Keek tells me that the paved area outside our municipal library is perfect for skateboarding. It has several sections and the right amount of steps and rails; even a huge curved sculpture that looks like it’s been made for the job. So Fernwood council built the skate park to keep the skaters away from the library. They must have wanted to keep them away not only from the library but from respectable people in general because they built it out in the boondocks of the local reserve, miles from anything.
The path leading through the reserve to the bowl is gravel – a terrible surface for skateboards. ‘It’s so far from the shops, half the time there’s nobody here,’ Keek tells me as we rattle along.
‘Where do they go?’
‘There are other bowls, if you catch the train. And they still use the library. Only now you can get fined.’
The bowl is bleak. I like it immediately. It’s so completely somewhere no adult would want to be. It’s a huge concrete plate with two interlinking bowls sunk into it, adorned with a few crappy tags. Fernwood Reserve spreads around us, green grass and grey gum trees – a strip of ferny bush along the creek is all that’s left of Fernwood forest. It’s peaceful. The bowl is so remote we can’t even see the footy oval.
‘But you can hear them on the weekends,’ Keek says. ‘And they shout when they’re training, too. Freaks.’
‘Who do you barrack for?’ I ask. ‘In the real footy, I mean.’
‘Don’t tell me you like football?’
‘Go Bombers!’
Keek groans.
‘Well, what do you like?’ I climb off the bike and stretch. ‘Besides bikes, obviously.’
He scrutinises me, like I’m a bug. ‘Do you read?’
Then I know what the look is for. Unless there’s a craze – in which case it’s essential – reading is definitely not cool. Not getting-around-with-your-face-in-a-classic-paperback type reading. Another happy fact I’d learned from experience. ‘Yeah, sometimes,’ I say cautiously, hedging my bets.
‘I ride and I read. That’s about it.’
‘What are you reading now?’
‘A Wizard of Earthsea. Have you heard of it? It’s pretty old.’
‘Mum’s got it. On the “books I loved when I was a kid and think you should love too” shelf of our bookshelves.’
‘Have you read it?’
‘No.’
‘It’s good.’ Keek leans forward on his bike so the back wheel lifts. It bounces when he drops it back to the concrete. ‘What are you reading?’
‘My Aunty Jean’s given me a pile of John Wyndham. Ever heard of him? He’s old too. I’m reading Day of the Triffids.’
‘Can I borrow it when you’re done?’
It’s hard to imagine Keek reading a book. I want to see him do it. ‘Sure,’ I say. ‘But I’m warning you – it makes going down the creek give you the creeps.’
There’s a covered seat, a bus shelter where no bus will ever arrive. Someone has done a decent job of the bus-stop graffiti and I trace a giant eye with my finger.
Keek pulls out the cigarettes. ‘What are you doing?’
‘I like how they’ve done this.’ I point to the curving line of the eye. ‘See how it’s so clean, and it’s definitely a spray line and not drawn. That must be hard. And they’re good colours, not muddy. I’d be very happy if I could control a big piece of art like that.’
Keek is sceptical. ‘Art?’
‘Of course it’s art.’
Keek waves at the tags. ‘I suppose you think they’re art, too.’
These particular tags don’t seem like art, it’s true. ‘In principle,’ I say.
Keek snorts, mocking me. ‘In principle.’
‘It’s an artistic statement, at least.’ Keek hasn’t changed after all – he always was annoying.
‘What’s it saying? “I have a marker”.’
‘It’s saying, “I exist”.’
But Keek isn’t convinced. ‘It’s about as artistic as a dog peeing on everything it sees,’ he says.
I stare at the bowl. ‘That looks scary.’
‘Nah.’ Keek leaves the cigarettes and lighter on the bench and zooms off on his bike. My stomach lurches to see him zip up and down the curve of concrete, seeming to stop still, suspended in air as he reaches the lip. He jumps out and rides back to me. ‘Can’t do much. Didn’t bring my helmet.’
‘Helmet?’
‘Shit yeah. Dean Barry cracked his head here about eight months ago and now he’s like, brain damaged.’
‘I heard that.’
‘Yeah. I saw him take the tumble. We laughed. At first.’
