Things aren’t so bad here. I’m living with Dad in Fremantle. He’s on the dole. Mum’s living down the road and 1 see her on weekends. See how it goes.
Fremantle is a weird city, mate. Full of mung beans and has-beens. I don’t mind the hippies so much, but there’s a lot of loonies on the loose up here. Dudes who think they were Cleopatra or Einstein in a former life. Why doesn’t anyone think they were Richard Nixon or Sid Vicious? There’s even a houseful of people round the comer who swear they’re from another planet. Lockie, these people actually get to vote! X-Files stuff.
Anyway, I was really writing to say that I saw Dot Cookson the other day. She looked optically hurtful, if you get me drift. Oh, mate! Anyway, I rang her up. Seventeen times, actually. I had to tell you this because you’re my best mate. I can’t help meself. I’m history. I know she was kind of your girlfriend for two weeks but. . . I’m gargling nuts about her. The question is, will you kill me?
Yr shakin’ mate,
Egg.
P.S. Have you heard Storytime yet? Filthy good band. P.P.S. Do you know what colonic irrigation is? Our neighbour gets it done once a week. The city’s pumpin’! (SSSSIIIIICKKK!) Stay in the country, mate. They’ve lost their lugs up here.
Lockie sat in the rubbish pile of his bed and read the letter through again. Sheesh. Egg and Dot. He didn’t know what to think. Egg was a great bloke, the best. But this? At least he told me, Lockie thought. At least he wants to know if it’s alright. And anyway, why not? Dot lives in the city and we busted up anyhow. There’s not much chance of making it work again, not from this distance. She’s a total spunk and a hot surfer, and she’d be in high school this year. But I’ve missed my chance. Why shouldn’t Egg see her? Still, it did feel awkward somehow. Maybe he just needed to think about it.
Lockie got up and went into the living room where his mum sat staring out the window, a teatowel hanging off her shoulder.
‘Mum, what’s colonic irrigation?’
Mrs Leonard looked out at nothing. It was dark already. There was just her reflection in the window.
‘Mum?’
‘You don’t want to know.’
Lockie scratched himself. ‘Actually, I am sorta curious.’
Mrs Leonard sighed. ‘For bored, rich, stupid people.’
‘Yep, uh-huh. And?’
‘They get themselves flushed out.’
‘Right. Eh?’
‘Their insides.’
‘Hmm.’
‘With water.’
‘Right,’ said Lockie, not getting it at all. ‘They drink it.’
Mrs Leonard pulled the teatowel off her shoulder and looked at it. ‘No, Lockie, they get it pumped into them. Into their intestines, shall we say.’
‘Not down their throat, then,’ murmured Lockie, beginning to squinch his face up in horror.
‘No.’
‘The . . . the other way?’ Lockie got the picture. ‘Aw, gross. Grotesque!’
‘Cleans out all their problems, they say.’
‘Geez, I’d rather eat a bar of Lux!’
‘Stupid people,’ said Mrs Leonard, flicking at the reflection of herself in the window. ‘Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, bored silly people with no problems who need someone to tell them they have problems as if having a problem is a hobby.’
Lockie stared at his mum as she flicked and whanged at the glass.
‘Mum?’
‘Damn stupid stupid people.’
Lockie went back to his room, wondering what all that was about. And there on the bed was Egg’s letter again. Dot and Egg. Hmmm.
ockie lay in the bath tub a long time looking at the streaky mildewed walls and the scrunched up towels that seemed to be growing like fungi on their racks. He thought about what it would be like having his best friend going out with his ex-girlfriend. He floated. He held his breath. He blew a few thoughtful and quite interesting bubbles. He really missed Egg. If he was honest, Dot Cookson was already fading in his mind, shrinking steadily to a . . . well, a dot. But good old Egg was stuck in his memory like a splinter. Lockie missed Egg’s mad talk, the way he invented words and made you laugh. He remembered their Sharkproof Swimming Machine. Could have done with that today. He thought of the pair of them trying to save the harbour earlier in the summer. It seemed forever ago. What the hell. Egg sounded like he was over the lunar surface about Dot. Let him be happy.
