by Tina Shaw
There was a cough on the other end. ‘As fascinating as it is,’ Ajax said in his driest voice, ‘is there a point to this tragic story?’
‘The thing is,’ I said, ‘she’s just asked me over to her place.’
‘Way to go.’
‘No, you don’t get it.’
In fact, Ajax could tell what I was getting at. ‘You think she’s gonna lay a booby trap? Lure you into her den and tie you up?’
Good old Ajax. I was starting to feel better already.
‘Yeah, something like that. Or maybe while I’m inside, she’ll plant a bomb under my Vespa.’
‘Or the entire school’ll be sitting in the lounge waiting to laugh at you.’
‘So you think I should go?’
There was a pause, filled with the hollow wailing of a sick oboe. ‘Have you already told her you’d go?’
‘Well, yes.’
‘Then, considering that chicks don’t like getting stood up, I would go. Take your chances. Just watch out for tiger pits.’
6
The heart is an amazing organ.
We get it all the time in love songs – the breaking, the aching, getting hurt, doing flip-flops, and going boom-diddy-boom. Even the hardcore rappers have hearts which can be squeezed and sucked dry, or they’re trying to win some girl’s heart, and she’s either cruel and telling the guy to go away, or she’s hanging round in her bikini and getting soft on another guy, or he’s sitting in his flash car in the street outside her bedroom window and trying to call her on his cell. It’s all about the same thing: getting the girl or the guy, and making your heart happy …
Then there are all those sayings about the heart: a heart of gold; in your heart of hearts; her heart was in the right place; he had a change of heart; you’ve got your heart in your mouth (a scary thought); cross my heart and hope to die (but not too soon, please). You get the idea.
But the actual heart, now that’s really something.
It’s a pump, pure and simple. This little baby pumps away, day in, day out, sending about six litres of blood round the body every minute – three times every minute! During your average day this little pump will move enough blood to fill a small Para pool. In one day the blood travels a total of 19,000 kilometres. The heart beats around 70 times a minute, and that’s about 2.5 billion times over an average lifetime.
And it’s this ugly red blob, about the size of your fist, that sits in the middle of your chest, pumping away like a real little trooper.
Man, it gave me a strange feeling, thinking about that pump working away inside my body. I was willing some good vibes towards my old ticker, to last the distance. We just had to hang on, my heart and me, till Doctor Brad could replace my faulty valve. Normally, the aortic valve is like a one-way door, letting blood into the aorta which is the biggest artery in the body. Only in my case the valve was stuffed, and the heart had to work a lot harder to get the blood out the door.
One thing for certain, when something like this happened, you started seeing things in a new light. You started appreciating what you usually took for granted.
It made me want to run outside and shout to the world: I’ve got a heart! Except of course, I’m too weak to run. Or shout. And hey, everybody’s got a heart. It’d be pretty weird otherwise. No hearts? We’d all be zombies. But now I knew Roxy, my own heart didn’t seem like such a piece of old shite. It had a good reason to keep beating. How corny was that? Beating for Roxy.
7
Despite my anxiety about meeting Roxy, I went over to her house. I pulled up outside and took off my helmet. Everything seemed quiet. The front door was wide open, but there was no sign of life. I knocked. No Answer.
Took a step inside. ‘Hello?’
Hm, interesting. An empty house. I could’ve been a burglar, and burglarised the place. I poked my head in the door of the lounge and checked out what I could burglarise. Burglarise burglarise burglarise. What a cool word. Saying it over and over under my breath also took my mind off thinking that Roxy had stood me up. There was a TV, but it was an old one, nothing special. And a stereo, ditto. A bunch of CDs; by the look of the place they’d probably be really old, like Simon and Garfunkel, the kind of stuff my mum liked. There was a flash train set on the floor. Must belong to the kid brother. I fought an impulse to kick it to pieces.
On the other side of the hall was the door to Roxy’s bedroom, but it was closed.
No way was I going to push my luck by opening it (get caught and labelled a pervert again), though I did knock.
Nothing.
‘Hello,’ I tried again. It came out even more feeble than the first time.
Well, okay. Maybe she was out the back.
