This Excellent Machine

by Stephen Orr

  This pattern had repeated for three years, most recently stopped (Mum had told me) when Anne had discovered cartons of cigarettes in the cubby house. She’d placed them in a shopping bag, driven to the police station and asked them to pick him up at school, so she didn’t have to go through it again. Or Gary; Curtis; the rest of Lanark Avenue, with its tolling bell.

  Again, court, McNally’s, this time for six months, with the threat from the judge that next time it’d be adult prison.

  ‘Your mum’s done her best,’ I said.

  ‘Who gives a shit? The sooner he’s gone … I want him to steal. I’ll dob him in, then I’ll get another six months of peace.’

  This didn’t seem unreasonable. Anne had tried, but wouldn’t turn on him again, I guessed. Gary had given up years ago. But, it seemed to me, and Pop, that at some point someone would have to deal with him.

  Curtis kept describing what he was seeing: a black bra that was dirty, dirty. ‘I should try.’

  ‘Bullshit.’

  ‘L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle. The love that moves the sun and stars.’

  ‘Hello?’ Ron’s voice, from the road.

  Curtis shot back behind the curtains. ‘He’s seen us.’

  Ron: ‘That you, Mr Whelan?’

  ‘Ssh!’ Curtis said, slowly dragging the telescope away from the window.

  ‘And that device of yours?’

  I glared at Curtis. ‘He saw you?’

  ‘The breeze blew the curtain.’

  We listened. Silence. Maybe he’d gone back in to the call the police? Or maybe he didn’t care. Maybe he was finishing the job.

  ‘Have a look,’ I said.

  Curtis moved sideways, glanced. ‘Safe.’

  We looked out. Ron Glasson looked in. ‘That you in there, Clem?’

  Steps, along the path, on the porch, and a knock on the door. ‘Fuck,’ I said.

  The girl was standing, watching, her arms crossed, her car seats half-fitted. I strained to hear Mum and Mr Glasson talking at the front door. ‘Wasn’t me,’ I said to my supposed friend.

  Then they were at my door. Mum and the man who’d never stepped foot in our house, our garden, our lives.

  ‘Well, what have you got to say for yourself?’ Mum asked.

  I waited for Curtis to confess—black bra, latches, popping out, the love that moves the sun. I had to think on my feet. I’d seen where dobbing got you: the mound, a disaffected son, broken antennas and a life of misery. There was only one thing to do. ‘I was just showing Curtis how it worked.’

  ‘You were bloody not,’ this stranger said. Never more than a quick wave, and G’day, and now here in the land of my most intimate apparel, and moments. He stepped forward, grabbed my telescope, folded the legs and placed it under his arm. ‘I see you, lookin’ at people all the time. It’s got to the point I can’t step out the front of me house without wondering if my fly’s done up.’

  Mum glared at me. No words, but I could see she was saving them.

  ‘Man deserves a bita privacy, doesn’t he, Mr Whelan?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Glasson.’ I waited for Curtis. He was studying the carpet.

  ‘What would your dad say?’

  ‘What’s that got to do with it?’

  He shook his head. ‘You’ll get this back when I’m sure you won’t …’ He leaned over to the window. ‘Coming, Mrs Hill.’ Then stormed from the room, the house, number 31.

  Mum said, ‘Happy?’

  ‘What’s Dad got to do with it?’

  ‘I warned you.’

  Curtis stood, smiled at Mum and said, ‘I better get going.’

  Of course, I thought, you bastard.

  He scurried from the room, strolled past the girl, and lingered, and I thought, You’ve gotta be kidding.

  Mum said, ‘He coulda called the police.’

  ‘It was him.’ I indicated the figure talking to the girl. ‘He was looking at her.’

  ‘Rubbish.’

  ‘How did Ron see? Look, the sun’s in his eyes.’

  She wasn’t going to concede. ‘What’s it matter? It’s usually you. I can’t believe … I warned you, now everyone in the street will know.’

  Then she was gone. My telescope. Curtis. Mr Glasson.

  So, the world had asked for it. I found my notebook under the bed and opened to a new page.

