The Best Australian Stories 2010 (9 page)

‘How's the art world?' he'd ask. ‘Selling any?' He came to my exhibitions because he liked the business–social aspect, plus the chance to mingle safely with a few raffish characters.

Always we acted as brothers. But we were acting. We weren't exactly brothers, and we weren't exactly friends. We were something in between.

But this was an intriguing twist, being called on for advice. Until recently the role of the family bohemian, the black sheep, was mine.

*

Even his handshake was different now, loose and metallic. All those silver rings on his fingers. Another in his left ear. Silver bracelets on each wrist, a necklace of little beads and seeds and stones, and another thin chain with some sort of gemstone pendant banging portentously against his sternum. I'd never seen an ornamented Anthony before – the Old Guildfordian cufflinks used to be his limit.

Add the rumpled natural fibres, a collarless shirt, rubbery sandals (no leather in evidence), floppy drawstring trousers like pyjama pants that didn't reach his ankles, and he'd gone the whole hog, sartorially. Guru-wear, his mother called it. It looked more like grandpa-wear to me – if your grandpa was institutionalised and had got into grandma's jewellery box.

I'd dressed up in a shirt with a collar and, for the first time, I felt like the conservative brother. ‘So, what's happening, Ant?' I said as I sat down. The ‘what's happening' came out more abruptly than I'd intended. I meant it more as How are you going? but it came out like What the Christ are you doing with your life?

‘What do you mean?' he said, frowning. To be honest, he looked well. He'd lost the extra weight he'd stacked on. Of course those childhood veins had long since vanished into ruddy cheeks and freckled temples.

‘How are things? What are you up to?'

That frown at least was familiar. Was he going to answer or not?

His cutlery caught the sun as he was arranging his knife and fork at right angles to the table edge.

‘I heard you'd gone vegetarian. So, you eat fish then?'

Yes, he ate fish. Apparently his new lifestyle didn't preclude alcohol either, or his liking for good wines, and once the bottle he'd ordered had arrived he began to open up. ‘Look, I've embarked on a new journey,' he began, guardedly. His fingers were still fiddling with the tableware. ‘Everything in my life has been leading me to this point.'

‘Doesn't it always?' I said. But I was trying to be understanding. ‘Tell me about your life changes. Who's the girlfriend? Do I know her?' There was a fair chance I did. My gravelly three acres of banksias and grass trees were also up in the hills. ‘Are you sure you're doing the right thing?'

Part calming-Jesus, part-lawyer, he raised an admonishing hand. ‘Let me show you something.' He held up the wine bottle, pointed to its label, read out its name: Torbreck Roussanne Marsanne. Barossa Valley. Its design featured two concentric circles. He tapped them with a beringed finger. His expression, very legal and wisdom-of-the-ages, declared, I rest my case.

‘What?'

‘That label says it all,' he said. ‘It's a personal message to me. It tells me I'm doing the right thing.'

‘Really?' I toyed with the idea of the Torbreck wine people not only knowing of his existence but basing their graphic designs and marketing strategies around his changing emotions. ‘I thought the label was saying, Please buy this wine.'

Anthony sighed and cast his eyes around the restaurant. ‘The thing is, I can get confirmation anywhere,' he said. ‘Okay, see those napkin rings on the buffet over there?' Two silver circles stood side by side, intersecting slightly. ‘They're speaking to me. They're confirming the rightness of my journey.'

‘Do the circles represent you and the new woman?'

He sighed. ‘Among other things.'

‘Are you going to tell me her name?'

‘Does it matter? Sarita. Maya. Parissa. She goes by several names. She's the essential, fundamental woman.'

Fundamental woman. I got the picture. Cuntstruck.

He said, ‘We don't have sex, if that's what you're thinking.'

Our plates of snapper arrived then, the fish engulfed by circles of beetroot and orange slices, and onion and pineapple rings. Collage as much as meal. As I scraped the bright geometric toppings off my fish I almost asked whether all this round food was conveying wisdom to him.

