by Cate Kennedy
One Book Many Brisbanes
The Tower
Meg Mundell
She found us a week ago, in the arts section of the newspaper. Or to be honest – and really, at this stage, what’s the point in lying? – we found her.
‘Listen to this!’ Marianne’s voice pricked a sharp hole through my sleepy Sunday afternoon. She read aloud from the paper: ‘However you phrase it – disabled sculptor, artist with a disability – they’re pointless labels. I am a sculptor. My physicality is irrelevant. Why automatically insert it before the art itself is appraised?
’ The journalist had used the word ‘defiant,’ Marianne reported, but I thought the artist, whoever they were, had a point. Eyes half-shut, I stroked the cat and felt almost content, waited for Marianne to finish her dramatic pause. I am interested in art, but the feeling is not mutual. Marianne is impasto, thick reds and dark greens and tobacco golds; I am the water in which the brush is rinsed.
She read on: ‘But Alice Rowe’s upbeat, assured personality may well have a darker side, if her art in any way reflects her life.’ I opened my eyes. Marianne stared at me over the newspaper and a sneaking unease crept between us. I tried to keep my voice neutral.
‘I’d heard she had become successful. How much space did she get?’ I asked.
‘Half a page. That should piss her off. Extra space because she’s a sculptor with a disability and an attitude.’ Marianne doesn’t really mean it when she talks like this. She only does it when she’s frightened.
‘Maybe she’s good.’ Distracted, I stroked the cat too vigorously and did not snatch my hand back in time – there’s still a red scratch on my wrist. She’s a pretty thing, but unpredictable.
As I sucked at the scratch Marianne got up to make coffee, but after announcing this plan and banging cupboard doors busily she just stood at the sink in a kind of dream. She left the tap running for a long time. I had to remind her that we’re in the middle of a drought.
*
It happened down by the river. Summer would turn us into mosquitoes, quick and irritating, whining in our parents’ ears until they shooed us out the back door and we all flew down to the water.
With each passing year memory blurs, another hazy layer of plastic wrap is laid over the senses, but at the age of eleven things are still as clear as the water, solid as the river stones. The world existed around us in a bright, clear bubble and nothing beyond the immediate horizon counted.
The water tower loomed over a bend in the river near the train tracks, a squat cement cylinder stained with lichen and faded graffiti. It cast its shadow over our swimming hole, darkening a rectangle of water that shifted slowly with the path of the sun.
Daniel was the first to conquer the tower. One still afternoon, after weeks of brutal heat, he climbed the worn metal ladder and stood on the tower’s crumbling edge, peering down at our upturned faces. Before anyone could yell out ‘Chicken!’ he’d done the unthinkable. Those skinny bird legs pedalled the air like Roadrunner suspended over a cliff, his eyes and mouth three black circles in his pale face; the drop of his scrawny body seemed endless.
Water exploded everywhere like glass. The swimming hole rocked and slapped against its banks. We waited.
Finally Daniel surfaced, eyes huge above the choppy water, the shock in his face already turning to pride. He strutted ashore, chest pushed out like a pigeon, face split by a grin, to shake his wet hair all over us.
But the hero shrank in status as, one by one, we followed. Marianne was first; my turn came later. But by the weekend, all but two of us had jumped off the tower. John, who was only seven and deemed too small, looked relieved when we forbade him.
But Alice didn’t get off so lightly.
*
Children are not, by nature, kind. They know that a group is made stronger by the presence of an outsider, that someone has to be the runt of the litter. Perhaps they know this instinctively; or perhaps they learn it from their elders.
That summer Alice had already been made to pay for many crimes: chickening out of our stick-fight tournaments, running home crying when a rubber tarantula landed in her hair, telling her mum about Marianne’s strip show, with us selling tickets at twenty cents a head. Alice who went to church every Sunday, who once wet her pants in assembly, who stared at the ground when teased. Alice the bag carrier, the moneylender, the punchline; the one whose clothes got hidden after swimming. Alice the lonely, and I later realised (hindsight being an inferior source of knowledge), the harmless and helpless.
