Gravity (15 page)

‘Sorry,' I said. ‘I didn't realise. I didn't mean to stir all that up.'

‘Don't be sorry,' she said. ‘It's not your fault. I feel good when I'm around you and that shits me because every time I feel good, the guilt just creeps up and I go from feeling good to feeling shit in ten seconds. I hate it. It happens at other times, too, but it's worst around you.'

‘What have you got to feel guilty about?'

‘I ran. I ran to get help and when the cops arrived, I lied. I told them I'd dragged Patchy from the wreck because I could smell petrol and I thought it was going to explode. I left Si bleeding on the crumpled bonnet because I hated him so much, but I still couldn't dob him in. I thought he was dead, too. I hoped he was dead. Prayed he would die in hospital and then, when he came home, all the hate was gone. I was going to have his baby and I felt so guilty about the whole thing. It's all my fault.'

‘It's not. It's nobody's fault. It just happened. It happened a long time ago.'

It was as though she hadn't heard me.

‘And then when your mum started hating me, it felt good, you know? Felt like I deserved it.'

‘Are you listening to me? It's over. It's all over.'

And we talked then. Properly. I stopped apologising and Tori didn't kick me out. We drank coffee and ate pancakes at midnight. We talked about everything and nothing and the ghosts didn't bother us again.

Bully did, though.

He came through the verandah door at full drunken throttle.

‘Hey!' he said. ‘I knew you guys would be kicking on!'

Tori shushed him and he covered his mouth.

He flopped into a kitchen chair. ‘Todd's gone to bed. Have you got any beer, Tori, mate? Any port?'

‘Bar's closed, Bully.'

‘Fuck it,' he said. ‘I knew you were going to say that.'

I watched him wobble on his chair for a minute and realised he was quite trashed.

‘Is it okay if I sleep on your couch tonight, Tori?' he asked. ‘I won't be any trouble or anything.'

Tori scoffed.

‘You've got your swag. Haven't you got work in the morning, mate?' I asked.

‘Yeah, I'll be fine. Shit, I have, too. I'd better get going. Thanks for the lovely evening,' he said, and shook our hands.

He made it to the door and must have forgotten what he was doing. He stood there with the door half open for a good five seconds – long enough for Tori and I to swap smiles and shake our heads – then he closed the door and staggered back into the kitchen.

He kissed Tori and patted her back, then kissed me on the cheek.

‘I love youse guys. Thanks,' he said.

He forgot to close the door.

There was a flap of activity outside and he swore as he bounced down the verandah stairs.

We laughed out loud.

‘I think I'd better take him home,' I said.

‘Good idea.'

She leaned across the table and kissed my cheek. It was soft lips on stubbled skin, but it was so much more than that. It was supposed to be a kiss goodbye but it felt like a kiss hello.
Bully moaned from the bottom of the steps.

I smiled and made it to the door myself before it dawned on me . . .

‘I don't have a car. Mum and Dad took the ute to Melbourne.'

Tori didn't hesitate. ‘Take mine, the keys are in it.'

‘I'll stay in town tonight. Is that okay?'

‘Of course! Bring the car back in the morning? Before, say, eight-thirty?'

Bully wanted to stick his head out the window and sing more Madonna songs on the way to Splitters Creek. Who was I to argue with a tanked Bullant?

Francis was ready for school when I made it to Hargate. I felt a bit guilty seeing him in his uniform. School had resumed a week before and I hadn't called anyone to let them know that I was coming back. Eventually.

Tori looked tired and genuinely happy to see me. There was no morning after. She smiled and thanked me and kissed me hello like it really was the normal thing to do. Francis offered to make me some toast for breakfast, his mum nodding furiously at me over his shoulder.

‘With Vegemite?' I asked.

‘Yep,' Francis said. ‘Coming right up.'

Tori made coffee and we talked in private tones as Francis cooked up a storm. Well, a cloud. A small smoke cloud.

‘All right?' I asked Tori.

‘Fine,' she said. ‘Great, actually. Thanks.'

‘What? I didn't do anything.'

