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Authors: Dianne Touchell

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BOOK: Forgetting Foster
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‘Why was there a foot left behind?' Foster asked.

‘She was spinning so fast it just flew off,' his dad replied. ‘You don't need two feet hen you've earned wings.'

‘Stop it, Malcolm,' his mum said. ‘You know she was smoking in bed.'

Foster felt bad when his grandma died. He'd never known anyone who had gone away permanently before and he didn't like the bruised feeling it gave him in the chest. It was a bad way to go too and he worried that Grandma might have been frightened. It had been on the news and the police had walked about her house in white jumpsuits and Foster heard the word ‘misadventure' a lot. He supposed this meant Grandma had been planning an adventure and missed out on that on top of everything else, which made her dying even sadder, really. But then his dad had told him about the dragon fire and it made him feel better.

Foster's mum had almost died but that was a long time ago and Foster knew of it mostly from the way she looked and the stories his dad told him. Foster's mum had an unusual face. Foster grew up with this face so it never bothered him. It was the face that leaned over him at night to smell his breath in the random tooth-brushing check; it was the face that kissed his forehead after ministering to the slashed knee he got falling off his bike; it was the face that greeted him in the car after school. Foster knew her face was different to his, and his dad's, but it wasn't until he started school and saw the way other
people looked at it that he began to feel self-conscious.

‘Can you take me to school instead of Mum?' Foster asked his dad.

‘Why?'

‘Kids at school say Mum looks weird,' Foster confessed quietly. ‘They make fun of her.'

‘Do they make fun of her, or do they make fun of you?' Dad asked.

‘Umm . . .'

‘Mum's got a different face because she had an accident.'

‘I know,' Foster said. ‘Tell me the story again, Dad.' His dad put down the book they were sharing, took a breath that raised his shoulders high and said, ‘Once upon a time there was a princess imprisoned in a castle surrounded by a moat filled with giant sea snakes. She was the most beautiful lady in the kingdom. Knights came from far and wide and wrote songs about her and battled the snakes that prevented her escape. But she was waiting for her prince. She became so sad she decided to call upon the old magic of her forefathers. This was a dangerous thing to do. Old magic was rarely used because when it gave you power it took something in return. But she was lonely. A spell was given to her: the snakes would remain in the moat and
she could walk from the confines of her prison across the drawbridge in safety.'

‘Oh yes?' his mum said. Foster looked up to see her standing in the doorway, listening.

‘Yes!' his dad continued. ‘But at the moment she stepped onto the bank, the moment she gained her freedom, her face would forever bear the mark of the snakes she had charmed in order to escape. She walked slowly across the bridge and hesitated only a second before placing her toe on free ground. It was then she felt a great slithering inside her head and all at once, one side of her face was paralysed. She hid her face, sure that she would forever be completely alone.'

Foster could almost feel the cold air shimmying off the dark water of the moat, clinging to his face.

‘Then she heard a restless horse approaching and knew it was her prince. She stood before him, frightened and ashamed, but he saw in her crooked face a courage and strength that eclipsed any beauty he had ever seen. He knelt before her and offered her his fealty for the rest of her life.'

‘What's fealty?' Foster asked.

‘Room and board in exchange for laundry and cooking skills,' his mum said. Dad laughed.

‘What happened to them after that?' Foster asked.

‘They lived happily ever after,' his dad said.

‘Forever and ever?'

‘Of course.'

‘Oh, for crying out loud,' Mum said. But Foster saw she was smiling.

Foster heard other stories about his mum's face. He overheard conversations that had words in them he didn't understand. Words like ‘coma' and ‘traumatic injury'. He asked his mum what a coma was and she said it was like being in a prison of sleep, so his dad's story satisfied him and when asked at school about his mum he repeated it to a wide-eyed audience.

‘Your mum is not a princess,' Blinky said. ‘You shouldn't tell lies.'

‘It's not a lie,' Foster said. ‘It's a story.'

‘It's a stupid story!'

