We Were Not Men

by Campbell Mattinson

  The phone rang. ‘Told you,’ Bobbie said and raced back up the ladder. Werner looked at me then and said, ‘What happened to your face?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I answered.

  ‘It looks sore.’

  He smiled. ‘You’ll be all right,’ he started. I smelled something strange then, something sweet, something like sawdust. It seemed to come from the trunk of him. I noticed then how neat he looked, as if he was dressed up. ‘You’re the imp,’ he said as if that’s how Bobbie had described me. He looked at the stairs, waited, listened and then added, whispering, ‘I don’t know what she told you but the dog’s at my place. Give Bobbie a bit and her nerves will settle.’

  Bobbie rushed down. ‘I take it he’s not found?’ she said and disappeared into the dark at the back of the cellar.

  ‘Hemi’s alive?’ I whispered.

  He nodded and put his finger to his mouth.

  ‘I lived at the foot of a sand dune one winter,’ Bobbie said emerging from the dark. ‘In Far North Queensland. Long story. Slow story, you’d guess. Though the sand at the edge moves quick.’

  ‘Jon,’ she then said. She went to put her arm around me but it passed across my back without ever touching. ‘I think I know where your twin brother is.’

  *

  We should have rushed there. But the police told us to wait. It was another five hours before we heard. By the end of the third hour I was sure that for all Bobbie’s words she knew nothing. I thought Eden might be lost for good. I thought then that you can’t put a safety fence around a creek and that he had gone to swim and a tree had fallen on him or a falling star or he’d become so enwrapped that he’d forgotten to come back up for air.

  I said to Bobbie then in that cold bush animal house that when I imagined the moment I was born and I was the first of twins it was as if for a few seconds or minutes everything in the world was big and expanding and that every dream I had would grow my world bigger. I was perfect and my mum was perfect and Dad was there and it was warm and I was going to grow in a garden of love. And then Eden was born.

  I lived this nonsense for an hour and then another and Bobbie was crazy and I was alone or worse.

  And Bobbie tried to serve me tea but when she put the plate in front of me I slapped it away and carrots, pie and peas scattered.

  And then the phone rang again. But neither of us answered.

  And Bobbie looked at me. In the eye. And said, ‘None of us in this family is stupid. You know that?’

  And I said, ‘Yes.’

  And she said, ‘Not your brother. Not you. And not me.’

  And I said, ‘Yes.’

  And she said, ‘That’s our bedrock.’

  And then she answered the phone. With her back to me.

  And I saw the phone slip down her hand.

  And then she turned to me.

  And her face was different.

  And I knew.

  *

  Nine years old with a rod in his back and plates in his arms and no wheelchair and no family to help. He had made his way home. To Newport, ninety-two kilometres away. I didn’t know how but it didn’t matter. I was not alone, I had Bobbie and Eden was alive.

  *

  ‘You can only be your real self at your real home,’ Bobbie mused as she drove. ‘This might have to play out different to how I was planning.’

  The drive from Flowerdale to Newport should take just over an hour but that day on our way to Eden it seemed to take forever.

  ‘You remembered to bring your tablets?’ she asked but only once we’d been driving for ages.

  ‘I couldn’t find Eden’s,’ I said.

  ‘We had to come down for the physio anyway,’ she said.

  ‘Can we move back to our old house?’ I asked.

  ‘We’re going to hit the ring road at peak hour,’ she said.

  ‘Can we?’ I asked again.

  ‘You know how I ended up at Flowerdale? I used to own the best anxiety money could buy.’

  We turned off the ring road into Altona North and she asked, ‘You hungry?’

  ‘Hurry,’ I said.

  ‘I’ll stop at Coles and grab a barbecue chicken.’

  ‘It’s Woolworths,’ I said because that’s what the sign in front of us read.

  ‘Coles as in Woolworths,’ she said.

  She got back into the car and she must have been thinking because she said, ‘Farms don’t run on hope.’

  Finally we turned into Jubilee Street. I unclipped my seatbelt before we’d even made it and Bobbie said, ‘One day you wake up and the world you know best doesn’t exist anymore.’

  ‘Where is he,’ I said as I slapped open the door.

