‘I dunno. Something easy. I was just thinking two-minute noodles, ya know? I know how to cook them, and this is only meant to be a bit of fun, ya know, a laugh, so —’
‘Heaven’s no,’ she said. ‘I’m not having you cook bloody Maggi noodles for this. It’s important, Ford. Things are important to get right.’
‘Right.’
‘I was thinking we could make some pasta, perhaps. Something simple, of course. How about macaroni and cheese?’
‘Oh, yeah?’ I said, and remembered seeing it close to the two-minute noodles in a supermarket aisle. ‘That comes in a packet, too. Should be eas—’
‘No, no, no. There’s to be no packet meals.’
‘But I have to cook it, Noon. And I don’t know how to cook.’
‘Well, this is the perfect time to learn, then. Isn’t it?’
‘Yeah. Sure. But, like, this is only meant to be a bit of fun. I’m not being judged on what I cook, I just need to cook something. So, why not make it easy for everyone? Less stress, ya know.’
‘Christ, I’m tired of hearing you use that word. Nothing in life is easy. People who think life is easy end up like your father. That’s where taking it easy gets you. It was always the easy way out with him.’
‘That’s not really my point.’
‘And anyway, we are having fun,’ she stressed.
In the centre of the room, my mother’s fingers were red, flushed with blood as she tried to force open a segment of the Handycam that was not supposed to be opened. On his knees, my grandfather was measuring out a portion of port, filling it right to the brim of his small and delicate glass.
By Sunday morning, Mum and Pop had the camera set up. They’d stayed up all night after Church and continued drinking port and swearing at the Handycam long after I’d gone off to bed. Noonie had been to the supermarket in the morning and purchased all the ingredients for my from-scratch macaroni and cheese. My family were well and truly into the full swing of my assignment. Mum had even fashioned a script for the shoot, written on giant cue cards from which I was to read as she held them up behind the camera. It was looking to be a very professional production, and I was now merely a bit player.
Before taping commenced, Noonie ran me through each and every thing that I would need to do while cooking. She laid out a plan as to when I should pause so they could cut before moving on to the next segment, and she was very strict regarding my movements; I needed to keep my body ‘open’ and in front of the camera. Most importantly, I was not, under any circumstances, to bring my left arm across my body when picking up the colander from the sink, though I would want to spoon out the pasta with my right hand. Should I do this, given the layout of the kitchen and the angle from which I was being shot, I would spoil – nay, ruin – the video.
This was all quite overwhelming, and I doubted it was in keeping with the intended spirit of the assignment.
‘Do you understand?’ she kept asking, taking me through the steps. ‘We can run through it again, if you like.’
‘No, I got it,’ I said, hopefully.
‘Good. Now, one last thing.’ My grandmother walked to where a bag was perched on the dining table. From within this bag she produced the pieces de resistance of my humiliation: a white apron and an enormous chef’s hat.
‘I’m not wearing that,’ I said.
‘Oh, yes you are,’ she demanded.
‘Why?’
‘It’s proper.’
‘No, it’s not. It’s stupid. I’ll be a laughing stock at school.’
‘Just do what your grandmother says, Ford. It’ll be fun, trust us,’ assured Pop.
And so I complied. What else could I do?
After filming had gotten under way, things were going well …until it came time for me to pick up the colander. When I reached for it with my left hand, I realised my mistake. Looking to my parents, I stopped in my tracks. I had officially ruined the video.
Noonie stormed out of the room like some irate TV producer and left me cowering in front of the camera. I felt like some ditzy model-cum-actress who’d come to Hollywood to cut her teeth but who couldn’t even make it through one audition without fluffing her simple lines. And I was realising just what a ditz I was, because there were a thousand girls out there like me – with blonde hair and blue eyes and large chest – and for the longest time I’d convinced myself that I was the only one. But I wasn’t. And what I knew in that moment, failing another audition, was that, in fact, what I was, who I was, wasn’t enough.
