by Nick Earls
Benno stops at the door guy when we’re on the way out and he gets so close to him that they’re practically nose-to-nose and he puts on a look that’s nearly a snarl and he says, ‘The lady’s shoes, pal. They’re not trainers, you dumb prick. That’s a fashion shoe you’re looking at there.’
And the guy looks a bit confused, and Tanika says, ‘Actually, there was a different man out here earlier.’
And Benno says to the guy, in the same tone of voice as before but with his face just a bit further away, ‘Well, I think you get my drift.’
Everyone but the bouncer laughs. He still looks like he feels a bit threatened. ‘I wasn’t looking,’ he says. ‘We don’t actually check shoes on the way out.’
‘He’s quite a kidder,’ Steve says to him, since Benno’s still standing a bit too close and the line between joke and straight out mean is often a fine one for him.
Trev can’t stop laughing all the way down the stairs.
‘Hey,’ Benno says, ‘At least I didn’t hit him. That could have been embarrassing.’
When we get out onto the street, we go our separate ways. Or at least the others do, and I stand at the door with Tanika.
‘Does anything embarrass Benno?’ she says.
‘Not that I’m aware of so far. But I’ve only known him a couple of years.’
I unchain my bike from the railing and push it along beside us as we walk to the church bus. Tanika’s parked it a street or two away, the nearest she could get. This is the part of the evening I wanted. This is the part of the day that I wanted all day. There’s a night breeze coming in off the sea, blowing Tanika’s hair around and, finally, it’s only the two of us. No Mum, no baby photos, no stupid talk.
It’s all crowding around in my head at the moment, and I want to stop here and think about it. Just stand still, and say nothing and think. There was too much noise in there, inside the surf club, too much going on. Dumb jokes about nothing and Tanika playing up to it all, messing around with the guys and I’d rather she hadn’t but I don’t know why.
‘You’re quiet tonight,’ she says.
‘Yeah, well, there was enough bullshitting going on in there without me needing to chip in.’
‘Is something wrong?’
‘Why would something be wrong? There was just too much bullshit, and you were showing off your legs and fooling around with them and . . .’
She stops, pushes the hair back out of her face. ‘And what?’
‘What do you mean, “And what?”?’
‘What? What was I doing wrong? I just wanted to create a good impression with the people you work with. And you always said they like a joke. That’s all it was. What did you think I was doing?’
She’s right, obviously right. I’m not thinking straight. She was just playing along with what was happening.
‘Nothing. Nothing. I’m an idiot. And I’m pretty sure you created a good impression. There’ll be a fair bit of talk about you during the Star Wars marathon at Trev’s place. Talk about how lucky that young Kane is, a level two and a girl of that sort.’
‘That’s more like it,’ she says, and she takes hold of my free hand.
We walk along the path not saying much, tree branches bending down over us in the breeze, people walking past heading the other way, going out for a few drinks at a bar or maybe to see a band. Backpackers, from the accents. Backpackers from Europe, with dark tans and sandals and hippy clothes. I think the pubs have a different dress code for them.
‘How about that baby of Steve’s?’ Tanika says when we get to the bus. ‘Funny looking thing, but kind of cute. I never really know what to say about babies.’
‘Yeah.’
‘He’d be a good dad, Steve. Don’t you think?’
‘Yeah. He’s a good boss, anyway. A good dad? He probably would be. But I don’t know about that.’ And it hits me again, like a fist in the guts. What’s got into me tonight? ‘I don’t know about that stuff. I never had a good dad, did I? I don’t know how I’d get to know about that stuff, about who’d be good and who’d be bad. About who stays and who leaves. I don’t know if you can ever know, anyway. Not for sure. I don’t know what Steve’d be like or what anyone’d be like. This level two – I can take that responsibility. How would I be if I was in Steve’s position? That could happen one day.’
‘You being the boss?’
‘No, the father. I’m being totally theoretical.’
‘What? What do you mean?’