I was running out of questions and Anthony, his cheeks already flushed from the alcohol and conversation, was still frowning. I swallowed another mouthful of wine. I was forced to raise my voice over the dour northern English voices and seagull squawks. So, this new life journey, one of tossed-in job and dumped family – a celibate journey, to boot – was being determined by serviette rings and wine labels.

‘Ant, I think you need to see someone,' I said.

*

Charged with carbohydrates, the melee of eight-year-olds fled the debris of the party table. For several minutes Brian and I tried to exhaust them by organising a game of Red Rover under the peppermint trees, but the idea didn't take hold.

Weary of manners and adult directions, first one boy then another broke away from the game and began running up the hill and rolling down again. Soon all of them were rolling and shrieking and somersaulting down the slope. Late-afternoon shadows were stretching across the park but the day's clamminess seemed to have increased. In the heat, with the river so close, this fierce prickly game looked like madness. Over and over, hysterical, they rolled and climbed.

Behind the main clump of boys, Anthony, less quick and agile, dizzy and red-faced, grass sticking to his shirt, picked himself up and staggered up the incline once more. His legs were wobbly sticks. As he climbed he had to avoid the mob of boys tumbling down, and several times he was knocked over. He was no longer in charge of events and the rebellious horde ignored his angry protests and indignant arm-waving. That urgent noise he was making sounded somewhere between shouting and sobbing. Then he got to his feet halfway up the hill, beat his sides with his fists and started to scream.

*

Anthony drained his glass, leaned back in his chair, dropped his hands in his lap, breathed deeply – once, twice – as if willing the dangerous glimmer in his eyes to fade and a suitably serene expression to slide down his cheeks.

‘See someone? You mean a shrink?'

‘Well, a psychologist or counsellor or whatever.' It sounded lame. He'd lost his father at the age of five. I tended to forget that. I'd been twelve when Mum died and eighteen when Dad did. Being five was probably worse. But at least he still had a mother. ‘You might find it very helpful, dealing with old emotional stuff.'

‘I have my own spiritual mentors,' he declared. ‘And I've never been more emotionally stable in my life. In fact, I'm so calm that I don't even resent your bloody gratuitous advice.'

‘Just because you're calm doesn't mean you're not fucked up and don't need help.'

‘And you'd be competent to judge that? With your background? A fucking painter who didn't even go to university?'

‘Someone with more life experience and common sense than you, brother.'

He raised an eyebrow. The resemblance was extraordinary. It could have been our father, towards the end. When he was bitter and hitting the bottle late at night, and always giving Sally and me strange looks; when he realised he'd remarried too soon, the wrong woman; when he was still mourning my mother.

‘Brother? Are you sure?'

‘Jesus! Well, half-brother then.'

He was running a finger round the rim of his wineglass so it made an irritating thin scream. Another bloody circle.

‘You're sure of that?' he repeated.

I could have whacked his smug hippie-lawyer head. ‘What are you getting at?'

Anthony wore a prim smile, as if an old score was finally settled.

‘You never wondered why you're short and olive-skinned? How incurious can you be? I hate to be the one to pass on family secrets, but you know your mother couldn't have children?'

For a few seconds I couldn't see. The glare off the harbour, snowy tablecloths, the swirling white ruckus of the seagulls, blinded me. The whole scene was leached of tint and shade. Strangely, I recalled the faint watercolours of Lloyd Rees when his sight was fading at the end of his life. If it were me, I'd have chosen brighter and brighter colours. But his were pale, soft yet urgent paintings that paralleled his life force. Paintings needing to be quickly said before time ran out.

I remembered how stressful my sister always found those get-togethers of the gingery Millers. The insouciant ways of the Spritzer Sisters, as she called them, the blithe, patronising attitude of Liz's siblings towards ‘Monica's kids' made Sally edgy and self-conscious in their presence, and savagely mocking later. My shy sister always got plenty of sardonic material from family gatherings but they wore her out and in the end she'd given up attending them. My older, smaller sister.

