Game Theory (10 page)

‘“Thanks”?' she said. ‘For what? I didn't ask you guys to come here, so you can fuck off if you want gratitude. This was about making yourselves feel good. All that family-sticks-together, blood-is-thicker-than-water horseshit. Mum's neediness, Dad's gutlessness, your overwhelming sense of fucking superiority. Well, I've had it, Jamie.' Her mouth twisted and suddenly she was ugly. Not the kind of ugly that can be fixed with mascara or a brush through the hair. This ugliness was stamped in the flesh. ‘Or is it all about protecting the family interests, huh?'

‘What are you on about?'

‘Seven and a half million reasons to be nice to me.'

‘Fuck you, Summerlee.' I didn't try to hide my disgust. I
couldn't
hide my disgust.

‘Yeah? Right back at you, little brother.'

Even then, Mum insisted on waiting until the taxi arrived.
I was for getting the hell out right there and then, probably because I didn't have her hard-wiring. Summer got in the taxi without another word and we watched as she disappeared into the gathering dawn. Mum closed the rear door of our car.

‘That could have gone better,' she said. I could see her fighting back tears.

‘You did your best, Mum,' I said. ‘Forget her. She's screwed up and it's not your fault.'

‘It's always the parents' fault,' she said, though her voice was little more than a whisper.

‘That's not true,' I replied. But she looked at me as if I knew nothing at all. Maybe I didn't.

We drove home in silence.

The money came through with a fanfare of publicity from the lotto people.
We read about it in the papers.

Summer bought a mansion in the city for nearly two million dollars. Spider bought a car. We weren't invited to see either of them. There was sporadic contact. Summer had taken to answering our calls occasionally, though they were invariably unsatisfactory. We were polite enough, but the conversations only served as reminders of the distance between us, the gap none of us, to be honest, struggled too hard to bridge. Apart from Mum, that is. She kept trying, but from my perspective at least, it was like attempting CPR on a body that was way past resuscitation.

Summer, from the age of thirteen, had always been moving away from us, slowly and inexorably. The lotto win accelerated the process. We had become a family polarised. It wasn't just the money. In fact, it was mainly to do with personalities.

But, shit, the money didn't help.

CHAPTER 10

This is what happened.
This is when the real terror began.

I had a free, last lesson of the day, so I went to see Mr Monkhouse, my maths teacher.
He'd set me additional homework a week ago (no one else got this – apparently, it was to keep my brain ‘fit') and I reckoned I'd nailed it.

Mr M was in his classroom marking assignments, and judging by the speed with which he pushed them to one side, he was pitifully grateful for my interruption.

‘Mr Delaware,' he said. ‘To what do I owe the honour?'

Mr Monkhouse was a brute of a man, about two metres tall and with a barrel chest. He kept his head shaved and his features were proportionately large and coarse. If you were designing a nightclub bouncer from scratch, Mr Monkhouse would make a perfect template. And yet his brain was beautiful. It often seemed to me that he taught not because it paid the mortgage, but
because it allowed him to think about mathematics, and he could imagine nothing better to do with his time than turn symbols and ideas around in his mind, basking in their perfection.

‘The homework, Mr Monkhouse,' I said. ‘Cracked it.'

He smiled and spread his hands. ‘Remind me.'

‘The spaghetti problem.' I could tell Mr M had been pleased with this when he'd set it.
Jamie, you drop a single straight strand of uncooked spaghetti onto your kitchen floor and it breaks randomly into three pieces. What's the probability you could form a triangle from those pieces?

‘Ah, yes,' he said. ‘Often called the broken-stick problem.' He pointed a finger at me. ‘You didn't look it up on the internet did you?' I cocked my head. ‘Of course you didn't,' he continued. ‘I apologise. So. Amaze and delight me.'

‘Quick version,' I said. ‘If you want the full proof I can do it.' I picked up a whiteboard marker and drew an equilateral triangle on the board. I referenced the altitude theorem, added another equilateral triangle within the first and showed how, of the resultant four congruent triangles, it was only in the medial that the sum of the lengths of any two pieces exceeded the length of the third piece. ‘Therefore,' I said, ‘the probability of forming a triangle from the three pieces of spaghetti must be one in four.'

Mr Monkhouse laughed. ‘One way of doing it,' he said.

‘One way?'

‘All right, Jamie. It's a
good
way. How about something more challenging? Never mind your spaghetti breaking into three.
Now – impossibly, I might add – it's broken up at
n
– 1 random points along its length, resulting in
n
pieces, obviously, where
n
is greater than or equal to 3. What's the probability that there exist three of the
n
pieces that can form a triangle?'

This time
I
laughed. ‘You're shitting me.'

‘Would I shit you?'

I thought.

‘Does the answer involve Fibonacci numbers?'

Mr Monkhouse smiled. ‘Maybe. You tell me.'

‘Has anyone ever told you that you're the most annoying teacher in the school, Mr M? Possibly the world?'

‘I've heard the proposition before,' he said. ‘But no one has yet provided the proof.' He stood, stretched and rubbed at his eyes. ‘Mr D, I spend most of my time
telling
students how to solve problems, but you have a mind. Use it. Go think. It's what you were put on this earth to do.'

‘It's to do with Fibonacci numbers,' I said.

‘How's that older sister of yours doing, Jamie?'

