‘I’m out of here,’ Peter told Jules. He slapped the salt and pepper grinders on the kitchen bench. ‘Come on Will, we’re going home.’
Once Will was safely in the car, Peter decided he should go back inside and say goodbye to the others properly. He shouldn’t have come at all, that much was obvious. But he should tell them all exactly why he was leaving: because Simon, all these years on, was still angry with his dead father. And it was easier to take it out on Peter than to do a damn thing about his own problems.
Before Peter reached the patio steps on his way back inside, Simon was down them like a wild boar. He grabbed Peter and shoved him hard into the ute’s side panel. Shit Peter thought, but didn’t say. Will had the window open. It was enough that this was happening in front of him without his dad swearing as well.
Simon got into Peter’s face and Peter held his brother’s arms down. Terry made his way towards the commotion then stopped. He couldn’t manhandle either of them without making everything worse. Kerryn and the other women were frozen on the patio and the kids, in their pyjamas, were holding their mothers’ hands or gripping their legs.
Kerryn and Jules squealed, but Fiona couldn’t get a sound out.
Can the whole of Westmore hear us? she wondered.
Neighbours across the road peered through venetian blinds. Some turned down their TVs to hear the Stevensons go at it.
‘You’re an arsehole, Pete... You fucken didn’t give a shit about the old man.’
Drunk as Simon was, Peter still had to work hard to stop him from throwing a punch. He couldn’t let this turn into a full-blown fight. He didn’t want to look at Will, but he knew the kid would be shaking in fright. Maybe crying. Christ, if he fought his brother in front of Will he could sign away his access.
‘Let go, Simon. All right?’
Peter had red marks on his arms where his brother’s thumbs were digging in. Jules was crying now. Collapsed on the steps. Peter couldn’t bear it. He roared, but it made Simon’s grip tighter.
‘Cut it out, fellas,’ Terry said calmly.
‘I’ll let go when I fucken want!’ Simon said through clenched teeth. And he heard Ron’s voice mixed up with his own and that made him angrier.
Simon later blamed the whole shitfight on the books Fiona had read. She’d leave him to the TV once the kids were in bed, huddle herself next to that touch lamp she’d bought from Target. All the rage. She read big shiny books about art. Just like Peter probably did. He probably had his own touch lamp and cup of tea right next to his canvas or easel or whatever.
All that reading got right up Simon’s nose.
Fiona was putting on too much weight, he thought. And she was always in tracksuit pants, even though she’d stopped going to the gym. Then she started reading about that Tahitian bastard and stuck his prints on the corridor walls. That corridor was too tight for prints or anything else on the walls, hardly enough room to fart, Simon thought. But, no, apparently there was room for pictures. The painter, Fiona told him, had left his wife and kids and pissed off to Tahiti.
‘His women are beautiful,’ Fiona had told him.
She’d hung another print one afternoon. This time next to Simon’s study slash office.
Slash porn computer room.
The print was the right kind for its location; a dark woman lay nude on her stomach on a bed. But in the background there was a little bloke with a green face and what looked like a cut-off black condom on his head. Maybe perving at the woman, maybe not.
‘What’s the bloke doing?’
‘To me, he represents the effects of colonisation.’
Jesus, why didn’t she just go and live with Peter?
All Simon knew of Tahiti was that TV ad in the ‘70s. There was a woman in a spa on a plane and she said, Tahiti looks nice, and her husband, with a hairy chest, called the pilot on a phone: Simon, Tahiti! and suddenly the spa tilted and they were all off and away. Pure irony that the pilot had the same name as him. Fiona’s artist would have tripped along with them, don’t worry. The whole lot of them, off to Tahiti because of a lump of soap. Simon couldn’t even remember which brand.
Fiona stuck up another print. This time a white woman was on a bed with a giant red flower in her hair. There was a black man coming at her with a whole bunch of the same flowers. Or maybe it was a scrunched up tea towel with a floral print.
‘What’s the flower in the hair all about?’
Simon didn’t even know why he was asking. The marriage vow, he supposed. Better or worse. No prizes for guessing where they were now.
