The Slightly True Story of Cedar B. Hartley Page 7

  Kite introduced me and Oscar and she smiled over the tip of her nose at us saying, ‘Pleasure to meet you.’ She was all straight lines and tips and angles. She asked Kite if he liked the show and what did he think of the tumbling sequence with the hoops and what did he think of the trapeze and did he like the music. Her eyes were very insistent. They seemed to be digging inside and searching about for something that was lost. She didn’t ask Kite how school was. She said, ‘And how is your father? Didn’t he come?’ Kite said his father was okay, but he didn’t want to come to the circus. ‘How’s his back?’ said the mother. Kite shrugged and said it was just the same. And then neither of them said anything for a while, but she smoked quite ferociously on her cigarette and looked out her eyes sideways. She called out to a woman, ‘Shirley, come and meet my son.’ Then she grabbed Kite by the hand and dragged him around, showing him to the people in the circus. I think she forgot that Oscar and I were there.

  Oscar leaned up against the wall and said, in his slow stumbling voice, ‘Well she isn’t a pussy footer is she?’

  ‘No she isn’t,’ I said, and giggled because Oscar made a funny face and I liked him for wobbling there with his wide face. The whole dressing room was full of people who were like lights blinking on and off in bright colours, except perhaps for Oscar who, in the midst of all that flashing, seemed suddenly stable and good, like a familiar lampshade with a warm unremarkable glow and a couple of sore spots and no reason to try to be brilliant or celebrated or better than the rest. I would have liked to stay and lean against the wall with him in a quiet colourless way, but I thought I’d better go.

  Oscar said, ‘Well, it was nice to meet you.’

  ‘Likewise,’ I said, and then I ducked out the door.

  We went home on the tram. I told Mum about Kite and she told me about Oscar. He’s one of her clients. That means he’s an accident victim and she helps him with things. She’s called a carer.

  ‘What happened to him?’

  ‘He had some kind of fall so he’s got a slight brain injury, which is why he sounds funny when he talks and why he wobbles a bit on his legs.’ She said there’s absolutely nothing wrong with his mind and that he isn’t at all mental, and that his mind is actually very original and sharp and imaginative. There’s just a slow connection in the motor part of his voice.

  ‘I wonder how he knows Kite,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, I wonder.’

  Mum read the card from Barnaby out aloud at dinner.

  ‘Oh, that boy. He gets it from your father,’ said my mum, shaking her head as if she disapproved, but I could tell she didn’t really disapprove, she just worried. She stuck the card on the fridge with all the other ones.

  ‘Gets what?’

  ‘Oh, you know, this crazy card thing. It’s just like something your father would have done. Barnaby’s off in his own world. We can’t even contact him. And he knows how I worry.’ She was tired. There was a dirty mark on her shirt. She was licking her finger and wiping at it but it wasn’t going to go, I could tell.

  ‘Was our father like that?’ I said, pushing my peas under the mash potato. I didn’t mind peas so much, but that’s what Barnaby always did with his peas. Mum leant her head in her hands. She looked at me like I was an innocent child, even though she knew I was half grown-up and had once hit a man on the head with a cumquat I lobbed from the hedge.

  Now she just rested her eyes on me and said softly that my father just had a very lively imagination, he was a dreamer, and had I finished my dinner, and was I going to please stop playing with the potato and start eating it? Conversations about our dad were always closed before you could really open them. It bugged me. Trying to talk about our dad was like walking up a very short dead-end street.

  ‘Mum, what illness did our dad die of?’

  ‘It was just a sudden thing.’

  ‘Was it cancer?’

  ‘No.’ Her fingers started tapping on the table.

  ‘Mumps?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Diabetes?’

  ‘No, that’s what Granma had.’ Her hand went flat and still for a moment.

  ‘Myxomatosis?’

  ‘No, that’s only for rabbits.’

  ‘Heart attack, then?’

  ‘Oh Cedy, yes, I suppose it was a kind of heart attack. Haven’t you got homework?’ She stood up and her chair screeched on the floor as it moved.