Lockie did a couple of laps, practising his tumble turns until water dripped off the ceiling and the bathmat began to float out the door. He was really getting up some momentum when he heard his silverchair tape booming through the fibro wall. His silverchair tape. Which his little brother had swiped without a word.
Lockie launched out of the tub and tried every mouldy towel on the rack. Geez, this house was a mess! He lurched and skidded his way out into the hallway, planning his unpleasant revenge upon the young and stickyfingered being they called Phillip.
When he got to his room, Lockie saw Phillip on the floor, his eyes clamped shut, pounding on a pile of Tupperware bowls with a pair of plastic chopsticks. He stormed in, jabbed the tape player and retrieved his property. Phillip opened his eyes.
‘Lockie!’
Before Lockie could say anything, he caught sight of his ransacked tape box. Right in the midst of Cruel Sea, Pearl Jam, Björk and Soundgarden was a crumpled photo. He went absolutely rigid.
‘Phillip’ he said in a dangerously quiet voice, ‘where’d you get that?’
‘The photo? It was in that Lemonheads tape, folded into the cover. Lemonheads, urk. I can’t believe you’re into them.’
‘It was a present,’ said Lockie.
‘From her, I bet.’
Lockie picked up the photo and smoothed out the creases. There she was, Vicki Streeton, in a plain white tee-shirt, her green eyes half closed beneath her kinky brown fringe.
‘What’s it like, kissing someone with braces?’
‘Phillip, haven’t you got an explosion to be at?’
‘Don’t get cranky, Lock,’ said Phillip in his most irritating, wheedling, skincrawling way.
‘If you touch my stuff again I’ll pound your head in. It’s bad enough sharing the room with you, but my stuff is mine. Get it?’
‘Hmm,’ said Phillip, looking at the photo. ‘That girl’s got more wires than the back of the telly.’
‘Rack off, Phillip.’
‘Be like sticking your tongue in a birdcage. Bleck!’
That was it. Lockie shirtfronted him and they went crashing to the floor in a welter of skittering Tupperware. But before Lockie could inflict any satisfying violence on his little brother, Phillip got an attack of the giggles and Lockie couldn’t go on with it. Besides, Blob came crawling in, screaming her head off, bringing with her an outrageous stench of unchanged nappy.
Phaw,’ said Phillip, between giggles. ‘Saved by the smell.’
‘You’ll get yours.’
Blob crawled over and sat beside them, reeking. A bunjee cord of dribble hung from her lip. Blob was her own person. She stubbornly refused to walk or talk. For two months she crawled backwards. There was nothing wrong with her. She just had her own ideas. And could she yell, or what.
‘Haven’t you got a mother? Stop screaming.’
But Blob wailed and moaned.
‘Mum!’ yelled Lockie. ‘Can you come and get Blob? She’s pooped herself.’
‘Yeah, Mum,’ called Phillip. ‘It’s interfering with me getting pulverised. I’m kind of anxious to get me head kicked in.’
Blob came closer. Lockie felt the sweet rain of warm drool on his arm.
‘Mum? Muuuuuuuum!’
Nothing. Just the chainsaw noise of Blob screaming. Lockie got up off Phillip and lifted Blob by the back of her jumpsuit. She hung in the air like a methane bubble. She stopped crying.
‘C’mon, Blob. We’ll go find her. I’ll deal with your other brother later.’
‘I’ll stay right here, then, will I?’ said Phillip. ‘Wouldn
’t want to miss out on being viciously brutalised.’
‘Who gave you a dictionary?’ muttered Lockie as he headed out with Blob swinging in front of him. ‘Mum?’
Lockie checked his parents’ bedroom, then the kitchen. Everything was a pigsty. In the end he found her in the loungeroom still standing in front of the window with the teatowel in her hands.
‘Mum?’
She didn’t turn around.
‘Earth to Mrs Leonard. Are you receiving, over?’
Even the loungeroom stank, now that he noticed. This whole house was a mess. It was suddenly really embarrassing.
‘Geez, Mum! You’re gettin’ a bit slack, don’t you think? You could show just a little bit of interest.’
He put Blob on the ragged sofa for a moment and went up to the window. That’s when he saw the terrible sad look on his mum’s face. Her eyes looked faraway, almost empty.
‘What’s up?’
She didn’t look at him. Her gaze stayed outward. She was staring into the night.
