The Eye of the Sheep (17 page)

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That night Dad said, ‘I’ll eat in here, Paula.’
In here
was the sitting room. Redness washed across Mum’s face. It was blood transmitting the stored feelings. Mum brought him steak and onion and corn on the cob on a tray into the sitting room, then she came back into the kitchen and ate bread and jam standing at the sink. She curled the bread over and the piece was gone in two bites. Her eyes were blank without a single story to tell. After he finished dinner Dad came in, and, graceful as a dancer, reached up to the high cupboard, pushed past the vitamin C and the Panadol, and took down the bottle of Cutty Sark. The boat on the bottle sailed down into our kitchen, dropping anchor on the bench while Dad took the ice out of the freezer.

That night I was dreaming the room had a skin and I was the heart inside it, when I woke to the sound of glass smashing. In my dream I didn’t know what kept me beating. The time between my beats was always different; the pattern was broken. I didn’t know if I would make it to the next beat. I heard Mum say ‘
No, Gav!
’ I heard something crash. There was a scream but I don’t know which side of the skin it came from. The bed filled with warm water. It was the Indian Ocean making a visit, absorbed through the epidermis. On the other side of the skin the rest of the house began to sink.
Beatbeat beat . . . beat
. I kept my eyes tightly closed.

The next day Dad came home and told Mum that he’d been fired. ‘No bloody loyalty,’ he said. ‘I’m a dollar sign and that’s it.’

When he crossed the yard to go into his shed I saw that the water was gone from his body. Smoke drifted from his chest.
He was dried up like a desert. I wanted Mum to hose him the way she did the succulents.

I ran outside after him. Mum called me back. ‘Stay away from your father, Jimmy. He’s had bad news, okay? You stay away.’

‘What happened, Mum?’ I asked her. ‘What happened? Why is Dad home?’ It was only two o’clock. Dad didn’t come home until six o’clock. ‘Why did they fire him?’

‘Shhh, Jimmy, take it easy. Just do something else.’

‘What, Mum? What?’

‘What about your manuals? Your blocks?’

‘What about your manuals?’ I copied her voice, rising in the middle, breathy.

‘Jimmy!’ she snapped.
‘Don’t!
’ Tiny currents of electricity left behind from the firing zigzagged through the kitchen.

Mum made me sit in the sewing room with my manuals while she worked. I learned how the needle automatically threads and stitches. The levers at the base connect to the cotton and its all systems go. When Mum left to answer the telephone I went out into the yard. I turned an empty plant bucket upside down, and put it underneath Dad’s high shed window. Then I stood on it.

Dad was staring into his open fridge. He was the centre and the light from the fridge came out in rays around him. All of the rest of the shed was in shadow. Soon he closed the fridge without taking anything out. He stood up and leaned against his workbench, his back to me. Everything in the shed radiated from him. The spanner, the saw, the rope, the car parts, the posters on the wall, even the dust particles, all joined to him by lines.

Dad slammed his fists down onto the workbench. ‘Fuck!’ he said.

I was ticking like a clock after too many windings. I gripped the ledge tightly, the bucket shaky beneath my feet. Dad sagged against the bench, putting his face into the bowl of his shadowy hands. Suddenly he lifted his head as if somebody had whispered to him that I was there. He swung around and saw me through the dusty glass. Though our vision was obstructed by dirt and cobweb and stain, his eyes held me suspended. Even if the bucket fell I would have hung there. I wanted to call out, but my throat was locked and wouldn’t release the sounds.

When at last he turned away, shaking his head as if he could refuse me, I jumped off my bucket and ran inside.

Later I saw him coming up to the house. Just before dinner when I walked past the sitting room I saw the dark of my dad’s head in his black recliner bobbing up and down to Merle, who sang ‘The Fightin’ Side of Me.’ I saw his hand pour beer into his throat. The table in front of him was full of empty bottles. His ashtray was on the ground beside the recliner. It overflowed with butts. Two were on the carpet, like white slugs.

I went into the kitchen where Mum was making dinner. She put chops, carrots, green beans and potato on a plate with a white roll on the side and carried it in to Dad. She knew that after he ate he wasn’t as drunk. Food particles battled the whisky and food, due to the heaviness, always won.

I heard Dad shouting from the sitting room, ‘What the hell would you know about it?’

