by Markus Zusak
She wore a dress the shade of peppermint.
When she realized Michael had pulled up, she clapped the book shut and the boys all cleared a path. They said, “Bye Miss, bye Miss, bye Miss,” and she got into the car.
But that’s not to say it was easy—it wasn’t.
When he was heading out to work sometimes, he heard her talk herself into it, in the bathroom; it was hard to face the day. He’d say, “Which kid is it this time?”—for the job became working with the toughest ones, one on one; and sometimes it took an hour, sometimes several months, but always she wore them down. Some would even protect her. If other kids mucked up, they’d be taken to the toilets, and shoved amongst the troughs. Don’t mess with Penny Dunbar.
In many ways, the title of ESL was ironic, because a good percentage of her students were kids whose first language was actually English, but could barely read a paragraph—and those were always the angriest.
She’d sit with them by the window.
She brought a metronome in from home.
The kid would stare, incredulous, saying, “What the fuck is that?”
To which Penny would answer flatly:
“Read in time with this.”
* * *
—
But then, it had to happen.
After four years of teaching, she came home one evening with a pregnancy kit, and this time they did go out to celebrate, but would wait out the week for Saturday.
In the meantime, next day, they were at work again:
Michael was pouring concrete.
He told a few of his friends there—they stopped and shook his hand.
Penelope was at Hyperno, with a belligerent yet beautiful boy.
She read with him at the window.
The metronome went click.
On Saturday, they ate in that fancy place in the Opera House, they stood at the top, on the steps. The great old bridge, it hung there, and the ferries pulled in at the Quay. By midafternoon, when they came back out, a ship had arrived to dock. There were crowds of people on the esplanade, and cameras and smilers in flocks. At the building and glasswork were them—Michael and Penny Dunbar—and at the bottom of the Opera House stairway, five boys had appeared, and stood standing…and soon they came down to meet us.
And we walked back out together—through the crowds and words of people, and a city all swollen with sun.
And death came walking with us.
Of course, Henry had to make an entrance that night of fists and feathers and brothers.
When I think of it now, I see it as the last wave of our collective adolescence. Just like Clay, individually, when he walked out the Bernborough Park tunnel that last time, so it was tonight for this, and Henry, and us. In the next few days, on and off, there’d be a kind of holding-on; a final nod to the last vestiges of youngness and dumbness.
We’d never see it or be it again.
* * *
—
It wasn’t long after. The TV was on.
There’d been much arguing, and Rain Man was replaced by a movie I got from Rory one year for Christmas. Bachelor Party. In Rory’s words, if we had to watch bullshit from the ’80s, it might as well be the good stuff. In Henry’s, it was Tom Hanks in his heyday, before he started getting crap and winning Golden Globes and shit; he’d researched it.
All four of us, we sat there:
I was icing my hands.
Rory and Tommy were laughing.
Hector was sprawled like a steel-striped blanket, purring on Tommy’s lap.
Clay was on the couch, quietly watching; quietly bleeding away.
It was right at Rory’s favorite part—when the ex-boyfriend of the female lead falls naked through the sunroof of a car—when Henry finally arrived.
First there were footsteps.
Then keys getting dropped.
Then in.
Then a bloodied, grinning face, in the light of the lounge room doorway.
“What?” he shouted. “Are you bastards kidding? You’re watching Bachelor Party without me?”
* * *
—
At first none of us looked.
Actually, Clay did, but couldn’t move.
The rest of us were too engrossed in the mayhem on screen.
It was only when the scene was over that Rory saw the state of him, and then came all the swearing, stunned silence, and blasphemy. I finished it off with a good long “Je-sus Christ…”
Henry, unfazed, plonked himself on the couch and looked at Clay. “Sorry I’m late, kid.”
“That’s okay.”
This had been Henry’s plan; to come in looking something like this, just before Clay had made it home himself, so I might get all distracted. The trouble was, the two boys from the 200-meter mark had taken much longer than he’d thought—and it took a lot more drinking—and of course he’d left his car behind, and walked from Bernborough Park. By then he was so drunk and beaten up he’d almost crawled, and really, looking back, it’s one of Henry’s dumbest greatest moments. He’d planned it all, and invited it all, and all of it for Clay.
He studied him, with a kind of satisfaction. “Good to see you, though. Is it good to be home? I see Matthew rolled out the welcome mat, the big muscly prick.”
“That’s all right, I had it coming.” Clay turned to him now, and was shocked by the extent of the damage. His lips, especially, were hard to look at; his cheekbones cooked and charred. “I’m not too sure about you, though.”
“Oh,” said Henry cheerfully, “I did, old boy, I did.”
“And?” That was me now, standing in the middle of the lounge room. “You want to tell us what the hell’s going on?”