I sighed, and continued gingerly down the hallway, walking as if there might be landmines hidden under the floorboards. I squinted ahead like Clint in The Unforgiven, scanning the horizon for trouble. Come out with your hands up. At the end of the hall I stopped and sort of leaned forward. The hall opened straight into a big kitchen. French doors looked out to a garden.
‘Hello?’ squeaked Jelly Man. There was nobody around. Not a sausage. Not even a zombie rearing out of the pantry. It was like everyone had been dissolved by some dire killer virus, leaving no trace.
I stepped into the kitchen, wondering what to do. One of the French doors was open. Maybe Roxy was sitting in the garden. Or better still, sunbathing, with those long legs stretched glistening in the sun.
A drilling sound started up, coming from a shed out the back. I went across the lawn and peered into this shed, where a man wearing goggles was working at a bench. I tried knocking on the open door, but he couldn’t hear me. What to do now? There didn’t seem any option except to just hang till the guy saw me. One thing for certain: there was no Roxy. I didn’t know what to make of that. Was it to be another humiliation? I should get out now. Then the drilling stopped.
‘Hello?’ I said, trying to make my voice drop a bit deeper (no such luck). The man turned round – it was the same guy I’d seen shouting at Roxy the other night. Her dad, I guessed. ‘Sorry to bother you, but I was looking for Roxy?’
He made a face. ‘Yeah, you and the rest of us.’
I started edging away from the shed. ‘Well, maybe I’ll come back later …’
‘You do that,’ he said, about to turn back to his workbench.
Then I noticed what he was working on. It was this humungous model ship. I mean, it was enormous. It took up nearly all the bench. It had rows of portholes, and decks, and a captain’s cabin.
‘Hey, great ship,’ I offered, impressed. ‘What is it, a cruise ship?’
‘The QE2,’ he said, brushing a sliver of wood from its side. He looked a bit like a wily old inventor dude. He had three-day stubble and blow-away hair, streaked with silver. ‘Except, I don’t know, maybe I haven’t got the proportions quite right.’
He had a photo he was working from, and I stepped over to have a closer look.
It was a great shed, full of tools and stuff. The kind of shed my own dad might’ve had, if he’d lived. One of the few bits of information Mum had volunteered about him was how handy he was and how he could make just about anything. I had this fantasy where he was still alive and had a workshop out the back of our place, and he taught me how to use power tools, a Skilsaw and cool stuff like that. I suppose I could’ve done woodwork at school, but I’d chosen really useful subjects like French and German instead. As it was, about the only kind of tool I knew how to use was a can opener.
‘I think you could maybe shave a bit more off the back,’ I offered.
He squinted at the boat. ‘Yeah, I think you’re right. She’s a bit bottom heavy.’
‘That’s what my mum says about herself.’
He gave a dry chuckle. Then he picked up a small plane from the bench and looked at it. ‘What’s your name, son?’
‘Um, James,’ I said. ‘James Griffen.’
‘Okay, James Griffen, you look like a handy kind of guy. Do you want to
do it?’
‘Me?’ I gave a skittish laugh. ‘No way. I’d wreck it.’
Another toasty chuckle. ‘Come on, give it a try. The boat’s just about bomb-proof.’ He handed me the plane. We locked eyes for a nanosecond in the dim light of the workshop. He seemed pretty cool. ‘Besides, it doesn’t have to be perfect. It’s only going to the kids’ ward at the hospital.’
‘Yeah?’ The plane made a good, steady weight in my hand. ‘My mum works at the hospital. In the prem unit.’
The man narrowed his eyes, like he wanted to grin but wasn’t quite ready. ‘I know the prem ward,’ he said. ‘Our son was born premature – that’s Roxy’s brother.’
Yup, I thought, got it. The little shit from the park.
‘My name’s Leo, by the way. I’m Roxy’s dad.’
‘Yeah, I kind of figured that.’
We looked at the boat again. ‘It’s a shame David’s not that interested in this sort of thing. He’s more into computer games.’
It struck me then that the guy probably just wanted some company. That made me feel better about being there.
