Louis Beside Himself

by Anna Fienberg

  It was stuffy in my room. There was my bed and another double mattress which two of us often had to share on a summer’s night. We left the window wide open and put the fan on, but even so, it felt unusually hot. And not peaceful. In fact, the darkness was peppered with sharp hissing and muffled thumping. ‘Why are you so bony? It’s like sleeping with a bunch of Dad’s golf sticks!’ and ‘Pffaw, you stink, why can’t you hold it in?’ and ‘Better out than in!’ and ‘For who, you? Garbage guts!’

  But I think we’d all dropped off and floated into the world of dreams when I felt a hot tickle in my ear and a whispered shout smelling of something tangy – olives? I swung round, my heart pounding, to see my father grinning at me in the pearly dark.

  ‘ ’Sup?’ said Dad.

  Thank god there was no one else to witness this transformation from responsible, middle-aged father of two into teenage clone. How embarrassing! I blushed red in the dark for him, even though the other two were snoring like trains.

  ‘All good?’ he asked, sitting down on my bed.

  ‘Yeah,’ I muttered.

  He looked around the room, at the two shapes sprawled on the mattress, and the fan doing not much next to them. It must have been thirty degrees centigrade in the room. He loosened the buttons on his shirt, which were already pretty loose, I have to say.

  ‘Why aren’t you dudes sleeping in the tent?’ he asked. Dudes! ‘At least outside there’s a breeze. You could leave the tent flaps open.’

  I closed my eyes and pretended to be falling asleep again. I was still trying to get over dudes. Perhaps if I ignored his transformation, it would disappear? If you give little children no attention when they behave badly, they usually stop it and go away. Did that work for fathers, too?

  ‘Louis? Aren’t you all too hot in here?’

  ‘Yes,’ I sighed. He wasn’t going away. ‘But there was a . . . a snake in the tent and Singo didn’t want to stay in there after we’d chased it out.’

  Dad gasped. ‘Oh good heavens, certainly not, well, and Singo of all people, how dreadful!’

  Dad had transformed back so completely into his usual anxious self that I was stung by guilt. Now he’d worry to death about snakes from all over Australia swarming into our garden, and think what if someone had actually stepped on the snake, so easy to do in the dark, and what was he thinking letting his children sleep out there in a nest of reptiles when he’d been far away at Doreen’s place, grooving to The Beatles on vinyl?

  ‘Well, actually, Dad, I don’t think there actually was a snake – in fact after I had a look around— ’

  ‘What, you went back in?’

  ‘Yeah, with shoes on, don’t worry.’ Oh this lying thing was terrible, it was like what they said about taking drugs – once you started, the drug got you by the neck and you had to keep on doing it more and more and more until you didn’t recognise yourself. ‘Well, see, I found an old piece of hose that looked exactly like a black snake, actually, and I called Singo over to explain , but he was too freaked out, so by then it was late . . .’

  ‘Heavens yes, absolutely, you did the right thing. Better to be safe than sorry, I mean, snakes.’ He shuddered so hard he nearly lost his balance and fell off the bed. Then he patted my shoulder. ‘Don’t know what I was thinking. Go back to sleep, I’ll have a good scout-around in the morning.’

  Oh no! A scout-around – in the tent? See what all this FABRICATION, as in lying, had brought? Visions of an unstoppable Monty on his hands and knees examining every blade of grass, discovering every Cordelia-shaped burglar-piece-of-evidence, made my temperature soar to fever height.

  But Dad smacked his forehead. ‘No, there won’t be time. The End asked for an eight o’clock appointment tomorrow . He wants to go over all the assets at his place.’ Dad grinned and threw a few mock punches at the air. ‘Do you know, he even has an original glove from The Undertaker? Worth its weight in gold.’ Then he moaned. ‘But it’ll be hard to get up in the morning after all that late-night music . . .’ His face went dreamy, and he tapped out a rhythm on his knee. A small private smile made his face look foreign.

  ‘Yeah, well, you’d better get to bed then,’ I said quickly. ‘I was actually asleep when you came in, like most normal people.’ And I gestured at the sleeping bodies of my friends.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ he said, with the vigour of the Dad I knew. ‘And isn’t it good knowing that Agnes is home safe! Hey, how did you know where she was? We only found her by chance, driving past . . .’

