Joyous and Moonbeam (3 page)

Joy-ous!

Good happy afternoon, Miss Moonbeam!

Cute. Is that what you're going to call me from now on?

Mm.

It's okay, big guy, I like it. Never had a nickname before. Unless you count Ash, which is totally boring and unoriginal. What about you? Any nicknames?

Some.

Uh-huh. We doing more pin-cushions today?

Yes.

That purpley material? Pretty cool. Look, hold it closer to the light – see? It glows. Like it?

Like it!

Or we could use the plain, maybe the green. Or would you prefer the swirls?

Joyous is also as well liking of the swirls. They are being coloured like lollipopsicles.

Like –

Would Moonbeam be wanting one?

What's a …? Oh, I see. You've got a bag of them. Lollipops. Geez, Joyous, there must be a hundred in there.

There was seventy-two now sixty, with Joyous finished licking on twelve since Sunday just gone.

You're addicted, big guy. Um … lemon, please. Ta. Yum.

It is yum. Joyous is liking the lollipopsicles – and the swirls.

Okay, swirls it is! Here, you cut, I'll sew.

Joyous will do cutting with scissors. Done like a dinner.

Cool. So Joyous, tell me about your nicknames. Do you have one now?

No.

But you used –

Not since Sammy-K who did be saying all the time, You're no Joyous, no-no, your real name is Rigor.

Rigor? How come?

Rigor is the first half piece of Rigor Mortis.

As in … dead people? That's –

Sammy-K was saying Joyous is so stupid his brain is in Rigor Mortis.

That's pretty mean.

Mm. But not anymore, in the past-times. Now Joyous is not Rigor. Now he is liking of the swirls – and the lollipopsicles.

Joyous, I don't think I like the sound of this Sammy-K very much.

Well, Miss Moonbeam, Mamma was always saying to be tolerating Sammy-K because he was mainly beneficial and so is his dog Sasha still in spite of poos.

Sounds like an interesting household, big guy.

Yes. It is interesting.

So, any other nicknames?

Olden ones from the past-times.

School?

Yes. From school, that hard place.

Like what?

Dumb-dick.

Oh.

Retard. Spaz. Mong. Pisser. Bog-brain. Stink-bomb.

Joyous, I'm sorry, it was a stupid question.

Misery Guts. Wet Week. Month Of Sundays.

Stop now, okay? Stop.

Okay.

Joyous, I know … schools can be horrible. And people can be cruel. You hear that stuff all the time. I mean, I've said things but even so –

Yes, Moonbeam. But not to be worried. Time is moving on like God in His most mysterious ways.

I know, but … if anyone called me those things, I'd – I'd want to smash them.

Joyous is not to be smashing. He is a peace guy, working things around a little.

So you've said. Working things around a little.

Like my dadda told me so. In my ear as a baby at hospitable although Joyous doesn't remember but that's how Mamma tells this story.

Right …

Mamma says, All life is joyous. The good bits are naturally joyous but even the bad bits can be too. You just have to work them around a little.

Okay. Fair enough. Finished cutting? Cool, very neat. So, Joyous, you don't mind talking about, you know, home, and that?

Joyous will be talking about home and that because it is working it around a little.

I guess so. I just didn't want to be too … Santorini was pretty keen on space and respect, and I –

Mm.

Anyway. Sammy-K. Is he like, a step-father or something?

He was being Mamma's companion, until …

Companion? How … quaint.

Quaint is a truesome word. Thanking you, Moonbeam.

Man, I love it when you call me that – it's way cool. Let me get this straight. There's your mum, Sammy-K, the crap-a-lot dog –

Sasha.

Sasha the crap-a-lot dog and you. Is that it? That's the whole family?

Yes. The kit-and-caboodle.

No aunts, uncles, cousins-twice-removed?

No.

Out of cotton. Is there any … ta. Tell me about your mum.

Mamma is My Special, fifty-four years of age.

My mum's thirty-six. But she looks older, especially since … anyway. Save that for later. Is your mum cool?

Joyous doesn't –

Cool. You know, good to live with, easy-going, fun personality. Doesn't arc-up about every little challenge to her perfect world.

Then Mamma is cool.

Way cool?

Yes, she is being way cool.

You're so funny, Joyous. As in ha-ha, I mean. Is she pretty?

Yes, she is pretty.

What does she look like? Describe her.

Joyous has a photo in his breast-pocket that is always being carried everywhere.

Really? Can I look? Okay, okay – she looks nice. Gorgeous hair. Not fifty-four though, surely not.

It is an olden days photo.

Haven't you got anything more recent?

No. Sammy-K did burn them.

He burned them?

A long time ago Sammy-K was angered so he did pour them with petrol and they burned.