My heart beat faster. My hands kept getting in each other’s
way, knocking against each other. The Saxa fell from the table, leaving a spill of salt across the floor.

‘You and that bloody kid! He drives to me to it. You both do. Leave me alone!’

I got up from the table and walked to the sitting room. The dinner Mum had brought for Dad was on the floor. Beans made a path across the carpet that led to Mum and Dad where they stood facing each other.

Why was my mother in there? She knew not to stay when Dad was drinking.

‘You leave him out of this. It’s not his fault you lost your job.’ Her face was red. There was chop gravy on her dress. Her hair flew round her face as if it was electric.

Dad stepped towards her. ‘If he’d been normal we could’ve moved to Albany. I could’ve got the job on the rigs.’

‘Oh, the bloody job on the rigs. Bloody Albany! You tried to get the job on the rigs and they said you weren’t big enough or some rubbish. It had nothing to do with our son!’ Her voice exploded from her.

I clung to the doorframe and watched sparks shoot from her mouth.

‘Our son!’ Dad shouted. ‘He’s not my bloody son! You must’a done some other poor bastard to get a son like that!’

Mum made the sound of an animal trying to escape. Then she came at him with the full strength of her body – with her arms that hung the washing and swept and vacuumed, with her legs that pushed the trolley of cans and packets all the way up the hill every Saturday, with her stomach where she put her dinners, and with the weight of her bottom that made a chair for her to sit on after another day done. Her hair now bright
with currents that flicked into the air above, she pushed herself into him and he fell back against the coffee table.

‘Stupid bloody woman.’ Dad dragged a low growl up from under the carpet beneath his feet, pulling it past the fibres and giving it hard to my mother. He shoved her in the chest. I wished she was wearing a jacket made of knives and guns, all the knives tied together and the guns aimed and ready. I wished she was wearing it under her dress, but she wasn’t. All she had was the bra and the cream petticoat I’d seen her put on that morning before she pulled her stripe and dot dress over her head.

Mum screamed and Dad hit her in the eyes. He was blinding her! He was blinding my mum! Who would see me if not her?

The sparks that shot from Mum’s mouth ignited a trail that snaked across the carpet and set my feet alight. I ran with an unstoppable force into the room and hit Dad in the legs. He felt hard under my fists, as if there were metal fillings beneath his skin. I hit him in the stomach then he hit me back. Dad had never hit me before; it was only ever Mum. I felt the bones of my chest splinter from the weight of his hand. He grabbed my arm and pulled it and snapped it like a matchstick.

I swung at him with my other arm. ‘No, Dad! No! No!’ I shouted.

And then he shoved me hard against the wall. Merle Haggard sang ‘That’s the Way Love Goes’ as I fell. I looked up and saw brown beer bottles filled with light as if a candle was burning inside each one. The carpet was wet with the ocean that flooded out of me.

Through the glass I saw Mum catch fire. Flames leapt from her body. She whipped at Dad with her burning branches, until he was crushed against the wall, hands over his face to protect
himself from the heat. He dropped into his chair and let her burn him.

When she’d run out of fuel, Mum fell to her knees beside me, looking up at my dad. ‘Our boy, Gavin,
our boy
,’ she cried. ‘Our son!’ In her voice was the memory of a time when I belonged to both of them; neither his nor hers, their shared boy. Dad heard it too, but he couldn’t look.

Mum kept crying as she half carried, half dragged me out of the sitting room and into the bathroom, where she wiped my face and took off my clothes. She fumbled with my clothes, trying to still her hands, trying to breathe in the air that might cool her and calm her.

She ran the sponge over my nose and arms and cheeks. My bones felt as if they’d been torn from my skeletal, like I’d seen Uncle Rodney do to the fish. My chest and arm ached. Blood dripped from my nose. Blood is always just under the skin; the skin is what holds it all in, like a membrane.

Mum gave me a pill from the medicine cupboard then she lay beside me on my bed in the dark of the sewing room, one arm under my neck. She gripped me. Her fingers hurt but I didn’t stop her. My nose throbbed. What connected the nose to the face and the arm to the body? Was it veins? Was it wires? Was it nerves? Did the nose stay on the face for the same reason the arm stayed on the body?

