‘And fair enough, too,’ I say. ‘How do you know all this stuff?’
The kid wipes his nose on his hand. Their trainer managed to stop the bleeding, which I think is a good sign. And it looks pretty straight, from where I stand.
‘Oh, my old man’s a lawyer, and he knows about her boyfriend, who’s a gangster. And evidently he’s going to get shot next week. So stay away from any black Corvettes with the Dukes of Hazard flag on the roof.’
Then the siren goes and it’s all over.
‘Anyway, catch ya,’ I say, and I shake hands with the dude. ‘Sorry about hittin’ you a bit late early on. I thought you were someone else.’
The kid shrugs. He doesn’t seem too concerned about the black eye; probably because he hasn’t looked in the mirror yet.
‘That’s all right. I’m just glad I wasn’t playin’ on that big tall blond guy with the red boots. He’s a fuckin’ madman. Anyway –’ The kid waggles the old hang-loose. ‘See you round.’ And he tucks his red mouthguard into a sock and walks off.
And I walk off, thinking that sometimes it is true that you make friends playing sport, although usually it’s enemies. Still, I’ll remember that kid. And if he ever swaps schools, which I’d suggest, and comes here, I’ll make sure no one kills him.
From my parents I get pocket money; from Trav’s parents he gets an allowance, the difference being, as far as I can see, that Trav probably gets too much to be kept in a pocket and sometimes it’s a cheque, not actual money. And all he has to do for it is put the key out for the cleaning lady twice a week, and put the recycling bin out once. Which I am helping him do now, by emptying a stack of The Big Issue magazines, as well as a copy of the council’s recycling guidelines, into a blue and yellow wheelie bin.
‘Who buys The Big Issue?’ I ask, failing to get my fingers out of the way as Trav kicks the bin lid shut. ‘My mum does, too. From that wheelchair dude outside the ladies’ underwear shop.’
‘My old man.’ Trav drags the bin across a flowerbed as he takes a shortcut to the front gate. ‘It’s a corporate responsibility, he reckons. Never reads it, though. Just buys it from some old girl in Collins Street, brings it home then chucks it.’
‘I guess it’s the thought that counts.’ I look at the tracks Trav’s left across the garden. They’re pretty deep. I stick to the path. ‘That Mikey thing was a bit of a mess, eh? Still. I guess it works out for some people in it.’
Trav pulls out five kilograms of junk mail and the local paper from the letterbox, which he then dumps straight into the recycling bin.
‘Yep. I guess when dudes go missing, they have a reason.’ Trav also bins half of one of Dot’s rubber chickens, which will give them something to think about down at the Sorting Station. He turns back up the driveway, his house looming large through the trees. ‘So, hey, tomorrow, maybe you and me and the girlies can go out somewhere?’
This would be great, except that what’s even better is that my folks are taking Gretchen to a Regional Round Robin Basketball Championship in Bendigo, where each team plays non-stop all day, starting at eight a.m. and going until nine p.m., so they’re looking down the barrel at about six hundred games and a sixteen-hour round trip.
‘I would,’ I say, before explaining what I think Electra said about coming over to my house. ‘If I understood right. Which I might not have. As no other girl’s ever said that kind of thing to me before. Except that girl in the toilet at your party. But I didn’t like the look of her.’
‘Neither did I,’ says Trav. ‘She was from that no-rules school, and they’re all off their heads. Anyway – ’ Trav takes out his phone, a new one I’ve never seen before, and hands it over. ‘So ring her and find out. Electra, not the other one. Meet you inside.’ And he walks off, following the wheelie bin tracks through the garden.
I ring Electra, and she says she will come over, which is the official signal for Marc E. Jarvis, 24, lost property superstar and Big Issue failure, to have a nervous breakdown beside a tree that is called a Pohutakawa, as Trav’s gardener has put a sign on it that says so.