‘Nothing. Nothing, really. Like I said, it’s all theoretical. Way, way in the future, hey, but you wonder sometimes. I had this kind of fight with my mother. She said a few things. Some about Dad, some about me. How do you ever know when you’re ready for that kind of responsibility? Ever. How do you know you’ll take it on and do it well and keep doing it well? It’s so easy to make a mess of things.’ She nods, but she doesn’t say anything. ‘Look, it’s easier for you. Look at your family. You couldn’t understand. You get the paper at your house, delivered every day, right? Even though no one really reads it and your mother always says there’s nothing in it. You told me that. She’s said that your whole life about the paper. But you still get it, and you get it every day, and you sit at the breakfast table and you can talk about anything. All the news, anything. You and your family, like a TV ad.’
‘What? What are you saying? Why shouldn’t we be like that? We’ve . . . What are you saying? You have no idea about my family, about . . .’
She stops there, pulls it to a stop and gives me a hard look. I’ve done something wrong. I don’t know what it is. I’m doing a lot wrong tonight. She takes a big breath in, lets it out.
‘I’m not totally sure what you mean,’ she says, in a calmer voice. ‘Why don’t we go and see how your mother is? See if some of that can be sorted out . . .’
We get into the bus, and I fit my bike in behind the first row of seats.
‘Anyway,’ she says as she starts the engine and the doors shut. ‘Maybe we could talk about the paper at breakfast time, but we don’t. And we don’t get to watch TV either. That’s a rule of Dad’s. He prefers the quiet. You do that at your place in the mornings, don’t you? Watch TV?’
‘Yeah. Generally. For the news and stuff. It’s not bad.’
We pull out from the kerb, Tanika turning the big steering wheel like she’s turning a ship around. And I’m sitting right behind her on the front passenger seat, watching the streetlights shine in on her bare thighs and her forearm muscles – more wonders of nature, working smoothly away to swing the bus out onto the road.
‘Do a lot of people watch TV in the mornings?’ she says. ‘What do you reckon? Maybe I could drop into your place some day at breakfast time. Do they have it on a weekend, breakfast TV?’
‘Sure. Well, Saturdays they do.’ I’ve been an idiot, and Tanika’s the kind of person who can make that apparent in a second, without ever having to tell you directly. Without even meaning to tell you at all. Just in the name of peace, getting on, turning a conversation somewhere better. I want to lean forward right now and kiss her on the mouth, but we’re driving at fifty and the road’s pretty narrow. “That’s “Today” on Saturday. There’s a whole different program on Sunday.’
‘What’s it called?’
‘“Sunday”. I think they make the names easy ’cause it’s early in the morning.’
‘Well, I could come over.’
‘Sure, that’d be good. And maybe we could make it a bit different to usual. You know, special breakfast food, like pancakes with maple syrup and strawberries. And cream from a blue-and-white striped jug.’
‘Maybe even tomorrow.’
‘Well . . . maybe some other time. We don’t even have the jug yet. It’s a good idea, but. Let’s see how Mum is first.’
She caught me there for a second. She had me thinking about her coming over for breakfast, just the way I’d like it to be. She made me forget, and had me dreaming of a better life. She didn’t mean to. It’s how she lo
oks, how she is, what she does. It’s just her, au naturel. She had me dreaming of a better life, a better life where pancakes happened. Maybe some day. Maybe some of that level-two wage could go on a pancake date at my place. I might have to have a couple of goes at it with just Mum and Wayne first, to get the recipe into shape before we do it. Maybe it comes in packets. That’d be good.
All the lights are off when we pull up outside. The TV’s flickering away in there, but the volume’s down and there are some other noises going on.
‘Is that your mother?’ Tanika says. She sounds worried. ‘Can you hear that? Does she ever have trouble breathing?’
‘No, I think that’s something else.’ I take my keys out and I give them a good shake. One of the louvres is open a crack and I put my mouth up to it and shout out, ‘Pants up, boy. Visitors.’
There’s a lot of panicky shuffling in there, and some throat clearing, and the noise of static as the channel changes to anything other than video.
‘Wayne doesn’t mind the occasional international film,’ I tell Tanika. ‘And he gets rather involved. I think he tries to treat the subtitles as an opportunity for self-improvement.’
