The Paper House (16 page)

‘Good afternoon,’ I said, slamming my door.

Dad grabbed my hands. ‘This is Ursula. Sorry Ursula, we were just leaving.’ The woman stared up at us, pupils fixed. Dad looked at me. ‘Are those pyjamas?’ he said to me.

‘These? They’re track pants.’

He frowned. ‘I’ll drive,’ he said.

‘I can drive.’

‘I want to drive.’ I rattled the keys.

Ursula waved from the love seat as we pulled out.

He took the shorter route, where the trees bowed to one another across the highway. The day was hot and still. Bitumen escaped from the road in glossy threads. Dad paused to let a woman cross. He beeped at a guy on his phone. He waved to a throng of high school kids on their way to the pub (fake IDs in pockets).

‘You must be looking forward to having Dave around more,’ he said.

‘I guess so,’ I said. ‘The house is pretty full already.’

We stopped at the lights and he looked over to me. ‘Am I there too much?’

‘Nope.’

‘Not enough?’

‘Just right,’ I said.

‘Hard to know what’s helpful. Know what I mean?’

‘Yeah.’

Sometimes, in the depths of winter when the house rocked in the salty gusts, I climbed into mum’s bed hours before she did, to warm it. The sheets were that stiff cotton that’s always cold. I wriggled my legs as fast as I could, tried to light a fire with the friction. Turned myself around and around to cover all the corners of it. And when I was done, I disappeared into my own bed to wait for her to call me in.
My bed is lovely and warm!
she said, with her eyes wet and her arms folded. Smiling.

‘Don’t want to do too much helping,’ I said.

‘You know what I mean.’

Dave was waiting by the gate with the other teachers. Prisoners on day release. The school with all its little buildings, plucked from a much larger complex and dropped on this green oval with its cliff-faced perimeter. He stood easily, his body fluid. Regaling his audience with some story or another – maybe the one about the seagulls that dive-bombed us at Phillip Island. Hundreds of them. Gull shit from his hair to his shoes, but he’d protected me with his whole body. That story, probably. Not the one where I caught my jacket in the car door on the way into hospital. Probably not that one.

‘Look how happy he is,’ I said.

‘He’s laughing,’ Dad said. ‘Not the same thing.’

‘Thanks, Descartes.’

Dave climbed into the back seat. ‘Bruce, you didn’t have to come.’ He beamed out at me. ‘Heather can drive, you know.’ He squeezed my shoulder. ‘Holidays! What shall we do first? Beer?’

‘Took myself out for dinner last night at this place on the roundabout,’ Dad said. ‘Had a pretty good parma.’

‘Sold.’ Dave clapped his hands.

I’d been there before, when we were still visitors. Rows of flower boxes and mismatched chairs rusted at the corners – deliberately, though, the way they had been in the city two years earlier. Dad sat by the door and I sat across from him, under the air-conditioner. Dave sat by the window; he’d never been able to sit with his back to a restaurant. My seat was hard. Briefly I felt the strain of the almost-wound across my abdomen, where my track pants rubbed.

Dave waved to students as they came in with their parents.

‘Are you allowed to talk to them outside of school?’ I said.

‘Why wouldn’t I be?’

‘Isn’t there like, student-teacher confidentiality?’

‘No?’

‘Oh.’ A couple walked by with their twin boys. Dave shook the father’s hand, rubbed the head of the snottier twin.

‘Have a great Christmas,’ he said. And he said it again, and again, to the stream of faces he found familiar but that I did not.

‘Must meet a lot of people working in a school,’ Dad said.

‘God yeah.’ Dave made finger guns at another family. ‘Half the time I’m not even teaching, just trying to remember their names.’

Our waitress was large and bouncy and had her breasts buttoned so tightly into her shirt that I could almost hear it straining. She pulled a pencil from the pocket in her apron.

‘Drinks?’ she said.

‘Pale ale,’ Dave said, and Dad said, ‘Pot of draught,’ and I said, ‘Water.’ She took our wine glasses. Ran her eyes across Dave. Told Dad she liked his shirt (orange hibiscuses). Dave watched her leave, her hips bound in black pleather and the clack of her kitten heels.

Dad coughed. ‘After this I thought we could go into Frankston. Five minutes down the road.’

‘What for?’

‘Sandcastle building competition. The bird running the Courtyard told me about it. Expert sandcastle builders.’ He shoved a couple of chips in his mouth. ‘I could’ve been an expert sandcastle builder.’