43
It’s Sunday, and as planned, Gretchen and my folks have left early and I’m freaking out about Electra coming over. And I can’t even workshop it with Trav via telephone, text, or email, as it’s all just way too personal. So I’m alone at home, looking out the front window, trying not to hyperventilate, waiting for Electra. So far, she’s eighty seven-seconds late. Make that eighty-eight. Make that – here she is.
She comes up our driveway just as the CD finishes, and the entire house goes silent, booming with a deep kind of nothingness that feels like guilt. Around me the family photographs seem to have expanded, and the rooms press in, emphasising their differences, such as the laundry compared to my bedroom, for example. But I go to the door, despite a houseful of unspoken criticism, and open it.
So far so good.
I say hi, and step back, relieved to find that I can talk, although I could do with a drink of water as my mouth feels like a sponge.
‘Hi.’ Electra smiles, wearing jeans, a white shirt and jacket, her handbag at her knee as if we’re about to head on out in a minute or two. ‘I’m glad you’re home.’
I try not to read too much into how she said that, as it might just do my head in completely, which wouldn’t take much at this stage.
‘I’m glad I am, too,’ I say enigmatically. ‘Come into the lounge. I’ve got the heater on.’
I follow Electra through, and we sit on the couch, at opposite ends but facing each other, our feet together in the middle, mine in new white socks, Electra’s bare.
‘Marc.’ Electra looks at our feet, then at me. ‘I’ve got some things to tell you. And I will. But first, let’s not talk. And not here.’
And I realise straightaway that I have absolutely no idea where this day is heading, except that I know it will be a day I will never forget.
Time ceases to exist and other more important things take over. At one point, this point never accurately recorded, when I go to say something, Electra stops me. And when I try to say something else later, she stops me then, too; having her reasons, I guess, as I do too.
‘Because,’ she says, in the timeless, sunny warmth of my room, where many things have changed, ‘I love you, Marc. And that’s all you need to know.’
I guess it is.
For now.
At a time like this.
I wish it was all I needed to know ever; because when Electra tells me that she is leaving Melbourne, to go and live in Canberra at the AIS, I have such a mountain of too-much information that it triggers an avalanche of misery that I don’t think I’ll ever be able to dig myself out of.
‘There’s another thing Coach Tom Geraghty was wrong about,’ I say, looking at Electra, at that face, and those wild blue eyes, and at her hands that I’m holding. ‘Because I’m sure I love you. And perhaps I wish that I’d never met you, because I don’t know how I’m ever gunna go without you.’ And I cannot be any clearer than that.
For a moment we sit in close, sad silence. I feel as if I’m caught in a dream that I hoped might last forever but is breaking up, and crashing back to earth, as we speak.
‘What did you say to me before?’ I say. ‘That was all that I needed to know? Tell me that again.’
Electra does, which is all I can ever ask for, I guess. Or all I can ever hope for, so I hold onto those words, using them like an anchor because anchors last a long time, even when they’re lost – knowing this because I’ve seen them stuck between rocks and in museums, anchoring nothing but themselves, and the memories of far-away ports, other countries, long voyages, beautiful ships, and the moving sea.
And on this day, like only one, perhaps two or three other days in my life, I need to be anchored, to stop me drifting away into a future that no longer seems to have any great purpose, or offers anything that might lift the sadness that I’m feeling right now.
Disaster has struck.
I didn’t e
ven see it coming.
No lighthouse, no fog horn, no warning whatsoever. Typical.
We are in the lounge, side by side on the couch, me feeling that there’s been an earthquake, and Electra’s on one side of a great big chasm extending as far as the eye can see, and I’m on the other.
‘So when do you leave?’ I ask, not really wanting to know. ‘Not tonight, I hope. And now’d be a really good time to tell me if you’re joking.’ This comment I toss like a lifeline to myself, but miss it.
Electra fiddles with the pattern on her top as if she thinks she has to keep her hands to herself, as if she doesn’t know me very well at all. She doesn’t look at me. She looks at our feet, hers in my white socks, mine now bare and pale.
