The Accident (9 page)

Mum raised an eyebrow and let out a scornful snort. ‘Jen likes to think she knows what everyone feels.’ She tapped her cigarette against the rim of the ashtray. Red embers tumbled, curling and blackening as they died. ‘But I have let you all down.’

Only when you go all weird and don’t get out of bed. Only when your writing is more important to you than us.

That’s what I wanted to say to her, but I didn’t. I should have been the bravest, but if anything I was the biggest wuss, the last one to speak out. Lauren would explode all over the place, and even Morgan would complain, but I would just sit there silently, feeling as if my mouth had forgotten how to work.

‘Come on.’ She stubbed out her cigarette. ‘It’s time I introduce you to my classics.’

‘Mum?’ My voice was wobbly, nervous.

She turned back.

I felt sick in my stomach as I asked, ‘Are you going to keep writing?’

She turned fully to face me. Leaned back against the wall. ‘It’s all I ever wanted to do.’

‘More than have us?’

‘It’s not the same.’

‘Why not?’

‘It’s just not. I have to write. It’s in my blood. I knew I wanted to do it just like I knew I wanted you three.’

‘What if you can’t have both?’

That stopped her. She rubbed at her eyes. ‘It’s been a horrible, crazy month, Will. Go to sleep, we’ll talk about it in the morning.’

Aunty Jen went back to her flat mid-May. I half expected everything to go pear-shaped within minutes without her around, but somehow we all just carried on. Lauren took over as boss, making sure we did our chores if Mum hadn’t swept through and done them first.

I worked through the stack of Mum’s classics. In the playground or on a sporting field I always felt out of place and out of my depth, but when I read I felt like I had found a second home, a place without contemptuous laughter or disappointed sighing.
War and Peace
was a challenge, but even so I was inspired. My own suburban primary school life was mundane against the grandeur and drama of times and places steeped in bloody history.

I wrote, too. I couldn’t help it. Snatches of conversations would just sneak their way into my head and go round and round until I released them to paper. I never got beyond the first chapter, never really built up any of my charac
ters. It was all terribly clichéd, full of tragic heroes, vivid descriptions of places I’d never actually been, and unbe
lievable dialogue. Yet, despite myself, the more I read, the more compelled I felt to write. I couldn’t help myself. In year seven I spent three weeks labouring over a short story for English. My teacher entered the story into a competition for me and I won.

‘Good,’ was Mum’s crisp response when I showed her the award, and she plied me with more books. ‘You need to give Shakespeare a proper go. I’ll see if I can hunt up some T.S. Eliot as well.’

It was always about books. She sometimes used to quote Kierkegaard at me. ‘The whole age can be divided into those who write and those who do not.’

I used to wonder. Did she see it that way—a few of us against the world? She had withdrawn from the world, deliberately, almost as a statement that they couldn’t understand her. I felt a sense of inevitable despair, knowing that I understood and shared that unquenchable need to write, but hating the thought of becoming the thing that I had loathed my whole life.

Mum stands abruptly. ‘Back to work.’

Something inside me cries out for her to stop, to wait, to listen, but I don’t know what I would say to her. For ten years I’ve been trying to find words to tell her to stop burning herself out for a worthless cause, that she’s got to make a choice to give up one or the other because she can’t have both, and it’s nearly too late.

I do the hour-long loop, along Galbraith Gorge, then wind my way home again. I’m nearly done when I see a familiar lean figure approaching from the end of the street. Lauren. Headphones in her ears and eyes on the ground as she runs, determination on her face like she’s going to push herself harder and harder even if it kills her. Across the other side of the road, she doesn’t look up once. We pass each other without her noticing.

Maybe it’s already too late.

before
after
later

Monday after recess we get our marks back on our ancient history essay. I get 45. Percent. Even the
Othello
debacle a couple of weeks back didn’t end up that bad.

Mr Hensley is new to the school. I thought he seemed easy enough to get onside. Looks like I was wrong.

I go up to him at his desk and demand to know what was wrong with it. He doesn’t mince words.

‘It was lazy. You didn’t use anywhere near enough sources, and only cited half of them, and it was too short.’

Yeah, it was. But that’s the way I’ve always done history essays. Always got away with it. As long as it sounds impressive, most teachers can’t tell the difference. The fact he’s right doesn’t make it any less irritating.

Still stewing over the essay mark at lunch time. Izzy shrugs and keeps flipping through her magazine. ‘What does it matter?’

‘It matters.’ It’s hardly surprising she doesn’t understand but it still shits me.

She stops flipping and looks up at me, clearly following her own train of thought. ‘Brett and the guys are going out shooting on the weekend. Killing kangaroos and stuff on his uncle’s farm.’ Wrinkles her nose. ‘It’s gross.’

I shrug. ‘They’re a massive problem. That’s why the government gives out licences to cull them.’

