The Gulf

by Anna Spargo-Ryan

  Blrrt. ‘Get a move on.’ Blrrt. ‘Get a move on.’

  I tried to kiss Ben’s head but he ducked away.

  ‘I’ll meet you here after school, okay? Mum’s at work.’

  ‘Whatever. I can walk home on my own. Yiannis taught me how to make tear gas by keeping a pumpkin in an ice-cream container.’

  I read the Lady Macbeth parts from memory, imploring my husband to seek his rightful kingship, breaking down at the blood on my hands.

  ‘There’s no need to show off, Skye.’ Mr Pollock didn’t look up from his desk.

  Jessyka leaned across me. Her breath reeked of hot chips and something else I didn’t recognise, something earthy.

  ‘Hear your mum’s got a new fella,’ she said. Her eyes were bloodshot, black rings underneath.

  ‘So what?’ I said. Felt a little bile in my throat.

  ‘So Jeremy says he’s a pretty bad guy, you know. Saw him outside that house on Dyson Road with all the cars in the garden.’

  ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Just saying what I’m hearing. Get the sand out of your vagina.’ She smiled. Mr Pollock shushed us.

  It’d been a while since Mum had even had a boyfriend. Months, at least. For a while I thought she might have had more to do with the Adelmanns’ arguments than she let on, although his wife always said hello to me when I went to the mailbox. There had been a bloke with one leg, for a bit, and Mum had let him stay in her bedroom while she collected his pension. Harold? Gerald? There was Noakes, skin black as embers and who always spoke in a whisper, even at the dinner table: ‘How was your day, Noakes?’ and then tiny unutterances, even though his mouth always moved plenty. At Christmas, Paolo, who was at least twenty years older than Mum, bought us all gifts wrapped in silver paper, and took us to his mother’s house in the hills where we ate handmade ravioli with figs and chocolate. He was okay, Paolo. Rich, anyway. But Mum said she could hardly look at him, with the hair sprouting from a mole on his forehead.

  At lunchtime I swapped my Le Snak for a ham sandwich and took it behind the tuckshop to eat while I read. Some of the boys had a soccer ball and it bounced off the bricks again and again, a hollow and metallic sound. I watched their feet move. Picking the ball up with their ankles, tossing it into the air. Thud. Thud. It reverberated in the back of my skull.

  When Ben and I had been at the same school, I’d found him in the quadrangle and we’d eaten our sandwiches together. He showed me creatures he’d found: moths that shied away from the daylight; a fly with its wings cut off for fun. He and Yiannis would spread out their food like it was a picnic. Didn’t seem to notice when the other kids stared at them. Plucked ants straight from the ground and kept them in a little jar in Ben’s pocket.

  ‘It’s a colony,’ Ben had said. ‘We’re going to breed them to make an army.’

  I found an empty corner where the main buildings met, waited until Kirrily came to sit with me after her piano lesson.

  ‘What’s this they’re saying about your mum’s new boyfriend?’

  I picked the greasy bits out of my sandwich. ‘He’s not a new boyfriend. Just a guy.’

  ‘Jessyka says he’s living at your place.’

  ‘She’s lying.’

  ‘Fair enough.’ She tapped her fingers along the ground, an imaginary piano. ‘How was your Macbeth thing?’

  ‘Shithouse. Everyone else just read from the book. Pollock said I was showing off.’

  ‘Overachiever.’

  ‘Yeah. Maybe I was showing off.’

  We sat with our backs pressed against the bricks for a while. I listening to her breathing in and out, the pinched asthmatic squeak at the end.

  ‘Hey, Casey is having a party this weekend. You in?’

  ‘A party? Like, a party party?’

  ‘Yeah, Skye. A party party. With boys and everything.’

  ‘Am I invited?’

  ‘Everyone is invited.’

  ‘That doesn’t necessarily mean I’m invited. Are you invited?’

  ‘Everyone is invited.’

  ‘I’ll think about it.’

  ‘Dad can get us some beers. He said he would. I guess so I don’t drink someone else’s or get my drink spiked. Haylee got her drink spiked.’

  ‘Did she?’

  ‘They found her in the back of Lachie’s car. You know Lachie? That Year 11 guy?’

  All the Year 11 guys looked the same to me. ‘Black hair? Floppy fringe?’

