by Cowley, Joy
She looked at him, her eyes bright and unblinking. “Yes,” she said. “There is more to come. It’s up to you, Jeff. When it’s time, you’ll do what you need to do. But it will be without me. I can’t stay in the dream much longer.”
“You mean you are going to die.”
At that, she began to laugh, a rumble in her chest that reached her mouth and eyes and then shook her entire body. She coughed and whacked her stick against the concrete. “There is no such thing as death,” she said.
* * *
Mrs Wilson could be tough. She gave Jeff five out of ten for his project on Dmitri Mendeleev, saying that the topic given was a historical figure, not the significance of the periodic table. He was disappointed and indignant, disappointed for himself, and indignant that Mendeleev’s achievement should be dismissed like that. But then Mrs Wilson was not a physicist. Paul got nine out of ten for writing about Henry VIII, who achieved practically nothing worthwhile, and Salosa got a full ten for six pages on Captain Cook. Jeff was pleased for them both. His five out of ten was an explosion of red ink, not done with Mrs Wilson’s birthday pen, nor by a good Russian pencil. He supposed it really didn’t matter. If he had to rate his personal disappointment on the same scale, it would be two out of ten, small compared with other events in his life that hit the full score.
At lunch break, it was raining, and he sat in the recreation room with his sandwiches and his notebook, trying to ignore the noise around him. This was the day Beck was flying in, and no one in the family would be at the airport to see him. I’m sorry, Beck, he whispered to himself. I’m so horribly, terribly, awfully sorry.
He looked at his notes. He hadn’t written all the old woman had said, but the words he’d scribbled prompted his memory and he was able to fill most of the blanks. It wasn’t craziness, he decided. It was a story, like Maui and his brothers netting the sun, like Orpheus going into the underworld to find that girl with the strange name. It was one of those stories that had echoes in it, vibrations, like patterns of numbers. The patterns meant something but he didn’t know what. Maybe only a “dream-keeper” could offer a mathematical sequence that made sense of the story.
He read the notes again and underlined two things that seemed engraved inside him. It’s up to you, Jeff. Light. The words escaped his brain but they were in his chest and stomach, and he didn’t know what to do with them.
Someone was standing in front of him. “Hey! Jeffrey Lorimer!”
He raised his head and saw it was Clive.
“Your brother is Beckett Lorimer, right? The drug dealer?”
“Yes.”
“My father says taxpayers’ dollars are rescuing him from a prison in Thailand.”
“Yes. I suppose so.” He saw a gleam in the stare, heard the voice reaching for every ear in the recreation room.
“More taxpayers’ dollars for keeping him in that flash new prison in Auckland,” Clive announced.
Jeff shrugged. “A prison is still a prison.” He looked down at his notes.
But Clive hadn’t finished. “Your sister, Andrea. She’s living with a married man. He’s got two kids. My parents know his wife. What’s wrong with your family?”
Everyone was watching, waiting for his answer. Jeff felt very tired. The only thing he could think of was something the old woman had thrown at him yesterday. “Shut your cakehole,” he said.
* * *
He went to Paul’s place after school, to have another session on the drums, do homework, anything to avoid going straight home. Mr Fitzgibbon and the dog were in the backyard. He was mulching the vegetable garden, and the dog, scratching in the compost, had rotting plants over its nose and muzzle. Mr Fitzgibbon stopped to ask Jeff how things were. Jeff wasn’t sure what he meant, but guessed he’d heard something, so he told him about Mr Staunton-Jones. Mr Fitzgibbon didn’t know, and he looked shocked. “One and a half million dollars!” he exclaimed as though that was all the money in the world. “What a terrible thing to happen!”
Jeff nodded. Mr Fitzgibbon was very tall, and up close, Jeff was talking to faded blue jeans and gumboots crusted with compost. “It’s really awful,” he said, patting the dog. “We thought he was such a kind man. He fooled everyone.”
Mr Fitzgibbon put his hand on Jeff’s shoulder. “Nearly always, evil tries to disguise itself as virtue. Tell your dad we’ll pray for him, if he thinks that will help.”
