Chapter 6
Remember when I said how I liked watching Sarah and Bruce come up the street that Sunday
night?
Well, during the week that all seemed to change.
There was also another change, because Steve, who normally didn’t get home from his office job until about eight at night, was home too. The reason for this was that the previous day at football, he’d turned on his ankle. It was nothing serious, he’d said, but on the Monday morning, his ankle was the size of a shot-put ball. The doctor had ruled him out for six weeks because of ligament damage.
“But I’ll be back in a month, you watch.”
He sat on the floor with his foot raised on some pillows and his crutches next to him. He would be stranded at home for a fortnight, after his boss gave him half of his holiday early. This drove Steve mad, not only because he would miss some of his holiday in summer, but because he hated just sitting around.
His somber mood sure didn’t help things in the lounge room between Sarah and Bruce.
On the couch on Tuesday, rather than going at it like they normally did, they both seemed to be glued down by tension.
“Smell this pillow,” Rube instructed me at one point as I watched them while trying not to. “Why?” “t stinks.”
“I don’t feel like smellin’ it.”
“Go on.” His hairy, threatening face came closer and I knew he wouldn’t take no for an answer.
He threw the pillow over and I was expected to pick it up and stuff it in my face and tell him if it stank. Rube was always making me do things like that — things that seemed ridiculous and meaningless.
“Go on!”
“All right!”
“Go sniff it,” he said, “and tell me it doesn’t smell like Steve’s pajamas.” “Steve’s pajamas?” “Yeah.”
“My pajamas don’t stink.” Steve glared.
“Mine do,” I said. It was a joke. No one laughed. So I turned back to Rube.
“How do you know what Steve’s pajamas smell like? You go round sniffin’ people’s pajamas? Are you a bloody pajama-sniffer or something’?”
Rube eyed me, unimpressed. “Y’ can smell ‘em when he walks past. Now sniff!”
I did it and conceded that the pillow didn’t smell like roses.
“I told ya.”
“Great.”
I returned it to him and he threw it back where it was. That was Rube. The pillow stank and he knew it stank and was concerned about it. He wanted to talk about it, but one thing was certain — there was no way he would wash it. Back in the corner of the couch, the pillow sat, stinking. I could still smell it now, but only because Rube had brought it up. It was probably my imagination. Thanks, Rube.
What made things even more uncomfortable was the fact that normally, if Bruce and Sarah weren’t all over each other, they would at least throw something into the conversation, no matter how stupid we were talking. On that day, however, Bruce said nothing, and Sarah said nothing. They only sat there and watched the movie they’d rented. Not one word.
While all this was going on, I’d better point out that I was praying for Rebecca Conlon and her family. It led me to even start praying for my own family. I prayed that I wouldn’t let Mum down anymore and that Dad wouldn’t work so hard that he’d kill himself before he hit forty-five. I prayed for Steve’s ankle to get better. I prayed that Rube would make something of himself sometime. I prayed that Sarah was okay right there and then and that she and Bruce would be okay. Just be okay. Be okay. I said that a lot. I said it as I started praying for the whole stupid human race and for anyone who was hurting or hungry or dying or being raped at that exact moment in time.
Just let ‘em be okay, I asked God. All those people with AIDS and all that stuff as well. Just let ‘em be okay right n, and those homeless blokes with beards and rags and cut-up shoes and rotten teeth. Let ‘em be okay…. But mainly, let Rebecca Conlon be okay.
It was starting to drive me crazy.
Really.
When Sarah and Bruce weren’t aware I was watching them, I stared at them hard and wondered how just days and weeks ago they were all over each other.
I wondered how this could happen.
It scared me.
God, please bless Rebecca Conlon. Let her be okay….
How could things be so different all of a sudden?
Later on, when I was back in Rube’s and my room, I could hear the drone of Sarah and Bruce talking behind the wall, in her room. The city was dark except for the building lights that seemed to appear like sores — like Band-Aids had been ripped off to expose the city’s skin.
The only thing that seemed never to change was the city at this transition time between afternoon and evening. It always became murky and aloof and ignorant of what was going on. There were thousands of households throughout that city and there was something happening in all of them. There was some kind of story in each, but self-contained. No one else knew. No one else cared. No one else knew about Sarah Wolfe and Bruce Patterson, or cared about Steven Wolfe’s ankle. No one else out there prayed for them or prayed repeatedly for Rebecca Conlon. No one.
So I saw that there was only me. There was only me who could worry about what was happening here, inside these walls of my life. Other people had their own worlds to worry about, and in the end, they had to fend for themselves, just like us.
By the time I went to bed, I was going in circles.
Praying.
Worrying about Sarah.
Praying like an incoherent fool.
I could feel the city at the window, but mostly, I remained in my head, hearing every thought — quiet but loud, and true.
The future:
Time to relax.
We’re at the edge of the city, right next to it, as if we can reach across and touch the buildings — reach in and turn off the lights that try shining in our eyes to blind us.
We’re fishing, Rube and I.
We’ve never fished before, but we are today, through this whole evening.
Our lines dangle in what is a huge, darkening blue lake with stars dropping up through the water.
The water is still, but alive. We can feel it moving beneath the old beat-up boat we have hired from some con man on the shore. Onc a while it shifts beneath us. We are unafraid, at first, because although nothing has been totally stable, we know where we are, and things aren’t moving along too rapidly.
We catch. Nothing.
Absolutely. Nothing.
“Bloody hopeless.” Rube initiates conversation.
“I told y’ we shouldn’t have gone fishing. Who knows what’s in this lake?”
“Dead souls from the city.” Rube smiles with a kind of sarcastic joy. “What’ll we do if we get one on the end of our line?”
“Jump ship, mate.”
“Too bloody right.”
The water moves again, and slowly, waves start rolling in from somewhere we can’t see. They rise up and jump into the boat, and they get higher.
There’s a smell.
“A smell?”
“Yeah, can’t you smell it?” I ask Rube. I say it like an accusation.
“I can, yeah, now that you mention it.”
The water is excessively high now, lifting the boat and us and throwing us back down. A wave hits my face and I get a mouthful. The taste, it’s grotesque, burning, and I can tell by the look on Rube’s face that he’s swallowed some too.
“It’s petrol,” he tells me.
“Oh God.”
The waves die a little now, and I turn to a boat that sits closer to the city, right near the shore. There’s a guy in it, and a girl. The guy steps out onto the shore with something in his hand.
It — glows.
“No!” I stand and throw my arms out. He does it. Cigarette.
He does it as I see another person doing laps across the bay, intense. Who is it? I wonder, and in another boat still, a man and a woman are also rowing, middle-aged.
The guy throws his cigarette into the lake.
Red and yellow rolls into my eyes.
Oblivion.