Everything Beautiful (4 page)

6
Poetic and Condemned

Fraser’s house rose out of the scrub like a sandstone dream. It had a tin roof, jasmine fringing, detached gutters, and nasturtiums crowding the cracks in the porch. I peered in a window and saw ghosted furniture and books and newspapers piled in ceiling-high stacks. The front door was locked, but the door to the adjoining garage was swinging open. I nudged it with my foot and wandered in.

I like traditional men’s spaces—sheds, garages, urinals (joke). In our old house Dad stored his “little village” in the attic. His little village started as a train set and just kept growing. Mom used to call it his girlfriend. She was only half joking. Dad, who could be waffly about so many things, was never anything but driven in there. I would sneak in sometimes. I wouldn’t touch anything. I just liked the way the room felt. It had an air of purpose. I could tell he dreamed stuff up in there. Fraser’s garage had the same feel.

Through a maze of jerricans and jam jars stood a tarp-covered monolith. The sun made crazy patterns on it and I traced them with my finger. I tugged at a corner of the tarp. Underneath was an old VW—a Love Bug—or some kind of Love Bug mutation. I looked down and saw that it was on blocks. There were other bits and pieces of the car family scattered about, giving the place a wrecker’s allure, but I knew about places like this. They’re all about possibility and potential—nothing actually
works
.

The back garden was only just contained by its crumbling bluestone wall. It looked poetic and condemned—in other words, perfect. There were wildflowers everywhere, and over a little hill there was even an old merry-go-round. I wandered around the space dreamily, plucking and breathing in lavender. Eventually I arranged myself on the merry-go-round and dug in my bag for my cigarettes.

I started smoking when I met Chloe. This was reason number one for Dad to hate her. All the breath mints in the world couldn’t disguise the fact that every night I stuck my head out of my bedroom window and puffed away like a caboose. But this was where dreaming began. Smoking was like a physical ellipsis. I drew back and my mind went
dot … dot … dot …
For the length of a cigarette I could be anyone. In my dreams I was usually thin and untouchable. Boys would swarm. Occasionally I would talk to one, or let one carry my schoolbag, or watch one set fire to himself in the street outside my house.

Chloe’s best bag-lady joke was that she only smoked after sex—and she was down to two packs a day. I lit up and toasted my absent friend. Then I wrenched the wheel and lay down and let the swirling trees and sky and sunspots hypnotize me into something like happiness.

Thursday night, Ben Sebatini’s: I walk through the door in a gold dress, with glitter on my eyelids, cheeks, and lips. Ben Seb sees me and does a triple take. He says, “I can’t believe you’re really here.”

I laugh throatily. “Believe it, baby.”

“Come on.” He grabs my hand and starts leading me through the throng. “I want to be alone with you.”

I laugh incredulously. “You’re going to leave your own party?”

He looks back to the fray. “Those people are bores. But you, Riley, you …” And I stop under the streetlight and say, “What?”

He shakes his head. “You know.”

“Tell me,” I whisper.

He holds my hand and swings it in a slow circle. He pulls me toward him. “There’s no one else like you,” he says. Then he kisses me, and it’s like every cell in my body is atomized.

I was still in dreamland when the merry-go-round jerked to a stop. I looked up to see a boy holding on to the rail, one foot up on the platform and the other on the ground. His stance was at odds with his gawkward appearance: pipe cleaner legs, ramekin ears. He was wearing an out-doorsy canvas vest with a hundred compartments. A pair of binoculars hung from his neck.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” he said. “You’re out of bounds.”

“Ok-ay.” I eyed him warily. “Are you a counselor?”

“No.”

“So that means you’re out of bounds too?”

“No. I have work to do here.” He looked down hastily. He was trying to suppress a smile, but he was losing the battle. He really had to concentrate to make his mouth do what he wanted it to. He shook his head once, twice, three times, fit-ishly. Then he pointed with his arm at a right angle to his body. “You have to go.”

“Okay, I’m going.” I ground my cigarette into the sand and stared at him, trying to work him out. He was Not Quite Right. An NQR bird nerd boy. Chloe would love it. He lifted his head and something in his expression—both eagerness
and
hesitance—reminded me of Olive. “Wait,” I said. “Are you Bird?”

He looked shocked. “Who told you?”

I laughed, “A little bird.”

“What kind?”

I started to laugh again, but Bird was dead serious.

“Um … a magpie?” I improvised.

He opened his mouth and spoke in the polished voice of a television announcer. “Australian magpie. Member of the
Artimidae
family. Diurnal. Omnivorous. Mostly a ground feeder but will eat human food. May eat its own digestive products. This piebald bird is used to both bush and urban surroundings. Beware the magpie during nesting season—aka swooping season—and lock up your jewelry, for the magpie is attracted to bright and shiny things and has no qualms about stealing whatever takes its fancy.”

Bird stopped reciting. I remembered a story I’d once read about a woman who finds a transistor radio in her false tooth. When she opens her mouth, radio talk would come out—race calls, talkback, classic hits.

“What did you have for breakfast?” I asked him. “An ornithologist?”