The water tower waited for her like a judge.
Cajoled, enticed, bullied – I am still not sure how she got up there. From below I could see her crouching near the edge, the panicky flutter of breath in her ribs; it brought to mind a tiny mouse I once found cornered by our cat. It was easy enough to save the mouse.
*
The rest is blurred in my memory – a deliberate haze, I suspect. But Marianne and I have always agreed that it was Sarah and Dean’s fault.
Nasty little Sarah with her beautiful hair shimmering, her sharp stick prodding. Mean Dean with his goblin teeth, laughing too high and too loud. They scampered up the ladder after her. I don’t remember what the rest of us were doing – just watching silently, I hope. It was a long time ago.
Hot mixed-up air, the sounds ugly and jumbled: Alice’s jagged sobs, Dean’s wild laughter, the swish of Sarah’s stick cutting through the air. Five children staring up at three children.
And then there were two.
I am certain she was meant to land in the water. If she had fallen into the river, rather than landing on the bank, one of us could have pulled her out before panic swallowed her – Alice couldn’t really swim.
But after the sickening sound of flesh on solid earth there was only silence. The sun smiled down on seven tanned children standing very still. Only the river moved.
*
I refused to go with Mum to visit Alice in the hospital. This didn’t rouse suspicions: I’d always been petrified of anything even vaguely medicinal.
Anyway, it was an accident. We were all fooling around on top of the water tower and Alice slipped and fell – didn’t she, Helena? Right, Daniel? That’s what happened – remember, John? That’s what happened. We all knew the drill.
And, incredibly, Alice’s story was no different. To my knowledge it never has been.
I cried that first day she came to school in a wheelchair. I contracted a mysterious illness, thoughtfully passing it on to the others, and we all spent the week in bed.
Eventually we had to go back to school. At first, Sarah and Marianne would bring Alice Redskins, sherbet bombs, Wizz Fizz. But Alice never said thank you. Alice didn’t say much at all. And after a few weeks we came to an unspoken agreement: it had never happened. Alice got no more lollies. We used the stairs instead of the corridors. When the bell rang we’d head for the back of the field, far out of reach of the smooth asphalt, on the rough grass where wheels could not travel.
At first, parental concern forced token visits. But after a few months the dreaded questions (‘Helena, why don’t you go and visit Alice and lend her your new book?’) became less frequent, then ceased altogether. I guess Alice made new friends. We went to the movies, hung out at the mall or played quietly in our bedrooms. We stayed away from the river. Our parents said the current was too strong.
*
Marianne flicked a chocolate into the air, catching it in her mouth. I’ve never seen her miss yet. Like she says, maybe if her hand-eye co-ordination wasn’t so good, her jeans would still fit.
‘So, Hells. Want to go and have a look?’
‘No,’ I answered.
*
Friday lunch hour. The gallery doors flick shut behind me. The woman behind the counter hands me a catalogue without glancing up.
The room is all-white, long and narrow, the sculptures set along its length. The first one I come to is a black cauldron filled with cement feet; further along I find an ornate li
fe-sized window frame, carved entirely from a block of soap, hung with a black lace curtain; then a three-course meal for one, hewn from white marble and set on bone china. The titles, written in the language of art, make no sense to me.
And then I see it.
It is more of a scale model than a sculpture: a cement temple, an icon of the rural landscape. A monument cut down to size. Below it, on the rocks, lies a tiny broken doll. The title card reads ‘Birth.’
*
The next weekend is my mother’s birthday and I must make the rare trip out to the country. The train-ride is hushed, each stranger wrapped in their own silence, and the landscape is parched and singed. Cheek laid against the synthetic fabric of the seat, I retreat into my own quiet bubble.
With me I take Alice’s black-and-white smile from the gallery catalogue. It’s not a posed smile, and there is nothing modest about it. She is smiling just like Daniel was when he walked out of the water.