It’s quiet in the middle of the morning with no one around. I can almost see Dean, airborne, then hear the sickening crunch. ‘It’s weird, everyone being at school,’ I say.
‘Why do they have to make it so boring?’ Keek bunny hops his bike then gets off and leans it against the bus shelter. ‘I wouldn’t mind going if it wasn’t so fucking boring.’
‘Fucking,’ I say. It sounds stupid, saying it like that, but I’ve never said it as freely as Keek just did. First Mrs Sutcliff, now this. No wonder my mother is worried. I say it again, more loudly. Then shout it at the top of my lungs. I pull a cigarette from the packet and light it.
‘Yuck,’ I say, and cough.
Mum’s taken pity on me and arranged for me to be transferred to Mrs Fitzpatrick’s Home Group. Fitzy actually smiles at me and says, ‘Welcome to the class.’
Sutcliff still gets to torture me in history, which is only bearable because it’s one of my few classes with Robbo. I mean, Keek’s cute in his own way, I guess, but Rob? Rob is hot. And you can tell he’s nice, too. Underneath.
Being in the same Home Group helps me and Keek make the transition from suspension-buddies to school-buddies without excessive weirdness, despite his rider-friend Cho paying out on him for ‘being a complete idiot’ for starting to smoke. She unfavourably dissects me and puts out a delicate hand. ‘Hi,’ she says. ‘Do you ride?’
When Keek scoffs loudly and I say, ‘No,’ she drops my lumpish hand and turns away. Every nerve in my body suddenly strains to justify my existence. ‘I’m artistic,’ I blurt.
‘Congratulations.’ Cho shows me her even teeth. ‘I’m Burmese.’
‘I’m Catholic,’ says Keek, and they laugh. I smile, weakly, and retreat into the safety of my notebook to zone them out. I’m still obsessed with drawing onions. This one’s words and image, an onion in cross-section with a different sentence in every layer. An onion poem to my father.
‘Don’t shave your thighs, Clover,’ says Mum, poking her head into the bathroom at exactly the wrong moment. ‘Shins if you must, but you can hardly see that fluff you’re calling hair. You’ll regret it. Don’t do it, I beseech you.’
I beseech you. The lingering effects of Shakespeare. ‘What do you want?’ I say, irritated.
‘There’s a boy on the phone.’
There’s a boy on the phone?
Because of our stupid landline, I have to trail my soapy legs out to the lounge in a towel. I take the receiver as if it might be toxic. Or Rob Marcello.
It’s Keek.
‘What are you doing?’ he asks me.
‘Nothing.’ I can’t believe I’m blushing over the phone. ‘Why?’
‘Tell him he can come for pancakes if he wants,’ Mum calls from the kitchen.
‘Mum says you can come for pancakes if you want.’
‘Okay.’
I can’t believe it. I’d been completely sure he would refuse my mother’s kind invitation. ‘They’re made with biodynamic whole-wheat flour and we only have raw sugar.’
‘Don’t you want me to come?’
‘Yeah, but – yeah, of course.’ How could I explain? ‘My house is . . .’ I look around at art and wood and books and strange Steiner-inspired clay sculptures and watercolour paintings Mum’s made with her friends, or at her many ‘courses’, not to mention my own creations from over the years, and sigh. It isn’t like anybody else’s
house that I’ve ever been to. Nobody else keeps their miniature television in a cupboard. We have a phone with a rotary dial. A typewriter. We still use my dead grandparents’ record-player and Mum listens to their vinyl records. I live in a museum and my mother is the chief dinosaur.
‘What number is it?’ he says.
My mother and Philip McKenzie chat over pancakes. In true mother-fashion, there’s a spray of ivy circling a hand-rolled beeswax candle. Inspired by having a guest, I suppose, she lights it and trots out an old Steinery grace we used to say at every meal.
‘We thank the water,
earth and air, and all the helping powers they bear,
we thank the people, loving good
who grow and cook our daily food.
And at last we thank the sun,
the light and life for everyone.’
I think I’m going to die, but Keek doesn’t seem fazed by pre-pancake poetry, our lack of technology or the overabundance of Lucille, who sits watching his every mouthful with eyes of longing. Mum asks him about his dad and Keek tells her that he works as a solicitor and is addicted to indoor rock-climbing.
