She turns and looks back out at the water. It’s calm now, but grey and sullen, hungover from its rage. She thinks of Graham and his distrust of the sea. As if it acted out of spite. As if it took pleasure in his pain. But she knows it’s only physics, just pressures and speeds, energy and friction. And the human body in all that. Her body.
Gently she lowers her arms and lays her hands flat on the quiet surface. The water enters the deep creases of her palms and the fine channels and whorls of her fingerprints. She feels the contrast between the coolness underneath and the heavy warmth of the air above. She registers its resistance, presses down against its weight, not breaking the surface, remembering the feel of it. Registering its existence. As though tomorrow or the next day, or whenever she returns, it might have gone far out from the shore and not come back. As if someday soon, there’s a chance it might not be there anymore.
Paperboy
The weatherman had said it was going to be the hottest night on record. It had felt like the hottest night on record. It took him ages to get to sleep and that shouldn’t be a problem because he’s old enough to stay up till midnight, this one night anyway.
But he has to get up at five-thirty for the newspaper round even on New Year’s Day, so he’d tried to get to sleep early, which was just fine by him because he was alone anyway after his mum and dad went out to the dinner dance. But it still took him ages because of the heat and because of half wanting to be up at midnight. And also because of the fireworks and the car horns and the new neighbours whose names they don’t know yet who had a huge New Year’s Eve party. So there was loud music and ladies screaming when they fell in the pool. Then with someone smashing something big made of glass, but not getting hurt because everyone just laughed and someone yelled, ‘Trust you, Tony!’
In any case, it’s already shaping up to be a hot morning and it’s only five-thirty. In the lounge room, there’s chips left out from last night. He grabs a fistful and pushes them into his mouth. He likes when they’ve gone a little soft and stale. The salt stings an ulcer on the inside of his cheek and he chews at it and seals it over with the tip of his tongue. When he’s dressed, he goes round to the side of the house to wheel his bike out through the gate and he can hear, over the fence on the new neighbours’ side, a record player still turning but at the end of the record, just going frrr … click, frrrr … click, frrr … click, and a man snoring but muffled, like he’s got a pillow on his face.
As he hops on his bike and turns from the driveway out onto the footpath, he sees the coloured lights strung up under the new neighbours’ carport, still on and looking kind of pretty against the quiet blue sky.
In the neighbours’ front yard, there are burnt-out fireworks. Catherine wheels nailed to the fence, rocket cases on the road, and empty beer bottles on the lawn that have been used to stand the rockets up in. A couple of houses further up, there’s soggy crepe-paper streamers and a red party hat in the driveway and a hand-painted banner hanging half down that says HAPPY NEW YEAR 1971.
There’s a funny feeling down his back, like cold raindrops slipping under the collar of his jacket. He always gets a bit shivery like that when the year’s finally over. Kind of like it’s died and all the things that happened are locked up and put on the top of a wardrobe somewhere high where you can’t see them, where you’ll forget about them. He’s trying to work out if the new year will really be all that new, or just leftovers of last year. Last year was alright, but he’s not that sure he wants another one like it. He’s ready for new things to happen. He’s ready to give it a go. Whatever it is.
* * *
The street is downhill to the newsagency, so he coasts all the way, closing his eyes for seconds at a time to feel the air on his cheeks and shins and knuckles, and smell it floating honeysuckle up his nostrils. He leans his bike up against the front window of the shop and goes around to the storeroom at the side to count out his rolled-up newspapers, mostly The Sun, but a few copies of The Age as well.
The newsagency owner is frowning at the entrance.
‘You late, paperboys,’ he grumbles. It sounds funny, the way he says it, the way he stresses boys, making it sound like they’re made of paper. There’s a flash in his mind, an image of himself and the others, like a string of cut-out paperboys all joined by the hands, all identical and blank.
‘Hurry up, you paperboys,’ says the owner with a frown.
The old bloke is never much one for small talk.
‘Happy New Year, Mr Rossi,’ he says anyway.
‘What so happy about it? Same as last year.’
He smiles and shrugs, but as he turns away he’s thinking, No, it won’t be.
