Clancy of the Undertow

by Christopher Currie

  Titch and Angus and I have already eaten ours watching The Simpsons but when I ask Mum what she wants on her burger she just says, ‘I’m not really hungry, Clancy,’ and then, ‘Am I supposed to clean all this up?’ and I give her a look like for God’s sake, I tried, and she just stares back at me, so I give her another face like it’s not like you were here to cook us dinner.

  She hangs her bag up and goes to me, ‘Do you know a girl called Nancy DeRosa?’

  Shit.

  I go, ‘Who?’ as if this will end the conversation.

  ‘I don’t have time for this, Clancy. I’ve been talking to her mother for the last half an hour.’

  I start to sweat a little. I should have had a shower. I’d be dead if she knew I’d been smoking.

  ‘Her mother,’ Mum rubs her forehead with the palm of her hand, ‘is Carla DeRosa. New vice principal at St Stephen’s. I’m about to finish for the day and start the three quarter of an hour drive home when I get this call out of nowhere.’ Mum takes her mobile out of her bag and unclips the battery. ‘This is just for you guys to call. God knows how she got the number.’

  The burger in my stomach starts complaining. George Parry had our emergency contacts, and mine was Mum’s mobile.

  ‘Apparently you abused her daughter at Nature Club!’ Mum throws up her hands.

  ‘I didn’t abuse her. That makes it sound like I’m a priest.’

  ‘Now is not the time for jokes, Clancy. You do know this girl, then? You did talk to her today?’

  ‘Yes. But she was being really…’ I couldn’t even come up with a good lie.

  ‘You swore at her, her mother says.’

  I realise I’ve got no way out of this. ‘It wasn’t even like that.’

  ‘What was it like, then?’

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ I say. ‘You wouldn’t even understand. You wouldn’t even want to.’

  ‘That’s great,’ says Mum. ‘And now you won’t tell me anything. As usual.’

  My legs are shaking. I keep my mouth shut. I’m not going to play the game.

  Mum’s face falls. ‘Impossible,’ she says. ‘It’s impossible. Why am I the only person who feels like they have to take responsibility in this family? You didn’t even tell us you were going. What if something happened to you?’

  ‘Who was I supposed to tell, Mum? You were out, Angus was out, Dad was…It doesn’t work like that. I needed to get out of the house.’

  Mum sits down at the kitchen table. ‘Can’t even keep one surface clean.’ She picks up a handful of paper—old homework, magazines, unanswered mail—and holds it up in the air. Then she just stares at it, as if it’s going to talk.

  ‘You’ll have to apologise,’ she says eventually.

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For whatever you said to that Nancy girl. You refuse to talk about it, so I’m just going to assume the worst.’ Mum puts down the handful of paper. ‘You’re going over there to apologise.’

  ‘Going over where?’

  ‘To the DeRosas’.’

  ‘To their house?’

  ‘Yes, Clancy. To their house. Tomorrow. Her mother insisted.’ Mum rubs her eyes. ‘As if I don’t have enough to do already.’

  I stand there, shaking my head. ‘This is so unfair.’

  ‘Why is it unfair, Clancy? Tell me why.’

  I can’t, of course, because that would mean telling her about Raylene McCarthy and Buggs and all the shit I have to put up with on an everyday basis. Mum doesn’t need to know all that on top of everything else. As good as it would feel to wound her, as satisfying as it would be to let her know I’m going through a heap of shit as well, she doesn’t deserve it. And I don’t deserve the inevitable follow-up, the heart-to-hearts and worried looks.

  Besides, I’m not a squealer like Nancy. Nancy’s mum—Carla, what a ridiculous name—would’ve probably taken Nancy out straight away to buy new clothes or get her hair done or some other bullshit. Anything to keep the spoiled little brat happy.

  ‘I’m tired,’ I say.

  The word tired seems to hit Mum like an arrow. She slumps back in the chair. ‘Let’s just get it over and done with,’ she says. ‘And then obviously you won’t do anything like this again.’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘I’m having a shower,’ says Mum, her parenting done for the day. I know I won’t see her now until the morning. I rinse off my dinner plate and leave the rest for Angus, who agreed to wash up but I know won’t do it.

