Bridge of Clay(53)

His lungs a kind of waxworks.

He lay back lightly, and slept.



* * *



—

The train pulled into the city just after five o’clock, Sunday morning, and a man was shaking him awake.

“Hey, kid, kid, we’re here.”

Clay startled, and managed to stand up, and despite everything—the enormous headache, the searing pain when he picked up his sports bag—the draw was unmistakable.

He felt the glimmer of home.

In his mind he was already there; he was watching the world of Archer Street; he was up on the roof, he saw Carey’s place. Or behind, to see The Surrounds. He could even hear the movie in our lounge room—but no. He actually had to remind himself he couldn’t go, and especially not like this.

For Archer Street, he’d have to wait.



* * *



—

    Instead, he walked.

He found that the more he moved the less he hurt, and so he trawled the city, to Hickson Road, down to under the bridge; he relented at the slanted wall. The trains came rattling above. The harbor so blue, he almost couldn’t look. The rivets in rows, on his shoulders. The great grey arch reached over.

It’s a she, he thought, of course she is.

He leaned and struggled to leave.



* * *



—

In the afternoon, he finally managed it, though, and walked the curves of Circular Quay; the clowns, a guitarist. The traditional didgeridoos.

The Manly ferry beckoned him.

The smell of hot chips nearly killed him.

He walked up to the railway, changed at Town Hall, then counted the stops and walked. He’d have crawled if he’d had to, to the racing quarter. There was one place, at least, he could go.



* * *



—

When he got there, way up on that hilltop, for the first time in a long time, he paid proper notice to the gravestone:





PENELOPE DUNBAR


A MANY-NAMED WOMAN:

the Mistake Maker, the Birthday Girl, the Broken-Nosed Bride, and Penny





MUCH LOVED BY EVERYONE


BUT ESPECIALLY


THE DUNBAR BOYS




When he read it, he dropped to a crouch.

He smiled hardest at the last part, and our brother lay down, cheek-first on the ground, and he stayed there alone a long time. He cried silently, nearly an hour—

    And these days, so often, I think of it, and I wish that I just could have been there. As the one who’d be next to beat him up, and bring him down, and punish him hard for his sins, I wish I’d somehow known everything.

I’d have held him, and quietly told him.

I’d have said to him, Clay, come home.





And so they’d be married.

Penelope Lesciuszko and Michael Dunbar.

In terms of time, it took approximately a year and seven months.

In other terms more difficult to measure, it was a garageful of portraits, and paintwork at the piano.

It was a right-hand turn and a car crash.

And a shape—the geometry of blood.



* * *



—

Mostly it comes in glimpses, that period.

Time shrunk down to moments.

Sometimes they’re scattered broadly—like winter, and her learning to drive. Or September, and hours of music. There’s a whole November of his clumsy attempts at her language, and then December through February to April, and a few visits at least, to the town he grew up in, and its sweat and surging heat.

In between, of course, there were movies (and he didn’t check her for laughter), and a love she found for video—likely her greatest teacher. When movies were on TV, she recorded them for practicing English: a 1980s catalogue, from E.T. to Out of Africa, Amadeus to Fatal Attraction.

There was continuing The Iliad and The Odyssey. Cricket games on TV. (Could it really last five whole days?) And countless salted ferry rides on that bright, whitecapped water.

    There were the slipstreams, too, of doubt, when she’d see him disappearing, to some place, held doggedly, within. The inner terrain of not-Abbey again, a landscape both vast and barren. She’d be calling his name from next to him: “Michael. Michael?”

He’d be startled. “What?”

They stood at the borders of anger, or foot holes of small irritation; both sensing how soon they could deepen. But just when she thought he might say to her, “Don’t come for me, don’t call,” he’d place a hand down onto her forearm. Her fears, through the months, were calmed.



* * *



—

Sometimes, though, the moments stretch out.

They stop, and unfold completely.

For Clay, they were the ones Penny told him about in the last few months of her life—when she was high and hot on morphine, and desperate to get everything right. Most memorable was a pair of them, and both occurring in evening; and exactly twelve months between them.

Penelope saw them as titles:

The Night He Finally Showed Me.

And Paintwork at the Piano.



* * *



—

The date was December 23, the eve of Christmas Eve.