With the other boys loading the papers into their hessian bags it’s too early for talking, and they never have much to say anyway, so once they’ve hung them over the bars of their bikes, they just nod and grunt and wheel their bikes back out onto the footpath.
He takes off down the street towards the Methodist church on the corner, depositing the papers in the cylinder-shaped holes in the front fences, swapping the side he takes the papers from to keep the weight even. He’s warming up inside but the air cools the sweat on his shins and his arms as he coasts down the hill.
The clopping of the draught horse’s hooves bounces off the silent brick front fences and shudders up through the bike and into the thin soles of his runners. He pictures the old milkman, in his faded navy blue shorts and light blue shirt, running to and from the cart, springing up onto the wooden ledge at the back and skipping backwards down onto the road, never losing his balance, never breaking his stride. Not bad for an old bloke. Old but fit. Fit and sinewy, even if he is getting a bit stiff in the back. With skin that looks grimy from all the sun, and faded blue eyes with white eyelashes that make him look like he’s wide awake even if he’s just woken up. He’s been seeing him every round for a year and a half now, but he still doesn’t know his name. He’s just the milky. Always has a word for him, but he’s never asked him what his name is either. Just calls him young fella or mate.
‘Cold one this morning, young fella,’ he’d say in winter. Or ‘School holidays soon.’ Or ‘How ’bout those Blues. How ’bout that Jesaulenko.’
He swings right into Pine Crescent. Only two deliveries here, but there’s that bloody kelpie that waits till he’s gone past and then runs after him and flings itself at his heels. He veers back out onto Hill Street and pulls out a Sun for the milkman. He usually just chucks it on the cart and yells, ‘Here you go,’ but today’s New Year’s so there’ll be a little pressie from him and his missus. He wanted to write them a little card to say thanks this time, but he forgot. Last Christmas and New Year it was mixed lollies, and Easter it was an egg. Nothing much, but a nice thought. The type of little pressies grandpas probably give their grandkids just for nothing. Just to spoil them.
He doesn’t have a grandpa. His mum’s dad died when she was a teenager and his dad never knew his dad. Sometimes he imagines having a grandfather, and when he does he imagines him kind of like the milkman. Old but still really active, with bright eyes and thin white hair that keeps the lines of the comb in it all day and shows through liver spots in the part.
He has to speed up on this last stretch to catch him before he peels off right at the intersection to go back to the dairy and he goes left to go home. As he slows with the climb, he notices empty milk bottles still by the front fences where normally there’d be white full bottles now, with foil caps glinting as the sun appears over the roofs of the houses on the other side of the road.
The cart’s way up ahead and he pedals fast to catch up as the horse continues over the crest and on downhill and turns the corner, heading home to the dairy; and now he sees the cart’s still half loaded with jangling bottles full of milk.
He stops and puts his feet down on the road and waits till the back of the cart has disappeared round the corner, but the milkman doesn’t come running and jump back up. He does a couple of slow figure eights as th
e jangling dies away and he chews the ulcer inside his cheek till the stinging goes numb and his tongue tastes like salt and vinegar chips. He turns his bike around and rides back up the hill, feeling a little tight in his chest and short of breath. The air is warm but it stings his eyes.
The sun is over the tops of the houses now and making the left side of his face really hot and he can kind of see it shining right through his eyeball. Up ahead past the crescent, the middle of the road is seeping, like a driveway with a hose not turned off properly. Thin, slow streams are slipping down the hill, flashing sunlight.
As he gets closer, he sees the white and red, merging and mingling to make pink, like strawberry milk. Along the stream, three of the neighbourhood cats are lapping up the milk, not gingerly and delicately, but a bit panicky and wild.
He says to himself, Don’t look! like someone else is giving the orders, making the decisions for him. And that’s enough to keep him looking down, looking no further than the cats. He says to himself, If you don’t look, it won’t be true, like he used to when he was younger. And he feels like he almost believes it. Feels like a little child again. But he knows there’s a quiet, crumpled shape on the road, not moving, lying still on a bed of glinting glass. The rosy-pink sun is feeling its way up its legs and brushing along its back, up to its broken head. He doesn’t look right at it, but he can see it all the same. He can see enough to know it’s real. He puts his feet on the ground but keeps his hands tight on the rubber grips. He takes a deep breath and holds it in and it feels like his chest is ripping like a sheet of paper. And he thinks to himself, This is what forever feels like.
