Letters to Leonardo (14 page)

Just after six, the front door slams.

“Matt, get here,” Dave yells.

“What?” I appear in the kitchen doorway.

Dave stands there, hands on hips, briefcase tucked against his leg. “Where the hell have you been?”

“I rang you, Dave, remember? Told you I was staying at Troy’s.”

“Don’t Dave me. I’m your father, and you’re lying.”

I turn my back on him and stroll into the lounge room. I throw myself casually onto one of the couches, not bothering to take off my shoes. It makes him angrier. He stands in front of the couch, glaring at me. I stare back, wishing I had a cigarette I could dangle from my mouth – that would really make him mad.

Dave spits the words at me. “I know you weren’t at Troy’s. I went to pick you up there.”

“Didn’t Troy tell you I’d gone home?”

“Yes, he did. But his mother told me you hadn’t been there all weekend.” A vein throbs in Dave’s shiny forehead.

I turn away from him as if the whole subject’s boring. “I ended up going somewhere else.”

“Where, Matt? Where did you go?” He walks around the couch and tries to force me to look at him. “I’ve had it with your attitude. I want the truth. Don’t lie to me.”

I leap off the couch and push past him. “Me, lie to you? That’s a joke. After all the lies you told me for the last ten years.”

“Where were you?”

“Went to visit my dead mother. You know, the one who died in a car accident? And you talk to me about lying.” I push past him and head to my room.

“Don’t you walk away when I’m talking to you,” Dave yells after me.

I slam the door and jam my bed against it. The door rattles as Dave tries to open it.

“Let me in, Matt. We need to talk,” he shouts.

“No.”

Dave stops rattling. “I said I’d go with you to see your mum.”

“I didn’t want you there.”

“You’re not supposed to be alone with her. There’s a court order. You broke the law.”

“So what!” I toss my shoe at the door. Enjoy the thud.

“Matt, your mother could get into a lot of trouble over this.”

“It was my choice.”

Dave tries a different approach. “Come on, buddy. Let’s discuss this.”

“Why?” I yell back.

“Because I’m your father!”

I shove my bed out of the way and pull open the door with such force that Dave, who has been leaning against it, falls into the room. I run out, go to the bookcase and take out Dave’s bible,
Sons and the Single Parent
. (Single by choice.)

Just because he has finally come clean about her not being dead, doesn’t make what he did all right. How can Dave think that one truthful answer makes up for all those lies?

I fling
Sons and the Single Parent
into the fireplace, light the corners with a match and watch it burn. Dave rushes in and reaches out to save the book, but I hold him back until the pages are well and truly alight, and there’s no hope of saving it. “That’s all you care about, Dave. Your book! You don’t care about me.”

Dave turns, walks into the kitchen and sits at the table, holding his head in his hands. “Matt, why?”

“That’s what I should be asking you.”

Dave looks up. “Oh, Matt.”

“I’m sick of the lies, Dave. Your lies!”

“I thought we’d been through all this. Didn’t you read those newspaper articles?”

“So? You reckon they make up for everything?”

“Can’t you see I had to protect you?”

“No! And by the way, I’m glad that stupid book’s gone,” I say. “It’s the only thing you ever take notice of. You sure as hell don’t listen to me.”

I don’t care what I say any more. When I burned that book, I went beyond the point of no return.

I take another day off school – who cares? In the afternoon, Troy comes over to see what happened with Mum – and how things went down with Dave after he found I wasn’t where I said I’d be.

Troy sits at my desk, swivelling in the chair. He frowns when I tell him about Mum’s migraine and how she seemed fine the next day.

“Maybe your dad was trying to protect you from her.”

“That’s what he says, but I reckon he was just trying to get back at Mum.”

Troy rolls his eyes. “Man, for someone who’s such a brain, you can really be a bit thick. Look at your dad, mate.”

I’m not sure where this is heading. “What about him?”

“He wraps you in enough cottonwool to clean the wax out of a dinosaur’s ear. He’s always trying to protect you from something. Remember how he wrote a note to the teacher in Year Five so you didn’t have to play footy because he didn’t want you getting hurt?”

“Yeah, I was quite happy about that. Wasn’t keen to break my bones either.”

“What about that hat he made you wear to school whenever there was head lice going around?”

Wearing a beanie in thrity-degree heat wasn’t much fun.

“So, what’s that got to do with anything anyway?”

“Maybe he really is trying to protect you.”

“But I don’t need him to. She’s not some psycho.”

“She’s been in psycho hospitals, Matt. She might be dangerous.”

“She’s not dangerous. She’s my mother!”

After Troy leaves I think about Dave’s book – the one I burned. I really hated that book, but I guess burning it was a bit extreme.

I’m lying on the floor, looking up at the ceiling, when Dave walks in.

“Matt, it wasn’t your fault, you know,” he says. “It was her – she couldn’t handle being a wife or a mum.”

“Why not?”

“I told you about her illness.”

“Yeah, and? Sick people can still be parents. They have things called medicine these days.”

Dave sighs. “I think it’s time we went to see her together and got this sorted out once and for all.”

You couldn’t really tell from the train, but Hillton is like a place out of a history book. The roads have bluestone gutters, and the parks have lakes with pampas grass wafting in the breeze. A horse and cart clomps down the road, taking tourists wherever they want to go. A man in a top hat, with a microphone, tells people the history of the town. We pass a shop with a sign that says, “Welcome – come in and see how Granny lived as a girl.” Dave laughs when I point it out.

