by Sofie Laguna
When she’d run out of fuel, Mum fell to her knees beside me, looking up at my dad. ‘Our boy, Gavin, our boy,’ she cried. ‘Our son!’ In her voice was the memory of a time when I belonged to both of them; neither his nor hers, their shared boy. Dad heard it too, but he couldn’t look.
Mum kept crying as she half carried, half dragged me out of the sitting room and into the bathroom, where she wiped my face and took off my clothes. She fumbled with my clothes, trying to still her hands, trying to breathe in the air that might cool her and calm her.
She ran the sponge over my nose and arms and cheeks. My bones felt as if they’d been torn from my skeletal, like I’d seen Uncle Rodney do to the fish. My chest and arm ached. Blood dripped from my nose. Blood is always just under the skin; the skin is what holds it all in, like a membrane.
Mum gave me a pill from the medicine cupboard then she lay beside me on my bed in the dark of the sewing room, one arm under my neck. She gripped me. Her fingers hurt but I didn’t stop her. My nose throbbed. What connected the nose to the face and the arm to the body? Was it veins? Was it wires? Was it nerves? Did the nose stay on the face for the same reason the arm stayed on the body?
When I next opened my eyes there was a strip of grey light between the curtains. I heard somebody walking around the house. I heard cupboards opening and closing, I heard Dad’s cough, his vomit, his peeing, his flush, taps turning on and off. The last thing I heard was the Holden leaving the house. I heard it go down the drive and then out onto the street and then away down the road and then I heard it go further. It kept turning and turning, stopping at lights, going left, going right, further and further till it came to the highway with six lanes of traffic rushing past and then it joined the highway and chose its lane, going further and further away until it drove into the centre of the setting sun. When I next opened my eyes it was morning.
When I moved in the bed my arm felt as if it caught on a hook inside, and hurt. I got up slowly, my body heavy and sore, and put my trousers over my pyjamas.
Mum was in the sitting room vacuuming the place in the carpet where I had lain the night before. When she saw me, she switched off the machine. Both her eyes were purple and swollen, as if she was wearing goggles. I heard the tentacles in her apparatus waving as they tried to move the dust. It made me want to put the vacuum cleaner to her mouth.
‘Do you want your puffer, Mum?’ I asked her.
‘No, love, that’s alright.’ She came over to me, wiping sweat from her forehead. ‘I thought you’d sleep in. I was going to come and check on you in a minute. Are you alright?’ She touched my arm and I flinched. ‘Oh, is that sore?’
I nodded.
‘Oh no, Jimmy . . .’ She lifted my top and gasped.
I looked down and saw a bruise spreading across my chest like a country on a map. ‘Oh Jimmy . . .’ She traced her fingers lightly across the bruise. Tears filled her eyes.
‘Where’s Dad?’ I asked her.
‘Not here,’ she answered.
‘Where is he?’
‘He left.’
‘Where did he go? Did he go to work?’
‘No, no he didn’t go to work.’
‘Did he go to the TAB?’
‘No . . .’
‘Did he go to the bottle shop? Did he go the newsagent?’
‘No, no Jimmy, he didn’t go to any of those places.’
‘Then where did he go?’
‘I’m not sure.’ She sat down on the couch, patting the space beside her.
I stayed where I was. ‘When is he coming back?’
‘Jimmy, your dad . . .’ She searched for the words, pulling at her lips with her fingers as if there might be some hidden inside them.
‘When is he coming back?’
‘Your dad . . .’
‘What?’
‘He had to go.’ Mum had no control over her pipes. As she spoke water came down over her face, as if her eye gutters were blocked: full with leaves and dirt and soil.
‘Did he take the car?’
‘Yes, yes he took the car. It’s all he took.’ She stood suddenly from the couch, pulling in air, straightening her skirt. ‘Jimmy, we have to get ready for town.’
‘Town? Why?’
‘Because we do.’
‘Will he come back?’
‘No more questions – we have to go.’
‘But, Mum, will he?’
‘Let’s get you dressed quick as we can, hey?’
‘Where are we going?’
‘Dr Eric’s,’ said Mum. ‘Get a move on.’
