And Juni’s mum – she cried a lot. She always acted like she wasn’t crying, or maybe that’s just how she cried. Juni had told him her mum was worried. ‘Why’s she worried?’ he’d asked. ‘I don’t know how to say it,’ she’d said. But Juni didn’t seem worried or even optimistic. She just seemed like Juni. Like him. So they played.
It was like no one wanted to wake his mum up, which didn’t make sense to Orion. Shouldn’t they talk really loudly? One day he screamed, ‘Wake up!’ but she didn’t. Very Viv picked him up and rocked him side to side and told him she was hungry. They got a chocolate bar from the machine by the lifts so at least there was that.
Today Juni was there, sitting on her knees on the blue chair, looking out the window. She was six, older than Orion, but not by much because his birthday was soon and then he’d be five. He was so glad she was in his mum’s room. He went straight past his mum and tapped on Juni’s shoulder. ‘Remember at your birthday when your dad was roaring and we were yelling so loud and running away?’
Juni turned her head and smiled at Orion. They stared at each other. Smiling.
‘He’s always roaring, isn’t he?’ Juni’s mum scooped him up for a hello cuddle. ‘How you going, Ry?’
‘Hi, Neddy.’ Orion felt a little embarrassed and squirmed down to the ground. He sat next to Juni and looked out the window with her. He pointed to a delivery truck and followed it with his finger. It was going to drive until it reached the ocean. Then it was going to keep driving till it reached America, where Grandma Pearl lived. They say he met her once but Orion couldn’t remember. He talked to her on the phone almost every week. His finger followed the truck until he couldn’t see it anymore, then he said, ‘Ahhh, I’m gone now. I’m gone into the ocean. I tried to drive to America but I fell in the ocean. Ahhh, I’m drowning. Help, I’m dying.’
‘My mum says your mum might die.’
‘Juniper!’ Neddy squatted down and grabbed her daughter’s hand. ‘Jean might wake up at any time, love. Anytime.’ She looked from her daughter to Orion, then she grabbed onto the boy’s hand. ‘We just have to be patient.’
Orion wondered if ‘patient’ meant ‘optimistic’ and if they were both ‘worried’ and what did Juni know about dying because she looked a little bit confused and maybe even scared, as if she’d heard thunder and was waiting for the lightning but it was nowhere to be seen in his mum’s hospital room. Orion looked at his mum, as if the answers to all of his questions were right there with her, beneath the covers, in the tubes, behind her closed eyes. He looked hard but she kept sleeping.
At first Orion liked going to hospital because of the vending machine and the cafeteria and the elevators and all of the corridors. He liked how the doctors looked like they were wearing pyjamas and the patients looked like they were wearing bathrobes. But he was used to it all now; it was nothing new, nothing exciting, and so he became angry when his dad or nan said they were going to the hospital. ‘It’s boring,’ he’d say; ‘I hate it there,’ he’d say; ‘I don’t want to go,’ he’d say. As soon as his foot came down, someone would lift him up and cuddle him into his car seat so there was not much he could do. He’d be angry as the car left the garage, knowing that he held the truth inside him: going to hospital was not as much fun as having his mum at home. He’d be angry driving past the houses he knew, the park he knew, the Woolworths he knew. He’d be angry until he didn’t know where he was anymore and then he’d forget that he was angry.
At the playground near the hospital, Orion was having fun. There was a strong breeze blowing through the park and ducks were everywhere. There was a plastic bridge and into the plastic fort with the round window he went, followed by Juni. And they’d made another friend: a boy with a patch over his eye. Together the three of them took turns being a monster. Orion imagined he was big and green. ‘Help, he’s going to get me!’ they squealed until they’d trip over their own feet and maybe cry, just a bit, then get up and have a go at being the monster. Orion felt like Juni’s dad, roaring and trying to get the children so he could eat them or steal them or kill them. Yes, he was supposed to kill them because that’s what monsters did. When the boy with the patch over his eye caught Orion, Orion fell and pretended the monster had killed him. He pretended he was dead. Juni and the boy kept running until they realised Orion wasn’t getting up, then walked over to him and said, ‘Get up!’ When they became bored with Orion’s still body and started to walk away, Orion got up and said, ‘I’m not dead. I was just sleeping!’ and started chasing them again, roaring like Juni’s dad, big and green.
