by Jon Bauer
I sigh and she offers to help with the picture so I give her one end, the glass facing uppermost and catching the lamppost light between us.
‘Sort of?’ she asks again, meeker now.
‘It’s such a long story.’
There’s a silence after that and I feel bad for holding back. We walk a bit, me wanting to tell her I was fostered, that I don’t know who my real parents are. Wanting to tell her all about my prison-service career. How great life is in Canada.
My usual stock standard bullshit.
‘Hey, let’s go in,’ she says pointing to Malfour Park. I smile for her, trying to look enthused when I just want to get her home and grab some healing before I have to face my last day with Mum in the house.
We both catch the giggles at the park gate, struggling to get the enormous picture through.
We take up residence on the swings, both of us swinging, Patricia’s shoes kicked off and her hair flying back at the top of her arc. She’s going much higher than me, my stomach still uncertain and half my mind focused on getting home to Mum. The other half though is happy to be here, grinning occasionally at this woman.
I scuff my shoes on the rubberised concrete, stopping the swing, my chin coming to rest on my hand where it’s holding the swing’s chains — watching her going backwards and forwards.
She stops trying to swing, letting the momentum drop a bit. ‘You’ve gone quiet.’
‘Sorry.’
‘It’s ok. Tell me about your job. Prison, huh? That must be full-on.’
She’s all offhand, breathless, perhaps happy to be back on a swing again — some sort of childhood nostalgia. Her happiness making me feel the aching separateness between all humans. Making this seem pointless, Patrish and I. Making me think that so much of loneliness is simply due to the habit feelings have of happening out of synch. Affection, contentment, sadness. Love. We’re so often alone with our particular mood, as if Patricia and I are communicating by letter. That delay between me feeling my emotions, and her corresponding with them.
‘I don’t work in the prison service. I don’t know why I said I did. I lost my job three months ago.’
‘You’re having a really good year, aren’t you.’
I give a weak little laugh at that, trying to meet her at her mood. Halfway at least.
‘How’d you lose it?’ she says.
‘Ah.’ I sigh, the alcohol having pulled up the handbrake in me. I look at the phone in my breast pocket. ‘Some of the officers were planning to lynch a frail old guy. He’d tried to abuse a kid, problem was it was a kid one of the prison guards knew. He must have been the world’s unluckiest paedophile. He got caught and the cops wangled it so that he was to be held on remand with us before trial. I’d had a gutful of being forced to turn a blind eye to what they did to prisoners, so I tipped off the authorities. That’s how.’
‘That’s awful but good on you.’ And her voice shows the strain of leaning back to push more momentum into the swing. ‘Sticking up for fairness, I mean.’
I’m getting dizzy watching her going backwards and forwards, a perfumed breeze blowing on me each time. A little more of that ache hitting me — she thinks my story’s no big deal.
‘It didn’t make any difference, he was held on remand with us anyway. Officially he committed suicide but I know what he’d have gone through. Hours of one-on-one time with prison guards.’ My eyes are threatening to fill now from a sudden sense of what it cost me, my need to be in that brotherhood. The things I had to turn a blind eye to in order to feel part of that all those years. The few things I did when I first got there, when I was too young and isolated or needy to know better. ‘They did worse probably than he’d have ever done to the girl, then they let him hang all night before they raised the alarm. I’d phoned in sick but they made out I’d been the suicide watch.’
She’s stopped working the swing now, her arc slowing. ‘That’s a disgrace. But why would you lose your job for trying to protect an untried paedophile.’
‘I’ve done worse.’
‘I didn’t mean it was a bad thing.’
‘Well.’
‘You think you did the wrong thing?’
I’m slowly sinking lower into myself. ‘Just that, sometimes it doesn’t seem to matter what you do either way.’
She’s still now, sitting on her swing beside me, her hand coming out and resting on my arm. I have to turn away though because she’s looking at me like I’m odd. Like she doesn’t know why I’m telling her this.