‘Yeah, right,’ Tanika says, and she laughs.
That’s his story, and he’s sticking to it. Or sticking to something, at least.’
The truth of course is that, whenever he can, Wayne goes halves in $2.15-weekly porn videos with Les, the neighbour out the back. But the less said about Les the better. He’s a bit more hard-core than Wayne, who’s perfectly happy with just nudity.
Wayne says Mum’s asleep. She’s been in bed for an hour or so, maybe two hours. It hasn’t been such a good night. He’s been in there a few times with glasses of water or to sort her curtains out and stop them flapping around, things like that.
‘Not the best video night,’ he says. ‘I’ve been working that pause button. And her timing hasn’t always been good.’
‘She likes fresh air,’ I tell Tanika. So she likes the windows open wide. But the curtains in there get noisy on windy nights. And if the moon’s out and shining in on them, and they’re waving round and you’re half-asleep . . . you know the way that kind of thing gets into your dreams?’
‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘Sure.’
‘There was other stuff,’ Wayne says. ‘Other stuff too. She was talking.’
And he’s saying it to me, looking right at me, but he keeps twitching his eyes over Tanika’s way. The TV’s fizzing and crackling with static, with the static of being between channels, and the light from the screen is coming out of the lounge room in a hazy glow and lighting one side of his face. His cheek and his hardworking eyeball, trying to let me know that there’s some kind of secret going on.
‘It’s all right, Wayne,’ I tell him. ‘We don’t keep anything from Tanika.’
‘Well, okay then. Okay. It’s Mum. You got her kind of worried. I think it’s to do with a lot of stuff happening at once. It’s kind of to do with you becoming the family success story. What with the new level at work and with . . .’ He turns to Tanika. ‘Don’t take this the wrong way . . . with, um, friends with jobs in real estate and who drive buses, and that. And who ended up not in the nativity play.’
‘Wayne . . .’ It’s time for my calm big-brother voice. ‘You might have to get a bit more precise about the actual issue. And, also, I’ve got a few years on you, remember? You and Mum forget that sometimes. There’s room in this family for more than one success story.’
‘Yeah, righto. That’s good. Um, well, it was to do with the level that you got today at work, and you going out a bit and getting a licence that’d let you drive long-haul trucks and stuff.’
‘I’m more likely to go for the horticulture, actually. That’s the plant part of the training.’
‘Yeah, but that’s just how it starts, she reckons. Ideas that aren’t so big can get big pretty quickly. And then you’d be out of here, which is the main worry. If you got to travelling you might see places better than here and, you know . . . girls in different towns, and gambling. And that’d be that.’
‘But that’s stupid. I don’t want a girl in a different town, or even a different girl in this town, and if I wanted a look at places better than here I could take a quick trip next door, either side. Did you talk her out of it all?’
‘Well . . . I didn’t know what to say. You’d just had that fight with her, and then you’d gone out. I can’t read your mind.’
‘Doofus. Next time what you say is, “Kane’s not leaving.” Something like that. Keep it simple. “For Kane, this is home.”’
‘She was worried because of Dad.’
‘What’s he got to do with this? That’s the past. You know that, don’t you? It’s long ago. I can’t remember much about Dad, and you can’t remember anything, so what’s he got to do with it? We’ve got our own thing going now. Have had for years. And it’s on the brink of getting better. That’s what’s happening now. Right?’
‘Right.’
There’s a noise from Mum, coming from down the hall. It’s like one side of a conversation. She’s talking in her sleep again and it starts off making no sense and then she’s going, ‘What? What?’ as if the conversation’s turned on her.
‘Okay, my go,’ I tell Wayne. ‘Leave this one to me.’
Tanika’s standing there, saying nothing. Which was fine till Mum started making noise. Now I’m not so sure. She hasn’t seen this side of things before, not close up, but there’s no point in hiding it from her.
The light’s glowing in her hair and on her face. I reach my hand out to her, and she reaches hers out and takes it.