‘It’s a hibiscus,’ she said. She pushed the framed print this way and that, trying to get it straight.
‘Right. So?’
‘It’s got a meaning.’
‘What?’
‘Can’t remember. I’ll read up on it.’
Great. He’d be watching the Sunday night movie on his own again.
Simon smashed Peter against the ute.
‘You’re supposed to be my brother. Why didn’t you help? We were all there. Helping Mum and Dad. But where were you?’
‘I had reasons—’
Simon dug his fingernails into his brother’s chest.
‘I’ll give you some fucken reasons,’ he hissed and tried a punch at Peter but he was strong enough to hold it off. Just. But Peter best white shirt was ripped. That incensed him.
‘I don’t have to listen to this from you! Let me go, arsehole...’
He tried to escape, but his brother wriggled his bulk and held him. Simon’s gut wobbled and his arse in his undies tightened up. Jules raised herself from the puddle she’d become. It was her idea to push hard and get Peter to come to this anniversary. All she’d wanted was to pull the family together before it became a beehive no-one wanted to go near. Just be normal for a change. Get on with caring for each other and being like families were supposed to be. Not that she’d known one like hers, but in lots of the novels she read things worked out fine and why couldn’t they for the Stevensons?
Despite everything else, all the other upshots of the driveway stoush, one thing really got at Simon afterwards. Years before, Ron had expressly told him, over a half-dozen pots at the Westmore Hotel, that he wanted things to work out right for his boys.
Don’t go on bickering and fighting and carrying on. You’re bloody adults. Act like it.
Christ, he even wanted them to love each other.
If I have to say it, son, then, all right, I will.
He didn’t say it, but Simon had known he’d meant it. That’s all Ron had wanted before he’d carked it, his kids to get along. If anyone had bothered thinking about him. Thinking about something else, anyway, instead of carrying on with all the rubbish and bloody stupidity and arguing. It was beneath them, wasn’t it? It should have been beneath the artist! The oh-so-mighty artist. But, no, Peter didn’t even bother to call Simon anymore. Call and just see how he was. Arsehole! Look what it had taken to get him to come to the anniversary dinner: his mum on the phone daily for two weeks. Waste of money. Ring-ing his mobile.
For all his faults and fuck-ups, Ron hadn’t raised them to be losers.
What do the Yanks call it? Trailer rubbish? I didn’t raise you for that rubbish. And neither did Jules.
But she’d been there in the driveway that night, too. Caught in the bloody of middle of it.
Peter blamed Simon.
Simon blamed the Tahitian bloke.
Jules blamed herself.
But it was all about Ron.
It was all about what they had and hadn’t done for him while he was busy dying in hospital. They were all guilty.
But Simon felt the guiltiest. Because Ron had sat him down in the Westmore Hotel.
He’d asked his father to speak up, get his voice above the beeping poker machines. Simon had wondered later if Ron had already known about his cancer that day. Regardless, the old bloke had laid down the law. Lazy bugger that Ron was when it came to his boys, he told him what had to happe
n as far as he was concerned. What would make him happy.
Dead or alive, it seemed.
But as his father had talked, swiveling in his bar chair, Simon could think of only one thing. Ron coming at him with a knife in the kitchen when he was a kid.
A memory that he didn’t even trust.
He didn’t know if it was real and it shook him up that he
didn’t know.
He knew Ron had belted him plenty of times, but that hadn’t hurt at all. Not like this fucking stupid arse memory that he wasn’t even sure was one!
Whether the truth was that his dad had wanted to kill him, or Simon was just a kid that made up fairytales, either way he felt like a bogged car without a towrope. Going nowhere.
He could have asked his father about it then and there in the bar. But instead he just listened to the old man’s orders and slugged down his beer.
You understand, son? You realise what’s important in life?
‘Can’t you two see what you’re doing?’
Terry turned to listen to his mum, but the other two were still a tangle of arms against the ute.
‘Your father’s memory...’ she said.
That riled Peter.
