Zigzag Street (14 page)

Jeff calls mid-morning.

So what happened to you last night
?

Domestic duties.

The lost art of renovating
?

No, that's still a lost art. Just boxes. How was the party?

Good. Really good. That friend of Veny's from Sydney was there, asking after you
.

Which friend?

Fiona. The one who thinks you look like Roddy McDowell, remember
?

Yeah, great. And that is how I want to be remembered, as a Roddy McDowell impersonator. I wish she'd never said that. What does it mean, that I look like Roddy McDowell? What kind of a taunt is that? Anyway, which Roddy McDowell? Which Roddy McDowell look am I supposed to have? Maybe that's my problem. Maybe I have a crisis of identity, and I'm some incarnation of Roddy McDowell, but I don't know which.

There's always
Planet of the Apes.

Thank you.

After I get off the phone I realise that my mother, in telling me I only have to take it one box at a time, never really made it clear what I was to do with the contents. I suppose I'm to throw some things out and do something sensible and tidy with the rest.

But I can't throw any of this out. It looks like junk, but I can't let it go. It's the clearest picture I have of my grandmother, at least of her last few years. I want to tell my mother we need more of this, not less. Older boxes that tell me things I don't know.

Just a few months ago I listened to the rhythm of the knitting in this house, the black jumper beginning. Stood here for measuring and for the nearly-finished front to be sized up against me, held up against my chest by my grandmother's bony hands as the air squeezed noisily in and out of her slowly flooding lungs.

I didn't come here enough then. Every time I visited she'd thank me for coming and I knew I should visit more often. But even in her nineties, even when her heart failure worsened, it didn't occur to me that time would run out.

This is the floor I raced cars on when everyone else watched Neil Armstrong walk on the moon. This is the place where I was looked after when I was sick and couldn't go to school (and my mother got annoyed with my grandmother for peeling grapes for me, saying,
He'll only expect it at home now you know
). This is the place with the best birthday presents, the bottomless lolly jar. The only place I was ever paid five bucks for just being nice.

Sometimes it's still so much her house that I expect I'll walk into another room and find her there and get the chance to ask her any questions I like.

On Monday, Renee from the
Westside Chronicle
calls.

I'm the Neighbour of the Month. I have performed the act deemed most neighbourly in the inner-western suburbs in the preceding four weeks. She wants to feature me in the last February edition. She wants to talk to me tonight. I feel powerless to stop her.

Perhaps the 1950s was the age when Neighbour of the Month would have been a good thing. It has Good Old Fashioned Values written all over it. In the nineties it is not a prize to covet. It is not in any way a Late Millenium concept.

Hillary sticks her head round my door.
Things ready for Sydney
?

Sure.

Have you lined up someone to feed your cat
?

No.

Don't say I'm not looking after you
.

I don't say that I'm Neighbour of the Month either. And how would it make my grandmother feel? The woman who spent, and I do this in my head, about eight hundred and fifty months in the neighbourhood and went unrecognised. I move in, pull up a tree, and in a few weeks I'm a hero. It's a harsh world, our neighbourhood. Fuck it, she's a grandmother. She would have been proud. I'd have said, It was nothing, and she'd be sure
it was false modesty.
But I read about you in the paper
. And she would have cut it out and shown it to people.

Renee is there with a photographer when I get home.

I apologise and tell her the bus got stuck in traffic.

So you catch public transport? Is that a decision made on environmental grounds
?

Sure I tell her, thinking she's kidding.

No. She writes it down. She's going to make me a greenie as well as a hell of a neighbour. Of course, I can't go back on it now. I can't say I don't do it on environmental grounds. It'd seem as though I have some problem with the environment.

So what exactly did you do for Mister Butt
?

I pulled up a tree stump.

And did he ask you to help him with it first
?

No. I just went over and did it. With him. He'd started on it and I saw him and I went over. It probably seemed like a more manageable task than renovating the house I'm living in.

All this goes down in shorthand. She must hate doing these loser stories, surely. She must hate it when her working day drags on into the evening because a few weeks ago a guy dug up a tree stump.

Are you a Christian
?

What?

Are you a Christian? Was that your motivation
?

How do you mean?

Was this an act of Christian charity
?

She's getting me again. This is like catching the bus home. What can I say? I suppose it could at least account for my hundred and ninety-seven days of celibacy. Renee, I've decided to wait. No. There must be no hint of mockery. I must treat this with earnestness and caution, and declare no affiliations.

It just looked like something that had to be done Renee, I tell her, and she nods, as though this is very quotable. Even though it sounds more like John Wayne
talking about something that involved a gun and a lot of bullets.

Now
, she says,
we thought we might get a photo with Mister Butt. We've spoken to him on the phone, so if that's okay by you, Richard …

Sure.

As in, sure, why not? Sure, this is already totally beyond my control, so why stop now. Let's go for the cheesy photo too.

