‘Reno-varting.’
Simon shook his head at Trevor’s odd way of talking. He had no idea who Trevor Randall was beyond him being a weird-arsed neighbor—who’d just this morning become a lot weirder.
Foster put his toddler on the footpath and the boy made to cross Trevor’s unfenced lawn. His father pulled him back by the hood of his raincoat. Simon had to get to work.
‘A bit early for all this, Trevor?’ he asked, adding you wanker under his breath.
‘Sorry. Finjun at four.’
Trevor flipped the muffs back on his ears and fired up his jackhammer.
Years ago, Human Services had moved Trevor Randall all the way to his house in Point Cook. It was before the suburb grew. A paper pusher had thought Trevor would be better off; closer to the warehouse job they’d given him in Laverton, and not too far from Werribee’s specialist hospital. He had to go there every week for a check-up.
Trevor had got a good price for his run down three-bedroom house in the centre of Westmore. He’d lived there twenty-six years and the place had got trendy around him. Cafes instead of coffee lounges. Yoga had taken over one of the pubs. Not that Trevor had cared much about what happened in Westmore after his boy had died.
After Trevor had seen him get hit by a car.
There were six lanes of traffic out his second-storey Point Cook window, and he saw the Holden Calais that had hit his son in every stream that flowed up and down. He could have chosen for his bedroom the one that faced the sea, but he’d told the removalists to put his double bed in the one that faced the road.
The night before he’d started jackhammering, he’d watched the traffic carefully. Peak hour cars were crawling, there was a lot to analyse. A driver switched on his headlights. Laser beams, Trevor thought, and the driver blasted the car in front of him. Away in the distance, giant power poles in the paddocks threw lines to each other in the long grass. The poles ended at the start of the McMansions. Those houses were giving birth daily and their babies were crawling across the paddocks. They’d soon make it all the way to the highway noise barrier and nuzzle up to it. For now, they were far off, the last blobs of sunset reflecting in their windows. But Trevor wasn’t fooled. They were coming. New foundations were growing in cement mixers somewhere. Men in orange safety vests and hard hats were holding electronic gadgets and inspecting the timber to make frames. They were putting in orders for 150 x 38 unseasoned hardwood. Trevor thought the timber would be shaking with excitement.
The long grass out there was peaceful in the breeze. But it would soon be home to hundreds of wooden skeletons. They’d get wrapped in plaster, topped with maroon helmets and ringed by tight beige fences. There would be no trees to shade the tiny rockeries and ponds, and none of the plants would be real. Just plastic because you don’t have to water plastic. And the wiring would be underground, so no more poles.
Nothing would grow out there anymore except houses.
Trevor had opened his window and his empty bedroom walls had hummed with the sound of grumbling engines. He’d tapped his hanging fern, a gift from his late son, and it had started to swing. A light had flashed on in the window of a house way off and Trevor had stared at it for a long time. Then he’d turned off his own bedside lamp and headed for the garage.
He’d fished in a milk crate full of spanners, wrenches and screwdrivers, and found his hammer. He’d blown dust off the rubber handle and taken it to the front footpath. Under the streetlight, he’d gazed at his house; the two front bedroom windows and the lounge window above them; the dark roller door and the study window above it; his solid timber front door guarded by square pillars and two fruit trees in pots beside them. The gold ‘17’ on his letterbox looked sturdy and stuck there for life. But Trevor had taken the claw end of his hammer and flipped off both the numbers easily. They had clanged on the footpath and he’d looked up and down the street as if he’d committed a crime. But he was safe; there were only parked cars in driveways and at the curbs. The blue glow of next-door’s television and no one on the footpaths, not even the first after-dinner dog walkers. He had kicked the numbers into the drain and grinned.
Drizzle mixed with Trevor’s sweat all day as he jackhammered holes in his house. By four o’clock he was cold and soaked. His canary yellow rain jacket and rubber boots hadn’t helped much.
