“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.
The ditch was still there, clean-cut and clear, but now more had been dug out, both up and down the Amahnu, to give them more room in the riverbed. The remaining debris—the dirt and sticks, the branches and rocks—had been removed or leveled out. In one place he brushed a hand across, on smoothened-over land. To his right he saw the tire tracks.
In the riverbed, he stopped again, he crouched in all its colors. He hadn’t realized before what a multitude it was; a history lesson of rocks. He smiled and said, “Hi, river.”
As for our father, he was in the house, asleep on the couch, with half a mug of coffee. Clay watched him a moment and put his bag down in the bedroom. He took out the books and the old wooden box, but left The Quarryman in the bag, well hidden.
* * *
—
Later, they sat together, on the steps, and despite the cooling weather, the mosquitoes were out, and heinous. They crouched, light-footed, on their arms.
“God, they’re monsters, aren’t they?”
The black mountains stood tall in the distance.
A panel of red behind them.
Again, the Murderer spoke, or tried to.
“How was—”
Clay cut him off. “You hired equipment.”
A friendly sigh. Had he been caught cheating? Had he severed the bridge’s ethos? “I know—it’s not very Pont du Gard, is it?”
“No,” said Clay, but gave him a break. “More than two people built that one, though.”
“Or the devil, if—”
He nodded. “I know.”
He couldn’t tell him just how relieved he was that the job was already done.
Now Michael tried again.
He finished his bitten-off question.
“Home?”
“Not bad.”
Clay could feel him looking, then—at the almost-heal of bruising.
He finished his coffee.
Our dad bit his mug, but gently.
When he stopped, he looked at the steps, and nowhere near the boy. “Matthew?”
Clay nodded. “Everything’s good, though.” He thought a moment. “Rory ended up carrying me,” and there was the slightest smile in front of him.
“They were good with you coming back—here, I mean?”
“Of course,” Clay said, “I had to.”
Slowly he got up and there was so much more, so many things to say, so much at the inner edges; there was Henry and Schwartz and Starkey (and let’s not forget Starkey’s girl), and Henry and Peter Pan. There was Claudia Kirkby, and me. There was all of us at the station, still standing as the train was leaving.
And, of course.
Of course, there was Carey.
There was Carey and Royal Hennessey, and weaving through the traffic…and losing to Pump Up the Jam—
But there again, the quietness.
The unsaidness.
To break it, Clay said, “I’m going inside…while I’ve still got some blood left in me—”
* * *
—
But then—what was this?
A surprise.
As halfway in, he came back; he was suddenly, expansively talkative, which for Clay was eight extra words.
Coffee cup in hand, he said, “I like it here, I like being here,” and he wondered why he’d done it. Maybe it was to acknowledge a new existence—of both Archer Street and the river—or even a kind of acceptance: He belonged as much to each of them.
The distance between us was him.
In the end, it had to end.
The fistfights were coming to a close.
A cigarette had been found and smoked.
Even the piano-mongering was over.
In hindsight, they were worthy distractions, but could never quite turn the tide of her.
The world inside her escalated.
She emptied, she overflowed.
If anything, in the months to come, there were a few last stands of reliable life—as our mother was punished with those treatments. She’d been opened up and shut back tight, like a car on the side of the highway. You know that sound, when you slam the front down, when you’ve just got the bloody thing running again, and pray for a few more miles?
Each day was like that ignition.
We ran till we stalled again.
* * *
—
One of the best examples of living that way was made quite early in January; the middle of the Christmas holidays: The gift and glory of lust.
Yes, lust.
In later years there might have been the naked excitement and pure idiocy of Bachelor Party, but in that early period of Penny’s decline were the beginnings of boyhood depravity.
Perversions or living completely?
It depends which way you look at it.
Regardless, it was the hottest day of summer so far, like a harbinger of things to come. (Clay liked the word harbinger, from his formidable teacher at school, who was full to the brim with vocab. While other teachers kept strictly to the curriculum, this one—the brilliant Mr. Berwick—would no sooner walk into class than test them on words they simply had an obligation to know: Harbinger.
Abominable.
Excruciating. Luggage.
Luggage was a great word, for being so perfect for what you did with it; you lugged.)
* * *
—
But yes, anyway, not long into January, the sun was high, and achingly hot. The racing quarter was searing. The distant traffic hummed to them. It turned casually the other way.
Henry was in the newsagent’s, up on Poseidon Road, just down from Tippler Lane, and when he came back out triumphantly, he dragged Clay into the alley. He looked left and right, and said it.
“Here.” A giant whisper. He pulled the Playboy from under his T-shirt. “Get a load of this.”
He handed him the magazine, and opened it to the middle, where the fold went across her body—and she was hard and soft, and pointed and amazing, in all the perfect places. She looked positively thrilled with her hips.
“Pretty great, huh?”
Clay looked down, of course he did, and he knew all this—he was ten years old, with three older brothers; he’d seen naked women on a computer screen—but here was totally different. It was stealing and nudity combined, on glossy printed paper. (As Henry said, “This is the life!”) Clay trembled amongst the glee of it, and weirdly, he read her name. He smiled, looked closer, and asked: “Is her last name really January?”
Inside, his heart beat big, and Henry Dunbar grinned.
“Of course,” he said, “you bet.”
* * *
—
Later, though, when they made it home (after several stops to ogle), our parents were caught in the kitchen. They were down on the worn-out floor, and sitting just barely upright.
Our father was against the cupboards.
His eyes were a wasted blue.
Our mother had thrown up—it was a horrible mess—and now she slept back against him; Michael Dunbar sat only staring.