Sorry, Joyous, but this Sammy-K dude sounds like a total pig. You should report –

Mamma did be saying he was mainly beneficial.

Burning your photos is not beneficial.

Joyous does remember, he did say, Sorry-hun, to Mamma. Sorry-hun, I lost control. That was what he said.

I should hope so! What a loser! I mean, to burn … anyway. Let's talk about nice things. Does your mum work?

Yes. Mamma does be growing flowers.

Oh right. In a nursery?

No. Mamma does be growing flowers at home.

And sells them? Like, at a stall?

No. She does be growing them in window-boxes then puts them in our rooms. My room and on the table of the kitchen and on the TV and her room and more flowers being everywhere now since the accident.

And that's her – work?

Yes. And the cooking of meals and picking up of the poos which Joyous does try to be helping with.

Fair enough. My mother has a different kind of job. She's an avoider, the best in the business. Avoids me, avoids what's happened, avoids everything – except work. She runs an employment agency.

Joyous is not –

Employment agency. It's a place where people go to get help with finding a job. Hey, maybe you could go there. I could –

Joyous is already be having a job.

What, here?

Mm.

But this is a –

Joyous is liking it here in Mister Santorini's good place. It is safely for me. No big noises, no confusions, no hard pieces and mostly nice people, except for the Crew-cut Kid. But he doesn't mean it.

Great name, though. What does he do that he doesn't mean?

Sometimes the Crew-cut Kid gets angered and then he does do some pushy-shove but afterwards he is a sorry guy which is good because it helps to work things around a little.

So whatever he does, it's okay as long as he apologises? Is that it?

That is being it.

And you're happy with this? You're happy here? The pin-cushions and that bloody classical music and the wooden stuff on Thursdays with Santorini?

Sometimes Saturdays. Joyous is being happy.

You do this every day then go home to your flowery rooms and the doggy-doo on the lawn and everything's fine?

Yes, Moonbeam. Except the doggy-doo is stinkity on the carpet because of no lawn inside of our apartment.

On the carpet! Yuck! That's revolting!

But Sasha is being a good dog, very bounciful.

I'll take your word for it. Joyous, I wish you could meet my parents. Particularly my mother.

That would be okay if Mister Santorini did be agreeing.

I mean, they could both learn heaps from you. Absolute shit-loads. Starting with working things around a little.

Moonbeam –

And dealing with shit like stopping all the avoiding and actually
talking
to each other. Jesus, it drives me insane –

Moonbeam –

Joyous? Sorry, I –

Moonbeam, you sweared.

Oh. Did I? I did, too.

Two times plus the J-word. The blaspheme one.

Sorry. I forgot. Okay, Joy-ous?

Okay, Moon-beam.

Working it around a little?

Yes indeedy-do. Would Moonbeam be liking of another lemony lollipopsicle?

Thank you, Joyous. Thank you.

One thing that Bracks said to me that did kinda stick was this,
Sort out the past if you want to improve the future
. I don't think she meant changing the past – you can't do that, unless you happen to have a spare time-machine floating around – but changing your attitude to the past. Dealing better with whatever has happened, after it's happened. I've been thinking about that and, well, she's right. Every event can be tracked back in some way, and until we know that tracking, or at least try to know it, then nothing will change, not really.

It reminds me of what Miss Qureshi said in English
when we were talking about the book
To Kill a Mockingbird
. She said, You can't understand why the characters do what they do unless you fill in their lives. The back-story, she called it, then she drew this huge line on the board with marker-points on it – birth, childhood incident one, childhood incident two, adult incident one, and so on. Made sense, even to idiots like Kyle Leggett. Then we did this group poster activity where we imagined pasts for Bob Ewell and Calpurnia and Atticus with his dead wife. It was pretty cool because everyone (including Kyle) had different ideas about what had happened so we had heaps of arguments and Miss Qureshi sat back like the cat that got the cream or caught the bird, whatever that old saying is.

So, back-story. Mum was twenty-one when I was born, Dad was twenty-four. They were already engaged but Mum got pregnant so they got married a bit earlier than expected, then I came along. Perfect child apparently – slept well, fed well, goo-ed and gaa-ed, hardly ever cried. Saving it all up for later, I suppose.

For a long time it was just me, and then, a bit over a year ago, Mum came into my bedroom and said that she was going to have a baby. I'll never forget that day. It was really gloomy outside, rainy and windy, cold, but Mum had this look like, I am the sunlight. She was radiant. Sounds corny but it was true. She let me touch
her tummy and I could actually feel the extra warmth coming out of her.

