Making Laws for Clouds (11 page)

I keep leaning forward, listening to it all, watching it all, remembering everything from then and now. Glimpses of other times and this, the deafening sound of water pounding steel, Tanika's white hands on the
wheel when the lights catch them, working the bus through the streets of Mooloolaba and onto the Nicklin Way, into the mad face of this thrashing pounding storm, the worst of the summer.

She shouts something out to me, something about the storm and how wet I'd be if I was out there on my bike. And I don't mind being wet, I don't mind storms so much, but I tell her, This'll do me.' And she doesn't hear any of it. ‘You, me and rain on a tin roof. That'll do.'

And the words don't seem to make a sound, but we don't really need them to. Not now.

Fridays we do takeaway when we can, and tonight we definitely can. And I've gone the full family-size takeaway deal, first time ever – three large pizzas, two bottles of Coke plus garlic bread for twenty-four ninety-five (more for home delivery).

When I'm stopped at the lights I can lean over and breathe in the aroma of Meatosaurus pizza, but I hold myself back from eating. Not even the end piece of garlic bread between now and home.

It's bought for sharing – for Mum, Wayne and me to eat what we want and as much as we want because we can. Not every night, but tonight we can because I've been bumped up to a level two at work and it means a bit more money. So, just this once, I've pushed the dinner budget up ten bucks to let us celebrate.

It's for Wayne, partly. Wayne always wants to do all-you-can-eat, but it costs a lot and it only ever works out financially if you want to eat a lot of those bacon
bits. And Wayne only ever really wants to eat pizza anyway so this should be ideal. We've never done all-you-can-eat, not since I was a kid. Maybe we'll do it when I get to level three. That'll happen one day.

They've left the outside light off at home, as always, but it's only just getting dark and it's not as if I don't know the front steps pretty well by now. I park the bike under the house and I pile dinner in my arms and I find myself singing the old Domino's ad about having the hots for what's in the box with the dots. There were some pretty cute girls on that ad. Student girls in a city somewhere, probably down south.

Upstairs there's TV noise, the six o'clock ‘Simpsons' repeat, and heavy footsteps heading down the hall. Slow, heavy footsteps, a door shutting with a bang it didn't need. Mum's already been at the rum, obviously, and that makes her a bit unco.

I duck under the beams and past the broken lattice and the creeper that's sending skinny wavy tendrils out across the steps. She's talking to herself down the back of the house, probably in the bathroom. I can hear her. She talks a lot when she's been drinking – about things gone wrong, the lack of fairness in the world, and good things too. Loyalty, and her two good sons. It could be any mixture of that right now. I can't make out the words. But sometimes when she's talking she
wanders down the back of the house and when you do that it puts you in the bathroom.

It's dark inside, with just the flickering light from the TV. That's how we like to watch it when we can. It's economical and it's also atmospheric, particularly for SBS which tends to have more nude stuff. Wayne hates watching nude stuff in full light. It totally shatters the illusion. He's fine with subtitles though, and most of the nude stuff on SBS does have subtitles. In some ways, he's more sophisticated than a lot of people think. He's become pretty nifty with accents, not that he's found a lot of use for that yet. But he has a good ear and he likes nothing more than a few naked ladies, so SBS works for him pretty often.

I ring the doorbell to create a sense of occasion. Tonight calls for that, at least at the start. There are footsteps inside, Wayne-size, then a head-shaped shadow low down on the louvres. The corner of the curtain lifts up by about the width of a human eye.

‘Hey, it's only you, doofus,' Wayne says when he opens the door. ‘Why didn't you use your key?'

‘'Cause I like seeing you peep through the curtains, in case I'm a scary Mormon come to tell you about the evils of your personal habits, or someone come to terrorise you with a hot new mobile phone deal. Woo, Wayne. Woooo, watch out for the scary doorbell ringer. Sign up for our new prepaid one-dollar deal with a free
phone plus huge monthly bills that you can't possibly pay and then we'll come around and give you a kick in the nuts every thirty days. Woo-ooo. Even if you don't use the phone at all, we'll still kick you in the nuts. Woo-ooo. Every thirty days.'

‘Dickweed. Ghosts don't sell phones, so you can quit the stupid noise. Hey, that's pizza. A whole stack of bloody pizza.'

‘You bet. And it's okay, Wayne. It's okay to check who's ringing the bell. I can tell the difference between respectable caution and downright fear.'

‘Yeah, well. That's right.'

‘So how are the pants, Wayne? Are the pants saying caution to you, or fear? Will there be laundry?'

‘Dickweed. That was years ago, the last time that happened. And it was surprise, not fear. And there's a huge difference between those two and you know it. I was just caught out for a second. It could have happened to anyone, that's what Father Steele said. Anyone who hadn't got round to asking where the facilities were, and then got a bit of a shock of some kind.'

‘Sure, mate, no worries.' Some days I'd like it if it was slightly harder to suck Wayne into getting totally defensive, but it's still pretty good value. ‘If Steelo said it, who am I to doubt you?'

‘Anyway, pizza. Pizza, dude. And is that Meatosaurus?'

‘You've got a fine nose on you, young Wayne.'

There's noise further back in the house, then the big shape of Mum, looming up out of the dark, swaying from side to side in the twitchy blue TV light as she makes her way along the corridor.

‘Late home, Kane?' she says, like it's the only thing she's noticed.

‘Yeah, but only slightly. Only slightly later than usual. It's only just dark.'

‘Oh. Oh, righto.' She looks around, towards the windows as though they'll give her a better idea of exactly how dark it is and that'll make things right.