My mother clicks her tongue and says, ‘The poor man.’
‘Let’s go to the park,’ I say, desperate to get out of our house.
‘Yeah, okay. But can I finish my pancake first?’ Keek and my mum smile at each other like old friends. Like allies.
We lie in the bowl, looking up at the sky and smoking.
‘Your mum’s okay, Clover.’
‘I thought you said she was a freak?’
‘Well . . . I’m pretty sure that I said you were the freak, CB.’
‘She’s the freak.’
‘So what if she dresses weird?’
‘She thinks everything has a consciousness.’
‘What?’
‘She reckons everything has a consciousness. Rocks and stones are in a trance, plants and trees are fast asleep, animals dream and humans are awake and have self-consciousness, which is why we say “I” and “you” and have morals and ethics and stuff.’
‘Right.’ Keek lifts one of his legs straight up in the air and stares at his shoe. His knee bends like a hinge and he lets the leg drop. ‘What’s that got to do with your conscience?’
‘Not conscience. Consciousness. Trance is a sort of . . . I don’t know. Trance. Sleep is kind of unconsciousness I think. Dreaming – pictures and feelings and stuff. Dream consciousness. I dunno.’ Why did I say anything about my mother’s crazy ideas? It makes sense when she talks about it with Aunty Jean, but now, here, in the bowl, it sounds ridiculous.
Keek slaps his hand against the concrete. ‘Is this concrete in a trance?’
It surprises me, that Keek doesn’t just dismiss me. ‘I guess so,’ I say. ‘Anything that’s minerals. The mineral kingdom, Mum calls it.’
‘That’s a weird thought.’
And we lie there, with the sweep of the bowl blocking everything but the sky overhead, thinking it: the idea that the concrete is alive but in a trance. It’s creepy. No wonder Mum feels so passionately about the earth, about things, if she thinks even dead stuff is alive.
‘What if it wakes up. Out of its trance, I mean?’ Keek says.
I imagine the bowl, shaking itself and getting up. Crushing us in the process. ‘Maybe that’s what earthquakes are. The mineral kingdom waking up.’
‘It doesn’t stay awake though.’
‘No.’ I feel his arm, warm against mine. ‘If it did wake up, the planet I mean – and all the trees and animals, I don’t think they’d be too happy with what we’ve done.’
Keek smiles at the sky. ‘They should make a movie about that, like The Day the Earth Got Revenge.’
‘Catchy title. Not.’
Keek punches me, but not too hard.
‘Maybe that’s why it’s not awake.’ I rub my arm and punch him back.
‘What, so it doesn’t have a revolution or something? Against humans?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Why are people awake then?’
‘It’s about being individual. Or individualised. But not individualism – which makes you selfish. She thinks we’re supposed to transform everything through art. By thinking with our hearts or some crap.’ I suss out Keek for signs of ridicule, but he’s listening. ‘My mum is weird. She yells at the radio when they mention the economy. She doesn’t think we’re an economy.’
‘What do you mean, she doesn’t think we’re an economy? How are we not an economy?’
‘Well . . . we, society, put a monetary value on everything. I mean, everything, especially nature, so we exploit everything, anything, for profit, so there’s like this mass destruction going on everywhere because globally we’ve gone crazy thinking everything is “the economy” – but it isn’t, it’s life; and Mum reckons it’s made us all personally crazy because we have to be doing something all the time to make sure we’re “economically viable” and we’ve forgotten how to value things that don’t make money, or that you can’t measure that way.’
‘Like what things?’
‘Nature. Artistic practice.’ I yawn, and try to remember the things she goes on about. ‘Peace and quiet.’
‘What does she do?’
‘Works as a temp, mostly. For publishers, and sometimes businesses. She has “ambitions” but mostly it’s proofreading.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Who cares. I’m sick of talking about her.’
‘She makes good pancakes.’
‘Yeah.’
What can I say to Keek about my mother? Just before Alison left for Canberra, she and I had a big fight because she said it was sad I didn’t have a dad and I said everyone called her dad a God-botherer and she went red like she always does and said, ‘Your dad could be dead and you wouldn’t even know.’ And then I realised: mums are supposed to keep dads for their kids.
