A Little Wanting Song (7 page)

I don’t grab my bathing suit and run to meet Rose. I’m not planning on joining them, on account of how I think it’s a plot to kill me. I head for the river, but far away from where they’ll be swimming. I head to Mum’s place.

She says I should go meet the three of them. She says I’m being dramatic, and I say, “If I am, you’re where I got it from.” Mum knows I’m thinking of a time our school ran this big fund-raiser. Every class had to do something and ours decided
to hold a concert where the parents or the grandparents performed and the kids came to watch. Dad kept saying he’d pay money not to be in the concert but Mum wouldn’t let him off the hook. I didn’t want him onstage, either. Dad couldn’t sing or dance and Mum had this duet planned for their act.

They got up there and the music started and Dad froze. His face didn’t even move. Mum looked at him and all the kids were looking, too, and I felt sick. And then she started up. She was Diana Ross dancing around one scared-shitless Supreme and she was moving enough for both of them. She acted like Dad was meant to be standing completely still. When it was his turn to sing, she opened his mouth and sang in a deep voice and the kids thought it was the funniest thing they’d ever seen. Even Louise was laughing.

We’re laughing today as we walk along the edge of the water. Mum’s pointing out things she remembers and I’m imagining what it would have been like for her growing up in this town. Imagining how she came to be that person who could get onstage and not care what anyone thought.

“Your dad asked me to marry him here,” she says like she always does. “He was romantic. Of course, when we were kids, he held my head under the water and nearly drowned me, too.”

“Love’s kind of weird,” I say, and we think about that for a bit.

After a while I feel like swimming and I don’t care that I don’t have my bathing suit. Everyone swims closer to town, so no one sees me here. I wade into the middle of the stream and let the river take hold of my shirt and swirl it round like
I’m dancing. I sink a little, jeans heavy with water, and the river covers my ears, turning sound to vibration. I keep my eyes closed and imagine that the water rings spinning out come from Mum’s old tire, and that the birds in the background are the same ones that flew over her years ago. I imagine I hear her laughing.

Maybe after the picture of Mum in the tire was taken, she lay on the grass, too, her curls pointing crazily in all directions. I climb back up the bank and lie on the ground and the light sings a lullaby, so I close my eyes. Maybe somewhere inside there’s a part of me that’s as beautiful as she was.

And maybe not.

“Why are you swimming in jeans?” Dave Robbie stands over me, taking in my messy hair and soaking clothes. Unexpected, sure. But not entirely unfixable with a smart comeback. “Because I’m swimming in jeans.” Unfortunately, I don’t have a smart comeback.

He laughs. “Fair enough. We’re further up the river.” I follow him because I can’t think of an excuse before he says, “You should take off your jeans.”

This moment was more romantic when I imagined it. “Sorry?”

“Don’t you have your bathing suit on underneath?”

“No.”

He nods and we keep walking. It’s not like I don’t have words in my head. I’m good with words. I’m great. On my own. In the dark. They come flooding. Sometimes I can’t sleep I’m swimming in so many words.

It’s when I’m around some people that my entire vocabulary goes on vacation. Like now, when Dave’s walking next to me wearing an old black singlet and board shorts and the tattoo of a bird on his wrist, every single word in my head except “no” and “huh” is lying somewhere on a beach getting a suntan.

“You want to go home and get your bathing suit?” Dave asks.

Yes. Because that worked out so well before. “No.”

“You’re kind of weird sometimes. Good weird,” he adds quick.

“There’s good weird?” I ask. “A whole new world’s opening up.”

He laughs, and something shifts. Like it did at the start of that party. I don’t know what it is, and I don’t question it. “I wasn’t planning on swimming. It was a spur-of-the-moment kind of thing.”

“I swim in my jocks when I have that spur-of-the-moment feeling,” Dave says. “You probably wouldn’t swim in your jocks.”

“Not since I was about five.”

We head closer to town. I think about the direction Dave was walking when he found me, and it doesn’t make sense. “What were you doing so far up the river?” I ask. He shrugs and grins and rips off a piece of grass for me to keep the flies off my back. “I always see you swimming there,” he says. “How come?”

“Just because,” I say, wondering when he’s seen me before.
Sounds I never heard from insects I can’t name flick around us, and my words go vacationing again.

“‘Jocks’ is a funny word, isn’t it?” Dave asks after a while.

“It is,” I say, and we have a little laugh.

“Look who I found,” Dave says to Rose, and she smiles at me again. He dives into the water and Luke swings over him from a rope tied to a tree at the edge. The whole place echoes as he crashes through the surface and disappears.

Rose fishes under the water for him. “Luke?” she calls. “Luke, stop messing about.” He explodes up beside her, laughter bouncing off the hills as he jumps on her back and tries to push her under. She screams and splashes at him with her feet. I soak it all in. Sun. Laughter. Dave.

I can’t take my eyes off Luke, running across the grass calling Rose’s name. I wonder what “Charlie” might sound like in someone’s mouth, shouted out across the day and echoing off mountains.

“Charlie, we’re watching DVDs at my place tomorrow night. Want to come?” Rose hovers at the edge of the river before she dives. Water drips down her shoulders.

Luke sneaks up behind her and mouths to me, “Should I push her?” She moves her head the slightest bit toward him, asking me if he’s there. I give a nod and she moves to the side. Luke splashes into the cold instead of her. She claps and shakes her hair; tiny tears flick out and disappear into air.

I take some time to think about the DVD night. On the one hand, it means more time with Dave. On the other hand,
there’s a burning question that’s begging to be asked. Why would Luke and Rose suddenly become my welcoming committee? Dahlia always told me I was funny. “Louise’ll love you once she knows you.” I still haven’t said anything that’s made her smile. Lucky I didn’t hold my breath.