He showed me how to use the plane. It was so cool. I pushed the tool down the edge of the ship where it looked a bit chunky, and a curl of pale wood came off. The wood smelt good, too. It made me feel like a little kid, using that plane and shaving off the wood.
‘That’s it,’ said Leo, ‘just ease it down the side.’ Another pale curl slipped off the plane.
But then maybe I used too much pressure or something because suddenly I’d taken off a great big chunk and the plane was sort of stuck in the side of the boat.
‘Oh no, sorry …’
My face went hot. Shit a brick. I thought maybe he would yell at me. I mean, he didn’t know me from Jack and here I’d wrecked his nice model boat.
‘It’s okay,’ he said, wrenching the plane out of the wood. We both looked at the jagged hole.
‘Gosh, I’m really sorry.’
‘Hey, no worries,’ he muttered. I couldn’t tell if he was upset or not. ‘Maybe that’s where the anchor could go.’
‘Really?’
We both looked at the ship for a while. Leo was obviously thinking about the anchor business and how to fix the hole. I was thinking I should get going before Roxy got back and caught me buddying up with her dad. That would be too embarrassing. I cleared my throat.
Leo looked at me, then nodded. ‘You’ll want to get going, I suppose.’
We stepped out of the shed and he studied the sky.
‘So do you know if Roxy’ll be back soon?’
He gave that bitter laugh again. ‘I’ve no idea, James. Roxy’s got her own timetable, which she doesn’t bother telling me about. I’m just the dumb guy who happens to be her father.’ He gave me another look, as if weighing up what kind of person I was, the way I’d weighed up the plane in my hand. ‘You look like a good kid,’ he said with a sigh. ‘She could do with more mates like you, eh.’
Leo reminded me a bit of Clint Eastwood – the rugged jaw and the inscrutable gaze. As I went out to my Vespa, I was thinking a guy could do a lot worse than having Clint as his role model. He’s a real old dude now, but he’s still cool. Bad things happen to him – in The Unforgiven his wife has died of smallpox, leaving him to run the farm and bring up their kids by himself – but he takes it on the chin. Takes it like a man. Or he gets even – like when his friend, the coloured guy, gets killed. Then there were the Dirty Harry movies. They were probably my favourites. ‘Make my day, punk,’ I hissed, narrowing my eyes and putting my hand on the holster of my cell phone, ready to whip it out and shoot somebody.
That was when Roxy turned up.
She was coming down the street, her eyes on the pavement. She had her hood over her hair, as if she didn’t want to be seen. I swapped my helmet over to my other hand, and waited for her to see me. She was practically at the gate before she looked up. A spark of surprise lit up her grey eyes.
‘Griffen,’ she said (and it gave me a small thrill that she remembered my surname). ‘What are you doing here?’
‘You, uh, asked me to come over.’
She put her head on one side, and looked at my bike. ‘Yeah,’ she said, ‘I guess I did.’
No apology, no explanation. I was beginning to understand that Roxy operated differently from most people. With anybody else it would have pissed the hell out of me, but at that moment I was prepared to forgive Roxy nearly anything. Best of all, it was just her and me – no trained monkeys in sight.
She gave a sharp nod at the house. ‘Is he in there?’
Her bitterness surprised me. ‘If you mean your dad, then yeah. He’s out the back.’
‘Right.’
Then she turned on her heel – just like that – and started walking back off down the street. Oh, man. I didn’t know what to do except follow her. So I grabbed my Vespa, and started pushing it after her.
‘Hey Roxy, wait up.’
She sent me a hard, grey look over her shoulder. Her face was tight, with pink splotches in her cheeks, like she was real mad or something. As if all the world, me included, was her enemy. But at least she stopped and let me catch up with her. Just as well, because my breathing was coming a bit hard. I leaned on the bike and caught my breath.
Maybe she took pity on me then, because she actually gave a kind of half-smile and said, ‘There’s a park a couple of blocks away. It’s part of the reserve that comes out at the end of our street. You know, where you were hiding the other night?’ She ducked her chin with a secret grin. Maybe she wasn’t as mad with me about that as she’d made out.
‘About that night, let me explain …’ I began.
