Bridge of Clay(80)

“And?” Penelope said. “What did you make of it?”

“It was great,” I said, because it was.

“Did you fall in love with Saga?” The ice cream was dead in its plastic.

My mouth fell silent, my face felt red.

My mother was a kind of miracle, of long but breakable hair.

She took my hand and whispered.

“That’s good, I loved her, too.”



* * *



—

For Rory it was a football game, high up in the stands.

For Henry it was out to a garage sale, where he bargained and talked them down: “A buck for that lousy yo-yo? Look at the state of my mum.”

“Henry,” she mocked him, “come on. That’s low, even for you.”

“Shit, Penny, you’re no fun,” but there was laughter, cahoots, between them. And he got it for thirty-five cents.

If I had to choose, though, I’d say it was what she did for Tommy that had the most influence on things, apart from her time with Clay. See, for Tommy, she took him to the museum; and his favorite was the hall named Wild Planet.

For hours, they walked the corridors:

An assembly line of animals.

A journey of fur and taxidermy.

There were too many to list as a favorite, but the dingo and lions ranked highly, and the weird and wonderful thylacine. In bed that night, he kept talking; he gave us facts on Tasmanian tigers. He said thylacine over and over. He said they looked more like a dog.

“A dog!” he almost shouted.

    Our room was dark and quiet.

He fell asleep midsentence—and the love for those animals would lead to them; to Rosy and Hector, Telemachus, Agamemnon, and of course, to the great but mulish one. It could only all end with Achilles.



* * *



—

As for Clay, she took him many places and nowhere.

The rest of us all went out.

Michael took us to the beach.

Once we were gone, Penelope invited him; she said, “Hey, Clay, make me some tea and come out front.” But it was more a kind of warm-up.

When he got there, she was already on the porch floor, her back against the wall, and the sun was out all over her. There were pigeons on the power lines. The city was open-ended; they could hear its distant singing.

When she drank, she swallowed a reservoir, but it helped her tell the stories, and Clay had listened hard. When she asked him how old he was, he’d answered he was nine. She said, “I guess that’s old enough—to at least start knowing there’s more—” and from there, she did what she always did, she went on with paper houses, and at the end she reminded him this: “One day I’m going to tell you, Clay, a few things no one knows, but only if you want to hear them….”

In short, the almost-everythings.

How privileged he really was.

She swept her hand through his boyish hair, and the sun was now much lower. Her tea had fallen over, and the boy had solemnly nodded.



* * *



—

By evening we were all back home, beach and sandy tired, and Penny and Clay were asleep. They looked knotted together on the couch.

A few days later, he’d almost approached her, about when the last stories might come, but was disciplined enough not to ask. Maybe in some way he knew—they would come at the near-to-the-end.

No, instead, there was our regular overrunness, as weeks were made into months, and again she was leaving for treatments.

    Those singular moments were gone now.

We were used to uncomfortable news.

“Well,” she said, quite bluntly, “they’re going to take my hair—so now I think it’s your turn. We might as well beat them to it.”

Between us we formed a queue; it was the opposite of the world, as the barbers lined up to cut. You could see us all waiting in the toaster.

There are a few things I remember of that night—how Tommy went first, unwillingly. She got him to laugh at a joke, though, of a dog and a sheep in a bar. He was still in those damn Hawaiian shorts, and he cut so crooked it hurt.

Next went Clay, then Henry; then Rory said, “Going to the army?”

“Sure,” said Penny, “why not?”

She said, “Rory, let me see,” and she peered inside his eyes. “You’ve got the strangest eyes of all of you.” They were heavy but soft, like silver. Her hair was short and vanishing.

When it was my turn, she reached for the toaster, to look at her mirrored image. She begged me to show some mercy. “Make it neat and make it quick.”

To finish, it was our father, and he stood and didn’t shirk it; he positioned her head, nice and straight, and when he was done he slowly rubbed her; he massaged the boyish haircut, and Penny leaned forward, she enjoyed it. She couldn’t see the man behind her, and the chop-and-change of his face, or the dead blond hair at his shoes. She couldn’t ever see how broken he was, while the rest of us stood and watched them. She was in jeans, bare feet and T-shirt, and maybe that’s what finished us off.

She looked just like a Dunbar boy.

With that haircut she was one of us.





This time he didn’t wait in the trees but walked the corridor of eucalypts, and burst quietly into the light.