“And nothing seems to have changed in town since then,” he says. “Trust your mum to live in a place like this. Very atmospheric!”

The station’s on the other side of town, so I missed most of this when I came by train. A pub advertises “Hillton sausages a specialty”. It has an outdoor seating area at the front, where knives and forks wrapped in bright yellow serviettes threaten to take off in the wind. We stop at the only traffic light in town, and I read a poster on the electricity pole advertising someone’s lost grey cat.

It’s not far from Mum’s house now. The muscle in the corner of Dave’s eye starts to twitch.

We pull up outside Mum’s and Dave stops the car. We both get out.

“I don’t want you to come with me. I have to do this by myself …”

“But Matt, she–”

“No. She’s my mother.”

Dave gets back in the car but sits with the door open. “You call if you need me.”

“Yeah, I will.”

Dave waves encouragingly as I walk up the stone path to the house. I knock on the door. No answer, just like the first time I stood there. I knock again and yell, “Mum, are you in there?” When I look back to the car, Dave shrugs his shoulders and gestures for me to knock again. Still no answer. I try pushing the door open, but it’s locked.

I start to panic. At least there were sounds coming from inside the house last time I was here. This time there’s nothing. What if she’s had an accident – or worse? In my mind I see her lying helpless on the floor.

I run back to the car. “She’s not there.”

Dave looks grim.

I rush my words. “I don’t understand. I rang and told her I was coming, and now she’s not here.”

Dave points away from the house. “Check the shed.”

I try the side door, but it’s locked – so are the big sliding ones. The mother cat and her kittens mew from the other side of the door.

When I get back to the car Dave’s frowning. “I’m sure there’s someone home. I saw the curtains move.”

I run down the gravel path again and knock on the door until my knuckles sting. I try the catch, but it’s still locked. I want to bash the door down.

Dave comes to see what’s going on. He yells out, “Open the door, Zora.”

Suddenly, her face is at the window. She’s there, watching us. I point to the front door. She mouths the words, “Go away.”

“Let me in.”

She shakes her head. She looks terrible, as if she hasn’t slept for days. Her long dark hair hangs in greasy strands. She’s got huge bags under her eyes and she looks terrified.

That’s what scares me most. I’m her son. Why’s she afraid of me? What does she think I’ll do to her? She’s not going to let me in – even after I came all this way to see her.

I get a sinking feeling in my stomach and I’m not sure why. It’s a feeling of dread. I don’t get it – Mum was a bit off last time, but not this bad. Did I say something to make her mad? Did I disappoint her? Maybe I didn’t grow up the way she thought I would.

There’s nothing I can do. I shuffle back to the car.

Dave opens the door for me. “I’m really sorry,” he says.

I climb into the passenger’s seat and slam the door. “What’s with her? If she doesn’t want to see me, why doesn’t she have the guts to say it to my face?”

“Maybe she doesn’t want to hurt you.”

“Yeah, well, this is the second time she’s done it. She’s not going to get another chance. That’s the last time I come here.”

Dave puts a hand on my arm and looks at me intently. “I don’t know what I can say to make it better,” he says.

“You can’t, Dave. I just wish I’d never come.”

Dave starts the car and we drive off.

“You caught her on a bad day, that’s all.”

“I don’t get it. First, she runs away and leaves me. Then she reckons she loved me all along – seems really pleased to see me. Then she blows me off again. I don’t get it. What have I done wrong, Dave?”

Dave stops the car. “You haven’t done anything, Matt. It’s not you. It’s her sickness.”

“So she says. But what’s she got? And why can’t it be fixed?”

Dave hesitates, as if he’s wondering how much to tell me.

“Come on! You promised, no more lies.”

“You know how I told you about her mood swings when we first talked about her?”

I nod.

“That’s part of a condition called bipolar.”

“What’s that?”

“It means she has cycles in her brain. Sometimes she’s manically happy and other times she’s depressed and sad.”

I pick at the seat cover. “Is she ever normal?”

Dave puts his hand on my arm. “When she’s on her medication.”

I look at it him. “Why can’t we get her to take it?”

“I’ve tried. Everyone who loves her has tried. But she doesn’t want our help. We’ve all been down that road with her so many times.”

“You still love her?”

Dave nods. “In a way, I suppose I do. But I’d never let her get close to me again. It would never work. On the medication, she’s okay …”

So it can be fixed! “What does she take?”

“It’s called lithium. It helps even out the imbalances in her brain.”

“Doesn’t she want to get better?”

“She reckons the medication stops her from feeling things – from being able to paint. She’s made her choice. And there’s not a damn thing you or I can do about it.”

“But she’s my mother.”

“I know that. But you know what Rosenbaum says, ‘You can’t make someone else into the person you want them to be’.”

I feel like screaming. I’ve felt closer to Dave today than I have in ages and now he has to spoil it with another Rosenbaumism? To hell with Rosenbaum! I wish for once, he would tell me a Dave Original, something that comes from his own heart, and not out of a book.

“And what about you, Dave? What do you say?”

Dear Leonardo
,

You said once, “He who is fixed to a star does not change his mind.”

Is that why Mum will always choose her painting over us?

Matt