In my white apron and stupid chef’s hat that made me ten feet tall – and, in the lens of the Handycam, the size of the fucking moon – I burst into tears. Oh, for God’s sake! I shouted inside. Not this! But once I started crying, I couldn’t stop. Mum and Pop only looked at me, bewildered, before leaving the room to console Noonie.
‘I’m sorry,’ I muttered to their backs, as the voice inside raged on. Stop it! Stop it at once, you whimpering imbecile!
When my family returned, it appeared they had talked Noonie down from the ledge of disapproval and she seemed ready to forgive me.
‘Well,’ she said, taking her seat beyond the camera, by the far wall. ‘Shall we get it right this time?’
‘Ready when you are,’ I said.
Mum and Pop wound the tape back to the point of my failure then counted me in from three and pressed record. And my God, take two was perfection! Even Noonie was gleaming with pride.
On Monday morning I showed up at school with my assignment. I knew what I had. The video was evidence only of a very sad boy cooking a pasta dish he’d never made before and would never want to make again. When my turn came, and the tape was loaded into the VCR, my classmates howled with laughter. ‘Nice hat, wanker!’ ‘What a dickhead!’
I know, I thought. But it wasn’t my idea.
In the other boys’ videos their families were laughing and having a good time, and the boys were allowed to make mistakes, and their families didn’t try to edit these out. Some boys were even allowed to cook two-minute noodles, and not a single one of them was forced to wear so much as an apron. Some of the kitchens looked pretty swank, granite benches and all.
I didn’t bear my classmates any ill will for teasing me. If it’d been somebody else, I would’ve done the same – people who bring that kind of dumb attention on themselves deserve what they get. The ribbing lasted a week or so before some other boy fell downstairs or shat himself or performed poorly in PE, and my shame was forgotten in order that he be paid his dues.
What nobody had noticed, except for me, was the minor blip three quarters of the way through the video, when my eyes had transitioned from clear to red.
Ceremony
As ever, my family had arrived at Hamer Hall far too early for Ceremony.
When I got out of the car and left them in the underground carpark, Pop directed me to ‘play hard’. We’d been sitting in that carpark, cooped up together, for the best part of an hour, and I now considered playing in orchestra a reprieve from the awkward, anxious tension I’d been immersed in.
In the foyer some teachers directed me backstage, where our conductor was bossing people about. Michael Kirkwood, a Year 7 boy – and the youngest ever to join the senior orchestra – was almost in tears because someone had peanutted his tie so severely he couldn’t get it off. The knot had been reduced to the size of a ten-cent coin, and Ms Evers was having a job of attempting to undo it. Beyond Kirkwood and Evers, Peter Mott was laughing hysterically with Justin Trevors, and I assumed one of the brass boys was responsible for the attack on Michael’s tie.
I laid my case on the floor and opened it, taking out my bow and tightening the horsehair before wiping it thoroughly with resin. Then I set about tuning my strings as best I could in the noisy room. I wondered how it might be possible for me to play the violin hard, as Pop had instructed, without damaging its delicate neck or breaking one of the strings. Then again, it had survived a ride on Moose’s bike, so perhaps it was a little hear
tier than I gave it credit for.
After everything had been set up onstage, I waited in the wings with the orchestra in ordered rows. The lights in Hamer Hall dimmed, and we filed out into the darkness, taking up our positions seated before our music stands. When our conductor walked out to join us, he raised his baton to cue us in. And when the music began, the lights went up, and soon a procession of cloaked figures and banner bearers – prefects and staff, all in academic garb, and special guests and a handful of clergymen, whose purpose at such proceedings was lost on me – were filing down the aisles between the rows of thousands of seated boys and entering onto the stage, where they took up their own positions. They sat like some diabolical panel of tight-lipped shit merchants for all of the family members in the upper levels of the concert hall to view.
My family were undoubtedly excited by the display, and, in moments like this, I had to acknowledge the grandeur of St Anthony’s College. But spectacle is only ever artifice, and as I sat there playing hard for them – for family, for school, for Queenie’s trust fund – I resolved to one day lead a life contrary to institutional dogma.
