by Gee, Maurice
She did not know the name of Brent’s street but had called to see him once and knew the way. The house was old but done up, a quarter way along, with verandahs glassed in to make sunrooms. She wanted to live in a house like that, but the rent would be way too much and they wouldn’t take solos anyway, nothing surer. Solos were like cockroaches, they sent a pest eradicator round. Leeanne laughed. She began to feel better. Sam had chocolate all over himself. So bloody what? She wasn’t going to be a Plunket mother, running round with rusks and nice warm flannels and cotton buds. Sam was going to grow up to enjoy himself. Imagine sticking cotton buds up your kid’s nose.
‘Hey, look at you. Chocolate-coated baby.’
She climbed the pushchair backwards up the steps and looked down the hall. It was dark, like in a cave, and Brent’s door, painted brown, with a shiny knob, looked as if it led straight out the back. She felt her happiness jolt away as though someone had knocked it out of her with a slap. He wouldn’t be home. Why should she expect him to be home at this time of day?
She knocked on the door and waited. ‘Hey, Brent.’ There was a noise inside, a shuffling and a creaking. ‘Come on, Brent, it’s me, Leeanne.’ She tried the knob. ‘Open up.’
A woman looked into the hall from another door.
‘I’m after Brent Rosser,’ Leeanne said.
‘I haven’t heard him today. Are you … ?’
‘I’m his sister.’ She knocked again. ‘Open up, Brent. Come on. It’s Leeanne, your little sister.’
‘We don’t see much of him,’ the woman whispered. ‘Last night he was in though, because he took a call. I’m not trying to stick my nose in, but … ’
‘Yeah, but?’
‘He’s acting kind of weird. We hear him moving round, but then he kind of hides. Des and me were wondering if he’s sick.’
‘I’ll find out. Thanks,’ she said. ‘Brent, open the door or I’ll bust it down.’
A key turned in the lock. The door opened several inches. She saw crooked teeth and half an eye.
‘Brent?’
‘What do you want?’
The woman closed her door with a click. Good manners, Leeanne thought. She was angry with Brent.
‘Have you gone bonkers? Let me in.’
‘I don’t want to see anyone.’
‘Too fucken bad, you’re seeing me.’ She pushed with her shoulder and felt how weakly he leaned to keep her out. ‘Shift, Brent. You’re not stopping me.’ She moved him until he stepped away suddenly. He crossed the room and lay down on his bed. Leeanne pulled Sam in and closed the door. ‘Okay, what’s up?’
He made no answer but turned his back and drew up his knees.
‘You sick or something? Got the bot?’
‘Leave me alone.’
‘Jesus, I’m your sister, that’s who I am.’
He made a little grunt and hunched his shoulders.
‘You want to see your sister or not?’
‘I don’t want to see anyone.’
‘I should put bloody Mum on you, that’s what.’
The curtains were closed and she turned on the light, which made Brent curl up on the bed. She took Sam out of his pushchair and sat him on the floor. ‘I’m going to make a cup of tea, that all right with you?’
‘Turn off the light.’
‘Sure, okay.’
She turned it off, but crossed to the window and pulled the curtains back. ‘It’s daytime out there, Brent. There’s helicopters and things flying round.’
She saw a little movement of interest in his back. ‘What time is it?’
‘I dunno. About twelve o’clock. You want some lunch?’
‘No.’
‘I’ll make some lunch. You got anything? Jesus, Brent, you used to be clean. Jesus, there’s maggots on this plate.’
She ran hot water on them and pushed them down the plughole with a fork, then crossed to him and sat on the bed. ‘Hey, come on, what’s the matter? Maybe I can help.’
‘I’m minding my own business, that’s all.’
‘Sure, lying on your bed in the middle of the day. You got some Playboys down there, eh? You tossing yourself off?’
‘Shut up.’
‘Nothing wrong with that, but girls are better.’
‘Shut up, Leeanne.’
‘Okay.’ She sighed. She thought that sex was really half his trouble – thinking about it, never getting someone to do it with. She had tried to get some of her friends at school to take him on but they all said he was weird. ‘Hey look,’ she said, ‘I brought Sam to see you. He’s even got chocolate in his ears.’