An hour into the journey, by the time the train clatters out of the burnt trees and past the gorge, I have fallen into a gentle half-sleep. I don’t see that grey concrete mass standing sentry over the river. I tell myself that on the train-ride back, if I keep my eyes shut tight, I can pretend that it was never there at all.
To the Other Side of the World
Sherryl Clark
Tell me a story, the boy said every night. So I did. Every night, a different story. Fairytales, Dr Seuss, favourite picture books. But always he wanted more, as if something was missing. I wouldn’t tell him the old stories. The ones that keep you awake in the dark.
*
The back lawn is a rectangle of green. I clean the spade, sand smooth the handle, sharpen the blade. I choose a spot in the far corner, thump the spade down, feel the blade bite. The ground is harder than I thought – we haven’t had much rain lately. I lift the turf, lay it aside in small patches, widen the square of plain dirt.
‘What are you doing?’
My wife of twenty-three years has crept up behind me in her red velvet slippers. I wipe sweat from my forehead.
‘I’m digging a hole.’
‘What for?’
She eyes the dirt, the marred surface of her perfectly mowed lawn. We spent last weekend planting a neat border of mondo grass. Her garden now looks like a gaudy beach umbrella with a brown fringe.
‘I thought I might put in a pond.’
‘Here?’
‘Why not?’ There are lots of things I could say to convince her. I could talk about rocks, pond plants, ground covers, darting tiny goldfish.
‘I suppose …’ She waits and watches.
‘It’s getting a bit hot. I’ll do some more later.’ I lay down the spade and walk inside to get a glass of water. When she has gone, I return and carefully dig up some more grass. After about an hour, I stop. I load the grass clods into a wheelbarrow and put them in the compost.
The lawn now has a neat rectangle of dirt etched into it. It seems about the right size to me.
*
At dinner, my wife seems edgy. She fiddles with her wine glass, turns the music up and down, spreads crumbs on the table and then sweeps them up with her hand. Her rings glint in the candlelight.
*
Every Sunday I visit my mother. She is in a rest home, one of those almost-luxurious residences that use thick carpet and lined curtains and central heating to disguise the fact that they are prisons.
My mother is not allowed outside. Not even in the back garden. Once she climbed the gum tree beside the fence and escaped. They found her in Myer, putting on lipstick from the sample display. Four colours at once, maybe more if they hadn’t stopped her. They laughed and said how ‘spritely’ she was. Her carers were hoping I wouldn’t sue, and I didn’t.
Every Sunday, I sit beside my mother and she asks, ‘Who are you?’
I am tempted to say, ‘I don’t know. Who do you think I am?’ But I don’t. I say, ‘I am your son, Charles.’
‘I don’t have a son,’ she says. ‘I’m not married. How can I have a son? That would be a sin.’
Sometimes I talk to her about my family but she doesn’t remember them either. She lives back in the past somewhere, a place that holds sharp moments, people who are long since dead but still vividly alive to her.
So mostly I listen. I listen to other visitors trying to get their mothers and fathers to talk to them. It seems sad that all those words go to waste.
*
During the week we have normal dinners, my wife and I. Normal means that we eat at the kitchen table with the small television on. We try to talk.
‘How was work today?’ she says.
‘The same as usual. Dobbs is going on long service leave next week. They’ve got a replacement in for him. Young man with earrings.’
‘Won’t that mean more work for you?’
‘I don’t think so.’ She knows that I have been shoved sideways, that I have a managerial job with nothing to manage. On a good day, I finish the crosswords in the newspaper by 11 a.m. I have six more years before retirement. I spend a lot of time wondering why they haven’t downsized me.
‘I had lunch with Mary today, then I went to the library and helped out with the book sale.’
I watch my wife’s mouth move as she tells her story. She never deviates much from the plot. Someone must have told her it is safer to stick with familiar details. That way you don’t get caught out.
