In that sense there was always a bulkiness to us.
A bursting at the seams.
Whatever we did, there was more:
More washing, more cleaning, more eating, more dishes, more arguing, more fighting and throwing and hitting and farting, and “Hey, Rory, I think you better go to the toilet!” and of course, a lot more denying. It wasn’t me should have been printed on all our T-shirts; we said it dozens of times each day.
It didn’t matter how in control or on-top-of-things things were, there was chaos a heartbeat away. We could be skinny and constantly agile, but there was never quite room for all of it—so everything was done at once.
One part I remember clearly is how they used to cut our hair; a barber would have cost too much. It was set up in the kitchen—an assembly line, and two chairs—and we’d sit, first Rory and me, then Henry and Clay. Then, when it came to Tommy’s turn, Michael would cut Tommy’s, to give Penny a small reprieve, and then she’d resume and cut his.
“Hold still!” said our father to Tommy.
“Hold still,” said Penny to Michael.
Our hair lay in lumps in the kitchen.
* * *
—
Sometimes, and this one comes so happily it hurts, I remember when we all got into one car, the entire lot of us, piled in. In so many ways I can’t help but love the idea of it—how Penny and Michael, they were both completely law-abiding, but then they did things like this. It’s one of those perfect things, really, a car with too many people. Whenever you see a group squashed in like that—an accident waiting to happen—they’re always shouting and laughing.
In our case, in the front, through the gaps, you could see their hand-held hands.
It was Penelope’s fragile, piano-playing hand.
Our father’s powdery work hand.
And a scrum of boys around them, of blended arms and legs.
In the ashtray there were lollies, usually Anticols, sometimes Tic Tacs. The windshield was never clean in that car, but the air was always fresh; it was boys all sucking on cough drops, or a festival of mint.
* * *
—
Some of Clay’s fondest memories of our dad, though, were the nights, just before bed, when Michael wouldn’t believe him. He’d crouch and speak to him quietly: “Do you need to go to the toilet, kid?” and Clay would shake his head. Even as the boy was refusing, he’d be led to the small bathroom, and cracked tiling, and proceed to piss like a racehorse.
“Hey, Penny!” Michael would call. “We’ve got bloody Phar Lap here!” And he’d wash the boy’s hands and crouch again, not saying another thing—and Clay knew what it meant. Every night, for a long, long time, he was piggybacked into bed: “Can you tell me about old Moon again, Dad?”
* * *
—
Then to us, his brothers, we were bruises, we were beatings, in the house at 18 Archer Street. As older siblings do, we marauded all that was his. We’d pick him up by his T-shirt, right in the middle of his back, and deposit him somewhere else. When Tommy arrived, three years later, we did the same to him. All through Tommy’s childhood, we craned him behind the TV, or dropped him out the back. If he cried he was dragged to the bathroom, a horsey bite at the ready; Rory was stretching his hands.
“Boys?” would come the call. “Boys, have you seen Tommy?”
Henry did the whispering, by the long blond hairs in the sink.
“Not one word, y’ little prick.”
Nodding. Fast nodding.
That was the way to live.
* * *
—
At five years old, like all of us, Clay began the piano.
We hated it but did it.
The MARRY ME keys and Penny.
When we were very young, she’d spoken her old language to us, but only as we went to sleep. Now and then she’d stop and explain something of it, but it left us year by year. Music, on the other hand, was nonnegotiable, and there’d been varying degrees of success:
I was close to competent.
Rory was downright violent.
Henry might have been brilliant, if only he could have cared.
Clay was quite slow to get things, but once he did he would never forget.
Later, Tommy had only done a few years when Penny fell sick, and maybe she was already broken by then, mostly, I think, by Rory.
“All right!” she’d call from next to him, through the barrage of battered music. “Time’s up!”
“What?” He was desecrating that marriage proposal, which was fading by then, and fast, but would never fade completely. “What was that?”
“I said time’s up!”
Often she wondered what Waldek Lesciuszko would have made of him, or more to the point, of her. Where was her patience? Where was the branch of a spruce tree? Or in this place, a bottlebrush or eucalypt? She knew there was a big difference between five boyish boys and a father’s studious girl, but there was still a disappointment, as she watched him swagger away.
For Clay, sitting in the corner of the lounge room was a duty, but one he was willing to endure; he tried at least to try. When he was finished, he’d trail her to the kitchen, and ask his two-word question: “Hey, Mum?”
Penny would stop at the sink. She’d hand him a checkered tea towel. “I think,” she’d say, “I’ll tell you about the houses today, and how I thought they were made of paper….”
“And the cockroaches?”
She couldn’t help herself. “So big!”
* * *
—
But sometimes I think they wondered, our parents, about why they’d chosen to live like this. Most often they would snap over minor things, as the mess and frustration mounted.
I remember how once it rained a whole fortnight, in summer, and we came home deep-fried in mud. Penny had duly lost it with us, and resorted to the wooden spoon. She gave it to us on the arms, on the legs—everywhere she could (and the dirt, like crossfire, like shrapnel)—till finally she’d splintered two of those spoons, and threw a boot down the hall instead. As it tumbled, end over end, it somehow gathered momentum, and elevation, hitting Henry, a thud in the face. His mouth was bleeding, and he’d swallowed a loose tooth, and Penny sat down near the bathroom. When a few of us went to console her, she sprang up and said, “Go to hell!”
It was hours till finally she’d checked on him, and Henry was still deciding. Was he ridden with guilt, or furious? After all, losing teeth was good for business. He said, “I won’t even get paid by the Tooth Fairy!” and showed her the gap within.
“The Tooth Fairy,” she said, “will know.”
“Do you think you get more if you swallow it?”
“Not when you’re covered in mud.”
* * *
—
For me, the most memorable arguments our parents had were linked often to Hyperno High. The endless marking. Abusive parents. Or injuries from breaking up fights.
“Jesus, why don’t you just let ’em kill each other?” our dad said once. “How could you be so—” and Penny was starting to seethe.
“So—what?”
“I don’t know—na?ve, and just, stupid—to think you can make a difference.” He was tired, and sore, from building work, and putting up with the rest of us. He waved a hand back out through the house. “You spend all that extra time marking, and trying to help them, and look here—look at this place.” He was right; there was Lego everywhere, and a scattergun of clothes and dust. Our toilet recalled those public ones, in the time of her spoils of freedom; not one of us aware of the brush.
“And what? So I should stay home and do the cleaning?”
“Well, no, that’s not what I—”
“Should I get the bloody vacuum?”
“Oh, shit, that’s not what I meant.”
“WELL, WHAT DID YOU MEAN?” she roared. “HUH?”
It was the sound that makes a boy look up, when anger spills over to rage. This time they really mean it.
And still it wasn’t quite over.
“YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO BE ON MY SIDE, MICHAEL!”
“I am!” he said. “…I am.”
And the quieted voice, even worse. “Then how about actually showing it.”
Then after-storm, and silence.
* * *
—