Summerlee had been in Monkhouse's class a few years back. Well, probably not often, come to think about it. God knows how he would have coped with someone like Summer, who had zero interest in anything academic. It's what teachers do, I guess. Part of the job.

‘Ah, you know Summer, Mr M,' I said. ‘Same old.'

‘I've read about her in the papers.' Everyone had read about Summerlee, it seems. It made me a kind of celebrity at school for
a few days, before interest waned. Mr Monkhouse sighed. ‘Seven and a half million dollars, wasn't it?'

I nodded.

‘That's not far off what a teacher would make in a hundred years,' he said, but it was like he was saying it to himself.

There was silence and it was kinda embarrassing. I didn't really know what to say, but thought I should say
something
.

‘Life's not fair, I guess.'

Monkhouse smiled and got to his feet. He picked up the pile of assignments and then tossed them back on the desk.

‘That's pretty much the philosophy of my mortgage lender,' he said. This was getting even more embarrassing. I didn't know if I was expected to apologise for Summerlee, or say something about how much I appreciated what teachers did. Instead I shuffled a few paces towards the door.

‘I'd better get going, Mr M,' I said. ‘Picking up my younger sister from school, doing some food shopping for Mum.' I didn't need to go this early, but for some reason I wanted to get out into the fresh air.

‘Of course, Jamie. I think I'll go home myself.' He pointed a finger at me. ‘Remember,
n
pieces of spaghetti. Don't make a meal of it.'

Even the best teachers think they're comedians.

It was a glorious day.
The sky was a pale blue, dusted like a bird's egg, and a few lazy wisps of cloud nestled against it. The air
was fresh, tinged with the scent of cut grass. I would be early, but I walked to Phoebe's school anyway. This is my job, picking her up after school, but it's not really a job. It was a ten-minute walk and by the time I got there I still had forty minutes to wait. Sometimes, on days when I had a free last period, I'd go into reception and wait there. The staff knew me and there was one girl in particular – well, not a girl, a woman probably in her early twenties – who had wicked green eyes and a way of biting on her bottom lip when she was concentrating. There are worse ways of spending time, sitting in a warm reception area and reading faces when no one knows you are watching. But I didn't feel like it today. I sat on a small swing in the school playground and tried not to look like a paedophile. I pushed against the ground with my legs, which wasn't difficult since the swing was designed for someone half my height.

I tried to remember what it was like to be in primary school, but I couldn't. This made me sad. I had been to Phoebe's school, for Chrissake, only a few years back, but now it was mainly lost to me. I could remember Mrs Griffin, who had a bad hip and bad teeth and a good sense of humour. God knows how many hours I spent in her company, but all that was left were fragments of memory and a few thin feelings. The past is like that. It dissolves and leaves you with a vague sense of loss.

It was no good. I still felt like a pervert, so I got up from the swing and circled the block. I passed a woman who was taking her blue heeler for a walk. Neither seemed to be enjoying it.
The dog was straining at the leash and the woman was straining against the dog. As I approached, it veered towards me, a low growl coming from deep within. The woman kept muttering ‘good boy' to it, but that was fooling no one, least of all the dog. I stepped off the footpath onto the road but it tried to follow me. There were a few glistening threads of drool coming from its lips and the woman's arms were bunched with the strain of keeping it in check. I told her g'day, but she didn't bother replying. I hate it when that happens.

I did two laps of the school and settled down to wait outside the main entrance. Parents had gathered by then, mainly women but a few men as well. The majority were parked in LandCruisers, Pajeros and other four wheel drives. It's a prosperous neighbourhood. The women chatted among themselves. I guess if you see the same people five days a week, you're bound to find common ground. I kept to myself, though I'd often thought about joining the discussion. That would be cool, to chat with women twice my age about . . . well, whatever they were chatting about. The weather, how great their kids were, the preposterousness of men. I could do that, but somehow I'd never found the courage. That was a pity. Game theory is all about understanding how other players think, so it would've been . . . educational.

To be honest, the thing I loved most about picking Phoebe up was not so much seeing her come out – though that did give me a blast – but watching the other kids. Some dorky, some gorgeous and confident. Boys who wrestled each other because they were
boys and couldn't hug; girls who hugged because they were girls and that was okay. But mainly the backpacks. Is it just me, or is there nothing better in the world than seeing a small scrap of a human being with a canvas bag as big as them on their backs? Some of the kids were like pack mules. I could see their bags were leaden with whatever was in them. Bricks? Anvils? Others had bags that were shrivelled and loose, presumably because there was nothing in them apart from a lunch box containing Pringle crumbs and a shrivelled apple. But the bags were still huge. It's really great.

Phoebe came out with Corey, as always. She was talking to him and it seemed, from a distance, an earnest conversation. He had his face turned towards her and his nose was enormous in profile. I was reminded of a wading bird, particularly since he has stick-thin legs made more prominent by extra-short shorts. He is going to be an accountant when he grows up. I would put money on it. Phoebe is one of the anvil-in-the-backpack brigade. I have no idea what she keeps in there but it is really heavy. I've toted it a couple of times. Maybe it's a piano. Corey was nodding. Phoebe was punctuating her words with extravagant wafting of her boater, which she carried in her right hand. Women talk, men listen. We learn this game at an early age and that's okay by me.