“Matthew,” Henry sighed, “you’re innerrupting the movie,” but he knew. If he’d enlisted Schwartz and Starkey (and Starkey’s girl, as it turned out) for the job of making a mess of him, here was my chance to finish it. “You see, gentlemen”—he grinned, and his teeth were more a butcher’s bone, all thickly red and mess—“if you ever want to look like this, all it takes is one blond Boy Scout with iron fists, one thug with disgusting breath, and lastly, the thug’s girlfriend, who hits harder than the pair of ’em put together….”
He tried to talk on, but didn’t get any further, for in the next few seconds, the living room swayed, and the Bachelor Party high jinks got funnier and funnier. At last he clattered forward, straight past me, and crash-tackled the TV to the floor.
“Shit!” shrieked Rory. “That’s one of the greatest movies of all time he’s wrecking—” but he was there and close for catching him, though he couldn’t save the board games. Or the birdcage, which tumbled down, like raucous, stadium-sized applause.
* * *
—
Soon we all crouched around him, with the carpet, blood, and cat hair. And dog hair. And Jesus—was that mule hair?
Henry was out cold.
When he came to, he recognized Tommy first: “Young Tommy, ay? The pet collector—and Rory, the human ball and chain, and ahh, you’re Matthew, aren’t you? Mr. Reliable.” Then lastly, fondly: “Clayton. The smiler. You’ve been gone for years, years, I tell you!”
It registered.
The movie was still playing, sideways on the floor, the birdcage was sloped and doorless—and further left, near the window, the fish tank had capsized amongst the chaos. We’d only noticed now that the water had reached our feet.
Henry looked at the movie, maneuvering his head, but the rest of us were watching T, the pigeon, as he climbed out of his cage, onto the floor, past the goldfish, headed straight for the open front door. Clearly, the bird knew what was what—this was no place to be for the next few hours. Well, that, and he was totally pissed off. He walked and half-flapped, walked and half-flapped. All he needed was a suitcase. Once he even looked back:
“Right, that’s it.” He honestly seemed to say it, seething in grey and purple. “I’m outta here, you lot—good Goddamn luck.”
As for the goldfish, Agamemnon, he flipped, he flopped, he gulped the air for liquid; he leapt across the carpet. There had to be more water out there somewhere, and he’d be damned if he wouldn’t find it.
So there they were, way up in the far-flung future:
A cantankerous bird.
An acrobatic goldfish.
Two bloodied boys.
And look here at Clay, in the backstory.
What can we say about him?
How did life begin, as a boy and a son and a Dunbar?
It was pretty simple, really, with a multitude lying within:
Once, in the tide of Dunbar past, there were five brothers, but the fourth of us was the best of us, and a boy of many traits.
How did Clay become Clay, anyway?
* * *
—
In the beginning there was all of us—each our own small part to tell the whole—and our father had helped, every birth; he was first to be handed to hold us. As Penelope liked to tell it, he’d be standing there, acutely aware, and he’d cry at the bedside, beaming. He never flinched at the slop or the burnt-looking bits, as the room began to spin. For Penelope, that was everything.
When it was over, she’d succumb to dizziness.
Her heartbeat leapt in her lips.
* * *
—
It was funny, they liked to tell us, how when we were born, we all had something they loved:
Me, it was my feet. The newborn crinkly feet.
Rory, it was his punched-up nose when he first came out, and the noises he made in his sleep; something like a world title fight, but at least they knew he was alive.
Henry had ears like paper.
Tommy was always sneezing.
And of course, there was Clay, between us:
The boy who came out smiling.
As the story went, when Penny was in labor with Clay, they left Henry, Rory, and me with Mrs. Chilman. On the drive to the hospital they nearly pulled over; Clay was coming quickly. As Penny would later tell him: the world had wanted him badly, but what she didn’t do was ask why.
Was it to hurt, to humiliate?
Or to love and make great?
Even now it’s hard to decide.
* * *
—
It was morning, summer and humid, and when they made it to the maternity ward, Penny was shouting, still walking, and his head was starting to crown. He was very nearly torn rather than born, as if the air had reefed him out.
In the delivery room, there was a lot of blood.
It was splayed on the floor like murder.
As for the boy, he lay in the muggy atmosphere, and was strangely, quietly, smiling; his bloodcurdled face dead silent. When an unsuspecting nurse came in, she stood openmouthed and blaspheming. She stopped and said, “Jesus Christ.”
It was our mother, all dizzy, who replied.
“I hope not,” she said, and our father still grinned. “We know what we did to Him.”
* * *
—
As a boy, as I said, he was the best of us.
To our parents, in particular, he was the special one, I’m sure of it, for he rarely fought, hardly cried, and loved everything they spoke of and told him. Night for night, while the rest of us made excuses, Clay would help with the dishes, as a trade for one more story. To Penny he’d say, “Can you tell me about Vienna again, and all those bunk beds? Or what about this one?” His face was in the dinner plates, the suds across his thumbs. “Can you tell me about the statue of Stalin? And who was Stalin anyway?”
To Michael he’d say, “Can you tell me all about Moon, Dad, and the snake?”