He folded up his aluminum ladder and carried the jackhammer to the porch before wandering back onto his soggy lawn. He inspected his work; apart from the windows, the entire lower part of the front wall was gone. He could see his furniture through the timber frame. The royal blue lounge suite and the entertainment unit. Beyond that, the fridge, the kitchen bench and the cupboards.
A smaller crowd than the morning’s was on the footpath.
‘You’ll be cold tonight,’ Foster laughed, pushing back his rain-flecked hair, and Trevor nodded. Simon threw his cigarette on the footpath. He crushed it out and shook his head. Everyone left for dinners and television.
Trevor started work at six the next morning and kept at it until seven at night. He turned the house into a timber skeleton. Apart from the furniture, only the charcoal roof and the carpet were left. Everyone could see Trevor’s large photos of his son, leaning against the lounge’s timber frame. A toy lamb from when the boy was little sat on a single bed in the spare room.
Trevor put on his work beanie and a Bluey jacket. He cooked himself scrambled eggs with fried tomatoes and, like a zoo exhibit, ate them at his dinner table. The neighbours were out the front.
‘We should call the cops,’ Simon said.
‘And say what?’ Foster asked. ‘Our neighbour’s chopped his house down? It’s not against the law. I don’t think.’
‘It’s pretty bloody stupid,’ Simon glared.
‘I agree,’ said a woman called Izobel, scratching at the sleeve of her red puffer jacket. An African woman, Samanya, nodded along.
‘What will the children think?’
That silenced everyone. What kind of example was Trevor setting? He was in his upstairs bedroom now, stripping off his overalls and jacket. And turning on his shower. The neighbours covered their kids’ eyes and shouted at Trevor. Steam fogged the glass walls of his shower recess and the neighbours dispersed.
Trevor got home from work and found a divvy van parked at the front of his house. He got out of his mini and met the police on his lawn. The policewoman stared at what was left of 17 Doveton Close.
‘Trevor Randall?’
He nodded.
‘We’ve had a report of indecent exposure. Would it be possible...’
She shook her head and couldn’t finish. Her partner chipped in.
‘...to cover up in the shower mate?’
Trevor nodded. The cops didn’t move. The policeman craned his head at the ensuite toilet, then looked at the bathroom under the stairs.
‘Cover up everywhere, all right?’
The cops told Trevor they’d be back.
‘You can’t do this, mate. You’ve got to get a permit.’
Later, Trevor sat on his couch and kicked off his boots. He turned on his television. He showered as usual, poured shampoo on his hand and rubbed it through his hair.
From where they’d gathered in Foster’s lounge room, his neighbours watched The Trevor Show. Simon closed the blinds.
‘So. Cops did nothing.’
Simon sat at the table with the others.
‘We’ve got to do something.’
He pointed at Izobel’s two pyjamed boys watching Who Wants to be a Millionaire? in the lounge.
‘They shouldn’t be exposed to this kind of thing. We’re not living in bloody Fitzroy.’
That got heads nodding. Samanya finished sipping her herbal tea.
‘Someone must speak to him,’ she said.
‘Not me, he’s nuts,’ Izobel laughed.
‘I’ll talk to him,’ Foster said, but Simon wouldn’t have it. ‘Forget it. I’ll do it.’
He offered Foster a plate of his own ch
ocolate biscuits, but Foster waved them away.
‘I’ll do it, Simon. I’ll talk to him. I live the closest.’ ‘Mate, we don’t know what he’ll do. I’ll handle it.’
Simon sat at his computer monitor, drinking mineral water. He still couldn’t find anything in any real estate document about dismantling houses. He went to his study window. He waited for Trevor Randall’s mini to pass but it didn’t.
‘Might be at the pub,’ he told the huge Darth Vader doll on his desk.
Simon decided to take a stroll to Trevor’s, just in case his neighbor had been off work sick. Which would be no surprise, given the cold.
He found a group of kids in Trevor’s house and wanted to shoo them out. Cheeky bastards; Trevor might be a nuff nuff but that’s no reason to invade a man’s privacy. When he got closer he saw the kids were riding skateboards and BMXs through an empty house.