‘Exactly,' she whispered. ‘You didn't have to.'

Francis scraped the burnt bits off my toast into the sink
and lathered it up with butter and black stuff. I chomped at it and groaned approvingly.

Mmm. Salty kiln ash.

When Tori walked his smiling face to school, I ventured into Todd's shed. I figured he'd nurse his head until midday, so I opened every drawer and examined every tool. I put it all back exactly as I'd found it and stumbled on an idea for a project. A simple and beautiful thing that filled me with sadness and hope.

Tori made sandwiches for us both at lunchtime. Todd still hadn't surfaced and Tori steamed with intrigue when I told her my project was a secret. She was still sitting quietly when Col's van stopped in the driveway. He was whistling when he delivered a box of supplies just inside the shed door. He didn't see us lurking in the shadows and jumped when Tori said hello.

‘Oh, g'day Love. Hiya, Adam. What you guys up to?'

‘Adam's building a project. A secret project.'

‘Ahh. One of those sorts of projects, hey? Whose birthday is coming up?'

Tori laughed. ‘Not mine.'

‘Is Todd around?'

‘Still in bed,' Tori said. ‘Do you want me to get him up?'

‘Oh no, I'll catch up with him next time, the lazy poop. Account's overdue. Again.'

‘You can leave that with me, Col,' Tori said. ‘I'll give him a kick up the arse for you.'

Col snorted. ‘Thanks, Love. Much appreciated.'

He tooted as he left, and Tori waved.

‘He's the only person in the world who calls me
Love
,' she said.

‘I think he wants your body,
Love
.'

‘Fuck off.'

‘Ooo. You want him, don't you,
Love
?'

She laughed and stormed out of the shed in mock disgust.

It didn't seem fair that Col could get away with calling her
Love
and I had to be content with using her name. When Col said it, it had no weight, it was a throwaway term of friendship like
mate
.

It would mean something else from my lips. It would have form and beauty, if I had the guts to call her
Love
.

The thought was still stewing when she came back with a glass of water for me. I smiled, thanked her and watched her leave.

I dropped my chisel on the bench and ran after her. ‘Can I call you
Love
?'

‘What?' she said. She turned, put her knuckles on her hips and smiled at me with her head to the side.

‘Can I call you
Love
?'

She bubbled and blurted for five seconds.

‘If you mean it,' she eventually said.

‘Oh, I mean it.'

She nodded, matter-of-factly.

‘I love you, Tori,' I said.

‘I know,' she said, and continued on her way home.

‘I love you,
Love
.'

She laughed and waved over her shoulder.

The ground could barely hold on to my feet. I chased after her. She let out a squeal as I hug-tackled her to the grass. We
rolled and I mouthed the back of her neck and growled. Gooseflesh under my lips. I bit her jaw, her cheek, her smiling lip, then her fingers were in my hair and I was tasting her sweet breath and there it was again – that feeling of epiphany. A moment rising to clarity in me like a swell of orchestral music.

I
knew
love.

We stole into her house and spent the hour before Francis had to be picked up basking in the glory and heat of our bodies. So urgent. So shameless and wild, with incense burning and faces glowing. Skin on skin and the sweet release of free hearts discovering their synchronised orbits.

The hour flashed by in what felt like a handful of seconds. The past didn't touch us and the future started painting itself in the pleasure. We were nowhere near finished. Might take a lifetime to get it right.

Tori eventually left and I got a lift into town with Sam the potter. He didn't want to talk. I couldn't stop smiling, anyway. He dropped me at Bully's place and I managed to wangle an invitation for tea. Even after a full day of work, Bully was still a bit seedy. One eye was all puffy and bloodshot. He didn't open his mouth at the dinner table except to lever food into it and he crawled off to bed before the end of
The Simpsons
. I thanked Bully's mum for the meal and Chuck told me to look after myself.

I lay on my bed at home and stared at the ceiling. What if you knew for certain that hope and love and all that stuff never lasted? What if you knew there were only ever going to be fleeting glimpses of light in a rolling tunnel of darkness? If you lived in a little pond and all you could see was muddy
water, you could be forgiven for thinking that. You could be excused for ignoring the flashes as they blinked past you. But if you knew what life was like outside your little pond, you'd flip yourself onto dry land just for a moment in the light. You'd wriggle a thousand miles for a feather of real love.