Later, I took a seat in the audience next to Will. I was sweaty in my blazer from the stage lights, and when I sat down the collapsible, velvety chair was too warm, and I felt like the giant room – filled with so many bodies – was a heaving entity, suffocating me, sucking away my energy.
‘Hey,’ Will whispered, ‘is it true Armstrong sorted you out with a fakie?’
‘What? How’d you know about that?’
‘I just heard. Someone was talking about getting theirs, and your name came up.’
I wasn’t sure how I felt about this. I’d thought I’d bought not just a doctored learner’s permit from Darren, but also his silence about the matter.
‘Ah, yeah,’ I said. ‘That’s right.’
‘Sick. Have you used it?’
‘Yeah. A couple times.’
Onstage, the awards were being distributed. Endlessly. Prizes for maths and then science and then English and accounting, and for each and every year level. And then the dux of each subject. And then the dux of each year. Plus awards for outstanding individual assignments, performances, accomplishments. Accomplishments. Accomplishments.
‘And it works?’ Will asked.
‘Yeah. Of course.’
‘Have you gone out with it? To, like, clubs and stuff?’
‘Nah, not yet. Just use it to buy grog, mostly, with a mate of mine, Dougie.’
‘Dougie?’
‘He doesn’t go to St A’s.’
‘You should test it, you know. In the city or something.’
‘Yeah. Maybe.’
‘We could go together. You and me.’
I looked at Will. The only interesting thing in an entire building full of people was this one conversation. ‘Yeah?’ I asked. ‘Ya wanna try and sneak in somewhere?’
‘Yeah. It’d be great. We should do it over the holidays. The city’ll be teeming with people over summer. I bet it’d be easy. Take me out!’
I laughed. ‘Awright, man,’ I said. ‘But I gotta go away for a bit this summer. It’s a good plan, but I’ll let ya know.’
The idea of us getting together was unlikely. Although we were close at school, we never saw each other during the breaks and our families had never met. I didn’t really want them to. From what I’d gleaned his family wouldn’t have much in common with mine. I liked Will, but he often struck me as naïve in a way I just wasn’t. In a dark corner of my mind I imagined he had one of those dads who read him Andrew Bolt at the breakfast nook each morning before taking off in his Beamer to work at the office. The summer was for wasting with Dougie, in Coburg, and so was my fakie.
After Ceremony, my family and I returned to The Compound for tea and cake. We gathered around the dining table to discuss the preceding events, and while it was agreed that my violin playing had indeed been exceptional, Noonie was less than impressed by the fact that the college had not more formally recognised my academic achievements. In fact, she seemed to believe an award should’ve been created just for me. ‘I don’t understand,’ she said. ‘It isn’t right. Ford does more than any other boy there. He’s a first-chair violinist, and we do absolutely everything the school asks of us. Where’s the recognition for that, I ask you?’
‘My marks just aren’t the tops, Noon. I can’t dux something unless I get the highest mark. It’s just how it works.’
‘But you’re an all-rounder. And you get steady marks. Where’s the award for that?’
‘He does his best, Mum. But they only recognise the top boys,’ said Mum.
‘I don’t understand it. We give everything to that school. How could they do this to us?’ Noonie was shaking her head, pleading to the room. She wanted to see another insignia, for something, sewn to my breast pocket, and I felt terribly ashamed for having let her down despite knowing this emotion was unreasonable.
Mum wanted Noonie to stop talking, I could tell. She often did. ‘Let’s just leave all that stuff alone for now. It was a nice night.’
‘Nice? You heard what that awful Barbara woman said to me, didn’t you? Asked me where we’d come in from tonight. Coburg, I tell her. Oh, Coburg? she says to me. Well, I set her straight, you know. There’s no O, my dear. It isn’t O-Coburg, at all. It’s simply pronounced Coburg. You should’ve seen her face.’
‘I’m sure that set her right,’ said Pop dryly, getting up to pour himself a whisky in place of his cuppa.