There was nothing. No couches, beds, TVs or furniture to get in their way. Even the lounge and hall carpet was gone. And no Trevor Randall. The only thing left was the fern, hanging from the wood frame at the back beside a window with no glass in it.
Simon watched the kids. They did their tricks and cackled, slouched in corners and smoked. There were more kids than he’d ever seen in the neighbourhood. Might’ve been a gang. And the crazy thing about them was, apart from the rub of their bike tyres and the rattle of their skateboard wheels, they were quiet. Even, you’d have to say it, well behaved.
Simon heard Foster’s door open and he headed for home.
He could never say what it was that had made him get out of bed later that night. He thought he’d had a dream. But when he looked back, he wasn’t sure if he woke at all.
Simon’s father was still alive. Standing over him in the kitchen at their house in Corumbul. Simon had never left the breakfast table. He was a man, not a kid. But Ron’s yelling was still scaring him. He could smell his father. Fresh showered with a whiff of apple shampoo. Roaring and disappearing now into the bedroom wall of Simon’s Point Cook house until he was just a speck.
Simon put on his red dressing gown and black slippers. But he didn’t own any. He dragged himself to the front door. By the time he got to Trevor’s front lawn he was asking himself what the hell he was doing: it was bloody freezing! He wouldn’t have been surprised to see snow on the ground. There was a strange whiteness to the night. The moon, he thought, sprinkling lefto-vers for the sheep. But he couldn’t see the moon and there were no sheep. He was thinking of Corumbul. Acres of green hills. He wished he’d never left. And that he’d never fought with his brother in his driveway and never left his wife. He wanted to collapse on the lawn in sadness, but he kept on. He crept around Trevor’s empty house. The gang of kids was gone, but there were three caps, a large, a medium and a small, lying on the concrete. They made him smile then cry. Over and over, his mouth going up and down. He couldn’t stop it.
Upstairs, all his neighbours were in Trevor’s bedroom. Everyone nodding at each other and talking about the cold. No one asked anyone else what they were doing there. Foster swung Trevor’s fern back and forward like a metronome. They all watched it tick. Then they turned and looked at hundreds of shapes in the paddock across the highway.
‘House frames?’ Simon asked, but Foster shook his head. Simon looked closer and shivered like a baby in a cold bath. There were skeletons with faces out there.
All of them Ron’s.
‘Don’t worry son,’ he heard his father say. But it didn’t do any good. Simon shivered until his skin fell from his bones.
18. Sheree Stevenson
She is sparkling in her ruin. She is a dirty diamond. She’s the dirt floor in the kitchen of her family’s Wimmera farmhouse. They grew up there, she and Ron and Stan and Ken. For a while. Until the orphanages.
She’s a baked custard tart, then and now, that’s been stepped on. She still tastes good.
Don’t imagine any different!
What the rest of them don’t know won’t hurt them. And they don’t know how to be anything. So it doesn’t matter what they think, does it?
Not really.
But she knows her redeemer lives. The handsome bloke looked her in the eye. Someone big and bright looked at her. She’s not the same. Something hovered then lit up in her. Dead or gone or alive or here.
She was a bit different.
She can say that. She can say what she wants now.
They’re praying for her and bringing her casseroles. All the church people. Good souls. One wearing a long, white dress. Washing Sheree’s dishes. She can see her from the lounge. The woman with the dishes has got everything but the halo.
The woman in the white dress.
Sheree’s dress is driving her crazy. She wants to fling it up and run round the lounge with it over her head. Like a halo, that’d be funny!
She loves casserole.
And look, out the lounge room window: her nephews. The sweet little things. The three of them on the swing she made. Those cotton shorts they’re wearing, the scoops in the sides. And their hair, cut straight across.
Ron took Peter to the barber. The boy told her. Ron scared the poor little soul! He put a plastic ear in his hand and said, ‘It’s mine! The barber missed my hair and cut me instead!’
The barber in his white apron that glowed blue from the sterilizer.
He cut off Ron’s ear! Snip, just like that.
No, he didn’t.
But Ron’s got ears, hasn’t he? He’s got ears to hear. Ha, ha, ha.