  14/iii/84. The Fantastic Four were no more. Mr Fantastic vowed to make new friends. The Invisible Woman had accused him of horrible crimes. What did she know? He’d been burned, again, by the Human Torch, and decided enough was enough. Even the Thing had deserted him. He rose from his bed, pulled on his zoot-suit, took his guitar and flew from the room. The evil Glasson was holding the girl hostage …

  ‘Been havin’ a perve?’ Jen asked, standing in the doorway.

  ‘Fuck off!’

  ‘Clem!’ Mum called from the lounge room.

  ‘You’re old enough to buy a magazine,’ she said, smiling, and I threw a book at her.

  The girl got her covers and drove off. Mr Glasson went home. Curtis called. ‘Sorry.’

  Half an hour later there was a knock, more voices, then Mum at the door with my telescope. ‘Don’t know if I should give it to you.’

  ‘Was that him?’

  ‘Hester. And she gave you this.’

  She dropped the telescope, and a map of something, on my bed.

  I looked.

  Map of the Constellations: Summer.

  Sleepy Gold Coast days, high socks, sandshoes and a walk to Southport for milk and news. Meter maids, too, in Hills Hoist bikinis. All so strange, as I read, in my shed, in Gleneagles. Apparently they walked around, finding expired meters, feeding them. ‘What do you think of that?’ I asked Pop, showing him a picture of the sisters-at-work.

  He glanced up from under Mr Harper’s bonnet, shook his head and continued preparing for the re-assembly.

  ‘You ever been to the Gold Coast?’ I asked.

  ‘Who’d wanna go there?’

  ‘It says it only rains a coupla days a year.’

  He was filing an engine mount, removing rough edges. ‘People can get it too easy.’

  I knew what he meant. You had to struggle: cold weather, rain, bills, a dodgy brain. ‘Says here: the Smiths are studying chemical engineering … as if.’

  ‘Where d’you find that?’

  ‘In the pouffe.’

  ‘What a loada rot. Put it in the bin.’

  He descended, greasing mounts and cleaning transmission lines. I studied the Smiths: same height, boobs, tummies (as I imagined the grimiest, leather-studded ecstasy imaginable) and cloaks with sequins. ‘You’d go soft in the head, wouldn’t you, Pop?’

  ‘Shoot me if I ever play bowls, Clem.’

  This was one of his mantras. Bowls, apparently, meant you’d given up on life.

  ‘Anyway, you wanna chuck those old magazines. Nan doesn’t need them anymore.’

  Strange he’d mention her. It’d been ten years and the person, I suppose, had been replaced with the idea. ‘She used to love the Post, eh?’

  ‘For some unknown reason.’

  The crosswords, mostly (this one finished, complete with question marks and copperplate notes). Stories about Perth plumbers rowing around Australia; one-armed kids winning soccer grand finals; Noelene Brown moving from screen to stage. And the story of eighty-seven-year-old dementia patient Costa Poglou, who’d gone missing from his nursing home, and the police and SES and a whole neighbourhood had searched for him for two days. But it was all right, the article explained, because people with dementia did remember. Costa had walked seventeen kilometres, a dozen suburbs, over main roads, through shopping centres (the CCTV proved it), paddocks, drainage ditches, to the spot he and his wife had built their first home. Now, it was gone, replaced by townhouses. But he’d made it, stood in what had been his veggie patch, and the man who lived there now (an accountant with two gleaming boys) had asked, Can I help you? And he’d said, My house? Where’s my hous
e? And the accountant had realised, and tried to show him around (as best he could) before taking him inside for a cuppa, and calling the police.

  So maybe it was all in Pop’s head. Every clue; every answer. I recognised his writing and said, ‘Seventeen down: She married the Sentimental Bloke.’

  ‘Doreen … Christ, get rid of it.’

  Every week Nan’d send me or Jen to Don’s with a handful of twenty cent pieces. Enough for the Australasian Post and fifty cents’ mixed lollies—no teeth.

  ‘You should keep them as a reminder,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t tell me what I should do.’ As he kept spraying lubricant.

  Sorry. Although you couldn’t say it.

  ‘I can remember everything I want. And if the rest’s gone … so what?’

  What he chose to remember. What he could remember. The photos we still had of him and Nan and Mum and me and Jen at a picnic, a rug and a thermos of tea, sandwiches. That’s the sort of thing you had to remember.