When he saw that his dad had shown up and was talking to his nan, he was happy to see him, but he didn’t want to stop the game to say hello. Still, when his dad waved him over, Orion stopped. But surely stopping and looking were enough and he didn’t really have to go to him, did he? And then Orion realised he was really puffed out. He felt his face burning red and his hair sticking to his forehead. He could go to his dad.
‘Let’s go back and see Mum together before we go home.’
‘See ya,’ he told Juni. ‘See ya,’ he told the boy with the eye patch. Then he took his dad’s hand and together they left the playground. They crossed the road with all the other people and went through the big glass doors. They turned this corner and they turned that corner, got into the lift where his dad said, ‘Do you want to press the button?’ and Orion said, ‘No.’ When they got out of the lift, they turned this way and that way until they reached his mum’s room where she was still sleeping, lost under all those covers, and his dad lifted him on top of his mum’s bed and his dad had one hand on Orion’s back while the other held onto his mum’s hand and they did not try to wake her up.
On the way home neither father nor son could stop yawning.
‘Dad! You’re making me yawn!’ Orion knew that yawns were ‘contagious’. His mother had told him once and he’d never forgotten. Orion didn’t want to yawn because he didn’t want to be tired. It was still daytime and there was so much more to do. But he couldn’t help it. And when he yawned, his dad yawned back.
‘Sorry, mate. I didn’t even know I was yawning.’
Orion watched the buildings go by, looked at the signs and tried to say the letters in his head, but they passed too fast. ‘What’s that say?’
‘What’s what say?’
‘That.’
‘What?’
But it disappeared before Orion could work out how to explain the flashing pink sign with the lady’s legs. It was never any use. The car always went too fast for him to move from one letter to the next; so, rather than answering his dad, he imagined they were on a conveyor belt, like at the airport or the grocery store, or even like the escalator at the shopping centre. He felt the rumble of the belt in his tummy, and even his toes vibrated. He imagined people walking on the footpaths looking at him in his dad’s car because wasn’t he special to be on the only car-conveyor belt in all of Adelaide – goodness, he must have done something right. He waved at everyone, feeling quite chuffed with himself, but then he had a horrible thought: what would happen to him if he was too busy waving at the people and his dad was too busy yawning, maybe even sleeping, to notice that they’d got to the end of the conveyor belt and forgotten to hop off? Orion heard the sounds of the belt getting louder. ‘Jump,’ he said, barely audible over the car radio. ‘If you don’t jump, you’ll get caught in the crack and get smashed underground and you’ll die.’
‘What’d you say back there?’
Orion straightened up. ‘Can we get fish and chips for dinner tonight?’
‘You betcha.’
Orion looked at the signs and said, ‘Can we get pizza?’ when they passed a pizza shop and, ‘Can we get Hungry Jack’s?’ when they passed that and, getting lost in the pictures of the passing signs, he’d forgotten about the fish and chips his dad had promised him and he’d forgotten that he’d almost died. Then there was the Wool
worths he knew and the park he knew and all the houses he knew, and then there was his house. It looked the same but it wasn’t.
They ate fish and chips in front of the telly, watching a DVD Orion had seen almost a dozen times. No matter how many times he watched it, he still laughed when the dog danced. Nothing funnier than a dancing dog.