  ‘I did it already. Mum, don’t only old people die of heart attacks?’

  ‘Usually. It depends. Sometimes you ask too much of your heart and it can’t take it. You can wear it out early.’

  ‘Is that what our dad did?’

  ‘I s’pose so. You shouldn’t think about it.’ She sighed and started fussing around the kitchen.

  ‘Mum, did you cry when our dad died?’

  ‘Yes, I did.’ She didn’t look at me. Her hand went to her mouth.

  There’s this ad on tellie where a girl’s crying because she’s in trouble at school and then her dad comes to get her. He’s wearing a suit, he’s handsome in an old Sean Connery kind of a way, and I can tell he would smell nice. He sorts out the trouble. When the daughter sees him she’s happy and you can tell she feels safe. The father hugs her and takes her schoolbag and opens the car door for her. He has a much better car than the Ingswood, one that would never break down. I bet she doesn’t even know the number plate. The ad is stupid. I can’t even remember what it’s advertising. I get the feeling that there’s something fishy about my dad dying, but no one will tell me what.

  I went and lay on the old couch and tried listening to it groan as I moved. It doesn’t really groan, it yelps and puffs. Barnaby exaggerates. I wanted to ask Mum if she thought Barnaby was asking too much of his heart, too, but I didn’t because my questions make her tired. So I did a headstand and checked to see if my rib hurt, but it was okay. I was ready, for Saturday.

  I remembered how, not long before Barnaby went, Mr Barton had come over. You could tell he was foaming at the bit about something, and I hadn’t thrown one single cumquat near him. You could tell by the way he banged on the door—bang bang bang, not knock knock knock. His face was all squeezed-up and his hands were pushing hard in his pockets, like they wanted to jump out and smack you but they weren’t allowed because he’s a dad and he wears a suit. Mum took him into the living room and closed the door, and they talked too quietly for me to hear. That time I think it was something to do with Barnaby.

  I should have known. Kite should have known, too. You’d have to be thick not to know that between the months of May and September, nearly every oval in Victoria is taken up with footy on Saturday. There were people all round the edge of the oval, watching. It was only boys playing, but still, boys and their parents get very serious about footy. I only like it when someone gets a mark way up high, by jumping up on someone else’s back and snatching the ball out of the air miles above everyone. That’s what I’d do.

  ‘Well, we can’t train here,’ I said. Kite and I were sitting on the rail and looking at the match.

  ‘Nuh, doesn’t matter, we can go to my place. We’ve got mats there.’ His hands were balled-up and stuck under his T-shirt. He twisted his head sideways to look at me. But I wasn’t giving anything away. I just gave a breezy shrug.

  ‘Can Stinky come?’

  ‘Course. Dad would like to see him again.’

  ‘Okay, let’s go then.’ I jumped down off the rail. Kite had asked me to his place—that meant we had to be friends. I didn’t care about mats or no mats. I felt like swinging my arms around and hooting, but of course I didn’t. I stood firmly on my buzzing feet and smiled. Kite slid off the rail and shoved his hands in his pockets, and looked up at the sky as if something was about to fall out of it.

  I met his dad. They lived in a small house with a long hall and windows on only one side. So it was dark, and smelt like wet socks and bathmats. The other side was joined to another house that looked almost the same. It wasn’t as messy as you might thi
nk a house without a mother in it might be, but it wasn’t swept and stainless and steely, like the Bartons’, and there were no good cooking smells like at Caramella’s. Also, there weren’t any pictures on the walls or things on shelves, like at our house. It was a house without things. At least without little things. For me, since I’m a major snoop, it was a bit like opening a photo album and finding it empty. Kite’s dad was sitting at the kitchen table reading the newspaper, just like my mum does on Saturday. She reads the Extra and sometimes cuts the Leunig out and sticks it on the fridge. Kite’s fridge was bare.