  I’ve already decided that when Sasha and I live together, we won’t eat until nine at night, like in the movies. We’ll eat olives and bread and ham so there won’t be any cooking and only a few plates to clean up. We’ll live somewhere by the water, but where the nights are cool, so we won’t have to fight for who gets to sit next to the fan and our legs won’t stick to the couch. We’ll have wine and talk until the sun comes up. It’ll be so far from here that we’ll both forget where we even came from. There’ll be no apologies, no responsibility, no family.

  25

  As predicted, when I come back to the lounge room, Titch and Angus have both disappeared. I watch TV for a bit but I’m not really taking it in so I got back into the kitchen and take the last two patties out of the fridge and cook up a double with cheese. I wrap it up in greaseproof paper and take it out the back. The light’s on in the shed and I smile. I knock on the garage door and shout, ‘I have your dinner Meester Underhill!’ like some fancy waiter. Dad rolls up the door and he’s sort of smiling, like how weird is my daughter, anyway? but I don’t care. I lift up the top piece of bread on his burger and make it go, ‘Where would you like me? In your mouth?’

  Dad laughs, shaking his head. ‘Talking burger,’ he says. ‘This is a treat. You make this?’

  ‘Sure did.’

  Thumb over the shoulder. ‘Come on, then.’

  There’s paper all over the workbench and a bottle of Bundy instead of beer. ‘What’s all this?’ I say.

  ‘Just some paperwork.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘Just stuff I have to get done.’

  I sit down in the bucket seat and it rocks crazily.

  ‘There’s still an ice-cream left,’ Dad says.

  I lean over and open the esky. The Cornetto’s floating in lukewarm water and when I press it with my fingers it’s squidgy. ‘Thanks for that, Dad.’

  He laughs. ‘Good burger, though.’

  ‘Maybe I can have some of that rum then,’ I say. ‘Seeing as you’ve failed to look after my ice-cream.’

  ‘No way, kiddo, you know what this stuff costs? Don’t want to waste it on an underdeveloped palate.’

  ‘What’s the score in the cricket?’

  ‘Hasn’t started yet. We’re eighty in front but only got three wickets left. Pitch’s turning square apparently.’

  ‘I’d like to listen to some when it starts.’ I want to spend as long as I can here. The shed, with Dad, is international waters for real emotions.

  ‘Hey,’ says Dad, ‘what do you want for your birthday?’

  ‘My birthday? That’s not till December.’

  Dad talks through a mouthful of burger: ‘I’m getting organised this year.’

  ‘I’d like driving lessons,’ I say. ‘Starting next week.’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Come on! I know I’ll be a good driver.’

  ‘Not till you’re seventeen.’

  ‘Aagh!’

  ‘You know the rule.’

  ‘The rule’s ridiculous. You haven’t even seen me drive. I might be amazing.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. It’s the law.’

  ‘I’m still allowed to practise.’

  ‘Too many people drive too soon, Clancy. I don’t want you to get into—’ Dad stops himself. ‘I don’t want you getting into trouble. I want you to be safe.’

  Shit. Our driving argument has been going for years, but I had to bring it up tonight. ‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘I didn’t…’

  ‘It’s fine,’
he says. ‘Don’t worry about it.’

  Now I feel terrible. I say, ‘I should get back inside.’

  ‘You don’t have to,’ Dad says. ‘It’s nothing to do with you.’

  ‘I just feel bad.’

  Dad fills up his glass. ‘Thanks for the burger. Did you make them for everyone?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I’m sure your mum appreciates it. It hasn’t been easy for her, last couple of days.’

  ‘Maybe,’ I say. ‘She got back ages late.’ I decide not to tell him the stuff about Nancy and her mum. He’ll find out later, anyway, and why ruin a perfectly nice evening?

  ‘It’s tough. We’re trying to work it out.’ He leans back in his chair and stares at the ceiling. We can hear the whine of mosquitoes outside the windows.