His own dog was sleeping on the kiddie-couch his mum had bought just before she’d gone to hospital. It was meant to be Orion’s couch. It had spaceships on it and Orion thought it was really cool because it was just his size. He’d given his mum a great big hug to say thank you and she’d hugged him tightly, as she always did, but Digger had made it clear that the little couch was his new napping spot. He began napping there in the daytime and at night, but not all night because Orion always woke up with Digger on his bed in the morning. Orion went over to the kiddie-couch and patted his dog to let him know he loved him. When he looked up at his dad to share a smile about how cute Digger was sleeping on the kiddie-couch and being petted by Orion, he noticed his dad had fallen asleep too. He hadn’t been able to stay awake to watch the whole DVD; he hadn’t even finished his glass of beer, which sat next to the greasy paper where their dinner had been. There were crumpled napkins on the lounge room table and an empty glass of milk next to a half-full carton of milk. His mum was at hospital, probably still sleeping, and wouldn’t be coming home to clean up their mess. ‘Wake up!’ Orion yelled. Digger jumped, and his father woke up to put him to bed.
Once Orion was in his bed – which wasn’t as high as his mum’s new bed but was much wider – he felt the all-over ache of his body. He was tired. He was sad. He was scared. He knew what all of those words meant. He knew because he felt them.
He hated the dark. He thought daytime was all right because pictures needed drawing, anthills needed flattening, swings needed swinging, clothes needed dirtying, juice needed drinking, Lego planes needed crashing, cartoons needed watching, scooters needed riding and cubby houses needed climbing. In the daytime his energy was as wide as his imagination was far, and though he ‘died’ many times a day in his mind, he was really too busy to think about what it actually meant. But at night, when darkness covered the cluttered order of his room so that primary colours turned to grey and shapes no longer had perfect edges and there was something so strange about Very Viv’s racing stripes that he tried not to let his eyes follow them around his room, Orion’s energy would leave his body and he’d beg his imagination to take over so he wouldn’t have to think about what ‘dying’ really meant. If his mum died, what would they do with her? What would her eyes look like if the doctors opened them then? Would she even have eyes anymore? He begged his imagination, begged it to take over until he forced himself to see aliens drowning in soupy rivers, children turning into cookies, screaming not to get eaten. He saw trees falling on people, monsters catching him, and he wondered if the hospital really did catch fire, would his mum finally wake up? He squinted his eyes to wipe away the image of his mum burning, but he couldn’t. These were awful things to imagine, awful thoughts to have, so he went back to thinking about ‘dying’ and, because he did not know what it meant, he thought about what it might feel like, and he decided it might feel something like the dark.
Memory Is Inside Us
What defines us? Is it our history? Where we come from? What we do for money? Who we love and how we love them? Charley was sure, no matter what it was, he was shit out of luck. Abuse, crime, prison, abandonment – what did he amount to? What had he to offer?
Bricklaying wasn’t such bad work and reading gave him reason to be proud, but who could love a man like him? Still, he kept trying. Dark bars with desperate smokers at pokie machines usually drew him in when he was feeling lonely, but this was the city’s own Crown & Sceptre Hotel. People like him didn’t sit on these stools and drink these whiskies and there sure as hell wasn’t a pokie machine in sight. No way was he going to find a female companion here, but he would find Mike – a young guy he worked with in the daytime who bartended at night, gave Charley a few on the house, joked with him and listened. He held a special place in Charley’s life because he was such a bartender, second on a short list of two.
The first was Jimbo, up in Elizabeth, the worst time of Charley’s life. Most would think his time in prison would top the list, but at least he’d been deep into self-improvement then. In Elizabeth he’d just been a thug.
He used to frequent the pub where Jimbo worked every couple of weeks when he wanted a break from the boys. The bikie life was intense and Charley wondered more than twice why the hell he was living it. Jimbo never told him it wasn’t any good. Jimbo listened and asked him questions – not the kind that had incriminating answers, but the kind that kept Charley talking. And Charley had never been a talker, so if someone made him want to talk that someone became a regular. Jimbo and his dingy pub were Charley’s first ‘regulars’.
‘Check it out.’ Mike grabbed the remote and turned up the volume of the Channel Seven News. There was the scene. The gnarled bicycle. The coppers and their narrowed eyes and the rain dripping from the rims of their hats. ‘You’re clear, mate. They’re not charging you.’ Big smile from Mike.