Foster wasn't worried when the stories first began to dwindle because it happened in a creeping-up sort of way. Dad seemed too distracted to concentrate. The quiet dinner tables became more and more frequent. Then his mum seemed to catch whatever bug it was that shushed his dad up. Foster knew that could happen. Whenever one of them got a cold his mum would always say, ‘Now it'll go through all of us!' with a sort of good-humoured resignation, and she
was usually right. So when Mum too grew quiet, and a bit sad, Foster thought, he began to worry about this thing, whatever it was, going through him too. He began telling stories to himself, and his toys – just a preventative thing, much like the vitamin C tablets Mum gave him to prevent colds. They never worked.

Foster had faith in stories though. Whatever changes were happening in his house and at the dinner table would surely, eventually, give way to another rollicking tale from his dad that would make his mum laugh again. So Foster became the dinnertime storyteller and carefully swallowed the gritty taste of not getting much response. Not much response at all.

suits and sympathy

Dad had a job that required a suit and Foster liked suits. He'd decided that he would wear one when he grew up. It would be dark coloured and have a crisp pleat down the front of each leg. It would feel shiny to the touch and fit gallantly over a white shirt that smelled of ironing spray and Dad's cologne. At the kitchen table before work Dad would tuck a serviette into his collar to make sure no runny egg or milk got on his tie. Foster liked the way the bright white shirt cuffs poked out and then retreated from the sleeves of Dad's jacket whenever he reached for the salt or a piece of toast. Sometimes Dad set his laptop up on the table next to his bowl or plate and scrolled through emails while he ate. He looked very important.

Sometimes he worked at night after he got home
too. After baths and dinner the laptop would appear again and Dad would
tap tap tap
away, tiny taps with the pads of his fingers. Not like the
click click
of Mum typing with fingernails that sounded like her high heels on a wood floor. Foster liked to sit at the table with Dad and work on a puzzle or read a book, occasionally glancing at Dad's merry fingers or hard-thinking face. Sometimes he would ask, ‘What are you doing now, Dad?' and Dad would say, ‘Making money for other people,' without looking up.

Foster knew his dad was important without having to be told how or why. It wasn't just the suits or the making money for other people. It was the sense that his dad was relied upon. Not just by him and Mum, but by lots of people. There were work phone calls at night and sometimes early in the morning, and Dad's voice was always different during these calls. It was slightly deeper, his words were fast and hooked together in such a way that they sounded like the car GPS when Mum accidentally set it to a foreign language. It was different to Dad's storytelling voice. This work voice had fewer colours and less movement. Foster found it a little bit scary. It was straight-edged, a voice that didn't waste time, a voice with no stories.

‘Where does the suit voice come from, Dad?'

‘The what?'

‘That voice that's like a stranger's. The one you use on the phone.'

‘I have a stranger's voice on the phone? Is it this one?
More coffee, woman!
'

Foster jumped, but Mum laughed, standing at the kitchen sink, her back to them.

‘I suppose you could call it part of my armour,' his dad continued. ‘Like the suit. No knight sounds the same with his helmet on.'

‘Hot and echo-y,' Foster said.

‘Very good!' Dad said.

When Dad's storytelling voice first started making an appearance during work calls Foster thought it was funny. He thought Dad was doing it on purpose to make him laugh. First there would be a silence that seemed out of place. Foster knew when it was Dad's turn to talk because the tinny chirrup of the person on the other end of the phone would stop. Where Dad would normally begin speaking immediately, or even get in early and cut the tinny chirrup off, he started to fumble with his words. He seemed distracted, like he was searching for the next part of a story. It was as if he'd lost his train of thought, or, more likely, boarded another one.

Foster noticed that Mum saw it too. She didn't giggle about it like he did though. She would stop what she was doing and look hard at Dad, as if her concentration alone could help Dad find the words he seemed to have lost. His face would look like he'd pulled a muscle. Sometimes he would take the phone away from his ear and just look at it before hanging up. But sometimes he would laugh and say something that didn't make any sense in that high-pitched storytelling whisper of his.

Foster wondered if the person on the other end of the phone noticed the giggling or the silences. Mum was all concentration and no sympathy. It seemed somehow wrong to him in ways he couldn't possibly explain, even in a story. He kept waiting for Mum to find it funny too and when she didn't it made him nervous.