‘Later,’ said Roxy. Her pink lip gloss caught the light. Her hair in the sunlight was pale and shimmery. A bit like the ‘hair’ of a corn cob. I wanted to know what it felt like.
‘You can take us to the park on your bike,’ Roxy was saying. ‘I can’t be bothered walking any more.’
I was about to protest that I didn’t have a spare helmet, but then I figured that a couple of blocks wouldn’t matter. Besides, I’d never had a girl on the back of my Vespa before. I wasn’t going to let the chance slip away on a mere legal technicality.
I hopped on the bike, pulling on my helmet. Roxy got on the back, and put her hands on my hips. It was such a thrill, I nearly flooded the engine. The only thing I remember about that short ride to the park is Roxy sitting close behind me – her body was touching my back, her breath on the back of my neck. I could feel her small hands holding onto me. I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. I wanted the ride to last for hours.
‘Down there,’ Roxy said, pointing out a street.
I already knew the way. I’d been there before. The street ended at the park.
8
‘Come on,’ said Roxy. ‘I’ll show you my favourite tree.’
I parked the Vespa and followed her across a big grassy area that was dotted with trees. A set of swings was off to one side. She stopped underneath this tree which had large glossy leaves and big limbs sticking out over the grass. Hidden among the tough leaves were bowl-like white flowers.
‘What kind of tree is this?’ I asked, patting one of the smooth branches.
Roxy was already climbing, stepping from one broad limb to another as if she was climbing a set of stairs. ‘Magnolia,’ she called. Her pale face, framed by leaves, peered back down at me, like an elf. ‘You can climb trees, can’t you?’
‘Course I can climb trees.’
Though in fact I had no idea how my heart would respond. I had enough trouble climbing stairs, let alone trees. Doctor Brad wouldn’t be very impressed.
‘James, come on!’ she shouted, nearly out of sight.
Hell, you only live once, right?
It was a number of years since I’d climbed a tree. Ryan and I had had a tree hut once, in our gnarly old plum tree. We built it ourselves, God knows how. Of course, with our building skills, it only lasted about a week. One night there w
as a storm and we came out the next morning to find the wreck of our tree hut scattered all over the lawn.
I stepped up onto the first branch. It was easy, because the lower branches were like benches, flat and strong. One step at a time. Up higher the branches got a little flimsier. But Roxy hadn’t gone too high. Just as well: my breath was coming in ragged spurts. She was nestled into the fork of the tree, her knees tucked up to her chin, and a distant gaze in her eyes. She pushed her hood back off her head.
‘Look,’ she said, pointing, ‘you can see those people’s swimming pool from here.’ There was a kidney-shaped pool (they’d hardly build a pool in the shape of a real heart, considering how ugly it is), sparkling turquoise blue in somebody’s backyard. I made myself as comfortable as I could on a nearby branch, and kept my eyes on the glittering pool, so as not to look at the drop. This was the most physical thing I’d done since getting sick. ‘They’re always in there through summer,’ said Roxy, ‘fooling round and acting dumb.’
That seemed kind of sad to me, Roxy watching from her tree as other people had fun. ‘D’you go swimming?’ I gently wheezed, trying to get my breath back. ‘There’s the Municipals just down the road.’
‘Nah,’ she said, ‘too many other kids. I’d rather be up here, in my climbing tree.’ She pulled out a packet of cigarettes and offered me one. I shook my head. She lit the cigarette with a pink lighter. ‘I come up here at night sometimes, too, if I want to get away.’
‘Yeah? You climb up here in the dark?’
Smoke seeped out from between her lips. ‘Yup. It’s easy. Me and my friends used to play up here when we were little. We’d pretend to be princesses hiding from a fire-breathing dragon.’ Roxy gave a sardonic laugh, like that kind of innocence was far behind her now. She looked at me then. ‘So, James Griffen’ (and I couldn’t help thinking it sounded just the way her father had said it), ‘where do you go when you want to chill out?’
I shrugged. ‘I dunno, I’m not really into tree-climbing.’ But that sounded like I was dissing her, so I quickly added, ‘The beach is good. You know, for hanging out sometimes. But I can’t do too much … so I’ve got this place, this zone I can go to.’