He was always in the kitchen, while the rest of us watched TV, or fought in the lounge or the hallway.
* * *
—
Of course, as things go, though, our parents were also editors:
The stories were almost-everythings.
Penny didn’t tell him yet how long they spent on a garage floor, to beat, to blow and burn themselves, to exorcise past lives. Michael didn’t talk of Abbey Hanley, who became Abbey Dunbar, then Abbey Someone-Else. He didn’t tell him about burying the old TW, or of The Quarryman, or how once he’d loved to paint. He’d said nothing yet about heartbreak, or how lucky heartbreak could be.
No, for now, most-of-truths were enough.
It was enough for Michael to say he was on the porch one day and met a woman out front with a piano. “If it wasn’t for that,” he’d solemnly explain, “I wouldn’t have you or your brothers—”
“Or Penelope.”
Michael smiled and said, “Damn right.”
What neither of them could know was that Clay would hear the stories in their entireties, not long before it was too late.
Her smile would be hoisted up by then.
Her face would be in decay.
* * *
—
As you might imagine, his first memories were only vague, of two particular things:
Our parents, his brothers.
The shapes of us, our voices.
He remembered our mother’s piano hands as they sailed across the keys. They had a magical sense of direction—hitting the M, hitting the E, and every other part of PLEASE MARRY ME.
To the boy her hair was sunny.
Her body was warm and slim.
He would remember himself as a four-year-old, being frightened of that upright brown thing. While each of us had our own dealings with it, Clay saw it as something not-his.
When she played he put his head there.
The stick-thin thighs belonged to him.
* * *
—
As for Michael Dunbar, our father, Clay recalled the sound of his car—the engine on winter mornings. The return in the half dark. He smelt like strain, long days, and brickwork.
In what would later go down as the Shirtless Eating Days (as you’ll soon see), he remembered the sight of his muscles; for apart from all the construction labor, he would sometimes—and this was how he put it—go out to the torture chamber, which was push-ups and sit-ups in the garage. Sometimes it was a barbell as well, but not even heavily weighted. It was the number of lifts, overhead.
Sometimes we went out with him:
A man and five boys doing push-ups.
The five of us falling away.
And yes—in those years of growing up in that place, our dad was a sight to see. He was average height, slight in weight, but fit and tight-looking; lean. His arms weren’t big or bulging, they were athletic and charged with meaning. You could see each move, each twitch.
And all those Goddamn sit-ups.
Our dad had a concrete stomach.
* * *
—
In those days, too, I remind myself, our parents were something else.
Sure, they fought sometimes, they argued.
There was the odd suburban thunderbolt, but they were mostly those people who’d found each other; they were golden and bright-lit and funny. Often they seemed in cahoots somehow, like jailbirds who wouldn’t leave; they loved us, they liked us, and that was a pretty good trick. After all, take five boys, put them in one small house, and see what it looks and sounds like: it’s a porridge of mess and fighting.
I remember things like mealtimes, and how sometimes it got too much: the forks dropping, the knives pointing, and all those boys’ mouths eating. There’d be arguing, elbowing, food all over the floor, food all over our clothes, and “How did that piece of cereal end up there—on the wall?” until a night came when Rory sealed it; he spilt half his soup down his shirt.
Our mother didn’t panic.
She stood, cleaned up, and he would eat the rest of it shirtless—and our father got the idea. We were all still celebrating when he said it:
“You lot, too.”
Henry and I nearly choked. “Sorry?”
“You didn’t hear me?”
“Ohhh, shit,” said Henry.
“Should I make you take your pants off, too?”
For a whole summer, we ate like that, our T-shirts heaped near the toaster. To be fair, though, and to Michael Dunbar’s credit, from the second time onwards, he took his own shirt off with us. Tommy, who was still in that beautiful phase when kids speak totally unfiltered, shouted, “Hey! Hey, Dad! What are you doing here in just your nipples?”
The rest of us roared with laughter, especially Penny Dunbar, but Michael was up to the task. A slight flickering in one of his triceps.
“And what about your mum, you blokes? Should she go shirtless, too?”
She never needed rescuing, but it was Clay who’d often be willing.
“No,” he said, but she did it:
Her bra was old and scruffy-looking.
It was faded, strapped to each breast.
She ate and smiled regardless.
She said, “Now don’t go burning your chests.”
We knew what to get her for Christmas.
* * *
—
In that sense there was always a bulkiness to us.
A bursting at the seams.
Whatever we did, there was more:
More washing, more cleaning, more eating, more dishes, more arguing, more fighting and throwing and hitting and farting, and “Hey, Rory, I think you better go to the toilet!” and of course, a lot more denying. It wasn’t me should have been printed on all our T-shirts; we said it dozens of times each day.
It didn’t matter how in control or on-top-of-things things were, there was chaos a heartbeat away. We could be skinny and constantly agile, but there was never quite room for all of it—so everything was done at once.