But I can picture Mum curled up listening in the darkness, a proud tear running down her face.
21
I don’t want to be a weatherman when I grow up anymore, I want to be a rubbish collector. The bins are collected from outside our house on Fridays and even though it might be a stinky early bird job at least I’d only have to work on Fridays. All those other six days off. Easy! Which is heaps better than school, and school’s supposed to be easier than work.
Whenever I don’t want to go to school Dad says ‘Let’s swap. You do what I do till seven in the evening and I’ll go put my feet up and listen to some sexy teacher.’ Which is annoying and not the point because I’m not choosing between work and school, I’m trying to choose between home and school, which is like between chocolate and leeks. But he’s making it like broccoli or leeks. Not chocolate at all.
Only it’s dark chocolate because Robert isn’t getting better.
When she isn’t at hospital with Robert, Mum takes me to church. Meanwhile Dad has to stay home and find a job. He winks at me while Mum’s upstairs rattling her tablets. He says the kitchen is his office now.
He always eats while he cooks and says he’s only taste testing. Then when he sits down he usually says he’s full of taste, but shrugs and eats all his dinner anyway. He’s quite big now, my dad.
I like going up to him when he’s watching TV and pulling up his t-shirt and pulling up mine so I can rub stomachs with him. Skin is in love with skin. That’s why it feels so good when we rub bellies.
Mum comes down with some tablets and asks him for a glass of water and he brings it but says ‘Why not take a rest on those just for today?’ She looks at us, then hands them over to Dad and goes upstairs again.
Dad’s got some food spilt down his top already but that’s cos it sticks out so far. Sometimes I think his belly’s going to catch fire on the gas flame and he’ll lose weight just like that. His whole fat lump will burn away and he’ll be healthy again.
People stare at Mum and me in church. Simon told me everyone calls her Saint Mary behind her back. I told Mum that to cheer her up but she said it wasn’t a nice thing they were saying. That calling her Saint Mary was a sarcastic thing and she’s not trying to save the world, despite what everyone says about her.
I think grown-ups are confused. That’s why good things can suddenly be bad and bad things good.
She shuts her eyes very hard and her lips move fast even when she’s supposed to be listening to the priest at the front. He says we’re all born sinners. Which must mean only bad people go to church. Mum says it’s the opposite, but she was never that bothered until Robert got ill.
I hide comics down the front of my shirt when we go to church cos the comics have lots of pictures in them which makes it harder for God to see inside me.
God is scary, you can tell by his house. All those statue eyes and violent stained glass with thorns on and Jesus bleeding from our sins. I like the feeling of the comics although I get sweaty and have pictures on my skin afterwards like I’ve got stained glass skin.
The comics are itching me and the priest is going on about sin sin sin and having the devil in you. I can feel him in my stomach and I don’t like it.
I know he’s in my tummy cos of the time Adam and Eve were in Eden and the devil was there and he was a snake. That’s how I know where the devil is inside me. He’s the snake and I don’t know how to get him out.
I grab Mum’s hand and she comes out of h
er dream and winces, moves her rings round on her fingers from where I hurt her squeezing, lets go of my hand.
She has a ring for every birth and marriage and will you marry me and proper anniversary and I wonder if Dad’ll give her a ring if Robert dies. Except he probably can’t afford a ring now his office is the kitchen.
Mum pats me on the leg and gives my head a kiss, looks round at the people staring at us. Even the priest is eating us with his eyes, all the stained glass windows staring. I pray the comics work but prayers probably can’t get through comics either. Then I pray that Mum and Dad don’t lose the investigation or go to jail.
They’re investigating us since Robert got hurt. I wonder what Three Lips would do. He’d put the moves on them.
I roll up my sleeve and carry on with colouring my arm in with biro. I like that. I’m going to colour the whole thing and maybe my entire body and I’m already black from my wrist to my elbow. Turning myself black and blue makes me feel better and by next week I’m going to be an entirely new colour.
