She wore a dress the shade of peppermint.
When she realized Michael had pulled up, she clapped the book shut and the boys all cleared a path. They said, “Bye Miss, bye Miss, bye Miss,” and she got into the car.
But that’s not to say it was easy—it wasn’t.
When he was heading out to work sometimes, he heard her talk herself into it, in the bathroom; it was hard to face the day. He’d say, “Which kid is it this time?”—for the job became working with the toughest ones, one on one; and sometimes it took an hour, sometimes several months, but always she wore them down. Some would even protect her. If other kids mucked up, they’d be taken to the toilets, and shoved amongst the troughs. Don’t mess with Penny Dunbar.
In many ways, the title of ESL was ironic, because a good percentage of her students were kids whose first language was actually English, but could barely read a paragraph—and those were always the angriest.
She’d sit with them by the window.
She brought a metronome in from home.
The kid would stare, incredulous, saying, “What the fuck is that?”
To which Penny would answer flatly:
“Read in time with this.”
* * *
—
But then, it had to happen.
After four years of teaching, she came home one evening with a pregnancy kit, and this time they did go out to celebrate, but would wait out the week for Saturday.
In the meantime, next day, they were at work again: Michael was pouring concrete.
He told a few of his friends there—they stopped and shook his hand.
Penelope was at Hyperno, with a belligerent yet beautiful boy.
She read with him at the window.
The metronome went click.
On Saturday, they ate in that fancy place in the Opera House, they stood at the top, on the steps. The great old bridge, it hung there, and the ferries pulled in at the Quay. By midafternoon, when they came back out, a ship had arrived to dock. There were crowds of people on the esplanade, and cameras and smilers in flocks. At the building and glasswork were them—Michael and Penny Dunbar—and at the bottom of the Opera House stairway, five boys had appeared, and stood standing…and soon they came down to meet us.
And we walked back out together—through the crowds and words of people, and a city all swollen with sun.
And death came walking with us.
Of course, Henry had to make an entrance that night of fists and feathers and brothers.
When I think of it now, I see it as the last wave of our collective adolescence. Just like Clay, individually, when he walked out the Bernborough Park tunnel that last time, so it was tonight for this, and Henry, and us. In the next few days, on and off, there’d be a kind of holding-on; a final nod to the last vestiges of youngness and dumbness.
We’d never see it or be it again.
* * *
—
It wasn’t long after. The TV was on.
There’d been much arguing, and Rain Man was replaced by a movie I got from Rory one year for Christmas. Bachelor Party. In Rory’s words, if we had to watch bullshit from the ’80s, it might as well be the good stuff. In Henry’s, it was Tom Hanks in his heyday, before he started getting crap and winning Golden Globes and shit; he’d researched it.
All four of us, we sat there:
I was icing my hands.
Rory and Tommy were laughing.
Hector was sprawled like a steel-striped blanket, purring on Tommy’s lap.
Clay was on the couch, quietly watching; quietly bleeding away.
It was right at Rory’s favorite part—when the ex-boyfriend of the female lead falls naked through the sunroof of a car—when Henry finally arrived.
First there were footsteps.
Then keys getting dropped.
Then in.
Then a bloodied, grinning face, in the light of the lounge room doorway.
“What?” he shouted. “Are you bastards kidding? You’re watching Bachelor Party without me?”
* * *
—
At first none of us looked.
Actually, Clay did, but couldn’t move.
The rest of us were too engrossed in the mayhem on screen.
It was only when the scene was over that Rory saw the state of him, and then came all the swearing, stunned silence, and blasphemy. I finished it off with a good long “Je-sus Christ…”
Henry, unfazed, plonked himself on the couch and looked at Clay. “Sorry I’m late, kid.”
“That’s okay.”
This had been Henry’s plan; to come in looking something like this, just before Clay had made it home himself, so I might get all distracted. The trouble was, the two boys from the 200-meter mark had taken much longer than he’d thought—and it took a lot more drinking—and of course he’d left his car behind, and walked from Bernborough Park. By then he was so drunk and beaten up he’d almost crawled, and really, looking back, it’s one of Henry’s dumbest greatest moments. He’d planned it all, and invited it all, and all of it for Clay.
He studied him, with a kind of satisfaction. “Good to see you, though. Is it good to be home? I see Matthew rolled out the welcome mat, the big muscly prick.”
“That’s all right, I had it coming.” Clay turned to him now, and was shocked by the extent of the damage. His lips, especially, were hard to look at; his cheekbones cooked and charred. “I’m not too sure about you, though.”
“Oh,” said Henry cheerfully, “I did, old boy, I did.”
“And?” That was me now, standing in the middle of the lounge room. “You want to tell us what the hell’s going on?”
“Matthew,” Henry sighed, “you’re innerrupting the movie,” but he knew. If he’d enlisted Schwartz and Starkey (and Starkey’s girl, as it turned out) for the job of making a mess of him, here was my chance to finish it. “You see, gentlemen”—he grinned, and his teeth were more a butcher’s bone, all thickly red and mess—“if you ever want to look like this, all it takes is one blond Boy Scout with iron fists, one thug with disgusting breath, and lastly, the thug’s girlfriend, who hits harder than the pair of ’em put together….”
He tried to talk on, but didn’t get any further, for in the next few seconds, the living room swayed, and the Bachelor Party high jinks got funnier and funnier. At last he clattered forward, straight past me, and crash-tackled the TV to the floor.
“Shit!” shrieked Rory. “That’s one of the greatest movies of all time he’s wrecking—” but he was there and close for catching him, though he couldn’t save the board games. Or the birdcage, which tumbled down, like raucous, stadium-sized applause.
* * *
—
Soon we all crouched around him, with the carpet, blood, and cat hair. And dog hair. And Jesus—was that mule hair?
Henry was out cold.
When he came to, he recognized Tommy first: “Young Tommy, ay? The pet collector—and Rory, the human ball and chain, and ahh, you’re Matthew, aren’t you? Mr. Reliable.” Then lastly, fondly: “Clayton. The smiler. You’ve been gone for years, years, I tell you!”
It registered.
The movie was still playing, sideways on the floor, the birdcage was sloped and doorless—and further left, near the window, the fish tank had capsized amongst the chaos. We’d only noticed now that the water had reached our feet.
Henry looked at the movie, maneuvering his head, but the rest of us were watching T, the pigeon, as he climbed out of his cage, onto the floor, past the goldfish, headed straight for the open front door. Clearly, the bird knew what was what—this was no place to be for the next few hours. Well, that, and he was totally pissed off. He walked and half-flapped, walked and half-flapped. All he needed was a suitcase. Once he even looked back:
“Right, that’s it.” He honestly seemed to say it, seething in grey and purple. “I’m outta here, you lot—good Goddamn luck.”
As for the goldfish, Agamemnon, he flipped, he flopped, he gulped the air for liquid; he leapt across the carpet. There had to be more water out there somewhere, and he’d be damned if he wouldn’t find it.
So there they were, way up in the far-flung future:
A cantankerous bird.
An acrobatic goldfish.
Two bloodied boys.