  So maybe I could keep the Post. Maybe, in a decade, it’d tell me things he couldn’t. The bits he’d kept in a box, and tried to forget. Nan getting in the car, but him not seeing her, even out the corner of his eye. Clutch, reverse, handbrake off, and back he went—Nan thrown out, but the door slammed shut by a post, and by the time he’d heard, and braked, she’d hit her head on another post, and was unconscious, hanging with one leg half-in, half-out, bleeding from the nose.

  I kept reading. ‘This musta been one of the last she read.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’

  Wouldn’t you think to ask? Do you remember yer nan, Clem? Can you see her when you close your eyes? Do you want me to talk about her, remind you how she helped you with your homework (little letters copied like the teacher drew them); walked you to school, and back; patted you to sleep when you were a bub, when your mum was tired, and there was no one else around to help (except Val, but she knew when to say when)?

  ‘Righto, let’s go.’ He stood, approached the hoist and wheeled the engine towards the car. ‘Come on, then.’

  I stood on the other side, holding the block steady while he positioned it.

  ‘You remember the sequence?’ he said.

  ‘Sorta.’

  He’d done it without a manual; insisted he remembered everything: crankshaft, transmission, electrics. ‘Righto.’

  You had to trust yourself. If you started writing everything down your brain would become less elastic. If it worked out you didn’t need it, it’d stop performing. So, he started pulling on the chains on the hoist. The block lifted.

  ‘Is that right?’ I asked.

  He stopped, fiddled with them, tried to work it out. ‘This one down … like this, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yeah, that one, Pop.’

  He tried again. It lowered.

  I said, ‘Stop.’

  And I turned the block, so it might fit. ‘None of these bolts line up.’

  He seemed unsure. ‘So we’re ready?’

  ‘Go on.’

  He pulled the chain again, and the block lowered. Down, until it approached the bolts. Then he stopped again. ‘This isn’t right, is it?’

  ‘Nearly there.’

  He studied the coming-together, then bit his lip. ‘You reckon?’

  It was simple. We’d done it a dozen times before. There were holes, and they’d align, and we’d bolt them, and then connect the parts that’d eventually make Mr Parker’s car run again.

  ‘Righto.’ He pulled the chain but the block was unbalanced and the left side dropped before the right. It fell heavy and wrong and scraped against the engine well so that it was pressing down on the side of the car. He stood back and said, ‘Fuck!’

  I came around. The engine had pushed out a body panel. There was no more tension in the chain, so he pulled it through. ‘What a mess.’

  ‘We’ve gotta lift it.’

  ‘Explain that to him.’ Indicating the damage. ‘Forty years … never done that.’

  ‘We gotta put it back, attach it.’

  He walked from the shed, across the yard, towards the house. Mum was hanging washing on the line. ‘What’s wrong, Dad?’

  He went in.

  Following, I said, ‘The engine dropped.’

  ‘For goodness sake.’ We found him filling the pot with tea. ‘What’s wrong, Dad?’

  ‘I’m givin’ it away.’

  Mum said, ‘Cos you hada bita trouble?’

  ‘Go look what I done. Used to do that blindfolded.’ He lit the stove, filled the kettle and placed it on the ring. Out of sequence. He always boiled the water first.

  ‘Come on,’ Mum said, ‘Clem’ll help you fix it.’

  ‘Enough!’ he said.

  Jen, standing in the doorway. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Mind yer own business!’

  Mid-term, and my first essay was due. I scribbled a few hundred words about the Russian Revolution before stopping to listen to Lennon, in bed with his own uprising. Mum was always on at me to study, every minute, It’s an investment in your future—but I couldn’t see it. So many years of grind, long division and King Tut dead at fourteen. It was all in the past, and all I wanted was alcohol, sex with real women, money and freedom. Wait, just a bit more, but I didn’t believe it. More, stretching into my twenties, beyond, mortgage, babies, old age, forgetfulness and a shed with an abandoned Datsun. So life had to be lived now. But how? One thousand words: Outline the causes of the 1917 Revolution.

  Fuck.

  Ernie’s book had come in handy. I’d ploughed through it: sitting waiting for minimum chips. Don: Whatcher reading?