‘Oh yeah?’

‘Mermaids, dragons. The whole bit.’

A couple sat at the table next to us. The man: oblong, robust. The woman: limp-haired, thin-lipped. She looked over at me and I stared back at her, the two of us locked together in our recognition. Dad glanced across, squinted.

‘Friend of yours?’ he said.

‘No,’ I said. Dave’s foot hooked around mine. Jenny’s face disappeared behind her menu.

We got a bowl of chips and a shiny boat of gravy, and Dave poured it everywhere until we had soup. Dad plucked the chips out with his hands, laughed as the gravy ran down his fingers. They clinked their beers. The afternoon tripped through the open windows until it was all around us and the bowl was empty.

Dave drove into Frankston. We hadn’t paid it much notice before we moved, and certainly not after, but it had a pretty foreshore and a new cinema complex, and the dodgy old bars our friends had frequented as children. People moved everywhere, great hordes of them, and right down at the beach sand structures stretched into the sky.

‘Sand
sculpture
,’ Dave said. ‘Not sandcastles.’

‘Still. Missed my calling.’ Dad winked at me, inexplicably.

We parked the car miles away and walked down the main street. Dad skipped ahead on his bony legs. ‘He looks like a newborn foal,’ Dave said, and he did. From the entry to the exhibition, he turned and shouted: ‘Forty dollars!’ and we walked on, tried to see the best sculptures over the fence but it had been blocked out with mesh.

‘Forty dollars to see
sand
,’ Dad said. ‘Cheaper to hire your own sandcastle builder.’

‘You think?’ Dave opened the calculator on his phone. ‘I make it fifty-eight dollars to hire a sand sculptor.’

‘I wouldn’t have charged that much.’

‘You’re a man of the people, Bruce.’

We went down the back of the plot and across the sand, dry and soft, losing our feet in its tiny dunes. Dad slipped in alongside me and Dave walked down to the water’s edge. Dad cleared his throat.

‘Yes?’ I said.

‘Look at him.’

Dave carried his shoes. I watched him draw circles in the wet sand, and the water rushed into them and carried them out to sea. He found a jellyfish and kicked it. Bits of clear blubber flew into the air. He did it again, kicked the broken bits. Kicked them again so they were smaller still, again until they disappeared completely.

‘What about him?’

He put his arm around me. ‘When your mum was sick, everybody looked at her.’

‘No they didn’t. No one looked at her.’

‘Hear me out.’ Dave found a shell and hurled it into the sea. ‘Her sickness was invisible, that’s true. I mean, you’re right people mostly didn’t look at her. Walked past. Saw her in the street and crossed the road. People she’d known for years and years pretending they didn’t know her.’

‘I don’t think that’s Dave’s fault.’

‘The people who did care about your mum – and they were there – only saw her. Not you. Not Fleur. And definitely not me.’ He let out a long breath. ‘I always had to be there for
her
. And I did it because I loved her and she was my wife, all those reasons. But when you’re the partner, no one looks at you.’

‘Right. Poor you. Poor Dave.’

‘Don’t be like that. You’re not listening. Being the “sick one”’ – he made air quotes – ‘gets attention. Caring for the sick one is exhausting. Seriously, you have no idea.’

I clenched my jaw. ‘I have some idea.’

‘There was a time when I was out at work and I got a call. In the middle of the night. It was a big deal to get a call to the rig back then. No mobiles. No emails. Manager came down to my room, pitch black. Flicked the light on and just stood there for a bloody age. Staring at me. I said to him, John, what the hell time is it? And he said, it’s three o’clock. Kept staring.’

Dave found another jellyfish and blitzed it. Dad’s arm was so tight around my shoulder.

‘So after a minute I guess I got out of bed and went over to him and punched him in the arm or something. John! Why are you in my room! And he sort of patted me on the back and said, Shelley’s in the ICU.’

‘The ICU?’

‘I rang the hospital right away but they couldn’t tell me anything. Your Gran was with her, I think. I asked them, is she going to be okay? and they said they didn’t know.’ His voice cracked. ‘It took me two days to get back to Melbourne. I called from every stop I made but they just said the same thing, they didn’t know.’

‘What did you do?’

‘I went straight from the airport to the Epworth. They’d flown her there in the air ambulance.’

‘Why though?’