‘And, you know, I had that meeting today, that work meeting with the big boss. And it was pretty good, so they bumped me up to a level two and that's more responsibility.'

‘Oh.' She hasn't had a good day, I can tell.

‘Yeah, level two, Mum. So that's . . .'

‘Have you got pizzas there?'

‘Yeah.'

‘Boxes and bloody boxes of pizzas? Are we having a party and I didn't know?'

‘Well, not a party, but it's the level two that . . .'

‘How many pizzas is that? Is that three pizzas? Three pizzas and three of us? What are you doing, Kane?'

‘Well, it's the level two . . .'

‘What do you think this is? Bloody Christmas? No, that's right. If it was bloody Christmas you'd've come home with another CD you'd been wanting to listen to and then you'd give it to me and borrow it back.' She takes a mouthful of drink and puts her hand against the wall to steady herself properly. ‘Powderfinger. When did I ever ask for Powderfinger?'

Wayne's looking at me. He wants me to pick her up on her lousy musical tastes, like usual. Tell her I was only trying to educate her, stop her getting out of touch. But not today. It's not the time for it, and she's got this wrong.

‘Look, you don't understand. The level two – you've got to let me explain.'

‘I look in front of me and I see three pizzas when two would do and that's not like you. We're on a knife edge here, mate, and you can't go doing things like this. You can't go getting big ideas. You can't order three of something, plus garlic bread, when two would do. That's where the rot starts. Things like that.'

‘What do you mean? There's no rot. It's perfectly all right. It's perfectly all right to do this in the circumstances. I got bumped up to a level two. It's a big deal, right? Well pretty big, anyway. I'm going out after with the guys from work . . .'

‘Going out? Going out? Jesus, Kane. Not to one of those places with pokies?'

To the surf club at Mooloolaba.'

‘Definitely pokies,' Wayne says.

Thanks Wayne.

‘Ever since Christmas,' she says, and we're back to that again. ‘Ever since before Christmas . . . It's that girl. It's that girl. Is that bloody girl going to be there tonight?'

‘Tanika? Yeah, hopefully. She's my girlfriend. Why wouldn't she be there?'

‘What is she trying to do to you? This is what I hoped would never happen. Hoped it and hoped it. Look at yourself, Kane. This is how it always starts. Look at you. Fornication and gambling and reckless behaviour. This is where it starts, but where does it end? Where does it end?'

‘What do you mean? I don't know what you mean. That thing before Christmas is totally sorted out. We did our time. We've got clearance. We're semiofficial. And you can't blame her for anything. And so what if I'm going somewhere with pokies? It's not like I was planning to play them. And even if I was you should trust me. You don't even know what this level two means.'

‘Trust you? Trust you? I've been through that kind of talk before and that's a mug's game. And don't you go shouting at me about your fancy level two. I don't even know what it means. All I know is that all of a
sudden we've got you buying stupid amounts of food and coming in here and big-noting yourself and setting off for a night on the town. And don't you dare go telling me not to worry about that. Not to lie awake all night worrying about that.'

‘It's cool, Mum,' Wayne says. This is Kane. We can always trust him. It's only pizzas.'

And she's still leaning against the wall and breathing noisily through her nose and not really looking anywhere. Taking a few words in, maybe, holding her glass low down by her side at an angle, but it's practically empty. ‘The Simpsons' comes back on after an ad break. There's a thousand things to say, but I'm saying none of them. There's not one'd get into her head right now and do any good.

‘Which one's the Meatosaurus?' Wayne says, and then he works it out by smell and slides the box out and takes it into the lounge room.

Mum goes after him, but for no particular reason – it's like she's just drifting along and that's where things are going – and I go down the hall and into the kitchen. I get us three plates. It was supposed to be a special occasion, bugger it, they could at least eat off plates. I serve us each a slice of the other two pizzas, and I pour three Cokes. No more rum for Mum while I'm here tonight, if I can help it.

She doesn't look away from ‘The Simpsons' when
I set her plate down in front of her. She just stares ahead at the TV, and Mum doesn't have a clue about ‘The Simpsons'.

‘Good on you, mate,' Wayne says when he sees I've given him a couple of big bits. They never cut pizzas evenly, so there's often a debate about who gets what. ‘What's a level two?'

‘It's a promotion.'

‘Really?'

‘Yeah. And it's not an automatic one either. It's an earned one. And not one you usually get when you're eighteen.'

‘And more money?'

‘Yeah. And training. Maybe a truck licence. Maybe heavy vehicle. Or maybe something to do with plants.'

‘Well . . . well, good for you. And lucky for us, hey? Lucky for us that Kane's on the job.'

‘Yeah. Maybe. Thanks.'

Mum's still hearing none of it, even though I said it loud and clear. Wayne and I both look at her, she stares at ‘The Simpsons'.

Mum's been different since the incident before Christmas when Tanika and I got involved up the back of the bus. That's what occurs to me when I go into the kitchen to get my plate. With all the other things that've been different, that's the one I didn't notice. And now that they're all coming good, it's there to see. I'm
working hard and, the harder I work, the edgier she gets. It's been a lesson in consequences, all of that, even though it didn't really have to have any. There was all this talk of how we'd ‘strayed' but, when we worked it through with Father Steele and he knew our feelings, he said everyone at the Blessed Virgin could get used to it being us ‘getting involved in a manner that was briefly inappropriate but now totally above board'.

The pizza boxes are next to the phone. I call Tanika. I've got to get out of here.

‘How was today?' she says, straight up. ‘How was your meeting?'

‘Good, pretty good really. I didn't get an increment this time. I got put up a level.'

‘Put up a level? That sounds good.'

‘Yeah. It's better than an increment. It's a good result.'