Bird cocked his head. He moved in and I had nowhere to go but back. I don’t know what I
thought
he was going to do—push me? Kiss me? And I don’t know why I thought these things first. In the end all he did was touch the skin above my neckline. “You should put some sunscreen on.” He smiled and suddenly looked about ten years old. He shouted, “This is my place!” and kicked the merry-go-round, hard. The platform spun and my cigs and lavender sprigs went sliding off onto the soft dirt.

“Thank you, psycho!” I bent down to collect my things. But he was already gone, storming into the garage. The screen door shuddered in his wake.

7
Orientation

Two feet away from me, on a small stage, Counselor Roslyn of the nightmare hair and mushroom-colored jumpsuit was leading the group in a song. The song seemed to only have two lines and the younger campers sang it with gusto:
Let JESUS in. Let His Spir-it SHINE!
The older campers—and I could only spot a handful—were more self-conscious. A boy sitting near me with bad acne was moving his lips, but no sound came out. I looked at his name tag: Richard. Next to him the speccy boy from the water fountain was nodding along. His name tag was also clearly displayed: Ethan. The song went forever. Roslyn was dancing, but her brain must have been sending mixed messages; her pelvis didn’t know where to go. If I’d had my phone I’d have snapped her for Chloe.

Out of the forty-odd campers the majority were under twelve and enthusiastic to the point of psychosis. When they sang “Jesus” they closed their eyes and waved their hands in the air. In and around that there was smiling. Lots of smiling. These kids were shiny-clean and plastic-wrapped. They made me feel like a big, dirty outlaw, and while part of me felt proud of my difference, another part just felt … bleak. Lonely. I sat back, hugging my knees, and let the veil of blah fall over me. “Three days,” I reminded myself. “Three days, not seven, and then I get a big, beautiful Ben Sebatini reward.”

Now that the tape-recorded music had faded, Roslyn produced a brass bugle. She hunched her shoulders and blew, and the noise was like pure pain. Long after she stopped my ears were still ringing. Roslyn took a humble bow. “Thank you, thank you! That’s the breakfast bugle. When you hear that you’ll know tucker’s up!” Roslyn had a monotone. Her words all ran together like wet ink. When she stopped to take a breath she almost lost her balance. She teetered on the spot, and everybody waited.

“Campers, on your name tags you’ll see a feather. That feather represents your group. Hands up—who has a white feather?”

Many hands shot up.

“Ter-rif-ic. If you have a white feather, that means you’re in the Mallee group. Who has a brown feather?”

Slightly fewer hands showed.

“Okay, brown feathers are Bronzewings. And if you have a yellow feather, you’re a Honeyeater, okay? Ter-rif-ic. Okay, people, go find your people!”

I dug around my bag for my name tag. I was a yellow feather. Honeyeater. Sarita flashed her name tag at me. She was also a yellow feather. I put my palm up.
How
. She came over and sat too close and the other Honeyeaters followed. There were eight of us: Sarita, Fleur, Richard, Ethan, the curious Bird, girl twins with identical nun-cuts, and me. Ter-rif-ic.

Counselor Neville patrolled the stage with a cordless microphone and told an interminable story about how driving down he got a flat tire, which led to an epiphany about just how small he was, but just how perfectly he fit into the physical world. He ended with a breathy prose poem: “The clouds were rolling across the sky. The trees seemed to be breathing. I felt so ALIVE. I remembered to thank God. It seems so obvious, but how often do we take time out—to sit and think and appreciate—but most of all, to thank God? I took time out. I sat on the hood of my Volvo and watched the colors spread in the sky, until the sun had sunk completely.” Neville’s hand swooped. He tucked the microphone under his arm and clasped his hands together. “Let’s thank Him now.”

Heads bowed around me. I picked at my cuticles.

For me the whole God thing was imposs. Godliness was next to dubiousness. If the Christian kids at my high school were anything to go by, then camp was going to be a big smile full of bad teeth. Those kids were creepy. They talked Alpha and Hillsong like it was a new slang and they wouldn’t budge in their beliefs if you hit them over the head with a dinosaur bone. Before the Norma Trauma I’d been to church maybe three times in my life. Dad used to be a “lapsed” Catholic. Now he as good as says that Mom was the lapse factor.

I wondered if she was watching. If she could see me now she’d be laughing, rolling her eyes, going “Jay-sus!” like she used to say to Dad when she wanted to tick him off. Mom was fat like me. She was dotty and overdramatic. When she found out about the cancer she howled like a howler monkey. I remember her stomping around the backyard. “I will not go gracefully, I will not.” But as she got weaker, her anger faded.

First comes acceptance, then transcendence.

In the early months, none of us brought up the big D that follows the big C, but one day I asked Mom what she thought would happen and she said, “I’m picturing sunshine, straight up. Someone will take my hand and I’ll feel light. When I was pregnant with you I used to float in a saltwater pool. I’ve decided it will be light as that. Just
light
. ” At the funeral everyone talked about God and heaven and how Mom wasn’t in pain anymore, but the priest kept calling mom “Lily”—no one ever called her Lily!—and the funeral had hidden costs, and the whole thing just felt heavy, not light at all.