‘That’s the problem! That’s his problem, anyway.’
‘What the fuck are you on about?’ Simon shouted in
Peter’s face.
‘Cut out the language and the yelling! I don’t care what sort of father he was. It doesn’t matter anymore. He’s gone. And we’ve just got to get on with things and not worry too much about it. For goodness sake boys, I wasn’t even married to him anymore.’
It was too much for Peter.
‘So why the bloody Memorial Dinner?’
Jules gave an angry sigh.
‘What I’m saying, Peter, is that I’d moved on...’
‘Well, good on you... Brilliant.’
She puffed up her cheeks and blew out the air. Like it was full of fumes.
‘Peter, just grow up.’
‘Yeah, arsehole,’ Simon said and bang he got a fist into
Peter’s ear.
Terry stepped in. He had to now or he’d get the blame for not sorting out the mess. He was the youngest, still his mum’s little helper. He got between his brothers and grappled with the rams. Peter headed to his car, got it started, put the stereo on and he was off, down the street and onto Fawkner’s Road.
‘Well done, Simon,’ Jules said, her sarcasm dripping like fat from her hotplate. ‘We get him here, we finally might sort a few things out for everyone, but you go and belt him!’
‘What? You said we should all move on!’
‘Yes, but...it’s hard. I didn’t say it’d been easy.’
Simon looked to Terry but his brother gave him nothing.
Simon, still in his undies. With a crumpled black heavy metal t-shirt and hair at all angles.
‘Nothing’s bloody easy, Mum. You weren’t there... He belted us.’
‘I was there, Simon, and I know. And I’m sorry about that. Why do you think I left him? And wouldn’t let him see you much?’
Simon looked towards the highway. ‘And he threatened to kill us.’
‘Who? Peter?’
‘Ron.’
‘Your father?’
‘Who do you think?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Jules said softly.
‘Well, you should know.’
Simon looked again for Terry to back him up but his brother turned his palms to the pale orange Westmore night sky.
‘You should know about it, Mum.’
Jules knew her son could be telling the truth. Still, she’d threatened to kill them too. Doesn’t everyone do that at times when it gets too hard? It’s just an empty threat.
But it probably wasn’t the best thing to do. Ron used to be a scary man.
She didn’t know the half of what she should about Ron. He’d had more secrets than the KGB and the FBI combined. Now she was stuck with them and her thoughts, halfway between the porch and the ute. Going nowhere.
Kerryn and Fiona were still on the porch. Kerryn rubbed at her short blonde hair as if the fight was caught there, knitted to her scalp. But she took the risk and stepped into family business. Into the shit.
‘Haven’t you scared the kids enough now?’ she said, pointing at her youngest son in pyjamas at her knees. Her fierce eyes were on Terry, but he could tell she wanted to give Simon and Jules a rocket. Terry tried his hands-in-the-air tactic again.
‘I was trying to sort it out!’
He climbed the steps to her, but she stepped back. He didn’t
know what to do. Luckily, one of his kids hugged him.
‘It’s all right mate. It’s all okay.’
Simon reached through the window of his ute for a pack of cigarettes. He tapped one out and lit it. Fiona had her two kids, Ryan and Alice, in pjs wrapped to her legs. She couldn’t move. Or wouldn’t. Jules hugged her, but Fiona just stared. Not at Simon or the ute where he and his brother had fought. Not even at the chalky moon clouding up. She might have been looking at something on another planet. No one had a clue.
Jules let go, but kept a hand on her shoulder.
‘You all right?’
She was stock-still. Eyes wide.
She’s a worry, Simon thought.
She’s in a trance, Terry thought. He followed the line of her stare. She was looking over the lower part of her paling fence and into her neighbour’s yard at a hibiscus bush.
‘Just let her be,’ Simon said.
He finished his cigarette and flicked the butt to the ground.
He didn’t want to stamp on it in bare feet so he left it to smoul-der. He walked past his wife and back inside. Ryan squawked up at her.
‘What’s wrong Mum? What is it?’
She didn’t respond. She looked right through him at the flowers until the boy fell away.
