Bridge of Clay(77)

    He couldn’t, of course.

He couldn’t.

It was all in what was to come.





Back then, for Penny Dunbar, she packed her bags for the hospital, and the world that waited within it.

They would push, they’d prod and cut bits.

They would poison her with kindness.

When they first talked radiation, I saw her standing alone in the desert, then boom—a little bit like the Hulk.

We’d become our own cartoon.



* * *



—

From the outset there was the hospital building, and all the infernal whiteness, and the spotless shopping mall doors; I hated how they parted.

It felt like we were browsing.

Heart disease to the left.

Orthopedics to the right.

I also remember how the six of us walked the corridors, through the pleasant terror inside. I remember our dad and his hard-clean hands, and Henry and Rory not fighting; these places were clearly unnatural. There was Tommy, who looked so tiny, and always in short Hawaiian shorts—and me still bruised-but-healing.

At the very back, though, long behind us, was Clay, who was scaredest, it seemed, to see her. Her voice fought out from the nose cord: “Where’s my boy, where’s my boy? I’ve got a story, it’s a good one.”

Only then did he come between us.

    It took all of everything in him.

“Hey, Mum—can you tell me about the houses?”

Her hand stretched out to touch him.



* * *



—

She came in and out of the hospital twice more that year.

She was opened, closed up, and pinkened.

She was sewn and raw-and-shiny.

Sometimes, even when she was tired, we’d ask if we could see them: “Can you show us that longest scar again, Mum? That one’s a bloody beauty.”

“Hey!”

“What—bloody? That’s not even proper swearing!”

She was usually home by then, back in her own bed, being read to, or lying with our dad. There was something about their angles; her knees curled up and sideways, at forty-five degrees. Her face lay down on his chest.

In many ways, that was a happy time, to be honest, and I see things through that frame. I see the weeks go by in a shoulder blade, and months disappear in pages. He read out loud for hours. There was wearing round his eyes by then, but the aqua always as strange. It was one of those comforting things.

Sure, there were frightening times, like her vomiting in the sink, and that God-awful smell in the bathroom. She was bonier, too, which was hard to believe, but then back at the lounge room window. She read to us from The Iliad, and Tommy’s body, in pieces, asleep.



* * *



—

In the meantime, there was progress.

We made music all of our own:

The piano wars went on.

There were many outcomes that could have arisen from my bout with Jimmy Hartnell, and many of them did. He and I became newborn friends. We became those boys who fought each other to find our common standing.

After Jimmy, there were many more lined up, and I was up to fending them off. They only need mention the piano. But there were never the heights of Hartnell again. It was Jimmy I fought for the title.

    In the end, it wasn’t me who was famed for fighting, though; it could only ever be Rory.

In terms of age, the year had clicked over, and I was well now into high school (free of the piano at last) and Rory was in grade five, and Henry the year below him. Clay had hit year three, and Tommy was down in kindergarten. Old stories soon washed to shore. There were memories of the cricket nets, and boys who were more than willing.

The problem with that was Rory.

His force was true and terrible.

But the aftermath was worse.

He dragged them through the playground, like the brutalist end of The Iliad—like Achilles with Hector’s corpse.



* * *



—

There was one time, in the hospital, when there were kids from Hyperno High.

Penny sat, punctured, in bed.

God, there must have been more than a dozen of them, crowded and noisy around her, both boys and girls alike. Henry said, “They’re all so…furry.” He was pointing at the boys’ legs.

I remember we’d watched from the corridor, and their uniforms green and white; those overgrown boys, the perfumed girls, and covered-up cigarette. Just before they left, it was the girl I mentioned earlier, the lovely Jodie Etchells, who pulled out a strange-looking present.

“Here, Miss,” she said, but she unwrapped it herself; Penny’s hands were inside the blankets.

And soon, our mother’s lips.

They cracked, so dry and smiley:

They’d brought her in the metronome, and it was one of the boys who said it. I think his name was Carlos.

“Breathe in time with this, Miss.”



* * *



—

    It was evenings at home were the best, though.

They were blond and black hair greying.

If they weren’t asleep on the couch, they were in the kitchen playing Scrabble, or punishing each other at Monopoly. Or sometimes they’d actually be awake on the couch, watching movies into the night.