  ‘Nah, Lachie has brown hair.’

  ‘Oh, I dunno then.’

  ‘She had to get her stomach pumped.’

  Kirrily’s dad was American, ex-Army. She told us he’d been on two tours to the Middle East in the eighties as part of Desert Storm, and he’d lost part of his foot when another soldier’s rifle went off in the tent. They sent him home but he was never the same. I didn’t really understand what ‘never the same’ meant. He’d met her Irish mother while they were both on respite in Vanuatu, and they’d moved to Adelaide in search of a new life, whatever that meant. A fresh start. So she said.

  ‘Dad gets pretty good beers, too. Coopers. Do you like Coopers?’

  ‘Don’t think I’ve ever had it.’

  ‘Well, I like it. You’ve got to roll it first to get the sediment mixed in.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Everyone knows.’

  ‘Oh.’

  We’d been to a couple of parties together. Mostly to laugh at the idiots getting drunk on cheap booze, we told ourselves, but we brought our own anyway. Kirrily had once got a hand in her t-shirt, and I’d hooked up with someone’s gross cousin. And there was the time I’d reached behind me for my drink and grabbed a random’s crotch instead. Some of my finest moments.

  The bell went.

  ‘Want to walk home with me?’ I said.

  ‘Can’t,’ she said. ‘Hockey practice. Dad’s picking me up.’ She put her arm around me. ‘We’ve got History last though. See you there.’

  My shoulder warmed under her hand.

  Jason sat on the couch, counting five-dollar notes into plastic bags in front of the afternoon news. The top of his head gleamed, sweaty and dirty.

  ‘You’re here. Again.’

  He looked at me. ‘School dresses always been that short?’ Corner of his mouth curled up.

  ‘Piss off.’

  ‘Careful when you bend over. Not everyone’s trustworthy like me.’

  ‘I’m sixteen.’

  He shrugged, pulled a bent cigarette from his top pocket and smoothed it between his fingers. ‘’Course you are. Sixteen-year-olds never shut up.’

  Mum walked in, bright and shiny in her bank uniform. Ben trailed behind, sunburnt around his eyes. His bag rattled as he dropped it. One of his experiments – a rocket, a bomb. An animal he found in a tree.

  ‘Why are you shouting? I could hear you in the car park.’ He leaned over the couch.

  ‘Jesus,’ Jason said. ‘Can’t get a bloody thing done in this place.’

  Mum pushed us towards the kitchen. ‘Give him some space.’

  ‘Maybe we could help him,’ I said. ‘If only we knew what it was he does, exactly. Crime lord? Train robber?’

  ‘He runs his own business,’ Ben said.

  ‘We were just talking about it,’ Mum said. ‘How I might work for him.’

  ‘You? But you work at the bank.’

  ‘He reckons I’d be an asset.’ Mum puffed herself out, like she’d won an award.

  ‘Because you know so much about diamond heists?’

  Jason rubbed his palm across his scalp. ‘It’s import–export.’

  Mum stuck her hand in her top and adjusted her boobs. ‘He reckons with my good connections, we could be raking it in in no time. That’s what he said: good connections.’ He came over to her and kissed her neck, her shoulder, her arm.

  Ben said, ‘Hey Jason, can I work in your business? Yiannis showed me how to make an abacus out of Coke bottle lids. Do you need an ab
acus? I reckon I’m pretty good at adding.’

  ‘Nah, mate.’

  Mum slipped her arm through Jason’s elbow. ‘Enough questions. You’ll get a job soon enough, Ben. When you’re fourteen.’ She slid past me. ‘Maybe get one for your sister while you’re at it.’

  Jason went home to Port Flinders for the weekend. Mum woke up on Saturday morning and sat at the kitchen table and when I left to go to Casey’s party that night, she was still sitting there with her face in her hands.

  ‘Are you going to be all right?’ I said.

  ‘Oh sure,’ she said. ‘Just lonely. Without the man I love.’

  I made a vomit sound. ‘You’ve known him for five seconds,’ I said.

  ‘One day you’ll understand. When you know, you just know.’ She picked up her phone and stared at it. ‘He’s probably out of range. He said he might be out of range.’

  ‘You should do something.’

  She stretched. ‘Maybe I’ll watch a movie.’