‘Where’s the baby?’ she murmured.
‘Here.’
‘Yes.’
‘She’s crapped herself.’
‘Yes.’
‘She needs changing. You’re the mother, remember.’
‘Does she have all her fingers and toes?’ asked Mrs Leonard in a flat, toneless voice.
‘Unless she’s eaten them off since last time I looked.’
‘There’s something wrong with her.’
‘She’s not so bad when she’s not wearing a poop parcel. Hint, hint.’
But Mrs Leonard didn’t take the hint. Lockie just hung there, not knowing what to do. His mum was always on the ball, on the prowl, on the case. She wasn’t the dreamy type. This sort of thing wasn’t what he was used to; it just wasn’t in the script.
Blob started bawling again. He couldn’t stand it. He hoisted her up and took her into the kitchen.
Phillip was there already, scrounging in the fridge, which was pretty optimistic. He was hoping for five chicken drumsticks and a metre of Hungarian salami but when Lockie came in he was looking seriously at one lonely pickled onion.
‘You’ll have to gimme a hand, Phillip.’
Phillip looked up from his pickled onion. ‘You look like you seen a ghost.’
Close, thought Lockie. ‘I need some help.’
‘What?’ said Phillip, warily.
Lockie lay Blob on the table, right there on the open newspaper and started unhitching her babysuit.
‘What, Lockie?’ said Phillip looking nervously at the great pukesome bulge of Blob’s nappy.
‘We’re goin’ in,’ said Lockie.
‘You must be jokin’!’
‘She’ll get a rash if we don’t. It hurts.’
‘Get Mum. That’s what she’s for. It’s her job.’
‘Well, she’s taken the night off,’ said Lockie, suddenly angry. ‘Get the egg slice, a wooden spoon and some Kleenex.’
‘How about some of Dad’s Brut 33?’
‘Good thinking.’
‘This is ridiculous.’
‘Phillip, just do it, willya.’
Phillip looked at his solitary pickled onion and
changed his mind. Blob started to coo and giggle. Lockie got to work. He wasn’t smiling.
ockie’s evening didn’t get any better. Mrs Leonard stayed in the loungeroom saying nothing at all and by seven o’clock the Leonard kids were ready to go off. They were starving and Lockie was totally rattled. He rummaged through the kitchen for something he could cook, but all he could come up with was twenty-seven slices of high-fibre bread, the kind of stuff the Sarge liked to call Bowel Blaster. So they had toast on toast, with a bit of toast to follow.
‘Ah,’ said Phillip, ‘lashings of toast. Me favourite.’
‘Shut up and eat,’ said Lockie.
Lockie could smell nappy cargo under his fingernails and not even the smell of Vegemite could overpower it. At least Blob was happy. She ground away at her bread and ate all Phillip’s crusts. Lockie just sat and stewed about his mum.
What is it? he thought. Is she trying to make a statement about how much we take her for granted? Is she just browned off with us all, or what? Doesn’t she know she’s got responsibilities?
‘Mum’s looking at herself in the window,’ said Phillip.
Lockie ignored him and wiped Blob’s face with the dishmop. She lunged at it, got her teeth into its sopping strands and had a bit of a chew. But she was too sleepy to do any real damage. A detergent bubble blew out of the corner of her mouth.
‘You clean up, Phillip. I’ll put Blob to bed.’ ‘You’re not the boss of me.’
‘That’s original.’
‘All you had to do is ask. You’re giving me orders.’
‘Okay. Please, Phillip.’
‘I’ll think about it.’
Lockie took the dishmop out of Blob’s mouth and held it in his fist so tight that soapy water and baby drool ran down his arm. He thought of inserting it into various parts of Phillip’s anatomy but somehow managed to pick up his sister and leave the room without blowing a valve.
Blob’s cot was in a corner of their parents’ bedroom. Lockie waded through the crumpled clothes on the floor, glanced at the unmade bed and lowered Blob into her cot. Her eyes fluttered and she whined for a moment as he patted her back gently. He sniffed her nice, strange baby smell. For a lino-chewing, pilcher-packing little dude, she still smelled amazingly sweet. He kissed her on her mostly bald head and watched her quickly go to sleep. He turned the light out and sighed.