‘On the Friday before the long weekend.’ She talks like a recorded message. ‘Two weeks away. Just under. My dad’s coming to help me. He’ll fly over then rent a car. And drive me and my stuff up there.’
‘So what about your school? What do they think?’ Man, I just keep on coming up with these great questions. ‘I guess they didn’t expect that to happen.’
Electra is at that point with crying where she doesn’t care what she looks like. Her eyes are smudged and huge, and her face is softly saturated, as if it’s absorbed every tear she’s ever shed. And her eyes aren’t blue, black and stormy; they’re closed for business.
‘Well, the Principal sure wasn’t very happy.’ She shrugs, her shoulder transferring the shrug directly into mine. ‘But in the long run – ’ she smiles so quickly that it’s already a memory. ‘I think it’ll work out best. In some ways. But not all ways.’ Then she buries her face into my best Ben Sherman shirt – a shirt that Trav might not like, but a shirt that I think of as one of my greatest supporters – and sets about saturating that.
Then, in the middle of all this, I suddenly think of Amelia-Anne, my long-lost friend, and I think of Mikey, lost to his family, and it seems that all I can do is what Electra is doing, which is to cry, because I realise that people do go away, and they don’t always come back, not ever, and there’s enough sadness in that fact to last a lifetime.
44
I never want to have another Monday morning like the one I’m having now. I am a complete and utter ruin of my former self, an empty whatever-I-am-or-was that has been stripped of everything good, then blown up and stamped on, and now lies in a flattened heap surrounded by onlookers who have no idea how to put it back together again, or who to call. Not even Trav.
‘I dunno, mate,’ he says, as we walk to school. ‘It’s just the worst thing. It sucks.’ Trav posts a muesli bar wrapper through a fence. ‘It’s not like you even screwed up. It’s just accidental. And it’s not even her fault, either. It’s not like she got pregnant and had to leave, or turned out to be, I dunno, mad. It’s just like, shit. Circumstances. No, it’s just bad luck. For you, especially. I mean, it’s just a pity she’s not like Hailey who can’t run to save herself. Then she’d be here forever.’
All I can do is agree, although I don’t agree with all of it. But I’m too tired to tell Trav that; I’m just trying to conserve enough energy to get through the day without Ms Inglis asking me what’s wrong, because I just might tell her. And that would be the end of my life, as I know it, for sure.
Then, just as it seems my day can’t get any worse, it does. As I’m walking home from school, sludging along Glenferrie Road like a suicidal snail, I see Belinda and Mikey pulling across the steel fence of GateWay Auto.
‘Hey, Marc.’ Belinda does not look like her neat, sweet, sunny self. She looks plain, cold, shivery, and upset. ‘How are you going?’
‘Okay,’ I answer, stopping on the footpath, because what else can I say? ‘How are you guys?’
Mikey lets out a breath, hefting the big padlock. ‘Not too flash. Vinnie passed away this afternoon. So we’re just locking up and getting the hell out of here.’
As I said, just when my day couldn’t get any worse, it does. But this news, at least, jolts me into realising that although losing Electra is one of the worst things that’s ever happened to me, I suppose it does put things in perspective. Somewhat.
‘That’s terrible,’ I say, and it is, because I know when someone good dies, the loss spreads outwards and inwards, becoming as much a part of you as your fingerprints. That’s just how it is, or how I’ve found it to be. ‘He was a really good guy,’ I add. ‘A real good guy.’
‘He was.’ Belinda nods. ‘He was very special.’
There’s a minute of silence between us.
‘It’s bad news,’ I say, as I’ve reached the point where I’ve got about twenty words to say or less. ‘I’m really sorry. I mean, I didn’t know him very well, but he seemed to help a lot of people. He helped me, and I only met him a few times.’
‘You’re right.’ Belinda pats my hand. ‘Anyway, we’ll see you soon, okay? Bye, Marc. Take care.’
‘You, too,’ I say, and now, totally wordless, I walk away.