  ‘Oh,’ I shrugged, ‘it came to me in a dream.’ He looked suspicious, so I asked another question. ‘Did Rosie come home?’

  Dad shook his head. ‘No, I let her stay over. Miles and Doreen both have to work early tomorrow, so Rosie said she’d stay and look after Agnes in the morning. You know, Doreen was telling me that Agnes always had a . . . vivid imagination. The odd delusion would take her over, even when she was younger – usually with an ancient Roman theme. Must have been a strange childhood for Doreen.’ He pulled his ear thoughtfully. ‘Agnes was pretty exhausted and shaky by the time we got her home. Something will have to be sorted soon . . . too hard on them all, this way.’

  I yawned. ‘Okay Dad, well, good night then.’

  ‘Night, son,’ said Dad, getting up. At the door he whispered, ‘Even though old pieces of hose are harmless, always make sure you wear your shoes in the garden. You never know.’

  THE next morning I shook Singo awake. Hassan groaned and turned over. I told Singo about the lie, but I felt guilty because it meant now he’d have to be a kind of drug-taker, too. If you see what I mean.

  ‘But why did you pick me to be the only paranoid one?’ he protested. ‘Why couldn’t it have been all of us scared of the snake, or just you or something?’

  I shrugged. It was pretty obvious really, wasn’t it? His shoulders drooped in resignation. ‘Okay, whatever. But I mean, a red-bellied black snake, it could kill you. Who wouldn’t be worried about it? I’ll tell you who wouldn’t. Some ignoramus with his brains in his bum, that’s who. Someone who knows nothing about Australian wildlife, someone who lives on Mars where there’s no oxygen and therefore no bacteria . . .’ His face went all wistful.

  Hassan stretched and opened his eyes. ‘But there is – oxygen on Mars. I heard about it on this documentary, it was very interesting. There is frozen water, made up of oxygen and hydrogen, and so there will be the presence of bacteria.’

  Singo sighed. Now Mars would no longer be his ideal destination. There could be no escape from earth, even if a reliable rocket equipped with oxygen masks and space food was invented. I put an arm around his shoulders and decided that it was actually very unfair of me to have singled him out, and everything he’d just said about how people ought to be afraid of black snakes was true, and I’d make it up to him by sacrificing something of my own, and this would be a confession about my father’s embarrassing transformation, witnessed only by my solitary self in the middle of the night.

  Singo listened with delight. Then he said, ‘ ’Sup, dude,’ about fifteen million times. Even Hassan, who didn’t quite get the abbreviation, rolled about. Laughing is so infectious, isn’t it? As catchy as a cold, but in a good way, of course. I didn’t point this out to Singo. I just let us all laugh. It was a good moment, the best I was to have all morning.

  AT least we didn’t have to worry about Dad as we emerged from the baking bedroom like three hot cakes. A faint whiff of aftershave in the hall and a tangy aroma of lemon soap in the bathroom informed us that Dad had already showered, shaved and driven off to see The End. A note on the kitchen table made us feel even safer, saying that he probably wouldn’t be back until after lunch.

  So we went outside to give Cordelia the all-clear. I coughed loudly as we approached the tent, in case she was, I don’t know, doing something private. But there was no answering sound. ‘It’s safe to come out,’ I finally called. ‘Dad’s not home!’ But still nothing.

  Suddenly a voice called from the garage, on
the other side of the lawn. Poking around the garage door was Cordelia’s bright gold spiky head, lit up like a sparkler in the sun. ‘Hi!’ she called. ‘I heard your dad go out early this morning. I’m just looking around in here for . . .’ but as she turned to look for whatever it was she wanted, her words were swallowed up.

  ‘Have you got eggs and bacon?’ Hassan asked. ‘I’m really starving.’

  ‘Me too!’ said Singo. ‘And Cordelia could do with some feeding up while she’s here.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘But it’s not as if a good meal now is going to keep Cordelia going forever. I mean, she’s not a bear or something that can hibernate for six months, living on what she ate in the summer.’

  ‘Or a snake,’ said Singo. ‘Did you know that anacondas can eat an animal four times their weight? They’re not hungry for weeks afterwards, so even if you trip over one and step on its evil head, it wouldn’t blink an eyelid.’

  ‘Do anacondas even have eyelids?’ asked Hassan.