  Kite’s dad stood up when we came into the kitchen. Kite put his hand on the back of my shoulder and said, ‘This is Cedar.’ The hand stayed on my shoulder for quite a few seconds. I could feel it. And when it left, there was still a warm feeling where it had been. The dad shook my hand and smiled and said, ‘Nice to meet you. I hear you’re a great acrobat,’ which made me go red and protest that I wasn’t, even though secretly I knew I wasn’t bad for a beginner. He was wearing trackie dacks and his hair was all ruffled-up, as if he’d just got up. He picked Stinky up and tickled him under the chin. His eyes were like washed-out rain clouds—big and sad and pale.

  ‘We’re going to do some training in the garage,’ said Kite.

  ‘Good on you,’ said his dad. He nodded encouragingly, and smiled, and seemed a bit shy, even. But I thought he was nicer than the mother. He seemed soft, like flannel pyjamas. ‘Can I look in?’ he said, and he put Stinky back down.

  ‘Nuh, not yet. Maybe later,’ said Kite. The dad nodded. He folded his arms and held on to them. He seemed not to know what to do, even though he was the dad and we were only the kids.

  ‘Oscar dropped over before. I told him you wouldn’t be back till this arvo.’

  ‘Thanks. I’ll go over later.’ Kite opened the fridge, looked in and closed it again. ‘Do you want a glass of water?’ he said to me, and you could tell the dad felt bad because there was no cordial or juice. He started saying he’d go and buy some apple juice but Kite told him not to worry.

  I said, ‘I like water and we only have water at home too because Mum says cordial makes you hyperactive and I’m active enough as it is.’

  I think the dad appreciated me saying that, because he laughed.

  We went out the back, which was mainly cement with a Hills Hoist and some building rubbish in the corner. I asked Kite about Oscar, but he didn’t really reply. He just pointed to the garage at the end of the yard, and said, ‘Check it out.’

  Garages have never appealed to me. Attics do and gardens do, but garages are usually full of men’s things that smell bad and have sharp, heavy edges that rip your dress or hurt if you drop them. I struggled to get excited by the appearance of two brick walls with a roll-a-door mouth.

  But inside it was another story. This garage wasn’t made of black corners and greasy holes. There were no cars, tools, or petrol stains. And no calendars with pictures of Hawaiian women in bikinis. It didn’t look at all like a garage.

  Firstly, there was a patch of dirty cream carpet on the floor and a window with sun coming in. The walls were painted blue and there was a big stack of foam mats in the corner. Hanging from the ceiling was a trapeze which was tied up so you couldn’t reach it. There was a ghetto-blaster in the corner and a few pictures stuck on one wall. I felt like a kid in a new playground.

  ‘Wow, some garage!’

  ‘Yeah, my folks used it for training. When they were together.’ Kite was flinging the mats on the floor and fitting them together like a jigsaw. I looked up close at the pictures. Some were photocopies from The Tumbler’s Manual, by Laporte and Renner, which Kite had already told me about. There were drawings of a short man with no face, in speedos, doing companion balances with another exactly-the-same man. Pretty advanced stuff, like high arm-to-arm balances, hand-to-foot pitch somersaults, ankle-toss flying back rolls, knee-and-shoulder springs, neck-lift back somersaults. There were dots to show you the movement pathways. Like this:

  ‘Can we do this one?’ I said pointing to the knee-and-shoulder spring. I felt sure we could do that. Almost sure.

  ‘Maybe. We’d need Dad to spot it first.’

  There was also a picture of his mum and dad when they were younger. The black-haired mother was standing on the dad’s shoulders, wearing a white disco suit with sequins. They were both smiling hard. There was another one with Kite in it. It was a large black-and-white photo of all three standing on their heads, laughing. Underneath was the same shot, only they weren’t laughing and their legs were in tricky positions.

  ‘Why didn’t your dad go to see Circus Berzerkus with you?’ I asked.

  Kite flopped on his tummy on the mats. ‘I dunno. I think it makes him sad. ’Cause he’s not in it any more. And he doesn’t like to see Mum, anyway.’

  ‘Why not?’ (Barnaby would say, at this point, I was being nosy.)