  ‘Outside, I mean.’

  ‘Don’t want to miss him if he calls.’

  ‘Your phone can go with you, Mum.’

  She put her fingers in her ears.

  Casey’s house was on the other side of the park, backing onto the canal. Kirrily and I walked together, her dad’s beers clinking in her handbag. ‘Three beers each,’ she said. ‘Or maybe four for me, two for you.’

  ‘Piss off.’

  It was already dark and the park was mostly empty. We stayed close together. My heart pounded in my ears.

  ‘It’s creepy here at night,’ I said.

  ‘Do you think? It’s the same as during the day, isn’t it? Just like, darker.’

  ‘Murderers can hide in the dark,’ I said.

  ‘Can’t be worse than that guy living at your place.’

  ‘He hasn’t even been with us for two weeks. Why is everyone so obsessed?’

  ‘You know Jessyka said she saw him outside the sex shop?’

  ‘No way.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Can we just get out of here?’ Water slapped at the concrete walls of the canal.

  Casey lived with her parents and big brother, but none of them were home that night. We stood at the door and stared at the doorbell. ‘Is it her birthday?’ I said, but Kirrily didn’t know.

  ‘Could be, I guess. You got a present?’

  ‘Like a little kids’ party? No, I haven’t got a present.’

  ‘Then I guess we’d better hope it’s not her birthday.’

  We stood and stood, staring at the doorbell. After a few minutes, a couple of older-looking guys came up behind us in a cloud of smoke.

  ‘You going in?’

  ‘Yeah, obviously,’ said Kirrily. ‘You can go first though.’

  Casey came to the door with Jessyka draped around her. We stood dumbly behind the guys, who pushed past the door and fist-bumped another guy in the stairwell. Casey peered out.

  ‘Kirrily?’

  ‘Here!’ she squeaked, and handed over one of her dad’s beers. ‘Happy birthday.’

  The party was shit. We perched in a corner of the living room on a half-rotten brown couch and watched people from our classes rub up against each other. The music was bad. The food was cold. I held my beer to my mouth, whistled a little tune over it. I’d ignored Kirrily and hadn’t rolled the sediment, and the flavour of piss was strong. I sipped at it, regretted it, but couldn’t put it down in case it was spiked. I thought of Haylee getting her stomach pumped.

  ‘Having a good time?’ Kirrily said.

  ‘Nope,’ I said.

  ‘Maybe we should go back to the park. Being murdered would be way more interesting than watching Lachie trying to slip roofies into unguarded drinks.’

  ‘Especially if we can find a murderer with a decent car. He could take us to Macca’s.’

  She put her arm around me, and my shoulder burned again. ‘KFC, even.’

  ‘Let’s not go crazy,’ I said, but the words scraped in my throat and I spat them across the couch.

  She was a bit drunk by then, two beers in. Her words washed around in her mouth and she chucked them out at random. We walked arm in arm back to the park, across to the playground where there were still those metal diggers from the nineties, and swings with chains.

  ‘Let’s go on the slippery dip,’ she said, laughing. She tripped on the stairs and planted her face in the plastic frame, but kept laughing. At the top of the slide she stretched out her arms and said, ‘I’m the king of the world!’ and slipped down the slide and into the dirt below.

  ‘Graceful,’ I said.

  ‘Go on, you have a go.’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘You’re drunk.’

  ‘You’re drunk.’ She reached for my hands and pulled me towards her. We sat in the dirt together. ‘Skye,’ she said. ‘You are my best friend.’ She took a swig of her beer. ‘Like, we’ve only known each other for a couple of years but I feel like I could tell you anything.’

  My ribs felt too big for my body. ‘Oh yeah?’

  ‘Anything. Go on, ask me something and I’ll tell you.’

  There were things I wanted to ask her. Questions I’d never used words for. She had this way of looking, like her eyes were too big for her face, like they wanted to break out and see every single thing there was to see, all the things they couldn’t see from the prison of the head they were in.

  ‘Skye. Ask me something.’

  My throat was tight.

  ‘That guy in the tunnel. What did he look like?’

  ‘Gross, Skye. Don’t ask me about that.’

  ‘I’m just wondering. You know, what it might be like to go out like that.’ She screwed up her face. ‘Do you think he did it –’

  ‘On purpose?’