I had just turned fourteen and I remember thinking, hope it's a little boy because I'd love a baby brother. I could hold him and take him for walks, dress him up, stuff like that. I didn't care that there was going to be such a difference in age between us. We were all so excited. Every weekend since they invented the game Dad has watched the footy on TV but for weeks after Mum's announcement he'd stare at whatever was happening and you could tell he wasn't really seeing it. Instead he was dreaming of the new baby which made his eyes go glossy.

We were happy, we really were. I think, when you've known that kind of happiness, that level of anticipation, it's even harder to see it destroyed.

I still don't know the sequence. Kinda random, like cloud-bursts. Everything was good for a few months, home was calm and we were like people in a waiting-room, flipping magazines, whispering our days away – then Mum had a couple of
episodes
(Dad's word) and there was bleeding, heaps of it (I saw the sheets in the washing-machine) and night-time visits to the hospital, scans, worried faces, silences. Eventually Dad told me my baby brother had died inside Mum and she would have to give birth to him before they had a funeral. A stillborn. They called him Jamie, after Dad's father who got hurt in the
war in Vietnam then passed away in a home. I never knew him either.

The rest happened because it had to happen. It was unstoppable. Mum and Dad away for a few days in hospital, me with Uncle Paul and his new wife before this tiny white coffin at the funeral and my parents returned as ghosts. They were pale and shrunken, as if all the blood and water inside had been drained. There was nothing left but skin draped over their skeletons like dust-cloths on chairs. It was horrible.

Looking back, my naïve little-kid brain thought that the funeral would mark the end, that Jamie would be buried and we'd be sad but we'd go back to being our old family again. But it never happened. Instead there was this gradual taking-away. A few months ago I saw this story in the newspaper about beach erosion, with before-and-after photos. The after shot showed how the beach was a different shape, hardly any sand, huge holes as if a giant had munched them. I remember thinking, that's us. That's our family. Eroded and full of holes, re-shaped into – nothing.

Mum threw herself into work. She'd been part-time, now she was full-time plus some, home late, drinking wine, not caring. Dad went the other way, shuffled around, stopped talking. He started eating heaps so of course he put on weight and became what he is today, a big old pillow
but too lumpy and musty and distant to hug. He took leave from his job and he's never been back. I'm sure the leave must have run out. He's probably unemployed. He was in sales – hardware – although he's always wanted to be a musician. He's got this golden saxophone that he used to play on Sundays before the footy. I'd hear it sounding through the walls like happy elephants or cows, so I'd go in and ask, Why don't you play in a band? And he'd say, Gotta pay the bills, sweetpea. On Monday morning he'd be back in hardware, talking up taps and toilets. He was never that successful but at least he was there. He was doing something and being someone. Whereas now, like I said … nothing.

Two alternatives – they stay mute or they argue. Mum will say, Get a grip, and Dad will answer, Why, what's the point? And I'll think, It's us, doofus, the point is us.

So Mum works and Dad sits in a room if it's raining or messes about outside with a bunch of never-to-be-finished projects if it's not. And me? At first I stayed in my bedroom, playing music, reading
Harry Potter
, playing games on the computer, waiting for it to end. When it didn't, I left my bedroom, left the house, came back as little as possible. I'd go to Kadie's place until her mum got sick of me, then I'd go to Tara's or Sog's, anyone's, even Patricia Handley's once, that's how desperate I was. Or I'd just walk around, because at least by walking I was getting
somewhere different, and not at home with its left-off lights and silences that hung like velvet curtains and dust gathering on all the shiny surfaces. Because it's not a home anymore, it's just a house, with rooms that sound old and cold, and I crave more than these grey strangers who come and go and sleep in separate spaces.

There were other things, too. I think Mum might've had an affair because I heard Dad ask, Who? And Mum said, Pete, from work. But there was nothing more, no anger, nothing. I snuck past the door for a look – they were in the kitchen – and he was sitting there, slumped and soft-looking, hands on his knees. She was waiting for the kettle to boil. They were so – still. It was scary. When I asked her about it she told me to mind my own business. We had this huge fight and, typically, she turned everything around to being about school. She said, I'll look after the fees, Missy, you look after the results, that's all you need to worry about. I thought, Eff-you, bitch. And that's when the school stuff started, leading to That Night In The Library and all those things that Bracks lectures me about, cries about, whatever. The things that ended up taking me to the workshop and Room 12 with ol' Joyous.

Joy-ous. He's this huge bloke, big as a truck, with hair the colour of cornflakes and boggley eyes and hands that don't always do what he wants them to do. He's got a rosy-coloured mouth that kinda falls off his face when he
talks in that funny way that he has. He makes pin-cushions all day, sounds like he has a totally screwy life at home, carries a bag of lollipops and sits placidly like a walrus on a beach. Strange then, for someone like him, someone so separated from the real world, to seem so gentle, seem so wise.