I blasted awake at two a.m. The front door closed quietly and light switches snapped. I rubbed my eyes and found my weary parents at the kitchen table. They nodded their greetings but said nothing. I joined them in their silent prayer and we sat there, heads bowed, as the clock ticked like a snare drum from the wall.

‘I feel like a beer,' Dad eventually croaked. ‘Do you want one, Adrienne?'

‘No thanks, Hugh. I'm going to bed.'

I had a beer with Dad. Mum came out in her nightie and kissed us both good night.

‘You never think you'll outlive your kids. Doesn't seem fair,' Dad said.

‘It
isn't
fair,' I said, and wished I hadn't. In any normal situation, Dad would have spent an hour sticking up for God and His mysterious ways. He'd never let himself hate the old prick just because He'd taken his son. Well, not that night.

‘Life isn't fair, sometimes,' he said. ‘You don't need a university degree to work that out.'

‘How's Mum?'

Dad shrugged. ‘I don't know, mate. Up and down. One minute I feel like she's back for good, next minute I think I can hear her wings flapping in preparation for a swift exit. Can hardly blame her.'

‘Yeah, and can hardly blame you, either.'

He smiled into his beer. ‘She'll make her decision when she's good and ready.'

She's made her decision, I thought. She wouldn't be facing all the heartache if she hadn't made up her mind. Dad was a bright bloke, he'd work it out eventually.

We had another beer.

‘Simon was capable of enormous rage if he had a reason. He was like that even when he was a baby. Your mum had to keep a close eye on him when you were little. He had a bit of trouble adjusting to having a new baby in the house. He was as jealous as autumn is of spring.'

I nodded, and inside I could feel a knot letting go. It seemed such a relief that Tori
and
Dad had seen through Simon's golden-child mask. I thought I'd been the only one. I remembered when Simon stabbed me for taking one of his football cards and imagined the wrath I would have endured if he'd lived to see me with Tori.

‘I was at Tori's tonight. She still feels guilty about the accident.'

He shifted in his chair and sighed. ‘Poor girl probably blames herself, like we all do.'

‘She does.'

‘I wish your mother could hear that from Tori's lips.'

I hoped he wasn't holding his breath for that to happen. I had no doubt that Tori could say the words to her, but I also had no doubt that Mum wouldn't hear them.

‘Your Mum and I thought we'd have another little ceremony. Nothing formal or fancy. I suggested we sprinkle his ashes somewhere but we couldn't decide on a place that would be fitting.'

I nodded. ‘I know a place.'

Dad took a deep breath.

‘Simon wasn't a monster,' he said. ‘He made some ordinary decisions trying to stay on the rails, but he wasn't a monster. He was just doing the best he could.'

He rolled the beer in the bottom of his glass and emptied it down his throat.

‘You know what I think Simon was doing up on the plateau?' he asked.

I shrugged. ‘He was lost.'

Dad shook his head. ‘Simon never got lost. He never went off the track and never took a risk unless he was pretty sure where he'd end up.'

He took a photograph from his pocket. An old school photograph.

‘He had this in his jacket.'

It was a photograph of me.

Dad nodded. ‘I think he was looking for you.'

All the sadness and guilt that I thought had gone crawled into my stomach. It sloshed around in there with the beer and drew my throat tight. I bit at my lip.

Dad put his hand over mine. ‘It's not your fault, Adam. It's nobody's fault. Not yours or mine or Mum's or God's or even Simon's fault. It's nobody's fault. We all did the best that we could and if the same thing happened again, we'd do it differently.'

‘But what if I hadn't run away?'

Dad squeezed my knuckles and threw his hands into the air. ‘What if I'd been a better father? What if your mother and I didn't have kids? What if I'd moved to Brisbane when
I was sixteen? You can't “what if ” your history. It's done. That lesson is over. Let's get on with living.'