  *

  There were police at our house but I ran straight through and Eden wasn’t in the lounge or the kitchen or our old bedroom but there was still the room out the back, the one with cork board for walls, a verandah with the walls filled in. He was there. He sat on the carpet with his back against the cork. He had a can of Nestlé’s condensed milk open and I thought I could smell vanilla or a whisper of it. He looked at me with red eyes as he scooped the sweet milk straight from the tin with a spoon.

  ‘Are you okay?’ I said.

  And he said, ‘Look outside.’

  I knew what it would be but with him here I didn’t want to look.

  But I did. I looked out the window at Mum’s vegie garden. It was a chaos of weeds. Her corn was brown, her tomatoes were limp and the basil was all just flowers. It was precious to her. Our earliest memories were of playing in the dirt with tomato bushes towering, Mum’s feet shuffling. I thought then that if we left her garden like this then we were not good sons.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said as if it was my fault and I should have watered it earlier.

  ‘She wanted to grow our family in it,’ Eden said because that’s what Mum used to say.

  ‘I thought you were dead,’ I said.

  ‘The internet’s off,’ he said.

  ‘We’ll get the shovels,’ I said. The vegie garden was all I could look at. If Eden had said he wanted to fix it right then I would have.

  ‘There’s no bread,’ he said.

  ‘Did you find your Puffle?’ I said.

  ‘It’s here,’ he said and he pulled his favourite stuffed toy out from under him.

  ‘I would have come with you,’ I said.

  Our Newport house was around the corner from an oil refinery. You couldn’t see it from the house but its flares lit up our rooms and even our gardens. The leaves on Mum’s tomatoes now looked orange.

  ‘I know,’ he replied.

  ‘How?’ I asked, turning to him.

  ‘I hitchhiked.’

  ‘No way.’

  ‘The lady from the chicken farm picked me up.’

  ‘All the way?’

  We locked eyes and he said, ‘We’re gonna go out there and plant new ones.’

  ‘We are Mum’s sons,’ I said out loud.

  ‘I see you found food.’ Bobbie stepped in, chicken in a plastic bag, plates.

  On the lawn just beyond the vegie patch there was a sprinkler left from one long-ago afternoon or it felt a long time anyway. I looked from the patch to the sprinkler and back. ‘Give me your spoon,’ I said.

  Eden handed me the spoon and the tin and I took a big scoop of the sweet oozing condensed milk and the instant it hit my tongue it was suddenly more than just sugar and milk, it was vanilla and home and Mum.

  ‘I have a question,’ Eden said as if he’d slow-cooked it over days.

  ‘Not now,’ Bobbie said. ‘Bread rolls. Chicken. Mayo. Lettuce. I’m organised for once. We’re not letting the chicken get cold. I bought Uno too.’

  She spread it all out in front of Eden, right there on the floor. When she looked up she had the jar of mayonnaise in her hand.

  ‘I don’t know how you made it here but today you need to eat well. You need to bank some rest,’ she said. ‘Every day is ground zero. It can’t all be fixed but it can be made
better.

  ‘Now,’ she said, ‘who likes wings and who likes drumsticks?’

  ‘Can we stay here now?’ Eden asked.

  ‘You too,’ she said.

  ‘Sunday afternoons,’ I said and licked the spoon again. I thought of Mum and of Mars Bar slice and instead of feeling excited about being back with Eden, I felt nervous.

  ‘It’s not Sunday,’ Bobbie said.

  ‘That’s not my question,’ Eden said.

  ‘I wish I’d bought a bottle of wine,’ Bobbie said.

  *

  Eden looked at Bobbie and asked, ‘Did you cry when our mum and dad died?’ Bobbie had all the answers but this moment she did not. I looked at them both and then shuffled over and touched the soft cottony coat of Eden’s Puffle toy.

  There was a sound from outside. ‘Is that a train?’ she asked unnecessarily though we then waited for it to pass.

  ‘I haven’t had time,’ she finally said.

  ‘You didn’t cry?’ Eden pressed.

  ‘Not yet.’

  Bobbie pulled chunks of chicken from the dead barbecued bird and doled them onto rolls though the pace of her hands had slowed.

  ‘What does that mean?’ Eden asked.