I turn my head and take in Keek’s profile. ‘She doesn’t fit in,’ I say. ‘You can’t take her anywhere without being embarrassed.’ Except maybe the Steiner School Fair.
‘Righto, Clover, no need to froth at the mouth.’
‘Now I have to meet your mother.’
Keek turns to me, then back to the sky. ‘Maybe. It’s weird that your mum went to school with my parents.’
I look back at the sky, too. ‘Yeah.’
The wheel of a bike and a helmeted head stare down at us over the lip of the bowl. ‘You right down there?’
‘Mugzy.’
‘Keeksie.’
Three guys and Cho, all on bikes like Keek’s.
I can’t help but admire the way Keek just lies there and finishes his cigarette. When he’s ready, he manages to run his bike out of the bowl and give me a hand to run out too.
Then it’s on: bikes crisscrossing the bowl in a chaos that resolves itself into an organic order, punctuated by gravity-defying moments of stillness. At first I am amazed by what they can do, especially flairs, where they flip right over, and the spills they’re prepared to take, but it’s like watching through perspex and after a while, I get bored.
‘Hey Keek, I’m gonna walk home.’
‘Nah, I’ll dink you.’
Cho pulls up next to him and dismounts. ‘Why don’t you have a go?’ She offers up the handlebars, her long fingers at the buckle of her helmet. Such beautiful hands. She swings the helmet towards me and gestures at the concrete. ‘On the flat here, to start.’
I shake my head, almost a twitch. I’m not ready to mortify myself in front of Cho, who rides like the bike is an extension of her body, who rides with more grace and control than I can even walk with. I want to say thanks, though, for trying to include me. But all that comes out is, ‘Nah, I’m cool.’
Cho’s shoulder tells me that was her one and only offer as she reclips her helmet and races back into the bowl. I feel a lump of sadness.
‘Keek, you stay and ride. Really, it’s fine.’
But Keek won’t let me go alone and we head of
f.
‘Take me to your place,’ I say.
When we get close to home, he stops the bike. ‘I’m going to drop you off and then go home.’
‘But—’
‘That’s what I’m doing, Clover.’
And that’s what he does.
Keek never takes me to his house, he always comes to mine. Or he picks me up on the way through to the skate park, or school, or over to Mrs T’s, who always has food. Or we hang out in my room talking and reading bits of books out to each other. Twice we’ve caught the bus down to Fernwood to watch a movie.
One Sunday morning, out of pure stubborn curiosity, even though I know he doesn’t want me to, I turn up on his doorstep. The first thing I notice is that the blinds are half-closed. I knock. A blind moves and Keek comes out.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘Nice.’
‘Sorry. But, what are you doing here?’
‘I finished The Chrysalids and thought you might want it.’ I hold up the book as evidence. ‘You just turn up at my place and it isn’t a drama. I’ll go.’
‘It isn’t a drama.’
‘Isn’t it?’
‘How come you came here though?’
‘Forget it. I’m going.’ I jump off the porch and Keek jumps down after me.
‘No. Sorry. Hang on, I’ll be out in a minute.’ Keek takes the book, thanks me and disappears inside. When he comes back out, I can tell there are smokes wrapped up in his hoodie. The ache is back on his face. ‘Mum’s asleep.’ He sniffs and spits.
‘Charming.’
‘Shall we go down to the bowl?’
‘I can’t. I have to be back by eleven-thirty. Barbecue at Aunty Jean’s.’
Aunty Jean is my aunty in the same way Mrs T is my grandmother. ‘Jeannie’ and Mum went to school together and stayed friends ever since. I never know what the two of them might get up to. Some nights they sit around in candlelight reading aloud from Steiner books like the most boring witches ever spied on, but I’m as likely to get woken up by them dancing around the lounge room and drooling over Jimmy Page.
When I was nine, I showed Mrs T’s real granddaughter Stephanie a photo of Jimmy with his electric guitar, his long curly hair and velvet dragon-suit – with a sense of ownership, as though the distant ’70s rock star belonged to our family, to my mum.
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