Anthony was rolling his napkin into a ball. ‘Very commendable of them in the circumstances to take you both in. I guess it must have been spiritually fulfilling in its way to snatch you from the tribe. All Monica's doing, I've been told, and he went along with it because of her infertility problems. Complex legal processes involved, health and cultural risks. Made it easier you two being pale, I guess. God knows that community doesn't give up its waifs too readily.'

*

Some of the boys on the hill stopped surging and somersaulting to stare at Anthony and his noise. The sisters glanced up from their spritzers and cigarettes, shook their heads wearily and resumed chatting. Anthony bellowed on. Tired of the hubbub, a couple of boys made for the shade, brushed themselves down, drank some Coke and looked around for entertainment. Then they spotted the Slazenger bag, unzipped it, got out the bat and ball, set up the stumps and quietly began playing.

I joined the game behind the wicket. The bowler bowled properly overarm, using the regulation hard six-stitcher; the batsman struck the ball squarely back to him two, three times. The face of the bat and the panther emblem hit the ball correctly with sharp, efficient cracks.

Down the hill thundered Anthony. His pallor was gone and his curls were damp and stringy. Muddy tear streaks ran down his cheeks and spit frothed on his lips.

‘Give everything to me!' he yelled. He raced up to the surprised batsman and snatched the bat from him; he took the ball from the bowler; he grabbed up the stumps. From the bitter ferocity of his glare, I could tell I had betrayed him.

‘What are you doing?' I said.

From under the peppermint trees his mother sang out, ‘Ant, play nicely.'

For a moment he stood there undecided, with the cricket gear clasped possessively to his chest. Then he stacked it back into the Slazenger bag, picked up the bag and marched off down the park.

He'd gone maybe twenty metres when something apparently occurred to him and he stopped, returned to the party table, collected all his birthday presents – some gifts still unopened – and crammed them into the bag as well. It was a tight squeeze: the panther was stretched to bursting.

Very businesslike then, a grim smile fixed on his face, he strode down to the river. I watched him go, just as grimly. The sea breeze had finally arrived, sweeping through the peppermint trees, and snappy little waves began breaking on the shore. I followed him but I wasn't going to stop him. Surely this tantrum would soon play itself out.

Indeed, the bag must have become heavy because he had to haul it the last few metres across the sand and onto the jetty. Brushing aside skylarking wet children, curious onlookers, he dragged it the length of the jetty until he came to a pontoon just above the deep water. Then he heaved the bag into the river.

All that wood inside it, and the trapped air; it floated easily. A couple of children dived in and set off after it, then gave up. The tide was going out and the Slazenger bag sailed away into the bay and bobbed into the wide river estuary. I reached the pontoon, and sat down along from Anthony, and we watched the bag in silence until it was gone.

Brothers and Sisters

The Great Philosophers

Michael McGirr

I used to sedate my students with a line or two from the great philosophers. When they complained about tests I told them that Socrates said the unexamined life was not worth living. Every afternoon when they went to their lockers I'd remind them to pack their bags carefully, to think of what they needed, to remember that Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) said that the world was the sum of everything in the case. I learnt as a teacher that the great philosophers need to be tailored for use in the classroom.

I don't see Anton much. We both have a key to the room and Gloria has one as well, which makes a total of three keys, so if something goes missing then we won't need a long investigation. Anton keeps his gear in plastic bags: laundry and toiletries and a few old magazines. He gets up and goes out early. I saw him once in a laundromat on the other side of town when I was spending a day riding trains. I recognised the set of his back against the front window as he was reading the paper. I'd know that back anywhere because I get to study it across the room in the middle of the night when I can't sleep; the green exit sign over the door is on all the time so the room is never dark. We lie under a wash of cheerless green light, not enough to read, too much to sleep. The mattresses are made of rubber and exhale whenever someone turns on them. Cold night or hot, the rubber feels clammy under the sheets. It doesn't matter. We have the day to sleep as long as we do it away from here. Everyone has to be on their way to somewhere by 9 a.m., even if they don't know where.