  The Communist Manifesto.

  Loada rubbish.

  How’s that? As I turned to the appropriate page and read about the proles rising against their capitalist oppressors. As Don scratched his arse, wiped his hands on his apron and shook my chips. Capital. You need capital, I explained. Then you can invest in a chain of fish shops and employ other people to work in them, and manage them, and you can retire.

  I’d read Marx on the toilet, in the car, waiting for Mum at the shops, during lunch (as Curtis made Twistie rolls), at home (as we watched That’s Incredible), forcing myself through the word sludge in search of meaning. In the same way I’d searched the Fantastic Four, Beatles’ lyrics, bird books, bus timetables, anything that might explain how the world worked. Manuals, newspapers, textbooks, IQ percentile rankings, The Guinness Book of Records, encyclopedias (V—Z, the leftover world from the alphabet of things). Maybe, when all of this brewed, stewed and boiled, there’d be a picture of the world that made sense.

  I’d even read it to Ernie, when I took it (heavily annotated) to ask questions. ‘So Marx is saying there have always been class divisions, and always will be?’

  ‘No, not always. He was saying it’s how we let people walk over us. We need to organise. That’s what you should say in your essay.’

  On the wall, a black-and-white photo of a 1969 Conference of Union Leaders: beer bellies and sideburns lined up in anticipation of a lost Russia.

  ‘Can I hold on to this a bit longer? It’s helpful with my essay.’

  ‘You can keep it. But the thing is, are these ideas living, or dead?’

  ‘Ernie!’ Ida, at the door. ‘He’s not interested.’

  ‘Yes, you are, eh, Clem?’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Sharpe. See.’ Showing her my underlinings.

  She just shook her head. ‘Well, you got your disciple at last.’

  Now I had something resembling an essay. I wondered if it was any good. There was only one way to tell. The Donnellan brothers were the best Lanark Avenue could muster. Two degrees, twelve years of university, cast in the weeds of number 33. Doctors of letters waiting for a right to wrong, a chance to show Val she hadn’t wasted a lot of time, money and faith. I went next door and found David in his spot. Showed him the essay and said, ‘Don’t know if this is any good.’

  He read a few lines, and seemed interested. ‘Histor
y?’

  ‘Modern European. Just wanna know what I should add.’

  His eyes followed the lines, but then dropped into the grass, through the plum foliage, down the street towards a man painting the Polish hall. Like he could, but couldn’t; knew, but didn’t have the energy or willpower. This, I supposed, was the worst thing of all. To know you no longer wanted to be, to fix, to raise and re-lower and bolt in; to realise the thing that used to churn in your belly had been shat into a garden of caltrop and soursobs. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Peter,’ he managed.

  Of course. The brother who’d become. Who’d taken over the family, but laid it to rest in the brick-clad collapse of pier and asbestos sheeting.

  ‘Righto,’ I said, reclaiming my essay.

  A few minutes later I was sitting with Peter at the kitchen table. He placed my essay on the melamine and read. ‘It needs an edit.’

  ‘Could you?’

  He found a red pen and started correcting. ‘You know, if we have a good go, I could get you an A.’

  ‘You reckon?’

  ‘Easy. You’ve thought it through, and there’s evidence. I always thought there was something stirring in the grey cells.’ He tapped my head. ‘Though it’s taken a while.’

  He corrected, and I watched David, searching up and down the road where nothing was happening. ‘Do you reckon he gets bored?’ I asked.

  ‘Here, look … needs a footnote. Sounds like you just made it up.’

  I checked. ‘I’ll add it later.’ But returned to David. ‘What about when he needs the toilet?’

  ‘Rings his bell.’

  I waited. ‘What’s it called?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘What he’s got.’

  ‘Muscular dystrophy.’

  ‘Is it bad yet?’

  He looked up. ‘Not yet. Next coupla years. Which worries Mum.’

  I’d overheard conversations between the mothers. The invocation of nursing homes, carers, nappies, machines, hospitals. Years of thinking and planning and avoiding doing anything, yet. Like the future would fix things. But my experience suggested the future just fucked things up.

  ‘So, like, when she’s gone?’ I dared. ‘What happens then?’