‘Yes. Well, someone has to speak up for this family. And it’s certainly not going to be either of you two.’ Noonie directed the comment at Mum and Pop. ‘Is it, Ford?’
‘Guess not,’ I said.
Noonie had this way of drawing me into an argument and I would find myself accidently siding with her, as if against my will.
‘These two believe in that man in the sky, but what’s He done for us lately, I ask you?’ she said to the ceiling, for dramatic effect.
‘Well, some of us have to believe in something,’ said Mum.
The portrait of her and Dad on their wedding day seemed enormous on the wall.
‘Urgh,’ groaned Noonie.
It was getting dark. Too dark. Noonie was going atheist on us, which was never a good sign. I thought of Will and imagined myself out with him in the city on a balmy night, drunk in some nightclub – a heroic image. I wanted the Scotch in Pop’s hand.
‘It’s just like everything else,’ she said. ‘We work and work, and we try and try, and nothing good’ll ever come of it. You have to accept it, we’re cursed in this house. Cursed.’
THREE
Cursed
The Most Wonderful Time of the Year
When Dad came to pick me up on Boxing Day and take me to Shepparton, his arrival at The Compound was heralded by a series of familiar sounds: the doorbell at the front gate, the shrill hiss of the remote control that opened the gate, the gate itself as it opened and crashed against the hedges, my father’s heels clicking-smacking down the driveway, and then the second doorbell, meaning he was now on me and Mum’s front porch.
When Mum opened the door, Dad had on his overly friendly voice, the one he always used in these awkward moments, conjuring up the fake-happy from his bowels.
‘Hi, Deidre,’ he said in singsong, a nervous tick, feigning casual.
‘Hello, Robert,’ Mum said through the flywire, sounding more tired than a person deserved to be. She left Dad on the sunburnt-orange tiled porch, coming back down to my room to check on me. ‘Ready, Ford?’ she asked from my doorway.
‘Yep. Ah, just a sec.’ I added another CD to my overstuffed backpack, something soft to balance out the Tool LP. I couldn’t survive three days in the wasteland of country Victoria without art. My music, more than food or water, guaranteed I’d make it back to Coburg.
‘Hey, Mr Motor,’ my father said, greeting me when I got to the front door.
‘Hey.’ I handed a sports bag to him, my overladen backpack on m
y shoulders and my discman in my hand.
Mum had this odd habit of kissing me goodbye when I was halfway out the door. She grabbed my wrist and pulled me back inside the house and planted kisses on both my cheeks as the flywire door bounced against my backpack. She held my wrists tightly. She was trembling, I realised, afraid. Leaving her filled me with dread and guilt.
I hugged her. ‘Be back soon,’ I whispered.
We’d played this scenario out countless times before. When I was younger, in the years immediately after Dad left, our Saturday mornings would be marred by these exchanges, made worse by the tantrums I would throw. The Family Court had decreed that I was to spend weekend visitations with my father, despite the fact he wasn’t fully honouring his child support payments.
On those Saturdays, years before, I would go early to footy training with Dougie and spend the morning tackling and being tackled and working on my kicks, while fielding my mates’ requests to come over afterwards to watch movies and play video games, the morning serving only to remind me of the birthday parties and trips to Luna Park or the drive-in that I would miss out on, serving only to make me crushingly disappointed. By the time I got home, I would be so despondent, so utterly and inconsolably angry, that I wouldn’t speak to Mum. After taking off my gear in the laundry, I would sit atop the washing machine in protest, arms folded and beating my legs against the side of the machine with my heavy boots still on, caked in mud. Beating my legs this way would shake out all the dirt and leave big clumps on the tiled floor for Mum to clean up. I wanted to punish her. I wouldn’t move. She would have to drag me off the machine and through the house and into the bathroom to get me changed for Dad, wiping my legs with a damp cloth to remove the blades of grass and long, green-brown streaks that ran down my shins and thighs. When she was finished and I was changed, I would race back to the laundry and resume my protest until my father arrived, when she would have to do it all over again – drag me off the washing machine, through the kitchen and across the lounge-room floor, all the way to the front door.
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