Bridge of Clay(84)

From our father we hoped for hope, I think—for courage, and close proximity—like hugging us one by one, or to carry us up from our lowest.

But nothing like that had come:

The police-car pair had left us.

The ambulance swam down the street.

Michael Dunbar came to all of us; toward us, then out, and away. He got to the lawn, and walked on.

There were five of us stranded on the porch.



* * *



—

The funeral was one of those bright-lit things.

The sunny hilltop cemetery.

Our father read a passage from The Iliad: They dragged their ships to the friendly sea.

He wore the suit he’d worn on his wedding day, and the one he’d wear years later, when he’d return and be faced with Achilles. His aqua eyes were lightless.

Henry had made a speech.

He imitated her put-on accent from the kitchen and people laughed, but he had tears in his eyes, and there were at least two hundred kids there, all from Hyperno High, and all in perfect uniform; heavy, and neat, dark green. Boys and girls alike. They talked about the metronome. A few she’d taught to read. The toughest took it hardest, I think. “Bye Miss, bye Miss, bye Miss.” Some of them touched the box as they walked and passed in the light.

The ceremony was outside.

They would take her back in to burn her.

The coffin-slide into the fire.

It was sort of like the piano, really, but the instrument’s homely cousin. You could dress it up all you wanted; it was still just a piece of hardwood, with daisies thrown on top. She’d chosen not to be scattered, or kept like sand in an urn. But we paid for a small memorial—a stone for us to stand and remember by, to watch her above the city.

    From the service we carried her away.

On one side was Henry, Clay and me. On the other, Michael, Tommy and Rory—same as our Archer Street football teams—and the woman inside was weightless. The coffin weighed a ton.

She was a feather wrapped up in a chopping block.



* * *



—

At the end of the wake, and its assortment of teas and coffee cakes, we stood outside the building.

All of us in black pants.

All of us in white shirts.

We looked like a bunch of Mormons, but without the generous thoughts: Rory was angry and quiet.

Me, like one more tombstone, but my eyes agleam and burning.

Henry looking outwards.

Tommy still wet with streaks.

And then, of course, there was Clay, who stood, then eased to a crouch. On the day of her death he’d found a peg in his hand, and he clenched it now till it hurt; then returned it soon to his pocket. Not one of us had seen it. It was bright and new—a yellow one—and he flipped it compulsively over. Like all of us he waited for our father, but our father had disappeared. We kicked our hearts around at our feet; like flesh, all soft and bloody. The city lay glittering below us.

“Where the hell is he?”

It was me who’d finally asked, when the wait became two hours.

When he arrived, it was hard to look at us, and us to look at him.

He was bent and broken-postured.

He was a wasteland in a suit.



* * *



—

It’s funny, the time beyond a funeral.

There are bodies and the injured everywhere.

    Our lounge room was more like a hospital ward, but one like you’d see in a movie. There were boys all torrid, diagonal. We were molded to whatever we lay on.

The sun not right, but shining.



* * *



—

As for Michael Dunbar, it surprised us how fast the cracks appeared, even given the state of him.

Our father became a half father.

The other half dead with Penny.

One evening, a few days after the funeral, he left again, and the five of us went out looking, and first we tried the cemetery, and then the Naked Arms (our reasoning still to come).

When we did find him, it was a shock to open the garage, and he lay beside an oil stain, since the police had taken her car. The only thing missing was a gallery of Penny Dunbars, but then, he never did paint her, did he?

For a while he still went to work.

The others went back to school.

I’d already been working a long time by then, for a company of floorboards and carpet. I’d even bought the old station wagon, from a guy I sometimes worked with.



* * *



—

Early on, our father was called to the schools, and he was the perfect post-war charlatan: well-dressed, clean-shaven. In control. We’re coping, he’d said, and principals nodded, teachers were fooled; they could never quite see the abyss in him. It was hidden beneath his clothes.

He wasn’t like so many men, who set themselves free with drink, or outbursts and abuse. No, for him it was easier to withdraw; he was there but never there. He sat in the empty garage, with a glass he never drank from. We called him in for dinner, and even Houdini would have been impressed. It was a slow and steady vanishing act.

He left us like that, in increments.



* * *



—

    As for us Dunbar boys those first six months, we looked a lot like this: Tommy’s primary school teacher kept an eye on him.