Mum slaps the pen off my arm and mega frowns at me.
Now the priest is talking about a man who tended his neighbours’ crops so much that something happened to his own crops and his family starved. The priest is saying it and eating Mum with his eyes and as soon as he’s finished and the hymn starts she leans over and says ‘We’re going.’
‘But the singing’s the only good bit!’
The clouds look angry too so we wait at the bus stop.
When the bus comes it does that hiss I like, as if it’s pissed off with carrying people and is pausing for breath. Like horses do when they flutter their lips and it sounds like ‘Bugger me, I’m tired’ in Horse.
Buses are the modern horses and Mum and me get on and it sighs again then clip clops off down the road and I love how the windows vibrate the outdoors when the bus is trying hard, then stop vibrating when it takes a break to change gear. Maybe the bus driver would let me change gear for him. There looks like there are a lot.
Mandy the social worker came over yesterday and brought the police with her. I knew there was trouble because of the police, plus when they came in the door all three of them had put their lips away.
I spied from the top step between the banisters. There was a lot of crying and shouting from Mum. Dad kept going out to boil the kettle and then not make tea. Then go back in. Then go out again, like he needed the loo or something. Meanwhile the social worker’s voice didn’t move left or right or up or down at all. It could only go straight ahead like it was high up on a dangerous mountain path.
Mandy has eyes like the statues in church do. She can probably see through comics.
Then my name started coming up a lot so I went and got in my lion’s den and prayed to Grandma. I have to have a plastic cover on my bed again now and it makes scrunchy walking on snow noises when I fidget.
‘Two steps forward, three steps back,’ Dad said.
I pray to Grandma a lot, asking her to stop the nightmares. Dad tries to stay calm about my wetting the bed. He used to be really calm all the time but now he always has spiky hair from sleeping in front of the TV. And he quite often shouts at me then cries when I cry.
I don’t ask them about the investigation into Robert’s accident but he might get taken away. Mandy even asked me about Robert’s accident but I don’t know anything cos I was at the park.
Besides I’ll just run away if they try and take me to a new house. Or if Mum and Dad go to prison I’ll just go with them and we’ll sleep in bunk beds and it could be fun.
Dad says prison makes it hard for you to sit down.
Mum is asleep on the couch instead of being at the hospital with Robert. I go into the kitchen and make her a cup of tea. White with one.
Even though I’m tall for my height I have to use a chair to reach the tea things. I put the milk in after the teabag and water so I can get the shade just right. Mum likes it the colour they make it on the telly, in the ads. I get it perfect and wipe up everything and even put it in Dad’s mug with Boss on it.
I creep over to her and she has the newspaper next to her on the floor and her new reading glasses on her forehead even though she’s asleep. I put the tea down on the table beside her and it’s all steamy.
There’s some grey in her hair and I wonder if it was there all the time and I never noticed or if it might be new, like when people see a ghost on Scooby Doo.
She could break her glasses sleeping in them like that. I reach out and take a hold of them. I’m not breathing at all in case I wake her up or if my breathing might jog my hand.
I’m a spy and these glasses have microfilm in them. I pull a bit but they’re behind her ears and make them curl a bit with the pulling.
She sniffs and I stop. I take some breaths to the side. I can smell her hot tea.
I use my other hand to prop up my elbow and then reach in again and hold on to her glasses, not getting anything on the lenses like the way she tells me to when she sends me upstairs for them.
I pull and the hook bit comes off one ear. I stop. Nearly set off an alarm. If I’m killed in action there’ll be a state funeral without my body and Mum will be there and really, really crying so much that they’ll have to carry her out and take her home and give her tablets, like the ones she takes since Robert had his accident. Ones that make her glide like an ice-skater.
Sometimes I can cry just from thinking about Mum being sad at my funeral. She’s SO upset.
I take a hold of the glasses again and her forehead starts needing ironing. I pull a bit and her ear moves and she flicks awake, her arm coming out and the tea spilt on the carpet and her eyes all blurry and red and scary and looking at me for a second and then ‘What the EFF are you doing, I’m trying to sleep!’
