s.

  When Terry woke, it was Saturday morning. He wasn’t crying or sweating, instead he felt like he’d been swimming in a river. Out his window the day was blue and shiny. There were power lines against the sky instead of trees, but he didn’t mind. He got out of bed nice and casual. No rush. Smoothing his doona and opening the false drawer in his dresser, he took out the driest, best batch of head he could find. He put it on the lounge coffee table and swept it into a sweet pile. It would make a spliff fit for a king. He didn’t consider how he would keep the smoke from getting out from under Ron’s hospital door and alerting the whole hospital.

  He picked up his dad’s joint. It was a perfect piece of engi-neering. He almost wanted to smoke it himself. Maybe they could share it, he thought, when the phone rang.

  8. Peter Stevenson

  The first door was pale blue and thin. Peter didn’t knock too hard in case he split it. A glassy-eyed woman answered.

  ‘Hello?’

  Her hair matched the door and the hallway was full of bleat-ing budgies in cages.

  ‘Hi, I’m collecting for the Salvation Army today. I
was wondering if you could make a small donation?’ Peter shouted.

  He shouldn’t have said small. Just donation.

  ‘Oh,’ the woman said. Her face was excessively made-up. Lipstick smudges on her chin. If she had a dollar it would be as lonely as her. Peter looked at his embarrassing Salvo’s bib. The budgies hushed and checked it out too. How many budgies made up for a guard dog?

  ‘You’re a gem,’ the old woman said finally. ‘You’ve restored my faith in young people.’

  Peter had just turned 32. He puffed his chest out and stood straighter in the doorway. The old woman sang herself along the corridor to her battered bureau. She returned to Peter with a dollar eighty in ten- and five-cent pieces and the bonus offer of a cup of tea.

  ‘I’m sorry, I can’t. I’ve got quite a few houses to visit yet...’

  The budgies amped up.

  ‘You’re an angel, good luck to you.’

  One down and one-hundred-and-forty-seven to go. Peter should have sat for the rest of the day on that old woman’s wicker chair. Had that cuppa. It might have saved his marriage.

  The Red Shield Appeal was his wife Jayne’s latest social justice campaign. Our way, she said, of giving something back. Peter had stopped suggesting that the campaigns were to stop her feeling guilty about working in finance and having a skyscraper wage. It wasn’t worth the hours of silence between them. Or the sharp turn of her head on the pillow.

  The last campaign had involved looking after disabled kids as respite for their parents. They’d stayed the night in their spare room. Peter’s studio, actually. His easel, canvases and paints had to be moved aside and covered with a white sheet. Maybe the kids thought it was a ghost because they roared all night and Jayne got sick of it. She’d just got pregnant and her friends had told her of the upcoming sleep deprivation. So it was bye bye disabled kids.

  But hello Salvos.

  Peter agreed to enlist. Under sufferance. Only a few days before, he’d finally got ready to start a new work. The sketches were finished and he’d even circled a Saturday on the calendar. It was the day he’d stand in front of his stretched and primed canvas, set out his oils, in their colors, in a neat row, and get down to it. But he was marching the footpaths instead, collecting. After the old lady and her budgies, he’d gathered a kilo of coins, some notes, a geranium from a cross-eyed Italian grandmother, and three blunt pencils from a pigtailed toddler. Plus a dozen doors slammed in his face. The hardest of those slams had come at house one-hundred-and-forty-two on his list. A ferret of a teenager in a white Guns ‘N’ Roses singlet. He didn’t look like he’d seen light since he’d farted from his mother.

  Peter was still pissed off as he strode to house number one-four-three. It wasn’t the biggest he’d seen that day, but it spoke wealth like no other. The iron gate was heavy, the brickwork smooth and sleek, and the path that led to the verandah wound through rows of bullet-shrubs. Two shiny steel sculptures—a winged bull and a nude woman with a bow and arrow—were chained to a bright green lawn.

  Peter gathered himself on the verandah. This campaign would soon be over. He could rip off his vest and pour a glass of red. At least start work on his canvas. He gave his buckets a quick rattle and got ready to ring the bell. Got ready for whoever was inside to appear and look at him like he was vermin. He’d learnt to keep his receipt book in his pocket on verandahs like these. Owners would fish around in antique vases for a tax-deductible two dollars in silver. Just like he did whenever the collectors knocked. In future, he’d give nothing less than a ten-dollar note. Like the Westco-wearing mum had earlier. Two kids snorting around her plastic anklets, she’d declined a receipt because she thought the Tax Department would track her down. Peter warmed to her. Until her kids started screaming. He’d thought, No child of mine’s going to be a screamer, and then he’d had to dodge the sudden memory of his late father. Ron calling him a screamer when he was a kid. Peter had always, even despite his father’s recent death, tried as hard as he could not to think of Ron. Or his childhood. Because whinging about Ron or anything that happened was useless. And so were whingers. Which was what his father had told him. And the irony that he tried not think about his childhood because of something his father had said during his childhood was more than Peter could handle. So he tried not to think about that, either.