  A sudden sadness wells up at the thought that Dad might not be able to sit in his shed again. ‘Will you have to go to prison?’ I say. ‘I know you didn’t do anything, but…’

  Dad rubs his eyes. ‘There’s still an investigation,’ he says. ‘They’ve told me not to leave town, but no one’s talking about prison.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘I know it’s tough on you kids, too, but we’ve just got to wait it out.’

  ‘What about your job?’

  ‘That’s something for down the track as well. For now we just have to wait and see.’

  I glance up at the papers on bench. ‘Are you doing, like, legal stuff? Is that what the papers are?’

  He looks down at them. ‘Just sorting a few things out. You know me. Prepared as ever.’

  ‘You know you don’t have to get me a birthday present this year, or a Christmas present or anything if it’ll make it easier.’

  Dad puts his hand up to his mouth. ‘Aw Jeez.’ He shakes his head. ‘You’re a good kid, Clance.’ His face crumples and he’s suddenly a stranger. My dad doesn’t do this. I get up to put my hand on his arm and he gathers me in and hugs me like he hasn’t done since I was little and I smell the rum and his arms are so strong and then I’m crying too. I push my face into his T-shirt and I never want him to be anywhere else ever again.

  26

  The whole night I don’t even bother turning off the light; I know I’m not getting to sleep. When my head’s like this, all I can do is stare at a corner of the ceiling. Staring for Australia. Gold medal in the eight-hour Mind Race. The worst thing is, I’ve never been able to focus on just one problem at a time. Tonight is no different. Nancy, Sasha, Dad. Over and over. I lie there, still in my clothes, paralysed by the logjam of my thoughts.

  I know—I’m smart enough to know—this is textbook teenage angst, but it doesn’t make it any easier. A whole bunch of useless TV drama tears make the pillow wet so I can’t turn my head. I clench and unclench my fists and I’m not sure who or what I really feel sorry for.

  Make a list, the tiny rational part of me says, the part of me who checks psychology books out of the library, knowing full well that the only people who check psychology books out of the library are people who think they’re too good for self-help books. People who know they’ve got problems but are too proud to admit it.

  And the question at the base of it all, as always, is: what am I doing? Just a simple question: what am I all about?

  The Sasha stuff.

  I can cut it any way I want but I can’t get away from what it means. I am obsessed. I am paralysed. I am in love. I am whatever it is when you’re my age and you’re adrift and all your hormones are holding a cold gun to your head. But it’s all about a girl. Is this a minor detail? Does it even matter?

  My whole life, pretty much, has been back to front. When I was little, I knew I was supposed to wear dresses and dream of princesses and run away shrieking from boys in the playground, but I never wanted to. I remember being far more interested in the things I wasn’t supposed to be interested in. I don’t think that has really changed.

  Past the age of maybe eight, I’ve never really got boys. My brothers are presumably a poor sample set, but if that’s the case, so are all the other boys I’ve known. And now I’m at an age where my life is supposed to revolve around them. I’m supposed to start wearing tight dresses and drinking pre-mixed spirits and generally generating all my self-worth from some guy’s attention. And it’s not that I hate guys, but they’re just…in the shadow cast by the larger part of me. The part that’s interested in girls.

  This is the word I always use with myself. Interested. As if that stuff—gender orientation, whatever—is something to be coolly appreciated. As if I’m casting an eye over an interesting building or I’m walking, detached but aware, through an art gallery. I can’t even tell myself who I am.

  I roll over and there’s Dolly Parton’s life lying half-open on the bed. Dolly wouldn’t care who I loved or what I obsessed about. In music, pain is money. Maybe I should buy a guitar and start a new career. Where else could so much emotional crap make you so successful? Except no one would care about the turmoil of a weird, ambiguous white girl. White-ish.

  Then I think, would Dad be allowed to play music in jail? Could he have books? Could he listen to the cricket on the radio?

  These are the things I would be afraid of if I went to prison:

  1) Forced exercise

  2) Sharing a toilet with other people

  3) Having to eat meals with other people

  4) Any type of forced therapy

  5) Having to say hello to your cellmate every day.