I take two steps back. ‘I made you tea.’
‘Do I LOOK like I need tea! DO I? I need sleep!’ She makes a loud sighing noise that uses her voice. ‘And what were you doing with my glasses!’
‘You might have crushed them.’
She stands up and huffs off. I follow her. She gets the cloth and runs it under the tap, squeezes it out and grabs the kitchen towel. She starts to come back but sees me and stops. Her hair is sticking up and it makes her look even scarier.
‘What?’ she says. ‘What are you looking at!’
I shake my head at the floor, her little toe’s nail looks like a tiny scab. Like the very last bit to come off when you’ve hurt your knee.
She walks past me. ‘Why don’t you go play with the traffic or something!’
Mission failed, repeat, mission failed.
I go upstairs really slowly.
This is the first time I’ve been in Robert’s room since he hurt himself. I sit on his bed, looking at everything. He got hurt because I’m wetting the bed again. And cos I burnt my hand. Cos I’m bad. And now Mum and Dad are going to prison and I’m going to be sent away.
One day I’ll get the hang of people the way Robert has. Maybe when I’m his age. Maybe then.
22
Patricia gives me a look as she opens her front door. ‘It’s not very tidy.’
While she makes herself busy with drinks and nibbles I set to work building the perfect joint, loading it pretty full to relax her but not so full I’ll overcook her. Meanwhile our bodies are probably firing up certain systems in readiness. Our minds on our inner feelings, sifting the excitement and fear and reticence and guilt — whatever cocktail of complications we’re overlaying on what is a simple, animal need. Pushing this lever.
‘It’s rude to poke your tongue out,’ she says, depositing the wine on the coffee table in front of me.
‘I can’t concentrate without my three lips,’ I say, forcing a smile then going back to building the joint.
When she’s gone again I reach for my phone and it’s hot to the touch from the long call but hung up somehow by my pocket. The screen blank.
I get up and do a circuit of the room, anxiety filling my innards.
; Patricia shuffles into the room holding a lighted candle, her other hand masking it from the walking breeze. ‘Don’t judge me,’ she says in jest, nodding at the bookshelves I’m pretending to inspect. She goes away again and I sit down, give my hair a good rummage, resigning myself to just one more hour or so before getting back to Mum — a hamster running a wheel in my chest.
I lick the joint, lighting it from one of the candles and letting my shoes slip off onto the floor — bring a foot quickly up near my face to check for smell.
‘Nice,’ she says from the doorway.
‘Just checking your carpet’s clean.’ My turn to blush, hers to laugh. She sits down beside me and nuzzles into my neck, more out of shyness probably. I put an arm round her and just smoke, trying to keep my breathing under control. She can probably feel my heart too.
She smells faintly of alcohol, perhaps from swigging in the kitchen. Lubricating the inevitable machinery.
‘I don’t get it,’ I say, handing her my smoking creation then inching a little away and bringing my feet up onto the couch, wrapping myself round my legs — a weather system breaking over her face from my pulling back. She takes a drag then admires the joint, looking it up and down.
‘You don’t get what?’
‘Why you want me here. You must have a thing for car crashes.’
‘Oh, shoosh,’ she says. ‘We’re all car crashes. Anyway, I didn’t know what was going on in your life when I first met you. I found you attractive then, before I knew.’
‘Knew what?’
‘Why you being like this all of a sudden?’
I hold my fingers out for the joint and she obliges. I take a drag. ‘Like what?’
‘Belligerent.’
I shrug. ‘I wouldn’t want me here if I were you, that’s all.’
‘Well, you’re not me. Besides I invited you in for a drink not a marriage.’
I exhale, blowing smoke rings.
‘I’m not stupid, you know,’ she says. ‘You don’t fool me with your sexy loner act. I know more about you than you might think. We know someone in common, you and I.’