Nothing worked. Fiona stayed on the porch until Terry, Kerryn and Jules shunted her onto the couch in the lean-to. Simon headed off in his ute. The rest of them tried to talk to Fiona but she was silent. She just kept up her staring, at the door now. It was shut, she couldn’t see through it, but she was trying her best.
The rest of them got the kids to bed. It took an hour. They had to settle them all down. Especially Ryan. Alice was too young to care. She thought it was all a big laugh.
‘Why were Daddy and Uncle Peter playing wrestles?’
Once the kids were down, Jules made hot chocolate. She took one to the couch and Fiona, but her daughter-in-law was asleep. Not for long. Once everyone was in bed, she went outside, straight to the neighbour’s yard. She picked one of the hibiscuses from the bush and stuck it behind her ear.
Terry got up in the night for a piss. He looked out the kitchen window to see if Simon’s ute was back. No such luck. But he saw Fiona on the patio, sitting on a white iron chair. She was twirling the hibiscus and staring at the bush like it was a long-lost lover.
Peter could have told them what it was all about. Or tried. He knew about Gauguin and his symbolism. But that wouldn’t have helped him make sense of Fiona. Nor would it have helped anyone at Simon’s place that night. They’d have laughed and said Fiona was already married.
Terry held her hand and took her to her room. He settled her beneath her doona.
‘You all right, Fee?’
She didn’t answer. He tried to pull the hibiscus away, but she clamped it hard to her ear.
Fiona didn’t say anything to Simon for two weeks. Then she finally spoke one night. They were sitting in front of the TV. She had another red hibiscus in her hair and she gave him just one word.
‘Leave.’
He’d been waiting for it.
‘Why?’
A Coles ad. Crunchy carrots. Simon shook his head.
‘Cos of Peter? Cos I belted him on the ear? Come on, you said yourself he never helped out with Ron...’
The show they’d been watching came back on. Two
spooks on a dark street. Miami or New York. It didn’t matter.
‘Is it cos of the porn...? I can cut back...cut it out...’
The spooks sorted something. Planted a bug in a bus stop.
‘I said I’d never scare you again and I haven’t, remember? I haven’t touched you.’
He had, he just didn’t remember. Too drunk at the time. The spooks were back at HQ. They had a serious talk with the big boss man in his glass office.
‘Well, stuff you. I’m goin’.’
And he went. That night. North, a long way. And she stayed on the couch.
She didn’t cry. Not until Ryan was in his teens and she woke one night to the neighbours yelling. She went out and the old couple were in their dressing gowns in their front yard. They were hollering at Ryan. He was in a black singlet and trying to dig up their hibiscus bush. They screamed at him to stop, but he wouldn’t. The old man tried to pull the shovel out of his hands and Ryan pushed him to the ground. The old bloke hauled himself up, swearing, but Ryan pushed him down again. The police arrived and Ryan kept trying to dig the plant out. The police wrapped him in a full Nelson hold and began to drag him from the yard. He swore at the hibiscus and saw his mum coming towards him in her dressing gown. She was crying. She was coming to stop the police from taking him away. Or maybe she was going to hug him. Or whack him? He got ready for anything. But his mum walked straight past him to the hibiscus bush, knelt beside it and made sure it was safe in the ground.
17. Trevor Randall and Simon Stevenson
At daybreak old Trevor Randall pulled on his blue overalls, fitted his earmuffs and took to his house with a jackhammer. He crashed it into the wall beside the lounge room window. Cement rendering and plywood panels shattered. Neighbours showed up on the footpath in their dressing gowns. A silver-haired bloke holding a tea towel scowled at the racket, and a woman in black three-quarter pants muttered. A couple of other men came to investigate: a stay-at-home dad called Foster, carrying his toddler son, and Simon Stevenson, back from living in Queensland, and wearing his wharfie jacket.
‘What the hell’s going on?’ Simon shouted.
Trevor turned off the hammer and put it down. He stepped carefully around the building waste and hung his earmuffs around his neck.
We. Are. Family. Page 18