  The sex crimes and the stabbings and the drugs up your arse and the neo-nazi groups? Neither here nor there. The real hell would be having no time to yourself.

  I scrunch up my eyes, trying to stop my thoughts. My brain deals with real shit, always, by turning it into a joke, some kind of psychological stand-up routine. But this isn’t funny. Dad is really in trouble. I think about all the paperwork in the shed, about him trying to sort everything out. If he went to jail, everything would go to shit. I don’t even want to imagine it. Mum would have to get full-time work. I’d have to look after the house. Angus would have to get a job. Titch would have to do something. We’d visit Dad on the weekends, talk through glass.

  A noise escapes my mouth, a deep moan, and it shocks me so much that I clamp my hand over my mouth. But it comes again, and I’m moaning like a cartoon ghost and I can’t stop and it’s like something inside me has uncorked and all this deep, horrible sadness is pouring out of me.

  I clamp a pillow over my face and I hear myself saying over and over stop crying you stupid fucking faggy bogan chickenshit you can’t do anything right and nobody likes you and nothing will ever ever ever change. I hold the pillow down harder until I can smell my own sweat and Mum’s geranium detergent and the fabric opens and shuts over my nostrils. I’m trying to smother myself but of course I can’t make it actually happen. Like trying to hold your breath underwater until you drown.

  I take the pillow off and lie there for a few amazing moments where my brain has actually turned itself off and all that I feel is my heart hammering, my breath catching back up to itself. There’s something scary but exhilarating about it. A momentary loss of control. Then my mind starts up again but I focus intently on the corner of my wardrobe and make myself think about how the pieces of wood all fit together and who decided that a square was going to be a square and how did we come so far from just a couple of hairy people and some rocks and now we’ve got computers and who was in charge of thinking up these things and how did someone know how to make anything and was it just hard work or did you have to be born a genius and then my thoughts settle down to a gentle hum and I close my eyes and I’m suddenly as tired as I’ve ever been.

  Another death, I think, another day. Tomorrow we’ll all try again.

  27

  We’re in the car by 10 am, and Mum’s still dirty with me. I remain as calm as possible. This, I tell myself, is the least of my worries. This morning is a drop in the shitty ocean that is my life. I ignore Mum’s constant stink-eye, and don’t say a th
ing when she puts the radio on Classic Hits and cranks it up. As Elton John craps on about some bland collection of emotions, I stay as silent as I can. Mum’s drumming her fingers on the steering wheel, trying her best to get me to tell her to stop, but I’ve been around too long to fall for that old trick. I pull up my hoodie—she hates that—and sink as low as I can into the seat.

  It’s only as we’re driving through town that I start to wonder where Nancy actually lives. I’d assumed she’d be in a brand new house, one of those estates where the streets are named after wines and native flowers. But instead we’re heading out of town, turning right on the so-called Tourist Trail, named this because it leads away from Barwen and on to towns that people might want to visit. I want to ask Mum where we’re going, but that would require me speaking to her.

  Soon, the car slows down and I can see Mum scanning either side of the road, her head rotating slowly like a sideshow clown. Then she stops the car and says, suddenly, ‘Oh.’

  We’re right outside a motel, according to the sign. Actually the Westside Motel, one of the long, nondescript brick accommodations that line the road out of town. A big Foxtel logo and an unlit neon sign saying Danny’s Ristorant are both attached to the reception building.

  ‘They live in a motel?’ I say.

  Mum goes, ‘I guess so.’ She takes a scrap of paper from her pocket and examines it, like maybe she’s written the number upside down. ‘I guess so.’

  Then we see Carla waiting by the entrance, wearing one of those puffy mountaineering jackets, even though it’s not very cold. She give us a quick wave, and Mum drives through into the carpark.

  ‘Good morning,’ says Carla when we get out of the car. She doesn’t seem angry with me, but she also doesn’t seem particularly happy to see us. ‘It’s the best they could do for now,’ she says, gesturing around her. ‘There was supposed to be temporary accommodation at St Stephen’s, but,’ she waves her hands, ‘budgets, cutbacks, shortages. The usual stuff.’