Brent closed his eyes. His hands crossed on his chest. God, she thought, he’s turning into a baby too. She went back to his kitchen and put the kettle on and looked in the fridge for something to eat. There were two eggs in a packet and milk that smelled okay and butter frozen as hard as bricks, but okay too. A lump of cheese, dried up. Fair enough, an omelette. If he didn’t eat it she and Sam would, they’d polish it off. She mixed it and put it in a pan on the stove, looking through the door at Brent from time to time. ‘Hey Brent, you got a radio?’ Sam crawled in. She wet the nappie again and washed his face, then carried him back to the main room and sat him in front of the TV set. She turned it on but kept the sound off. Keep him happy, that was it, he hadn’t seen TV for a while. She found a little radio and listened to Windy as the omelette cooked. Brent hadn’t moved again. Like a bloody lion at the zoo – remembering the one she’d seen lying there depressed.
She made tea and put it on the table. Cut the omelette in half. Knives and forks, pepper, salt.
‘Come and get it, Brent. Come on. I’m going to eat your share.’ She took the plate across to him and wafted it by his face. ‘Smell it, eh. Omelettes is one thing I can cook.’
Brent swung his arm up under the plate. He sent it flying across the room. The omelette slid down the wall and folded over on the skirting board.
‘Piss off, Leeanne. Leave me alone.’
‘For Christ’s sake, Brent – ’
‘I don’t need you or anyone.’
‘I’m only trying – ’
‘Do you want some money? Is that why you came?’ He swung off the bed. He was thin and white and bent and, she thought, poisonous. He crossed the room, stepping over Sam, who had turned round and was getting ready to cry. ‘Here you are. I got money.’ He pulled a drawer open and she saw notes inside, lying loose. He snatched some and held them out to her. ‘Take the stuff.’
‘Brent, where’d you get all that?’ she whispered.
‘I work, that’s all. For God’s sake,’ he stuffed the money in her nappy bag, ‘take it and get out. And don’t come back. I don’t want you or your nigger baby.’
‘You call him that, you bastard – ’
‘Get out, Leeanne. Get out.’
He grabbed a knife from the table and pointed it at her. She jammed Sam in the pushchair and ran it at the door, opened it one-handed; left him bent and bare-armed, venomous. The door crashed shut behind her and the key rattled in the lock.
‘Oh Christ,’ she said, ‘oh Christ, oh Christ.’
‘Are you all right?’ the neighbour said, from her open door.
‘He’s mad. He needs a doctor.’
She ran along the footpath, pushing Sam in a wobbly line. If she had stayed he would have taken to her with the knife. And all that money. He had to be mixed up in something criminal.
I’ve got to stay away from him. I can’t take Sam there any more.
She stopped around the corner. She regained her breath. Sam had enjoyed his wobbly ride and was jerking the chair to make it go. She pulled out the money Brent had stuffed in the nappy bag. Five-dollar notes and tens, and not as much as she had thought: only sixty-five dollars. But there must have been a couple of thousand in the drawer. She was sure she had seen red notes in a wad at the bottom.
Stay away, she thought, it’s dangerous there.
‘Calling you a nigger,’ she said to Sam. ‘
You’re not a nigger, are you? You’re my little coconut, eh?’
She stopped at a dairy and bought a pie with one of the five dollar notes, then went back and bought some cigarettes. She found another park and sat under the trees. She ate and fed Sam from her breast, then with meat from the pie, and changed him on the grass and let him sleep. She smoked half the packet. Cigarettes for a while, for a day or two. Poor bloody Brent. All he’d really needed was a girl. And a mother. And some luck. Luck like hers. Leeanne laughed.
Sure I’ve got luck, she thought, I’ve got my baby boy. And half the day left before Danny comes home. Maybe he’ll drop dead on the way. Who needs better luck than that? Drop dead, Danny.
She found an old newspaper and folded it into a little tent and put it over Sam’s face to shade him from the sun.