You don’t know my father, Jeff wanted to say, he’s allergic to stuff like that, but instead he nodded again. He didn’t want to upset Mr Fitzgibbon further by telling him that the police weren’t doing anything fast, and Dad had to sell their house to pay back his clients. That would have been too much. He turned and went inside to see Paul.
* * *
Helen’s first words were, “Where have you been?”
“Paul’s,” he said. “Mr Fitzgibbon drove me home.”
“Why didn’t you send me a text? You know the rules.”
“I forgot.” That was true. Getting in touch had been the last thing on his mind.
She slammed a cupboard door. “Do you know what’s happened? Your idiot father has invited a land agent to look at the house. What do you think of that?”
He didn’t answer.
She said in a louder voice. “I said your idiot of a father is selling our home. This place is half mine, but was I consulted? Of course not!”
Jeff knew she wasn’t talking to him, but to Winston who was somewhere near, probably in his office. He was right. His father came into the living room, walking unevenly. His eyes were red. He had been drinking. “You’re a bit late, son,” he said to Jeff.
“It’s a pretty picture, isn’t it?” Helen said. “The financial genius who was going to buy – what was it? A villa in Tuscany? An island in Fiji?”
Winston swayed slightly and put his hand on the back of a chair to steady himself. “Don’t!” he bellowed. “Do not make me the criminal! This was an – an investment in good faith. I did everything I could –”
“Good faith!” She spat the words back at him. “You played up to him. You saw him as an old rich man who was giving you his property cheap, because you were like a son. Yes, Daddy Warren. I’ll look after your beautiful little kingdom, Daddy Warren. But as soon as it was yours, you planned to sell it to the developers.”
“It was an investment!” Winston looked confused. He put his hand up in a helpless gesture as though he was trying to clear the air of words. “I did it for you, Helen! I did it for my family!”
“No! You did it for greed,” said Helen, “and now your family will be homeless.”
He lurched forward, angry now. “Will you bloody well shut up? We’ll get the money back. Eventually. Until then we can rent a house.” He held his hands out to her, his voice shaking. “All of it, Helen, everything I did, was for family!”
“You have no family, Winston,” she said.
“Stop!” Jeff cried. “Stop it!”
“You destroyed us!” Helen said. “Your children, one by one, and now me. Yes, me, Winston Lorimer! If this house goes, so do I.”
Winston hit her.
His fist came up twice. She shrieked, spun around and with the second blow, fell to the floor.
Jeff ran to his mother. She was on her back. Her arms and legs were at sharp angles against the white marble tiles. Her lip was bleeding down the side of her face, but she wasn’t knocked out. Jeff took her left arm and helped her into a sitting position. She was crying. There was a red mark on her left cheek.
He turned to his father, who was still standing by the chair. “Dad!”
Winston stepped backwards, shaking his head, little shakes as though he didn’t believe any of it.
Helen stood up, touched her mouth and looked at the red on her fingers. “That does it,” she said, and went to the bathroom.
Jeff was now crying, huge gulping sobs. “Why, Dad? Why did you hit her?”
Winston sat heavily in the chair, staring at him, but it seemed to J
eff that he wasn’t seeing anything. “What a bloody mess,” he growled.
After a long time, Helen came out of the north wing of the house, wheeling an overnight bag. Her lip was still oozing blood. She ignored Winston, and said to Jeff, “I’ve booked a motel. Grab a few things, Jeffrey, just enough for the night. We’ll collect the rest tomorrow.”
Winston looked at her, but said nothing.
“Please, Mum,” Jeff said. “Please, don’t!”
“I said, pack a bag. Come on, Jeffrey. Hurry up! We’re getting out of this hellhole.”
“I don’t want to go,” Fresh tears were spilling. “Mum, let’s stay. Please?”
“We are going!” She nudged her bag against his leg. “Do as I tell you!”