Last Man Standing
All he does is duck his head and move one foot forward on the flat concrete floor, but it feels like he’s missed the last steep step and reeled into the void. He turns and grips the bottom of the roller door to steady himself. The air from the garage leaks cold onto the back of his neck and pushes a shiver down under his collar. He drags the door down behind him and turns to face the dark. The car is two steps away, looking older, squarer, more battered than he remembers. The metallic blue panels are dust-dulled and cold.
In the cobweb-crowded corners of the rear window, dead flies hang and silent daddy-long-legs stare back out. A faded bumper sticker, peeling at the corners, warns DON’T FOLLOW ME. I’M LOST TOO. He lifts his head and strains to see the bare brick walls in the almost-black. At the back there’s something that looks wooden, like maybe he’d been building something, working on a project. He squints as his eyes adjust to the darkness and the individual pale brown cubes emerge. He recognises the same cardboard boxes he’d helped Pete shift when he moved in two years ago.
He runs his palms over the dust-coated boot, over months of locked-up stillness. His breaths are deep but ragged at the end. Despite the big fans the fire brigade had used, he swears there’s still something in there making him light-headed.
* * *
When Pete’s fiancée, Mel her name was, when she finally called the wedding off, they had to sell the house they’d bought together. Always a practical man, he told his son, ‘If you have to buy a flat, make sure it has a garage. It’ll add to the resale value.’ And Pete did. In Richmond. He was happy that his son seemed to be making a new home of sorts there. At least that’s the impression he got when Pete came around for dinner on Thursdays. It was a ritual that had started after Janet died. Pete was twenty-two when it happened and had just moved out into a share house, but he made the effort to come back home for that dinner with his dad once a week, and he’d kept doing it for the last twelve years. Until last year. It wasn’t for the food. Neither of them was any good in the kitchen. Janet had been the cook. So he just made sausages and eggs or, at a stretch, shepherd’s pie. One weekend he bought a wok at a garage sale and started making stir-fries. Sometimes Pete picked up Indian takeaway on the way over and they ate it watching The Footy Show on the sofa. That made the lack of conversation less awkward. Not that either of them were talkers anyway. So the not talking wasn’t really that big an issue.
Until last year when Pete lost his two best friends. Ian and Carlos. Oldest, closest friends. Since primary school they’d been together. That’s when he wished Pete had been more of a talker. That they’d had that type of relationship. It would have helped, surely. He knows from experience that it’s not good to keep it all inside.
First Ian had lost the family bakery, passed down from his dad. He’d blown all the money on a woman and the horses, then killed himself in July in a national park, with a shotgun he’d borrowed from his brother-in-law. That’s what Pete said had hurt the most. Imagining him sitting there alone and trembling before he did it in the cold and wet outdoors.
And soon after the whole thing with Ian, Pete’s other best friend, Carlos, came out and told him he was gay. That he’d always known he was, but had never said a word. Pete knew it shouldn’t change anything, but once it was out, it was over. Carlos just disappeared and never called. Went interstate and started a new life without even saying goodbye. After twenty-six years of friendship. Like he was a missing person. Like he was dead too. And that really unsettled Pete, set him adrift, like a dropped five-cent piece.
* * *
Then, two weeks ago today, the police arrived at his door, early in the morning when he was still in his pyjamas.
‘Are you the father of Peter Saunders?’ they asked.
‘Is your wife here?’ they asked.
‘Can we come in please, Mr Saunders?’
‘Maybe you should sit down, Mr Saunders.’
And then, when there were no questions left to ask, they told him as gently as they could. His son had died. Suicide. Car exhaust. In the garage of his flat. Last night. The people in the back flat raised the alarm at four in the morning. They’d heard the motor running when they went to bed, but they didn’t go to check. Afterwards, after the funeral, they’d write a card to say how bad they felt.