  The walls looked slate yet could have been thick glass hiding security cameras. He rang the bell, but there was silence behind the dark wood door. He touched it. Probably mahogany. It was the only expensive wood Peter knew. He caught his reflection in the bronze doorknocker and saw the mole on the left side of his neck. Like Ron’s. Peter gave the knocker three quick raps. There was a rustling in the house but no steps came down the corridor. He reached for the knocker again but the door opened and revealed a wiry man in socks and a slick charcoal tracksuit. His tanned face was covered in light stubble. And tears.

  ‘Sorry,’ Peter said to the man’s shiny floorboards. He turned to leave but the man grunted. Peter looked back and the man raised his hand for him to stay. Then he slipped in his socks to a steel cabinet and came back with a white cotton bag. He gave it to Peter and he had to stop himself from rummaging through the loose fifty-dollar notes inside.

  ‘Thanks, that’s really...’ he wanted to say unnecessary but settled on generous. He turned again to leave but the man wouldn’t allow it. He grabbed Peter’s arm and sobbed.

  Those puffy red eyes and that tear-sloshed face. Whatever had happened to get his waterworks going had broken a dam built strong over decades.

  Peter tried to stop himself but he remembered his own tan-trums as a kid. How he’d sit in the car on his own and scream.

  His mother had cried for weeks when she and Ron had finally broke up. She’d leant on Peter. And he’d held her up. Even though he’d wanted to fall in a heap himself.

  The man disappeared into one of his rooms. He returned this time with a black briefcase and opened it. There were fifties and hundreds clipped to the lining. He tossed them at Peter and the man’s desperation rang Peter’s alarm bells. Real ones might have gone off at a bank recently. Or a mob leader’s mansion. He imagined a hit being organised through cigar-smoke.

  The notes kept floating to the floorboards and the crying man bent to pick them up.

  ‘Hang on,’ Peter said. ‘Could you write me a cheque?’

  ‘It’s all legit,’ the man said and his voice was clear for the first time. ‘Every dollar.’ He swallowed a sob. He’s not the Mother Teresa-type, Peter thought. But if it was dirty money, wouldn’t it have been in Port Philip Bay by now?

  ‘Wait!’ the man yelled, and Peter watched him slide the length of his corridor and open French doors onto a gymnasium-sized back room. There was a home bar and the man disappeared behind it. Peter heard what sounded like a hatch open, presum-ably into a cellar. Then there was silence. Peter was left with the sound of sparrows and the occasional car crawling past. The man was gone so long Peter was about to leave, but then he caught sobs echoing out from wherever the man was hidden.

  Peter ground the heel of his runner firmly onto the doormat. Too many tears, fella, he heard Ron say. Pull yourself together, boy.

  Another reason Peter hated tears. He couldn’t get any of his own out. His father had dried them up.

  Cut out the bawling, son. Or there’ll be bloody hell to pay.

  A sliding door thumped shut like someone thrown against a wall. Peter shivered. For a moment he saw Ron bolting down the corridor towards him, ready to let Peter have it, then the crying man dropped two black garbage bags at Peter’s feet.

  He’d never seen so much cash. There were enough hundreds in those bags to allow him and Jayne to renovate their house twice over and still not have to go to the ATM for months. He wanted to plunge his hands in, hold a single note up to the sun like an old-time crime boss. Whisper something like: ‘Pleasure doing business with you.’ Instead, he accidentally shook one of his coin buckets. The man wiped some tears on his sleeve then sank to his
knees and collapsed. Sniffling on the floorboards.

  ‘Can I call someone for you?’

  He didn’t seem to hear. He mumbled at the hall ceiling and its ornate light fitting. Peter decided to leave the bags. He didn’t have a ruling from the Salvo squad leader about massive donations. But it wasn’t right that someone had so much cash in their house, and surely it was a worse idea to collect it? He wasn’t even sure if he’d be able to carry the bags to the checkpoint, so he took what the man had already given him and left the bags on the verandah. He hadn’t got far down the path when the man tapped him on the shoulder.

  ‘The money,’ he whispered. His breath smelt of garlic and shellfish. He whipped back to the porch, picked up the bags, easily, and brought them to Peter. Peter took them, brushing the man’s cold hands as he did. He pulled out his receipt book but the man ran for his verandah, clicked his door open then slammed it behind him. Peter stood shocked for a few seconds, vacantly staring at the sculptures. A tinny voice came through speakers somewhere.

  ‘You can take the sculptures! I’ve got bolt-cutters.’

  ‘Jesus,’ Peter said. He waved in the direction of the house, a gesture he hoped would say enough was enough.

  There were more houses on his list but Peter figured he’d finished for the day. He puffed along with the bags until he saw Jayne sitting under an elm on a median strip. Her pregnant belly pulsed above the waist of her sleek track pants in a way Peter found suddenly exciting.

  ‘What are you doing with rubbish bags?’ she moaned. ‘You could have at least pretended to be a Salvo...’

  She crossed the road to where he’d dropped the bags by the kerb.

  ‘I’m king of the Salvos.’

  Jayne looked in the bags and blinked.

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘My job. I collected,’ he said in a Mafia voice.