  ‘It means,’ she started. She reached to her side as if to grab at something but nothing was there and so her hand landed and then withdrew from nothing but fresh air. She seemed to straighten then as if pushed up into a corner. ‘It means that one day someone else will die, maybe someone famous, someone like Martina Navratilova or something, someone I’ve never met and have never known, and I’ll collapse right there in the street or wherever I am and it will all come gushing out, and I’ll be crying for Martina because I’ve always had a soft spot for her but really I’ll be taking the top off the pressure cooker or the well or whatever you want to call it and letting out everything I’ve stored up over your mum and dad. And over Jack too. And it will be disproportionate, I’ll let a decade go at once. Because that’s how life works. Hurt is a two-way valve. Some things make it all flow out and some things just dig the well deeper, but just because it hasn’t flowed yet doesn’t mean there isn’t a sinkhole waiting to cave in.’

  ‘I haven’t cried either,’ I said. ‘Not properly.’

  ‘I have,’ Eden said.

  And I stopped playing with his Puffle toy then as I realised that I’d not cried because I’d wanted to do it with my brother.

  *

  I stood and headed for the toilet. I thought of that dry russet hair of Mum’s, stuck and dry under the toilet seat, and how I would prise it free and store it before it was lost. But when I lifted the seat it was gone. I looked on the floor and around the toilet but it was nowhere. I went to wash my hands then but before I did I picked up the soap and smelled it.

  ‘Can we stay?’ Eden asked Bobbie as I walked back into the room.

  ‘There’s a mortgage,’ she said.

  ‘Is this house expensive?’ I asked.

  ‘Are you scared to leave here?’ Bobbie asked.

  And then Eden spoke a sentence I could not forget.

  ‘No,’ he answered. ‘I’m afraid to stay. Which is why I have to.’

  *

  We’d finished tea and cleaned up, roughly. Bobbie dealt out the Uno cards. ‘I’ve seen you play Uno,’ she said. ‘So you know the rules. But just so you know, I play that sixes and nines are the same.’

  Eden and I looked at each other.

  ‘Families have their own rules,’ she said. ‘Except when baking.’

  ‘We all need a bit of stupid in our lives,’ she said.

  ‘Is Eden going to get in trouble?’ I asked, the cards dealt.

  ‘Good question,’ Bobbie said. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I shouldn’t have run away,’ he said. ‘But I had to.’

  ‘We don’t run away in this family,’ Bobbie said. ‘We combine our calamities.’

  ‘Can we stay here?’ Eden asked again.

  ‘It’s a long way. Even the police were amazed.’

  ‘It’s home,’ he said.

  Bobbie arranged her cards and then she said, ‘I wish we could roll back two years to when Jack was still here. I want my old life back too. This wasn’t part of my superannuation plan.’

  She breathed. Her hand reached into thin air again. ‘God knows what hoops I’m going to have to jump through to sort your mum and dad’s super.’ The Uno cards were flying the whole time.

  She looked at Eden directly. ‘I’m starting to admire your pluck.’

  ‘Please,’ he said.

  I’d been silent but I said, ‘On the back of the door,’ and I pointed towards the hallway, ‘are the lines where Dad measures us and marks how tall we’ve grown.’ I smelled at my hands to see if I could still smell the soap.

  And the cards went around. A red six on a yellow nine on a green six.

  ‘I’d have nothing to do all day,’ Bobbie said.

  ‘Is that a yes?’ Eden asked.

  ‘I can see the headline,’ she said. ‘CITY-COUNTRY HOUSE DIVIDED.’

  ‘Maybe means yes,’ Eden said.

  *

  We didn’t put on our blue tops and short pants and arrive at primary school one day ready to resume as if nothing had happened. Instead one morning Bobbie drove us to the school around playtime. We had our school bags with us but we didn’t get out. We watched as kids played out on the oval, lapped at water from the taps, ran about. The last time we’d gone to school it was with Mum. She stayed to help with reading.

  ‘Have you both got hankies?’ Bobbie asked.

  ‘What’s a hanky?’ Eden said.

  ‘I guess they have tissues,’ Bobbie said.

  ‘I’m not ready,’ I said.

  ‘Just look as though you are,’ Bobbie said. ‘In case the school counsellor comes.’