Not that it’s really out of the blue, he tells the police officers as they sit with him in the cold morning lounge room. Pete had been seeing a psychologist. He knew because he’d been paying for it after Pete lost his job. He knew his son had been depressed and heavily into pot. And he knew what that could do. His own father had been a heavy drinker. And probably depressed, although that’s not a word they used back then. At least not about men. But to picture Pete alone in the garage, starting the car and taking that first breath. That’s what’s hard. His eyes search the ceiling then sink down to the mantelpiece. The police officers’ eyes follow. Pete’s high school face is there, looking like the happiest kid on earth. The police officers give him the key they took out of the ignition. The car had kept running till it ran out of petrol, they explain.
* * *
The day after the funeral Mel came around to the house to spend some time with him. They drank green tea together and sat in silence for minutes at a time. Finally she asked how he was feeling.
At first he just stared at the back of his hands; then, ‘Angry,’ he spat out, his eyes shining, looking straight into hers. ‘I’m just so bloody angry at him, Mel.’
She reached out and lay her hand on his.
‘I’m sorry, love, but it’s been boiling in my guts for the last week and it feels so good to finally say it out loud.’
His eyes left hers and she saw that they were glazed with tears.
‘Such a selfish thing to do,’ he scowled. ‘Such a selfish bloody thing.’
And she was shocked at how his face had lost its sweetness and his mouth had twisted down.
* * *
The next day, he’d gone over to the flat to clean it out. When he’d opened the door, the smell of absence had hit him. Unwashed dishes in the sink and on the floor by the couch. Unsteady towers of books against all the walls. Only instant noodles in the cupboards and two casks of Lambrusco in the fridge. He’d leaned against a wall with the look of someone who’s forgotten what year it is. He couldn’t do it. Not on his own. He’d just click
ed the door shut, turned around and quietly walked down the stairs.
* * *
He pushes his hands against the boot and straightens up. Wiping the dust from his palms on the front of his pants, he moves slowly around to the driver’s-side door, opens it and folds himself into the seat. It is laid slightly back, in a half-reclined position, not one you could drive in. On the floor by the pedals, among the dried mud and leaf dust, there’s a single Freddo Frog wrapper and a crushed matchbox lid. On the passenger seat lies a small square black-and-white photo of Janet, young, before they were married. He didn’t know Pete even had it. He reaches up and switches on the car’s interior light, picks up the photo and holds it close to his face. Janet’s smooth cheeks and pale eyes are plainer than he remembers. She reminds him of a melancholy young woman he saw once behind the glove counter of a big department store. And he realises that it’s been years since he last saw Janet in his dreams and that the women he’s been dreaming of are not like her at all.
As he straightens his neck, the light-headedness returns and he leans his head back against the seat, waiting for the spin to settle down. In the dull interior light of the car, a St Christopher medal turns slowly on a rubber band below the rear-view mirror. He recognises it as the same one Janet gave Pete when he bought his first car. To keep him safe. As an eighteen-year-old, Pete had been embarrassed and had hidden it in the glove box for years. He assumed he’d thrown it out when he sold the car.
In the rear-view mirror he’s caught off guard by the look in his eyes. He recognises the shrunken glance of a man driving home alone late at night. When he lowers his eyes, he sees that the dashboard and steering wheel are coated with built-up dust. He wonders when Pete last drove anywhere. Then he notices the finger marks on the dashboard. Four on either side of the steering wheel. He extends his arms and stretches his fingers to place them over the dark grey prints. When Pete was small, Janet said he had pianist’s fingers. Long and elegant. He leans forward, lays his cheek on the steering wheel and breathes in the odour of thousands of kilometres of sweating palms. It’s a strangely pleasant smell, like something yeasty from an oven. He straightens his back, reaches up to turn off the light and lays his head flat back against the headrest. The seat back is soft and yielding and it cradles his shoulders. With his eyes squeezed shut, he swallows the saliva that pools beneath his tongue. He knows it’s not wise to stay here, that there are things he must attend to, but he doesn’t have the energy to pull himself back up. He takes in several short, shallow gulps of air and then, down low in his chest, he starts to whimper to himself, like a newly orphaned child.
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