There was yelling from the kitchen.
When Lockie got back to the kitchen, Phillip was trying to push a metre-high mountain of bubbles back into the sink. The great sudsy mound had toppled against the window and was sliding down the benchtop, heading for the back door as though trying to make a getaway. Lockie figured it was better to leave it with Phillip. He went into the loungeroom to look in on his mum.
Mrs Leonard had the TV on and was watching the news. There were scenes of some disaster somewhere else in the world. Ambulances, stretchers, bodies. Mrs Leonard had tears all down her face. The twitching light of the TV lit up her shining cheeks. She didn’t make a sound. ‘Mum? What’s the matter? What is it?’
‘So many people dying.’
The news story changed to something about a cat up a tree. A cat being rescued by the fire brigade. Everyone celebrating, hugging, laughing. Mrs Leonard cried right through it and somehow it made Lockie mad.
‘Mum, that’s a happy story, you know.’
Mrs Leonard bawled.
‘It’s not really a crying matter, Mum.’
She cried and cried. In the end Lockie stood up in front of the TV and looked into her eyes.
‘What, Mum?’
‘Where’s my baby?’
‘In her cot. She’s asleep.’
‘She’s doomed.’
‘She’s snoring.’
‘She’s retarded, you know. She won’t walk or talk.’
‘Blob’s just stubborn, Mum. It’s a Leonard thing.’
‘Oh, my baby!’
‘Blob’s fine, Mum.’
‘But not my baby. My baby’s not.’
‘Geez, Mum! Get a grip, why don’t you? Get a grip!’
That was it. His mum just howled and howled, letting out great, awful sobs until Phillip came in all soapy and shocked and gave Lockie the filthiest look possible.
Lockie split. He crashed out the back door into the yard and kicked the heads off weeds. He wanted to scream.
hen the Sarge got home from work at midnight, Lockie was still out in the yard with the frogs and mosquitoes. The lights were on inside. His mum was still prowling around. Lockie couldn’t figure it out. He was bitten all over and his skin felt lumpier than Phillip’s marble bag. The lights of the Sarge’s paddy-wagon caught him as he slumped on Blob’s swing.
The Sarge groaned as he heaved himself out of the car.
&nb
sp; ‘Can’t sleep?’
Lockie shrugged but a shrug doesn’t communicate a lot in the dark.
‘Test-driving the swing, then?’
‘It’s Mum,’ said Lockie. ‘She’s giving me the horrors.’
The Sarge closed the car door and leaned against it, rattling his lunchbox. ‘Shoe’s on the other foot for a change, is it?’
‘Maybe. She’s not doing anything.’
‘Know how she feels. I arrested a sheep tonight.’
‘I’m serious, Sarge.’
‘So am I. Caught it coming the wrong way down a one-way street. Right in the middle of town.’
‘It was probably looking for a drink,’ said Lockie.
‘No, the pubs were closed.’
‘Very funny.’
‘It’s back at the lock-up. Let the blokes on the next shift deal with it. They’ll probably eat it. By dawn there’ll be nothing left but some chump chops and a few strands of wool. They’re savages, the night shift.’
‘You don’t expect me to believe you, do you?’ said Lockie, crankier than ever.
‘You’re on holidays. Come down to the lockup and see for yourself.’
‘Sarge.’
‘Can’t wait to see the look on your face.’
‘Uh-huh. I suppose I’ll look real sheepish. Okay, let’s do the bad jokes.’
‘Geez, you are dark on the world tonight.’
Lockie climbed off the swing. ‘Mum left me to do all the work tonight. I had to feed ’em, bath ’em, put ’em to bed—’
‘Well, now you know what it’s—’
‘She won’t talk to me.’
The Sarge sighed. ‘Lockie, I’m dead on me feet.’
‘She cried all through the news.’
‘Mate, sometimes I reckon crying is the only sensible way to respond to the news. You sit there every night watching this horrible stuff happen. After a while you don’t feel a thing. Starving kids, burning people, bleeding people, homes washed away, blown up. I’m ashamed of feeling nothing sometimes, aren’t you? In my job you’re not s’posed to feel. Scares me, that.’
‘Sarge, she didn’t lift a finger.’
‘One night of responsibility won’t kill you.’