Foster's nervousness turned to hot and clammy the night Dad started to cry. Mum liked to read after dinner while Foster and Dad sat at the kitchen table and did their things. That's how Foster described it to her. On the way past Mum ran her fingers across the top of Foster's hair as she retreated to the lounge with a cup of tea and said, ‘What are you two up to?'

Foster solemnly replied, as he always did, ‘We're doing our things.'

‘And what things are they?'

‘Secret things. Aren't they, Dad?'

‘Oh, yes,' Dad said without looking up as he shifted papers this way and that. ‘We're mid-ritual here.' Foster shuffled his books and drawings about, mirroring each of his dad's actions with the same attentiveness, brows drawn in, mouth puckered and occasionally whistling on the hard exhale. It made him feel like he was helping.

When Dad's phone rang he passed Foster a sheet of paper covered in small indecipherable words and symbols and said, ‘Have a look over that for me, Fossie,' before answering. Mum gave Dad a kiss on the top of the head and headed to the lounge. Foster stared at the document in front of him and tapped a pencil thoughtfully.

Foster listened to Dad's armour voice for a while. It seemed in charge tonight. Foster began copying words from Dad's report onto his drawing paper, colouring in the holes in the letters. Foster was so absorbed in creating pockmarks in every word he copied that he didn't realise immediately that his dad had stopped talking. It was his pen not moving that alerted him. When he looked up he saw Dad's face was red and wet and Foster had to look hard to make himself believe
his dad wasn't just sweating. But people don't sweat from their eyes. Foster let his fingers hover slightly above Dad's wrist before letting them land because he was embarrassed for both of them. When his fingers finally touched down Dad winced and recoiled his arm until it was curled up against his chest, his fingers in a knot under his chin. Foster slid quietly from his chair and went to the lounge.

‘Dad's crying,' he said.

‘Crying? I don't think so, Fossie.' Mum didn't look up from her book.

‘I think so,' Foster said.

Mum looked at Foster then, pressed her lips together, and stood. She left her book facedown on the lounge, clearly expecting to be straight back. Foster followed her into the kitchen where she stood behind Dad's chair and leaned to the side to look at Dad's face. Her hands were resting on his shoulders. Foster stayed where he was, watching the back of them both. Mum took the phone that was still pressed to Dad's ear from his hand, and put it to her own. She said, ‘Hello,' and clearly someone answered because she listened then, making a few thoughtful noises like
mmm
and saying ‘I see' twice. Then, ‘He'll have to call you back,' and the small
pip
of ending the call.

‘Malcolm?' She said it cautiously, as if to a sleepwalker she didn't want to shock into wakefulness. When Dad's phone, still in Mum's hand, suddenly rang, all three of them yelped in such a way that Foster started to giggle. It was the yelp that was needed, the sudden blare of spiky noise into an increasingly uncomfortable silence. It snapped them all into a kind of action, small action, but Foster was grateful for it nonetheless. Mum took Dad's hand and led him down the hall towards their bedroom. She shut the door behind them, leaving Foster standing in the kitchen alone with a giggle still pressing on his lungs. He walked forward and closed Dad's laptop. Then he went to the lounge and put Mum's bookmark in, placing her book on the coffee table.

stories and shortbread

Dad used the word ‘ritual' a lot. He said rituals helped make sense of the unfathomable, and that we didn't have enough of them. He said they didn't have to be fancy, either. Even small rituals can coax people closer together, just like cinching the neck of a drawstring bag. Foster had a drawstring bag he kept library books in. He liked the sigh of the fabric sliding on the thin waxed rope that secured it. When it was shut tight the neck formed a soft flower. Foster knew what his dad meant.

Foster's favourite day of the week was Sunday. Not just because it wasn't a school day but because exactly the same thing happened on every Sunday. Other days, for all their sameness, came with all sorts of unpredictable stuff. Foster didn't mind surprises
if they were good ones (he didn't like surprise spelling tests or trips to the dentist), but he liked his unsurprising routine more. The stuff Dad called ritual and looked forward to just as much as Foster.

BOOK: Forgetting Foster
3.75Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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