I slid my chair out, stood and hugged his head. He patted my arm then hung on tight.

I finished my woodwork project in time for Simon's proper ceremony.

‘Whoah, you made a cross,' Francis said.

‘I did, mate. Do you want to make one, too?'

‘Yes,' he said. ‘I'm good at making crosses.'

I found some old packing timber beside Todd's shed and helped the little bloke saw it to length with the handsaw. I started the nail for him and watched him smack at it with the hammer for five minutes. The hammer was heavy and the nail bent and I straightened it until I thought it would snap. He was a determined little shite and he wouldn't let me help with the hammer. He eventually sighed with relief and rubbed his brow on his forearm.

‘Finished,' he said, and there was a single round of applause.

Tori stood at the shed door. She could have been there for hours. ‘You made a cross, Francis.'

She lifted him and mouthed the words ‘thank you' to me.

‘It's for my dad's grave,' he said, and Tori looked at him, aghast.

She looked at me and I shrugged. I'd never said a word. There were tears in me then and I didn't feel sad, just wide-eyed at the beauty and honesty of a little kid.

‘How did you know that your dad was dead?' she asked, the words streaky with emotion.

Francis shrugged.

‘I made a cross, too,' I said. ‘Only mine is for my brother.'

Tori ran her fingers over the crucifix. With the right attention to detail, even the simplest thing can become a work of art. ‘It's beautiful.'

Francis wriggled to be let down, grabbed the hammer and gave his cross another couple of good slaps before running out of the shed and into the day.

Tori's eyes sparkled with tears, but she smiled through them. She opened her arms and hugged me. We rocked and I patted her back. When we finally parted, she held my hands and swallowed as though she was about to speak.

I waited, but the words didn't come.

‘What?' I asked.

She shrugged. ‘I love you.'

We hugged again, only this time it was with our everything: our bodies, our lips, our past hurts and our futures.

‘I love you.'

I drove Tori and Francis to Splitters Creek early on the morning of Simon's final ceremony. Francis held his cross and I carried him up the stairs and through the door into Mum and Dad's house.

‘Hello?' I called.

‘In here,' came the reply from the lounge.

I glanced at Tori over my shoulder and she forced a smile. She was as ready as she'd ever be.

Mum stood in the lounge and, while the sight of me with Francis made her shift feet, she didn't run.

Dad raised an eyebrow at me from the couch.

‘What have you got there?' Mum asked Francis, and all the air in the room vanished.

‘A cross,' Francis said, holding it proudly aloft.

Tori stepped beside me. ‘Francis was wondering if it would be okay to put the cross in the ground today.'

Mum's eyes misted and she covered her mouth.

‘It's for my dad. The cross is for my dad.'

Mum nodded through her tears, her body tightening with emotion. ‘Of course, love. Of course,' she said, before she surrendered to the sobbing. She put her arm around me but kissed the side of Francis's head. She held her other arm wide and Tori stepped into the embrace.

‘I'm so sorry,' Mum said. ‘Sorry for treating you like I have. Sorry for . . .'

Tori, her face already cramped and scarred with tears, pulled Mum close and kissed her wet cheek.

‘It's okay,' she said. ‘It's all okay. We do the best we can.'

The couch creaked as Dad stood. He sniffed, wiped his face on his sleeve and tried to encircle the whole group with his arms.

‘Peace at last,' he sighed.

I helped Francis plant his cross by the side of the road. Beside Patchy's painted boulder. We used quickset concrete and
I spent five minutes getting my crucifix nice and vertical then stomped on it so it leaned and wasn't such a slave to gravity.

Dad spread Simon's ashes and read from the Bible. We'd cried our tears by then and my hometown heaved a collective sigh.

Mum learned to pull a beer that night and found herself a job beside Emma and Col. I could see my father laughing and knew his heart had softened.

I was a calm speck of the cosmos that night, washed clean from a dusty time in my life, my soul warmed by the respectful cheer around me. My little mate on my lap, his mother holding my hand.

I had a past that I owned every minute of.

I'd found my wayward heart.

And the future . . .

Well, you can't pick them.