We. Are. Family.

by Paul Mitchell

  ‘Go bone yourself!’ Thommo grinned. ‘I’ve gotta take a leak.’

  ‘Well, when you’ve finished looking for ya dick then.’ Thommo laughed, reached over and rubbed Simon’s spiky hair.

  ‘Righto,’ he said and made a beeline for the loo. Simon looked to Terry and Brooksey.

  ‘You bastards right then?’

  When the surfie saw Simon had got in after all, his smile faded. Terry got Simon a pot and he toasted the surfie and his crew from a distance. The surfie looked away. Real quick.

  ‘I’ll just go over and see if he’s having a good night,’ Simon nodded and he took off. That was the moment, right there, to say, Hold on, lad, let’s just have a nice beer or two. But Thommo missed the boat. He got back from the dunny and Simon was already gone.

  ‘Peter here?’ Terry asked and Thommo shook his head.

  ‘Fuck it. What are we doin here then?’

  Terry took a sip of his pot. He watched Simon, holding his beer in the air and pushing through the crowd. His brother made it to the window, to the surfie and his mates, and started yapping at them. Terry knew what he was saying without even trying to lip read.

  You havin’ a good night?

  The surfie nodded, on cue.

  I’m not havin much of a night.

  Now the surfie acted innocent. And tried not to look scared in front of the girls or his mates. Terry felt for him. Because it was going to start soon. And it always seemed like slow motion; girls screaming, waving bags all over the place, beers going over. Simon’s first punch, always straight into the bridge of a bloke’s nose when the poor bugger was in the middle of saying something. They’d all got that advice from Ron. And he’d got it from Bernie.

  Shit, why couldn’t I shut up about that crap? They were Bernie’s bloody ideas, not mine.

  Everyone near that window would soon be up and about like a bomb had gone off. The surfie’s eyes would be watering from Simon’s first punch, and Simon would be giving the board rider another few quick ones to get his teeth wobbly. That was always the plan.

  Ron’s bloody bickering kids.

  Terry usually got in there pretty quick too, straight at the ones just standing around. More advice from the family.

  Terry never worried too much about the first bloke who would try to get at Simon. He was usually the drag ‘em apart, settle ‘em down type. No real problem. The ones standing around were the worry. They sized everything up. One of them might come in with a wild swing. A bloke who’d been thinking the whole time, Will I get in there? Those standing arounders weren’t keen to cop a pounding and then have to explain it to their wives or girlfriends. So Terry made up their minds for them. He usually went for the biggest one, gave him an upper-cut to the chin. It was a bastard of a punch if it copped you when you weren’t looking. Ron had copped one playing footy and the rattle it gave him was enough, let alone the headache for a week. But Terry knew when to hold up and take it easy. Simon? No such luck.

  Once Terry had to pull Simon back from booting a bloke in the head who’d copped one and was just lying on the ground. And then there was the night they all went home and watched music videos till late and Simon found a bloke’s tooth stuck in his knuckle. It had been there all night.

  Terry fumbled now in his pocket for coins for another pot. When he looked up, Simon had two Arnie bouncers in his face. Thommo had seen it all and was on his way and Terry followed him.

  ‘What’s goin on?’ Terry asked an Arnie.

  ‘This bloke’s threatening one of the patrons.’

  ‘Threatening him?’

  Arnie nodded.

  ‘You can’t kick him out for that,’ Terry said. And he thought, Show up, Pete! Make it worth being here.

  ‘We’ll kick out whoever we want,’ the other Arnie said.

  ‘Fuck off,’ Simon told him, and he gave the bouncer a shove.

  That wasn’t clever. Both Arnies got him in a headlock. Terry, Brooksey and Thommo kept their cool. They talked to the bouncers, tried to settle them. And they did. They settled. Good thing for Simon’s crew, because now there were six bouncers in the room. Thommo had a quiet word with a couple of them. The surfie and his crew were long gone. But the Arnies stayed on the case.

  ‘Come with me, mate,’ one said. The two of them grabbed Simon, and his arms were quick smart round his back as they dragged him through the bar.