I watch her eyes go wide, like I’ve just suggested going out and drowning a bag of kittens. She seems to have no comprehension sometimes that there’s a whole rest of the country out there, let alone a world. A bit like Rose-Marie, though I can’t really imagine Rose-Marie getting up to any of the stuff Izzy does on weekends. Still. They both have that clueless streak. I feel a bit sorry for them sometimes. That nice, comfortable world they live in is very small.

‘I grew up in the country, Iz. I’ve shot stuff.’

‘Oh yeah. I forgot.’

God, she’s blonde. Sometimes wonder how I’ve put up with Izzy so long.

‘Still. I can’t believe he’d do it. He even asked if I wanted to go along. I mean, seriously? It’s a five-hour drive each way in a car full of serious BO.’ She shudders dramatically. ‘I don’t think so.’

Free period last so I go pick up Tash early. The kids are just finishing their afternoon snack and getting covered with sunscreen before they can go play. Tash is still sitting at the table on the verandah, a half-eaten quarter piece of Vegemite toast in one hand, picking through her bowl of fruit with the other. Pair of rabbit ears from the dress-ups box.

I hang back for a minute. Watch her eat a piece of rockmelon, then shove the rest of the toast into the same mouthful as if she’s suddenly realised she’s losing valuable play time.

She decides she’s done with the rest of the fruit. Climbs out of her seat, wrestling it back under the table, and trots over to the hat box to find her Dorothy the Dinosaur hat. Turns around, tugging the hat sideways onto her head, on top of the rabbit ears. Sees me.

Her face is covered in Vegemite and I know her hands will be sticky from the fruit. Learned that from experience. I snag a wet wipe from the box on the shelf and go for her hands as she comes running, wiping them and her face clean before I let her grab me.

Tash always has a lot to say and tries to say it all at once. Her sentences are getting longer and longer but she hasn’t quite cracked knowing when to end them. She keeps banging on when I say, ‘Yeah, okay, I get it,’ then chucks a tantrum when I pull the rabbit ears off. I cop a kick to the stomach as I lift her up.

‘Stop it or you’ll get a smack.’ The way I say it, she knows I’m serious. Looks at me reproachfully, snot hanging out of one nostril. I take a tissue from the shelf and wipe her face clean again.

Dirty looks from people on the bus. It’s always worse when I’m in school uniform. I meet the looks with a cold stare. Pretend to be interested in Tash’s prattle as she watches out the bus window.

‘Just wait. The water’s yucky.’ It might be April but nothing’s going to quench the kid’s determination to get wet. Never mind that there’s a puddle of stagnant rainwater in the bottom of the wading pool that looks and smells like stale piss. I grab Tash before she can clamber in, Rose-Marie would chuck a fit if she found out.

I need a distraction. ‘Go get the hose, okay? Your pool needs more water.’

I upend it while her back is turned and grimace at the stink of stagnant water and sun-warmed plastic. Turn my face away from the remnants of a squashed slug on the underside of the plastic.

‘The things I do for you, kid…’

I stretch out on the deckchair and manage to get ten minutes’ worth of homework done while she paddles in the refilled pool. When she climbs out the endless questions start.

‘What’s that?’

‘My biology homework. For school. These things are called Punnett squares.’

‘Pun-nit squares,’ she repeats after me, as if the word actually means something to her. Reaches out for my book with wet hands, dripping onto the pages.

‘No. You’ll make it wet. Why don’t you get back into the pool and do some swimming?’

Rose-Marie takes her to swimming lessons Friday mornings. The wading pool only has a few inches of water in it, but Tash will splash around trying to dogpaddle and ‘breathe and bubble’ like she does in the bath.

‘Don’t wanna.’

That’s it then. Once she makes up her mind, she won’t change it. I get her to help me tip the water out and prop the wading pool against the side of the house to drain. Wrap her up in her towel but she wriggles away when I try to dry her off, so I kick a ball with her for five minutes till she dries off a bit. We go in and I let her choose one of her DVDs to watch. ‘Don’t tell Rose-Marie, okay? Or we’ll both get in trouble.’

Get the mail in; letter from school. It’s an unmarked envelope—which means I’m in shit—but they’re the only ones who refer to Rose-Marie and Terry as Mr and Mrs.

I open it up carefully in case it’s something I’ll need to reseal. A warning letter from Mrs Williams. Lack of sustained effort in bio. My first, and she didn’t even tell me it was coming. Cow.

Grab a felt tip and dash off Terry’s trademark scrawl in the acknowledgement fields. Tear off the bottom section, seal it up in the return envelope, hide it in my school bag. The rest of the letter I shred and then flush. Call Izzy.

‘Can we do something tonight?’ She knows how to read between the lines.

‘You’re still mad about that essay, aren’t you?’

‘It’s just been a shitty sort of day all up. Can we do something?’

‘I’ll make some calls,’ she promises. ‘See if anything’s going on.’

Grit my teeth when Terry gets home from work and Rose-Marie asks, on cue, her daily question about the weather forecast.
Any rain in sight?
The same four words every day, for weeks. I don’t know how Terry hasn’t strangled her. The mood I’m in, it takes all my will not to do it myself.