He felt that all his insides were being torn up like bits of paper and tossed into the wind. But there was something else in him, something strong that remained. He walked over to Winston who was sitting as still as a rock, and put his hand on his shoulder. “No, Mum,” he said, “I’m staying with Dad.”
9
IN 1632, GALILEO GAVE AN EXPLANATION OF TIDES in a work he called “Dialogue on the Tides”. His theory was incorrect because he attributed tides to sloshing water caused by Earth’s movements around the sun. At the same time, Johannes Kepler correctly suggested that the moon caused tides. Isaac Newton was the first person to explain tides as the product of the gravitational pull of astronomical masses.
At seven-thirty in the morning, Winston was still in his pyjamas. His face was grey and stubbled and he looked hung-over.
Jeff helped himself to muesli then cut a banana over it. “Aren’t you going to work?”
“Not this morning. There’s a land agent coming. Don’t forget to wash your dishes. Do you know where your mother keeps the coffee?”
“I think we’re out. There’s no bread, either. I’ll have to buy my lunch.” He looked up. “Dad, I’ll need to buy something for lunch.”
His father walked out of the room and after a while came back with a fistful of coins and notes. He dropped them on the table.
“That’s too much!” Jeff said.
“So? Treat yourself. Buy chocolate or something.”
“Dad!” Jeff spread the money across the table. “There’s over sixty dollars here. I don’t want it. Twenty is more than enough.”
“Take it while you can. Before it all runs out. Before we’re begging in the streets.” His father shoved the morning paper in front of him. “See this?”
It was folded at the third page and there, at the top, was a photo of a man between two police officers. The man was Beckett and the background was Auckland Airport.
Jeff counted the raisins in his muesli. Usually there were between seven and ten, but today was bottom of the packet, and raisins sank, being heavy, so there would be at least twenty.
“I don’t deserve this,” Winston said, his forefinger stabbing the photo. “I don’t deserve any of it. What happened to right and wrong? My dad had good old-fashioned values. If I stepped out of line, it was his belt. I respected that. Once, he caught me smoking in the woodshed. I tell you, I couldn’t sit down for a week. Mark my words, it didn’t do me any harm. So what’s changed? Huh? Where’s the respect?”
Fourteen, fifteen. The muesli was thick with raisins. There could be more than twenty.
“I never hit her before,” Winston said. “I despise men who hit women. But, you know, she’s got a tongue like a razor. She went on and on. Don’t tell me. I know it’s no excuse. The thing is, she and I need to talk now. Communication, that’s what. Did she phone this morning?”
Jeff nodded.
His head tipped quickly, like a bird’s. “What did she say?”
“She wanted to know if I was all right.” Eighteen, nineteen, twenty.
“Is she coming back today?”
Raisins were dried grapes. They lost their juice and wrinkled but they didn’t give up their sweetness. They were like sugar between the teeth. “I don’t know,” he said.
“Did she tell you the name of the motel?”
“No.”
“Well, that’s bloody lovely,” Winston rocked back in his chair. “How do I talk to her then? You know I didn’t mean to hit her. You do know that, son. And you do believe that everything I’ve done has been for this family?”
Jeff hoped there would be twenty-seven raisins, but the final number, twenty-one, was just as good. That came to three, Beck’s number.
His father picked up a spoon and turned it between his fingers. “I have to put the house on the market. It can take weeks, months to sell. I can’t risk delay. She must know that. We’ll rent an ordinary family home and when the police get off their backsides, we’ll get our money back. What your mother doesn’t understand is the setback is only temporary. We’ll buy or build something just as nice as this.”
Jeff glanced again at the photo in the paper. It was Beck, all right, but different, older, thinner, with short hair and lines at the edge of his mouth.
What had happened to the long blond hair that swished about when he laughed?
“Talk to her, will you?” Winston was saying. “Tell her I need to see her. Can you do that for me?”
He nodded. “Okay.”
Winston put his elbows on the table, his head in his hands. “The silly woman has been talking about divorce.”