  ‘I’m not goin anywhere, I’m fucken stayin’ ‘ere. Me brother’s comin and I’m fucken stayin ‘ere.’

  Terry followed, yelling stuff just for the hell of it, while Brooksey and Thommo stayed and argued with the other bouncers.

  Simon was thrown on the concrete out the front. He banged his head. Terry had a word to the boys in black.

  ‘There’s no need for that shit. He was going.’

  An Arnie piped up.

  ‘Look mate, the Bandidos have been around the last few nights...’

  Which meant the Arnies were hot on idiots and weren’t taking any crap. Terry had a chat with them. He thought that for gorillas they were quite reasonable. He yacked about some trouble a mate of his had had with the Bandidos. All the time he was watching Simon on the ground and thinking his brother should just get up, it was embarrassing.

  Terry couldn’t see Simon’s face, just the back of his moaning head. Simon lifted himself, finally, looked along the street at the cars and taxis. Girls in the line laughed at him. Pete’s not comin, Terry thought and he botted a cigarette from one of the girls. And we’re going to the Eureka...

  You bet they were.

  Simon was on his feet and it was Eureka! all right. The punch he gave the Arnie’s called a king hit, but that’s bringing down a king’s good name.

  11. Jules and Fiona Stevenson

  In the years after she and Ron divorced, Jules had plenty of time to read more novels that she borrowed from the library. In dreams begin responsibilities. That was the quote at the start of the one she’d read just last December. She couldn’t for the life of her remember the name of the book, but she remembered that quote.

  But maybe it should have said, In dreams begin bloody madness.

  After Christmas, she could hardly sleep. There were night road works. And the heat, God, it was ridiculous. She even thought of taking off her nightie and sleeping in the raw. When she did snooze, she kept dreaming she was doing something she’d never do in real life: dancing with a woman. Her dead sister-in-law, Sheree. They were twirling down the Tonvale loony bin’s bluestone hallway. She shouldn’t think of it as the ‘loony bin’, but it’s what everyone called it when it was open. The place was shut now. For good.

  In the dream, Jules was the same age as she was now, sixty-four. But Sheree’s high cheekbones and fluttery eyelashes were in perfect working order. She was still thirty-three, or however old she’d been when they’d put her in Tonvale

  When Ron put her in Tonvale.

  It wasn’t Jules who’d signed the forms.

  Sheree danced and spun in that tie-dye dress she always wore, and the hallway went on and on. Down the end of it was a light like a train coming out of a tunnel. But it was changing from white to red and green. And there was a buzzing. There must have been music somewhere—they were dancing after all—but Jules couldn’t hear a tune.

  Sheree could; she snaked her hips, her brown hair golden in the sunlight shining through a row of arch windows. None of those had been there when they’d dropped her off. It was all drab stonewalls and darkness. But through the windows now were acres of flowers; bright and cheery things, waving madly. As if Sheree and Jules’s dance was what they’d grown all their lives to see. Jules was frightened. She couldn’t feel her body, just her hands. One was on Sheree’s shoulder, the other on the small of her back. And Sheree wouldn’t stop smiling. Grinning like a baboon. There was no sign of those sudden tears of hers that used to come on, or the cloud that used to sit on her head like a black swan looking for something to peck. And, of course, there was none of that squatting and pissing
in front of Jules’s boys.

  There must have been an orchestra somewhere because Sheree tilted her head gracefully as if violins had started up. She pulled Jules close and hugged her tenderly. It made Jules’s skin prickle. With fear or excitement, she couldn’t tell. She felt a heaviness in her chest. Then the corridor was gone and the loony bin with it.

  The first time she had that dream it took two cups of tea to shake it off. That green stuff her daughter-in-law Fiona brought over whenever she dropped in. Jules still thought of Fiona as her daughter-in-law even though Simon had disappeared up north. And no one knew if he was coming back.

  ‘It’s good for you, Jules,’ Fiona said the first time they drank the tea.

  Maybe, but Fiona didn’t know what was good for her. Jules was more worried about her now than she’d been when Simon first left. She was putting too many sugars in her tea, stacking on a few pounds again, around the girdle. And what about that paint-splattered t-shirt that she wouldn’t ever seem to put in the wash?!