Mum took me into town on the bus along Blythe Street. I sat beside her and counted the measurements of her breaths. Mine was in one two, hers was in one out one.
They didn’t keep us in the waiting room long. The girl at the desk looked at Mum’s eyes, frowned and sent us through.
‘What happened?’ Dr Eric asked Mum.
‘Oh, it’s nothing, really. It looks worse than it is.’
‘I doubt that, Paula. What happened?’
‘Oh nothing – it’s not me I’ve come about. It’s Jimmy.’
‘You first,’ said Dr Eric. ‘What happened?’
‘My fault – very silly. You know how you leave a broom leaning against a wall when you finish sweeping? You know how you do that? With the pile of dust ready to pick up? Well I went and stood on the broom and the handle of the thing came flying back at me and got me in the eyes. See how silly I was!’
Dr Eric didn’t look like he saw how silly Mum was. She winced as he touched the skin around her eyes. ‘If you had come in when it happened I would have insisted on stitches. But as it is, it looks like it will be alright.’
‘Oh yes, good, I didn’t think it was too bad.’
‘It is bad, Paula.’
‘Will you have a look at Jimmy?’ She turned to me. ‘He . . . oh dear . . . he got into a bit of a scuffle . . . his arm . . .’
Dr Eric looked at my arm. ‘This will have to be X-rayed.’
‘Will you look at his chest?’
Dr Eric lifted my top. He listened with his stethoscope. He felt my ribs. ‘Paula, I need to know that it won’t happen again or I will have to do something about it. Do you understand what I am saying?’ Dr Eric’s words were red lights flashing on off on off.
‘Yes, Dr Eric, yes, yes I do. It’s not going to happen again.’
‘You’ve said that before.’
‘It’s different this time.’
‘Different how?’ Dr Eric raised his eyebrows.
‘It just is.’ Paula looked at the ground.
‘I would like to know how it’s different.’
‘He’s – he’s gone.’ She mumbled as if to say it loudly and clearly and properly would be too much news for her own ears.
‘How long has he gone for?’ Dr Eric asked.
‘He’s gone. He’s not coming back.’
Still it seemed Dr Eric didn’t believe her. ‘This must never happen again – to you or the boy.’
‘Please, Eric, is Jimmy okay?’
‘He’s okay, Paula. He’ll need X-rays but I don’t think anything’s broken.’
‘Oh good, oh God, oh thank God.’ Mum started to cry again and Dr Eric passed her a tissue and a mint.
We had to catch another bus to Footscray Medical for the X-rays. Mum stared out the window and didn’t speak a word. She only moved a muscle to check the map Dr Eric’s secretary had drawn for her. The bus kept turning corners I’d never taken before. When I rocked against Mum my rib hurt and the hook inside my arm pulled at the socket. When we got to Footscray Medical a woman called Tracey stood me inside a telephone box and said, ‘Stay very still, please. It’s important.’ Then she left and went into a sound booth where she sent the X-rays into me. I heard the radiation piercing my skeleton from inside the telephone box.
‘We’ll send the results to your doctor,’ Tracey said to Mum when the X-rays were completed.
‘How did they look?’ Mum asked. ‘Ar
e they okay?’
‘I don’t read the X-rays, madam, I just take them.’
‘So you can’t tell? You didn’t see any . . . any . . . damage?’
‘Like I said, I don’t know. You’ll have the results back in a couple of days.’
Mum sighed, as if she didn’t believe Tracey was telling the truth.
On the way back to Emu Street Mum took me to Lee Sam’s on the corner and said, ‘Choose a lolly, my love.’
I chose teeth. I stuck them in front of my own. Then I smiled up at Mum, pulling at her sleeve. ‘Hello, Mum, how are you? Look at my teeth, Mum; Mum, look at my teeth. Hello, Mrs Flick, I would like to talk to you about your son, look at my teeth.’ She laughed, then her eyes fill with tears again, then I ate the teeth.
When we got home Mum told me to have a rest in Dad’s recliner. I lay against the valley of his legs and his back and his neck and Mum pulled the lever to bring up the footrest. ‘You take it easy, Jimmy. I’ll bring your manuals.’