‘Is this okay?’ That’s what I say to her because I want to say something but I can’t think what it’d be.
‘Yeah. Of course.’ She smiles, to make the situation seem closer to normal than it is. ‘Go and talk to her.’
Mum’s voice is louder now, back there in the dark. Angry or confused – the two get mixed up sometimes.
‘I’ll wait here,’ Tanika says. ‘Wayne can tell me about the movie he’s watching.’
‘Or not,’ Wayne says, looking a bit tense. ‘It’s very . . . European.’
It’s darker the further you get away from the lounge room, but I don’t turn any lights on. Lights freak Mum out when she’s stuck in a bad dream. I open her door, and she’s lying across her bed at an angle, with just a sheet over her. A sheet with the moon on it, making shadows like a hillside, the huge body of my mother rising up out of the landscape.
‘Wayne,’ she says when she realises there’s someone there. ‘Wayne,’ in a murmury, rum-heavy voice. ‘What are we going to do?’
‘It’s Kane, Mum.’
‘Kane . . . Kane.’ Said the first time almost like a question, but the second like reassurance.
‘Yeah.’ I go and sit on the bed, round the far side – the window side – down around knee level so that she can see me in the light and I’m not casting a shadow on her face. She doesn’t like that. ‘It’s me, Mum. I’ve just been out for a few hours, but now I’m back. Simple as that, and same as always.’
‘Oh.’ She’s still half asleep. Her mouth moves into the O shape a while before she makes the sound to go with it, then the sound comes out slowly.
‘We got our wires crossed a bit earlier on. That’s all that happened.’
She opens her eyes, and looks at me. She reaches out and squeezes my hand. ‘Good boy,’ she says. ‘That’s my boy. My young man.’
‘Yeah. But still here, right? We’re getting somewhere, Mum. That’s all that’s happening. But it’s us. Not just me. See? That’s the idea.’
‘You came back tonight.’
‘Yeah, like every other bloody night.’
‘Yeah.’ There’s enough light coming in that I think I can see her smile. She nods her head without lifting it off the pillow.
‘So everything’s like it usually is,’ I tell her. ‘Just a little better. I’m doing well at work, Mum. I’ve been promoted.
That gives us more money and it means that I’ll get training opportunities. That’s what I was trying to tell you.’ There’s a snuffly noise, which turns into a snore. A one-off loud snore, then more snoring, slowly, steadily. ‘So everything’s fine.’ She’s asleep now, her mouth half-open and her eyes closed and noisy breathing passing in and out of her. ‘Even tonight, I think it still stacks up as the best summer of my life.’ A gust of wind blows in, flaps the edge of the curtain up, then drops it down again. She doesn’t stir. ‘And Wayne’s had a good evening. He’s watched a European movie, so there’s culture involved. And he’s been kept busy performing unholy acts on his middle regions, of course. But that’s our boy. Never bored while his hands are free and his pants are loose-fitting. And in the morning we’ll talk about Dad. You and me. In the morning or some time soon, when it’s early in the day and it suits us both. Okay? And we’ll talk about you. If you want.’
More snoring, but the snoring of someone lost far away in sleep. I slide my hand out from under hers and I stand up and go to the door, as quietly as I can. On my way out, I shut it behind me with hardly a click.
Meanwhile, Wayne, not Caloundra’s greatest conversationalist, has taken Tanika into the lounge room. He’s got her sitting in Mum’s chair and he’s on the couch and they’re watching David Letterman with the volume down low, still in the dark. He’s leaning forward, staring at the screen and pointing the remote at it too, as if he’s ready to try for a better option the second Tanika says she’s bored. He sees me in the doorway and nearly says something, but then he doesn’t.
‘Good work, Wayne. You sure know how to entertain a guest.’
‘No worries,’ he says, as if he’s just copped a compliment. ‘Mum okay?’
‘Yeah. Fine. Everything’s fine. Just a few wires crossed, and we’ve sorted it out now. So Tanika and I might head out again for a while. Give you a chance to watch that video of yours all the way to the end. Does that sound okay, Tanika?’