  Fiona came over more often now her kids were high school-ers. She was one of those empty nesters, like Jules. And neither of them had a husband to stuff up their nests. But at least her ex was alive. Not that Jules had ever wanted Ron back. But she’d like to see her son every now and then. He wouldn’t come down south and visit her, let alone Fiona or his kids. Fiona had flown up to the Daintree at one point, wasted a heap of money. And she’d only caught up with him for an hour.

  ‘What? He said he had to go back to work?’

  ‘Yep, Jules, on a croc boat.’

  ‘A croc boat? Is he being careful?’

  ‘Didn’t ask.’

  Now whenever Simon rang, Jules didn’t bother to go on at him about what he’d done to his family. She could only waste so much breath. What he did was pathetic if you asked her. But nobody did. Her friends asked more about her work, actually, than her kids. Which was nice of them. It was good not to be asked about her bloody kids all the time. Because the three boys could all have done with a bit more sorting out from their father if you asked her.

  But, again, nobody did.

  She’d started working at Davison House in Westmore. A mental institution. It brought everything back for her. The nights her mother drifted around the kitchen in Horsham, her apron stained with tomato and whatever else she’d made a hash job of cooking for dinner, when she was really whispering to aliens she could see in amongst the darkening apple trees outside. You could see the footy oval, too, from the kitchen, and Jules’s mother thought aliens were landing their spaceships there every night. It was just the new pole lights the footy club had bought for training, but her mother didn’t believe that for a second.

  Of course, some doctors or someone should have come and put her away but they never did. Jules’s father, an ex-army captain, he was all stiff upper lip, like the British. We’ll battle on manfully, it’ll come up roses, won’t it kids? And the children in their tattered school uniforms nodded. Your mother’s fine, she just gets distracted, Jules’s father said as he followed in his wife’s wake. As he patched up her cooking and took away the clothes she’d burnt with the iron. And when she threw herself into the Wimmera River, he said she hadn’t been careful swimming. She’d never been a strong swimmer, he said. You kids be careful too, won’t you? They hadn’t been allowed to the funeral because their father didn’t want to upset them.

  Davison House, where Jules worked now, was a lot better than Tonvale had ever been. Not that she’d know, really. She was only there that one afternoon to drop Sheree off. But her sister-in-law wouldn’t have died so quickly if it had been a nice place, surely?

  Jules had given up thinking she could have saved Sheree. That she could have saved her mother. She couldn’t save anyone. She spun her rosary now because, well, she always had. Our Father, who art somewhere, hello? She never heard a word back. But she spun and chanted anyway.

  Fiona came over on one of Jules’s mornings off. Brought her a box of tea bags. And started spouting off about this and that as always. Fiona was worried about her eldest, Ryan. How he would turn out without a father.

  ‘How did my boys turn out with a father?’

  Neither of them bothered to answer that one.

  ‘Ryan’ll be all right,’ Jules told her.

  ‘He wants to get a trade...’

  ‘That’s not bad, Fiona. That’s good! More money in trades than anything else.’

  No money in throwing it into a building society that col-lapses, hey Ron? But that was another matter. What really mat-tered was that Fiona should have stuck with nursing. She was still doing it part-time, but she thought she was an artist, like Peter.

  All this bloody family! From that Nick Stevenson who walked across the desert, to those other Stevensons who, she’d heard, apparently moved from one train station to another. Homeless wrecks. And then there was her own Simon, heading off to fight crocodiles. You can’t choose your family, you don’t even like them, do you, sometimes?

  But you love them.

  You try.

  And Jules wouldn’t have had it any other way. She knew that sounded stupid, like she was a pair of tangled pants in the washing machine. And she was glad she didn’t say it to Fiona. Or anyone. They’d have put her in Davison House.

  She worked there just about every other day as it was. Part-time casual was pretty soon near full-time if you happened to know what you were doing. Too many kids that didn’t want to work these days, and wouldn’t know how. There she was, in her sixties, and she had the psych nurses telling her she was the best Mental Health Social Worker they’d ever had! She just wished they could have given her a better title. Not that she needed it to be important or anything. It’d just have been easier to explain.