8
The Idea of Kinship

Toward the end of Neville’s holy thanks the door opened. A guy ran down the side of the room, pumping his fist like a game show contestant. He did a heroic leap onto the stage and took the chair next to Roslyn. He was
gorgeous
. He had white blond hair in a kind of faux-hawk, brown eyes, and olive skin. I stared at him from under my hat. He looked too young to be a counselor. Over his T-shirt he wore a black and silver vest with the letters
YL
. Neville introduced him as Craig Barrett, Youth Leader. My first instinct was to put him in the too-hard basket.
A guy like that and a girl like me …
But then he smiled and, ohmystars! It was the kind of smile a guy gives you when he’s just about to pull your school uniform over your head and expose your bra to all and sundry. The kind of smile that killed me.

In my dreamy-dreams I imagined a boy, sarcastic and hilarious, who’d make me a fetish necklace out of gum-nuts and feathers and champagne wire. A boy like that could be possible. But a beautiful boy was something else. A beautiful boy could make me feel beautiful back. “There’s a challenge,” I told myself, echoing my father.

Craig was squinting at the door, waving someone in. At first all I saw was a dark square in the sunlight. As it came closer, I realized it was a guy in a wheelchair. Craig pointed him to Honeyeater territory. He parked across from me and bowed his head. I checked him out: he was skinny and pale. He had long dark hair and a cool bruiser’s pout. He was wearing a Kreator T-shirt and black jeans, but I could tell by the way his feet fell that the chair was a fixture. His eyes flashed sideways.
Busted
. I stared down at my lapful of lavender. I lined the flowers up head to head.

When Craig first took the stage an appreciative ripple went through the audience. The female campers sat up straighter, even little Mallee girls who still played with Barbies. Craig did have a bit of Ken doll about him. Now Fleur did a languid neck roll so that her hair fell over one shoulder. Craig looked comfortable with all this attention. He read the rules, with one eyebrow cocked for coolness. I stared at the fine gold hairs on his calves.

“No drinking, no drugs, no pranks—you know what I’m talking about—no short-sheeting, no plastic over the toilet seat. Take it from me, if you stick your roomie’s hand in a bowl of warm water while he’s sleeping, he will
not
wet the bed. Ahem. No stealing, no phones, no unauthorized excursions into non-camp territory, no midnight feasts … Did I mention no swearing? No inappropriate clothing, no coupling up …” He mimed
NOT
.

There were giggles at that. Sarita’s eyes were all pupil. She looked like she’d stopped breathing. Craig’s words kept coming. They folded over each other like lather. The Mallees were getting restless. There was sneaker scraping going on. Beyond the rec room walls I could hear nature noises: birds and insects, summer’s fizz. I could feel someone looking at me—Wheelchair Boy. I smiled at him. He rolled his eyes and I tingled all over at the idea of kinship.

“One more thing,” Craig called. “Roslyn has lost her ‘shroud,’ so keep your eyes peeled for a—”

Roslyn lunged at the microphone. “Piece of fabric. If you find it,
please
don’t wash it … or use it as a hanky. Just … hand it in. Ter-rif-ic.” She smiled at us all for a few seconds too long and then sat back down.

Just when I thought it was all over, there was Neville again.

He said, “This year we have some old friends and some new faces. If you treat the new faces like old friends, then it’s going to be a beautiful time for everyone.” He raised his head. “Dylan Luck, would you come up, please?”

Wheelchair Boy came forward slowly until his tires bumped the foot of the stage. For a second no one did anything, but then Craig and Neville lifted the chair onto the stage. Neville said, “Some of you know Dylan from previous camps; you may not have seen him since his accident. He’s still Dylan and he’d appreciate your support and friendship. Don’t be strangers!”

Dylan stared to the back of the room. He looked embarrassed to be up there on display. Some of the younger kids were staring, with dropped jaws. “Accident” is such a non-word, so nonspecific. Neville made it sound like nothing, but here was this boy in a wheelchair, and you couldn’t call a wheelchair “nothing.” Then I recalled Fleur and Sarita’s mystery boy who’d jumped sixteen floors—and realized he and Dylan had to be one and the same.

Neville went on. “Dylan, we’ve got something for you because we value you, and because you deserve it.”

Craig came forward. “Here you go, dude.” He clamped a hand on Dylan’s shoulder and handed him a shiny bundle. Dylan was slow to unfold it, too slow for Craig, who moved across and shook it out and held it up for display. It was a vest identical to his. Craig draped it over Dylan’s shoulders and announced: “So this year there are two Youth Leaders!” He turned to show his letters and everyone clapped. I clapped, too—I was bored. I was getting delirious again. I whistled and threw my lavender sprigs at the stage. A flower landed on Dylan’s chest. He watched it fall to his lap and then he picked it up. I noticed his cross then: thick and silver, hanging on a thin leather string. As he held the sprig of lavender, his face changed and I had a sudden flash that he looked on the outside how I felt on the inside: Lost. Moody. Superior. Charged.

Dylan smelled the flower and stared straight at me. Then he put it in his mouth and ate it.