She is still an attractive woman. At business functions, I see other men, both old and young, watch her move, smile when she laughs, offer to get her a drink. I stand with my back to the wall. I wait for the moment when her eyes will meet his. I imagine a spark leaping across the room, just for an instant, before they both turn away.
That’s how I know who it is she has been sleeping with, making love with, fucking. Everyone else gets her full attention, including me.
*
I clean the spade again, test the blade. It is time to cut into the earth. I press down on the handle, use my foot to dig deeper, force the spade to carve bricks of dirt.
The hole slowly deepens. Soon it is a trench that widens, brick by brick, into a rectangle again.
‘How deep are you going to make it?’ She is there again, a line creasing between her eyebrows. Her mouth is tight.
‘I’m not sure.’
‘You’re not planning this very well,’ she says.
No, I’m not. But I am doing it very neatly and precisely. Is it possible to be precise without having a plan?
*
I decide to tell my mother about the hole. She listens intently, nodding. ‘Is it a pond?’ she asks.
‘I don’t know. Maybe,’ I say. I feel a thrill of happiness at her interest, even though she probably thinks I am the gardener at her father’s huge, columned house.
‘How deep will it be?’
‘I haven’t decided yet. I thought I might dig until it seems perfect.’
‘Perfect?’ She frowns. ‘Can a hole be perfect?’
I can’t answer. I want to say yes but I’m not sure where that would take us.
‘You shouldn’t dig a hole for no reason,’ she says. ‘Someone might fall down into it.’
For a moment I’m angry with her, then she says, ‘Who are you?’ and I laugh.
*
It is Friday morning of an ordinary week. I have just finished the crossword when I’m summoned to the director’s office. He is fifteen years younger than me and he has never been able to grow a proper moustache, although he’s been trying for as long as I have known him.
His secretary makes us real coffee and I know something is wrong. I know what he is going to say before he says it. All I’m waiting for is the amount of money they will offer to get rid of me. It is larger than I expected but not as much as I’d hoped for.
His face reddens as I sit in silence. I want to say something that he will remember but my mind is blank. Except that I think about the hole and suddenly I can’t wait to get home and pick up the spad
e again.
*
I tell my wife over a Saturday-night dinner of candles, burnt lamb chops and peas.
I’ve never seen anyone literally go white before. It makes her eyes darken and glitter, and her mouth thins out to nothing. I realise she is biting the inside of her lips. I think I see a tiny smear of blood.
‘So what are you going to do?’ she says. ‘Are you going to find another job at your age?’
‘Probably not.’ I think about her Chanel perfume, her designer clothes, her last pair of shoes, which cost eight hundred dollars. Maybe she’s worried that she’ll have to buy things at Kmart now. ‘I think we’ll be okay financially. I’ve made good investments, the house is paid off …’
‘But – what will you do all day?’ she says wildly.
No, she’s worried that if I’m home she won’t be able to see her lover. I smile at her. ‘I have a hole to dig.’ I push my plate aside. ‘I think I’ll make myself a sandwich and watch TV.’
On the way to the kitchen I turn off her classical music.
*
On Monday morning, I don’t go to work. I can’t endure the last two weeks they offered me. I can do the crossword at home. But straight after breakfast, I can’t wait to get back to the hole.
When I dig down deeper, I discover a new layer of earth of a different colour. Instead of dark, rich brown, this layer is caramel. When I was a boy, we used to joke about digging to the other side of the world, right through the middle.
My wife comes to stare at the hole. Her face is stony but I can’t work out if it’s the hole or my being at home on a Monday that upsets her most. I take a break for lunch; the house is empty.
When I return to the hole, I realise that it looks like I am digging a grave. I sit by the hole for a while. Maybe my mother is right – a hole should have a purpose and even if I don’t know what it is yet, I know it’s not for a coffin or a body.
I widen the hole until it is a square.
*
One night, after a long, stressful day, when the boy asked me to tell him a real story, I gave in. I shouldn’t have but by the time I realised, it was too late.