He had gone that Friday night, as she had told him. All day he’d waited in his room. A light seemed to shine in his face and he could not get away no matter how he turned. People stared at him, their faces slanting forward on their necks. Brent Rosser, that’s Brent Rosser, they seemed to say. It was like shitting by yourself in the trees and finding people standing in the trunks all around. Who were they? He did not know. Ponder was over them like a big papier-mâché head with a light inside.
‘Ponder,’ he said, ‘how did you know?’ She seemed to swell until her red cheeks cracked and little croaks and wheezes came from her mouth. That was Ponder laughing. She laughed because she had him; she could see.
He put the money in an envelope. Ten one hundred-dollar notes, and they were fat in there and made it like a sandwich he could bite. He put it on the table and waited. He did not want to go out in the streets, which he imagined full of light, and the cars coloured and the people pink and white. He could not go among them, the envelope would shine. He crossed the room and put it in the wardrobe with his shoes.
She’ll always know, he thought. Even when I pay her she’ll still know.
He heated baked beans and ate them from the pot. He drank water, feeling it go cold into his chest. The sun was gone behind the Brooklyn hills but the sky had turned almost white and shone like a dinner plate. It lit the dog at his kennel and showed his tongue like bacon and flies on his white water bowl. Brent could not leave until the light was gone. He would put the envelope in his shirt and zip the jacket up. Not take his car. Starting it would make too much noise.
The clock went round again. He did not like its face so he put it in a drawer, under his clothes. His watch, black, showed half-past eight. He took the envelope and shut it tight against his skin. The floor creaked as he walked, the door made a sighing: open; shut. In the street the cars were parked up tight. He could not tell, until he passed, which had people in them. Back ways, empty ways – he kept them in his head. Each narrowed to a crossway, into light. Brent Rosser, men in upstairs windows seemed to say.
He crossed a vacant section by a corrugated wall and came into the sidestreet beside Ponder’s yard. No people, no cars. Rosser ran. He came to the door in the fence; slid through the opening, stood in the yard; and felt that here, in Ponder’s, he was invisible. The timber stacks, the mowers, the circus horse – there was only Ponder here and he was safe from people.
Her light shone in the shop, past the whiteware under the lean-to roof. Rich in there, with brass and polished wood. Ponder was at the front, locking the door. She wore a red dress and a yellow cardigan – and Brent felt easier, watching her. He felt as if he’d woken up and the day had started.
Ponder came back down the shop. She stopped and wiped her nose and patted the handkerchief into shape in her cardigan pocket.
‘Brent, come in, don’t stand out there,’ she said.
He walked past the mattresses and chairs, hunched a little, trying to look as if he was coming in his own time.
‘You’re late,’ she said. ‘I’d just about given you up.’
‘Yeah, sorry, Mrs Ponder, I kind of got delayed.’
‘Now what would delay you, Brent? A girl?’ She scraped the rim of a blue glass vase with her fingernail.
‘I walked, that’s all. It’s further than I thought.’
‘Did you sell your car?’
‘No, not yet.’
‘You’d better hurry, Brent. You haven’t got much time.’
He did not like that. He wanted Ponder to be friendly. The shop seemed like a boat they were on, all alone in a creek somewhere. She took her handkerchief out and wet a corner with spit and wiped the vase and looked at it with her head drawn back. ‘Did you bring what I asked you for?’
‘Yes, Mrs Ponder.’
He unzipped his jacket, but she said, ‘Not here, Brent. In the office, dear’, and led the way and turned on a light on her desk. ‘Flick that switch, love,’ – showing him where – ‘that’s right.’ The lights in the shop went out. ‘Now, Brent, no one can see us.’
He liked that. He smiled at her. ‘Now?’
‘In your own time, dear.’
He liked her politeness too. He unbuttoned his shirt and took the envelope out. It had stuck to his skin and it came away like a plaster. He smiled at her and said, ‘Sorry, Mrs Ponder, I been sweating.’
‘A new envelope, dear? No names or anything?’
‘Window one, see. My rent bill came in it. You can see the money, it’s all there.’
‘I’m sure it is. Thank you, Brent.’ She put it in a bag resting on her chair.