  ‘Oh, she’s got a boyfriend in the circus. After Dad had his accident, my mum went off with a man called Howard. He’s the music director in the circus. So Dad lost a lot all at once and it makes him feel bad to see it. It reminds him. I don’t think he likes his job in the library. He’s stuck looking after me, and Mum goes around the world with the circus and Howard.’ Kite rolled on his back and squeezed his knees up to his chest, taking a deep breath in. ‘We don’t like Howard much, Dad and I. Dad calls him The Weasel. Mum rang that day. Remember the day when you broke your rib? They had a big fight on the phone. I listened to it. They always fight. Dad told Mum to just bugger off out of his life. He told her she was selfish and she didn’t care about anyone but herself. I heard him say it.’

  That explained Kite’s weird mood that bad Marnie-and-Aileen-bung-rib day. I went and leant on his knees; it helps the stretch. I was looking directly down at his face. It looked back up at me blankly.

  ‘Do you like your mum?’ I asked.

  He turned his face away. ‘I dunno. Aren’t you gonna start warming up?’

  ‘Yeah.’ I lay on my back like he was.

  ‘Do you like yours?’ he said, looking straight up at the roof. His voice came out with a stumble, as if it was running over rocks.

  ‘My mum? Nuh not much. Sometimes she makes me mad.’ I don’t know why I said that. It wasn’t true. Well in some sense it was true. I felt mad at her for always rushing and always being too tired and never being home after school. But then if I didn’t like her I’d be glad she wasn’t home. So I must like her. And if she had a heart attack, like Dad did, or ran off with a circus, I would feel really rotten. I’d feel like those people felt when the Titanic was sinking and they knew they had to jump into the ocean all on their own. Well maybe not quite that rotten, but almost. It hurt a bit just to imagine my mum not being there, so I didn’t. So I did a back roll because I’m impatient and I’m also a show-off. Kite wasn’t watching, anyway. He was still staring up towards the ceiling. Probably thinking about his mum.

  The thing about boys is that they don’t talk in the same way as girls. They talk about things. Out-and-about things, things you can touch and see, not the kind of things that are inside. Those inside things aren’t really things at all, since you can’t see them—not with your eyes—and you can’t hold them—not with your hands. So they’re situations. I call them situations of the heart. Boys don’t talk about heart situations. If they’re blokish, they talk about bulky things that move, like cars, footballs and chicks. If they’re natty sharp, they go on about plug-and-socket things, like computers, stereos and science experiments. I think really smart boys probably talk about the government and the theatre, but there aren’t many that smart. The smooth talkers talk about girls they see on the tram, and older boys like Barnaby talk about music, bands and marijuana, and what an antelope doesn’t know. I don’t think many boys talk about what an antelope doesn’t know; only Barnaby, because he’s a dreamer like our dad was.

  It’s not that girls’ talk is better or more important, not in subject matter anyway, because honestly some
of them only talk about boys and how to make boys like them. That’s the older ones, and it’s so boring. I wouldn’t do that because I’m a feminist and I plan to get my own opinions about the state of the world and I wouldn’t ever let a boy tell me how to get them or what to do with them, either. It’s the way girls talk that’s different. With girls you can go on and on about tiny little things that happen to you. You’re allowed to take an hour to tell about an argument you had with your mum, and how it made you mad or sad or both. You can’t do that with boys.

  Kite hardly ever talks about those inside things. Like when he told me about his mum and dad, he just said it as if he was talking at the roof and not as if he was sharing something with me. And when you ask him personal questions, like about his friendship with Oscar, he kind of blocks them, or fobs them off or swipes them away as if they’re flies bothering him. That’s kind of what Barnaby does, too. Not Caramella, though. She wants to chew the fat, as my Uncle John would say. That means you linger on details, you chomp right through the facts and get to the bone, the nitty gritty gristly chewy sense of things, the gooey core, the centre of that messy weave of feelings that bury into your skin and wrap you up. Not that you can ever hit that centre, but if you hover around it for a while you can get some kind of blurry view of it.

  When I got home from training with Kite at his house, Caramella wanted to hear everything. I know Caramella is my friend, because when we talk it makes me feel that what I felt and saw and said in any kind of situation means something.