  ‘That’s not important,’ sniffed Singo, still huffy about Mars.

  By now we were at the fridge. I found half-a-dozen eggs, two packets of bacon, and tomatoes, mushrooms and parsley.

  ‘Ah, this is good,’ smiled Hassan. ‘We will have a feast!’

  Delicious smells of frying bacon were filling the kitchen when we heard the sound of a mower starting up outside. I jumped with fright and nearly hacked off my finger with the mushroom knife. Was Dad back early?

  ‘You should see this!’ cried Singo. ‘She’s mowing the lawn! What would she do that for?’

  I shook my head. ‘Beats me. Has she got shoes on?’ That question was a reflex response, like shooting out like your leg when someone taps you just under the knee. If you’d heard Dad’s story a million times about a boy whose bare toes were gobbled up by a lawn mower, this might happen to you, too.

  ‘Yes,’ said Singo. ‘She’s got those awful head-kicker boots on. You think she’s scared of the snakes out there?’

  The sounds of mowing moved off towards the back of the house. A magpie warbled. A car door slammed. Then, from the front, there came the clang of our gate slamming shut. Hassan’s face froze like the ice on Mars.

  We stood, transfixed, until there was the polite, friendly sound of a knock on the door. ‘Probably Mrs Livid come to get help with her tax,’ I muttered to Singo, walking up the hall.

  Instead, there was Elena. Calm, bouncy-haired, optimistic Elena. I stood at the door, drinking in the peace of her, and forgot to say hello.

  ‘Hello,’ said Elena. In her hands was a white cardboard box.

  Hassan and Singo arrived behind me. I could actually hear Hassan panting.

  ‘Elenaaa!’ he gasped, the last syllable a sigh.

  Elena smiled, and the hallway seemed to fill with a special warmth. I wondered if this was due to Elena, or maybe it was Hassan breathing down my neck.

  ‘Can I come in?’

  ‘Yeah. Sure.’ I prodded Hassan in the ribs to break the spell and get him moving. He’d been standing there as if he’d been hit with a stun gun.

  Elena opened the box. ‘Ta-dah! Bugie,’ she said, looking at Hassan. ‘You know, the Italian pastries you asked for? We had tons left over from last night. We can have them after breakfast, like dessert!’

  ‘Except you don’t have dessert in the morning,’ Singo pointed out, eyeing the box suspiciously. I knew he was thinking of the white box full of silkworms that Elena had kept in Grade 5. He’d never liked the worms, for obvious reasons peculiar to Singo.

  ‘That will be delicious, thank you,’ Hassan said quickly, frowning at Singo. He took the box and put it on the kitchen bench. He kept looking at Elena the whole time he set the table and brought over the salt and pepper shakers. He was performing an OCULAR juggling act, which was very clever except I got the feeling he couldn’t help it. (Ocular, meaning to do with the eyes.)

  As Hassan served the eggs and bacon, I tossed around different scenarios that could explain to Elena the existence of our lawnmower person outside. After all, we’d taken a solemn oath not to reveal her true identity. Well, a sincere agreement, anyway. Could we say she was hired help? No, Elena knew mowing was my job. Could I say she was a friend of Rosie’s? No, why would she be over here mowing the lawn?

  But suddenly Cordelia was at the back door, wiping sweat from her brow. She still wore her big black boots and jeans, but on top she had on a soft white singlet. She leaned in the doorway, backlit into a shimmering silhouette, her golden hair a halo around her head.

  ‘Phew, it’s hot out there already,’ she said, slumping down on a chair. And suddenly she was not an angel or a scenario but a real-life, sweaty girl who was smelling her armpits to see if she needed a shower.

  ‘Are you hungry?’ asked Hassan, putting a plate down in front of her.

  ‘Famished. This looks fantastic!’

  ‘How’d yoush shleep?’ said Singo, his mouth full already. ‘Not too many shnakes?’

  ‘You know what?’ said Cordelia. ‘That was the best sleep I’ve had in a year.’ She grinned around the table and suddenly spotted Elena, who’d been searching for something in the fridge. ‘Oh, hi,’ she added, and poured herself a big glass of juice.

  ‘Hi,’ replied Elena. She turned to me. Who is this? her eyebrows said. Why aren’t you introducing me?