‘Aren’t you going to count it?’
‘Is there any need?’
He felt it would be businesslike and somehow fit him more into her life. He knew what he was going to ask her now.
‘You know all about me, don’t you?’
‘I know you’re not bad, Brent, if it’s any consolation.’
‘What happened up in Kelburn, that was an accident.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about there.’
‘Yeah you do.’ He grinned at her.
‘And I think you’d better go now. I have to lock up.’
‘You know everything,’ he said. ‘That’s why I want to stay here and work for you.’
‘Brent – ’
‘This is like … ’ He could not find words for what he felt. ‘It’s like the inside of a cave.’
‘I think you’re a wee bit over-excited, dear.’
‘What I could do, I could work in the yard and shift the furniture round and stuff like that. You wouldn’t have to pay me much. What do you say, Mrs Ponder?’
‘No, Brent.’
‘I could clean up all that stuff out there. I’ll patch that canoe. I’ll do all that for nothing if you like.’
‘Brent – ’
‘And no one has to see me, Mrs Ponder. You’ll be the only one who knows.’
‘Brent. You zip your jacket up. Go on.’ He obeyed. ‘Now, you go. The way you came. Out the back. And don’t you ever come here again.’
‘Mrs Ponder … ’ It was like a pocket turning inside out. He was in the light again, with faces all around.
‘If I ever see you, Brent, I’ll say a word to you know who. Just one word is all they need from me.’
‘Can I – can I – ’
‘What?’
‘Just stay in my room? And not go out?’
‘No.’
‘You don’t know what it’s like, Mrs Ponder.’
‘You’re a very dangerous boy, Brent, and I want you out of here. Australia is where you’re going to.’
‘I don’t want – ’
‘Listen to me. I don’t know you. Never ever come back here again. You sell your car. Quickly now. Whatever you can get. And you buy a ticket and you don’t ever come back. I’m doing you a favour, but this is the last one. If you aren’t gone in a week – and I’ll hear, don’t you think you can hide from me.’ She put her face lower so the light coloured her eyes. ‘A week, Brent. Next Friday. You be gone from Wellington. Now quick march, out of here. And don’t make any noise.’
‘Mrs Ponder – ’
‘Not a single word to me. Not one.’
‘Ah, Mrs Ponder.’
‘And don’t you start crying because tears don’t work with me. I’m going to count to three, Brent, then I’ll pick up the phone.’
‘I thought … ’
‘One.’
‘You told me once you’d like to be a stand-in for my mother.’
‘Two.’
‘I’m going. I’m going.’
‘Australia by next Friday. Don’t you play any smart tricks, Brent.’
He turned and ran. An edge of mattress tripped him and he dived into the doorway, striking his shoulder on the jamb. A stove grazed his face; he heard his jaw squeak on the enamel. Head down, he ran – past the grey timber stacks and the star-spangled horse. Iron boomed under his feet. When he looked back from the gap in the wall only the door showed, half hidden by washing machines that had the pale gleam of night clouds in the sky. Ponder was invisible.
Shit on you, he cried silently. Shit on you, bitch. She’d put him out where everyone could see him again.
He ran home, close to walls, head down through fuzzy domes of light. In his room he pulled everything shut – doors and curtains – huddled in his bed, but could not close the blankets round himself tightly enough.
Through the weekend and the next week he stayed in his room, except for forays late at night to the dairy up the hill for bread and eggs and milk and cake and tins of spaghetti and beans. He boiled two eggs and peeled them and felt that he was stripping the skin off himself. He could not bear to touch them again when they were naked, and rolled them off the plate into the rubbish. He fried eggs then, and ate them with beans. And once he pulled his shoes out of the wardrobe and sat among his clothes for several hours in the dark until a cramp in his leg made him burst out, rolling and crying on the floor.
He was not going to Australia. He was not going out of his room again. Ponder could do what she liked.
On Thursday night she rang him. Mrs Casey took the call. ‘I’ll see,’ she said, and knocked on his door. ‘Brent, there’s a telephone call for you.’
He stood with his back and hands flat against the wall beside the door.
‘She says it’s important.’