I rocked the chair back and forth, back and forth. My chest and arm ached. Soon Mum came in with my manuals. She put them on my lap and then she turned on the heater full blast. ‘I’ll be back with cheese toasties, love. How would you like that?’
‘Cheese toasties? Yes, Mum, yes, I would like that. With pickles, please. With pickles.’
‘With pickles coming up, my man. Coming right up.’ Mum left the sitting room and went into the kitchen. Coming right up. Coming right up. She was trying to pretend that Dad was here, that he still had his job at the refinery, and that he would be home for dinner at six.
I looked through my pile of manuals: vacuum cleaner, hot-water box, radio, hairdryer, toaster. I started with toaster. Electrical energy lived in the wall and entered the toaster through the socket. The more it tried the hotter the loops got. It’s friction. Then the friction spread onto the bread turning it to toast.
Soon Mum came in with the cheese toasties. They were in fingers with pickles at the end in a small pile for dipping. I ate the cheese toasties and read my washing-machine manual. It was for Mum’s new General Electric. Make sure the tap is tight before turning on the water. Weigh the pipe down in the sink to ensure there is no spillage. On page three there was a diagram of the engine. I couldn’t see the back; they needed another picture for that. There were pipes in the engine that carried the water into the tub. The pipes were wrapped in rubber to stop electric shock. I traced over the pipes with my finger. I felt heavy and sore. I went back to page one for the instructions, then back to page three for the diagram. I linked them. The General Electric rumbled from the laundry.
•
All that day Mum cleaned. She dusted the china horses that reared up on the shelves, and the lady with the long skirt holding the umbrella and standing in flowers with the dog at her feet. She dusted the lamps and she wiped away the ring marks on the table from where Dad’s beer bottles missed the coasters. She cleaned away gravy where it had splattered the table leg and she sprayed Zoom on the television and wiped that too. Then she got on her hands and knees and dipped her sponge in the bucket and rubbed at the lamb-chop stains on the carpet. Her bottom wobbled as she scrubbed. Wobble wobble wobble scrub scrub scrub. She ran the vacuum cleaner up and down the curtains until the dust even made me sneeze.
Mum was trying to clean away my dad. By nightfall only his shadow was left. She tried to clean that away too, spraying Charlie in the air where it hung. But Dad’s shadow couldn’t be cleaned away; it hovered over us as we watched the evening news – me in his black chair, Mum in her brown flower one. It hung, wanting us and not wanting us, unable to go, unable to stay, thin as air, passing through every membrane.
The next morning, and the next and the next and the next, I asked her, ‘Where’s Dad, Mum?’
‘I don’t know, son. You ask me that like I ate him for dinner,’ she answered, her eyes on the screen.
I know she never ate him for dinner, even though he would have fit. It was as if my mum had no stomach, only empty space. If you ever visited you’d have to feel with your hands stretched out as you groped for something solid – it would all be space, the only thing to fill it the sound of her trying to breathe. There was a lot of room for my dad in there.
•
On the back of the milk carton was a picture of a M-I-S-S-I-N-G P-E-R-S-O-N. Her name was Samantha Billmore and she had metal wires on her teeth that channelled messages from her brain. ‘Chew, Samantha, talk, Samantha, smile, Samantha.’ Her face tipped when I poured milk on my cornflakes.
‘What is a missing person?’ I asked Mum as she put away the dries.
‘What’s that’s, love?’
‘What is a missing person?’
‘Why are you asking me that, Jimmy?’
I pointed at the milk container. ‘Is a missing person someone you miss?’
‘Please don’t talk with your mouth full, Jimmy.’ She stopped stacking plates and put Samantha back in the fridge. ‘A missing person is someone who has gone missing.’
‘Does anybody know where they are?’
‘I don’t know. Somebody must. Poor girl.’
‘So the missing person is not missing from everybody, only from some people?’
Mum put her hands on my shoulders. ‘Jimmy, you have to go to school. We don’t have time for talking.’
‘But, Mum, there are people somewhere who know where the missing person is, aren’t there?’
‘I suppose there are,’ she said, wiping drops of milk from the table around my bowl.