* * *
His phone was buzzing with messages from his mother and Andrea, wanting to know if he was all right. He didn’t know if he was all right. He remembered a scene from a movie, a man in a space suit who had been working on the outside of the spacecraft when he got cut loose. He had whirled away, head over heels like some big snowman, disappearing into blackness. That was how Jeff felt, but there were no exact words for it. Lost in space was metaphor or allegory, he wasn’t sure which.
Phones were not allowed in school, but they could be switched off and stored in lockers. He closed down messages without reading them and went early into the classroom to avoid the stares of students in the school grounds. It seemed that even the little kids knew about his brother.
Mrs Wilson was sitting at her desk. “Good morning, Jeffrey.”
“Good morning, Mrs Wilson.”
“Cool morning, isn’t it? Autumnal! Out goes cricket and in comes rugby.” Her mouth smiled at him. Her eyes looked anxious. “How are you, Jeffrey. I mean, really, how are you?”
“All right,” he smiled back. “Thank you, Mrs Wilson.”
“Is there anything you want to tell me?”
He shook his head.
“I don’t know about you, but when I’ve got something on my mind, it helps to have a chat about it.” She folded her arms and leaned back in her chair. “Not someone close. The people close to me will already have opinions. No, I go to a person who isn’t involved. I talk to someone I trust. Maybe they’ll see the problem more clearly from a distance. I find that very useful.”
He nodded in agreement but didn’t say anything.
“Jeffrey, we all have challenges, and we sometimes need help to deal with them. I wonder if you, well, I mean would you like an appointment with the school counsellor?”
This time, he shook his head.
“Are you sure? She is good at her job. You can absolutely trust her.”
He shook his head again.
Mrs Wilson looked ready to cry. “I’ve talked to some of my colleagues and we’re very concerned about our lovely Jeffrey. We know things aren’t easy for you, dear, and we –”
“I’ve got a counsellor,” he said.
“You have?”
“Yes. Someone I can talk to.”
“I’m very pleased to hear it. Did your parents arrange that for you? I’m sure you’ll find it very worthwhile. Who is your counsellor?”
He heard the thunder of feet in the hallway and he glanced at the door. “Her name is Maisie,” he said.
* * *
After school he went to Argonaut Travel, and yes, his mother was at her desk, work
ing on the computer. She wore make-up that covered the bruise on her cheek, but lipstick didn’t hide the brown ridge and swelling on her upper lip. She spoke in a low voice, “Jeffrey, I don’t want you to spend another night with him. He’s unpredictable. He’s dangerous. I’m looking for a house. Three bedrooms. I think Andrea might stay with us and go back to school.”
“Dad didn’t mean it,” he said.
“He has always been a bully,” she said. “I’m thankful I held on to this job. I’ve got a small amount put away, enough for a bond and a month’s rent in advance. We’ll manage, and it will be better, Jeffrey, I promise you.”
He shifted from one foot to another. “When do you finish? Can you drive me home?”
She saw through that and gave him a long look. “No, Jeffrey. I went up to the house today and got most of my clothes.”
“Did you talk to Dad?”
“No. He talked to me – the way he usually talks. At me. Further communication can be through lawyers.” She leaned towards him.
“I want you to come back to the motel with me.”
He was stuck, unable to say yes or no.
“Are you listening, Jeffrey?”
He didn’t want to hurt her. He didn’t want to make her angry. “Please,” he said. “Come home, Mum. Just for tonight.”
“It won’t change anything.” She shook her head. “It’s over, Jeffrey. Do you realise that I legally own half that house? That man refuses to even consider my legal rights. All he thinks about is himself, and that’s the way it’s always been.” Tears came into her eyes.
Jeff was aware that the women at the next desk were listening. They probably knew everything, anyway. “Please, Mum,” he whispered.
“Tonight you stay with me,” Helen said.
At that moment, he saw something clearly that he had not seen before. They were the same, Winston, Helen, Andrea, they all thought only about themselves. They were like little islands. That’s why we aren’t a family, he thought. No one really cares about anyone else. He wasn’t sure about Beck. Maybe Beckett cared. It was hard to tell, not having seen him for a long time.