Was there no way to keep distance from this ruin? After the stress of the interrogation and investigation, all Charley wanted was to settle into a quiet, however sombre, celebratory drink. He’d planned on telling Mike in his own good time but fucking TV got in the way. Ruined the taste of the whisky too. Charley nodded. Mike topped up his glass.
‘There’s a reason I don’t own a television, mate.’
‘Yeah, because you like to read all those books.’
‘It’s because of all this bullshit hype, eh. People get off on tragedy. Used to be in the olden days, they’d go watch some Shakespeare. Now they just turn on the bloody news.’
‘You saying you’re Romeo?’
‘Romeo wasn’t tragic, mate. He was a fool.’
‘So who are you then?’
‘Charley.’
He was a tragic, all right. Once he composed a three-line poem that read:
Memory does not walk behind us
or next to us or in front of us.
It is inside us.
But he never wrote it down. This is the memory he was referring to:
Two weeks after Runt’s funeral, he was at Jimbo’s pub in Elizabeth, all hard on the outside in his leather and rings, all goo on the inside, hoping tonight was the night he’d fall in love and it would change his life forever. Sometimes he wanted out. Sometimes he wanted a woman who could heal him, not just suck his cock. He was, at heart, a romantic.
A scrawny guy in an old grey suit that was way too big came into the pub with a canvas bag slung over one arm and a little kid under the other. He held the kid like a football. The kid wasn’t making any noise, not laughing like they were mucking about or crying like he wanted down. The guy scanned the room like he was looking for someone or something. He wasn’t right. The kid must’ve been only four or five and not a day’d gone by that Charley hadn’t wondered what the guy was thinking in the middle of that dingy pub.
Eventually the guy put the kid down and touched the top of his four- or five-year-old head and didn’t even look at him or say anything to him. Just left.
Charley yelled to Jimbo to get the kid a lemonade and said he’d be right back. Had some business to take care of.
The guy was sitting in a blue Holden, yelling at himself, when Charley knocked on the window. He jumped. His eyes were bulging and he licked his finger like he was doing lines. How sweaty he looked. How pathetic he was. Charley hated him straightaway.
He opened the door and asked the guy what he was doing dumping a little boy at a pub and the guy said, ‘He’s not mine, he’s not working out.’ The guy went to close the door, but Charley caught it and held it open. ‘You right, mate?’ He hated him. He felt the hate rushing through him in a way he never h
ad before. It was that easy to hate a man. That easy.
The guy reached for the car door and said he had to go. Too right the fucker had to go, but Charley said, ‘And leave that kid in a pub?’ He asked him where the kid belonged and the guy said, ‘With you, he’s all yours. Have fun with him.’ Have fun with him?
Again the guy tried to close the door, but Charley held it open, asking him if he’d hurt the kid, but he knew the answer already.
The guy shook his head no but said yes. Charley will never forget how wimpy he was. How small and insignificant. He pulled the guy out of his car and held him by his shoulders; it was just so simple. He punched him. A lot. He punched him over and over and the guy’s face swelled up and turned all sorts of colours and his eyes rolled up into his head and his head rolled about because Charley was smashing the life out of him, so of course he pleaded guilty at the courthouse and didn’t want to fight the rap; Charley had been completely in control.
(Once he’d composed a letter to Lisa in his head that read: This is what I find hard to understand – I committed a crime that I was in control of and I’m not ashamed. But when someone committed a crime against me which was out of my control, I was ashamed. I am ashamed. How is this fair? But he never translated it to paper.)
‘Yeah, well, this one’s on me.’ Mike put a shot glass of whisky before Charley – the top-shelf stuff, the kind Charley would never spend his money on – and poured one for himself. ‘To fools.’
Charley looked at him straight-faced with the glass in his hand, wondering what cheersing to such a thing might mean. A corner of his mouth turned up and he knew he couldn’t hide his smile. He shook his head and raised his glass because, yes, it was good to be cleared of any charges and, yes, it was good to have a mate who wanted to help him celebrate and, yes, it was better to be a fool than a tragic.
Jean Harley Was Here Page 5