  ‘Right, on purpose.’

  ‘Dad said he thought he probably did. He said people mostly don’t fall in front of trains by accident.’ She brought her face very close to mine. ‘Unless someone pushed him.’

  ‘Murderers.’

  She squealed and pulled herself closer to me. ‘I don’t really come to the playground anymore. What about you? Do you miss it?’

  ‘Nah, I bring Ben here all the time.’

  ‘But do you miss the times when you came here because you wanted to?’

  I shrugged. ‘Sometimes I still want to come here. Depends how good the company is.’

  Her head dropped onto my shoulder like a bag of shit. Passed out. Unconscious. She’d had two beers and she was paralytic. I waited there in the park with her, at the foot of the slippery dip in the dirt, keeping watch for murderers.

  3

  WHEN I WAS IN Year 2, Dad and I ate McDonald’s every month in a C-47 plane. It was concreted in behind the playground, fold-down tables just right for Happy Meals. Afterwards we watched the footy players file onto the oval and he told me about his failed career as a centre half-back, and his failed career as a second slip, and his failed career as a point guard.

  One time we reclined our seats and he said, ‘Let’s go to Fiji!’ and pointed out the window and then said, ‘Look at those people, like ants,’ but they were ants and we were still just cemented into the ground.

  The FOR SALE sign went up the next day. Ben and I stood in front of it on our way to the corner shop and I said, ‘What the hell?’ and then he fly-kicked it.

  ‘Spacious three-bedroom apartment,’ I read. ‘Spacious? Your room is the size of a cupboard.’

  ‘Your room doesn’t even have a proper door.’

  ‘Great views towards the hills. Refurbished kitchen.’

  Once, Mum had decided to paint the kitchen. She’d got some crackle-effect paint from someone at her work and she wanted to do the bench top in it. Spent a couple of hundred dollars on sponges and brushes, slapped the paint across the vinyl contact. ‘Just wait,’ she said. ‘In half an hour the cracks will show up. Paula showed me.’ We all stood and watched the bench tops for two hours. The paint dried.
No cracks appeared. ‘I’ll kill Paula,’ she said, and put all the paint in the bin. The landlord made her pay half the cost to have the bench top resprayed.

  Ben kicked the sign again. ‘This is so unfair.’

  ‘We’ve gotta tell Mum,’ I said.

  Mum came running from her bedroom in just a t-shirt. ‘Back already?’ she said. Her face was flushed and her hair stuck out at right angles.

  ‘You seen the sign?’ Ben said.

  ‘What sign?’

  ‘There’s a FOR SALE sign out the front.’ Mum didn’t say anything. ‘Did you hear me? The flat’s for sale.’

  ‘Yeah, I know.’

  Ben’s bag of trinkets dropped to the floor behind me. ‘You know?’

  She waved her hand in the air. ‘They sent me a letter last week. Don’t worry, Ben. Investors.’

  ‘Will we have to move?’ I said.

  ‘Nah. They said the new owners will let us stay here for sure.’

  ‘They better,’ said Ben.

  ‘Nick off though, seriously,’ Mum said. ‘Get some fresh air.’

  The corner store did pretty good hot chips. We bought the biggest size they had and drowned them in salt and vinegar. That road ended in a cul-de-sac and we took the food down a path that ran between the houses. It was quiet there, if you could block out the far-off drone of the main road.

  ‘Yiannis says if you eat too much vinegar, your stomach can dissolve.’

  ‘I don’t care.’ I shoved a few chips into my mouth at once. Last night’s beer still sat piss-soaked on my tongue.

  ‘Do you think they’ll really let us stay?’ He was drawing with a stick in the dirt.

  ‘I don’t know, Ben. I don’t know how this stuff works.’

  ‘I don’t want to go back to the old place. Can they make us go back there?’

  Right after Dad disappeared we’d spent two years in the commission flats, on the very top floor right at the back, three of us in two small rooms. Ben was three when we moved in, and I was nine. Mum banged on the walls and shouted a lot. We weren’t supposed to leave the flat without her but we did, went down into the quadrangle to play with the other kids. Maron from the building next to ours had a tricycle with a seat on the back, and we took turns riding Ben around and letting the neighbourhood dogs chase us.