  ‘Why don’t you have a rest, Jules? God, you raised those boys, pretty well on your own. You nursed Ron to his grave, even though he was only your ex. You’ve worked with the disabled since wheelchairs were invented... God, put your feet up! You don’t need to slave away down at Davison.’

  Fiona put three sugars in her cup of green tea. Stirred the little granules around. Jules didn’t understand it: weren’t green teas supposed to be healthy? Why stuff it up with all that sugar? Behind her, the cuckoo clock’s canary shot out for five on the dot. Didn’t Fiona have to be at home for the kids, making them dinner? And, anyway, wheelchairs had been around since before Jules was born.

  ‘Don’t need a rest. It’s good to be busy.’

  She put the milk back in the fridge. The Lite Milk she’d bought for Fiona. That was a useless idea.

  ‘So, with the art you’re doing, the painting—’

  ‘—yeah, it’s going really well thanks, Jules. I’m working three days a week on it now...’

  She yapped about the colours and the paint itself. What she put the paint on, what she did to the paint once it was on the canvas. And then all about her latest raison d’etre. That’s what she called it. Jules didn’t understand every word she said, but Fiona used plenty of them for someone who liked pictures. But there wasn’t a single word about her kids wearing tatty clothes, one of her cats getting put down because she reckoned she couldn’t afford to give it tablets, or the fact that the front passenger window of her old Subaru was gone and covered with a green plastic garbage bin liner.

  Next thing she’d be talking to aliens in the backyard. It wouldn’t be the first time, either, as far as Jules understood it.

  ‘I’m really getting somewhere now, Jules.’

  Jules was in Sheree’s loony bin corridor and she could still hear the buzzing. She opened a glass-paneled door into a big, empty room. Sheree was sitting at a table with a pile of junk on it. It was all the old stuff she’d kept on her kitchen table: teddy bears with no eyes, old cake tins from the ‘50s, springs, jack-in-the-boxes that wouldn’t jump—even coloured rolling pins stacked in a pile. God knows how they weren’t falling over. Sheree was working away behind it all. Whistling like a sparrow that can’t keep quiet once the rain’s gon
e and the worms are out. Same huge windows in this room as the corridor. Plenty of light getting in, but no flowers outside. Out there was barren. Like someone had picked up the Tonvale loony bin and stuck it in the Little Desert.

  She said Jules’s name. And Jules started laughing. She wouldn’t stop. It was ridiculous. There wasn’t anything funny. Just Sheree working away furiously, and all Jules could see was her fringe and her eyes. She went in behind the junk and, God, it was all Sheree had! Just eyes and a forehead! No nose, no mouth. So how the hell was she whistling or saying her name?

  When Jules woke from those dreams she was shivering. Every time. But she wasn’t cold. She went straight to her rosary and said the Our Father times ten.

  In the end there was nothing else for it. Well, there were probably a hundred things for it, but she decided she’d take some photos of Fiona’s paintings. Then she could send them to Peter. The ar-teest, as Ron had always called him. Peter would be able to tell her if Fiona was doing what Jules thought she was.

  Wasting her life. And taking her kids down the drain with her. Simon had lost the plot and now Fiona had as well. Jules wasn’t going to turn her grandkids into freaks and hobos.

  She went to Fiona’s for a cuppa. She had on some weird music that honked and fizzed. Her corridor had those prints down the walls of Tahitian women, big and nude. Her studio was a corner of the lounge room that was part of the kitchen. There was an easel with a canvas on it. A painting of a red hibiscus.

  The same flower she’d stared at the night Simon and Peter had fought in the driveway of her house.

  Jules looked away from the painting, didn’t want to remember the mess of that night, with her kids fighting like that, in their thirties, when they should have been having fun with their kids together.

  When Fiona had started out painting, she’d done pot plants and fruit bowls. But now, as Jules looked around the lounge, she saw it was red hibiscuses or bust. Canvases leant on chairs and against the walls, and they all featured hibiscuses in various states. Some were just sketched outlines, some already red, some in gardens, and others driving cars. Mad. Every flower had a mouthful of fangs and a fierce grin on its face.