He made a ball of sand and threw it. ‘Overdose. They were mine, from when I threw out my back. I had to watch her almost-die in that hospital bed three times and know it was my fault. Nurses kept telling me it was. Never would have happened if I’d been there. Someone should have been looking out for her. Everyone knew she shouldn’t have had access to pain pills. Just got lucky this time. Just
lucky
. Look, now you’re so lucky you get to go home and watch her for two months without pay and hope she doesn’t try to die again. Hope and hope. People will stop coming and it will just be you.’

‘I don’t remember any of this.’

‘My sister Jean came down from Ararat so I could stay with your mum. Six days in the ICU.’ He kicked a jellyfish and it sprayed across the sand. ‘I’m just saying, we’re invisible. No one looks at us because we’re not the sick ones.’

And there he was, my Dave. Sitting in the tide, letting it pool around him. Unnoticed.

*

The next night we met in Sylvia’s front yard. She’d packed a picnic basket and it filled the car with its doughy sweetness. The night was warm and the wind licked our skin, rushing through the windows and then out again, sparrows caught in currents. Dad sat against the window, Dave with his long limbs folded into the middle seat, then me. Fleur got shotgun on account of her leg, which she propped against the dashboard, pushed her seat right back.

‘Hey!’ said Dad, crushed into himself.

‘No Ashok?’ I said.

‘No dogs allowed at drive-in,’ Sylvia said.

The twilight was golden, in both colour and mood. We drove deep along the foreshore, past the turnoffs to other places (Dad: ‘Tyabb? That’s a stupid name.’ and Dave: ‘Flinders has a great bakery though.’), across a bridge that was more of a modern art piece, and a milkbar with a couple under an umbrella. The sea crested quickly as the tide moved; it was blustery. Sylvia had her window up but the rest of us let our bodies flutter.

A row of cars blinked back to the main road.

‘Great turnout,’ Dad said.

Dave eyed the line, tapping his fingers on his seat. ‘Lots of them.’

‘Nervous?’ I said.

‘Me? No way.’ But his hands went around and around in his lap. I felt myself slip into the adult role momentarily, touching his knee and telling him it would be fine. The parents will love it. Only night out all year. ‘You’re probably right.’ His body relaxed. Sylvia’s stereo crackled through golden oldies.

Ours was the only car rattling. The others hummed and moved in rows of polite ants.

Sylvia tapped her fingers on the steering wheel. ‘I have not been to drive-in movie since boys were little,’ she said. ‘We came to see this movie
Mary Poppins
. Grant did not like it! He hide under my feet until the end.’ I watched her ears lift; she was smiling. ‘We get hot dogs. Not picnic. I was too tired to make picnic.’

Fleur groaned a little, lifted her leg through the window and let her foot drop to the side mirror. ‘Better. No one had a caravan we could borrow?’ She threw her hand into the back seat. ‘Water in that basket?’

Sylvia slapped her hand. ‘This basket has everything! Water. Sangria. Little Christmas brandies.’

‘Water will be fine.’

‘Some pate made from ducks. You ever had pâté from ducks? Better than pâté from chickens. Not so good as pâté from peasants.’

‘Pheasants,’ Fleur said.

‘Yes, peasants.’

‘Chuck us the water, Heather.’ Fleur’s face gleamed in the late evening sun, slung as it was low across the sky. ‘Don’t suppose you brought my scratching wand?’

‘There are some forks here.’

‘Fork will do nicely. Give it.’ She stuck it deep into the cast, let out a long sigh of relief. ‘Reckon there’s a spider in there,’ she said. ‘Saw it in the corner of my room last night and then this morning? No spider, and all this new fucking itchiness.’ She reached around and put the fork back into the basket.

‘Gross, Fleur,’ Dad said.

They were all around me, my people crammed into the car. Each one buzzing in their own way, kicking the world along on its axis.

Ten minutes later we were at the yellow ticket booth. The woman in the booth smiled with all her teeth showing. Dad coughed up the twenty-five dollar entry.

‘I’d like my future grandchild to have a music school,’ he said, without looking at me.

‘Flute,’ said Dave, and he didn’t look at me either.

‘Violin,’ Dad said.

It wouldn’t be either of those things. An oboe, actually. A child of mine at the edge of a lake, playing the soundtrack to
The Mission
in as mournful a tone as she could muster.

‘Oboe,’ I said. They looked at me then. Both of them with all four of their eyes boring right into me. I hadn’t said
Oboe
. I had said
My future child
, and they knew it and we were like that for a minute, staring. They didn’t say anything, and I didn’t say anything, and the car moved and we went along with it down the road and the words were left behind at the booth to be swept up by the woman with all the teeth.