  My mind went blank. I opened my mouth to speak but nothing happened. The feelings of last night rushed back at me, swamping my brain. It was like the end of a horror film – just when you think the baddie is dead, he rises up again, stabbing you in the back. I opened and closed my mouth like a fish. My brain wouldn’t work. Nothing.

  Hassan glanced at me. Singo cleared his throat. Elena brought over the tomato sauce and sat down next to Hassan. His ears were reddening, the burn travelling down his cheeks. In the quiet, Elena fiddled awkwardly with her knife and fork.

  ‘This breakfast looks great,’ she tried bravely. ‘You know, Lou, if you ever need eggs or anything you can always ask me – we have two extra chickens now and they’re great layers. We gave away a whole heap of eggs to the rellies last night.’

  She chattered on, filling the silence with her aunties and uncles and chickens. Hassan began to breathe again and I tried to look enthusiastic about the possibility of an endless supply of free eggs.

  But just when it seemed the subject of Cordelia had been dropped, Elena suddenly stared right at her and said, ‘Do you live around here? You look familiar . . .’

  Cordelia choked on her toast. She coughed and spluttered until Singo handed her some water. While she gulped, Elena suggested that Singo thump her on the back, as last night this is what Elena’s father had done to Aunty Maria who had breathed in a whole olive . . . ‘It was awful,’ Elena went on. ‘Maria had been telling us about a burglary at her house only yesterday morning – imagine, she’d come home to find the front door wide open and her gold earrings gone – and when my dad thumped her, the olive flew out across the room and landed plop in Mum’s wine glass!’ Elena gave a snorting laugh.

  At the word burglary, Cordelia got up and went to the sink. It seemed no one was going to answer Elena’s question. She laugh-snorted again in a bewildered way. I remembered how she used to do that years ago in primary school when she had to speak in front of the class. It was a nervous habit – a sharp, blurting noise like a wrong note from a trumpet. It must have only made her feel more embarrassed. Funny how people do things to get over their shyness, and those very things often make the situation worse, but they can’t stop doing them. Have you noticed that?

  The silence deepened. We heard Cordelia run the tap, fill the glass, swallow. My head was like the bottom of a dead lake. Obviously this was going to happen to me forever now, every time a burglary – or Cordelia – was mentioned. I peeped at Hassan. He was staring at me, his eyes widening, urging me to explain to Elena . . . And then, suddenly, he looked away.

  He’d made a decision, I knew it. You could always tell when Hassan made his m
ind up. His jaw hardened and he took a deep slow breath. Relief, and a kind of sadness that was becoming familiar, spread out in my chest.

  ‘Elena, can you keep a secret?’ he said softly, as if he was sure she could.

  ‘Of course I can,’ she said equally softly, her chin jutting out a little.

  ‘Well, this is Cordelia, and she stayed here last night because she had to escape from home.’

  ‘Oh! How awful! What happened?’

  Cordelia made a face and picked at her knife.

  ‘She’ll tell you later, maybe,’ said Hassan. ‘No one else besides us knows she is here. And right now, we don’t want anyone else to know. It is just . . . a difficult situation. So, let us eat while everything is hot. Okay?’

  We all agreed, even Elena, who’d probably had heaps of eggs for breakfast already.

  HASAN had cooked the eggs perfectly – exquisitely. Did he put a smidge of curry powder in them? His uncle had taught him well. The bacon was crisp and still moist, and he’d done something special, too, with the tomatoes. But as I sat chewing, watching Singo get up to fetch himself more of everything, I decided that what I admired most about Hassan was the way he’d mastered both his Elena-terror and the social situation with Cordelia at the same time. How did he do that? How did he overcome his embarrassed, barely-able-to-breathe feelings in just the beat of a second, and change the atmosphere for everyone? And he must have known that all the while he was talking, his face was glowing red like the tomatoes on his plate. How did he cope with blushing and being looked at by a person – a person who made his heart turn over – and still find the right words to say?

  I was grateful to him, but at the same time I felt hollow, empty, worthless and without hope. I thought of all the imaginary scenarios that had helped me through life. The courageous speeches I’d given in my head to people who’d bullied, teased or laughed at me (or at Susan Sackworth, who I’d had a crush on all through primary school). My inner wordy victories had kept me BUOYANT. There’d always been the hope that one day, when a crisis hit, I would deliver. Well, it had happened, and I’d failed.