Where do thoughts take you? All over the place; even to places that aren’t places but more like spaces – brain spaces, where things and people are filed, perhaps alphabetically but probably not, as I tend to think more about what’s important than what’s in order. And I guess, when your brain space fills beyond a certain level, you either let stuff go, put it away, compress or change it, or risk total meltdown.
I haven’t reached the point of total meltdown; although I think Mikey might have once, and decided to escape rather than go up in smoke. But I can’t escape because no matter where I go or what I do, the memories of what I’ve lost will just come right along with me. Meaning that happiness and sadness don’t ever truly cancel each other out, or not permanently. So there’s no such thing as being totally happy or totally sad – or not in this equation, as I see it, which has me agreeing with Ms Inglis that mathematics, although it is crap, is logical (she teaches maths in an emergency), once you understand it.
And this time I do understand it; although it’s highly unlikely I’ll ever write the universal happiness-sadness formula, even though it’s my guess that in everyone’s lives there’s always going to be more than enough of one or the other to go around.
There. I just did.
Fuck!
I’m a genius.
An unhappy one.
45
The week drags by, hauling me along with it. Hopelessly I shamble through the charred remains of my life, familiar places now so desolate all that remains is mud and a few splintered landmarks from the past, preserved under a sky the colour of cemetery marble.
Nothing I see makes me feel any better, not even the glimpse of a lady’s black bra on the tram. And anything I have to do, I do in a trance. Even footy training. Anything I don’t have to do, I don’t even think about.
Even Ms Inglis asks me if I’m okay. Even Coach Tindale tells me to take it easy because I look sick. Even Hailey rings me to ask me how I am. Even my mother wants to know what’s wrong. Even Trav’s mum does.
Far out.
Yet I don’t want to talk to anyone about it. Yet when I see Electra, the only person I do really want to talk to, I don’t know what to say. And when I hold her hand, or kiss her, or when our skin is together in some way, shape, or form, I feel that although I’ve never been closer to anyone else in my life, she’s already far, far away, and moving further away still.
Hey, yeah, I’m used to losing things; man, I’ve been losing stuff all my life. But what I’m not used to is knowing that I’m going to lose something in advance, and there’s not a thing I can do about it. Even freakin’ nametags won’t help in this situation.
There’s just no stopping Electra.
And I wouldn’t if I could.
46
We play footy on Saturday, the last game before the long weekend, and when I touch the ball it feels almost like it normally does. I even kick a great long goal on the run, and when I peel off after it like a Mustang fighter, as seen on Total War/Shoot to Kill, I almost, but not quite,
raise my winning finger.
‘That’s a really good kick,’ says the kid I’m on, who’s actually too big and too slow to be a wingman. He’d do a lot better up back smashing guys in the goal square. ‘You nailed it.’
Shocked at such good sportsmanship, I take a closer look at the dude, noting the plain black boots, long-sleeved jumper, and pulled-up socks. And I recognise him; I mean, I recognise his type as occasionally you come across guys like this who are really fair, never swear, have no haircut or attitude, and will end up as either heart surgeons, or growing trees in countries that burnt all theirs, or sold them for decking.
‘Ah, just luck,’ I say, and add, since we’re five goals up with five minutes to go. ‘You wanna kick the next one?’
The guy – who has the flat, crinkly kind of do-nothing hair that these guys generally have – laughs.
‘Well, it wouldn’t hurt.’ He points to the boundary line where four or five chicks hold some little white dogs. ‘That’s my girlfriend over there. The one with the red hair. And she thinks I’m hopeless.’
Right. Well. I hear you, brother; so when the ball bounces our way, I don’t exactly let him get it, but I don’t exactly mow him down, either, because he has a girlfriend that he doesn’t want to lose, which is something I understand at this moment better than just about anything else in the world.
And as the ball flies ugly off his boot, I see the girl with red hair clapping, and really, it’s the happiest I’ve felt for quite a while.
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