And cheesy it is.

Kevin's grinning when we get there, as though he's done me a big favour, or at least repaid a substantial debt in full. And he's wearing his Akubra and a gingery cowboy shirt buttoned right up to the top. I note his guitar is nearby. Kevin is an old pro and never likely to miss a chance for publicity. And he appears to have soaked his dentures in some whitening agent overnight, as they gleam quite incredibly whenever he speaks.

Let's get the photo first
, Renee says to all of us.
Jack's got another job to go to
.

The photographer nods, looks around at the light, fits a different lens.
Okay
, he says.
Now I figure we want both of you. And the stump, is it still around
?

No, Kevin says.
I didn't know I should keep it
.

That's okay
.

But I've got my guitar
.

Kevin insists on the guitar, probably well aware that this is all that gives him the leverage to be described as a Retired Country and Western Performer, rather than just a non-specific old codger. The photographer, accepting that the guitar is not negotiable, says it's good that I've still got my work clothes on. It creates contrast. He suggests I roll up my sleeves to show the muscles that pulled up the stump. I roll up my sleeves. This is going to be awful. I can see this on the front page. This oozes human interest, or at least oozes.

Um, don't worry about it
, he says.
Just try rolling them down again
.

I'm not sure how to take this. Renee straightens my tie and Kevin, his guitar swinging around him, is instructed to take one of my hands, which I am to make into a fist, and to hold it up as though I've just won a title fight. And we all know that this pose will be the one. Jack takes about a hundred and ten photos, says,
Great
, with huge sincerity, then goes off to his next job.

Okay, Mister Butt, if we could just have something from you, Renee says. About Richard and the stump, how it made you feel, that sort of thing
.

Righto. Well, I think the country needs more like this lad, and you can quote me on that. I was struggling away and he was over the fence in a flash. He had his own things to do and his own life to lead, and he gave up a whole day of it to help an old bastard like me. Hang on a tick. You'd better put veteran country and western star, or something like that. He should be given a bloody medal on Australia Day or something, I reckon. He wouldn't have known me from Adam, and he just jumped on over and worked all day like a bloody black
. And Renee and I exchange a glance that says that's one remark that's unlikely to find itself in a
Westside Chronicle
feel-good story.
We could do with more like him, that's what I say. You hear a lot of bad things written about the young people of today, but if they're half as decent as young Richard, they won't go far wrong. This sort of lad's our hope for the future
.

And it doesn't stop there.

When I leave with Renee, Kevin tells me that feeding the cat while I'm away is,
The bloody least I could do
.

When we're back at my place she says,
You've got a fan there
, but in a disturbingly genuine way.

She asks me a few questions about the house, and says it's really interesting that my grandparents built it in the twenties and now I'm living here. Maybe the
Westside Chronicle
really is her territory. Maybe she believes in this suburban journalism. I don't mention the letter.

She gives me my prizes and says it's a pity Jack isn't
around to take a few shots.
Anyway, we got some great ones with Mister Butt, didn't we
? And still, no irony at all, or an incredible gift at underplaying it.
There's a medallion too, but it's not engraved yet. We'll give you a call when it's ready, and we'll take a few shots of you wearing it to use as a promo for next month. Drum up a few more entries
.

So, should I ask you how many entries there were this month?

She smiles.
Well, there were several, but Mister Butt was very persuasive. You tipped out a woman with a Neighbourhood Watch story. She'd copied down a number plate when a car with suspicious people in it drove away from a house with most of its appliances. They were actually robbing it. Usually those stories are just people helping friends move house. And there was a guy who intervened to settle a boundary dispute concerning a mango tree
.

What did he do?

Well he basically said that, in an amazing mango season like this one, there are so many mangoes, there's no reason for a dispute at all
.

The wisdom of Solomon.

In the very moment I am saying this, I realise its biblical allusions, and that it may not be a good idea.

The wisdom of Solomon
, she says, looking at me closely.
Yes
.

Fortunately, she has things to do. She leaves me with my prizes.

My prizes. My selection of prizes from local businesses, interested in supporting neighbourliness. My choice of two bags of tan bark or a hose from a gardening store. My twenty dollar boutique voucher. A free wheel alignment and lube job. And the big one. Dinner for two, Le Chalet.

As if the notion of dinner for two isn't cruel enough by itself.

I call Baan Thai. Usual order for Hiller.

There's a storm coming, picking up in the west and pushing in over Mount Coot-tha. Rain starts to fall in big unhurried drops as I park the car. The cicadas go crazy in the gardens near Park Road.

The storm breaks as I leave the restaurant. I stand barefoot in the shelter under the mock Eiffel Tower as ten minutes of astonishing rain thrashes all around me, pounds the bushes and the awnings, overflows gutters, runs warm over my feet.

At home I divide the meal into its two portions and I put Wednesday's into the fridge.