  And then I saw Mr Colt, my teacher. He strode across the playground in his black leather boots. He always wore a suit, the only teacher who did. I was in Bobbie’s warm car with Eden but still I shivered. Mr Colt always called me Eden.

  ‘Have they taught you “I Was Born on a Pirate Ship” yet?’ Bobbie asked as we sat in her car, still not moving.

  ‘Taught us what?’ Eden said.

  ‘Maybe I could warm to this parenting caper,’ she replied.

  We sat in Bobbie’s car with the word parenting in the air. We didn’t get out, we left.

  *

  That weekend I went to our old bedroom in Newport and found an exercise book from school. I turned to the back cover, which had a calendar, and worked out when the accident had been. I then went through and put a cross through every day since. I counted them. There were only forty-four crosses. ‘Should we ask Bobbie to stop where the accident was?’ Eden asked.

  ‘I don’t want to,’ I said.

  ‘People put flowers out,’ he said.

  ‘I’ve seen them.’

  ‘I don’t want to forget,’ he said.

  ‘We’re not going to forget,’ I said.

  ‘Quicksticks,’ Bobbie called out, grabbing the car keys. ‘There’s a place I need to show you.’

  As we drove along our street Bobbie pointed at a car as it drove towards us. ‘I’ve seen this woman driving down your street,’ she said. ‘She’s so small she actually has to look through the steering wheel. She’s like a stunt driver.’

  ‘She gave us chocolate once.’

  ‘You know her?’

  ‘Golden Rough,’ I said.

  ‘Her son Nectar goes to our school,’ Eden said.

  ‘Nectar?’ Bobbie queried.

  ‘That’s what we call him.’

  ‘Her husband has bees,’ I said.

  ‘Married him for his honey,’ Bobbie said.

  *

  The waterfront at Newport is made of concrete, black rock and wood. Bobbie took us there then. As soon as I stepped out of the car I felt tiny in the face of it. We could see across to the Melbourne CBD but where we stood was dominated by the shipping channel and the freight y
ards and the river. The Westgate Bridge was there too, or it felt as though it was. Its concrete pillars and long iron spans looked so big I thought they might stretch all the way from Newport to Flowerdale.

  Cranes, fixed in place, loomed like giant giraffes. There was a gymnasium building there too, themed to look like a ship. A baseball field, empty. Freight ships cruised through, containers piled high, rusted. What I stared at most though was the power station. It was a huge box with a single striking chimney, its top striped with red and white. ‘I remember doing diligence on that when it was privatised,’ Bobbie said, flicking a hand in the direction of the station. ‘We should get the wheelchair out,’ she said.

  ‘I’ll be an idiot and walk,’ Eden said.

  We helped Eden from the car and stood by the water. The power station reared behind us, a red light blinking on its top. We watched a mammoth ship glide in with the words CHINA SHIPPING LINE on its side. It was windy. One small step from the edge of the concrete and we’d be into the water and over our head. I took a half-step backward. Eden leaned forward.

  ‘This is not a love song,’ Bobbie said. ‘It’s more than that. It’s a scream. A fist. A song of muscle.’ The day was grey and the wind was strong and if she’d said just anything it would have been blown away.

  ‘You two didn’t appear out of a puff of smoke,’ Bobbie said into the sea breeze. She spoke as though we had to be roused. ‘You are the live chapter of a long line of people. You are monumentally grand. Everyone is.’

  Bobbie looked mischievous. Almost dramatic. She stood tall. She breathed deep of the sea wind.

  I didn’t know what we were doing there but every time I looked at either Eden or Bobbie they were both fixed on something: a ship, a bird, the water, the sky. Neither of them looked at me. They looked up and out as if at any second we might start off on a voyage. There was a hum in the air, from the station, as if its power could be heard. There was the sound of rushing water, not a trickle or anything minor; a gush. At the edge of the water the basalt rocks were black and grey but they were rusted, their bases forested by the green weeds of the sea. These weeds were studded with generations of mussels.

  Sometimes we’d go with Mum and Dad to watch the Williamstown football club play. If they won, on the way home in the car, Dad would get us to chant: What do we sleep on? Seaweed. What do we eat? Mussels. How do we eat ’em? Alive.