When I next opened my eyes there was a strip of grey light between the curtains. I heard somebody walking around the house. I heard cupboards opening and closing, I heard Dad’s cough, his vomit, his peeing, his flush, taps turning on and off. The last thing I heard was the Holden leaving the house.
I heard it go down the drive and then out onto the street and then away down the road and then I heard it go further. It kept turning and turning, stopping at lights, going left, going right, further and further till it came to the highway with six lanes of traffic rushing past and then it joined the highway and chose its lane, going further and further away until it drove into the centre of the setting sun. When I next opened my eyes it was morning.

When I moved in the bed my arm felt as if it caught on a hook inside, and hurt. I got up slowly, my body heavy and sore, and put my trousers over my pyjamas.

Mum was in the sitting room vacuuming the place in the carpet where I had lain the night before. When she saw me, she switched off the machine. Both her eyes were purple and swollen, as if she was wearing goggles. I heard the tentacles in her apparatus waving as they tried to move the dust. It made me want to put the vacuum cleaner to her mouth.

‘Do you want your puffer, Mum?’ I asked her.

‘No, love, that’s alright.’ She came over to me, wiping sweat from her forehead. ‘I thought you’d sleep in. I was going to come and check on you in a minute. Are you alright?’ She touched my arm and I flinched. ‘Oh, is that sore?’

I nodded.

‘Oh no, Jimmy . . .’ She lifted my top and gasped.

I looked down and saw a bruise spreading across my chest like a country on a map. ‘Oh Jimmy . . .’ She traced her fingers lightly across the bruise. Tears filled her eyes.

‘Where’s Dad?’ I asked her.

‘Not here,’ she answered.

‘Where is he?’

‘He left.’

‘Where did he go? Did he go to work?’

‘No, no he didn’t go to work.’

‘Did he go to the TAB?’

‘No . . .’

‘Did he go to the bottle shop? Did he go the newsagent?’

‘No, no Jimmy, he didn’t go to any of those places.’

‘Then where did he go?’

‘I’m not sure.’ She sat down on the couch, patting the space beside her.

I stayed where I was. ‘When is he coming back?’

‘Jimmy, your dad . . .’ She searched for the words, pulling at her lips with her fingers as if there might be some hidden inside them.

‘When is he coming back?’

‘Your dad . . .’

‘What?’

‘He had to go.’ Mum had no control over her pipes. As she spoke water came down over her face, as if her eye gutters were blocked: full with leaves and dirt and soil.

‘Did he take the car?’

‘Yes, yes he took the car. It’s all he took.’ She stood suddenly from the couch, pulling in air, straightening her skirt. ‘Jimmy, we have to get ready for town.’

‘Town? Why?’

‘Because we do.’

‘Will he come back?’

‘No more questions – we have to go.’

‘But, Mum, will he?’

‘Let’s get you dressed quick as we can, hey?’

‘Where are we going?’

‘Dr Eric’s,’ said Mum. ‘Get a move on.’

Mum took me into town on the bus along Blythe Street. I sat beside her and counted the measurements of her breaths. Mine was in
one two
, hers was in
one
out
one
.

They didn’t keep us in the waiting room long. The girl at the desk looked at Mum’s eyes, frowned and sent us through.

‘What happened?’ Dr Eric asked Mum.

‘Oh, it’s nothing, really. It looks worse than it is.’

‘I doubt that, Paula. What happened?’

‘Oh nothing – it’s not me I’ve come about. It’s Jimmy.’

‘You first,’ said Dr Eric. ‘What happened?’

‘My fault – very silly. You know how you leave a broom leaning against a wall when you finish sweeping? You know how you do that? With the pile of dust ready to pick up? Well I went and stood on the broom and the handle of the thing came flying back at me and got me in the eyes. See how silly I was!’

Dr Eric didn’t look like he saw how silly Mum was. She winced as he touched the skin around her eyes. ‘If you had come in when it happened I would have insisted on stitches. But as it is, it looks like it will be alright.’

‘Oh yes, good, I didn’t think it was too bad.’

‘It
is
bad, Paula.’

‘Will you have a look at Jimmy?’ She turned to me. ‘He . . . oh dear . . . he got into a bit of a scuffle . . . his arm . . .’

Dr Eric looked at my arm. ‘This will have to be X-rayed.’

‘Will you look at his chest?’

Dr Eric lifted my top. He listened with his stethoscope. He felt my ribs. ‘Paula, I need to know that it won’t happen again or I will have to do something about it. Do you understand what I am saying?’ Dr Eric’s words were red lights flashing on off on off.