Dave lies beside me to dry off, and he smells like car oil and grass and sunscreen. He laughs at Rose and Luke for a while, then he turns to me. “‘Beetle’ is a weird word, too.” He picks one off my arm. “It’s a diving beetle. Stays under the water for ages. Holds spare air under its wings.” There’s one on his arm but I leave it where it is.

We stay at the river for hours. The afternoon is warm and my skin is cold and my stomach is rumbling. Night is nearly here and the light is the color of a sweet yellow pear.

Rose and I leave Dave and Luke at the end of the road that leads to their houses and turn off toward our street. “So you’ll come to watch DVDs tomorrow?” she asks as we reach the gate of her house. I see the branches of the plum tree sticking out over the back fence. I remember Dave lying next to me. I hear Mum telling me to take a chance. “Yeah. Okay. I’ll come.”

The yellow light stops at my door. The curtains are drawn, and the living room is dark. Gran squeezed every last second out of the day when she was alive, like juice from a bright, shiny lemon. She always tossed her hat off when she worked in the garden. “Stupid thing keeps slipping,” she’d say. “You keep yours on, Charlie Brown; you’ll have skin that looks like a join-the-dot picture.” She couldn’t stand having the curtains closed before nightfall. “House is like a funeral parlor,” she
said once when Grandpa closed them too early. Dad cleared his throat and looked at me.

I heard them arguing about it later. “You think she doesn’t know her mother’s dead, Joe?” Gran asked. “I wonder if you know sometimes.”

“It’s none of your business.”

“Maybe you’re right. But it’s hers. It’s not doing either of you any good, living like this.”

“Enough!” Dad yelled silence into the air. I’ve never heard him loud like that before. I’ve tried hard since then not to talk about Mum.

“Grandpa?” I call.

“Outside, Charlie.”

The garden was always Gran’s place. It feels like any minute she’ll shuffle round the corner and call to us like she used to. “Albert, Charlie, we’ve got a lemon on the tree.” Her voice mixed with the sound of insects, rising in the dropping light.

I remember this path she made me once. “It’ll lead you somewhere special,” she said. It twisted round the outside of her plants, then curled in toward the middle of her garden. It took me past the vegetable patch and her chicken coop, down to the back of the yard. I saw two of the most beautiful flowers, bright splashes of red against green. I leaned in and smelled them, but they were empty, like a film with the sound turned down.

“Charlie,” Gran said, walking up behind me, “they’re not what I wanted you to see.” She pointed out over the back
fence at huge mountains, singing purple and blue in the distance. “Beautiful, aren’t they?” she asked, and I nodded, but I kept thinking about those bright, silent flowers.

Looking at Grandpa’s eyes tonight, I know he’s not seeing the mountains. The path’s too overgrown. We sit together for a while, staring at the tangle. He’s thinking about Gran, and I am, too. But the river keeps creeping in. I’ve got the start of a song in my head that’s warm and full of light. Spattered with chords that move like water.

I’m taking out the rubbish around nine tonight when I see Dave walking past on the other side of the road, arms wrapped around himself, face telling the world to piss off. I call to Mum I’ll be back soon and follow him.

He’s staring at the footy oval when I catch up, sitting on the bench under the one light the club leaves on to stop people vandalizing. “You following me?” he asks.

“No,” I say. “I come here all the time, late at night, to hang out on my own.”

“Thought you were bored with me and Luke.”

“Not a lot else on offer.”

“Except Charlie,” he says.

“If you like her so much, get on with it and ask her out. She’d say yes in a second.”

Luke and I give Dave shit about not having a girlfriend, but the truth is Dave could have anyone he wants. He just hasn’t wanted anyone so far. He came back from the Year 8 holidays and all the girls in our class started laughing with him instead of at him.

They were laughing when he wasn’t even funny. They stared at him on the way past. At his arms sticking out of his ripped-off black singlet. At his eyes, half hiding under his hair. They gave up their spot in the line for the school canteen. “Unheard of,” Luke said when a little space cleared for him and Dave. “You see that, Rosie? Girls love us.”

“It’s not you. It’s Dave.”

“Dave?” Dave asked.

“Yeah, dickhead,” I said. “You.”

I’d worked it out the week before when Justine Morenci walked past the three of us having lunch and her head did this three-sixty-degree spin. Justine Morenci is a ten on a scale of five. You don’t get on her radar unless you’ve made it. Dave had done what most guys only dream about: he’d found a way of changing his molecular structure and reversing the gene that makes him invisible to girls like Justine. And what do you think Dave does with this amazing molecular evolution? Nothing. He spends his weekends at the garage, working on cars.

Justine cornered me in the toilets after a few weeks of attempted Dave pickup. I think she was going through some
molecular transformation herself. Dave must have been the first guy who looked straight through her. “So, Rose, I’m planning on asking Dave to the school social. Think he’ll be interested?”

“Sure,” I said, and she smiled. “If you grow four wheels and get some license plates, he’ll be all over you.”

She asked and Dave went along because he didn’t know how to turn her down. He stood at the side of the room, and when she said they should go out the back, he ran away faster than those cars he spends so much time on.

“Did you hear me, Dave?” I ask. “Make a move on Charlie.”

“You think she’d go out with anyone because she’s not like you. She’s gorgeous. Fucking gorgeous. You’ve spent too long in this place to see.”

“I don’t think anyone can have her,” I say after a while, because it feels wrong to sit next to Dave and not talk.

“This town,” he says, and throws a rock at the light and knocks it out.