Who’s the mad one? Cross your heart and hope you died.
She knows her redeemer lives. There’s a puddle of blood someone left behind on the kitchen floor, shaped like a flower.
It’s not Ron’s fault, really. He couldn’t speak when he needed to. Say what he needed to say to be a man.
You’re just a bunch of silly women, he’d say.
But he couldn’t be a man like Sheree’s a woman.
One thing or another. Here or there, up or down, alive or dead.
Her little nephews. Swing, swing, back and forth. Now Peter’s on the see-saw, by himself, up and down, lifting it with his legs, up and down.
Is he crying?
See-saw, Marjorie Door. That’s it, isn’t it? That’s what you say, that’s what you sing?
Sheree’s dancing under her bed covers. Grey blankets. Nurses watching. White uniforms. No casseroles. Where’s her beanbag? Where is the woman doing her dishes? Where’s Jules? Come here, someone. The tie-dye angel in the morning light is freezing.
She can’t stop dancing. Or the flowers from becoming her skin. Oh, the sweet music of voices that must be planets and stars humming the news of the universe being born. She knows her redeemer lives. Someone lives. Someone nearby. Red and green lights.
And all that stink and crying.
All the urine running down the sides of the mountain. Or was that the Promised Land, gone off like stale milk? She doesn’t know, but something keeps her, and keeps her safe.
There’s Ron. On a see-saw, Marjorie Door, the cat’s got his tongue. Up and down, round and round he goes. Little Ronnie. His father’s son.
There are no play things where they live with the dirt floor and the custard tarts, but Ron’s on a see-saw. At the farm at Laharum. Sheree’s in the kitchen. Where she always was. Sitting in her highchair. She’s never left. And there’s Ron, sitting in his chair at the kitchen table. Like he always did. He’s not moving and Sheree can smell him.
Her brother.
How old is he, seven? He’s pissed his pants.
He’s sitting in his chair. He can’t move.
He never has. He’s always sat there, his whole life.
But he’s outside on the see-saw. Up, down, turn around, Marjorie door, and the dish ran away with the spoons. And the knives. And Ron and Sheree’s father.
The floor’s dirt. But there’s no custard tart, just cabbage all over the kitchen. And blood. In Sheree’s hair and on Ron’s face. It came pelting out of
the bowl when their mother flew across the table. Cabbage and blood.
A baby emu came in the house once. They can’t fly.
They had a baby emu, but they never had a see-saw. She’s as sure of that as she is that her redeemer lives. Sheree’s eyes have seen the glory of the Big Daddy O and he’s coming down with a grin and a tongue made of swords and fists made of fire. And he loves her. Shut up, he does.
She is the dust in her own eye. She is the mountain that has pulled itself out of the sea. She is the snake eating itself inside an apple. She is the rainbow that’s had its colours spat onto her skirt. She is the living God’s cousin, nephew and niece.
She is Ron’s sister. Sister Sheree? Get her to a nunnery? Get her to an asylum!?
He can’t hear her, can he? He doesn’t even know where tomorrow or Sheree is. She could laugh all night now that it’s day and he doesn’t know where the screaming’s coming from.
But don’t worry. She’ll put in a good word for Ron. She can see the truth. And the truth has fangs.
Ron put her here. But she’s not anymore. She was there, in Tonvale, but she never, ever was.
They played tennis against the back wall while their father roared at their mother. Their father’s voice sizzled and spat, but that was the barbecue, wasn’t it? Their father said he was sorry? Sheree can’t see the sun anymore; it’s so bright here. So many lights, so much buzzing.
Look at the table, their mum lying on it: her nose bleeding, her face disappearing. The blood on her, the blood on Ron and Sheree. Their father’s fist, flying; free of the house, free of his children. Their father, running down the dirt road, trees bend-ing to watch; they’re screaming, he’s screaming; he’s killed his wife.
He’s killed her, Ron.
He didn’t mean it. But he did.
She didn’t mean to go.
They can’t bring her round. There was no ambulance. The neighbours can’t bring her round, Ron. She’s gone.
We. Are. Family. Page 19