‘Maybe if the person lived in a cave with only seals and polar bears and only talked to animals and didn’t go onto the roads or into the towns and only drank from a coconut then they would be missing from all people, wouldn’t they?’
‘I suppose they would,’ said Mum, pushing glasses into the cupboard.
‘But they wouldn’t be missing from the seals then, would they, or the polars?’
‘Come on, Jimmy. We have to get ready.’ Mum sighed and put the butter into the fridge beside Samantha.
‘Is Dad a missing person, Mum?’ I asked the back of her.
She stopped, her head still in the fridge. ‘No, Jimmy, not in that way, he’s not.’
‘In what way is he, then?’
‘What?’
‘In what way is he missing?’
Mum huffed and pulled the hair back from her face. ‘Oh, Jimmy . . .’ I could see I was making her tired, but I had to know.
‘In what way is Dad missing?’
‘He’s not missing – he’s just . . . gone.’
‘But, Mum, do you know where he is?’
‘No. No, I don’t. But if I wanted to I am sure I could find him.’
‘You could find him?’
‘I don’t know . . . I haven’t thought about it.’
‘Because you don’t want to?’
‘Because I don’t want to – you’re right. I thought I explained this to you.’
‘Can someone find Samantha Billmore?’
‘No, but she is different to your father. She’s only a little girl. Jimmy, get up. Come on, that’s enough. You have to get ready for school.’
‘So nobody in the world can find her?’
‘Somebody can. Somebody will. That’s why her face is on the milk, Jimmy. Now come on and get dressed.’
•
Just before we left the house the telephone rang. I picked up the receiver. ‘Is your mother there, Jim? It’s Dr Eric.’
‘Yes, Dr Eric. Yes, she is. My mother is here.’
‘Can you put her on?’
‘Yes, Dr Eric, I can, I can.’
Mum held out her hand. ‘Come on, Jim. Give it to me.’
I passed her the telephone.
‘Hello, Dr Eric? Oh that’s good news . . . that’s a relief . . .’ I saw tears entering her eyes. ‘No, no, he hasn’t come back. Yes . . . yes, I will. Thank you, Dr Eric.’ Then she hung up. ‘Seems like there’s no broken bones, Jimmy.’ She sniffed. ‘Now let’s
get you to school.’
Mum walked me to school, leaning on a stick she’d bought at the chemist’s. It curled over at one end with five dents for the fingers. She puffed as she walked.
‘Enemy territory,’ I said when we got to the gates.
‘Oh, Jimmy, don’t say that. You have to go,’ she wheezed. ‘Everybody has to go.’
‘Enemy territory,’ I repeated. I wished I could take her stick with me as a weapon.
‘I have to work, Jimmy. I don’t always like that very much, but I have to go. Sometimes we have to do things we don’t want to. Please, Jimmy.’
I looked at Mum’s face. It was white and damp with puffed half-moons beneath her eyes. I heard the tentacles waving in her apparatus, trying to clear the particles. She held her stick tight in her hand, knuckles white from the grip. Maybe she was scared that if she let go she would defy gravity and spin off into outer space. I saw my mother’s white body in her dress with flowers on the hem, floating through the universe without cables connecting her to a spaceship. She would drift forever, turning round and round in the endless galaxy.
I gave her a quick cuddle. ‘Okay, Mum, I don’t want to, but I will.’ I stepped away from her towards enemy territory.
‘Thank you, Jimmy. You are a good boy. I’ll make chips tonight and you can watch Doctor Who.’ She kissed my cheek. ‘My good brave boy.’ There were tears in her vocals. But why, if I was going to school like she wanted? Why? Tears are from the sea of sadness and you draw them up through osmosis when things happen that you don’t want. Your epidermis is born knowing how. It has the capacity, though you can’t see it with the naked eye. Where was my capacity?
I walked up the path to school, the gravel crunching beneath my shoes. I didn’t turn back to see Mum waving. I knew she was there, but I didn’t want to. I took a deep breath and opened the doors to my classroom. There was everybody all as one thing, and then there was me, as another. School reminded me. Where was I from? Why was it this way? Who decided on the way it was?
